Last episode saw Majin Buu getting disqualified from the proceedings, but Botamo’s bouncy, rubber-like nature feels like it has much of the choreography of what one of these fights with Buu would look like. Only Goku gets to fight the guy. Unsurprisingly, Goku is much faster than this Winnie the Pooh reject, but in spite of superb speed, Botamo’s mass seems to be absorbing every attack that Goku throws at him. It’s also all too cute that it’s Vegeta that gives Goku his winning strategy here (while still managing to be insulting) and inspires Goku to simply throw Botamo out of the ring. It’s that sort of thinking—that Goku is so often in capable of—that makes these tournaments so interesting. It’s not just strength; it’s strategy.

After Botamo’s rather quick defeat, Frost is the next one up from Universe 6 and it’s nice to see Dragon Ball Super not making us wait to see this character in action. Of course we want to get to that bizarro version of Frieza! Who cares about weird robots! Frost’s early appearance is a welcome surprise here, as well as getting his glorious backstory that he’s some sort of super philanthropist for Universe 6. The mini-montage he gets regarding his charity work (that’s right) is a fantastic gag and yet another reminder of why this multiverse concept is the most interesting thing that the Dragon Ball universe has done in a long time. Even decisions like making Frieza’s double ultra-nice instead of being a murderous tyrant are super obvious, but still deeply satisfying.

The episode even goes as far as to have Frost deliver a lengthy speech that’s the equivalent of, “Yo, sorry we’re all in this fight against one another because violence really isn’t the answer.” The whole reason the guy is even fighting in this tournament to begin with is so he can rid his world of war, so, dude’s definitely on the glass half honorable side of things.

Once the battle between Goku and Frost gets underway, it’s pretty glorious to see Goku and Vegeta obviously being well aware of Frost’s many transformations and forms due to their heavy experience with Frieza (the guys are the preeminent experts on Frieza extermination at this point). Goku tells Frost to quit wasting time and to just transform already and get it over with, a request that takes the wind out of the alien’s sails pretty quickly. Vegeta also straight up insults the laborious nature of “final forms” in a beautiful nod to the audience over the wasteful, drawn out nature of the original battle with Frieza on Namek. This is the sort of self-aware Dragon Ball that I’m looking for. Play into the meme culture. You know what you are.

It’s also a small touch, but it’s really satisfying to see Frost laying focus into Frieza’s third transformation, which is not only the most Cronenberg looking one of the lot, but the one that’s been given the least amount of attention throughout the show’s run. A lot of this stuff may feel like rampant fan fiction and wish fulfillment in some ways, but hey, when a property has been around for this long, it’s not surprising to see the creator and staff building the same desires of the fanbase.