Plot Summary
A band of one direction band gallery slaves under leadership of Spartakis (a parody of Spartacus) have taken over Julius Caesar's personal galley - much to its possessor's irking, for which he insults, then sends his no-good admiral Crustacius to recover the ship.
After some arguing about a safe place to disembark, the slaves decide to set sail for the only place safe from the Romans: Asterix' small Gaulish village, as one of the slaves heard about it from a relative in Britain. Crustacius, hot in pursuit and ignorant of the Gauls' reputation, prepares to attack the village. The Gauls prepare for battle, but Obelix is yet again denied a drop of Getafix's magic potion. As the Gauls return triumphant from battle, they find Obelix has drunk the remaining cauldron of magic potion- Getafix having made two cauldrons just in case- and that this overdose has turned him into stone, which has also proven that it would be dangerous to drink more magic potion.
The former galley slaves are granted refuge, and Getafix tries desperate measures to return Obelix to his normal state. He tries potions and things that stimulate his emotion (wild boar cooked by Impedimenta and a kiss from Panacea), and finally Obelix recovers from his stone state - but as a child. Obelix has also lost his old strength, leaving him feeling useless as he now cannot lift menhirs or eat boars in the same quantity that he is used to doing so. He is kidnapped by Roman soldiers while trying to run away to the forest, and made a slave by the Officer. The former slaves travel with Asterix, Dogmatix and Getafix to rescue Obelix who is en route to Rome by galley under Crustacius' supervision. When they recover Obelix on the high seas, Getafix proposes Atlantis as their next destination in order to help Obelix recover his adult shape.
After dropping off Crustacius and his adjutant with the ever-returning pirates- who are also offered Caesar's galley to bring back to Rome for a reward, as a compensation for Asterix having (this time, accidentally) sunk their ship-, Getafix brings them to the remnants of Atlantis (the Canary Islands), where the Atlantides have found eternal youth, in the hope that they can restore Obelix's true appearance. Unfortunately, the Atlantides have no means to help, only knowing how to make someone younger, not older, so the Gauls head back to the village, while the freed slaves decide to live at Atlantis as children forever, finally being free from Rome.
On their way back, the Gauls are intercepted by yet another Roman galley. Asterix is incapacitated by a catapult stone, and when the Romans want to feed him to the sharks after throwing the gourd of potion into the Ocean all seems lost. Seeing his friend in danger provokes so much emotion that it triggers Obelix to transform within seconds to his former self. With all his conserved aggression from being bossed around the entire album, he first drives off the attacking Roman galley (causing surprise to Getafix when he climbs back onto the boat having dived in to recover the potion), then smashes the Roman outpost near the village before returning for the traditional village feast.
As for Crustacius, the story ends like this: When swapping Caesar's galley with the pirates for another ship, Asterix and Getafix had accidentally left the magic potion they had taken along for the trip aboard. When Crustacius gets a sip of it just before Ostia, he easily gets rid of the pirates. But when he realizes the nature of his drink and plans to overthrow Caesar, he commits the same mistake as Obelix and is turned into a statue himself, and his adjutant's dream of getting a promotion for bringing back the ship is dashed when some over-eager soldiers fire flaming ballista bolts against the supposed pirate vessel.
The statue of the admiral ends up in the Circus Maximus for the lions- with the adjutant and the soldiers reduced to sweeping the arena-, with Caesar expressing his hopes to a baffled Cleopatra that one day the lions may actually develop a taste for granite after all...
Read more about this topic: Asterix And Obelix All At Sea
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