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[Avatar: the Last Airbender]: you DO always come back!
Qingu
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This thread is about Avatar: The Last Airbender, an epic fantasy cartoon in its third season on Nickelodeon. The show draws heavily from anime and Chinese history, mythology, and martial arts, and is also the awesomest show ever.
Like other fantasy stories, it's useful to begin our evaluation with the world map.
Avatar's world is divided into four civilizations, each one privy to a certain kind of elemental magic/martial arts called bending:
The Water Tribe, who live near the poles,
The Earth Kingdom, which occupies the vast eastern continent,
The Fire Nation, which rules the western volcanic archipelego, and
The Air Nomads, ascetics who (once) roamed the world freely.
Throughout all of history, the Avatar, a bender chosen from one of the four civilizations and reincarnated from previous avatars, has kept the world in balance. But 100 years ago, the last avatar—a twelve year Airbender named Aang—mysteriously disappeared.
Now, the world is at war. The Fire Nation wiped out the Air Nomads and invaded the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribe, and seem hell-bent on world domination. That is, unless the Avatar Aang and his friends can stop them!
This is Aang, the Avatar. 100 years ago he froze himself in ice, and in his absence the world fell to ruin. Aang is an Airbender and, as the Avatar, must learn all the other bending arts to become master of the four elements.
This is Katara, a Waterbender from the southern Water Tribe. Along with her brother Sokka, she discovered the Avatar frozen in ice.
This is Sokka, Katara's brother. He has no bending ability, but his scientific-minded creativity and wit make up for it!
Together, Aang, Katara, and Sokka must journey around the world, helping Aang learn waterbending, earthbending, and eventually firebending so that he can take on the militaristic Fire Nation and restore balance to the four civilizations. Along the way, they are pursued by:
Prince Zuko, the banished son of the Fire Lord, who seeks to restore honor to his name by capturing the Avatar, long believed to be dead.
The show has all the trappings of a Final Fantasy game and anime, both in its story and its expansive fictional world and highly developed magic system. However, it is written, produced, voiced and partially drawn by Americans, with Koreans doing the animation.
It's remarkable (in my opinion) because it manages to take all the awesome things about anime—creative, cohesive worlds, intricate storylines, imaginative battles—and at the same time excises the stupidest things about anime—for example, over-the-top melodrama and angst, nonsensical super-powers, and panty shots. It's a Nickelodeon show so there is some "kids humor," but the characters and themes of the show are remarkably mature and multi-sided. The Fire Nation, for example, is not merely an "evil empire," the protagonists are flawed and often act selfishly or stupid, and even the worst characters have a noble side. The show's animation and art design is also among the best I've ever seen and seems to be getting better and better as the show progresses.
______________
THE MOVIE is coming out soon, directed by M. Night Shamaylan. It looks kind of all right, Shamaylan caveats noted. He is apparently a fan of the show, introduced to it through his daughter. The original creators co-wrote the screenplay and are heavily involved in production.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W1dhqc-JBs
HOWEVER, the movie's casting has caused controversy: all of the main characters are white. Except for the Fire Nation characters, who are now brown Indians. This is especially ironic because in the show, Fire Nation people were the palest of all.
MUCH DEBATE has ensued. I think I can sum up the arguments:
Like other fantasy stories, it's useful to begin our evaluation with the world map.
Avatar's world is divided into four civilizations, each one privy to a certain kind of elemental magic/martial arts called bending:
The Water Tribe, who live near the poles,
The Earth Kingdom, which occupies the vast eastern continent,
The Fire Nation, which rules the western volcanic archipelego, and
The Air Nomads, ascetics who (once) roamed the world freely.
Throughout all of history, the Avatar, a bender chosen from one of the four civilizations and reincarnated from previous avatars, has kept the world in balance. But 100 years ago, the last avatar—a twelve year Airbender named Aang—mysteriously disappeared.
Now, the world is at war. The Fire Nation wiped out the Air Nomads and invaded the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribe, and seem hell-bent on world domination. That is, unless the Avatar Aang and his friends can stop them!
This is Aang, the Avatar. 100 years ago he froze himself in ice, and in his absence the world fell to ruin. Aang is an Airbender and, as the Avatar, must learn all the other bending arts to become master of the four elements.
This is Katara, a Waterbender from the southern Water Tribe. Along with her brother Sokka, she discovered the Avatar frozen in ice.
This is Sokka, Katara's brother. He has no bending ability, but his scientific-minded creativity and wit make up for it!
Together, Aang, Katara, and Sokka must journey around the world, helping Aang learn waterbending, earthbending, and eventually firebending so that he can take on the militaristic Fire Nation and restore balance to the four civilizations. Along the way, they are pursued by:
Prince Zuko, the banished son of the Fire Lord, who seeks to restore honor to his name by capturing the Avatar, long believed to be dead.
The show has all the trappings of a Final Fantasy game and anime, both in its story and its expansive fictional world and highly developed magic system. However, it is written, produced, voiced and partially drawn by Americans, with Koreans doing the animation.
It's remarkable (in my opinion) because it manages to take all the awesome things about anime—creative, cohesive worlds, intricate storylines, imaginative battles—and at the same time excises the stupidest things about anime—for example, over-the-top melodrama and angst, nonsensical super-powers, and panty shots. It's a Nickelodeon show so there is some "kids humor," but the characters and themes of the show are remarkably mature and multi-sided. The Fire Nation, for example, is not merely an "evil empire," the protagonists are flawed and often act selfishly or stupid, and even the worst characters have a noble side. The show's animation and art design is also among the best I've ever seen and seems to be getting better and better as the show progresses.
______________
THE MOVIE is coming out soon, directed by M. Night Shamaylan. It looks kind of all right, Shamaylan caveats noted. He is apparently a fan of the show, introduced to it through his daughter. The original creators co-wrote the screenplay and are heavily involved in production.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W1dhqc-JBs
HOWEVER, the movie's casting has caused controversy: all of the main characters are white. Except for the Fire Nation characters, who are now brown Indians. This is especially ironic because in the show, Fire Nation people were the palest of all.
MUCH DEBATE has ensued. I think I can sum up the arguments:
"It's no big deal":
Race plays little, if any, role in the world of Avatar. When Zuko is wandering around the Earth Kingdom, he isn't recognizable as "fire nation" based on his outward appearance. Likewise for our heroes in season 3. There are no racial underclasses. There is no racism. Unlike Lord of the Rings, which is extremely race-conscious, you could easily interchange any of the individual characters' outward appearance in the show. Also unlike LoTR (where racial bloodlines grant magic powers), the magical metaphysics of Avatar are explicitly cultural. So it's not as though switching characters' skin color is changing something important to the internal reality of the show. The characters' voice actors were all white, except for Zuko and Iroh, who were Asian. Also, Shamaylan is dark-skinned, so it may not make sense to assume bad faith on his part. He may have just picked the most talented kids who were fans of the show.
"It IS a big deal":
An argument can be made—as Ursula LeGuin has when people have whitewashed visualizations of her fantasy stories—that turning dark-skinned characters white flaunts a moral argument that is made in such stories: that race is incidental to culture. And even if such transformations aren't motivated by racism on the part of the publisher/producer, they probably appeal to some perceived base of racism in the audience, which is not good.
I lean more towards the second view and think that the casting decision is disrespectful to minorities. I'm not willing to go to far to ascribe racist intent. But I think multiculturalism ultimately informs the ethos of that show. While race isn't the same as culture, and has nothing to do with it in Avatar's world, it is very often tied to culture in our world, and at minimum the casting missed a golden opportunity to showcase that ethos explicitly.
Race plays little, if any, role in the world of Avatar. When Zuko is wandering around the Earth Kingdom, he isn't recognizable as "fire nation" based on his outward appearance. Likewise for our heroes in season 3. There are no racial underclasses. There is no racism. Unlike Lord of the Rings, which is extremely race-conscious, you could easily interchange any of the individual characters' outward appearance in the show. Also unlike LoTR (where racial bloodlines grant magic powers), the magical metaphysics of Avatar are explicitly cultural. So it's not as though switching characters' skin color is changing something important to the internal reality of the show. The characters' voice actors were all white, except for Zuko and Iroh, who were Asian. Also, Shamaylan is dark-skinned, so it may not make sense to assume bad faith on his part. He may have just picked the most talented kids who were fans of the show.
"It IS a big deal":
An argument can be made—as Ursula LeGuin has when people have whitewashed visualizations of her fantasy stories—that turning dark-skinned characters white flaunts a moral argument that is made in such stories: that race is incidental to culture. And even if such transformations aren't motivated by racism on the part of the publisher/producer, they probably appeal to some perceived base of racism in the audience, which is not good.
I lean more towards the second view and think that the casting decision is disrespectful to minorities. I'm not willing to go to far to ascribe racist intent. But I think multiculturalism ultimately informs the ethos of that show. While race isn't the same as culture, and has nothing to do with it in Avatar's world, it is very often tied to culture in our world, and at minimum the casting missed a golden opportunity to showcase that ethos explicitly.
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I tend to agree with LeGuin to an extent.
It totally didn't register with me as a child that Ged wasn't white. I can't say I specifically thought of him as white, but I recall re-reading the books later and realizing that most of the characters had shades of brown and red skin. The fact that it never occurred to me was interesting/intriguing/disturbing (not sure which).
I do not, however, agree that it's racism in the overt sense. It's more cultural identity and a natural reaction for your mind to visualize protagonists being like yourself. Skin color wasn't a major theme in the Earthsea series... in most cases it was only mentioned in passing. I think I can maybe recall one instance where Ged's skin color was remarked upon either in the narrative or by another character. It was a sublime reference, really.
Hell, it could be argued it was intentionally subdued so that LeGuin could yell, 'Gotcha!' at all those evil racists who thought Ged was white. (Yes, I am simply musing here)
As to Avatar... I haven't watched it... I keep hearing it's good, so I've considered checking it out on Netflix or something... but in the abstract, I do think it's unfortunate to have a new, invented world with a homogeneous population. However, I don't think it's necessary to "call out" the creators for not having multi-hued characters unless it was their intent to do so.
I think that's a bit daft on the part of those making the movie. I wont go so far as to call it sinister, but at best it's a poor design choice and makes it a bit difficult to defend the idea that it wasn't intentional.
I also apologize for my tl;dr-ism.
I think that's an extremely important point to make and it's one that Avatar (the cartoon) makes as well. Possibly more forcefully than the Earthsea books because the characters' colors are right in front of you, while the text descriptions in Earthsea flew right over your head (and probably many others').
That's how I feel about that.
edit: I read Starship Troopers.
Meanwhile, other Firebenders and (we can assume from Aang) Airbenders do a lot more fighting outside of their element. I.e actually getting in close to attack in hand to hand combat. I've always wondered if it was intentional, or if this was just a happy coincidence. I mean, with Katara it could easily be justified as she's a Master Waterbender, so she has no use for anything but waterbending. And with Iroh it's fairly obvious he's out of shape (or at least, not in the same shape he used to be in) and thus uses his bending to make up for it.
I think that fire and air are just less effective when you throw the elements around. Air especially. But firebenders and airbenders have the advantage of always being able to use their elements. On the other hand, throwing a boulder or a tidal wave of water-turned-ice is like a one-hit-kill. This is balanced by the limited availability of these elements.
Every time I saw there was a new post in the Avatar thread and hoped it might be news about a new series or something, a little part of me dies every time it's someone else bringing up that same old tired argument.
Of course, it's kind of hard to tell what's meant to be bending and what's supposed to be stand alone martial arts since they're all mixed together.
She runs up to Paku and tries to just punch him in the face. I love that scene, I don't think we see anything else quite like that.
NNID-InvisibleInk
I think the reason why Air and Fire benders seem to fight more than the others is that mastery of their own body, mind and soul is an important part of their culture. Martial arts are one of the best ways to discipline oneself and strengthen said aforementioned traits. Also, the Fire and Air nations seemed to be the most "asian" out of the four. Being as such, martial arts were always an important part of asian culture, much more so than that of the west.
That said, I disagree about your views on the elements. Every single element is just as deadly as another. Fire is the most destructive element of all, as fire can only destroy. A force of air can be just as blunt as a rock if condensed enough. Tornados and hurricanes are some of the most dangerous disasters around. A piece of straw picked up by a tornado can penetrate through your body.
That's what I love about bending though. Literally a benders ability is hinged upon the creativity of the user. Some of the things that the main cast did with their bending abilities were absolutely mind blowing. My jaw dropped moreso while watching this than any other show I've ever watched before.
Unfortunately, the sheer variety of ways that bending can be used is probably the biggest reason why an Avatar video game will never be as good as the source material.
As for the subject of the casting, I'm personally disappointed. I think you guys already nailed it on this topic. The diversity of each culture itself is lost by white washing the cast. If these kids really were the best for the part, then so be it. I can overlook the colour of their skin if they can portray their characters well. That really is the biggest test of this movie, since the show itself was very character driven.
Yes, but there's a lot of air and water in tornadoes and tsunamis, respectively, while all earth needs is a small piece of lead, and fire is self propagating.
Fire Nation most reminds me of America, actually. What with the torturous prisons and the colonial occupations and wars fought under the guise of spreading civilization.
Well, I don't know. I think airbending is the least offensive (I believe the show's creators even said as much). But airbenders have the best mobility in general.
Fire is the most offense-oriented but firebenders have the word mobility and little defense.
Earth and water have really good offense, defense, and mobility (occasionaly better than airbenders), but are both largely dependent on how much of the element happens to be in the environment.
Water and fire are affected by the time; earth and air aren't.
I mean, there's a lot of ways they're balanced but I don't think they're equally deadly.
This is shown to be false by the show itself all the time. All the Fire Nation technology uses firebending to some extent. You can use it to power steam engines, weld, cook food probably, etc.
~1:27
Katara vs. Pakku
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Fair 'nuff. I used to think they were basically Japan before that Zuko speech to his dad in Day of the Black Sun.
I think that's a metaphor though.
This is pretty much better than 99% of anime that I've seen. The jokes were actually funny most of the time, where as my reaction to most anime humor is the same that everyone gets when Sokka makes a bad joke.
Fight was frickin' BAWESOME though.
I think it's reaching to call the Fire Nation most like America. Really reaching. People have been going to war for stupid reasons for, you know, ever. And since when has America tried to subjugate the entire world? I mean come on, if you want to talk Western civilizations, what about Great Britain? They had colonies on every continent but Antarctica (actually, they might have had Antarctica too), they had infamously brutal prisons. And have you ever read "The White Man's Burden?" Talk about spreading civilization.
Nota Bene: Rudyard Kipling was a cool dude and one of my favorite poets. But he had a curious view of the Western world's obligations.
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The weird animals are the leftovers of bizarre genetic experiments by earth scientists before they all evaporated into the Technological Singularity, leaving a mix of luddites and religious zealots behind to annihilate themselves with weapons they didn't understand, replacing science with a dark age of Asian-influenced mysticism.
So it's entirely a scientific show.
Because nanomachines are magical.
I mean, scientific.
But science is magical, right?
I'd actually contest this
Now whether it was actually useful to do it, I don't know. We don't really have enough information on the Earth Kingdom military capacity post take over of Ba Sing Se to judge.
To me, atrocities of the sort Ozai proposes are the logical evolution of the atrocities we ourselves have commited in a world where super magic is more or less randomly distributed.
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I agree though that the ending, while quite good, had its flaws. Particularly the rushed feeling after some episodes that felt a little stretched out.
Actually, no. In fact the moon
Also, who's saying that the end of the final fight wasn't awesome? Shut yo mouth. It could have been set up better, certainly, but
It was a smarter military move to attack a closer target at full force, especially one they had already conquered. It wasn't an attack, either, it was a display of power.
As for taking away his bending, I believe it was more a point to show that Bending is not a right, it's a privilege and misusing it is not something you wanna do.
BUT
I'm sorry, but the thing I liked about the action in the series was seeing beautiful martial arts forms executed in combat. Most of the Ozai/Aang fight didn't have that. Sure, it was a great epic fight, but it lost something I found unique in the series.
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