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Avatar: The Last Airbender—best show in the universe
Qingu
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
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. (A sword fight in a recent episode is definitely one of the best I've seen in animation.)
***UPDATE 7/6/09***
There is a movie coming out, directed by M. Night Shamaylan. Up until recently I've been asserting that there is no such movie because facing reality seemed too painful an alternative. But the movie actually looks kind of alright. Shaymalan is apparently a fan of the show (introduced through his daughter) and the creators co-wrote the screenplay and are heavily involved in production.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W1dhqc-JBs
There has been some hulabaloo about racist casting (white actors for the Inuit-like Water Tribe characters, mainly), but personally, I'm okay with it. Why?
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. (A sword fight in a recent episode is definitely one of the best I've seen in animation.)
***UPDATE 7/6/09***
There is a movie coming out, directed by M. Night Shamaylan. Up until recently I've been asserting that there is no such movie because facing reality seemed too painful an alternative. But the movie actually looks kind of alright. Shaymalan is apparently a fan of the show (introduced through his daughter) and the creators co-wrote the screenplay and are heavily involved in production.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W1dhqc-JBs
There has been some hulabaloo about racist casting (white actors for the Inuit-like Water Tribe characters, mainly), but personally, I'm okay with it. Why?
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.
I think an argument can be made—as Ursula LeGuin has when people have whitewashed visualizations of her fantasy stories—that turning dark-skinned characters light-skinned 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. But I am willing to give Shamaylan the benefit of the doubt; I don't think he's racist, and I think it's entirely plausible that he picked the most talented kids who are most into the show that he could find.
I think an argument can be made—as Ursula LeGuin has when people have whitewashed visualizations of her fantasy stories—that turning dark-skinned characters light-skinned 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. But I am willing to give Shamaylan the benefit of the doubt; I don't think he's racist, and I think it's entirely plausible that he picked the most talented kids who are most into the show that he could find.
Qingu on
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I describe Avatar to people who haven't seen it like this: It's a nick show, but someone screwed up big time with it. Because, y'know, it's actually good.
I'm curious, though- why did they change the subtitle from "The Last Airbender" to "The Legend of Aang"?
I like this newest season because it been hanging loose and having fun. The episode with the beach volleyball was hilarious.
YOU WILL NEVER RISE FROM THE ASHES OF YOUR DEFEAT
hehe
I also liked
"...My own mother thought I was a monster."
--
"...Well, she was right, of course."
What's great is that it's also subtly subversive to the typical kids show. There's lots of subtle and disturbing things going on in the show, the whole episode of The Puppet Master and the prophetic foreshadowing dream in Nightmares and Daydreams being the most recent examples.
That's because TV execs seems clueless on anime sometimes. If it doesn't have blood or big breasted women if must be for little kids(wait .....there is narutoO_o).
This show is one of the better looking anime series I have seen in a while. The story is great and doesn't follow all the cookie cutter "kid with world altering powers" theme all the time.
I'm gonna have to look up the past couple of seasons to catch up.
I must finish this assignment and get back to my dorm, with haste!
Oh and the end of season two is my favorite fight scene so far. It was pretty awesome to see katara kicking butt, and of course how many kids shows have a murderous secret police?
My least favorite part of the show is
I was also a little disappointed that
I also feel like the kids learn skills too fast.
That was an awesome episode.
"You will never rise from the ashes of your shame and humiliation!"
"My own mother thought I was a monster. She was right of course, but it still hurt."
That story had a lot of character development, especially for a filler episode. It does so much to humanize Azula while simultaneously reminding us that she'll never change. A lot of shows tend to lose momentum into their third season, but Avatar consistently raises the bar. These writers are geniuses.
Most. Likable. Antagonists. Evar.
He really is the most useless character.
Heh, I liked in season two after urging zuko to show restraint for so long he finally breaks down and basically says
Also I like how the characters have changed appearance over time.
As to post Fire lord the creators have already said they have plans to carry on the show beyond this original storyline.
Well, no, Invader Zim had a middle school kid as the protagonist and I enjoyed the hell out of that show.
I wish that show would come back on Adult Swim. I'd like to see what happens when the creators aren't holding back.
I also love the martial arts aspect to air-bending. I've dabbled in the martial arts a bit myself, and it's cool to see kata moves and tai-chi being thrown around with air bending in the parts where the energy is supposed to be. Very cool.
That's why it took me a while to get into Samurai Jack.
Stupid people. Talking so many good things about this show. Now I feel that I'm missing something and need to watch it.
Yeah but if you market something "for teens!" teens will invariably avoid it like the plague.
If you liked Samurai Jack chances are you'll enjoy Avatar.
Also, great thread. I haven't actually caught up on Season 3 yet because crappy overseas air force tv doesn't carry it. I'll probably iTunes it soon.
I too give the show great props for the martial arts aspect. The beauty of it is how well the different bending styles convey the elements they wield. That flowing style for Water, than heavy, ponderous yet strong movement for Earth, etc. I think that you can really see the differences in the moves. And the fight scenes really are well choreographed. The show examines things in unexpectedly mature ways. Secret police, deaths, betrayal, and a definite sort of moral ambiguity at times. I mean, the Fire Nation is bad, but (from what I saw of Season 3) that's starting to be examined, and between the Dai Li and Water Tribe chauvinism...well, the good guys often ain't all that great. And genocide seems like new ground for a kids show.
Battle.net
Supposedly the fire martial art is one that is sort of reckless, and has little defensive moves, that sort of thing.
sooo...ninjitsu?
* Tai Chi creates flowing energy, and fluid movements to represent water, turning an opponent's force against them.
* Hung Gar was chosen for its firmly rooted stances, linear patterns, and powerful strikes to represent the solid nature of the earth. The form most practiced by the Earthbenders is the General's Mandate.
* Northern Shaolin, which has almost no defensive techniques, uses fast, aggressive attacks to mimic the power of fire.
* Ba Gua's erratic, circular movements were chosen to represent air's unpredictability and cyclical motion.
* Chu Gar Southern Praying Mantis has distinguishing movements and unique footwork that are employed by Toph Bei Fong to complement her blindness, giving her an anomalous style of Earthbending.[34][36]
Man, now I feel like a dick for making fun of my girlfriend's little brother for watching this.
and you should! Avatar is a really exceptional show. The show really is entertaining in content for to both a young and old audience. It reminds me of the way pixar movies are enjoyable to both age groups.
and top notch fights scenes, like really good stuff. When him and the blue spirit are making their escape man, that is so damn awesome. like this is coming from nickelodeon? WTF?
"No, son, I don't like the looks of this spirit-filled Avatar show. How about we watch some Bibleman instead?
I'd still like to know
While I love the eastern mysticism, I don't think the show is outright advocating it. Uncle Iroh is probably the most loved character on the show and seems to be more or less a hedonist. He disagrees with the relinquishing of earthly attachments (love, pleasure, etc.) that Guru Pathik and eastern mysticism hold as the highest virtue. The avatar state, embodying supreme detachment from human limitations, has never been portrayed as entirely a good thing.
Also I LOVE Azula. As a villain she doesn't have a very complex motivation (she's crazy and evil) but her portrayal is one of the best. She's manipulative, smart, bratty, entitled....basically a spoiled child, but she's incredibly competent. As far as villains go, this is a step up. So far she's a better villain than Zuko ever was, and she also doesn't come with emo problems or an insane rabid fanbase.
I get a pretty strong animal rights vibe from the show, for example. Recent episodes also dealt with environmental pollution. The same episode dealt with the supposed existence of a legendary river spirit, "the painted lady," a pretty obvious parellel with the theism/atheism debate. Sokka, one of the main characters, is a pretty hard-core skeptic.
They are localizing Avatar for Japanese audiences, Japanese dub and all. Should be interesting to see how they react to the show considering their reaction to manga-inspired American comics wasn't too great. Character design aside, it's stylistically different enough from anime (no overwrought exposition, little fanservice, no personality stereotypes, the pace of the episodes is faster) that it may not be as popular, despite it being a wonderful show.
I was very disappointed.
Have you watched Shin-chan on Adult Swim? While it's obviously not the most faithful translation, the writers are brilliant and the dub has its intended effect of perversity and political incorrectness.
I imagine they have the same objections about Avatar as they did towards something like DBZ - filled with magic (from Satan!), demons, unholy actions, etc. Probably also something about how it teaches children to be rebellious and ignore adult authority (usually an objection voiced by some of the more strict critics when something stars a child main character, like Peter Pan or Spirited Away).
Any way yes, the show is awesome.