This is a series on Avatar the Last Airbender. This first part will cover some of my general thoughts, while future posts will feature a more in depth analysis. Spoilers will abound.
So I finished watching Avatar the Last Airbender for the first time. I can feel all the bandwagon comments headed my way, but the simple accessibility of it being on Netflix and its reputation meant I had to give it a go.
The first question you might have is..what did you think? Did it live up to the hype? And the answer to the first question is I really enjoyed it..and the answer to the second question is…complicated. Let’s get right into it to see what worked and what didn’t and whether Avatar the Last Airbender is a masterpiece or not.
What worked
First of all, you really got to give it to the main cast, because they are all extremely strong characters. Aang is a solid lead, a fun loving kid with a strong moral compass who struggles with his responsibilities and his feeling of inadequacy to the task at hand. I love that this character isn’t the stereotypical Zen monk in most Western media. You know the type, they’re filled with wisdom and platitudes and disconnected from the pleasures of the world. Aang isn’t like that. Sure he embraces the philosophy of pacifism and vegetarianism, but he’s still a normal kid deep down.
Katara and Sokka are also solid characters. Katara is a great example of an empath(a deeply empathic person) in fiction. She cares deeply for her friends and family and will do anything for them, including giving them some positive reinforcement when they need it and knocking their heads together when they get out of line. I also love that her empathy also makes her a highly vindictive character. Because she loves her friends and family so much, she absolutely despises those who hurt them. Sokka is also a solid character who starts as comedic relief but grows much stronger as the series goes on.
I also adore Toph, a character who never lets her disability define her, or stifle her sense of humor. In most media, disabled characters are these idyllic angels, but Toph is a tough, snarky, independent fighter.
And of course we all love Uncle Iroh, that wise compassionate, forgiving man. A person who never abandons his nephew, but is with him every step of the way, guiding him as best he can, but also allowing his nephew to make his own mistakes and come to his own conclusions.
As for other things that work in the show, the world building is also quite impressive. It’s interesting to see how each style of bending would influence the cultures of the four tribes, and how certain traits are encouraged within each nation, such as stubborn independence in the earth kingdom, compassionate tradition in the water kingdom and so forth.
Finally, this show does a good job of showcasing rather complex topics in a way that kids can understand. It handles topics ranging from abusive parenting to genocide to totalitarian governments. Not to mention it shows how certain forms of bending can be misused, such as waterbending being turned into bloodbending, which in turn offers an interesting message on how even good things can be corrupted by wrong motives.
What didn’t work.
But alas, now we have to get into a few things that really….didn’t work. And this is where we get into some firery hot takes.
As you might have guessed by that pun, the Fire Nation characters have some issues when it comes to storytelling. Let’s start with everyone’s favorite crispy boy Zuko. He starts as a fairly straightforward character. He’s a kid desperate for his father’s approval and to win back his honor after his father banished him when he expressed a conscious(and also burnt his face). In season 1, Zuko only has a single ship and his uncle. In season 2, however, even that little bit is taken away from him and he and his uncle have to live as refugees.
He is greatly humbled during this time and begins to undergo a bit of character development. He realizes that the Fire Nation’s way of doing things was perhaps never right and he learns that his obsession with hunting the Avatar was never really what he wanted, but was just his father’s desires projected upon him, and he makes a crucial decision to return Appa(Aang’s flying bison) back to him. When he does this, he gets a fever..because apparently having two competing desires gives one character development flu. But then, he appears to be on the right track. He even claims to have changed.
But then, Azula shows up to fight the Avatar and in a scene where it appears that Zuko will attack his sister, he attacks…Aang instead. He betrays his beloved Uncle Iroh and the Avatar and Azula “kills” Aang.
Then in Season 3, he is accepted back into his father’s court, because his sister Azula decided to tell her father that Zuko killed the Avatar(this doesn’t make sense because Azula has expressed only disdain for Zuko at this point, but we will get to Azula soon). Zuko’s father, who has shown he is an abusive parent who favors Azula and obviously wants her to be his successor…accepts Zuko with open arms.
At this point, Zuko’s character development is back to square one. He’s an angry punk again who thinks his uncle is an idiot and he has to go through the whole character arc again of realizing the Fire Nation’s goals are bad. And then he finally joins up with the Avatar about five episodes before the finale. Yes that’s right…five episodes before the finale.
Zuko really isn’t given time by this point to develop his new identity as a decent person because the show is on a breakneck pace to the finish line.
In essence, my big issue with Zuko’s redemption arc is that it just straight up resets in season 3 for flimsy reasons, and the creators have to rush to get it through in time so Aang has a firebending teacher. I suppose the logic of it was to give Zuko all that we wanted so that he would realize it wasn’t actually what he wanted, but it ends up just wasting time that could be spent with Zuko interacting with and developing relationships with the rest of Team Avatar(Toph literally makes a joke out of this later of not getting time to have a life changing field trip with Zuko).
As for the other fire nation characters, they have some issues as well. For example, Azula is a competent villain who rules through fear throughout the story. She treats everyone like an underling. But all of a sudden in season 3, she’s…somewhat kind to Zuko. And during the finale, she loses her mind because her dad ordered her around a little bit. In addition, Mai, one of her companions, randomly becomes Zuko’s girlfriend in season 3 and has a deep relationship with him despite the fact they barely had any interactions at all before that and Zuko spends most of his time being a jerk to her..even after his redemption.
Then you have the Fire Lord himself. Fire Lord Ozai is built up as a Dark Lord type of character. We never see his face until season 3 and when we do it’s….kinda disappointing.
If you are going to create an intimidating dark lord character who is never seen, they need to have a strong presence that’s felt throughout the entire story and when they do reveal themselves, they need to make a strong impact. Other than Ozai’s final battle against Aang, he never really does anything. And he’s hardly an intimidating figure. He’s just a normal looking dude. I get the impression from the story that Ozai just leaves the planning up to his bands of goons while he sits back and waits for the comet to boost his powers. This issue would be easy to fix. Just have a few scenes where he discusses(from the shadows) how to lure out the Avatar and suggests a devious plan. Or make him appear more intimidating or more conniving(the only time we see him conniving is during Zuko’s flashback scenes).
Other than the fire nation, the show has other issues too, such as how it wastes time with pointless filler(the great divide, the environmentalist episode, Aang getting fangirls) and how it flip flops on whether to actually tackle serious topics(like death) due to it being a kid’s show. In addition, the show often waits till the last second to bring up critical plot points that should have been present since the beginning(such as Aang not wanting to kill the Fire Lord) But now it’s time to get into my final thoughts.
Does Avatar master the elements?
I could go on about other minor stuff I like, such as the excellently animated fight scenes and other stuff I dislike like how the finale has Aang pull not one but two asspulls so he doesn’t have to kill Lord Ozai, but this post would be wayyyy too long if I did that.
I think Avatar does a fantastic job at what it set out to do, which is tell a serialized coming of age story of a young man and his friends learning to master the elements and claim their destiny. It has a great cast that is very memorable(even Zuko). And it has a really cool world to boot.
But despite being a serialized show with only 61 episodes, it wastes a lot of time. We spend so much time on filler that the show never gets to resolve more serious questions such as whether Toph ever gets closure with her parents or if Zuko ever finds out what happened to his mom. I’m aware comics ATTEMPT to answer these questions, but that’s no excuse for the main story leaving this loose ends.
The show seems torn between two identities. On one hand, it wants to be an adventure of the week kid’s show, but on the other hand it wants to be a serious serialized fantasy epic. I wonder if it would have done better if it had run on adult swim on Cartoon Network rather than Nickelodeon.
All that being said, I still think Avatar is a great show, just not perfect. I would definitely recommend others watch it, regardless of your age. It’s worth it just for the great characters and world.
Next time, we will get into some more in-depth analysis, looking at how Avatar tackles culture, power, politics and pacifism.