Retro: Avatar: “The Warriors of Kyoshi” & “The King of Omashu” & “Imprisoned”

B.A.S.S. Line:

In the span of three episodes, Aang and the gang travel to three different villages, have three different adventures, and meet at least three memorable characters. And Katara loses her mother’s necklace.

Key Points:

1. Unlike other American animated children’s programs—most of which are just animated sitcoms for kids, or “kidcoms”—creators DiMartino and Konietzko envisioned Avatar as a true fantasy epic, using the episodic medium to tell a single, coherent narrative, complete with expansive worldbuilding and overarching character development.
2. As a by-product of that ambition, Aang and the gang spend every episode travelling to a new location and meeting new characters (allies and villains alike) on their quest to help Aang master all the elements and defeat the Fire Nation. The benefits are obvious from a storytelling standpoint, but from an animated television production standpoint, this could be a nightmare: every episode demands new character designs, new locations and backgrounds, new props, new voice actors, etc.
3. That Avatar holds together as well as it does is a testament to the dedication and hard work of DiMartino, Konietzko, and the rest of the Avatar crew, most of whom probably never dreamed that they’d be working on something so challenging and so rewarding of their passion and creativity, let alone something so different from the usual “kidcom” stuff. Nickelodeon deserves some praise for allowing the team enough creative freedom to develop a series so radically different from their standard fare (at the time, though, they were looking specifically for their own fantasy-adventure franchise to bank on the popularity of Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but that’s another topic for another time).
4. “The Warriors of Kyoshi,” “The King of Omashu,” and “Imprisoned” establish what would be the typical pattern of an episode of Avatar (at least until Book Two, when they started to get real weird with it), which goes as follows: Aang and the gang travel to a new location (perfect worldbuilding and art direction opportunities), where they meet either an ally or foe who’ll present them with a conflict to be resolved before the end of the episode—most likely with a last-act action sequence full of awesome Bending—before they leave to go somewhere else.
5. In “Warriors of Kyoshi,” they go to Kyoshi Island—Aang wants to ride the elephant koi and impress Katara—where they’re ambushed by the island’s inhabitants, specifically the all-female Kyoshi Warriors. Only when Aang proves himself to be the Avatar do the island’s residents relax and welcome the gang with open arms.
6. Aang loves the adoration of the islanders, and wants to stay for a while. Katara, however, wants to leave soon to keep Zuko off their trail. She also finds Aang’s behavior around the villagers to be vain and childish, which Aang interprets as jealousy. Meanwhile, Sokka—humiliated to have been defeated by “girls,” the Kyoshi Warriors—wants to learn some moves and techniques from the Warriors, if they’ll forgive his initial ignorance.
7. The gang ends up overstaying their welcome, because Zuko does eventually appear, and he immediately proceeds to burn the village in order to get to Aang. Realizing that Katara was right and that he inadvertently put the villagers’ lives in danger, he and the gang fly away on Appa (but not before Aang stops the fire and saves the village by spraying it with water from the mouth of a giant, ferocious sea monster).
8. In “The King of Omashu,” they travel to the city of Omashu, which has a crazy, intricate sliding mail system that our heroes ride like a roller coaster. They’re caught by security and brought before King Bumi, who’ll only let them go on the condition that Aang completes three challenges of his design. The point of the challenges is to teach the Avatar to always think outside the box, especially if he’s going to be defeating the Firelord. Did I mention that Bumi is an old, old friend of Aang’s from one-hundred years ago?
9. Finally, “Imprisoned” takes our heroes to a coal mining village being ruled over by the Fire Nation, since they use coal to fuel their war ships. In this village, Earthbending is strictly forbidden (which is odd, because you’d think that would help them mine more coal, but never mind), and anyone who gets caught is shipped off to a prison built on the water far from land, guaranteed no Earthbending. However, with a little ingenuity from our heroes, the imprisoned Earthbenders revolt and free themselves, resolving to take back their village from the Fire Nation.
10. Unlike the previous two episodes, this episode revolves around Katara and not Aang. She’s the one who befriends Haru, the Earthbending boy who gets imprisoned after he saves an ungrateful old man from being crushed by a collapsed coal mining tunnel. She’s the one who resolves to rescue Haru by also getting herself arrested for Earthbending, thereby getting taken to the same prison. She’s the one who attempts to inspire the down-trodden Earthbenders to stand proud and fight for their freedom (to no avail). She’s the one who refuses to leave the prison without helping these people reclaim not just their freedom, but their fighting spirit.
11. And what does she get for all her troubles? In the midst of the prison chaos, she loses her mother’s necklace, the only possession she has by which to remember her deceased mother. To make matters worse, at the end of the episode, it’s found by Zuko! (In an alternative timeline, this would be definitive proof that he and Katara must be meant for each other, but let’s not even go there.)

High Points:

1. With the exception of “Imprisoned” (the best of the three, and a mostly good harbinger of things to come), these episodes are light as a feather, goofy and meandering, almost completely devoid of seriousness and substance. Is that a bad thing? I certainly used to think so, but the way I see it now, the seemingly aimless nature of these episodes perfectly match the temperament of our main character, Aang. And once the stakes are raised by episode eight, and our hero becomes more focused and motivated, so do the episodes. Pretty clever, eh?
2. Until then, “lightweight” doesn’t automatically equal “bad” (as it will with the infamous “Great Divide”), and watching Aang bask in all that attention from the village girls is pretty amusing (as is Katara’s obvious annoyance with him). Besides, he does learn his lesson after Zuko arrives and nearly burns the village down, so it wasn’t entirely pointless either (unlike a certain divisive episode that we’ll deal with when it comes).
3. Speaking of unexpected character growth, Sokka shows us a much more mature side to him than we’d been led to believe he had. He gets his butt kicked by the Kyoshi Warriors and then asks their leader Suki to forgive him and to teach him to be a better warrior through their principles. This is a much more altruistic message than the kind of “girls are better, deal with it” impression you sometimes get with The Legend of Korra, where the male characters, with few exceptions, tend to be either incompetent or evil.
4. You know what else you’ll find in these episodes that’s lacking in much of Korra? Respect for the elderly. One of the few pleasures of “King of Omashu” is watching King Bumi, who’s over a hundred years old, best Aang with every single one of his challenges. The moment when Aang chooses to challenge Bumi in a fight—and the old man tosses off his robes to reveal he’s in better fighting shape than all three of our heroes combined—is the funniest gag in the episode. Don’t mess with crazy King Bumi!
5. In “Imprisoned,” the show makes a point of showing just how old most of the Earthbending prisoners are, and how much their will to fight has been crushed by both their imprisonment and their age. And yet Katara still believes in them, and pushes for them to fight back even before she, Sokka and Aang bring them the coal to actually fight back with. As weak as they may be, once Haru, one of their own, instigates the riot and is nearly killed, they immediately jump to his aid, and soon every single one of them is kicking ass.
6. There are lots of great little touches like that in “Imprisoned,” including a fantastic guest appearance by George Takei as the posh and smarmy prison warden. The prison itself is a clever creation, showing us just how thorough the Fire Nation is with its plans for world domination.
7. I also love the elaborate gag involving Katara’s fake Earthbending, which peaks when the Fire Nation guards think it’s actually Momo that’s Earthbending. Good ol’ Momo!

Low Points:

1. Foaming Mouth Guy. Yeah, I know, he’s one of the most iconic and most memetic characters in all of Avatar, and that he was originally supposed to just faint, and that his seizure was an animated ad-lib by Korean animator Ki Hyun Ryu (who’d go on to co-direct Book One of Korra), and I know most of the fans love, love, love Foaming Mouth Guy. I don’t get it. Why is this non sequitur of a man having a seizure supposed to be funny? It’s not acknowledged by any of the characters nor does it even get a simple reaction shot (which can save even the stupidest gags). No, it just comes out of nowhere and goes nowhere just as fast. To make matters worse, it follows a much better, much funnier gag involving Aang and a stupid marble trick he tried to impress Katara with earlier. (Hmm…maybe that’s why the seizure man’s overreact is funny.)
2. Speaking of iconic characters that everyone loves but I don’t, the Cabbage Man (“My cabbages!”) is…kinda silly, but at least he’s not offensive like the Foaming Mouth Guy. I don’t understand his deal here, though. Is he a cabbage salesman? Before entering Omashu, the guy gets his cabbages thrown off a cliff because they’re rotten, but then he goes inside Omashu and has more cabbages? Did he buy them in Omashu? What?
3. Also, remember how it said the meandering quality of the episodes cleverly matched that of Aang’s attitude at the moment? Yeah, it’s clever, but not much else. The episodes can still drag if they meander too much. Not “Warriors of Kyoshi,” that episode is pretty solid. “The King of Omashu,” though? Damn near filler. The premise, which is way too silly for its own good, would probably be fine in a lesser children’s show, but in Avatar you start to think, “Wasn’t this show about a kid whose entire race of people got slaughtered during a hundred-year war?”
4. Don’t even get me started on the animation of “King of Omashu.” Seriously, what was DR Movie’s deal with Avatar? The show is no more and no less complicated than your average “real” anime. (I just saw their name credited in One Punch Man, so clearly they’re no slouch in the drawing department.) Did they initially just write off Avatar as another silly American project?
5. Then there’s Katara’s utter determination to save the incarcerated Earthbenders, complete with a passionate, impromptu speech, which is NOT a low point in and of itself—what borders on cringe is redeemed when the speech appears to fall on deaf ears—but I want to bring it up because it sets an unfortunate precedence for Katara’s character as someone who is pathologically, neurotically, unquestionably good. It can get annoying, and the show is usually self-aware enough to call her out on her overbearing behavior. When it’s not, you get horrid episodes like “The Painted Lady,” of which “Imprisoned” is an unwittingly forebearer. (Then again, if I’m going to curse every early episode for a worse later addition it inspired, I might as well curse all of Avatar for giving way to Korra, and that just won’t do, will it?)

Random Point:

1. While we’re on the subject of Katara’s speech, do you remember the running joke in “King of Omashu” where every horrible pun and joke was followed by the sound of some random guy coughing? If you listen closely at the end of Katara’s speech—after which she expects the Earthbenders to rise up and fight—I swear you’ll hear the exact same random guy coughing. Now that’s clever!

Conclusion:

It took six episodes, but Avatar is finally starting to gain momentum: the concepts and the world are starting to make some sense, and we’ve gotten to really know and like our main characters. It’s the next two episodes, though, that will really kick the show into gear and transform Avatar into the amazing and engaging series we all know and love. Stay tuned!

Next week: Korra: “The Spirit of Competition”

May 6, 2017 | Categories: Book One: The Experimental Season, Retrospective | 1 Comment

Retro: Avatar: “The Southern Air Temple”

B.A.S.S. Line:

Aang returns to his home in the Southern Air Temple only to discover that the Fire Nation really did wipe out his entire race. Meanwhile, Zuko must capture the Avatar before his rival, Commander Zhao, does.

Key Points:

1. Just in case the title of the show didn’t make it clear, Aang is most definitely the last Airbender on the planet. Knowing that the next Avatar in the cycle would be reincarnated as an Airbender, the Fire Nation made sure to eradicate every single one of them in the hopes of stopping the Avatar from foiling their plans for world domination. Ruthless is an understatement.
2. It would be one thing if Aang, having returned to his home after a hundred years of being frozen in an iceberg, discovered that the Southern Air Temple was still brimming with life and activity, let alone with Airbenders. What he, Katara, Sokka, and Appa find instead is a decrepit ghost town, and the only initial signs of life are the tall weeds growing from the cracks of the crumbling structures.
3. For their part, Katara and Sokka expected as much from the evil Fire Nation, and do their best to brace Aang for the brutal truth of what happened to his home and his people. Aang, the eternal optimistic, refuses to give up hope that there’s someone still around after all these years, despite all evidence to the contrary.
4. They do find one living creature: a flying lemur that the nature-loving Aang vows to make his pet and that a starving Sokka vows to make his dinner. In the end, there’s a nice compromise: the lemur, which they name Momo, brings the hungry kids an assortment of fruits from God knows where, and is graciously made a part of their oddball family before they leave the Southern Air Temple.
5. Other than Momo, there’s not a single soul left in the temple. Who is Aang looking for specifically? According to a flashback, Aang’s old mentor and best friend, Monk Gyatso, informed the newly anointed Avatar that when he was old enough, he’d be able to enter the Air Temple sanctuary and meet someone who would guide Aang through his Avatar training.
6. Aang and his friends do find the sanctuary and go inside, discovering over a hundred statues that represent all of the Avatar’s past lives. It is here that we learn about the Avatar cycle, which goes Air, Water, Earth, Fire, and repeats. Aang’s predecessor was a Firebender named Avatar Roku (a fact Aang just knows by looking at the statue, since there’s no writing of any kind on the statue), which explains why the Fire Nation knew the next Avatar would be an Airbender and killed all of them. Including, much to Aang’s horror, good old Monk Gyatso.
7. It’s not that Gyatso is dead that sends Aang over the edge (it’s been a hundred years since Aang last him, and he was pretty old then); it’s that his skeletal remains are surrouned by the armor and corpses of dozens of Fire Nation soldiers, leaving no mystery as to how Gyatso must have died.
8. It’s all too much for the poor little Airbender, and for the second time in the series, he goes into the Avatar State to unleash his fury. Had Katara and Sokka not been there to calm him down, he probably would have destroyed the entire temple. Luckily, they bring him back to his senses by reassuring him that while he may have lost his original family, he’ll always be a part of theirs. With that, they continue on their journey.
9. Meanwhile, Aang’s Avatar State sets off a chain reaction around the world, alerting everyone that the Avatar has finally returned. This worldwide phenomenon is a major blow to Zuko’s plan to keep the Avatar’s return a secret. Or, at least, it would be if his secret hadn’t already been figured out by one Commander Zhao.
10. Commander Zhao is a snaky, condescending man who lives to inflate his own ego and humiliate those he sees as beneath him. Zuko is an easy target, having been banished from the Fire Nation and only allowed to return when he captures the Avatar. If Zhao catches him first, then that’s just one more insult he can shove in Zuko’s face. How proud these Fire Nation folks must be that a grown man gets off on putting down a teenager with enough of a burden on his shoulder.
11. And so this strong-headed prince and this overconfident commander engage in a Firebending duel known as an Ag Ni Kai. Zuko barely manages to emerge victorious, thanks in part to Uncle Iroh, who yells fundamental advice from the sidelines.
12. What matters most, however, is that Zuko decides against delivering the finishing move on his fallen opponent. It’s Zhao, who in a fit of sore loserdom, tries to attack Zuko when his back is turned. Again, Iroh saves his nephew, and delivers some choice words to Zhao before he and Zuko depart to their ship.

High Points:

1. The tense encounter between Zuko and Zhao (and Uncle Iroh) are easily the best and most intriguing scenes in the episode. At this point, it’s pretty clear that Aang and friends are the “heroes” and the Fire Nation is the “villain.” But this episode throws some ambiguity our way by presenting us three different variants of “bad guy.”
2. Zhao is the most traditional (and least interesting) villain of the three, and would likely have been the main baddie along with the Firelord in a lesser children’s show. But Zuko and Iroh? Iroh doesn’t seem all that villainous at all, with his love for tea and his nephew. Zuko, of course, wants to capture our hero Aang, but he’s hopelessly outmatched by Zhao in terms of resources and connections. Yet, as Iroh puts it, he’s a much more noble and honorable person than Zhao, even as an exiled prince. (And can a person who’s been exiled from the bad guys’ homeland really be all that bad?)
3. One really has to give props to DiMartino, Konietzko, and company for further developing and humanizing the main bad guys. How many children’s shows even attempt to do that as early as episode three of any series?
4. The Ag Ni Kai is also a fantastic demonstration of Firebending. This is one of the many ways in which the series makes concept of Bending more grounded and palpable by connecting it to actual martial arts principles and techniques. Scenes like this really benefit from the consultation of Sifu Kisu of the Harmonious Fist Chinese Athletic Association, hired to provide insight on the real life forms which inspire each element of Bending.
5. As for our heroes, there are two moments in this episode that rank among the most emotionally resonant in the entire series, both of which take place just before the end credits, and both of which have to do with Aang coming to terms with the loss of his people and culture.
6. The first, in which Aang says to Momo, “You, me, and Appa. We’re all that’s left of this place. We have to stick together.” So simple. So poignant. What more is there to say?
7. The second, which closes the episode, shows our heroes flying away from the Southern Air Temple. Aang and Momo watch silently as the abandoned temple disappears behind the clouds.
8. Both moments are underpinned by an amazing music cue from the Track Team, Avatar’s resident music composers (and sound designers) Benjamin Wynn and Jeremy Zuckerman. These two have always been an integral part of Avatar’s success (and would later work on Korra), and this is just one of many standout moments. It’s little wonder fans used to beg year after year for a CD release of the Avatar soundtrack.

Low Points:

1. Thank God the episode ends on such a soaring high note because, except for the scenes with Zuko and Iroh and Zhao, the rest of the episode SUCKS. The animation? SUCKS. The voice acting? SUCKS. The dialogue? The humor? The drama? SUCKS, SUCKS, SUCKS!
2. That’s a bit hyperbolic (not to mention juvenile), but it’s honestly shocking how bad this episode is. I know, it’s the first season and they haven’t worked out all the bugs yet. That doesn’t quite explain how this episode came out so terribly, especially since the first two episodes weren’t that bad at all.
3. Then again, those episodes were animated by an entirely different animation studio. For the entirely of Avatar’s production, the only way that Nickelodeon and the Avatar crew could fulfill their huge workload and episode order each season was to delegate the animation production to two separate studios (all stationed in South Korea). During Book One, those studios were JM Animation Co., Ltd and DR Movie. JM Animation animated the first two episodes, while DR Movie animated this one.
4. The odd thing is, if you look at the two studios’ track records, DR Movie would appear to have the more impressive resume. According to their Wikipedia page, DR Movie is the only Korean studio to have a contract with Studio Ghibli. (Hell, as of this writing, DR Movie is the only one of the three animation studios that worked on Avatar to even have a Wikipedia page.) But as Avatar went on, it was JM Animation that consistently produced the best-looking episodes of the series. DR Movie even quit Avatar after Book Two and handed its animation duties to its sister studio, MOI Animation.
5. So maybe DR Movie wasn’t quite sure yet what to do with Avatar, or maybe the directions they received from DiMartino, Konietzko, and company weren’t entirely clear. Whatever the case, the first few episodes they animated for Avatar are pretty bad.
6. Every time Aang has to express an emotion like disappointment, reminiscing, or sorrow, he just looks sleepy. The voice performance by Zack Tyler Eisen is on-point (as it usually is), but sleepy Aang just makes me laugh.
7. You know what doesn’t make me laugh? Sokka. At least not in this episode. In the past, I used to think my hatred of Sokka was entirely due to Jack De Sena’s voice acting. He can certainly go overboard sometimes, but at the end of the day, he’s just an actor doing his best to make something out of a terrible script. (Not even P.J. Byrne, the voice of Bolin and one of the funniest character actors in Hollywood today, is immune to the horrid lines this franchise can occasionally pump out.)
8. The animation doesn’t do Sokka any favors either. Because he’s the comic relief, we’re supposed to believe that whatever violence is inflicted upon him is automatically funny. But flipping him in the air with an Airbending blast seems intolerably cruel coming from someone like Aang. Later, when Aang enters his Avatar state, we see Sokka get blown about twenty feet into a stone wall. He’s not knocked unconscious, and he doesn’t experience any broken bones. So why should I care if he and Katara get blown off the mountain by Aang’s windy rage?
9. That entire sequence is particularly awful. These kids are hundreds of feet in the air and in danger of being blown away to their deaths by the merciless winds of Aang’s despair. Yet Katara and Sokka speak to each other about the situation like people reciting their lines for an Advil commercial. Katara immediately volunteers to attempt to calm Aang down (with absolutely no precedence of how she could possibly do that), and Sokka callously tells her that she better hurry up before they both get blown off the mountain. Is Sokka’s sudden lack of brotherly concern for his sister’s safety supposed to be funny?
10. To make matters worse, the scenes of Aang and friends at the Air Temple are clumsily intercut with the scenes of Zuko, Iroh, and Zhao. It’s particularly jarring towards the end, when Aang’s Avatar state havoc is edited around Zuko and Zhao’s Ag Ni Kai. I think they should have saved the Avatar state business for after the Ag Ni Kai, that way the worldwide reveal of the Avatar’s return doesn’t undercut the tension between Zuko and Zhao (who, aside from pride, are basically fighting for the right to capture the Avatar).
11. All this confusion really does undermine the main emotional point of the episode, in which Aang discovers that he really is the last Airbender left on this planet. As harrowing as this concept is in theory, within the context of this episode’s messy script and clunky humor, it rings pretty hollow (at least until the final two moments discussed in the High Points). As time goes on, the episodes will strike a firmer balance between its pathos and its humor, making for some wonderful episodes. This is just one misstep (but unfortunately not the last).

Random Points:

1. I always wondered about that scene when Aang goes into the Avatar State, which transmits a signal to different places in the world, alerting everyone that the Avatar has returned. Does this happen every time an Avatar goes into the Avatar State? Or did it only happen this time because Aang was in the proximity of the Air Temple sanctuary containing all the statues of the past Avatars? If it’s the former, why wasn’t the world alerted to the Avatar’s return back in episode two, which was the first time we’d ever seen the Avatar State activated? If it’s the latter, then I suppose it makes sense. The episode doesn’t clarify this one way or the other, which is why it still puzzles me after all these years.
2. Did you know that DiMartino and Konietzko hired Jason Isaacs to play Zhao based on his performance in The Patriot starring Mel Gibson? That said, am I the only one who think that Zhao’s character design and voice performance resembles Gibson more so than Isaacs?

Conclusion:

As we can see, Avatar has a few production hurdles to clear before it can even qualify for the title of “best American animated children’s series ever made.” The ambitious and the potential is there, at least. As Konietzko put once it, “the first season of anything is Hell.” He was referring to the production side of things, but it can be true for the audience as well. It’s a good thing children are way more forgiving of sloppy execution, so long as whatever is on screen provides enough sustenance for their imagination, and even the worst episode of Avatar has more creativity and interest than most kid’s show.

Next week: Korra: “The Revelation” & “The Voice in the Night”

April 15, 2017 | Categories: Book One: The Experimental Season, Retrospective | 4 Comments

Retro: Avatar: “The Boy in the Iceberg” & “The Avatar Returns”

B.A.S.S. Line:

Two Water Tribe siblings, Katara and Sokka, discover Aang, the last Airbender and the Avatar, and decide to help him learn the elements and end the 100-year war with the Fire Nation. All the while, they’ll be chased by Prince Zuko, an ill-tempered teenage Firebender, and his loving uncle Iroh.

Key Points:

1. Earth. Fire. Air. In the Avatar universe, Bending is the ability to manipulate one of these elements through a combination of magic and martial arts. Not everyone in this universe can Bend, and those who can are only able to Bend one element (i.e. Waterbenders, Earthbenders, Firebenders, and Airbenders). The kind of Bender you are is determined by which of the four nations you’re born in, be it the Air Nomads, the Earth Kingdom, the Fire Nation, or the Northern/Southern Water Tribe.
2. There is one exception to the one element per individual rule: the Avatar is the only person on the planet capable of Bending all four elements. The Avatar is also the one in charge of maintaining order and balance between the four nations.
3. There’s a problem: the Avatar has disappeared, and his absence, the Fire Nation sought complete global domination, resulting in a terrible war which has gone on for a hundred years. Where, when, and why did the Avatar vanish in this time of need? And will he ever come back to finally defeat the evil Fire Nation? All of this is relayed to us in the minute-long introduction. From then one, these first two episodes waste no time defining the main conflict of the series and setting the narrative in motion.
4. We’re introduced to our three main heroes: Aang, Katara, and Sokka.
5. Aang is the fun-loving twelve-year-old Airbender and the long-missing Avatar of the title (a fact he initially hides from the others for reasons that will be revealed later). When we first meet him, he’s frozen alive inside a giant iceberg that was trapped underwater in the Souther Water Tribe. Upon being freed, immediately requests to go “penguin sledding.” As Katara will remind us every episode, this kid is clearly not up to the task of saving the world, but he’s going to try with a little help from his new friends.
6. Those friends would be Katara and Sokka, Southern Water Tribe sister and brother (wisely ruling out any possibility of a love triangle, a la Harry Potter). Despite being siblings, the two teenagers couldn’t be more different: she’s a Waterbender and an eternal optimist, while Sokka is a non-Bender and a skeptic (except where his manly ego is concerned). Accordingly, she warms up to Aang almost instantly while Sokka is quick to accuse him of being a Fire Nation spy.
7. Aang’s sudden appearance provides a break from the monotony of Southern Water Tribe life during wartime. On the one hand, Katara and the children in her village love him for his strange foreign ways, while Sokka and the elders don’t trust him for the same reason. More importantly, for Katara, Aang is her ticket out of the Water Tribe to find a tutor who can help her reach her potential as a Waterbender (the only Waterbender in the entire Southern Water Tribe, no less). For Sokka, as long as he can do his part in stomping the Fire Nation out of existence, teaming up with Aang to help him master the elements is a sweet deal.
8. Aang even has an impressive mode of transportation: Appa, the sky bison (and the most overt Miyazaki homage thus far). Imagine the Catbus from My Neighbor Totoro with the utility and mobility of the Millenium Falcon and you’ll immediately understand the appeal and popularity of Appa.
9. Appa is definitely as asset in the group’s efforts to reach the Northern Water Tribe, to evade the Fire Nation, and especially to escape the clutches of Prince Zuko.
10. Prince Zuko has been searching for the Avatar for years, and in a stroke of luck, Zuko and his crew are exploring the Southern Water Tribe when Aang makes his entrance in the story. Zuko, along with Iroh, Zuko’s uncle and Firebending tutor, finally have a real chance of capturing the Avatar, ending their (initially hopeless) search, and being allowed to return to the Fire Nation.
11. There’s a lot at stake, especially for Aang, since committing to his role as Avatar means mastering the four elements, stopping a hundred-year war, and finding the maturity to do so. All the while making time to ride the hog-monkeys.

High Points:

1. Like all pilot episodes, “The Boy in the Iceberg” and “The Avatar Returns” have one important job: establish the characters, the world, and the drama unifying it all just enough to make us eager to see how it all plays out. And in that respect, they’re a great success, which is something of a miracle considering just how much plot and exposition is in these two episodes alone. Avatar could have easily turned into a convoluted, aimless, emotionally void mess (which, unfortunately, is exactly what happened to Korra).
2. Lucky for us, these two episodes already showcase the merits of the series as a whole: good writing, a solid voice cast, and a colorful, imaginative visual style.
3. There’s a good helping of humor sprinkled throughout these episodes, but it’s not of the snarky, mean-spirited variety you see in most “hipper-than-thy-parents” children’s program, or of the sitcoms-for-toddlers variety you find in those programs which mostly function to sell merchandise. This humor is good-natured and stems organically from the characters and their circumstances, which is quite refreshing.
4. There are a few standout sequences. Aang and Katara’s exploration of an abandoned Fire Nation ship creates an eerie atmosphere that perfectly complements the revelation that Aang has been frozen for a hundred years (hence his ignorance of the terrible war that has all but defined Katara and Sokka’s lives).
5. In “The Avatar Returns,” we get our first major action sequence, in which Aang, having been taken aboard Zuko’s ship, takes back his Airbending staff and attempts to flee Zuko’s capture. Not that the Prince makes it easy for him. Such is his obsession with capturing the Avatar that he jumps from the ship’s observation deck about twenty feet in the air, which absolutely no regard for his own safety, just to stop Aang from getting away on his glider. Determination is, in Zuko’s case, an understatement.
6. This sequence also showcases the potential of Bending as a means of generating visually impressive fight scenes. In later episodes, the writers and animators will continue to top themselves with the creative ways in which the four elements can be used in a fight.
7. None of this would matter, though, if we didn’t start to care for Aang and friends as they duke it out with the banished prince and his goofy uncle. Thankfully, by the end of the episodes, each character’s personality and objective is so clearly defined that we’re pretty eager to follow them on their journey to save the world from this ongoing war.

Low Points:

1. Honestly, I can’t say there are any genuine “low points” this early in the game. One could make the argument that these episodes are a little too leisurely in their pace, and that some jokes—despite how refreshing different the humor of the show is from that of most others—are a bit too silly, and that some of the animation isn’t as good as it will be later on. Then again, how many pilot episodes—especially of the animated variety—actually compare favorably to later episodes?

Random Point:

1. Quick: can you recall ever hearing the word “sexist” used in an American animated children’s television program before Avatar? I can’t. I can certainly recall many programs that dealt with sexism as a concept and a theme (one of the best examples being The Powerpuff Girls with the cleverly-titled episode “Equal Fights,” whose story was written by Lauren “Friendship is Magic” Faust, no less), but never one in which a character outright says the word itself.
2. In the case of Avatar, it occurs in the very first episode, in the very first real scene. And it does make sense in context. Sokka, the macho warrior, instantly blames Katara for crashing their canoe, insinuating that girls ruin everything. Katara’s furious scowling of her brother—exacerbated by her Waterbending, which nearly gets them crushed by an avalanche and ends up uncovering the iceberg in which the Avatar is frozen—is certainly justified (and hilariously animated), especially she’s the one stuck doing all the Charlie Work that comes with living and surviving in an Antarctic region while all he’s off, as she puts it, “playing soldier.” She also tosses in some choice adjectives, such as “immature,” “nut-brained,” and yes, “sexist.”
3. But let’s think about this moment in the context of the overall narrative. There’s been a war going on with the Firebenders for almost a hundred years, and two years prior to this scene, Sokka and Katara’s father and the other men of the village have left to fight and contribute their efforts to defeating the Fire Nation. Presumably, that left Sokka as the only “man” to look after the village and doing his share of the labor. Katara belittles his role in all this by calling it “playing soldier.” But is that all? Does Sokka not hunt? Does he not help maintain civility and order in the village? Does he not try his best to prepare the next generation of soldiers—all adorable pre-pubescent children—for the war effort against the Fire Nation?
4. Or did the absence of the father and other male role models render him incompetent and unprepared for the challenge, and thus reduce him to inflating his impotent ego by making muscles whenever he sees his reflection in the water? In such harsh living conditions where survival is the name of the game, Sokka would have long been exiled to freeze in the cold if he didn’t contribute something to their well-being. (Or does his status as the absent chief’s son prevent that?)
5. Do any of these questions really matter? Not really. For one thing, the scene is clearly geared in Katara’s favor, and all Sokka can do is coward in fear as her angry Waterbending nearly gets them both crushed by a nearby glacier. At no point is Sokka allowed defended his place in the village as more than “playing soldier.” He’d probably point out that he does all the hunting (by himself, no less), and Katara would even retort that he may capture the food, but she and the other women are the ones who have to actually clean it, gut it, and cook it.
6. None of that matters because the point of the scene is to present Katara is a fiercely independent young woman who has the balls to call Sokka out on his sexist attitudes. That’s fine. My contention is with the use of the word itself, because its such a modern word (it didn’t exist before the 1960s) that it sticks out like a sore thumb in this Asian-influenced fantasy adventure show.
7. Ultimately, my problem is that “sexist” is not something a character would say ever say in this universe—in point of fact, the word is never uttered again in either Avatar or Korra—but something that the writers wanted her to say to signal to the audience “look how progressive we are, our female character knows what sexism is and calls it out when she sees it, aren’t we so hip and clever!”
8. Not hip and/or clever at all, in my opinion. Maybe in 2005 it was at least surprising, but now, it comes across more like “self-conscious” and “pandering.” Not to mention “unnecessary,” because the series as a whole handles the issue so damn well and without calling attention to itself when doing so. Here, though, not only do the writers betray their motives in such blatant, tasteless fashion, but they damn near destroy the element of timelessness that makes these kinds of stories work. (If anything, this “virtue signaling” would eventually help to destroy Korra, but it’s rather disheartening to see the seeds of destruction already planted in the first goddamn scene of the first goddamn episode of Avatar.)

Conclusion:

Looking on the bright side, though, the show creators’ “self-conscious progressivism” didn’t apply solely to the show’s politics. Whether it was in the animation, the storytelling, the voice acting, the themes, etc., Mr. DiMartino and Mr. Konietzko fought hard to expand the limitations of what could be done in an American animated children’s television program, and for that, they should be commended, and the show they and their crew created should be praised. For better and for worse, these first two episodes are the perfect harbinger of things to come.

Next week: Korra: “Welcome to Republic City” & “A Leaf in the Wind”

(P.S. I want to apologize to everyone for not responding to their comments yet. It’s been a hectic week, and I’m still trying to find my groove with this retrospective. Thanks for sticking with me, guys, I promise the quality of these retrospectives will improve with each week.)

April 1, 2017 | Categories: Book One: The Experimental Season, Retrospective | 7 Comments

Retrospective: Chapter Fourteen: “The Fortuneteller”

I have to wonder if any of Avatar: The Last Airbender’s young audience were converted into hard-nosed skeptics after watching “The Fortuneteller.” The main conflict involves a village that puts all its trust in the local fortuneteller, Aunt Wu; if Aunt Wu says the village will not be destroyed by the nearby volcano, everyone believes it. So when said volcano shows signs of an impending eruption, the villagers smugly refuse to accept  that they’re in any danger, despite the evidence presented by our heroes. One could almost call the episode subversive if it hadn’t handled its faith vs. science theme so gingerly.

For one thing, the episode never makes it clear whether Aunt Wu is a sham or not. She certainly seems to believe in what she’s doing, and her prediction about the volcano was technically correct since our heroes saved the day. (She even accurately predicts Aang’s trials as the Avatar.) Then again, her cloud readings—which are interpreted with a special book—seem pretty arbitrary, and apparently take place at the same time every day, despite the fact that clouds are constantly moving and making new shapes. Even if the cloud of death had formed on its own—and without the clever Bending of Aang and Katara—Aunt Wu would have missed it had Sokka not pointed it out to her.

Speaking of Sokka, he plays the role of skeptical man of science, chastising the villagers for blindly putting their fate in the hands of Aunt Wu. And yet, Aunt Wu’s prediction that Sokka’s pain would mostly be self-inflicted is not only true, it undermines Sokka’s endorsement of facts and logic by reminding us that he’s the Comic Relief, and thus doomed not to be taken seriously, by the villagers or the audience.

The villagers themselves aren’t treated any better. Their extreme devotion to Aunt Wu is mostly a setup for Sokka’s mockery and a source of tension for the plot. Most of their predictions revolve around petty personal matters with no real significance (i.e. the man you marry will have large ears). There’s not a single substantial testimony that would give their trust in Aunt Wu’s wisdom some legitimacy. It’s one thing to ignore the crazed ranting of Sokka. But to ignore the physical evidence of an incoming volcano eruption is straying too close into Darwin territory.

So is the “The Fortuneteller” pro-faith or pro-science? It’s hard to tell, and that’s one of the problems with this episode. The fact that this conversation takes place at all is an unusual achievement for a children’s show, but the writers’ refusal to take a stance and instead use the potential dialogue as a platform for silly comedy is all too typical. It’s rather telling that the one person whose reaction we don’t see to the volcano’s pre-eruption activity is Aunt Wu. Her reaction probably would have determined once and for all whether her abilities could be called into question. But alas, she’s conveniently away when the plot doesn’t need her and conveniently back when it does (we have no idea where she was when the volcano was starting to act up, but Sokka comes across her immediately when its time to point out the doom cloud).

Tangled into this fortunetelling business is the subject of love. Aang’s feelings for Katara have finally started to manifest, but for most people, it’s pretty much a forgone conclusion that the two will end up together, so there’s not much of interest there. At this point, Aang is waist deep in the Friend Zone, so his feelings aren’t reciprocated. But, while eavesdropping on Aunt Wu’s prediction of Katara’s love life, he learns that she’ll eventually marry a powerful Bender, which puts the odds in his favor.

Of course, putting your love life in a fortuneteller’s hands turns out to be a bad idea. Aunt Wu’s assistant, a little girl named Meng, was told that she’d eventually marry a man with large ears. Upon meeting Aang, she just knows he’s the one (although any five-year-old can tell you that you can’t marry someone you just met). Naturally, her feelings aren’t returned, which should provide a lesson about moving on, but considering how predictably Aang and Katara’s story turns out, it’s a lesson for us normal people and not the main characters in fantasy tales.

The only real point of interest with Meng is that she’s voiced by Jessie Flower, who would return in the next season as Toph Bei Fong, one of the most beloved characters in the series. Otherwise, she’s a pretty indistinct character, which may or may not have been the point, but I’m not sure. In any case, she stalks Aang throughout the village, and ends up helping him find Aunt Wu’s cloud book to save the village. The stalking aspect of that sequence is played for laughs, but considering that it conveniently worked to Aang’s (and the village’s) advantage, Aang should consider himself lucky for having those big ears.

At the end of the episode, Meng initially appears to have pushed her feelings for Aang aside for the greater good. But after waving goodbye to our heroes, she calls Katara a naughty word. Again, it’s played for laughs, but the implication that Meng will never let it go and harbor some lingering  jealousy is a little much. Isn’t this girl, like, eight-years-old? (Admittedly, we’re never told Meng’s age, but considering Flower must have been ten when they recorded this episode, that’s probably the range they were aiming for.)

So “The Fortuneteller” is not of the series’ strongest episodes—in fact, it’s borderline filler—but it’s entertaining enough. The humor generally works, which is always a good thing. Katara’s obsession with Aunt Wu’s predictions is funny thanks to Mae Whitman. And who doesn’t get a kick out of seeing Sokka being tormented by the universe? Having said that, the writers missed a big opportunity for a laugh by not having the doom cloud be a cute fluffy bunny (especially since the episode establishes that fluffy bunny clouds are signs of doom and destruction) instead of the obvious skull of death.

Perhaps the lack of a Zuko/Iroh subplot keeps this episode from being better, but that will be somewhat rectified in the next episode.

On a side note, this episode may just be the first appearance of a Hybrid Animal. Not the concept itself (which goes back as far as the first episode), but the explicit nature of naming them after the animals being fused (in this case, it’s a platypus-bear). Apparently, during production, the writers were so taken with co-creator Bryan Konietzko’s initial Hybrid Animals (i.e. Momo the lemur-bat) that they took it upon themselves to up the ante with the weirdest possible combinations in future episodes. I won’t go so far as to say Hybrid Animals ruin the series—it’s a harmless running gag—but it does reek of typical children’s show cheekiness in that the cleverness of the joke stifles our engagement with the story and its characters. This type of humor always feels like it’s more for the writers’ amusement than ours. (This kind of meta-humor pops up sporadically throughout the series, and would eventually reach its nadir with the awful “The Ember Island Players.”)

Additionally, the piecemeal nature of the Hybrid Animals calls into question the series’ own imperfect synthesis of different parts and sensibilities (mostly those of anime, Western cartoons, young adult fantasy, and of course, Star Wars). Avatar may be a fantasy, but even fantasy requires a cohesive tone and consistent worldbuilding in order for the story to resonate. Hybrid Animals have no true connection to the reality of the world of Avatar and continually shatter the suspension of disbelief. Might it have been better if the combinations didn’t breach good taste (ex. bison-manitee, yes; pig-rooster, no) and if they hadn’t lazily named them after the animals they were created from?

If you ask me, things like the Hybrid Animals—and all the silliness they exude—are why Avatar ranks fairly low in the pop cultural conversation.

P.S. Great Scott, the responses to this post were lengthy, passionate, and well-thought out. Once I have a chance to sit still for a good hour or so, I’ll contribute to the conversation. Thank you so much, guys! This is what I’ve missed the most in my time away from this blog!

December 14, 2015 | Categories: Book One: The Experimental Season, Retrospective | 9 Comments

Retrospective: Chapter Twelve: “The Storm”

How did Aang end up frozen in an iceberg for a hundred years? Why is Zuko so obsessed with capturing the Avatar, and why does he get absolutely no support from the Fire Nation? Where did Zuko get his scar?

All these questions are answered in “The Storm,” one of the most important episodes in the Avatar storyline. We’ve had eleven episodes to warm up to the cat-and-mouse game between Aang and Zuko, and now we finally get to know their individual backstories. These days, most cartoon characters are lucky to get a personality, let alone a backstory. When they do, it’s usually a cynical attempt to manipulate us into caring about poorly animated toy commercials. Here, however, the backstories actually deepen our understanding of the characters and gets us more invested in their emotional journey. It’s almost like what happens in a real story!

Among other things, we learn that Aang found out that he was the Avatar at too early an age: typically, the new Avatar doesn’t find out until they’re at least sixteen years old, when they’re emotionally mature enough to handle the news and the responsibility. Aang had to be told at the age of twelve because, as the Airbender monks observed, the Fire Nation was in the early stages of declaring war on the rest of the world, and they needed Aang to get a head start on his Avatar training.

Aang is reasonably flustered by this news, but the worse is yet to come: suddenly, his friends no longer want to play with him (they coldly reason being the Avatar gives him an unfair advantage), and the monks decide to separate him from Monk Gyatso, his mentor and only friend. And so, Aang flies away into the night on Appa. They get caught in a terrible storm, but thankfully, Aang’s Avatar State kicks in and safely freezes them both in a giant iceberg. (Why it didn’t rush them to the surface, as we’ve seen it do twice so far, is never explained, but it’s just as well: clearly the Avatar State knew something Aang didn’t.) And frozen they remained until “The Boy in the Iceberg,” which is where we came in.

Meanwhile, in Zuko’s lifetime, he was the prince and thus destined to be the new Firelord. Unlike Aang, his eagerness to fulfill this great responsibility becomes his downfall. While sitting-in during a war meeting, he speaks out against a dreadful plan to coldly sacrifice the lives of young soldiers  so that the older soldiers could gain the upper hand. While Iroh agrees that Zuko was in the right, it was the wrong time and place for him to voice his opinion, and his punishment is an Agni Kai with the Firelord. His father, that is.

Zuko’s pleas for forgiveness fall on deaf ears, and not only does his refusal to fight earn him his distinctive scar–Zuko’s harrowing scream remains one of the most chilling moments in the series–it gets him banished from the Fire Nation. His father will only take him back and restore his honor if he finds the Avatar. This is, of course, intended as a fool’s errand designed to shut Zuko out permanently. But the ever-literal-minded Zuko is just foolish enough (or rather, optimistic enough) to take his word, and has been searching for the Avatar ever since. “The Boy in the Iceberg” was a drastic turning point in both his life and Aang’s.

Aang and Zuko’s back stories are expertly told in flashback by Aang and Iroh respectively. In Aang’s case, he has to explain to Katara why he’s so filled with shame for running away in the first place. In Iroh’s case, he has to articulate to Zuko’s poor crew why the boy is so stubborn and seemingly heartless. Katara and Iroh essentially provide an outside, but sympathetic perspective on their tales. Katara reasons that, if Aang hadn’t run away, he would have been killed during Sozin’s Comet, and how could he have saved the world then? Iroh reasons that even though Zuko is so narrow-minded, he ultimately means well. Besides, given the circumstances, the Avatar’s return is the best thing that’s happened to him in a long time. It gives him hope.

The rest of the episode is pretty typical by Avatar standards—Aang saves Sokka and an old fisherman during a terrible storm, and Zuko chooses the safety of his crew over recklessly pursuing the Avatar—but given extra heft thanks to our new understanding of Aang and Zuko’s motivations. In the end, the past is the past. What matters is what they choose to do now. For Aang, that means saving the world. For Zuko, that means capturing Aang and thus stopping his from saving the world—as you can see, despite our new sympathy for Zuko, he’s still technically a villain; Aang may have found his direction in life, but Zuko is still a drifter, doomed to wander between the winds.

“The Storm” is a frequently found on most Avatar fans’ Top Ten best episodes, and it’s not hard to see why. Of course, any episode could have followed “The Great Divide” and would have seemed like genius in comparison. If that episode shook your faith in Avatar, “The Storm” will completely restore it. It’s that good.

July 23, 2015 | Categories: Book One: The Experimental Season, Retrospective | 3 Comments

Retrospective: Chapter Eleven: “The Great Divide”

There is a line of dialogue that no one ever brings us when talking about “The Great Divide,” but that pretty much sums up everything that’s wrong with this episode. When the entire group—consists of our heroes, the Gan Jin, the Zhang, and canyon guide—finally reaches the end of the Great Divide, Aang says the following:

As soon as we get out of here we can eat…

The crux of this line is the “we can eat” part. Eat what? The canyon guide specifically told them to dump all their food before going into the Divide, and as far as Aang knows, that’s exactly what they did. Or did Aang miss that crucial piece of information? Or did he simply forget?

He couldn’t have, because when it’s reveal that the Gan Jin and the Zhang did bring food, he is absolutely furious. But if they weren’t going to eat the food they brought, then what convinced Aang that once they got out of the Divide, they could eat (and immediately, at that)? Was there a restaurant just on—or even nearby—the other side of the Divide that Aang knows about? If that were the case, wouldn’t it have benefitted everyone if he just told them about it in the first place? That at least would have provided extra incentive for them not to bring food. As far as I know, no such place exists. So what the fuck is Aang talking about? Aang either wasn’t listening or he’s full of shit, and neither speaks well for him as a person. And this is the guy who’s supposed to save the world!

This single line of dialogue has thoroughly convinced me that DiMartino and Konietzko and company knew just how bad “The Great Divide” was. And I don’t mean after the fact—after all, they give it a harsh shout-out in “The Ember Island Players”—I mean during production. Wouldn’t you suspect that after writing all the scripts, they realized that “The Great Divide” was just not up to snuff (but had to produce it anyway)? Don’t all the bizarre and idiotic choices made in this episode seem like an attempt to alleviate their own boredom? Maybe they realized that their initial premise had little-to-no promise, and that nothing would save this episode. They probably knew that “The Great Divide” would be a noose around they neck for the entire rest of Avatar’s run on television. That little joke in “The Ember Island Player” was their way of assuring us that they were embarrassed by the episode, too.

“The Great Divide” is widely considered the single worst episode of Avatar, and I mostly agree (though I find “The Ember Island Players” to be worse for less obvious reasons). In a rather perverse way, I’m glad that “The Great Divide” exists. Strange as it may sound, “The Great Divide” serves as a better yardstick from which to measure Avatar’s greatness than another cartoon, even a contemporary one, would have.

On one hand, this is a true testament of Avatar’s singularity, since what makes a good episode of Avatar is vastly different from what makes a good episode of, say, Star vs. The Forces of Evil (a fine show, just less ambitious and more sitcomical). On the other hand, a terrible episode of Avatar is virtually indistinguishable from a terrible episode of most other kids’ shows. When a show as original and intelligent as Avatar somehow manages to produce an episode as stupid and careless as “The Great Divide,” you immediately take notice.

How could this have happened? The answer may be implicit in the episode itself.

The opening establishes the overall “message”: Sokka and Katara disagree on something (it doesn’t matter what), and Aang forces them to reach a compromise for the greater good (it doesn’t matter how). The rest of the episode is a failed attempt to make this textbook morality less hollow than it already is.

Then we’re introduced to the Great Divide itself, which is clearly modeled on the Grand Canyon, right down to the typical American boredom with it. Before our heroes simply fly right over it on Appa, the two tribes of refugees show up. Both of them need to get across the Divide, but they hate each other (it doesn’t matter why) so much that they refuse to share the canyon guide. Aang forces them to compromise for the single day that it will take them to cross the Divide.

The two tribes are the “civilized” Gan Jin, who are clean, proper and dressed in white, and the “barbaric” Zhang, who are dirty, crude and dressed in brown. Beyond that, there is no attempt to give them any discernible personality. They exist collectively as a plot device, and not a single member of either tribe emerges as a human being. Then again, giving the warring tribes some humanity would probably take too much time and effort than could be accomplished in a single twenty-two-minute-long episode. Why waste such effort on an episode nobody wanted to work on in the first place?

If anyone had to be written with some humanity, it should have been the canyon guide. He’s an old Earthbender who takes people through the Divide, apparently for no pay. He should be the most interesting character in the episode, but instead he’s a total bore. When the Canyon Crawlers break his arms, he turns into a paranoid lunatic. Not without reason, though: with his Earthbending gone, there’s little to no chance of the group getting out of the Divide. This should create suspense, but since we don’t care about the fates of these two tribes, it doesn’t. It certainly doesn’t help that the only reason the guide’s arms were broken in the first place was because of the tribes’ idiocy.

The canyon guide’s only rule for going through the Great Divide was that they cannot bring any food with them. Food attracts Canyon Crawlers (a hybrid animal that’s a cross between a spider and a crocodile), so they have to eat as much food as they can and then dump the rest. Both the Gan Jin and the Zhang bring food anyway. What’s the point of relying on the canyon guide if you’re not even going to listen to him? No one even brings up the fact that their selfishness and stupidity cost the canyon guide his arms and nearly got them all killed. (The Gan Jin don’t even think to offer him compensation for the damages. And you know they’re loaded!)

Since the tribes can’t along even for the greater good of their own survival, Aang splits them up and tasks Katara and Sokka with watching over the Gan Jin and the Zhang respectively. You’d think splitting up the group would be a terrible idea, but given the circumstances, it’s still a terrible idea. Not that anyone seems capable of rational thought in this episode. For example, when Katara and Sokka find out that the two tribes did bring food after all, you’d think they chastise them for putting their lives in danger.

Oh wait: it turns out that Katara and Sokka have a lot in common with their respective tribes (it doesn’t matter what), so the food problem is no longer a big deal. Katara even says, without the slightest hint of irony, “I guess it’s OK if everyone’s doing it.” (Mae Whitman’s straight-faced delivery of this childish dialogue is probably what got her the Tinker Bell gig after Brittany Murphy died.)

Each tribe explains their hatred of the other tribe to Katara and Sokka (and the audience). By this point in the episode, DiMartino and Konietzko and company have become so bored with their own episode that each explanation is done in an animation style radically different from the style we’re used to with Avatar. Do they benefit the story in anyway? No, but they’re a nice bit of relief after the utter predictability of the rest of the episode (the music is especially peculiar, as if the Dust Brothers temporarily took over for the Track Team).

The third-act action sequence is entirely perfunctory, except for one thing. Aang’s idea to use the food bags to both tame the Canyon Crawlers and get them out of the Great Divide is actually very clever and deserving of a better episode.

Otherwise, there are two points in this last act—both involving Aang—that finally tip the episode from lazy and lousy to downright insulting.

The first is when Aang reveals that the feud between the two tribes is based on a misunderstanding. He explains that the feud was based on a technical foul in a children’s game. Somehow, this explanation is acceptable to these silly tribes, and they immediately forgive each other. And you know what? We immediately forgive the episode for everything that came before because, as silly as this explanation is, it means the episode is almost over.

All could be forgiven and forgotten if it weren’t for the second point, when Aang reveals that all the above was a lie, and that he’d only made it up to finally get the tribes to stop fighting. It’s difficult to say what the moral is supposed to be anymore. It’s even more difficult to say whether this final twist is supposed to be funny or not (Katara’s reaction to this, on the other hand, is kinda funny). Most likely DiMartino and Konietzko and company were so fed up with how the episode turned out that they simply gave up trying to make any literal or emotional sense of the main conflict. That’s quite a way to treat an audience who’ve stuck with you for ten episodes. No wonder no one likes this episode.

P.S. In a way, one can view Aang’s lie as an ironic reflection of the Gan Jin’s and the Zhang’s lie that they didn’t bring food. It is possible to be too clever.

And since we brought up Brittany Murphy…

July 17, 2015 | Categories: Book One: The Experimental Season, Retrospective | 4 Comments

Retrospective: Chapten Ten: “Jet”

Among other things, Avatar is a masterpiece of worldbuilding. Every new episode adds something new and usually integral to our perception and understanding of the Avatar universe, and subsequently our understanding of the overall story. This can range from a tiny plot device (e.g. the bison whistle) to a complex moral dilemma that stems from the characters’ behavior and sense of purpose. These narrative devices, when successful, deepen our understanding of our heroes’ journey by showing us precisely what they’re fighting for and not just who they’re fighting against.

“Jet,” for example, adds a touch of grayness to the story’s spectrum of morality. Jet and his merry band of hoodlums aren’t the first “friendlies” that we meet, but they may be the coolest: a gang of young, charming, reckless outcasts who live apart from society, sustaining themselves on nothing but their wits and their hatred of the Fire Nation. When you’re living through a hundred-year-war with no end in sight, people like Jet are a cancer to their enemies and rock stars to their supporters. Jet is the perfect symbol of hope, the underdog who does everything he can to change the world.

But there’s a problem. The same passion that makes Jet such a romantic figure—Katara is immediately smittened after his amazing entrance into the series—fuels a bitter racism: in Jet’s eyes, every single person from the Fire Nation is responsible for the death of his parents and thus deserves no mercy and no remorse. Even a harmless old man is just a pawn that can be taken out of the game, if necessary.

We witness this vicious attack on the old man along with Sokka, and naturally he tries to warn Aang and especially Katara about Jet’s dark side. Unfortunately, he’d already been openly critical of Jet from the start, so when he comes to them with a legitimate concern, they continue to dismiss it as jealousy. It doesn’t help that Jet, the expect manipulator, makes Aang and Katara believe that the old man was actually an assassin sent to get him (which, in Jet’s paranoid delusions, is probably true).

If things weren’t bad enough, Jet plans to flood an entire village in order to drive the Fire Nation out of the area. That the civilians will also die is nothing but an necessary evil to Jet. It is upon discovering this plan that Katara finally sees Jet for the monster he is. By that point, however, she and Aang inadvertently helped put his plan in motion with their Waterbending. Aang attempts to fly away and warn the village, but Jet manages to stop him by stealing and damaging his glider. (Aang’s fight with Jet is pretty revealing: if the Avatar can’t handle a fight with one sword-wielding teenager, how is he going to be ready for the Firelord? How many upgrades will he need before that fight?)

Luckily for the village, this episode belongs not to Aang, but to Sokka, and he manages to evacuate the village. (He gets a lot of help from the old man that Jet attacked.) Sokka started out as the butt of the joke in the first half of the episode, but once Jet reveals his true colors, he’s the hero in the second half. Voice actor Jack DeSena plays both sides very effectively, finding the perfect balance between stoicism and idiocy.

Voice actor Crawford Wilson, on the other hand, doesn’t quite bring the charm and menace necessity to bridge the two extremes of Jet’s personality. The episode suffers as a result, since the evil, murderous Jet is feels emotionally disconnected from the charming rouge we first met (during Jet’s more sinister motions, Wilson’s delivery is too contained and self-conscious to convey genuine rage). This disconnection makes Jet less of a character and more of a plot device designed to demonstrate the innate virtues of our main heroes by comparison.

Voice acting not withstanding, Jet is an intriguing character, and thankfully he returns in Book Two, adding a bit more depth and given him a satisfying character arc. “Jet” demonstrates the show’s willingness to explore moral dilemmas that most kids’ shows probably wouldn’t touch, especially on an episode-by-episode basis. “Jet” brings an element of darkness to the series that stays with it to the bitter end.

July 13, 2015 | Categories: Book One: The Experimental Season, Retrospective | Leave a comment

Retrospective: Chapter Nine: “The Waterbending Scroll”

Avatar continues its winning streak with “The Waterbending Scroll,” the most blatantly comic episode in the series since “The King of Omashu.” But whereas that episode was marred by its own pointlessness, “The Waterbending Scroll” never loses sight of the overall story or its characters, even as they swashbuckle with a crew of silly pirates. This is easily the funniest and most entertaining episode of the series thus far. It’s also one of the most accessible episodes; you don’t need to be an expert in Avatar lore to enjoy this one, and that’s because the relationships of all the main characters are so perfectly clear and utilized. You don’t have to know how Waterbending works to find amusement in Katara’s escalating jealousy of Aang’s innate talent for it, especially since she’s supposed to be the one teaching him. (She finally blows up at him mid-way through the episode, and even with Aang’s reaction—or because it—it’s one of the biggest laughs in the series.)

The way that Zuko and Iroh factor into the plot is borderline sitcom. Iroh loses an important game piece and forces Zuko to make a pit stop at a marketplace by the water. The punchline: the piece was in Iroh’s sleeve the entire time. Had the rest of the episode not been up to snuff, Iroh’s and Zuko’s individual reactions to this news—Iroh with a sense of humor, Zuko with furious anger—would have easily made it all worth it.

As fun and as funny as “The Waterbending Scroll” is, it feels a little too lightweight for its own good. So while certain things do carry over into later episodes (including the titular scroll, Aang’s bison whistle, Katara’s necklace, etc.), the episode as a whole feels very inconsequential. This may be because the episode contributes little to our gradual understanding of the Avatar universe, and also because “The Waterbending Scroll,” more than most episodes, calls back to DiMartino and Konietzko and company’s background in sitcoms and more typical kids’ show fare. If the “Winter Solstice” felt like a step towards something new and exciting, “The Waterbending Scroll” feels more like a regression into sitcom territory, albeit high quality sitcom. The result is a genuinely funny episode, but nothing more.

July 8, 2015 | Categories: Book One: The Experimental Season, Retrospective | 3 Comments

Retrospective: Chapter Seven and Eight: “Spirit World: Winter Solstice, Part One” and “Avatar Roku: Winter Solstice, Part Two”

Avatar: the Last Airbender is a show that requires a lot of faith, patience, and understanding from its audience. While Avatar is hardly an inaccessible show, its accessibility is largely dependent on the acceptance of certain stylistic choices and tendencies that might be off-putting to the average viewer.

The most obvious example would be the undeniable anime influence on the story and the visual design. While not necessarily “mainstream,” American viewers have certainly warmed up to anime quite a bit over the last few years (e.g. thanks largely to John Lasseter of Pixar fame, most of the works of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli share the same retail space as Frozen, The Lion King, and the Tinker Bell movies; whether they’re actually selling is another question). Back then, though, anime was still very much a niche culture and usually only held in high regard by nerds, freaks, connoisseurs, or other animators. The latter made sporadic attempts to adapt anime sensibilities into a few different series, some of which (e.g. The Powerpuff Girls) were more successful than others (e.g. Teen Titans). Avatar was the latest and most successful merging of anime and American cartoon sensibilities, if not entirely seamless.

Still, even those who embraced the overall style would have to come the terms with the mythos and continuity of the overall Avatar story, which all but requires you to watch it from the very beginning. That’s asking a lot, especially coming from an American television animation children’s program. The few instances of continuity that do occur in such programs were typically quite trivial (a la recurring characters, running gags, themes, etc.), and rarely played any part in a greater narrative. With its ambitious narrative structure and commitment to a story universe grounded by certain rules and customs, Avatar definitely distinguished itself from other kids’ shows (although even this is a nod towards the comparatively denser and more complex narratives found in most anime).

And yet, having embraced both the style and the narrative, the viewer has to overcome the last and potentially deal-breaking obstacle to enjoying Avatar: the sporadic shifts in quality from episode-to-episode. Surely every series has one or two bad episodes, but since most children’s programming rarely bothered with continuity, it could never affect the overall quality of the show. With Avatar, however, almost every episode adds to our understanding of the story’s narrative and universe. To get the most out of Avatar means willingly suffering through a few toxic episodes, phases of grotesque animation, lazy writing, and lapses into the clichés and formulas of the kind of kid’s shows that Avatar purports to be better than.

(Most children can look right past these all of these technical flaws, making them the ideal, if not the only, audience for much of Avatar since the show never had the broad, all-encompassing appeal and Zeitgeist timing of, say, Star Wars or the Lord of the Rings films.)

As always, though, it’s important to note that Book One largely consists of DiMartino and Konietzko and company figuring out the right tone for the show, striking the perfect balance between the thrills, the laughs, the mystery, and—above all else—the emotions of the adventure at hand. Having found that balance with “Imprisoned,” they push it even further with the two-part “Winter Solstice,” giving us the best and most exciting episodes of the series thus far. It may have taken more than six episodes, but the dramatic potential inherent to the show’s premise is finally being properly realized.

As one of the quintessential set of episodes, “Winter Solstice” lays bare the primary narrative strategies of much of the series.

On the one hand, we have Aang, who as the Avatar—aka “The Chosen One”—is immediately expected to handle certain tasks and responsibilities in order to keep the world in balance (in this case, it’s stopping an angry spirit from destroying a village). While those tasks and responsibilities appear to be self-evident to most of the folks we meet in the Avatar universe, they are a constant mystery to both Aang and the audience. Since the audience rarely knows any more about the Avatar’s duty than Aang does, we can relate to him on at least some level as he navigates the trials and dangers of his learning curve. (This relatability isn’t necessarily deep or emotional, but it’s enough to make Aang’s adventures effective.)

On the other hand, we have Zuko, who knows even less about the Avatar, except that he must be captured and brought to the Firelord (his father) at all costs. Zuko’s narrow-minded obsession with capturing the Avatar—and regaining his honor—could have easily resulted in a one-dimensional villain who only existed to give Aang and friends an obstacle to overcome each episode. What makes Zuko’s side of the story so compelling this early on are the complications and setbacks he must face just to be recognized as a formidable threat. Just how interesting would Zuko’s journey be if he didn’t have to compete with his fellow Fire Nation native Commander Zhao (the kind of smug, heavily-armed opponent who would be the sole villain in a lesser cartoon)? Or what if he didn’t have the companionship and guidance of his immensely likable uncle (whose playful worldliness provides a much needed contrast to Zuko’s prideful tunnel vision)?

The plights of these two older men allow us to put Zuko’s emotional journey into perspective. Zuko may be ruthless, but he’s not a monster. He may threaten to leave his uncle behind to stay on the Avatar’s course, but when Iroh is kidnapped by Earthbenders—technically the “good guys”—he immediately goes searching for him. It’s surprisingly heartwarming to witness Zuko conscientiously put off his hunt for the Avatar in order to rescue his uncle. Commander Zhao would have just left, and that alone makes it impossible to sympathize with him. In this narrative, Zhao is allowed to go to the villainous extremes that Zuko—due to his recklessness, his lack of resources, and his loving uncle—cannot. That Zuko carries on anyway makes him the more interesting character, and his conflict with Zhao underpins just how much of an underdog he is even among his own people.

Comparatively, Aang’s story is much more conventional, and more prone to careless and predictable writing. As the protagonist of a fantasy action/adventure series for children, Aang is essentially doomed to succeed and save the world from annihilation. The best Aang-centric episodes deal with how this twelve-year-old boy must quickly grow up and take on the heavy burden of keeping the world in order, which means figuring out exactly what the Avatar is supposed to do. Episodes that don’t have this drama at its center are usually saved by the trials faced by other characters (mainly Zuko, Katara, or Sokka), clever plotting, humorous character interactions, and fun action sequences. (In the absence of any of those things, you get “The Great Divide.”)

“Winter Solstice” is the first true Aang-centric episode and one of the best. He continues to feel guilt for disappearing a hundred years ago, and thus allowing the Fire Nation to wreck havoc on the world. In this episode, the Fire Nation has burned down a significant chunk of a once-majestic forest. This desecration of nature sends Aang into a depressive stupor, although Katara pulls him out of it when she shows him the seeds left unharmed by the fire. The original trees are dead and gone, but the forest inside lives on.

Why the Fire Nation specifically burned this forest is immaterial; what matters is that it is the home of the angry spirit that is destroying the nearby village and kidnapping the locals. Aang is tasked with dealing with the beast, and only after clearly assessing the situation–and a detour that temporarily traps him in the Spirit World and get in touch with Avatar Roku’s spirit animal–is he able to appease the spirit, and in the same way Katara cheered him up earlier in the episode: by showing it the unharmed seeds from the forest and promising that it will grow back in time. Out of gratitude, the spirit leaves in peace and even returns all of the kidnapped villagers (including Sokka) in a manner surely inspired by Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The Spirit World is one of the new concepts introduced in these episodes. Somehow, the Avatar is able to navigate both the Spirit World and the real world in order each one in check: what goes on in either world affects the other. In this case, the Winter Solstice occurs, temporarily allowing the Spirit World and the real world to function on the same plane of existence (this is how the forest spirit was able to physically destroy the village from time-to-time).

This is great news for Aang: as Avatar Roku’s dragon had show him, the Winter Solstice may present his only opportunity to get in contact with Roku and figure out what to do next as the Avatar. Unfortunately, the Solstice is fast approaching, and the Fire Sage’s temple—the only place where Aang can talk to Roku—is not only far away, but its within Fire Nation territory; going in there is basically a suicide mission for Aang and Zuko (as a banished prince, Zuko can’t stop his people from attacking him even as he’s on the Avatar’s trail).

The trip to the Fire Sage’s temple and the chase that ensues between our heroes, Zuko, and Zhao constitutes nearly the entire second episode of “Winter Solstice.” Whether our heroes are being shot out of the sky by flaming projectiles or being chased by elder Firebenders, there’s not a single dull moment, which is an impressive feat for an episode that’s essentially one long action sequence (a feat that would be repeated in Book Two with the perfectly titled “The Chase”). It certainly helps that this time around, the animation of DR Movie has bounced back significantly after the abysmal work in their last episode “The King of Omashu.” The aerials scenes are especially wonderful, as Appa dodges fireballs that fly at them over the clouds.

The action is made all the more suspenseful by the limited amount of time the kids have to reach the temple and get inside the alter so can meet Avatar Roku just as the Solstice happens. The strict time restraint brings out the best in everyone. One of the Fire Sages turns out to still be loyal to the Avatar, and takes our heroes straight to Roku’s chamber. When the chamber door requires five blasts of Firebending, Sokka gets to demonstrate his technical ingenuity with makeshift Firebending bombs. The bombs don’t work, but Katara intuits that, since it looks like it worked, the other Fire Sages will think Aang somehow got inside the chamber and will open it themselves.

With one thing or another—including the appearance of both Zuko and Zhao that nearly derails their quick thinking—Aang does get into the chamber and manages to speak directly to Avatar Roku, who informs him that, at the end of the summer, Sozin’s Comet will return. Upon passing the planet, this comet made the Firebenders of the world more powerful, and the Fire Nation used that power to kill all the Airbenders and declare war. A hundred years later, Firelord Ozai plans to use that power again to finally win the war. Can Aang master all four elements well enough to be able to defeat the Firelord before the comet returns? Or will Zuko and/or Zhao capture him first?

And with this plot point, the show finally kicks into gear. While the story up to this point was rather vague and meandering—”stop the Fire Nation and bring balance to the world” is hardly specific enough to be that engaging—the deadline and the possible consequences imposed by Sozin’s Comet finally gives the series a clear narrative drive and focus. What began as a slightly above-average kids’ show might just prove to be something more. Something special. Something worth sticking with to the bitter end.

July 3, 2015 | Categories: Book One: The Experimental Season, Retrospective | 2 Comments

Retrospective: Chapter Six: “Imprisoned”

“Imprisoned” contains a multitude of firsts for Avatar: the Last Airbender.

This is arguably the first wholly satisfying episode in the series: it’s enjoyable from beginning to end; nothing feels like it’s only there to pad out the episode length; the plot is tight and well-thought out without being so straightforward as to be boring and predictable; and we learn more about the inner workings of the Avatar universe. In fact, “Imprisoned” is the first in a sequence of really good episodes. Starting from “Imprisoned” and going down to “Jet,” the quality of each episode ranges from “good” to “great.” (This hot streak is, of course, violently derailed by the infamous “The Great Divide,” but we’ll deal with that episode only when we have to.)

This is the first episode in which the humor works consistently. Comedy has always been a major component of Avatar‘s narrative infrastructure, with varying degrees of success. Here, however, every setup is perfectly clear and every punchline hits its target. Two of the biggest laughs in the episode include the scene in which Momo is mistaken for an Earthbender, and the scene where the Warden of the Earthbender prison doesn’t take the news of a possible “flying bison” sighting very professionally (to say the least).

This is the first episode where Katara is given the spotlight, and we gain significant insight into her character. Specifically, we learn that she’s a stubborn idealist who will do anything to help those in need, even if it means putting herself (and her friends) in danger. She tries her best to infuse people with the same fire and optimism she has that the Fire Nation can be defeated as long as you never lose hope and do what you can with the tools and opportunities presented to you. (It helps that she and her brother accidentally found the long-lost Avatar, apparently the only one who can end the war.)

What could have easily been a flat and annoying caricature is given depth and nuance thanks to the well-rounded vocal performance of Mae Whitman and the delicacy of the writing, specifically in scenes where her ideology clashes directly with those of other characters. In this episode, she butts heads with her brother Sokka regarding whether they should stay and find some way to free the imprisoned Earthbenders. Unable to dissuade his sister and being the extreme pragmatist that he is, he’s given the unenviable task of figuring out just how to free the broken Earthbenders. That a clever solution presents itself among him, Katara and Aang goes to show what a great team they are: Katara is the Will, Sokka is the Way, and Aang is the Avatar.

Finally, this is the first episode that feels perfectly intertwined with the larger story. Not just because of the cliffhanger ending, but because all the elements of the plot naturally spring from the main narrative context of the series: a hundred-year war waged by the Fire Nation in the absence of the Avatar (and the rest of the Airbenders). In this episode, a coal mining village have been taken over, its locals are forced to pay ridiculously high taxes by snaky guards, and the only people who could have stood up to them and fought—the Earthbenders—were taken away and not heard from for five years.

This war has dire and lasting consequences, which makes the drama all the more interesting. Haru, an Earthbender boy that our heroes meet, is forbidden from using his gifts by his mother. If the Fire Nation were to find out he was an Earthbender, they’d take him away from her just like they did his father. While the audience is certainly meant to side with Haru and Katara—Haru wants to fight back, especially since Earthbending is the best way for him to remember his father—the mother’s concern isn’t treated lightly. The scene when she realizes her worst fear has come true—that Haru has been found out and taken away by the Fire Nation—is truly effective and heartbreaking. (This moment is the last we get with the mother in the entire series, and while it’s a bit of a shame that we never got to see a reunion between her, Haru and her husband, this lack of closure makes her final scene that much more powerful.)

So where are the Earthbenders taken? If this weren’t a children’s show, one could reasonably guess that they were simply killed off (much like the Airbenders were). Instead, they’re all held in a remote prison made entirely of metal and in the middle of the sea. The perfect prison for an Earthbender. Without a single piece of earth around to fight back and defend themselves, it’s no wonder the big “escape” plan is simply to wait out the war. And it’s no wonder that Katara’s big inspirational speech to the broken Earthbenders—the centerpiece of the episode—falls on deaf ears. Who is this crazy girl to tell them not to give up hope after they’d been there for five years? She’s not even an Earthbender. And do the Earthbenders even believe in the Avatar at this point? Do they even remember who the Avatar was? Also, many of these Earthbenders look pretty old, and without Earthbending to rejuvenate them, they must all be out of fighting shape. Maybe Haru’s father should have led them all in daily Earthbending calisthenics. Or would the Warden have outlawed that?

Speaking of the Warden, he’s one of the major highlights of the episode. Played wonderfully by George Takei, he’s an overconfident and condescendingly prim-and-proper man who refers to his prisoners as “honored guests” and perpetually berates them any chance he gets. He also has a short-temper, which doesn’t really have a payoff, but does lead to the funny business of the “flying bison” sighting. He also has a funny demise: we learn that he can’t swim moments before he’s dropped into the sea by the revolting Earthbenders (which begs the question: who would hire someone who can’t swim to be the Warden of a prison surrounded entirely by water? Shouldn’t that have been a pre-requisite for the position?).

Our heroes’ solution to freeing the Earthbenders is lovingly laid out throughout the episode. The manner in which they staged fake Earthbending—in order for Katara to be arrested and taken to the prison where Haru and others are (again, they fortunately weren’t killed off)—turns out to be the perfect way to expel coal through the prison’s ventilation system and to the Earthbenders. Of course, they don’t all fight back at once: Haru, having not endured the years of soul-crushing that his elder Earthbenders have, is naturally the first to revolt, and soon all the older folks are fighting back, too. The battle between the Earthbenders and the Fire Nation guards is pretty fun, and it’s nice to have an action sequence that’s motivated and meaningful rather than obligatory and perfunctory.

Somehow during this mutiny, Katara loses her necklace, which we learn belonged to her mother. Since her mother was killed by the Fire Nation, this is obviously something precious to her. To make matters worse, the necklace is found by, of all people, Zuko. It makes a certain amount of sense that Zuko would intuit that this random Waterbending necklace belongs to the Waterbending girl who is helping the Avatar. But how did Katara even lose the necklace in the first place? Last we saw, she was clearly still wearing it by the end of the battle. (And if you look very closely, in a wide shot where she and Haru are talking about Aang, she’s still wearing the necklace, only for it to disappear in the next shot.)

Such a slip-up is easily forgivable, though, in light of how brilliant the rest of the episode is. “Imprisoned” is the best episode the series has given us by this point, raising the bar for how good each subsequent episode should be. It’s nothing short of amazing that the next two episodes would raise the bar even further.

June 24, 2015 | Categories: Book One: The Experimental Season, Retrospective | 4 Comments