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cluebottles · 5 years ago

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Consuming Avatar: The Last Airbender for the First Time...

... at 23 years old.

**Some Major Spoilers Ahead for Plot Lines and the Ending -- If you haven’t seen Avatar: The Last Air Bender I highly suggest you watch it before you read

[Before I begin: I live in America. Currently and since the “founding” of our country, minorities have not been treated as equal -- Black people in our country have been treated as less than human and have been brutally murdered at the hands of the police and the hands of our governing system of racist oppression since the beginning. It’s still happening. It will continue to happen if we ignore this, if we give up, if we push forward without enacting change. Be safe when you are protesting. Educate people who might not understand. Use your platform to speak out, to share information and resources. Donate if you can. Here’s some resources: https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/ ] Alright, so the spoiler alert is out there in the open and I’ve addressed our current situation, I guess we should jump in with a little back story of my history with Avatar. As a kid, I never watched it. I still pretended to water bend in the pool -- Avatar transcended more than just television. The idea of controlling the elements around you was magnificent enough to bleed into that weird group of kids who never watched it growing up. I also had one Avatar video game that I barely played...because I didn’t watch the show...so I didn’t know what was going on. Trying to watch something and be caught up as a kid without streaming services was just impossible, so I’m lucky to not only have the complete box sets now, but we’re all lucky Netflix has graced us with the story to binge-watch.

I want to first start off and say that overall I highly enjoyed this show. Everyone I knew has praised it as being an important character building experience that made them the person they are today -- and while I can understand that, and some of that is not only important and moving, I’m also here to criticize that, just a little bit.

Let’s start off with the characters and story-- both of which mostly fantastic. I mean, Uncle Iroh is a phenomenon I’d only heard of and honestly had to think he was overrated until I fell in love with him on screen.

I think Uncle Iroh is also a very important character because he shows an important and believable character growth -- he was a war criminal. He was pushing forward, killing innocent people as he attempted to conquer the great Earth Nation city Ba Sing Se. His son was killed in the war he was raging, and he gave up and went home and over years has worked on himself to have the wisdom he is known for and astounding character growth. “But didn’t he save the last two dragons?” ...you can do a good thing while also doing other bad things. Lmfao. He is constantly trying to steer his nephew, Zuko, in a more positive direction, while also providing scattered support to the Aang Gang more than once throughout the entirety of the series. (RIP to Uncle Iroh’s original voice actor, Mako Iwamatsu, and I praise the beautiful story dedicated to him in Uncle Iroh’s tale, an episode that made me cry once I realized it was a dedication to him.)

Let’s contrast this to these two -- both having the least believable character growth(s? ses? ???) I’ve ever seen.

Everyone says “that ZUKO CHARACTER GROWTH ARC THO” and I just... I don’t have the same energy for it. Maybe it’s my most unpopular opinion on this show? But ... it’s just so rushed. I do think this series ended too soon, and I know it goes beyond just this show in comics, but as a consumer of just this show, it was flat to me. “I MUST HAVE THE AVATAR” to “I MUST HELP THE AVATAR SAVE THE WORLD” but a majority of him in this series has been the former while the last season, really, has been the latter. We stan reassessment and learning and bettering the world, but some of the first times he’s helped the Avatar has been for his own personal gain because he wants the glory so he can go home to his abusive family. I wish he would have been given more time to have a more realistic turnaround, because the beginning and the end are there -- it’s just a weird muddled middle that doesn’t make sense to me. The same with the hatred of his father. We’re not given much between “I NEED TO RESTORE MY HONOR AND COME HOME TO MY FATHER” and “I WILL HELP THE AVATAR KILL YOU” and I think that’s a shame.

Mai... I just... I can’t even.. like I don’t know where to begin on how underwhelming her betrayal of Azula is. Like yes, it has shock value, but besides the shock value, to me, it’s unbelievable. Yes, she has had a crush on Zuko since they were kids, but she’d been closer to Azula than him for most of her life. Even in the EPISODE where she does this betrayal she has very little time alone with Zuko. He tricks her and traps her in his cell, and just moments before this she’s accusing him of going against her and their entire nation. In scenes we see them together before this she’s broken up with him and shouted at him, they’ve gotten into fights, a lot, and she’s seen talking about the perks of dating a prince, relishing in the fact that she gets them too. To me her betrayal is unbelievable. I don’t hate her at all though! I honestly just think she needed more screen time so that we could be shown her doubts about the Fire Nation and how strong her relationship to Zuko actually is.

I guess it’s time for another unpopular opinion -- I can’t stand Sokka and Yue. They don’t have chemistry. Yue is literally engaged to a dickbag and instead of doing what was best for her, she was going to just go through with it. Also, Yue and Sokka don’t know each other that well nor have they known each other for that long, whereas Suki met Sokka first. Suki and Sokka have a natural chemistry. Sokka takes Suki for granted, a lot, but they’re fantastic.

Cluebottles’ Top Ten Favorite Character List

Uncle Iroh

Sokka

Toph

Suki

Avatar Roku

Appa & Momo

Avatar Kiyoshi

Katara

Aang

Zuko

Now, we know Uncle Iroh preaches humility, growth, peace and harmony. And while a lot of the time I would agree, there are some times where I don’t. Here is my biggest criticism of the show: love doesn’t conquer all, and Avatar: The Last Airbender sloppily tries to enforce that it does ‘til the awkward end of the series.

I understand that this is a children’s show. However, the fact that it’s about war and multiple people have died during the show (even if it wasn’t always outright shown), I don’t think killing the Fire Lord would have been unwarranted. If anything, it’s another show that pushes “no matter what be the bigger person”, “no matter what, love is the only way”, “you can’t fight hatred with hatred”, which ultimately does not work, and furthers the bullying of people or the oppression of people.

Aang is supposed to save the world, and when it comes down to it, he can’t kill the Fire Nation’s Leader, Lord Ozai, who is the third in straight succession to lead the assault on conquering the other nations. A war of 100 years ends “peacefully” -- except for all of the people who lost their lives fighting for their family and freedom against the Fire Nation.

Aang seeks council from his previous Avatar incarnations -- and each of them tell him to take out the Fire Lord for the good of the world. That’s Aang’s only job as the Avatar -- to keep the balance and work for the good of the world.

Instead of him bringing down the swift hand of justice, Aang learns how to bend energy (wtf?) at the literal last minute from a giant lion turtle so that he can bend the energy (again, wtf?) out of Ozai and take his bending power away. Even when the kid gets the snot knocked out of him and the Avatar state takes over, Aang stops it. And then he bends the energy (wtf x3) out of Ozai successfully even though the turtle tells him it can corrupt him entirely if he does it wrong, that it’s extremely hard to do, and even though he’s never practiced doing it.

Iroh was a war criminal. He reformed himself and helped the community he hurt when he really never had to. Zuko has his own “character development arc” where he goes from being bad to goodish to bad again to okay to bad to finally good. He’s a kid, he’s still learning, and has changed drastically for the better. Azula...Azula had been struggling with some form of mental illness/psychosis since she was a small child even into adulthood. She’s hateful and dangerous, but not only is she still a kid -- she should be (and is) locked up so she can’t ever hurt anyone again.

Fire Lord Ozai is an adult, fully aware of his actions, has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people in his wake trying to take over territories and kill other benders, enslave them, and imprison them. Even when confronted by the Avatar, resistance, and his own son peacefully, not only does he start the violence in retaliation, but he doesn’t learn from being shown compassion. He is literally already a war criminal, there should be no compassion left for anyone to show him. My point being that there’s a stark difference between him and others who may have been like him.

So in the end, the big message that this sends to me is that you should always show love and compassion. Never resort to violence. Be the “bigger person”, like I mentioned above, and like I said this doesn’t translate to real life. I think a huge reason why I feel I need to criticize this and other children’s shows that push this message is that we are being fed this narrative at a young age while we’re being bullied, while we’re facing hatred from others whether it’s because of the color of our skin, our gender, our sexuality -- we are expected to always be the “better person”. Our problems will somehow amicably be fixed by love. We shouldn’t actively be trying to dismantle a system taking advantage of and killing minorities, all I have to do is be nice. As we grow that feeds into our naive outlook on protesting and rioting, our outlooks on lawmaking and leadership. “Well they just made their whole movement look bad” “You should never resort to violence” -- meanwhile the police have been murdering black people for years and years, and people have been “peacefully protesting” that. Rioting was what got freedoms for several different movements, whether it’s worker’s rights, lgbt+ rights, the "civil rights act”, rioting is what literally got the USA the “freedom” to begin with.

In the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Aang is gifted at the last moment with the ability to take away Lord Ozai’s power and ultimately, have a peace restored without violence. In the real world, you cannot take away the power of war criminals and oppressors because they have the power in a system stacked against you. So trying to answer such a huge life question, trying to end a war in the real world, trying to take down oppressors -- showing them love and trying to fumble it on your own sense of humility does nothing.

I watched this show unfold and finish moments before I watched people take to the streets to protest yet another black life lost by the hands of police brutality and systemic racsim. Watching George Floyd die just for being black in America, knowing all of the black lives lost every day just because they are black in America to then look at a show that tries to push a message like “love conquers all”, “violence is unnecessary”, just makes me angry because we live in a world where these sentiments, though nice, don’t exist.

That being said, I’m glad this show meant a lot to people, because it did mean a lot to me too. For some reason, it gives me a strange sense of hope. This is probably my favorite show and I’m watching it again after just finishing it. If you haven’t watched it, there are a lot of lessons that can be learned to positively affect you and make you take a step back and re-evaluate, and maybe implement some of Uncle Iroh’s wisdom into your life.

#avatar #avatar the last airbender #netflix #critically reviewing avatar the last airbender

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