I rewatched The Last Airbender recently and it's difficult not to lament the fact that you can't make a show like this anymore. I would say warts and all, but the problems with the show are ether not problems or are just very minor. Almost no episode is wasted and it's pretty spotless.
I think a good example of "not a problem" would be that it's not afraid to be silly. I feel like whenever I talk about it, there's always that guy who chimes in to express that they feel it makes the show too juvenile and I don't agree.
Maybe we gave kids too much credit because fact of the matter is, our tastes weren't as deep as we liked to imagine. A lot of what made Avatar work were the character arcs and sentimental dialogue, not just the battle scenes where dramatic music is playing, but we don't realize until we get older.
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This might be a niche example, but a similar point of contention was back when Power Rangers RPM first aired. This season showed death, destruction, war, disease - but it also has one of the characters eat some detonator putty because he thought it was pancake mix.
But the show's big success in my eyes was Doctor K, who starts out the season framed as basically a computer, but becomes more socially well-adjusted, and perhaps even more and more human as the season progresses.
Ironically, that show ultimately taught kids that growing up and acting mature... is basically just being a kid again. It's being able to laugh and play and not take yourself so seriously. It's here where silliness does not betray a lack of maturity, but rather a surplus of it.
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Regardless, similarly to Digimon, something I appreciated about Avatar were the character's contrasting personalities, where you could pair each of the two of them up and you could probably guess how they'd get along.
The characters in Avatar are more dynamic than you'd expect and you could do a lot with, who each have clear goals, strengths, failings, and irrational weirdnesses that make them human. And they're not afraid of making any one character seem too unsympathetic.
If you look at Aang, a lot of his positive and negative attributes come from basically the same "core". This means Aang's negative qualities also come from traits we'd usually frame as heroic and good, and seeing as how the show ends, there's probably a reason why we don't see this at all anymore.
Now, if I had to pick a least favourite character it would probably be Azula. People often cite Zuko as a villain redemption done right, but on closer inspection he's not a villain and he doesn't get a redemption. It's more a recovery arc than a redemption arc.
But I feel Azula doesn't get that similar level of nuance and consideration. And don't get me wrong, it's okay that she doesn't turn out alright at the end, but I feel she never had a chance to become a good person in the first place.
A part of it is personal bias because it hasn't gone unnoticed that Azula was a lot of kids' sexual awakening, similarly to Harley Quinn generations prior. So, in the years following, rather than give the archetype some more nuance, they just turned her into this bizarre incest thirst trap.
#Avatar #TheLastAirbender #Nickolodeon #cartoon #Cartoons #animation
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