Avatar: The Last Airbender

I’m quite proud to say that I have to be amongst the very first people in the UK to have started watching Avatar. Indeed, I was amongst the earliest members of the fandom even counting the US crowd. As I recall, I started to watch the show shortly after the first season finished, after some artwork came up in an online discussion about Teen Titans and how American cartoons were increasingly influenced by anime.

Since then, my feelings have been mixed about Avatar. I was constantly frustrated with the way that everything I loved about the show seemed to be balanced by something annoying or badly-done. Its main problem was how it rushed through things, showing in half-episodes what needed three to explore, leaving an impression of real shallowness. I didn’t like Sokka’s humour and was frequently irked by how easy it seemed for main characters to learn difficult things, or for really contrived solutions to problems to present themselves, and seemed to swing from love to hate.

Having seen the grand finale, though, I have landed finally, though not unreservedly, on love.

Avatar was a bold move from the start. Successful American cartoons on Nickelodeon are things like Spongebob Squarepants and Fairly Odd Parents. Even Teen Titans was cancelled prematurely. And then here’s this grand epic, unashamedly anime-based, with some hugely impressive animated sequences.

I’m so pleased the risk was taken. This is really a step in the right direction, and after the big climax, much more is planned: a Shyamalan-directed live-action adaptation, probably several more short chibi specials from DVDs and who knows? Perhaps there can be another season to come.

Most importantly, though is the precedent set. Who knows what may come through doors now opened?

The story is good and solid: a cruel empire is spreading over the world, and the only one standing in the way of total conquest is the avatar, Aang, the only person capable of manipulating all four elements. This is an unoriginal magic system – powers derived from air, water, fire and earth – but the way each culture is developed (as well as the martial arts systems used to represent them) works excellently.

The other winning element is Zuko, the antagonist, initially bent on finding and killing the avatar to ‘restore his honour’, but later given a lot of complexity in his search for his own sense of morality. Why his father didn’t think his uncle was obviously going to shape his sense of the world, though, I can’t say.

A lot of minor parts about this show are badly thought-out, and in all honesty, I never thought Toph’s blindness worked very well (even though her character outside of that was always awesome). A lot of miniplots get resolved way too easily and the humour often grates and errs too far on the side of the postmodern, but these gripes are far outweighed by the positive elements. The art is superb, and some animation sequences are of excellent quality, especially in the character models. Aang, Katara, Toph, Zuko, Iroh, Bumi, Ty Lee – these are all outstanding characters I will always remember with fondness. The voice acting is outstanding, which only makes me sadder that dubbed anime gets such useless performers. And the relationships, the way they develop and all those warm, fuzzy moments – very well done.

If this is the future of western TV animation, count me very much in. Along with, of course, my anime.

(originally written 28.7.08)

Additional: first mention, Dec 12 2005

Saw a bit of new anime-influenced kids’ show Avatar, which looked fantastic in trailers, and has some beautiful animation. It looked like it might be a bit of a disappointment, though, but I shall wait until I’ve seen more before I pass judgement. Anime’s influence is getting more and more pervasive!

First impressions from Feb 2006

Watched the first episode of Nickelodeon’s leap onto the anime bandwagon, a series called Avatar: The Last Airbender (which is retitled Legend of Aang or something in the UK, though I’m not sure what they’ve done about the numerous references to ‘benders’ – someone clearly didn’t check UK slang when they wrote the series, but hey, Futurama does ok). It’s so close to being brilliant, but it just doesn’t quite work. It’s a shame, but it doesn’t have that certain charm and sincerity that makes anime so special.

The presentation is utterly outstanding – the character designs are superlative, the animation breathtaking and the anime influence very clear, from the characters’ faces to a creature with more than a passing resemblance to Totoro’s Catbus. The animation for the fight scenes in particular is stunning. The story in itself is a nice archetypal tale: teenagers find another mysterious kid, the kid turns out to have strange powers, bad guys appear chasing him, lots of angst as he’s chased out of the village he endangered etc. It reminded me of Tales of Symphonia, and was very similar in tone. Nothing at all wrong with the overall picture. The two main characters, Aang and Katara, are great – Aang is very sweet and childish, and Katara is an excellent everyman character. Their scenes together showed what this series COULD be.

But the problems are in the details. Katara’s brother Sokka encompasses much of the unappealing nature of the dialogue – he’s a typical American teenager, always being sarcastic or wisecracking or goofing around. It’s not just him – Aang was given a few annoying wisecracks in his combat scenes, and when the big bad guy Zuko came along, not only was he undercut by the eccentricities of his uncle (who alone has a strong Japanese accent), but he was soon rendered mere comic relief through pratfalls and silly sound effects. It wasn’t funny, and it ignored the fact that if you want someone of a serious temperament to be respected, you can’t make them the butt of far-fetched slapstick.

Well, these faults are only small cracks, and I don’t yet know whether or not they’ll be enough to bring the whole thing crashing down. It’s just a shame that in the US, writing for the 6-11 demographic seems to mean talking down to the audience and never letting yourself take them quite seriously enough for the story to work.