Avatar: Legend of Korra – Book 4: Balance

Going into the fourth and final season of Korra, I had high hopes. I felt that the seasons got progressively better, and I was left feeling excited about a new mini-generation after Jinora got her tattoos and Kai looked to be a something of a new hero figure. The first episodes felt like they were fulfilling that promise – after a short timeskip, there was an established Airbender Corps of sorts, helping rebuild the Earth Kingdom, a ‘great unifier’ named Kuvira who is uniting the people – but with an iron fist – and Korra herself is missing, still suffering from her fight with Zaheer. It’s a great set-up, and there’s a lot in this season that goes very well. Sadly, it all rather falls apart towards the end, and especially for the ultimate finale of the series, it’s a disappointment. And yes, I’d still rather have the Gurihiru continuations of the original series animated.

I liked Korra’s quest to find herself, especially as she found a certain cranky old-timer from the original series to be her Yoda. I loved the little shopkeeper who had a ‘Wall of Avatars’ as well! I enjoyed the way Mako and Bolin were split up and their loyalties to one another tested, and the general idea behind Kuvira’s philosophy – as well as her personality – was excellent. Of course she had to push things way too far in order to be an unambiguous antagonist, and her being badass enough to take down Korra in Avatar State – even having mental issues – was pretty damn awesome.

But the need for a big bombastic climax rather ruined this season. If Jinora, Kai and co looked to be developed this season, they had to be cast aside to give enough time to the main four characters. The moral dilemma of stopping a strong leader from uniting the Earth Kingdom gets dropped when Kuvira reveals that she not only wants to unite the established territories, but also to reclaim the land that Aang annexed to make his Republic City. This makes her a conqueror ignoring what had been established by diplomacy, and unambiguously in the wrong – which is something of a shame.

There’s already a huge problem with this as the final ending to Korra’s chronicles. After the events in the second series seemed genuinely apocalyptic, this season needed to at least have a threat to the world, or destroy the spirit realm, or someone stealing all the spiritual energy in the entire world, or a war between all spirits and all mankind...something huge and apocalyptic. I thought that’s where things were headed when the spirit vines began to become hostile. Instead...well, what we got was Kuvira deciding to retake Republic City for the Earth Kingdom. So the threat was already just one city, and some pride. And how is the ante upped? Well, with a weapon of mass destruction, naturally.

Mounted on a frickin’ giant mecha.

Sure, certain series can pull of giant robots. Evangelion, Bokurano, Gurren Lagann...but in the Avatar world? The giant drill was the biggest mistake the original series ever made! Sure, there’s been a progression of technology in this season, but really? A giant robot? Controlled by bending levers? It really doesn’t work. And taking it down is far harder than it could feasibly be, the thing staying upright when its feet are bound, Kuvira is blinded and Bolin uses his goddamn newly-acquired lava bending to trap a foot. Kuvira’s plan to sort of stomp into town and smash things up rather than, y’know, imposing trade sanctions and blockading the ports, goes badly and the whole thing ends with a whimper. To my great surprise, Korra never even learns to connect with her past lives properly, because she doesn’t need to.

It’s an ending that sadly lets down everything that went before it. There were certainly interesting places this story arc could have gone, and I don’t think it pulled any of it off with the final direction of the plot.

Then there’s the mild controversy of the implied lesbian relationship between Korra and Asami with the final scenes. I like the idea, but I think it was poorly done. It would make sense that Korra and Asami end up falling for each other and try being together. But the show would need to have built that up, developed it and made it less ambiguous. I mean, the creators had to clarify what they intended – and nobody saw it coming. The result is that it just seems like something tacked on for a fashionable statement on what can be included in a children’s show. It’s a welcome statement...but I’d much rather it were done right, and not at the last minute for its own sake.

In a way, it encapsulates why I was disappointed with this last season. The ideas were good, but the execution just didn’t work for me.

Avatar: Legend of Korra – book 3: Change

Avatar gets stronger and stronger...ironically as the focus shifts gradually away from its main characters. 

The second season was a huge improvement on the first, but the giant squiggly spirit antagonist was a bit unconvincing. This time, the threat is more earthly: when Korra opens the gates to the spirit realm, all of a sudden new Airbenders begin popping up around the world. At first, this is a time for celebration, but it also empowers a dangerous prisoner. Using his new abilities to escape, he also sets free his three old comrades, who of course are from each of the other elemental factions. This group, part of the evil hidden society the Red Lotus, set about trying to draw out the Avatar and kill her in the Avatar State – which will end the reincarnation cycle. While this is classic kill-the-innocent-main-character bad guy stuff, the fact is that they’re quite cleverly depicted as genuinely believing what they are doing is in the interest of the balance of the world, and are fleshed out quite a bit through both romantic and comedy scenes. They are fleshed out well, and if Bolin has rather descended to Sokka-level inappropriate goofiness by this season, one great thing about having him around is that he sometimes brings out a more interesting side of other characters, giving them another dimension.

What really made me happy, though, is a shift towards a younger generation, more like that of the old season. Much as I like the older teen main characters, I find them pretty dull and hard to like. On the other hand, giving Jinora more of a spotlight is very much a breath of fresh air in the show, and then there’s the introduction of Kai. Looking rather like Aang with darker skin and a Hitler Youth haircut, he has the classic introduction of annoying streetrat thieving brat who repents when he gets into hot water and falls under the positive influence of older brother figures – but beyond that he gets really likeable and is given a role that is clearly leading to a much-expanded one in Season 4. His puppy love with Jinora is also absolutely adorable. He brings the same sort of energy Aang brought to the original, and it’s extremely welcome.

Which isn’t to say I dislike the screentime given to the others. I like how Korra’s mind works in this season, suspicious of authority figures and determined to improve herself and make sure those she cares about are getting on – even prickly Lin, who gets lots more development as she is reunited with her estranged sister. Bolin and Mako also get some good development thanks to reunions – stumbling upon their extended family, including their grandmother.

Ultimately, of course, the whole thing boils down to a big scrap, and the many overpowering the few, thanks to Jinora’s quick work and leadership. It’s pretty satisfying and the stakes genuinely feel high without being on the huge scale of the season 2 finale. Perhaps it would have been good to get some indication of where the next season will lead, as things feel neatly wrapped up other than the political upheaval of the Earth Kingdom, and of course the fourth season began very quickly after the (online) airings of the last episodes of this season.

It remained a little unsettling to the end that the same animators were working on this and The Boondocks. Especially in the comedy scenes, there was often a lot of Grandpa Freeman in Korra’s expressions, and that is pretty weird and jarring. But arguably the influence is actually going in the other direction. It feels like there’s less ambition in the animation now, all looking just a little cheaper than it used to, but the art stays on-model remarkably well, and the lava effects are great.

Certainly I want more – especially more Kai and Jinora, which from watching the first episode of the next season I know I’ll be getting, with their designs really not changing much after a time skip. I’m slightly sad Jinora grows her hair back, though – she looked so cute as a bald girly-Aang!  

Avatar: Legend of Korra (season 1)

I’ve already said much of the background stuff about Korra, about who is animating it and why it seems very much in-touch with its fanbase, in my first impressions post. That one became long enough that for the first time I’m going to have to keep it separate from this one – which is for final impressions having watched the season finale.

My feelings about the piece are on familiar turf, having been a long-term fan of Avatar. I ended up loving the setting, really enjoying the characters and seeing huge potential…but ultimately spending the entire season swinging between like and dislike, thrills and disappointments. Just like with the original series, I suspect my immediate feelings will be mixed but slightly on the positive side, but will grow in the direction of love with a bit of hindsight.

The point of Korra rather seemed to be to do something in a different direction from that of the original, to centre it on older characters to give it a more grown-up feel, which would be in keeping with the ages of its original target audience. Travelling from place to place has been replaced by the claustrophobia of an urban setting, so often associated with grittiness in American media, especially when it comes to comic books. The original had this with Ba Sing Se, but that was the diversion – here, Republic City very much forms the heart and soul of the narrative, showing its positive and its negative sides.

And yet despite its new direction, Korra falls back on familiar ground. We quickly get ‘the new Team Avatar’ established, and around the headstrong hero who must learn to overcome weaknesses and doubt, we have a wisecracking but reliable brother figure (Bolin was slightly more likeable than Sokka but had that same horribly irritating sense of humour), the standoffish but attractive and ultimately selfless firebender (though Mako was never an antagonist) and the idiosyncratic rich girl who is introduced later than the others and is born different from the rest (though Asami’s similarities to Toph are admittedly limited to these and very superficial). If you imagine Korra as a melding of Aang and Katara, it’s essentially the same set-up. And the awesome Tenzin fills the gap of Uncle Iroh, too – both stealing every scene they’re in.

But this is no bad thing and the team had potential for great adventures. But the main problems I had with Korra were that its pacing and scale seemed totally off and that its conflict was ultimately too inconsequential and badly-conceived.

Much of the 12 episodes are given over to the pro-bending tournament, which should have taken up an episode or two but dominates all but one of the entire first half of this season. Even Wakfu’s boufball episodes didn’t go that over-the-top. They were a convenient way to have Korra make strong allies but they were excessive, got in the way of real character development despite the shortcuts they provided and ultimately felt too throwaway because the whole plot arc got abandoned.

The writers clearly remembered that what drove much of fandom in the original was shipping, so we end up thrown by episode 3 into complex love triangles and squares. It’s all too superficial, moves too fast and feels too tacked-on, especially when it’s treated as so important. It worked in season 1 because you never did quite know if the kids had feelings for one another, and Aang was believably stupid about it. Here, all the young adults are upfront, so there’s little in the way of mystery.

And finally, we come to the story of Amon, which as it was clear from his first appearance it would, soon becomes the dominant element of the season’s overall plot. My first observation was that it owes a lot to The Uncanny X-Men – totally unrelated to how much Korra in Avatar State mode looks like Storm throwing her elemental powers about. Amon is much like Graydon Creed, creating The Equalists, who much like The Friends of Humanity are against humans with advanced powers. Like Creed, he is not all he appears, and he was set on his current course by family members.

One of the best parts of the season was the flashback to tell Amon’s past. It was nothing highly original – there were hints of Naruto and HunterXHunterand, perhaps, Thor in the siblings-and-father relationship – but it was no rip-off and had enough original elements to work. I very possibly would have enjoyed a dark season about its characters more than what we got. But it was only one positive when there were too many negatives, most of them as a result of rushing. The episode where Korra discovers a trusted patron is in league with the equalists is an absurd Scooby-Doo story of peeking through keyholes and snooping, getting proven right by the villain’s stupidity. Amon himself is dealt with much too expediently, not only arbitrarily deciding to stage a full-blown invasion when his advantage was clearly working from the shadows, but giving his own game away in a panicked moment I couldn’t quite believe someone so calculating would do. And then his sad final scene just seemed tacked on for the sake of convenience, not because it hit the right emotive notes or advanced the plot.

None of this is to say Korra wasn’t excellent. It’s likely the best cartoon coming from the US right now. Its characters are solid, its setting interesting and the animation pleasant to look at. But it was also disappointing in many ways, and putting a good episode of the original series on makes me remember that it had a spark that isn’t really here. I cared much more about the gaang and their quest than I do about Korra. But that doesn’t mean I won’t keep watching, or that s2 can’t be far better!

Avatar: The Legend of Korra (First impressions)

First impressions, 22.3.12

Well, the first episode of The Legend of Korra got ‘leaked’ a few days ago, and has become widely available, albeit only as a low-quality stream or slightly cleaned-up streamrips. I resisted for a little while, wanting to wait until the series had its proper premiere and I could watch it in decent definition, but in the end I was too weak! I’m a confirmed Avatar fan these days, and I have an inkling this leak wasn’t entirely accidental, but designed to gauge fan reaction.

And I was pleasantly surprised. I’ve been on the fence about the series since designs and early plot outlines were revealed: I was very happy we were getting new Avatar at all, but I wished it could have been about the ‘gaang’. I wasn’t sure about Korra, who seemed cocksure (my least favourite character trait ever since Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and not very interesting. I also wasn’t sure about the 20s-New-York-n-jazz theme, with mobsters in old motorcars, and worried that the series would lose its fantasy edge.

But having watched the episode, I’m pleasantly surprised. It all works. It may never quite reach the heights Avatar did, and I’m fairly sure Korra as an emotional core will never give me the same resonance Aang did, but I suspect it will also be more mature and more consistently good, rather than swinging between good and poor as Avatar did for so long.

The Legend of Korra, as fans have known for a long time, tells the story of the next Avatar after Aang. This means that by the time of the story, Aang is dead, and likely to appear only as a ghostly adult. More or less all the other characters are dead and gone, too, thus far only old Katara making an appearance, though the children of old cast members appear. There’s something a little unsettling about thinking of Aang and Katara having children, but there is a bearded airbender with kids of his own, driving the plot – he is the only one who can teach Korra to airbend, but since Aang passed the city he founded has been in turmoil, so his son cannot take the time away from the city needed to mentor the new avatar. Toph’s child is another major player, the head of the city’s police force of earthbenders capable of bending metal, and while she’s an awesome no-nonsense character, the idea of Toph having a child makes me a little sad. It’s unusual for stories that put kids at the centre to make us think of them growing up, marrying, having kids and dying of old age – and it’s very different from the way Dragonball Z sees Goku grow up - but that’s where Korra starts.

It takes some getting used to, but I think it’s all to the good. It’s sensible to make a whole new story rather than dragging the old one on. And the things I didn’t think I’d like, it turns out I did – Korra’s one line as a small child, in a nod to Buddhist traditions of searching for reincarnated masters, made her seem bratty and tomboyish, and certainly her character flaw is that she is all aggression and action-without-thinking, but she is also identifiably young, uncertain and repentant about the mistakes she makes. She’s a lot more Aang-like than I thought she’d be – though no Aang.

At the moment, it doesn’t look like we’ll have a core of youths as in the first story – though I have to say I’m glad there’s no Sokka figure as yet, as unlike much of fandom I never liked him, and he never had a boufbowl moment to win me over. Aang’s grandkids are too young, and the adults in Korra’s life seem like mentors rather than companions. I’m sure Korra will gain friends, possibly related to Zuko (in fact, the artwork above shows them), but it had better be soon. Beyond that, the tension seems to be very much in the comic book mould: a rising faction of the non-benders in Aang’s city feel they are oppressed and a league is being formed around a mysterious figure to fight back. Well, as long as they don’t make any Sentinels, that’s fine. I like that the plot is somewhat comic book-flavoured, just the same as I liked how the city is obviously meant to put us in mind of New York – the blend of East and West is part of what makes Avatar what it is, and it’s moving on in its own way.

It’s a little complex following what happened with the Korean animations studios behind Avatar, but to wrap up I’ll give an overview of how it worked as I understand it, based mostly on image board posts, side articles and what people who actually work for the studios have said on their DAs – the original pilot was made by Tin House, who made Wonderful Days. Tin House stopped being a studio in their own right, though, and some of the key workers went over to the Korean animation powerhouse Dr Movie for a while, before forming their own new studio JM Animation to finish work on Avatar (with some work farmed out to Moi). Now, though, a ‘core’ of JM staff are working in a new, separate company called Studio Mir, who will now be credited with Korra’s animation. It’s clearly the same people, though, and while some backgrounds are different, the same elasticity, propensity to make comedy expressions with the mouth down at the bottom of the chin and nice action scenes are there in abundance. The first shot of the big city is great, though some CG cars could blend in better.

Overall, I’m pleased with how Korra looks at first, and eager for more. After the new My Little Pony, though, and maybe Lucky Star, I’ve never known a show so influenced by its fanbase – the episode with the play at the end of the original series was full of nods to online debates, and here there was an explicit reference to them too, with the line about Zuko’s mother. These nods can be very amusing, but I hope they don’t go too far with them. They can get very, very jarring.

Additional notes having seen Korra ep 2: I must say I’d prefer to see Korra actually learn humility and peace rather than levelling up under pressure of battle like a Shounen Jump character. And I hope we don’t see too much pro-bending in future eps. But here are the two main companions, very much in the Sokka and Zuko vein, and I like them. I just wonder if this will lead to being stuck in a rut. Korra needs a more immediate quest.

Rango

I’m not quite sure what I expected from Rango, but it wasn’t this.

The clues were there, really, in the posters and trailers. There was that Hawaiian shirt, and that crick in the neck recalling another famous poster. Then of course, there was Johnny Depp in a cartoon that sounded somewhat surreal. But I definitely didn’t expect another outing for his Hunter S. Thompson impression (ahead of The Rum Diary) and what can only be called Gonzo animation (not animation from Gonzo) – before it settles neatly into a straightforward tribute to Western films. It's one of those neat comedy films that starts out as a parody before settling into relying on the familiar tropes and clichés to evoke the sincere emotions that made the original genres work so well – Shaft do this well, as did Baka to Test.

Rango is a pet chameleon with only the toys and ornaments of his glass cage to serve as his connection to the world – he believes himself an actor and director, and while pondering what he ought to be, an accident in the car results in him losing his family and being left alone by the roadside. After a rather hallucinogenic meeting with an armadillo that couple with Rango’s eccentric, Thompson-derived personality at once makes the film look incredibly drug-addled and creeps out any small kids who’ve been brought to see this ‘cartoon’, he ends up in the Californian/Nevadan desert, notorious for containing Death Valley. After his death is prophesised by some cute, grumpy mariachi owls, he is chased by a huge hawk and meets Beans, who at first seems like a typical southern-belle/redneck caricature with the odd tick of freezing as a ‘survival instinct’. Rango stumbles into the Wild West town of Dirt, and manages to avoid being mocked and possibly murdered by ‘blending in’, acting the part of a rough-talking cowboy and, thanks to some dumb luck typical of the character type and the return of the hawk, not only being believed but becoming the town’s sheriff. But the town is running out of water, and someone’s tampering with the supply, and it’s up to Rango to sort things out. But with the hawk gone, a notorious outlaw might come back to town, one who might be able to see right through Rango’s camouflage.

As I said, the film starts out surreal, bewildering and influenced by Hunter S. Thompson’s freewheeling narrative style, a likeable, intelligent but very clumsy and physically inept character just managing to get out of scrapes through luck or saying the right thing at the right time. But then it bends at just the right angle – through action scenes and clever visual parodies of other well-known action films – to heartfelt cowboy story (nodding back towards the strange with a cameo from a very recognisable figure), ending up with a story arc that has comedic characters you actually come to like and a situation you genuinely want to end well. There wasn’t quite enough closure at the end – I wanted to know what was going to stop the humans simply coming and messing it up for the animals very quickly – but this was a deft move to make and it worked better than I had expected it to. It may not pluck at the heartstring and move you like a direct, sincere story, but it bridges comedy and drama much better than many other animated films that try the same – like most of Dreamworks’ output.

Industrial Light and Magic also lent their CG to this film, and it looks absolutely incredible. This is one of the best CG films I’ve ever seen – and it’s not the characters and their movements and the textures of their faces that is the most stunning, impressive though they are. It’s how perfect water looks, poured into a glass. It’s the way the lens that doesn’t exist is affected by the refraction of light that doesn’t exist when pointed towards a sun that doesn’t exist. It’s glass breaking and the machine gun in a rattlesnake’s tail winding down. It’s the small details. Look for them and you’ll be consistently impressed.

This could have been a near-miss. Happily, it’s a substantial success.

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn

I’ve always found Tintin a little creepy, even when I was small. He’s always somewhere in the middle of two things, and neither of them. He’s not a child, nor a man. He’s not handsome, nor ugly. He’s not cute, nor cool. And he lives in a weird sexless world of funny men that’s neither comic nor serious. The Hergé comics, despite their great characters, never sat well with me, and though I’d smile to see Tintin décor in Belgian cafés, I’ve not touched a Tintin comic since the early 90s.

On the other hand, this project had me quite excited. For one thing, it’s part of what seems like Spielberg’s resurgence into relevance: after everyone hated Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull (most blaming Lucas) and nobody saw Munich, it seemed he was more a producer figure than a director. But then Super 8 reminded an audience who had become used to postmodern glibness how much we miss his earnest style of filmmaking, War Horse created a lot of buzz – and Tintin came out. It’s not only directed by Spielberg, but has a number of exciting names attached. Peter Jackson was producing, and will direct the sequel. Steven Moffat, one of the slew of writers Doctor Who has slung into prominence, adapted two of the Tintin comics (with a little aside into a third) for a film, and while I may not like everything he writes for the show, he certainly made the Russell T. Davis era slightly more bearable when in my view the writing was the worst it’s ever been. Working with him were Edgar Wright, who writes material for Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (their roles as Thomson and Thompson probably the thing they’ve done I've liked the most), plus Joe Cornish, of Adam and Joe – another Pegg/Frost cohort.

The cast was also fine. I would perhaps have preferred the originally-cast Thomas Sangster as Tintin, but Jamie Bell – of Billy Elliot fame – did a great job in a purposefully slightly wooden performance that fit just right with the slightly hapless Tintin. Andy Serkis was perfectly hammy yet loveable as Haddock, and Daniel Craig’s sinister posh accent was a lovely against-type bit of exaggeration I’d have loved to see delivered. Toby Jones continued his rise to prominence with a nice little cameo role, and I smiled at the Hergé-like figure at the very beginning of the film.

Stylistically, it’s a fairly startling piece of CG. The motion capture techniques mean the CG figures’ every little head movement, every narrowing of the eyes and every flinch, is startlingly real. While the look of CG films has moved on a lot since, say, The Polar Express, and there’s no fear of the characters looking too doll-like, the realism of their movements does on occasion put them into the uncanny valley. That said, I loved the clash of realistic presentation and comic book designs – the outsized noses and silly head shapes fit in perfectly to create a great aesthetic. On the other hand, I think I would have rather the animators relied on the language of animation and created all their movements from scratch – Snowy was probably the one whose movements were most appealing, after all, and as rotoscoping taught us, the most realistic motions are not always the most appealing ones in animation. Plus of course, the best visual elements of the film were those possible only in animation – desert dunes becoming huge waves, action caught perfectly in a drop of water, superbly silly setpieces like the grand chase down a steep hill pursued by a tank dragging along a hotel building.

And for once, the 3D genuinely enhanced the experience. It was extremely well done.

The story was not perfect. It felt like it needed a few more draughts to slice away a little of the flab. They obviously wanted some of the detective story feel at the beginning, but it ended up not getting there, so seemed to drag and felt unnecessary. Too much of the character interaction was given over to getting Haddock to remember a rather silly detail that allowed him to link someone his grandfather had seen (and told him about once) to a present-day relation. The ending was also a bit clumsy, and it would have been nice to have the climax of the action and the solution of the mystery together rather than consecutively.

Once its action got into its stride, though, the film was immense fun. It had some of the best visual comedy and slapstick of any CG film, and that’s saying a lot when it’s Pixar’s speciality. For the laughs, the fun characters, the performances and especially the bravura action scenes, well worth seeing – but not a perfect film, or one to move you.

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.

Invader Zim

The vast majority of the cartoons you’ll see on Western television are zany comedies based on quirky characters, be they child geniuses like Dexter or Jimmy Neutron or anthropomorphic angry beavers, cows or chickens. Generally, the success stories are either the simple, recognisable ideas done well (the babies of Rugrats; the everyday life of broadly-characterised kids in Hey Arnold) or the totally crazy (an anthropomorphic sponge, or three bug-eyed kindergarteners with immense powers and a simian nemesis). Anything in the middle, like Fairly Odd Parents or The Wild Thornberries tends to flounder and disappear. However, since the 80s, there have been very few animations with serious, non-episodic storylines – pioneering CG animation Reboot, a few action movie tie-ins, the recent anime-imitating Avatar. What American animation does best is humour.

And sometimes something subversive comes along. There are the prominent adult-oriented cartoons – The Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park, Beavis and Butthead et al – but then there are a select few that get shown on kids’ networks, are ostensibly marketed at kids, but are totally against all the sanitised, predictable moulds cartoons tend to be squeezed from, and get a cult following amongst adults and teenagers. The first and perhaps greatest of these was Ren and Stimpy. But the one that has the most vociferous followers is 2001’s Invader Zim.

Created by Jhonen Vasquez, the mind behind the repetitive but nicely dark Johnny the Homocidal Maniac, Nickelodeon must have known what they were getting themselves into, despite later cancelling the series because 10-year-olds weren’t watching. And Vasquez delivered, with a daft tale about a hapless alien with an insane but adorable robot sidekick GIR, whose plots are usually discovered by Dib, a conspiracy nut hated by his sceptical classmates and his laconic little sister Gaz. I’d say that he usually foiled Zim’s plans, but to be honest most of them don’t really need foiling.

This is as dark and weird as mainstream cartoons get. Ghostly, snake-like schoolteachers, weird machines, little green men from the planet Irken, lots of slime and grotesque fat people, plenty of satire of media culture and a few dollops of out-and-out surrealism (like Pig-Boy, who appears just to undermine Dib’s attack on Zim, cries and jumps out of a classroom window, only to fly off into the sky), not to mention lots and lots of pain for all the major characters; Postman Pat it ain’t. It’s also remarkable in really lacking any identifiable figures. Zim is a crazy megalomaniac, Dib is a pariah and a nutcase and Gaz is violent and antisocial. It’s a cartoon made by outsiders, for outsiders, which is perhaps why it has such a large internet following. But it’s also a slickly-made cartoon, with nice stylised art, great B-movie/techno music and the kind of over-the-top comedic voice acting the Americans do so well. Zim and Gir are just superbly-voiced.

But having watched all the episodes ever produced, I can’t say I’d watch more than one or two of them again. For such a good concept, Zim was rather lacking in laughs. I don’t think there were enough ideas to sustain the entire run, and when a whole double-episode is devoted to Gaz being put under a spell that makes her only able to taste pork, you know Vasquez was scraping the barrel. Most of the real laughs were based on performance, not writing, and Zim’s voice actor has a great way of emphasising random WORDS in a sentence that always made me smile. It was a great concept, and some of the surreal moments work perfectly. Minor characters like the sardonic Almighty Tallest and the dramatic Professor Membrane were extremely well-conceived. Perhaps if it hadn’t been cancelled, the show could have reached its full potential and really been the classic some of its fans would have you believe it is (most of them, I have to suspect, just wanting to impress on you how hiply alternative they are), but as it stands, it was an entertaining diversion, worth watching, but fell short of being something I can wholeheartedly recommend.

(Originally written 16.3.07)

Live-Action Adaptation: The Last Airbender

I nearly shed a tear, I must admit it.

Not at the travesty of what M. Night Shyamalan did to Avatar: it was a bad film, but not as awful as has been suggested. Not at the politically incorrect parts dubbed ‘racebending’: I have never been too troubled about the casting, knowing the Hollywood machine is and will long remain extremely racially prejudiced, because it caters to its audience. Certainly not for the emotional high points of the film, such as stabbing a fish.

I nearly cried with laughter at the increasingly infamous scene of a whole group of earthbenders performing a long sequence of complex martial arts moves associated with element-bending…only for one puny rock to drift across the screen. Fortunately, this was the absolute nadir of the special effects in a generally good-looking film, although some inconsistent CG, obvious miniatures and rickety sets will date the film very quickly.

But this was not at all a good adaptation of Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender, a brave attempt by a Western company to make a series with the tone of an epic anime; other similar attempts have almost exclusively been comedic. It was not entirely successful and while I look back on it with fondness and would certainly rank it amongst my favourite American cartoons, it ought not to be forgotten that the series frustrated me almost as much as it pleased me, and a lot of episodes had me gnashing my teeth at bad pacing, annoying characters, dubious power-ups and poor world-building. But in the end I loved much more than I hated, and this film made it all look so good.

Before its release, fandom was mostly critical of the racial elements. I must say that these were not as I expected. I thought that we would see a Central/South-Asian Fire Nation, maybe some East-Asian monks and everyone else would be white. In fact, while this seems right for the Fire Nation, everyone else was a cosmopolitan mix – although of course all young heroes were white. Dev Patel is an anti-hero, of course, but still virtuous, and we ought not to forget that the original casting had lily-white Jesse McCartney in the role. The Earth Kingdom seemed predominantly East-Asian and Aang himself had an appearance suggesting mixed white and Asian heritage. Indeed, while he is a long way from the series’ Aang, far less playful and yet still seeming even younger, and not so much of a pretty-boy, this ‘Aang’ (‘Ong’? One of many odd pronunciation changes) fit his badly-developed role well, performing acrobatics skilfully and delivering stilted lines with enough directness to just come over as naïve, not wooden.

Unfortunately, his co-stars were not so good. Worst was the guy from Twilight as Sokka. I assume that he was cast purely to try and draw in teenagers, because he was so, so wrong for the part. Quite seriously, if I didn’t already know the plot and world of Avatar, I would have expected a twist to come later on that revealed he was a robot or emotionless alien. His performance was just that flat. And it’s a real shame that apart from one amusing moment where Katara’s water-bending goes wrong at just the wrong moment, all comedy was removed from his character. Not even an extremely pretty Yue whose performance was excellent given the terrible material, could excuse the entirety of her relationship with Sokka being told to the audience by Katara’s voiceover.

Katara herself fit quite well, looking more formidable towards the end, but as yet she has nothing of the strength or warmth of her cartoon counterpart. Dev Patel as Zuko was worse, and he apparently worked in cahoots with the hairdressing department to give us a Zuko who was based entirely in appearance and performance on Ross from Friends. I really could not see past this. Every emotional outpouring seemed to directly channel David Schwimmer.

Uncle Iroh was a rather cool hawklike Asian man, and while there’s much to be said for hidden strength found in a fat, affable old man, this new formidable interpretation worked nicely. I can’t help but think he would make a better Ozai, though, for the man cast in the role looked like some office clerk.

The plot could have worked, as an outline, but it was all so rushed and distant, events unfolding with barely a reaction shot to give the impression the characters were in any way involved. There was no reason to care for any of the characters, and making a plot point of Aang being emotionally repressed is hardly a way to make us sympathise with him. The climax had its moments – some waterbending looked great, and Aang’s moves occasionally made him look incredible, but the crisis of the moon spirit lasted all of a minute, after which the battle was clearly decided, leaving no tension for Aang’s Avatar State moment, which while impressive did very little of any effect.

No tension, no emotional attachment to characters, no climax and no development made for a dull, detached film.

I sincerely hope that the sequel does not get made, and look forward to the new animated spin-off.