Netflix have unveiled the trailer and release date for their live-action take on the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender.
The original animated show ran for three seasons from 2005 to 2008 and won significant critical acclaim, which has only increased over the years through reruns and re-releases. It spawned a spin-off show, The Legend of Korra, which ran for four seasons from 2012 to 2014.
The main cast includes Gordon Cormier as Aang, Dallas Liu as Prince Zuko, Kiawentiio as Katara, Ian Ousley as Sokka, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee as General Iroh, Elizabeth Yu as Princess Azula, Daniel Dae Kim as Fire Lord Azula. Recurring castmembers include Ken Leung as Commander Zhao, Maria Zhang as Suki, Lim Kay Siu as Gyatso, Amber Midthunder as Princess Yue, Yvonne Chapman as Avatar Kiroshi, C.S. Lee as Avatar Roku, Danny Pudi as the Mechanist, Utkarsh Ambudkar as King Bumi, James Sie as the Cabbage Merchant, Arden Cho as June the Bounty Hunter, Momona Tamada as Ty Lee, Thalia Tran as Mai, Meegwun Fairbrother as Avatar Kuruk, Hiro Kanagawa as Fire Lord Sozin, George Takei as Koh the Face-Stealer and Sebastian Amoruso as Jet.
The first season consists of eight episodes. Original Avatar creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko are listed as the writers of the first episode and the co-writers of the sixth episode, despite parting ways with the project early in development. DiMartino and Konietzko are developing new Avatar animated projects with Nickelodeon, including a new animated sequel movie to the original series.
Avatar: The Last Airbender arrives on Netflix on 22 February.
It's been confirmed that the first new Nickelodeon Avatar: The Last Airbender project will focus on the original cast and will be set after the original show. The news was revealed at the San Diego Comic-Con.
Original Avatar creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko have teamed up with Nickelodeon to create new animated projects in the same universe. Three animated movies have so far been greenlit, with at least the first set for a theatrical release. The first movie will be directed by Lauren Montgomery (Voltron: Legendary Defender, The Legend of Korra). DiMartino and Konietzko will write, with OG Avatar writer Eric Coleman also on board. Further projects, including a new ongoing animated series, are also under discussion.
It's assumed that the original voice cast will return. The precise storyline for the sequel is unknown, but DiMartino and Konietzko previously authorised a series of graphic novels dealing with subjects like the search for Zuko's mother and political tensions between the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Kingdom colonies cut out of its territory a hundred years earlier, eventually leading to the founding of Republic City. These graphic novels could provide a storyboard for new projects, or the writers may choose to tackle unrelated subjects.
These projects are unrelated to the live-action remake of the original animated series being worked on at Netflix. The first season of that project wrapped production last month and will debut on Netflix in 2023.
Nickelodeon and Team Avatar have confirmed that they are now working on three new Avatar: The Last Airbender-related animated films and a TV series. One of these projects will be CG-animated, the others using the more traditional techniques of the original series.
It was announced in February 2021 that Nickelodeon had set up a new dedicated studio to exclusively focus on new animated projects in the Avatar: The Last Airbender world. Original creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael DiMartino are heading up the studio which will involve a number of different projects in total. Eric Coleman, who also worked on the original animated series, is on board as well.
Lauren Montgomery, who worked on Voltron: Legendary Defender and The Legend of Korra, will direct the first of the three movies. At the moment the plan is for the three movies to be unrelated, not part of a trilogy. The time period and characters involved are unknown.
Avatar: The Last Airbender ran for three seasons from 2005 to 2008, achieving immense critical acclaim and commercial success. Sequel series The Legend of Korra ran for four seasons from 2012 to 2014. There have also been a number of spin-off novels, graphic novels and video games.
Netflix are currently shooting the first season of a live-action remake of the animated series. Konietzko and DiMartino were involved but parted ways with the project in August 2020 over creative differences. Albert Kim has subsequently taking over as showrunner and production is underway, with a cast including Gordon Cormier, Kiawentio, Ian Ousley, Dallas Liu, Daniel Dae Kim, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Lim Kay Siu, Ken Leung, Elizabeth Yu, Maria Zhang, Tamlyn Tomita, Yvonne Chapman and Casey Camp-Horinek.
The series stars Gordon Cormier (Lost in Space, The Stand) as Aang, Kiawentio (Rutherford Falls) as Katara, Ian Ousley (13 Reasons Why) as Sokka and Dallas Liu (Bones, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Five Rings) as Zuko.
The show will be written and showrun by Albert Kim (Sleepy Hollow). Michael Goi, Roseanne Liang and Jabbar Raisani will be the directors for the first series.
Netflix have confirmed that they plan to make a "faithful and authentic" adaptation of the original Nickelodeon series, which has a large international fanbase and rocked to the top of Netflix's charts when it started airing the animated series last year. The project has been in development for years, with the original animated creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino in charge. However, they quit in 2020, citing differences of opinion with Netflix, whose representatives they claimed were interfering with development. They have since returned to Nickelodeon to launch Avatar Studios and are developing animated projects set in the world of the original series, starting with a new animated feature film.
This news, and leaked casting sides suggesting wide-ranging changes to the plot and characterisation, had raised concerns among fans. However, the casting and Netflix's character descriptions are relatively faithful to the original show (the leaked casting sides had swapped Katara and Sokka's ages, whilst the actual press release restores them). Showrunner Albert Kim has promised a series that will use its greater running time to expand character and story arcs whilst keeping the original story intact.
More casting announcements are expected, particularly for the fan-favourite character of Uncle Iroh.
In a shock move, the original co-creators of Avatar: The Last Airbenderhaveresigned from their positions as showrunners and executive producers of Netflix's live-action remake.
Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, the creators of the original animated show, were tapped by Netflix two years ago to lead a live-action remake of the series. Their plan was to correct the mistakes that led to M. Night Shyamalan's badly-received 2009 live-action film and to deliver a story that was true to the spirit of the original series whilst also allowing for some changes due to the shift in medium.
In particular, DiMartino and Konietzko were keen to ensure continuity in terms of ethnic casting (the 2009 movie infamously "whitewashed" several key roles, replacing characters meant to be inspired by Inuit or Asian backgrounds with white actors) with the original animated show. It appears that Netflix has disagreed with some of their choices. It's unclear if casting itself was in dispute, but it is notable that for a show that was due to start shooting in the spring (before a pandemic delayed things) and which had already had sets and costumes created and some test-filming done, no final casting had been announced as of the start of this year.
DiMartino, in his statement, notes that Netflix promised to honour his and Konietzko's vision, but more recently had apparently rolled back on this statement. He notes that he and Konietzko were no longer in "creative control" of the project, suggesting that higher-ups at Netflix had enforced decisions on them that they were not willing to accept. DiMartino notes that the project is continuing and may end up being enjoyable, but it is not the project he or Konietzko "envisioned or intended to make." He notes that he and Konietzko had also resigned in June.
Intriguingly, DiMartino noted that they were "not done" with the Avatar universe and the recent surge in popularity of both Avatar: The Last Airebender and its sequel series, The Legend of Korra, had re-inspired them, hinting at the possibility of a third animated series in this universe.
Three years have passed since Avatar Korra defeated Zaheer and the Red Lotus, but in the process sustained terrible injuries to both her body and spirit. The world has moved on in the interim, with a general named Kuvira having united much of the Earth Kingdom which fell into civil war upon the death of the previous Earth Queen. When the new Earth King claims his throne, Kuvira rejects him and declares herself the ruler of a new Earth Empire...with its sights firmly set on Republic City.
The third season of The Legend of Korra was a welcome return to form after the disappointing and messy second. It did end with an extremely brutal confrontation between the Red Lotus and Korra, one which it felt like couldn't be brushed under the carpet so her heroes could immediately get into fresh adventures, and it's therefore a relief that Season 4 devotes its opening episodes to showing the passing of time, confirming that Korra has been struggling to recover from her experiences and that the world hasn't been sitting around waiting for the Avatar to return.
Season 4's drama centres firmly on Kuvira, the "Great Uniter" who has restored peace to the Earth Kingdom have years of internal conflict brought about when the Red Lotus killed the Earth Queen in Season 3. Kuvira is understandably annoyed at having to hand power over to the Queen's nephew, a vain and arrogant fop, purely on the grounds of his bloodline and, apparently supported by most of the Earth Kingdom's population, declares herself its new ruler. The show could have presented an more interesting moral dilemma by showing Kuvira as trying to be a more responsible ruler only to fall into the traps of authoritarianism and despotism more gradually, but the opening episode confirms that she is prepared to use brutal techniques in the pursuit of her own personal power, so this kind of nuance is lost. Going in the opposite direction does mean that it's less plausible that she would be supported by Bolin and Varrick, who spend several episodes in her camp before recognising her true colours.
The show also demonstrates how the good guys have become a much more capable force even in Korra's absence: Asami has rescued her company and developed lots of exciting new technology and gadgets and the new Airbenders have become a strong factor in restoring balance to the world. Their efficiency makes Korra feel even more redundant, leading to her going AWOL and joining the underground pro-bending cage fight scene. Early episodes feature Korra feeling sorry for herself before pulling herself together to confront the new threat, but the show is surprisingly realistic in addressing Korra's PTSD and show that the recovery process is long, gruelling and prone to reversals even after positive steps are taken.
The final season of Korra only features 12 episodes - a 13th is a flashback episode mandated by a hefty budget cut late in development - and perhaps doesn't quite have enough time to do these ideas justice. The return appearance of Avatar fan favourite Toph (and her first meeting with her spiritual descendant in the new series, a now-older Meelo) is very welcome and the further development of new magical forms like lavabending is cool, but it feels like the season is trying to do a bit more than it can pull off in the time available, especially when an utterly gigantic war-mecha rather out of keeping with anything we've seen previously in the show turns up without any warning.
Still, if the final season of The Legend of Korra does try to do much, it at least keeps the show busy and moving at a very fast clip. As it stands, the final season is highly entertaining but also features a surprisingly mature look at adult issues like stress, breakdowns and recovery. Action-packed and well-written, the final season of The Legend of Korra (****) ends the show and the entire franchise (at least for now) in fine form. The season is available now as part of the complete series box set (UK, USA) and on Amazon Prime worldwide.
The Harmonic Convergence has resulted in unforeseen consequences, including the return of airbending to the world. Korra, after a public falling-out with the President of the United Republic due to her decision to allow spirits to enter the physical world, teams up with Tenzin to recruit the new airbenders to help restart the Air Nomad Nation. Unbeknown to Korra, a criminal named Zaheer has gained the power of airbending and seeks to reunite his old gang of elite benders, the Red Lotus, to renew their quest to find and eliminate the Avatar...permanently.
The second season of The Legend of Korra was a major disappointment, the first letdown provided by the five seasons (at that point) of the combined Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra franchise. The third season of Korra has a lot riding on it: is the rot permanent or could the show recover?
Fortunately, the latter is the case. The third season of The Legend of Korra drops a lot of the more spiritual and nebulous elements of the previous show in favour of a much firmer story. A charismatic enemy, voiced by Henry Rollins, assembles a notable "anti-Team Avatar" to take down Korra. The spine of the season is Korra taking the fight to Zaheer and working out what his motivations are. These motivations are complex and less concerned with power than freedom, verging on anarchy. The bad guys are thus presented as having somewhat understandable motivations, but are over-zealous in their application. These ideas are sophisticated for a kids' show but presented well. It's particularly interesting to see the scale of the struggle and the price of victory.
There's also a lot of excellent subplots, such as the recruitment of the new airbending recruits and Tenzin's difficulties in establishing himself as a leader, and the introduction of Lin's family and the city of Zaofu. We learn more about metalbending and the new art of lavabending as well.
The Legend of Korra's third season (****½) is the show getting its mojo back and becoming compelling viewing, the finest season of the show overall. The season is available now as part of the complete series box set (UK, USA) and on Amazon Prime worldwide.
Aang decides to celebrate a festival in honour of Yangchen, the previous airbender Avatar to himself. However, he discovers that the holy site dedicated to Yangchen is now the site of a town. The town is prosperous but also dirty thanks to a factory outside of town. Aang's disgust with the holy site being defiled is contested by Toph, who points out that the people - a mixture of Fire Nation colonists and Earth Kingdom nationals working side-by-side to build a prosperous community - are in fact representing the very thing Aang is trying to build. As Aang struggles to contain his anger, the town comes under threat and it's up to a divided Team Avatar to save the day.
The first Avatar: The Last Airbender graphic novel, The Promise, was a pretty solid story exploring colonialism and how politics can tear families apart. The follow-up, The Search, was more focused on the mystery of Zuko and Azula's missing mother, but couldn't sustain its length and fell prey to filler. The Rift is fortunately more of a return to form.
The graphic novel gets off to a good start by seeing the return of more of the Avatar Team, with Toph front and centre for the action (and even getting her first romance). The story feels a lot more Avatar-ry as well, with Aang communing with Yangchen's spirit to learn more about her life as an Avatar and this tying in well with the main storyline. We're also getting a lot of set-up for The Legend of Korra, with the first example of a factory running on earthbending and firebending and the rate of technological progress in the Avatar world proceeding apace, with the first motorised vehicles starting to appear. We also get some good fight scenes.
As with The Promise, the story is given added depth by the presence of a genuine moral dilemma, with Aang unhappy with the town being built on a sacred site and polluting the environment, but also happy to see people of different backgrounds working together to build a better world. The problems of blind faith and venerating the old just because it's old are also highlighted, with Aang admitting that he doesn't know the significance of Yangchen's ceremony until he communicates with her in the spirit world.
The Rift (****) isn't quite as strong as The Promise, which had a better supporting cast of characters and more material for Zuko (who sits this one out), but is a nicely-paced, enjoyable story that answers the call for more Avatar stories. IT is available now in the UK and USA.
Netflix are producing a live-action television series based on an earlier animated show called Avatar: The Last Airbender. Alongside The Witcher and The Chronicles of Narnia, Netflix are betting on Avatar being the next big fantasy epic on TV. But what if you are unfamiliar with the series and its premise? Time for a Franchise Familiariser course!
The main cast of Avatar: The Last Airbender: from left to right, Sokka, Toph, Aang, Katara and Zuko, with Appa in the background.
The Basics
Avatar: The Last Airbender is an animated fantasy television series set in a fictional world where both magic and politics are divided by the four elements: Water, Air, Earth and Fire. Four distinct ethnic-political groupings have emerged: the two Water Tribes (one at each pole), the Air Nomads (who dwell in and around four great mountainous Air Temples), the enormous Earth Kingdom and the technologically-advanced Fire Nation.
Magic-users in this world are called “benders” because they can bend the elements to their will. Almost all benders only use one element each and this will be determined by their bloodline and where they are born (firebenders don’t appear in the Water Tribes and Earthbenders are never born in the Fire Nation, for example). The sole exception is the Avatar, one person in the whole world who can use all four elements simultaneously. The Avatar is both a very powerful individual but also serves as a bridge between the Spirit World and the material world. The Avatar is also reincarnated at the moment of death, transferring from one kingdom to the next.
Avatar: The Last Airbender takes place in a medieval-ish world which is starting to develop into a more steampunk kind of setting. It depicts the reappearance of the long-missing Avatar and how he and his friends and allies overcome the threat of the power-hungry Fire Lord.
The Legend of Korra is a sequel series to Avatar, set seventy years later. It depicts the adventures of the next Avatar when she arrives in Republic City, a teeming metropolis which has grown up in a world without war, and what happens once chaos and imbalance threaten the world once again.
Avatar was made for children, but the generally high quality of the writing, the depth in which the themes are explored and the impressive animation have seen it gain a huge adult, global fanbase as well. The Legend of Korra deals with more adult themes than its forebear.
The six (so far) canonical graphic novels which take place after Avatar: The Last Airbender and set up the events of The Legend of Korra.
The Canon
The Avatar: The Last Airbender canon consists of two television series and a long-running series of comics and graphic novels.
Any rumours of a live-action Avatar movie directed by M. Night Shyamalan in 2009 are illusory, and should not be pursued.
The canon consists of:
Television Series
Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-08): 61 episodes released over three seasons, subtitled Water, Earthand Fire.
The Legend of Korra (2012-14): 52 episodes released over four seasons, subtitled Air, Spirits, Change and Balance.
Graphic Novels
Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Lost Adventures (2011): a collection of one-off and short-run comics previously published between 2005 and 2011.
The Promise (2012): This and the following graphic novels form a direct sequel to Avatar: The Last Airbender, picking up immediately after the events of the TV series.
Avatar: The Last Airbender – Team Avatar Tales (2020): a second collection of one-off and short-run comics previously published between 2013 and 2015.
The Legend of Korra: Turf Wars (2017-18): a direct sequel to The Legend of Korra.
The Legend of Korra: Ruins of the Empire (2019-20)
Video Games Avatar: The Last Airbender (2007): an action game from THQ
Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Burning Earth (2007)
Avatar: The Last Airbender – Into the Inferno (2008)
The Legend of Korra (2014): a beat ‘em up by PlatinumGames.
The Legend of Korra: A New Era Begins (2014): a strategy game for the 3DS.
The Backstory For centuries the Four Nations have lived together in peace, harmony and balance. The balance was upset approximately one century ago by Fire Lord Sozin, who used the appearance of a comet which could bolster the power of firebending to wage war on the other nations. The Fire Nation conquered part of the Earth Kingdom, using it as a base to launch further attacks and raids on the main continent, and also wiped out the Air Nomads as part of an attempt to kill the Avatar when he was just a child, ending the line forever. The Avatar, a 12-year-old boy named Aang, disappeared and it was presumed the Fire Nation had succeeded. However, the Fire Lords knew they had failed and over the coming years sent many agents and assassins to search for the Avatar.
No new Avatar appeared in the interim and the world lost hope. The Fire Nation spent three generations waging war on the rest of the world, seizing and colonising vast stretches of the Earth Kingdom and dragging the Water Tribes into the war as well. The war bogged down under Fire Lord Azulon, who seemed content with a long stalemate, but Azulon’s brutal and more dynamic successor, Ozai, has prosecuted the war with much greater vigour since becoming Fire Lord.
The series begins when two young members of the Southern Water Tribe, the waterbender Katara and her brother Sokka, find Avatar Aang frozen in an iceberg. They thaw him out and he realises he has to save the world. Matters gain urgency when it is revealed that Sozin’s Comet is returning in just under a year and, on the day it passes closest to the world, Fire Lord Ozai will use its power to destroy the last resistance to his rule. The Avatar, who usually spends years mastering each element in turn, has only months to master water, earth and fire before facing his destiny.
Avatar: The Last Airbender The original animated series tells the story of Aang and his quest to defeat the Fire Lord. The story is broken up into three seasons or “books.”
In Book I: Water, Aang learns waterbending from Katara, but she is also still a novice and they decide to travel across the entire hemisphere to the larger and more powerful Northern Water Tribe to find a teacher. They undertake the journey on Aang’s flying sky-bison, Appa, who was frozen along with him in the ice. They are joined on their journey by Sokka, Katara’s non-bending brother, and a flying monkey-lemur named Momo. They are pursued relentlessly by Prince Zuko, the Fire Lord’s son whom he exiled for cowardice, who seeks to regain his honour by capturing the Avatar. Zuko is advised by his wise, tea-loving uncle, Iroh, but rarely takes the advice he is given.
In Book II: Earth, Aang seeks out an earthbending teach and finds one in Toph, a young blind girl whose visual impairment seems to have enhanced her ability to sense the earth. As Aang gains knowledge of earthbending, he is struck by personal tragedy when his oldest friend, Appa, is kidnapped. The gang travels to the Earth Kingdom capital of Ba Sing Se with a bold plan to defeat the Fire Lord during a solar eclipse, but find trouble at the pinnacle of Earth Kingdom power. Meanwhile, Zuko and Iroh are forced to become desperate refugees after betraying the Fire Lord, and Zuko’s sister Azula, a master of lightning-bending, is sent to arrest him and destroy the Avatar.
In Book III: Fire, Aang and the gang travel to the Fire Nation. As their allies prepare to invade the Fire Nation capital, Aang and the team go undercover and learn how the Fire Lord has been abusing his own people. The friends and allies Aang has recruited over the years amass for the final battle, and Zuko is forced to choose his loyalties for the last time.
The Legend of Korra The sequel series tells the story of Aang’s successor as the Avatar, Korra of the Southern Water Tribe. Unlike Avatar, which tells one story over three seasons, Korra depicts four separate struggles which take place in sequence.
In Book I: Air, the new Avatar, Korra, masters waterbending, earthbending and firebending but is unable to master airbending, since almost every airbender in the world was wiped out during the Hundred Year War. Frustrated, she runs away to Republic City and recruits the aid of Master Tenzin, Aang’s son, in learning airbending. Republic City is then thrown into chaos by Amon, the leader of the “Equalist” movement which plots the destruction of all benders and has gained the power to remove a bender’s powers.
In Book II: Spirits, Korra has to intervene in a growing dispute between the two Water Tribes, with the Northern Tribe (long the more numerous and powerful) threatening to “unify” the two by force. A series of events see a permanent change in the connection between the Material and Spiritual Worlds.
In Book III: Change, the world is recovering from an event which has seen the Spirit World merge with the Material. This has included the forced return of airbending to the world en masse, with the ability manifesting in tens of thousands. A criminal, Zaheer, becomes an airbender and plots to use his new power to conquer the world.
In Book IV: Balance, Korra’s powers are put to the test when civil war erupts in the Earth Kingdom. A new, brutalist “Earth Empire” arises on a populist wave to replace the Kingdom and plots to conquer Republic City.
The world of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Click for a larger version and check out more maps over on my Atlas of Ice and Fire blog.
Setting
The setting for both Avatar and Korra is a single planet located in the Material World. The Spirit World, the source of magic, spirits and possibly souls, is also explored in some detail.
The Avatar world is spherical but only one hemisphere has been explored; the other is believed to be almost entirely covered in water. The major nations include:
The Earth Kingdom: the largest and most populous nation, but the one with the lowest percentage of benders in the population. The Earth Kingdom occupies the main continent and several immediately adjacent smaller islands and subcontinents, although several of these in the far north-west have been conquered by the Fire Nation. The Earth Kingdom is ruled from Ba Sing Se, the largest city in the world, by the reclusive Earth King.
The Fire Nation: the most technologically-advanced nation in the world, the Fire Nation occupies a very large island or small continent in the ocean to the west of the Earth Kingdom, and also spreads along an extensive island chain to the east. The Fire Nation occupies several holdings along the coast of the Earth Kingdom, the most significant being colonies in the far north-west, some of which have existed for a century.
The Northern Water Tribe: located at the small northern polar continent, the Northern Water Tribe is relatively large and numerous, and far more technologically advanced than their southern kin. The Northern Tribe has largely sat out the war, defended by its capital’s enormous walls and the climate which the Fire Nation finds difficult to operate in.
The Southern Water Tribe: located at the even smaller southern polar continent, the Southern Water Tribe is more nomadic and primitive than their northern cousins. Despite this, their bravery is unquestioned and over the course of the war they have sent countless warriors to help support the Earth Kingdom against the Fire Nation.
The Air Nomads: the Air Nomads occupied four large Air Temples located in the four corners of the world. However, they were the victims of a multi-pronged sneak-attack ordered by Fire Lord Sozin, who was determined to destroy the Avatar in one fell swoop. All four temples were sacked and every last airbender apparently killed. Although the Air Nomads are considered extinct, some members of the other nations still honour them and their spiritual ways.
The United Republic of Nations: a new nation established some years after the events of Avatar. It was formed out of the former Fire Nation colonies in the north-western Earth Kingdom and became a nation where members from all of the other kingdoms could come and live in peace. Its capital, Republic City, rapidly became one of the largest and most advanced cities in the world. The United Republic and Republic City are the primary settings for The Legend of Korra.
Korra bending fire and water.
Magic
Magic – known as “bending” in the Avatar world – is the manipulation of the four elements: earth, air, fire and water. Benders can only manipulate one element apiece and the ability appears to be somewhat genetic: the child of two benders is far more likely to be able to bend him or herself. The ability to bend is somewhat random, however and can skip several generations; Katara’s brother, mother, father and grandmother are all non-benders.
If benders of different disciplines marry, their children may be of either discipline as well. For example, the brothers Mako and Bolin are the sons of a firebender and earthbender, and Mako is a firebender whilst Bolin is an earthbender.
Waterbenders can manipulate water. They can freeze it, turn it into cloud or turn it into a razor-sharp weapon. They can push water back to create bubbles of air underwater. As the series continues, waterbenders discover two other forms of bending: healing is using the spiritual form of waterbending to repair tissue damage and injury, and bloodbending is the manipulation of water content in the human body and blood. This can turn people into puppets, or cause blood to congeal or flow in unnatural and dangerous ways. Bloodbending is considered extremely dangerous and is outlawed. Fortunately, very few waterbenders have the skill to become bloodbenders.
Earthbenders can manipulate the power of the earth itself. They can turn earth to mud, encase themselves in rock armour, cause rocks to erupt out of the ground and can kick or throw rocks with tremendous force. Toph, arguably the greatest earthbender to have ever lived, also developed a new form of the art called metalbending, using the earth content in metal to manipulate it. Metalbending is difficult as it requires a supreme effort of will to master. Lavabending is another sub-skill.
Firebenders can manipulate the raw element of fire. They can shoot fire out of their fingers, feet and mouths and can manipulate natural sources of fire. Particularly skilled firebenders can also become lightningbenders, although this is extremely difficult (and dangerous) to pull off correctly.
Airbenders can manipulate air and the wind. They can fly, create devastating hurricanes and create shields of air. Sky bisons are natural airbenders.
The Avatar is the one being in the world who can manipulate all four elements. The Avatar gains their power from the Spirit World and they can enter “the Avatar State”, which their power grows exponentially (although this also makes them vulnerable to being killed permanently). The Avatar line has continued unbroken for over ten thousand years; when one Avatar dies, his or her soul is transferred to the new one immediately, with the soul moving between earthbenders (like Kyoshi), firebenders (Roku), airbenders (Aang) and waterbenders (Korra) in that order repeatedly.
The main cast of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Top row from left: Aang, Katara, Sokka, Toph, Appa. Bottom row from left: Momo, Suki, Ozai, Iroh, Azula.
Notable Characters of Avatar: The Last Airbender Aang is the Avatar, an airbender raised at the Southern Air Temple. At the age of 12 he ran away from home with his flying sky-bison Appa, was caught in a storm near the southern continent and forced to freeze himself in an iceberg to survive. One hundred years later, he is thawed out by Katara and Sokka. Learning of the Hundred Year War, he vows to help end the war for good. Aang is kind-hearted, generous and moral, but also occasionally impatient and impetuous.
Katara is a 14-year-old waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe. Katara is compassionate, patient and kind, but has limits which trigger her frustration and anger (limits that her brother Sokka inevitably tests on a daily basis). With her father gone to war, her mother passed away and her grandmother elderly, Katara had to act as a surrogate mother to the youngsters in her tribe.
Sokka is a 15-year-old warrior of the Southern Water Tribe. His father went to war three years ago and left Sokka behind to protect the village. Despite his youth and his awful sense of humour, Sokka is a surprisingly capable warrior with both the sword and boomerang, although he often finds himself out of his depth with “bending stuff.” As time passes, Sokka shows a surprising affinity for science, technology and military strategy.
Toph is a 12-year-old earthbender from the Earth Kingdom. Born blind, she learned how to earthbend from badgermoles, particularly their ability to sense more deeply to make up for their visual blindness. Toph is an earthbending prodigy and possibly the greatest earthbender in history, which makes her a worthy teacher to Aang. Toph is also matter-of-fact, self-reliant sometimes to the point of isolation and believes in extremely harsh training techniques. She is also the inventor of metalbending.
Appa is a huge flying sky bison and Aang’s oldest friend. He is a friendly (if sometimes grouchy) creature and serves as Team Avatar’s main mode of transportation. He is an airbender in his own right with various powers at his command. Despite being mostly friendly, Appa is not above using his intimidating size to scare off would-be enemies.
Momo is a flying monkey-lemur who joins Team Avatar at the Southern Air Temple. Momo is a cunning and wily creature, which sometimes leads people to think he’s rather smarter than he actually is.
Zuko is a 16-year-old firebender from the Fire Nation. He is also the son of Fire Lord Ozai. Zuko is intelligent and shows a keen interest in military strategy, including the conservation of lives and resources; a challenge to a senior general who planned a war of attrition saw Zuko attract the wrath of his father, who challenged him to single combat. When Zuko refused, Ozai burned Zuko’s face and exiled him from the Fire Nation. Despite this abuse, Zuko continues to respect his father and sees capturing the Avatar as a way of returning home.
Iroh is Zuko’s uncle and Fire Lord Ozai’s older brother. Iroh was once a great general, the Dragon of the West, and the original heir to Fire Lord Azulon, but the death of his son Lu Ten in battle saw Iroh become a broken man. The mantle of Fire Lord instead passed to Ozai. Iroh has since rallied and now pursues a more relaxed, spiritual path as Zuko’s mentor and advisor. He worries for Zuko, whom he treats as a surrogate son, but Zuko rarely heeds his measured advice. Iroh’s friendly, peaceful nature sometimes causes people to severely underestimate him, particularly his formidable (but rarely-deployed) firebending powers.
Azula is a 14-year-old firebender. She is the younger sister of Zuko and, since Zuko’s disgrace, has been regarded by her father as his heir. Azula is cruel, lacks empathy and is capable of tremendous manipulation of both friends and enemies. She has mastered lightningbending, an extremely advanced and dangerous form of firebending. Azula is often accompanied by two friends and allies, Mai, a master of knife combat, and Ty Lee, an acrobat and martial artist specialising in paralysing attacks. Azula’s overwhelming confidence is her weakness: she does not cope well when her carefully-laid-out stratagems collapse.
Ozai is the Fire Lord, supreme ruler of the Fire Nation, younger brother to Iroh and father to Zuko and Azula. He is ruthless, amoral, cunning, utterly without remorse and dedicated to his own power. He is the main antagonist of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Suki is one of the Kyoshi Warriors, a martial arts sect dedicated to the teachings of Avatar Kyoshi. She meets Aang early in his adventures and becomes a firm friend and ally, as well as sharing a romantic interest in Sokka. Suki and her warriors rejoin Team Avatar several times during their adventures and prove honourable friends.
Jet is the leader of a band of Earth Kingdom freedom fighters dedicated to destroying the Fire Nation. Initially friendly and apparently honourable, it is revealed that Jet has become increasingly cynical about the war and is now prepared to sacrifice innocents if it serves “the greater good.” He acts as both an ally and an antagonist to Team Avatar.
The main cast of The Legend of Korra. Top row from left: Korra, Mako, Bolin. Bottom row from left: Asami, Tenzin, Lin.
Notable Characters of The Legend of Korra Korra is a 17-year-old from the Southern Water Tribe. She is the Avatar after Aang and, unlike Aang, was identified as the Avatar at a very young age when she spontaneously manifested the ability to bend water, earth and fire simultaneously. She learned from master teachers (including an elderly Katara) but failed to master airbending until she moved to Republic City to learn from Tenzin, Aang’s son. Korra is a prodigy of bending and fighting, but struggles with the spiritual side of being the Avatar, and is extremely impatient. She also tends to dwell on defeats and setbacks more than is healthy.
Mako is an 18-year-old firebender from mixed heritage. He is also a lightningbender. He is a member of the probending sports team, the Fire Ferrets, alongside his brother. Mako has a strong sense of justice and is a bit of a romantic, although occasionally tends to brood.
Bolin is Mako’s 16-year-old brother, an earthbender and, it is later revealed, a lavabender. He is also a member of the Fire Ferrets. Bolin is much more outgoing, lively and fun than his brother, but has a tendency to get himself in trouble.
Tenzin is the 51-year-old son of Avatar Aang and Katara. He is a formidable airbender, but he is also serious and sometimes stuffy. He is married to the nonbender Pema and has three children: Jinora, Ikki and Meelo, all benders. Pema is pregnant with their fourth child, whom she desperately hopes is not a bender.
Asami Sato is the 18-year-old daughter of Hirosh Sato, the inventor of the Satomobile (automobile) and the head of Future Industries. Sato cannot bend, but she is a trained and accomplished engineer, pilot and driver. Her father’s company sponsors Bolin and Mako’s probending team.
Lin Beifong is the 50-year-old chief of Republic City’s police. She is also an expert earthbender and metalbender. She is the daughter of the earthbending prodigy Toph Beifong. She is somewhat humourless, but she always tries to do what is right.
Avatar: The Last Airbender co-creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko.
Conception & Development Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino were American animators with a shared pedigree working on shows like Family Guy, Mission Hill and King of the Hill. In 2001 they decided to collaborate on a new project together and started brainstorming ideas. Konietzko had drawn a sketch of a balding older man and then regressed him to a child; DiMartino had been watching a documentary about exploring Antarctica. They hit on the idea of using elemental magic, with the bald kid being an “air guy” helped by some “water people” at the South Pole, with “fire people” as the bad guys.
Despite the vagueness of the concept, they pitched the idea to Nickelodeon just two weeks later and got a series order. They spent most of 2002 on development before starting active production of the series in 2003. It got its debut via a trailer and teaser reel at the 2004 Comic-Con before premiering on 21 February 2005.
As the series developed, Konietzko and DiMartino hit on the idea of taking the traditional Western epic fantasy template, specifically how it is applied in Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, and recasting it through the lens of Japanese anime, Hong Kong action and kung fu cinema, yoga and Eastern philosophy in general. This led to the show’s art style – which is influenced by anime despite being American in origin – and the decision to base the four ethnic groups in the show on Asia (plus the Inuit nations), with no Western analogues at all.
The Fire Nation was primarily influenced by Japan, although the creators were aware that they did not want to present the idea of Japan as the “bad guys.” They instead incorporated other Asian influences (such as Chinese clothing and architecture) for the Fire Nation and made it clear that although Ozai, Azula and other senior Fire Nation figures are evil or corrupt, the people of the Fire Nation themselves are the same mixture as any other group in the world. The Earth Kingdom was also based on Chinese influences, particularly the Great Wall for the massive defences around Ba Sing Se and the Forbidden City in Beijing for the Earth King’s palace. The Air Nomads incorporated Buddhist and Tibetan influences, whilst the Water Tribes were based on both the Inuit of Canada and Greenland and the Sirenik of far eastern Siberia.
The show’s emphasis on Buddhist philosophy and Eastern martial arts allowed the creators to incorporate action but also avoid killing; in Avatar’s 61-episode run, only eight people are ever shown to definitively die (although some off-screen fatalities are likely to have happened).
Other influences included the Studio Ghibli films of Hayao Miyazaki, particularly the influence of spirits (inspired by Spirited Away) and the idea of a living creature as a main "vehicle", with Appa inspired by the Catbus of My Neighbour Totoro.
Although DiMartino and Konietzko created the show and served as executive producers, they left much of the day-to-day direction of the show to Aaron Ehasz, who developed some of the fine detail of the world and how it worked. Dave Filoni also proved instrumental in the development of the show’s look and style in the first season, before he left to work on Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: The Clone Wars CG show.
The original plan was for the show to last for three seasons and DiMartino and Konietzko developed a fairly detailed bible and story arc, with characters such as Toph and Azula always on the drawing board. However, the original plan for Toph was a tough adult male character who’d have trouble fitting into the group. It was Ehasz who changed the idea to a young blind girl, a notion which was enthusiastically adopted.
In 2007 the show was optioned as a live-action film project and DiMartino and Konietzko took time out to work on that project with director M. Night Shyamalan. During this period Nickelodeon requested a pitch for a fourth season, so Ehasz developed a storyline focusing on Aang dealing with the aftermath of the discovery of “energybending” in the series finale, the search for Zuko’s mother and a redemption arc for Azula. However, after further consideration it was decided this might be anticlimactic after the final showdown with the Fire Lord and the original plan to end the show after Season 3 was left in place.
With the live-action film an unmitigated failure, DiMartino and Konietzko worked with Nickelodeon on a sequel concept, which became The Legend of Korra. The show was originally conceived as a one-off mini-series for the 2012 season, but when Nickelodeon renewed the show for several seasons, it left the team scrambling to come up with new material (explaining the rushed and disappointing second season, before the far superior final two seasons). Ehasz was not available to work on the series, having moved to Riot Studios to work on video games. Ehasz later founded his own animation company, Wonderstorm, and joined forces with Netflix to produce a new fantasy animated series, The Dragon Prince.
In late 2018 it was announced that Netflix would be producing a live-action reboot of the entire Avatar: The Last Airbender series, with DiMartino and Konietzko attached to write and produce the series. The show is expected to start shooting in February 2020 to debut in early 2021. The future for the Avatarverse looks bright, at least for now.
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With political tensions between the Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom eased for now, Fire Lord Zuko embarks on the most important quest of his life: to find the truth of what happened to his mother. Unfortunately, the only two people who can help him in his quest are his insane sister Azula and his deposed father, Ozai. Zuko reluctantly has to trust them if he is to learn the truth.
The first Avatar: The Last Airbender graphic novel, The Promise, was an unexpectedly weighty story about colonialism and imperialism, whilst also incorporating the fun characterisation from the TV show. The Search has even greater promise, as Zuko's burning desire to find out what happened to his mother is the most prominent story left dangling from the TV show.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work anywhere near as well. Partly this is down to the much smaller cast of characters (even characters in the book keep mentioning how much they miss Toph) and also the decision to incorporate Azula into the main team. Redeeming Azula is not a bad idea - it was even Avatar head writer Aaron Ehasz's main idea for a potential fourth season of the show - but the book doesn't really try to do that. Instead Azula is just crazy-whacky with some lightning control issues, a schtick which gets old way too fast.
The Promise also justified its 200+ page length with multiple subplots and character arcs, even for minor recurring roles. The Search, which is the same length, does try to do the same thing by incorporating a lengthy flashback story, but there isn't enough meat on the bones. It turns out the story of what happened to Zuko's mother is fairly straightforward (with an excellent callback to one of Aang's earlier adventures) so the mystery doesn't quite justify the length of the story.
That doesn't mean there isn't some fun in seeing the characters develop and the team go out on another adventure. There's some good writing (Gene Yang has a good ear for the voices of the characters from the TV series) and Team Gurihiru's artwork is pretty good, but the story is definitely a bit thinner this time around. The Search (***½) is available now in the UK and USA.
The Hundred Year War is over. The Avatar Aang has defeated the Fire Lord and restored balance to the world. Fire Lord Zuko and Earth King Kuei have formed the Harmony Restoration Movement, a treaty of peace between their nations which calls for the removal of the Fire Nation colonies settled on Earth Kingdom soil. The newer colonists leave peacefully enough, but in the city of Yu Dao, which was founded over a century ago, there is huge resistance from the population (consisting of earthbenders, firebenders and non-benders alike). Removing the colony would tear families apart. Zuko reluctantly defies the treaty, bringing the two nations to the brink of war once again and forcing Aang to make some difficult decisions.
Avatar: The Last Airbender was a three-season show which ran on Nickelodeon from 2005 to 2008. It was, and remains, one of the finest fantasy TV shows of all time. It was succeeded by a sequel, The Legend of Korra, which ran for four seasons in 2012-14 and was set seventy years later, following the adventures of a new Avatar. Although Korra did expand on the fate of some of the original characters by featuring a few of them in old age and having some extensive flashbacks, fans were left wondering on the details of what happened between the two shows.
Dark Horse Comics took up that challenge and reconnected with Avatar creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko to tell that story in surprising detail across a series of graphic novels. Six have so far been published (plus collections of one-off adventures) with more in the planning stages. Gene Yang and the art team at Studio Gurihiru were tapped to create the comics and have done a fine job.
The Promise answers that tricky question of now that you've won the war, how do you win the peace? When your're fighting a war against an enemy, especially one who is clearly evil and wants to conquer the world, it's easy to see how to proceed and make plans. When that war is over and you have to bring people back together again, the situation becomes much more morally complex and murky, and tough questions have to be asked and answered. It's the reason why books, movies, TV shows and video games love World War II but generally stop at the end of the war, and prefer not to get into the extremely murky waters of what happened next (particularly the brushing-over of how countries that went to war to stop Poland being invaded by the Nazis were perfectly happy with it instead being overrun by the Soviets instead).
Avatar's strength was always respecting its audience and telling morally complex stories despite the audience being younger. The Promise picks up on this by being an exploration of colonialism. The situation is initially very clear: the Fire Nation invaded the Earth Kingdom and planted colonies along its coast. Now the war is over and the Fire Nation was defeated, it has to remove them. For the newer colonies that have only been there a few years and consist entirely of first-generation settlers, that's fine. For the older colonies that have been there for a century and consist of mixed descendants of the settlers and the indigenous population, the question suddenly becomes a lot more complicated and fraught with difficulties. These people are being told to leave their homes that their grandparents and great-grandparents built, often from scratch, and is that any better than the original colonisation? This point is illustrated when earthbenders and firebenders join forces to defend the colony, to the Earth King's shock.
The graphic novel also cleverly uses Avatar's extensive cast of supporting characters to illustrate the point, putting members of Jet's freedom fighters on different sides of the argument and having Zuko and Kuei at odds. Long-standing questions left dangling from the show are also expanded further, such as the fates of Fire Lord Ozai and Zuko's sister Azula, and also the question of what happened to Zuko's mother.
The book explores surprisingly heavy themes, but it also remembers that this is the Avatar world, so there are also plenty of laughs and lighter storylines. Toph has started a metalbending academy but is finding it difficult to train her students, so Sokka volunteers to help in his capacity as "inspirational bending." Katara and Aang's relationship has blossomed but their constant doe-eyedness is getting on the rest of the team's nerves (and how this is explored, by maturing the relationship sensibly rather than having them break up, is refreshing). Aang also has to deal with a "fan club" of young women who cosplay as him and are constantly excited to hear about his adventures, which is first dealt with as comedy but then becomes more serious when Aang starts to wonder if he can use them to re-found the lost civilisation of the Air Nomads.
The Promise (****½) is a surprisingly weighty, accomplished graphic novel which takes the story of Avatar: The Last Airbender and moves it forward in a way that is entertaining and does not undercut the ending of the TV show, as well as acting as a (distant, for now) prequel to The Legend of Korra. It is available now in the UK and USA.
The second season of Avatar ended on a downer: the city of Ba Sing Se has fallen to the Fire Nation, the Earth Kingdom is under enemy occupation and organised resistance to the Fire Nation has been reduced to a few guerrilla bands. However, the Avatar, Aang, and his companions are still at large and in possession of vital information: in a few short weeks there will be a solar eclipse, during which time the Fire Nation will be vulnerable to attack. A few weeks after that, Sozin's Comet will return, and the powers of the firebenders will be at their height. The Avatar must face and defeat Fire Lord Ozai during the eclipse if the world is to be saved. The board is set for a grand showdown, but our heroes still need to prepare for the final confrontation. The early part of Season 3 has our heroes infiltrating the Fire Nation, having arranged a meeting place with some of their allies. One of the benefits of Ba Sing Se's isolationism during the war was that many of its armies were left to operate autonomously, and they have enough military force left to help with an assault on the Fire Nation's capital. However, the early part of Season 3 is surprisingly focused on stand-alone episodes as it treads water waiting for the eclipse. Luckily, few arc-heavy shows do stand-alones as well as Avatar, and episodes centering on Sokka's desire to find a mentor of his own or Katara trying to save a village from pollution caused by a Fire Nation factory are more effective than they might sound, with each adding an element of character growth or humour to the series' tapestry.
After a few stand-aloneish episodes, the arc reasserts itself. We learn vital backstory about the relationship between Sozin and Roku, the previous Avatar, and Katara discovers a powerful but deadly new form of waterbending. There is still time for the show's humour, however, as with the episode where Aang cannot rest before the invasion and starts having bizarre hallucinations (such as one where Momu and Appa gain the power of speech and fight a deadly sword duel whilst being cheered on by sheep). The invasion finally comes, but obviously the fact it takes place ten episodes before the end of the series is a sign that things are not going to turn out well. From this point, the former dynamics of the show reassert themselves, with Azula and her compatriots hunting down the Avatar and Zuko's torn loyalties again leading him down a different path. The second half of the season is more tense and more urgent, as the 'good guys' are reduced to little more than just our heroes and the imminent arrival of the comet inspires the Fire Lord to embark on a plan of mass destruction and genocide beyond anything we've seen before in this show. Events culminate in a massive showdown, unexpected (but cleverly foreshadowed) allies emerge and old mysteries are solved as the story reaches its epic conclusion.
The third and final season of Avatar draws the storyline to an action-packed conclusion which is extremely satisfying, with enough twists and turns to avoid being predictable. As usual, the character development is exemplery, the writing entertaining and the voice acting accomplished. Criticisms? Well, there is an element of deus ex machina in the finale, although closer examination reveals it was set up earlier (a fairly obscure reference in Season 2's The Library, though), and there are a few loose ends, with some characters' fates left murky or unresolved. With the promised Avatar spin-off series apparently going to be set in a different time period focusing on a different incarnation of the Avatar, it's unclear if these questions will be answered. But if not, they at least give the fans something to debate and argue over in the future.
Avatar: The Last Airbender - Book III: Fire (****½) will be released on DVD in the USA on 16 September 2008 (individual volumes are available now), although once again no word of an official UK release, although a Region 1 import will be available.
The second season of Avatar picks up where the first left off. The Northern Water Tribe has successfully defended itself against a Fire Nation invasion, with the help of the Avatar, Aang. With Katara having mastered Waterbending and now capable of teaching Aang, Team Avatar (as Sokka dubs the group) heads south into the Earth Kingdom to find Aang someone to teach him Earthbending. Meanwhile, Prince Zuko and his uncle, General Iroh, have been exiled and outcast by the Fire Lord, who has sent his daughter Azula to hunt down them and the Avatar. To this end she recruits two fellow female warriors to succeed where her brother failed.
Season 2 starts off with our heroes on a high after their victory over the Fire Nation and their securing of the Northern Water Tribe as allies. Their luck seems to hold up, with the Fire Nation apparently keener on tracking down the 'traitors' Zuko and Iroh than pursuing the Avatar, and they soon meet Toph, a blind girl who 'sees' through Earthbending and is the teacher Aang needs. However, no sooner has Toph joined the group then things start to fall apart: a valued member of the team disappears without a trace, the Earth Kingdom capital of Ba Sing Se comes under attack by the Fire Nation and political intrigue within the Earth Kingdom weakens the allied forces as the Fire Nation advances.
Avatar's second season (or 'Book', in the show's own parlance) is a splendid follow-up to the first. It's the middle part of the trilogy, but if it adheres to an existing format, thankfully it's the original Star Wars trilogy: Earth is The Empire Strikes Back of this story, putting our heroes through the wringer emotionally, physically and mentally, and ending on a surprisingly downbeat note. The notion of 'mentorship' is investigated thoroughly, with Aang's mastery of bending now in the hands of two people barely older than himself, whilst Zuko's relationship with Iroh goes through some tough times. In fact, it's the internal war between Zuko's dual natures over his soul which forms the most satisfying through-line of the series, and Zuko's painting as a young man tortured by his own past with his own strengths and weaknesses rather than as a simplistic bad guy, or a bad guy who turns to good, is a surprisingly mature theme for what is apparently a kid's show.
Many individual episodes are of note, although Tales of Ba Sing Se is especially noteworthy. With our heroes forced to stay in the Earth Kingdom capital for a protracted stay, this episode doesn't feature a major crisis but instead follows them on several minor plot strands, from Sokka getting into a haiku-off with some poets ("That's one too many syllables!") to Aang establishing a zoo to an especially splendid instalment in which Iroh pays tribute to his late son. It's an extremely accomplished episode, as is Appa's Lost Days, in which the most under-explored member of the team gets his very own episode. However, there are far less stand-alones this season, with every episode linking into the main story arc and minor characters from the first season returning with more concrete roles.
With its second season, Avatar continues to impress, exploring themes of redemption, honour and extreme property damage in a consistently intelligent and amusing manner.
Avatar: The Last Airbender - Book II: Earth (****½) is available on DVD in the USA, but has not been officially released in the UK yet. Import Region 1 copies can be found on Amazon.co.uk. Season 3 returns to Nickelodeon for its final five episodes (also the final five episodes of the series) in mid-July.
Whilst I've always quite liked the aesthetic qualities of Japanese anime, I must confess I've always found the plots to be nigh-on incomprehensible (based as many are on Japanese cultural tropes which have no analogue in the West), and the ones that seemed to be understandable seemed to only last a few episodes before being canned (the excellent Cyber City Odeo 808 being a perfect example of a great show with tremendously interesting characters, yet it lasted a mere three episodes). Having said all of that, my exposure to anime in recent years has been extremely limited and these older generalizations may not hold true.
An interesting and apparently successful approach has been to combine Western storytelling with the anime style of art to produce something of a hybrid programme. Robotech began this trend back in the early 1980s, with Carl Macek crafting an original story (albeit one heavily derived from Macross, one of the three contributing Japanese TV shows) to fuse three different Japanese shows into one continuity. A few years later, French writers and Japanese animators combined to create The Mysterious Cities of Gold and Ulysses 31, both notable for being limited series with definitive endings with much more adult themes than is usually encountered in animation primarily aimed at children. The latest such effort is Avatar: The Last Airbender, a Nickelodeon production currently in its third season hiatus in the USA.
Avatar is set in a heavily Japanese-inspired world which is divided into four forms of magic: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Manipulation of each form of magic is known as bending. Over the centuries, each form of magic has attracted its own followers, and a powerful nation or tribe has arisen based around each element: the two Water Tribes live at the opposing poles of the planet, the Fire Nation occupies a huge volcanic archipelago, the Earth Kingdom dominates the largest continent and the various Air Tribes (at least three of which used to exist) occupy remote mountain chains. The four peoples lived in harmony under the protective guidance of the Buddha-like Avatar (who could combine the four elements and thus kept the tribes in balance) until, a century prior to the series beginning, he vanished without a trace. Without a check on their ambition, the Fire Nation launched a war of aggression against the other peoples, quickly overrunning and apparently destroying the Air Tribes, but then becoming bogged down in a lengthy war against the Earth Kingdom.
Avatar opens with two youngsters from the Southern Water Tribe, Katara and her brother Sokka, discovering the Avatar trapped in a magical block of ice. The Avatar is a 12-year-old boy named Aang, an Airbender who doesn't know anything about the war or the events that have transpired in his absence. His only companion is Appa, his magical flying bison, but Aang rapidly finds himself the target of Zuko, an exiled Fire Nation prince who is determined to capture Aang to restore his honour and prestige at the Fire Lord's court. With the Southern Water Tribe in danger due to Aang's presence, Aang decides to journey to the North Pole to learn waterbending from the more powerful Northern Water Tribe. Katara, a novice Waterbender herself, and Sokka agree to accompany him.
Avatar is a single, large story which is divided into three 'books' or seasons, with each episode a chapter of that book. Book I is named Water, as the focus is on Aang's journey to the Northern Water Tribe and what happens when he gets there. Along the way he and his companions have many adventures, including repeated run-ins with Zuko (whose backstory becomes more complex and intriguing with every appearance) and Zuko's rival, Admiral Zhao, who is determined to capture the Avatar for his own purposes. We also learn about the ongoing war on the Earth Kingdom's continent, although somewhat disappointingly we never see the front lines. Aang also finds time to visit two of the Air Temples in an effort to understand his own growing power. Events culminate at the North Pole where Zhao launches a concerted effort to destroy the Northern Water Tribe.
Avatar is, simply put, a tremendously enjoyable slice of television. It's definitely a kid's show (those looking for dark, gore-filled gritty anime best look elsewhere), but it never talks down to its audience and credits them with a fair bit of intelligence. The worldbuilding is impeccable, the stories are intelligent and logical and the writers clearly have the story mapped out ahead of time, resulting in tremendous coherence and continuity. These guys could teach the makers of Battlestar Galactica a lot. It's also quite funny and shows occasional homages to other forms of animation: one early episode featuring our heroes accidentally devastating part of a city with a mail cart even has a Wild E. Coyote-style freeze-frame shot so the audience can more thoroughly appreciate the destruction they unleash. In another sequence two prison guards report the appearance of a dangerous flying bison to the commandant (voiced by George 'Mr. Sulu' Takei), who delays acting on the news due to linguistic concerns over where the correct designation is 'flying bison' or 'flying buffalo'. The animation is also excellent, clearly inspired by Hayao Miyazaki (Appa, our heroes' mount, is a nod to the Catbus from My Neighobur Totoro) and is a step above practically every other US animated show in production today.
I'm struggling to find some negatives here. The show is fast-paced and funny. It isn't preachy and never indulges in, "I learned something today..." moral lessons. It's simply a very good show, enjoyable by all no matter your age.
Avatar: The Last Airbender - Book 1: Water (****½) is available on DVD in the USA. Annoyingly, it isn't available in the UK yet, although Region 1 copies can be purchased from Amazon.co.uk. Season 3, which is the final season, is currently airing in the USA on the Nickelodeon.
