Stephy Watched Avatar: The Last Airbender

 

That's rough, buddy.

 

 About/Summary

 Originally aired from 2005 (hey, that's the year my kid was born! This show is as old as my kid!) to 2008 on Nickelodeon.

Water... Earth... Fire... Air. Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.

Content/Trigger Warnings

War

Death

Betrayal

Stalking

 Abusive Parent

Violence

Tropes

There's a lot on TVTropes. Now I shall ramble about my favorites.

Action Girl -  There are soooo many action girls in this show. And they are all fantastic. Gold stars all around.

Back for the Finale - I love it when characters return in the big final battle or whatever. Makes me all giddy.

Badass Adorable - This is 100% Appa. So adorable, and so badass. Oh, and some other characters, but mostly Appa.

Big Brother Instinct - I love the protective big brother character type, as long as it is done well. Sokka has this over Katara throughout the whole show, but towards the end, he also acts like a protective big brother to Toph. And it was done pretty well. He was ready to stand up and protect them, but he also knew they were certified bad-asses.

I'm sorry, but this one made me laugh. "It's cool, Zuko outgrew stabbing people in the back."

Elemental Powers - This one is a big one on this show. And I'm a sucker for media that has elemental powers in them. I am kind of disappointed that there wasn't more people that could (do?) control plants.

Forgot the Disability - I'm sorry, but I loved the way the Gaang kept forgetting Toph was blind and her snarky responses. Love Toph...

And that's all I'm doing for the tropes section. I spent days going through the A-H page of tropes and do not want to spend weeks going through the rest.

Characters

Sokka is my favorite. Which, hey, it's really good to see a funny side-kick type character not be a fucking idiot. Sokka is silly and he bumbles, but he's really smart.

Toph is also super awesome. I love her.

Oh, and Uncle Iroh is everything I wish I was.

I really liked all the characters. Well, except for the fire lord asshole. Fuck that guy. Absolute worst.

All the characters were really well written. So five stars on characters.

Atmosphere/Setting

The settings were so great! Each nation had it's own feel and look which was super cool to see.

Also, it takes place in a sort of ancient medieval times, but not based in a fictional European country! Woo!

Writing

Writing was fan-damn-tastic. Five stars to the writers.

Plot

 Aang, the Avatar, has to defeat the Fire Lord. And to do so he must master all four elements. Which means he must travel the world finding teachers for the Water, Earth and Fire bending. Oh, and he has, like a year to do this.

Pretty basic plot of Main Character needs to learn something to defeat Big Bad, but it was done fantastically.

Animation

I really liked the animation. Five stars to the artists.

Costuming

Not sure if costuming is a thing to talk about in an animated show, but... fuck it. Great costuming.

There is a trope that I didn't mention, color coded outfits or something like that. And while it seems kind of silly, honestly it was kind of helpful for my shit memory to be able to know where the Gaang was by just checking out what color people were wearing. I do wonder if they ever came up with a reason in lore to why the people of each nation seem to only wear one or two colors.

How diverse is it?

Bunch of straight people. Or... Straight passing? No one is openly queer.

Lots of not-white people though! 

Also, there are disabled people that are more than just their disability. One of the main characters is blind and she is badass.

Overall Thoughts

I really liked this show. And I feel horrible for waiting so long to watch it. I watched it right before I cancelled Netflix so I can't rewatch it and I want to rewatch it. Such a great show.

Also, props to the Avatar fans because it is 18 years old and I knew nothing about it. Like, all I knew was that the Fire Nation attacked and there was a cabbage guy who's cart of cabbages kept getting destroyed. That's about it. So good job not spoiling the entire show for me. 

 

And that's all for this one.

Send me money on Ko-fi so I can buy this show on DVD and watch it all the time.

See y'all Saturday.