May 14, 2007
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Avatar: The Last Airbender
My most recent animation infatuation is with a series called “Avatar” that is amazingly American made and comes on Nickelodeon of all places. I haven’t seen a show I liked on Nickelodeon since David the Gnome. Yes, that’s right, I liked David the Gnome, thought I think I had to have been something like eight when I used to watch it. And no I don’t have any clue what it was that I liked about that show.
Anyway, Avatar is something quite different. The premise is thus: Four nations based on the four elements live. Each has a lot of people called “benders” who have control over that nation’s element. These nations live in harmony rather than destroying each other thanks to the “Avatar” who acts as a mediator between the nations. The avatar is a lucky bastard who can control all 4 elements and on top of that he has some cool “spirit” powers and the knowledge of hundreds of lifetimes because he is reborn repeatedly each time starting off as a different bender-type and then having to go on this journey to learn each of the other three elements so that he can become the Avatar and keep the peace.
Well, you know that crazy situation can’t last, so about a hundred years ago the Fire Nation (big surprise, for once why can’t water be the badguys?) decides that they want to be evil and all powerful so with the help of a comet they take over the world and they slaughter all of the airbenders hence ensuring that the avatar will never be reborn again. The avatar is conspicuously absent during all of this and that serves as one of the great mysteries of the series.
Well a hundred years later, a brother and sister pair, the sister an aspiring waterbender, the brother seemingly completely useless (at this point) stumble across a little kid frozen in the ice with his giant flying bison. Turns out the kid is an airbender and on top of that destined to be the next avatar. And so their journey begins.
The story is, as I have described pretty simple. But that simplicity disguises a very extraordinary piece of artistic story telling. One of the best features of the series is the very detailed and balanced portrayal of the four cultures. Each is very distinctive and fascinating to behold. Unlike far too many anime, the characters do not all look alike.
The action scenes are also really very impressive in this. They way they depict the various powers and techniques capable of being wielded by the benders is extremely impressive. When the benders get into fights with one another it is face paced and so smoothly animated that your eyes end up glued to the screen. You could almost watch the series just to see the fights and not be too disappointed.
The story? Well despite the simplicity of the basic setup it does progress somewhat interestingly. Not a lot of surprises at least in the first season which is all that I have seen but also not a whole lot of completely uninteresting filler episodes either. There’s a lot of character development in here and all of the characters are a lot of fun and pleasant. As of the end of the first season I can’t see any characters I can really say I didn’t like.
The voice acting is quite good too. It’s a really strange feeling to watch an animated series that is all english voice acting and not be cringing at the sounds of the characters voices. Although I did unfortunately have to cringe at a few points where they re-used voice actors in a very obvious manner. I guess that’s just chalked up to a low budget and a need to focus their money on animating incedibly fight scenes. If so I think they made the right choice.
Overall, I’d have to say this is exactly the kind of series I would have been glued to the screen to watch when I was little refusing to miss a single episode no matter the cost. And yet it is sophisticated enough to hold its appeal for me even now.
It is good to know that in this post-transformers, post-gargoyles, post-GI Joe, post-thundercats era, kids these days have at least one good action based animation to appreciate besides the evil one that starts with a p.
