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Old 09-07-2012, 12:49 AM   #1
AshleyO
 
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Avatar: The Last Air Bender

You know... this is a pretty smart show.

I was really amused by their show on skepticism. It made me chuckle.

Anyone else seen it?
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Old 09-07-2012, 01:20 AM   #2
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I loved it. Both the original series and Legend of Kora. Sadly, I was hoping Kora would have been drawn out better. The story seemed rushed at times and irrelevant at others.
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Old 09-07-2012, 11:45 PM   #3
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Funny, Tumblr decided today to talk about how the show is a thinly disguised critique on imperialism, complete with meme.



Can't say I watched much of it just cause its a litte too whimsical for my cold dead heart, but the critique and discussion that comes out of it, what they did right and the mistakes they made, is fascinating for a kid's show.
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Old 09-08-2012, 09:50 AM   #4
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Yeah. After about 6 to 8 episodes, I picked up on it pretty fast. The fire nation is white supremacy and imperialism all wrapped up into one.

I was looking at the map of The Last Air Bender and the fire nation is fairly similar in shape to the US.

The show also got on my nerves with the whimsical happy Nickelodean crap until it REALLY started picking up.

I'd say give it a chance if you can tolerate the first few episodes.

Zuko, Toph, and Katara are my favorites. Aang is alright, but I feel that the other three characters are so much more important.

I like how Toph is this blind earth bender girl who has a hobby of beating the shit out of pro wrestlers.

Zuko is interesting BECAUSE he comes from the fire nation, but is in exile for not being "good enough" and he's trying to reclaim his honor for a while until he turns his back on the fire nation and he's starting to develop a sense of justice. Unfortunately, his reputation proceeds him and now the whole world can't trust him.

Katara did some things in this one episode that I thought was really awesome. She ended up wanting to further her studies in waterbending and had to grapple with the sexism of the northern water tribe. She gets freakin' AWESOME moves later on and her relationship to Toph makes for a fun dynamic to watch.

One of my favorite episodes was when Sokka's skepticism was taken to task by a fortune teller loving town.
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Old 09-10-2012, 09:14 AM   #5
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I just watched it last night, because my guy bought it.

It's definitely a kids movie, but I was really interested because it seemed to be based on Shinto and had a lot of kung fu and tai chi in there. ^_^ Me Gusta.
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Old 09-10-2012, 11:46 AM   #6
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The movie? Dude, fuck the movie. Check out the show.
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Old 09-10-2012, 02:37 PM   #7
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The movie? FUCK the movie. That shit was just racist crap.

The show is LEAGUES better and smarter.
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Old 09-10-2012, 08:59 PM   #8
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I watched it on Rifftrax, it was pretty hilarious that way.

My favourite part was how they took Aang to the Airbender place and never fucking mentioned on the whole trip over that OH BY THE WAY THEY WERE ALL VICIOUSLY MURDERED, WE COULD HAVE PREPARED YOU BUT WE THOUGHT IT WOULD BE BETTER IF YOU JUST CAME ACROSS THEIR CHARRED REMAINS.
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Old 09-10-2012, 10:36 PM   #9
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I would get a chuckle out of that.
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Old 09-10-2012, 11:13 PM   #10
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The movie? Dude, fuck the movie. Check out the show.
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The movie? FUCK the movie. That shit was just racist crap.

The show is LEAGUES better and smarter.
Really? I overlooked Avatar:The Last Airbender until it was randomly bought because it looked like it was just for kids, but if the show's better I'll have to check it out.
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Old 09-11-2012, 12:05 AM   #11
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It is geared towards kids so sometimes it does get a little silly but it is still a really good show. The characters have depth and flaws and the show deals with rather complex themes for its target audience but manages to avoid getting too heavy and doesn't take itself too seriously.
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Old 09-11-2012, 01:42 PM   #12
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I didn't like the end so much.

It had a very strange conclusion.

The writers pulled a Deus Ex Machina with Aang in the end.

Protip: If you're going to sell your main character as a noble pacifist that does no harm to anyone and refuses to kill anything; then don't put them in an actual situation where they really WOULD have to compromise their values. Giving Aang the kill switch technique out of nowhere and being completely unearned from a giant sea lionturtle so that he can continue to stick to his principles doesn't help prove your point that violence is never the answer.

That's lazy writing and if you don't like where these scenarios logically lead to, then don't write them.

Also, I just found it disturbingly weird that the victory over the fire nation wasn't decided by the other nations in the war. Basically, Zuko becomes fire lord and states that the war is now over and now ALL THE OTHER NATIONS ARE JUST HAPPY THAT THE FIRE NATION ISN'T KICKING THEIR ASS ANYMORE! It just looked like the fire nation was showing mercy to the less powerful nations. It doesn't serve a good narrative and I found it oddly annoying that Katara learned quite possibly the most deadly technique in the show and she NEVER used it against anyone that deserved it. She could have snuffed out the evil princess of the Fire Nation any time she wanted to. This was war, man... and these characters stayed their hands in the weirdest ways sometimes. Katara could have killed the fire lord with no problems at all. They didn't even need the avatar because Katara was a Blood Bender that let her control the bodies of her opponents.
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Old 09-11-2012, 04:41 PM   #13
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Well on the same note I don't recall metal bending every being used to bend someone's armor, either to control the person wearing it or to kill them even though everyone in the fire nation's army wears armor.
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Old 09-11-2012, 05:18 PM   #14
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yeah, but try to remember, they can't go killing people in a kids show.
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Old 09-11-2012, 06:21 PM   #15
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Exactly, I was surprised the show even got as dark as it did.
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Old 09-11-2012, 06:50 PM   #16
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I don't consider it being a kids show being a factor.

The show was FREAKIN BRILLIANT.

I just don't think that they solved the problem of killing very well. I'd argue that if that was the whole point, then they shouldn't have done it because unfortunately, the REAL solution that the show was showing was that Aang should have killed the Fire Lord. To conveniently learn some miraculous move that takes powers away was just the writers admitting that "violence is never the answer" is in fact, NOT a realistic answer.
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Old 09-11-2012, 07:53 PM   #17
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See I didn't take it as "violence is never the answer", violence is something that had been used throughout the show, they just avoided having the good guys killing people directly.
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Old 09-11-2012, 10:00 PM   #18
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Legend of Korra is REALLY fucking weird.

Everything about it is disappointing me so far as what they're trying to talk about.

I really don't like how they're depicting the benders as bourgeois and those without bending abilities are called "equalists".

So far, this reeks of defending the status quo and the "equalists" are so far a fucking caricature of real social struggles. It's like Reddit wrote the scripts.
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Old 09-12-2012, 12:34 AM   #19
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Well that is disappointing.
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Old 09-12-2012, 03:25 AM   #20
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Yeah. I was snickering at the last scene in the movie.


Aang - OMG stop killing one another!
*distracts a battling goodie with his bending moves, causing his death*
... *directly causes a tidal wave*
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Old 09-12-2012, 01:19 PM   #21
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Legend of Korra is REALLY fucking weird.

Everything about it is disappointing me so far as what they're trying to talk about.

I really don't like how they're depicting the benders as bourgeois and those without bending abilities are called "equalists".

So far, this reeks of defending the status quo and the "equalists" are so far a fucking caricature of real social struggles. It's like Reddit wrote the scripts.
"You're oppressing yourselves!" Has to get an award for most douchetastic writing in a kid's show this year.

I'm almost willing to give The Last Airbender a bit of a pass on the violence thing in that its kinda rare for a kid's show these days to take kids seriously enough to let them get it. Like Batman TAS left a lot of ambiguity regarding Batman's technical pacifism, and sometimes whether he was a good guy at all (like when Dick leaves to become Nightwing, Bruce is overbearing and insufferable.) Its kinda why I like Gargoyles a smidgen better, just for the fact in the first few episodes they think nothing of picking up enemy soldiers and dropping them to their deaths.

I remember being horribly disappointed when Fox Kids dubbed Shaman King, I used to read the manga in Shonen Jump and the manga was very much all about redemption and non-violence, at least as far as I read, but the English dub made it all "its like Pokemon, except they use ghosts!"
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Old 09-12-2012, 01:41 PM   #22
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"You're oppressing yourselves!" Has to get an award for most douchetastic writing in a kid's show this year.
Oh man. When I heard that I knew I was going to have a bad time.

Unfortunately, the aesthetic also does nothing to help the rest of the show either. All that steampunky stuff with the overly 1940s looks just blazes in that kind of low brow short sighted conservatism that gets under my skin.

And they couldn't even get the revolutionary stuff right. You've got a guy who can break benders and instead of sharing this knowledge with his comrades, he keeps it for himself and calls himself a savior. I looked into the character. Unfortunately, he's not an equalist which makes the whole point of it being revolutionary almost laughably insulting.

Holy shit. How do you get something so smart and compelling like The Last Airbender and then start up some fucked up shit like The Legend of Korra.

At least the avatar is a female who's not completely white I guess. :/
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Old 11-11-2014, 05:57 AM   #23
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I loved it. Both the original series and Legend of Kora. Sadly, I was hoping Kora would have been drawn out better. The story seemed rushed at times and irrelevant at others.
I recently got hold of seasons 2 and 3 of Korra (4 is still being released). It got better. I enjoyed Avatar, it filled my childlike need without being anime or Invader Zim or Robot Chicken.

I started off disliking Korra, S1 finale did not find itself. But I binge watched s2&3. Granted I am super stressed and exhausted so my internal hypercritic was MIA.

The writers get around to addressing the villain issue in an interesting montage in s4...
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