Comment on Avatar (the one with the blue aliens) is such a weird franchise
Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org 3 weeks agoI didn't like the art style of the cartoon, that's a big part of it. I also appreciated the story being condensed - the movie cut out what amounts to about 11 hours of padding. The only thing I saw as being questionable was the Earthbender section (I watched that episode just for Sulu voicing the bad guy), but I think the point of their spirits being broken is even more pronounced when they're literally on ground, rather than trapped in the water.
So basically, the animation and the time.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 3 weeks ago
Hard to say much about that. If you don’t like it, you don’t like it. Personally, with the exception of a few moments where it goes “all anime” (because personally, I cannot stand anime, and have never found a single anime show that I could stand to watch for very long, in part because of the preponderance of ridiculous over-the-top reactions)
Three screenshots from Avatar showing over-the-top anime-style reactions
I find Avatar to be one of the most beautifully-animated shows out there. Especially in moments like the climax of Crossroads of Destiny or during the Last Agni Kai.
This I could not disagree with more strongly. And I don’t think this is opinion, but pretty solid fact. There’s a little padding for sure, but on the whole Avatar is an incredible example of how to do serialised storytelling well. With very little exception, every episode makes some major steps towards advancing the main story, deepening the characters, or deepening the worldbuilding to help heighten the stakes. Usually at least 2 of the 3. The first season is definitely the worst in this regard with episodes like The King of Omashu (which adds some worldbuilding that is important later, but is otherwise not a brilliantly-utilised episode), The Great Divide (an infamous joke within the community), and The Fortuneteller (whose only real redeeming quality is its role in effectively kicking off the romance arc). But in a 20-episode season, and for a show where this is the worst season, that’s a pretty damn good record.
That’s something that could be a good point, but the movie doesn’t really do anything to show why their spirits are broken.
The episode does a great job of this, by showing that even once Aang provides them with coal to earthbend, they are too broken to take it up right away. In the movie the prisoners outnumber their guards, and always have done, and there’s nothing stopping them using their powers whatsoever, either in theory or in the narrative.
And in fact, I think when it’s one smallish scene within a much larger movie, it’s always inevitably going to be hard to adequately “show, don’t tell” why the prison is able to break their spirits despite being surrounded by earth. So ironically, this is something that, if they wanted to do it, a longer runtime in a show is what could have made it work.
It really does have a spectacular voice cast. Outside the core cast, Mark Hamill, René Auberjonois, Jason Isaacs, and Clancy Brown are also among those really worth mentioning.
Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org 3 weeks ago
I guess that's another part of my issue - the setting really never grabbed me or seemed worth the investment that others were putting into it. So that might be why you saw world building and I just saw padding. l only saw "generic anti-authoritarian fantasypunk #367", you saw something else. Because really, that's how I see it. It's fantasypunk, bordering on religious deconstruction. Heck, it's even messianic, and the core concept is an unwilling messiah accepting his role and the chaos of the world left without a connection to the divine - a deconstruction that was already trite a century before ATLA.
The movie sticks to the beats of the core narrative and the modified Hero's Journey. The show tries to meander and present multiple heroes - but when the narrative is messianic, you have to get to the point of the messiah saving the world and then departing in some way, leaving the world secure in the knowledge that the divine presence is both with them and apart from them, giving them free will but bearing judgement.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 3 weeks ago
What I think most people like about the worldbuilding is the rich believable cultures that manage to be very obviously inspired by real-world Asian cultures, without being either caricatures or carbon copies. That it has a magic system that is woven seamlessly through the society of the world and doesn’t at all feel like “a medieval society with magic added on as an afterthought”. That the magic system itself does a great job of providing examples for all three of Sanderson’s Laws, being a robust hard magic system with very obvious limitations that gets explored in depth through things like ice and blood and lightning as believable extensions of what already exists. Revelations that make you go “oh yeah, of course!” and “holy shit that’s cool!” simultaneously.
In terms of characters, Aang’s certainly not the most interesting. I think it’s a bit more interesting than you give it credit for, because it’s not just an “unwilling messiah”, but it’s a literal child who’s forced to be a saviour. Not the teenager or young adult that you’d get with most YA fiction, but someone very much characterised as a young child forced to grow up too early. Themes of loss of innocence and the tragedy of war get explored well through him. But as I said, he’s not really the focus.
Zuko is. Zuko’s character arc is frequently cited as one of the best redemption arcs in fiction, and for good reason. It’s one of the best written, most believable arcs I’ve seen. He starts out a bad guy, because he was born on the side of the bad guys. But we later learn that he was banished because he stood up for the little guy. And even though banished, he doesn’t suddenly change the allegiances he’s grown up with his whole life. He believes he can restore his honour by aiding the bad guys and taking out the main good guy. Of course it’s actually a rather classic case of “he needed to find acceptance from within and stop seeking external validation”, which is a well-trod trope, but it’s his path to get there that’s great. Thanks to his contact with the good guys, and the helpful but non-pushy guidance of his uncle, he slowly comes to appreciate that he can be better. But it’s rather shallow and focused on just himself, not on understanding that the ruler of the bad guys is a bad guy. And so when the ruler welcomes him back, he goes. It’s not a smooth curve from bad guy to good guy, there’s a very prominent relapse along the way, due in part to the misaligned reason for his initial growth.
Other characters are also great. Azula’s tragic descent into madness, shown as an extremely believable progression resulting from traits she exhibited in her very first scenes. The understanding that Ozai might be irredeemable because he’s been steeped in the evil of the Fire Nation his whole life, but that the war didn’t start out like that: Sozin was ego-driven and insane, but ultimately got there because of his tragic friendship with Roku turning sour after he was just spreading his nation’s prosperity. Not a redeeming quality by any means, but an understandable one. There’s Hama; captured and tortured for years until she got the chance to turn the tables and became the torturer. And of course, Iroh. So much could be said about Iroh.
Of course there are other things outside of that. The music is sublime. The representation is great—I’ve already mentioned the fact that it’s focused on Asian and indigenous cultures, but also for people with a variety of different disabilities. The fact that it balances tone incredibly well with its serious moments and the light-hearted humour. The fact that it is, without a doubt, a children’s show that nonetheless does not condescend to kids, and even manages to have depth enough to attract a lot of adults (and know personally multiple, as well as having seen stories of people online, who were first introduced to it as adults, so it’s not just nostalgia).
I just…yeah. I cannot say enough good things about it.
Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org 3 weeks ago
I'm glad you got all that out of it. For me, the whole value of the show was shown in what the movie delivered. I feel it was a loss that Shyalaman wasn't given the green light for the rest of the saga in the same condensed style.