Review- Avatar: The Last Airbender

Aang (front), Momo (on Aang's shoulder), Katara (girl in middle ground), Sokka (boy in middle ground), Appa (creature in far back)

STORY
The world is divided into four nations: The Water Tribe, the Earth Kingdom, the Fire Nation, and the Air Nomads. Each nation has special people called "benders" that can bend the elements corresponding to their nations element. The Avatar is a special person who is able to master all four elements and also communicate with the spirit world. His job is to keep balance and peace across the land. One day, the Fire Nation decided to attack the other nations and rule the world. Unfortunately, the next Avatar, a young airbender named Aang, gets frozen under the ocean for a century. After one hundred years he is freed from his stasis by a pair of southern water tribe siblings: Katara and Sokka. After over a century of war, the Fire Nation has heavily scarred the land and the people of the other three nations, even completely wiping out all of the Air Nomads. Aang is a great airbender, but still needs to learn the other three elements. Together with Katara, Sokka, and his flying bison, Appa, he must learn the other three elements and face the Fire Lord, ending the war once and for all and restoring balance to the world. But the Fire Lords banished son, Zuko, along with Zuko's uncle Iroh, endeavor to capture the Avatar in order to restore his honor and return to the Fire Nation.

Aang is a fun loving kid who needs to learn to grow up fast.

The story at first glance doesn't sound like anything innovative, but it's the execution that really matters. For a kids series that airs on Nickelodeon, it deals with some pretty heavy themes such as war, love, death, loss, and a host of other things. It also has a continuous story line rather than a more episodic format. Characters also mature, develop, and change as the series goes on. In fact, the characters and their interaction is what really makes this series shine. Each character is easily identifiable by the first episode and it's amazing to see how they grow. Twelve-year-old Aang, who is the main character, the Avatar, and the last airbender (that's a lot of pressure!), is a fun loving and goofy kid who adds a special charm to the series, but also deals with the weight of his past mistakes and the weight of his current responsibility. He never gets emo and certainly never gets too goofy, but has the right balance. He grows a lot throughout the series as he gets a better idea of the urgency of his situation. He gets more confident, mature, and authoritative as the series goes by. He even gets better at fighting. Other characters are the same way. Aang's main love interest is fourteen-year-old Katara (I thought monks were celibate!), a young water bender who still has a lot to learn. She's an incredibly strong female character without being too feministic. Fifteen-year-old Sokka, her brother, isn't much of a fighter, but his smarts and quick wit gets them out of tough situations all the time. He's also the shows main comic relief character. Toph, a twelve-year-old earth bender who joins their team in the second season, is blind and has a really big mouth. She's not just all talk though. She's a formidable fighter. One of the most interesting characters in the series is Zuko, the banished Fire Nation prince. In the beginning he's set up as the shows main antagonist, but it's obvious that he's more than just a guy who's bad for the sake of being bad. He's incredibly conflicted and has a complicated past. The strange rival relationship that develops between Zuko and Aang is an interesting one that goes in intriguing directions during the show's progression. His uncle, Iroh, is a kind and wise man who, on one hand, is basically a saint who can warm your heart, but on the other hand is also a formidable fighter. Many of the fire nation characters aren't simply portrayed as evil despite their nationality. They each have their pasts and loyalties that are developed throughout the series. This series shows the contradiction within humans that makes us capable of good on one hand, but also evil on the other. Why do seemingly "good" people do bad things to others? The answer is never simple There's tons of others: such as Zuko's sister Azula, Zhao, Long Feng, Ty Lee, and Mae, but I can't get into them all. The series is made up of three seasons referred to as "books." The first two seasons are each twenty episodes or "chapters," with the last season being twenty-one episodes. Each season is named after the element that Aang tries to learn. First season is water, second is earth, and third is fire. Each season has incredibly awesome finales. The finale's manage to be very different from each other so there's no repetition. First season ends with the siege of a well fortified city that the gang must defend. The second season finale is a surprisingly complex political conspiracy. The third season's finale is an epic final battle. The show also manages to get better with each season. The first season is entertaining, but can have a more noticeable Nickelodeon type goofiness to it. It also contains more filler episodes (but also some of the best episodes of the series). The character development and storytelling get more focused and well-written in the second season, even having improved "filler" episodes. The third season gets even better, and even darker, as characters go through huge metamorphoses and prepare to achieve their goal, all leading up to an incredibly satisfying ending with most, if not all, of the loose ends tied up. The series does have a few "throwaway" episodes that are almost completely superfluous, such as The Great Divide in the first season, Tales of Ba Sing Se in the second, and The Painted Lady in the third, but other than that each episode adds something to the story and character development. Overall this series has wonderful storytelling, feels like a grand adventure, and has memorable characters.

Zuko using firebending

ANIMATION AND SOUND
Being an American cartoon, one should expect pretty good quality animation. The thing about most American cartoons these days is that they're smoothly animated, but tend to be simplistic. Avatar is a series that not only has fantastic animation, but incredibly beautiful artistry as well. A person with a trained eye will be able to spot animation shortcuts in the first season, but it still contains fast-paced action scenes with fighting styles based on real-life martial arts, great bending effects, gorgeous backgrounds, and hardly a lack of character movement. The animation improves with each season, not only getting larger in scale, but also doing some interesting camera angles to make it feel like there's really a camera out there filming all of this. It can especially help with the artistry, camera angles and colors all being used to create some beautiful scenes. The environments the character visits are varied and beautiful, often times based on real-life locations that the creators photographed. Each nation has it's own style that gives your eye something new to look at in each season. Sometimes details with the backgrounds, especially interiors, that seem easy to miss are somehow never missed by the animators. Character designs have a noticeably anime appearance, but usually more subtle. They are each distinct and visually appealing, there's no gender ambiguity in any of the characters, and there's even noticeable physical changes to characters as the series goes on. Aang gets buffer, some character's hair get longer as time goes on, and little details in the designs that seem easy to miss are always there. The music in the series fit each scene well. I can listen to a song from the series and be able to imagine the scene it plays in even if I don't remember it on the top of my head. The music is never exaggerated too much and they even make good use of silence in order to enhance the mood of a scene. The voice acting is absolutely top-notch in this show. Not a single performance is bad. Everything, from everyday conversations to more intense emotions are convincingly and realistically acted. They used actual 12-13 year-olds to play as twelve-year-old characters like Aang and Toph. Zack Tyler Eisen is an incredibly talented actor and it's hard to imagine Aang as lovable without him. That age is usually about the time that a young boy's voice starts changing, but his actually manages to help the show. As Aang gets more mature, confident, and authoritative, his voice reflects that, so it's helpful that Zack's voice is a bit more mature sounding. Mae Whitman as Katara, Jack DeSena as Sokka, Dante Basco as Zuko, and Mako as Iroh are all pretty unforgettable. Grey DeLisle has a deliciously evil voice that suits Azula perfectly, and Mark Hamill's Fire Lord Ozai is intimidating and scary. It's amazing that Hamill has such range, since Ozai sounds nothing like either the Joker or Luke Skywalker. Each actor sounds the part and bring the show to life.

Toph becomes a member of the Avatar team in season two.

OVERALL
This is perhaps the best American animated series to come out in the last decade. It's well written, gorgeous, has unforgettable characters, and eargasmic voice acting. I highly recommend this series to anyone who likes animation.

The gang visits many beautiful and varied locations during their travels. The artwork is gorgeous.

PROS
- Well written story and characters
-Deals with pretty heavy themes for a kids show
-Gorgeous animation and art
-Satisfying ending
-Terrific voice-acting

CONS
-A few superfluous episodes here and there
-Some contrivances used to move the plot along