The Real Avatar
Just finished watching all three seasons of Avatar: The Last Airbender over the course of the past two or three weeks. Holy cow, how have I missed out on stuff like this in my life until now!? I mean, sure, I was aware this beast existed. I just wasn't aware of how GOOD it was until I got seriously suckered into it.
First things first. Shippers are funny people. This has nothing to do with the series itself, of course, but my, it's amazing what rose-colored glasses people can wear while watching something. Perhaps I had a slightly unfair advantage going in since I had been preemptively spoiled by the last five seconds of the last episode before even going into it (I could NOT resist reading om_nom_berries' writeup, I confess, have mercy on me), but still, fandom is funny. Seriously.
But more importantly, man, I have to admit that I was really REALLY impressed at how interesting the show was and how deep the concepts were... especially for a cartoon show. It harkened juuuuuust a little bit back to another favorite Batman: The Animated Series. Sure, Avatar wasn't that dark, but it DID deal with a lot of very deep issues: genuine sacrifice, conditional vs. unconditional love, losing everything, imminent danger, discrimination, genocide, destiny, revenge and that's really just scratching the surface of the show. Sure, it has a fair bit of comedy that makes it easier to swallow... and the whole thing is compressed into an unrealistic timeline. But I felt that the writing never placed them in completely, totally contrived danger where, "Oh hey, we're only introducing this plot setup so that we can teach the kiddies a moral lesson here." There might have been one or two perhaps, but I think it definitely portrayed things well.
I'll have to admit that I was a bit skeptical of the show in the very early episodes, but after understanding the Anime Rule of Five-where you NEED to watch five episodes of a show before you truly understand where it's going-I'm glad I didn't give up on it. I was also pleasantly surprised to see how all of the characters grew over the course of the show. It's very subtle, but even as a non-artist I could tell that the show itself was DRAWN in such a way to add maturity to the characters as they went through their experiences. I really do love three-dimensional characters, and that helped a lot too.
Seriously, I feel as if fanfiction must be written now. It's been too long since I scratched that itch.
First things first. Shippers are funny people. This has nothing to do with the series itself, of course, but my, it's amazing what rose-colored glasses people can wear while watching something. Perhaps I had a slightly unfair advantage going in since I had been preemptively spoiled by the last five seconds of the last episode before even going into it (I could NOT resist reading om_nom_berries' writeup, I confess, have mercy on me), but still, fandom is funny. Seriously.
But more importantly, man, I have to admit that I was really REALLY impressed at how interesting the show was and how deep the concepts were... especially for a cartoon show. It harkened juuuuuust a little bit back to another favorite Batman: The Animated Series. Sure, Avatar wasn't that dark, but it DID deal with a lot of very deep issues: genuine sacrifice, conditional vs. unconditional love, losing everything, imminent danger, discrimination, genocide, destiny, revenge and that's really just scratching the surface of the show. Sure, it has a fair bit of comedy that makes it easier to swallow... and the whole thing is compressed into an unrealistic timeline. But I felt that the writing never placed them in completely, totally contrived danger where, "Oh hey, we're only introducing this plot setup so that we can teach the kiddies a moral lesson here." There might have been one or two perhaps, but I think it definitely portrayed things well.
I'll have to admit that I was a bit skeptical of the show in the very early episodes, but after understanding the Anime Rule of Five-where you NEED to watch five episodes of a show before you truly understand where it's going-I'm glad I didn't give up on it. I was also pleasantly surprised to see how all of the characters grew over the course of the show. It's very subtle, but even as a non-artist I could tell that the show itself was DRAWN in such a way to add maturity to the characters as they went through their experiences. I really do love three-dimensional characters, and that helped a lot too.
Seriously, I feel as if fanfiction must be written now. It's been too long since I scratched that itch.