Avatar: The Last Airbender rewatch

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Ever since I've known her DD said she doesn't watch animated shows because she just doesn't like it. There was always more than enough other stuff to watch, so I never pushed. But recently LK came by for a visit and was shocked that DD hadn't seen "Avatar: The Last Airbender" and managed to convince her to give it a chance. So the past 2-3 weeks we've been watching A:TLA, and DD likes it :) I hadn't rewatched it for years because I was worried it wouldn't be as good as I remember, but fortunately that worry was unfounded. It does such a great job with its characters and the worldbuilding, and both of those carry the plot well.
It was funny to see what I remembered and what I didn't. There were even some season 1 episodes I hadn't seen before. Most episodes I remembered a lot of, but sometimes I was missing important details and those were then funny to guess. It was also interesting to see which plot developments DD anticipated; a lot more than I did the first time I watched it, but then I was a lot younger.

Some comments/nitpicks:
- Why did the Fire Nation imprison Hama and the other waterbenders and not just kill them on the spot? Maybe they planned or tried to brainwash them and were just really bad at it.
- The invasion plan on the Day of the Black Sun was so stupid. How did they actually think they could succeed. Aang could have snuck in, fine, but the army?
- One detail I did not like about Zuko's redemption arc: when he found out that Avatar Roku was one of his great-grandfathers, which according to Iroh explained the conflict in him, that would maybe make sense in a family history kind of way, but I dislike the "it's in your blood" implication.
- I'm not a fan of the Katara/Aang pairing in the show. A few years later, maybe, fine, a good fic could sell me on it. But here she's fourteen and he's twelve, they're way too young. Aang having a crush on Katara, fine, but a relationship? …oh no I think I get A:tla shipping wars more now.
- Why did they wait until the comet appeared to fight Ozai? Okay, Aang arguably couldn't earlier because he was visiting the lion turtle, but even before that they seemed to aim for when the comet appeared, and that seems counter-productive. Same with the White Lotus – yes, Iroh and Jeong Jeong are stronger, but so are all firebenders stationed in Ba Sing Se.
- Speaking of the White Lotus, I would have really liked them to have female members.
- I really liked Zuko's final fight with Azula, but not so much Katara's fight with Azula. Instead of both of them really going head to head, it's more Azula attacking and Katara running, until she defeats her with a single move (which Azula should have been able to at least somewhat counter with firebreathing.) It wasn't bad, but not as good as I'd hoped.
Similarly with Aang's fight against Ozai – really, he gets shoved into a rock at the exact position to conveniently unlock his chakra so he enters the Avatar state? *sigh* Ah well, plot armor.
- DD got hung up on the fact that Aang, who struggles so much with being expected to kill Ozai, apparently doesn't even realize how many people died because of his actions at the North Pole. To me it seemed clear why he didn't think of it or thought it was something different. We also disagreed on Katara: DD found her very hard to understand, I didn't.
- Azula losing it: it does seem sudden. I can see that Mei and Ty Lee's betrayal would hit her hard, and that together with the pressure of suddenly becoming Fire Lord can certainly affect her a lot, but imo they should have prepared it a bit earlier.

Some more comments without any negativity:
- I thought Ursa killing Azulon to protect Zuko was fanon, I forgot it was actually pretty much canon, neat.
- I remembered that Zuko's redemption arc is really good, but I'm still really impressed by how well they did it. He gets everything he thinks he wanted and then realizes that it's not what he wanted after all, and he sincerely apologizes and tries to make amends. (I still think "it's the Avatar's destiny to kill the Fire Lord" was mostly very understandable self-justification so he didn't have to kill his father.)
- They are really good at showing that the majority of characters are very young, either kids or teenagers. Even Azula.
- Why did I not know that Ozai is voiced by Mark Hamill. Amazing.

And I'm probably forgetting a dozen more things I wanted to say, but I have to go to bed early today ^^

Comments

[skygiants]

I have always had a theory that some Fire Nation royal distant cousin is just really into designing increasingly elaborate and impractical prisons to account for EVERY DIFFERENT SPECIAL kind of bender, so they end up imprisoning everyone instead of executing them just to give him something to do.

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They had an earthbender special prison and one for waterbenders and Boiling Rock with its coolers is presumably mostly for firebenders - yep, that theory absolutely makes sense ^^