~ essay on the greatest American animated series of all time — Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Lessons, Adventure, Action, Companionship
Avatar — at surface, a rather simplistic and childish cartoon show from early aughts Nickolodeon — is full of heartfelt lessons. Not unlike the original serial adventure cartoons and comics, like Jonny Quest or Spider-Man {or the many other modern toons that fit to such molds}, every episode contains a moral. These moralizing threads are woven throughout Aang’s journey, alongside water tribesmen Katara and Sokka, later earth-toppling Toph, the little blind girl who is probably pound-for-pound the strongest force in the whole world. Over three seasons {61 episodes} of hero’s journey arcs for the child air nomad Aang, ‘The Last Airbender’ — and Avatar, the one slated to bring balance to a world where four nations, one for each element, battle it out for parity, or supremacy, or peace — creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko build a world of adventure, action, and hearty companionship.
Structured like a prototypical pre-teen adventure show, “Team Avatar” — consisting of funloving, naive, and golden-hearted Aang, motherly moral compass Katara and inventively comedic Sokka, and the brashly confident Toph — ventures through a war-torn realm solving problems. 100 years into a war initiated by the Fire Nation — against the Earth Kingdom, Water Tribes and Air Nomads {now exterminated..} — the world is decidedly unbalanced, full of oppressed, exhausted, afraid or altogether ruined peoples, cultures, nations.
Elemental “bending” provides the key to understanding the world; certain persons within each nation are afforded the power to control their element, for the sake of security and invention. And inevitably, war. The Avatar — master of all four elements — is continuously reincarnated into the world, cycling rebirth as a person somewhere among the four elements. Their role — now Aang’s — is to provide balance between the elements, and the nations. Aang’s journey begins as he emerges from ice, asleep and out of the game of said balancing for over 100 years, with the Fire Nation in a position of geopolitical dominance.
What the show does superbly, among many things, is build out Aang’s character — and he and his companions’ true-hearted philosophies — via real action in the world. Their diverse band takes to traveling the lands and training Aang’s Avatar capabilities, like a Dungeons & Dragons adventuring party or Star Trek crew — that is, running into, getting caught up in, going out of their way to help all kinds of peoples along their way to their greater quest, the classic one: saving the world. Aang, Katara, Sokka, Toph, and many other side characters they meet and befriend along the way {even including early rival Prince Zuko} actually engage in that world, with the people they are tasked with eventually saving; introduced to different cultures and myths and perspectives on everything from the war to what the role of the Avatar should be, a living, breathing realm is mapped out.
It is a dangerous and exciting place, full of strange multi-combo animals {Sky bison, turtle ducks, eel hounds, platypus bears!} and incredibly detailed element-bending animations and styles. Not to be discounted in the critical acclaim of the series is the excellent action sequences and fight scenes between top-tier benders. The imaginative bending battles of Aang and Zuko and Azula and Iroh and Katara and especially Toph, alongside the magnificent battles in the final episodes are some of my favorite fights in any show — anime or otherwise. The high-flying elemental combat, along with the narrative stakes, are what makes Avatar special.
In the wide-ranging storyline, harsh lessons are earned by trickster, never-wanna-grow-up Aang, as he is faced with the consequences of tyranny and slavery and genocide that his ancestral absence and pathological power-grabbing from the Fire Nation has wrought; he takes on his responsibility with grace, his face casting an unselfconscious grin upon everyone he meets, seeking to understand and to help. Carrying on as truly the last of his noble tradition of air nomadism, Aang’s arc is one of building his childlike compassion steadfastly and conscientiously into the world, whether it takes to it easily or not. Or whether it is easy for him or not.
Overtly rationalistic, soldierly Sokka learns early of the err of his defaulted misogynistic ways; he proceeds to prove himself time and time again to the many benders he fights with and comes across, as a capable foe even without it. Healer archetype Katara, fiercely protective of her found family in Aang and Toph and others they meet, wields her water-bending power the same way she does her heart — peacefully, trustingly; but she struggles with fears of loss and betrayal, the draw of revenge and the potential expediency of blood-letting tempt her. Toph, disabled and thoughtlessly sheltered by her parents, hardly lets such things hold her back; tough beyond belief for her frame, powerful Toph most of all yearns for companionship — and that is just what Team Avatar delivers to her.
Katara and Sokka’s arcs, alongside Toph’s {and Zuko’s} all deal with coming to terms with the absences or shortcomings — or straight up injustices — of their family circumstances. Their parentage guides them onto paths from a young age — and it is through their journey alongside Aang, through the world and its peoples, that they come to resolution. To peace. And that peace has everything to do with the bonds they build into one another. And the lessons they learn. Aang and his ride-or-die companions are given insights into the human condition from witnessing and taking part in the struggles of people; consistently non-obvious, especially to a child, these lessons take their form before Aang and construct a worldview to culminate in his final battle against the corrupted Fire Lord Ozai:
People are complicated, and can change / the *right* thing is never the most expedient, and may only be found along the path of most resistance / it is beyond alright — even imperative — to rely on others, to trust your companions to help you along your journey — even if they are unproven, or opposed you before… and the most important family in your life is the one you choose.
Yeah, I know. It is just “the real treasure was the friends they made along the way” stuff. It is. But you see, what I love most about Avatar, having watched it as a kid when it aired and again now, is just how realistic yet concisely the narrative delivers such cliched companionship. It’s sincere; it is believable. And a joy to experience. What is so fulfilling about the series {similar imo to the anime Fullmetal Alchemist, which I find to be comparable and equally excellent} is that ALL of the principal characters are given their due time. Every character has a myriad of powerful or artful moments — amongst the world, with each other, against their enemies. Protagonist Aang has an individually distinctive relationship with Katara, Sokka, Toph and Zuko — and then Katara and Toph have their own bond, Katara and Zuko have their long, emotional road to travel, Sokka and Zuko even get their high stakes buddy mission.
The real quest for the Avatar, for Aang, is cultivating such companionships, helping everyone he comes across — regardless of their original position in the larger war — and that of nurturing his own heart, for the battles and balancing to come. In its underlying heart, through such characters, that is just what Avatar does.
Paths to Redemption
Avatar builds out what may be the best Redemption Arc of any show I have yet seen — that of the story of scarred, unyielding, firebending Prince Zuko. While much of the spotlight belongs to Team Avatar, to me the beating heart of the series belongs to Zuko and Iroh. A banished prince, obstinate in his quest and his disgraced yet graceful uncle, a former Fire Nation general with a dark past, make up the parallel quest to Aang’s roaming cavalcade of heroics. As Zuko hunts the Avatar to regain his honor and rightful place beside his father, the Fire Lord, we are delivered the truth of our two ‘antagonists’ and their intersecting path with our heroes.
Aang and Zuko’s backstories are revealed in the same episode, as parallel yet disparate journeys. Aang, 100 years ago — still just a kid and not yet ready to take on the immense responsibility of being Avatar — runs away from his masters at the air temple. Caught in a storm, Aang enters the Avatar state unconsciously and seals himself in ice… where he waits, locked in time, for 100 years.
Zuko, only a year or so ago, taking part in the royal war council for the first time, speaks out against an elder general’s plan, one that is willing to sacrifice the lives of citizens to gain an objective. As a result of his seeming disrespect, he is challenged to an ‘Agni Kai’, a firebending trial by combat, and is surprised to see his father as his opponent. Refusing to raise his hand against his father he is burned, forever scarred, and then banished.
As an impossible forever-quest, Zuko is tasked by Fire Lord Ozai, his father, in hunting down the Avatar {whose whereabouts obviously have been unknown for these 100 years} and capturing them for the glory of winning their war. Only then could he return to the Fire Nation with his honor intact. Iroh, brother to Ozai and uncle to Zuko, joins him on his ill-fated quest as a soon-to-become surrogate father — ever working and hoping to calm Zuko and turn him away from his confusion and anger at being banished. Thus, the dynamics of the show’s core are laid out. Aang journeys over the land, across all nations, meeting and helping her peoples > while Zuko passionately chases Aang to regain his lost position > and Iroh subtly teaches Zuko, with word and action, of a different path, a better one.
We soon find that Aang and Zuko are rivals but not enemies. Through their repeated conflicts, Aang’s escapes and Zuko’s failures, the world’s shifting conditions, their own changing emotions and realizations — buffered by Iroh’s guidance alongside Team Avatar’s worldly travels — we find the true path before each of them. One of balance, transcending honor for justice and peace, slicing through traditional conflicts to arrive at an alliance that is both necessary and righteous.
The narrative plays out beautifully. Zuko’s path to redemption is not without obstacles, hidden growths and setbacks, late-stage reversals, further layers of betrayal to Iroh, Katara, himself. His sister Princess Azula {voiced by the talented Grey Griffin}, firebending prodigy and queen liaress, proves to be the saga’s most intriguing — and terrifying — villain {even beyond Fire Lord Ozai, voiced by the great Mark Hamill}. She is introduced in Book 2, and is immediately showcased as a hyperfocused, cold-blooded little tyrant, more pathological than the ever-conflicted Zuko, and therefore much more effective in her hunt for the Avatar. With the help of Uncle Iroh and Aang’s companions — their character and their deeds in the world — Zuko comes to bear the weight of his past more graciously, seeing beyond his fatherland and his father, eventually consciously working to do the right thing in a striking volte-face against everything he had committed himself to up to that point. He finds himself again, sees his destiny for what it really is — joining the Avatar to help restore balance to the world — and then follows through on that path to the very end. *Redemption Arc complete.* It is beautiful, as I said, and my favorite thing of all about the saga.
In the final picture of Zuko and Azula’s arcs, one can see that the difference between them, despite their apparently starkly different natures, is that of the presence of companionship, or love, within their life. A family of support and wisdom. Love from peers and mentors. Experiences among the people on the ground, well below the king’s courts. These things appear to be the decisive factor in their respective pathing to the light and dark side. Zuko had it with Iroh, who helped him along his realizations, as a child of tyrants and conquerors, his journey back from the abyss of pathology is borne out of constant struggle; Azula did not, she had no one. And so, she never turns away from her empire, her father’s legacy, her own narcissism. As a result, Azula’s elitism, her isolation and her invulnerability, all her most dire character flaws come to dominate her person by the end, sealing her fate. Zuko’s redemption comes in the integration of his drives and his flaws. His desire to regain his honor is redirected — like the lightning bending that Iroh teaches him — onto a better path, a destiny of his own making.
~ Zuko to his father Ozai
~ Zuko to Aang and Team Avatar
The Wisdom of Balance
Despite loving them all, Uncle Iroh is actually my favorite character in the series. His presence as a source of both wisdom and comedy, grace and power, fatherhood and unclehood {a mythically distinctive separation from these two roles!} — is just awesome. Maybe more than anything else, after watching all of the Avatar saga, one wishes to sit down and have a cup of tea with Iroh.
~
The wisdom of Iroh is profound, and laced throughout the saga’s run. One of the most ingenious ways, from Uncle Iroh and others, that the series conveys timeless truths and big character-turning moments — is through its core conceit: the nature of the elements, hidden bending techniques, how they all combine to make the world as we see it. We understand from the show’s intro that the Avatar is meant to bring balance by wielding all four of the elements, allowing them to effectively fight against and defeat any potential power-hungry conquerors, only ever able to bend a single element, that try to unbalance the world. The Avatar’s mastery of all is one critical bending technique, others come from Iroh and Toph and Katara, in their own respective arts. Iroh teaches Zuko how to bend lightning ~ a more volatile aspect of firebending ~ who then also teaches it to Aang; Toph invents metalbending, identifying the components of earth within the structures, to escape a dire situation; Katara learns bloodbending from a wayward elder, the dark side of the peaceful, supposedly non-lethal waterbending. Lightning and metalbending prove to be pivotal in the final fights against the Fire Nation’s top benders, such as Ozai and Azula, and against their superior technologies with their war balloons. Bloodbending on the other hand, provides Katara with a most important inner obstacle, to restrict herself from using it to defile and kill her foes, even if they may deserve it.
Iroh, in his many witticisms and shrewd guidance of Zuko back onto the path of goodness, provides his best insights when speaking upon the importance of balance, concerning one’s own soul, their energy, and the elements and nations themselves:
“Fire is the element of power. The people of the fire nation have desire and will, and the energy and drive to achieve what they want. Earth is element of substance. The people of the earth kingdom are diverse and strong. They are persistent and enduring. Air is the element of freedom. The air nomads detached themselves from worldly concerns and found peace in freedom. Also they apparently had pretty good senses of humor! … Water is the element of change. The people of the water tribe are capable of adapting to many things. They have a deep sense of community and love that holds them together through many things.”
~ Iroh on the four elements
We come to find in Iroh’s past there is great conflict and pain, resolved as of now from time and experience, but never fully healed; in a previous generation of the ongoing war, he lost the decisive battle — the siege of Ba Sing Se, the key city in the Earth Kingdom — but more imperatively, he lost his only son in the fighting. Thus, Iroh’s wisdom has been earned through painstaking experiences of his own.
“Ever since I lost my son, I think of you as my own.” ~ Uncle Iroh to Zuko {😭}.
More layers to his character are revealed with his actions in the Order of the White Lotus and tales of his own ventures to the indigenous fire peoples and their coexistence with the two remaining dragons in existence, the original firebenders. Iroh’s strength, both physical and spiritual, is borne of a fraught life, hardened yet loving. He now seeks balance with the Avatar, Zuko, the other nations. It is through Zuko’s redemptive transformation, his son in all but name, that Iroh hopes to find peace for his nation. And for himself.
~
Aang’s various ‘vision quests’ come in the decisive moments of each Book of the saga — through conversations with his past selves, such as Roku and Kyoshi, facing off against the daemonic “Facestealer” in the pit, learning of chakras with Guru Pathik, sailing off with the great Lion Turtle — and provide similar bouts of resolute wisdom on his path to mastering all the elements. Iroh and Roku and Pathik and the Lion Turtle all bear the same message, weighted with knowledge and the cycles of the past, on to the youngsters of the next generation within the world, the ever-present conflicts between the nations and their respective elements always threatening on the horizon: that of balance in all things.
Not centrism, or indecisiveness, or acquiescence to your foes — no, instead the saga of Avatar: The Last Airbender presents a vision of an empire gone too far, a war and campaign of oppression and injustice in need of a swift and violent conclusion, a world, divided and dissociated, with too many people suffering — and too many peoples gone entirely. All this is too far out of balance to be considered anything but unconscionable. And so Aang and Zuko and our cast of conscientious characters must play an active role — as liberators, defenders and protectors, balance-seekers unto a world set on fire. Threads of anti-imperialism and anti-racism are laid bare; themes of egalitarianism and mutual cooperation, of the possibility of redemption and the revolutionary necessity for it from out of the currently existing power structure, are all here, in a kid’s show! Alongside monologues on destiny, and of the power of the energy flowing through one’s body, genocide is openly discussed as a tactic the Fire Nation can use for their victory — against the Air Nomads already, and against the Earth Kingdom if our heroes were to fail. Aang and Zuko respond to the wicked violence from Ozai and Azula with virtuous resistance, consciously choosing to return their opponent’s death-driven fascism with newfound harmony, sparing their lives to prevent their own corruptions as they take on their duties as leaders for the new world.
~ Wan Shi Tong, the librarian owl
This is the balance of Avatar; these are the timeless truths presented relatively simplistically, alongside fun animation and whacky adventurism. I think it is a message kids should certainly hear, even in their cartoons.
It’s easy to see why the show endeared itself to so many people in the short time it was on the air. The story, the characters, and the visuals are top-notch. In my opinion, there are few series that reach the heights Avatar reached, and none of them are made for children. In 61 episodes, the series brings us incredible heroes, terrifying villains, wildly diverse and important storylines engaging with the horrors of war, imperialism, and oppression. Building its world amidst grand animation and great music, fun side adventures, and one hell of an ending, the saga is holistic, completely realized. Avatar is essentially a perfect show, full of pathos, of heart. Creators DiMartino and Konietzko continue to reach new audiences with their mythos today. Here’s to Avatar: The Last Airbender’s endurance, and to hoping future generations continue to find it and experience it themselves. ~
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