One of the tragedies of growing up is that everything seems smaller than you remember. That sandbox where you used to play God, a place where all was your domain, raised and destroyed by your hand? Small, sad and shallow now. Those buildings that seemed like magnificent towers, marvels of architecture and engineering? Just regular office buildings. And those TV shows that you used to love as a kid, where you got lost in a world of laughter and imagination? Disappointingly simple, in retrospect.
Most of the gems of childhood we remember so fondly serve mostly as sources of nostalgia for us when we get older, but when we hold them up to our world-wise eyes it seems almost laughable that we used to think them so marvelous. If we put our youthful memories through the sifter of our mature judgement, most of them fall through the cracks, grains of sand where we once thought there were jewels.
But sometimes, on rare, special occasions, something gets caught. A glint catches our eye, and to our astonishment we find at the bottom of the sieve not a clump of sand, nor a tangle of seaweed, but a diamond. And even more amazing, when we hold it up for inspection it’s not just a shiny rock, or a piece of glass - it’s real.
And that’s a cause for wonder - because to the old cynics that we are now, finding a diamond in the sand is infinitely more remarkable than it would have been to our dreamy-eyed younger selves, who saw the sparkles of precious stones everywhere we looked.
Avatar: The Last Airbender is such a diamond.
The animated kids show that originally aired on Nickelodeon from 2005 to 2008, that most of us remember mainly for the fact that immediately after we would go to the pool and pretend to be waterbenders, is one of those rare fragments of childhood that not only holds up to the test of time, but that becomes more spectacular the older you get.
For one, as an older viewer you’re better able to appreciate the quality, detail and beauty of the animation, as well as the sheer richness of the worldbuilding that the show performs.
Those visual elements are usually the most obvious contrasts that strike us between our childhood memories and our grown-up viewing experience, as we realize that our beloved cartoons were crudely drawn, monochromatic figures hopping around the same one-dimensional patch of grass all day long.
In Avatar: The Last Airbender, however, the animation is just as awesome as we remembered, with realistic and varied characters, strikingly beautiful and diverse settings, and of course the visceral coolness of the four types of bending.
[Note: For those of you who by some tragic misfortune were not exposed to Avatar: The Last Airbender during your younger years, the basic premise is that there are four elements - Air, Water, Earth and Fire - and that there are people who can “bend,” or essentially telekinetically manipulate, one of the elements. The Avatar is the only person who can master all four elements. Airbenders, waterbenders, earthbenders and firebenders live in four different, culturally and geographically distinct nations (Air Nomads, Water Tribes, Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation) based on their elements.]
Bending itself is an excellent magic system whose simplicity, rather than being a limiting or detracting factor, makes it easy to understand and appreciate and makes it all the more impressive and delightful when characters apply it in surprising and creative ways.
Meanwhile, the show does an incredible job of establishing an engrossing world with a well-developed history, rich cultural diversity, and detailed geography and character (not to mention bizarre but amusing taxonomy). The connections between the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender and real-world Asiatic and indigenous cultures - from the martial arts that influenced the four types of bending (e.g. Northern Shaolin Kung Fu, Earthbending) and the real-world spiritual traditions that inspired their Avatar counterparts (e.g. Taoism, Water Tribe spirits), to the parallels in physical locations (e.g. Forbidden City, Royal Palace of Ba Sing Se) and historical events (e.g. Fire Nation, Imperial Japan) - add another, fascinating level of depth for the older viewer to apprehend.
Beyond the visual experience and the captivating setting the show creates, the three-season plot is complex, surprising and rewarding.
[The Avatar, who is cyclically reincarnated into a different one of the four nations each time he or she dies, is tasked with keeping the balance between the four nations. In a 100-year period during which the Avatar disappeared, the Fire Nation began a successful war of conquest against the other nations. In the show, the Fire Nation is nearing victory in the war, and it’s up to the protagonists to stop it.]
While the conflict is easy to understand and the stakes are clear, the number and nature of challenges the characters face makes the plot unusually unpredictable and compelling for a kids’ animation. Rewatching the show for the first time since elementary school, having blissfully forgotten most of the storyline, I was pleasantly surprised and even shocked by many of its plot twists.
Finally, there are the two most important parts of the show, the reason it’s so loved by older audiences: its themes and its characters.
Avatar: The Last Airbender features classic themes like selfishness, jealousy, destiny, nature and spirituality, and love. Those are to be expected in an animated kids’ show. What fans like myself love, however, is that the show does not shy away from touching on much heavier, more complex, mature themes - including, but not limited to, genocide; imperialism & colonialism; incarceration; class inequality & discrimination; totalitarianism, propaganda, indoctrination and censorship; and the abuses of industrialism. While staying appropriate for younger audiences, the show is not afraid to discuss real, serious issues - and in doing so, it creates a far more compelling, multidimensional, and thoughtful experience than the glossy, simplified, idealized conflicts more common among shows for comparable audiences.
The plot is set in a hundred-year-war, and the show treats that war honestly. Yes, it has cool fight scenes, a classic hero and villain, and an overarching destiny-guided, restore-balance type mission. But it also shows the burdens of war for ordinary people, and the consequences that mistakes the main characters make have for people other than themselves.
Refugees flee from an encroaching, abusive colonial power, only to end up living in the slums of the grand city where they seek asylum. Oppressed people learn to live under exploitation and fear, and have long lost hope after having seen the futility of resistance. Innocent people and communities are caught in the crossfire in the struggles between the protagonists and antagonists. People, disillusioned by years of brutal war with no respite, turn against their heroes. And when those heroes fail, people are taken prisoner, villages are burned, and cities and armies fall.
That level of nuance and realism, and refusal to oversimplify into simple good-versus-evil narratives, is also reflected in Avatar: The Last Airbender’s deservedly lauded characters.
The show features a diverse cast of characters, many of whom fall outside and challenge conventional norms. The primary protagonist is Aang, a 12-year-old, bald, nonviolent vegetarian monk who throughout the show is indeed heroic, but also playful, emotionally expressive and vulnerable. There are many strong female characters on the sides of both good and evil, some of whom align with traditional conceptions of femininity and some of whom reject them entirely, but all of whom are depicted and treated as capable and independent.
One of the greatest strengths of the show, however, is in how it deals with moral gray areas when it comes to its characters. With the exception of one or two cases, virtually no person, group or institution in the show can be labeled as pure good or evil, and almost all of the characters are extraordinarily dynamic.
The Water Tribe and Earth Kingdom are cast as nations on the side of good in the show’s central conflict, yet we see sexism, aggressive militarism, totalitarianism and corruption in some of their institutions. The imperialist Fire Nation is undoubtedly the side of evil in the story, but we are shown the humanity of its ordinary people, none of whom are inherently villainous or even malicious. We see Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom families alike shattered by the tragedies of war, and communities on both sides subject to the depredations of the military state and the military-industrial complex.
Characters who ostensibly fight for freedom against the Fire Nation are revealed to have morally questionable motives or methods, and some characters who fight for the Fire Nation are horrified by the evils committed in its name and resist the perversion of its identity into one of domination and self-assigned superiority.
Multiple characters undergo significant changes in character or values, and struggle internally with what they think is right. Even the characters we revile, who actively embrace the worst impulses of war and do so throughout the show, have their complicated backgrounds, insecurities and roots exposed to the audience.
Because the characters are so complex, and therefore so real, their fears, hopes, joys, and struggles are all the more poignant and powerful for the audience to watch play out. Certain emotional climaxes are so subtly achieved and built up to that they are more moving for older viewers, and reduce grown fans to tears. The characters’ growth, love and loss, as much as the plot, are what makes the show thrilling, heartbreaking, and empowering all at the same time.
Even with all this weight, however, the show manages to stay lighthearted and fun - with plenty of adorable moments and comic relief. It is, after all, a kids’ animation - but the thematic sophistication and character depth is what makes young adults appreciate it so deeply.
This is why I love Avatar: The Last Airbender. This is why, over a decade after first seeing it, it hasn’t lost its appeal. It’s a show that embraces complexity, is unafraid of being real, and uses that authenticity to deliver an emotional, powerful, and truly epic adventure.
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