Avatar Book One “The Blue Spirit”
06 Apr 2011 Leave a Comment
in Project Avatar, TV Shows Tags: Aang, Avatar, Katara, Sokka, The Last Airbender, Zhang, Zuko
This episode is an excellent follow-up to the last episode, “The Storm”.
In this episode, Aang and Zuko work together, without ever knowing it — well, without Aang knowing it. After Aang is captured by the Fire Nation (while bringing back some frozen frogs for Katara and Sokka), a man in a blue mask sneaks into the fortress and frees him. This man doesn’t speak, but he works with Aang to escape from the Fire Nation. Right at the last second, though, they don’t make it over the last wall, and they’re trapped by soldiers. The blue-masked man brings his swords to Aang’s neck, prompting Zhang to let them both go. After being hit by an arrow, the blue-masked man passes out. Aang goes to help him, and he sees a scar underneath the right eye socket. He lifts off the mask and discovers that it’s Prince Zuko!
Aang could run and save himself, or he could also save Zuko. He almost leaves alone — this is the villain who has been chasing him all over the place. But he thinks about how he just saved him from the Fire Nation fortress, and Aang does the right thing and brings Zuko to safety.
When Zuko wakes up, Aang tells a story about how he loved playing with one of his best friends, who was from the Fire Nation — and he wonders if he and Zuko would have been friends had they been given the chance. This scene foreshadows a possible friendship between the two. Building upon the stories from the last episode, it provides even more depth to Zuko’s character, making him even less the heartless villain. Zuko’s last scene in the episode is genius for this cause. He’s resting on his ship and he looks at the Fire Nation flag, and he bitterly turns away. One must infer what he was thinking, but I think it’s pretty obvious that he may have been resentful at his people — thinking about how a Fire Nation boy a hundred years ago could be friends with an Airbender.
The content of this and the last episode is what I love about this show. The show could have kept a predictable and boring trajectory of the hero and the villain, always fighting against each other. Everyone does that. But in this show, they’ve started weaving the two together, showing their similarities, showing their depth, making you feel for both the hero and the villain — changing the perceptions of the words “hero” and “villain”. As I concluded the last episode, it starts showing how everyone has their own backstory; everyone is not who they appear to be.
Avatar Book One “The Great Divide”
02 Apr 2011 Leave a Comment
in Project Avatar, TV Shows Tags: Aang, Appa, Avatar, Gan Jin, Katara, Sokka, The Last Airbender, Zhang
Quote of the Episode:
Aang: “Harsh words won’t solve problems. Actions will.”
Aang and the gang arrive at The Great Divide, the world’s largest canyon. They are about to just fly over on Appa, but right before they leave, a man runs up, telling them that they better not be taking his tour guide. The tribes then appear, the Zhangs and the Gan Jins, feuding over the tour guide — and fighting about pretty much anything else. Aang, who settled an argument between Katara and Sokka this morning, tries to settle this feud, too, and suggests (well, commands) that the two tribes share the tour guide and cross the canyon together.
Things are going decently until a Canyon Crawler attacks the tour guide and breaks his arms. Aang successfully gets rid of the beast, but with the tour guide neutralized, the leaders of the tribes begin arguing again. Aang splits them up, hoping that Katara and Sokka can find out why they’re fighting.
The events of this episode are definitely nothing new. Parables have told about feuding families and the ridiculous reverence to some event, far in the past, that keeps the families angry at each other. Even when Katara and Sokka are split up, they relate to the tribes’ stories, making them argue with each other when they finally rejoin again.
Seeing that it’s just that story that makes the families fight, Aang retells the story, saying that he was actually there (since he is 112 years old). As the tribes believe his story, they can finally move past the past and establish a friendship for the future. However, Aang lied. I’m not sure that this is the best message for kids, lying to solve the problem, but Aang saw the pettiness in their feuds and now that they’ve forgiven the past, they can respect each other as they are presently — which is a good message.
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