Avatar 1x01-2x20 (no spoilers)
Mon, Dec. 18th, 2006 03:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterI'm not sure if I'm up to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
rilina's level of episode mainlining yet, but I feel watching 40 half-hour episodes in about four days is pretty up there.
Avatar: The Last Airbender is a cartoon running on Nickelodeon about a world in which there are four types of "bending" (think elemental magic): fire, water, air and earth. As the little intro spiel to each episode says, the Fire nation, Earth kingdom, Air nomads and Water tribes all lived in peace until the Fire nation decided to conquer everything about a hundred years ago. Normally, there would be someone called an avatar who could practice all four types of bending to keep the peace. The avatar is reincarnated into each tribe cyclically, but when the Fire nation invaded, the avatar never appeared. A hundred years later, Water tribe teenager Katara and her brother Sokka find the twelve-year-old avatar Aang and his flying bison in an iceberg.
Now they're on a mission to get Aang trained in all four types of bending while also trying to avoid being captured by the Fire nation and trying to prevent the Fire nation from taking over the world.
Whew! End plot exposition!
The series is very heavily influenced by anime in terms of character design and plot arcs, but I didn't actually feel that it was that much like anime. Of course, this is probably because the last time I watched American cartoons was.... eh.... Powerpuff Girls. From assorted comments that I've seen, it seems as though most American cartoons don't even have plot arc.
I watched season one (each season is 20 eps.) and was thoroughly unimpressed. I didn't like the voice actors, the individual episodes were too easily wrapped up with digestible moral lessons, the plot itself seemed rather obvious, and everything felt too easy. I think I was expecting something more like FMA, which is a pretty difficult standard to live up to!
Season two is much improved; there are now about an equal number of male and female characters, the plot arcs have gotten less predictable and more complex, and the characters themselves feel more real and less shoehorned into whatever the moral lesson of the week needs them to be. I'm still not completely fannish, but it is now on my season pass list.
Outside of plot and character, the thing that impresses me most about Avatar is the worldbuilding. It isn't as original and complex as Sherwood Smith's Inda or other such Giant Fantasy Tomes, but it's actually very well-done in terms of cultural appropriation. The entire world is based on Asia and other Asiatic-Pacific cultures; the Water tribes seem to be based on Inuit culture and the Air nomads feel Tibetan, but the Earth kingdom and Fire nation cultures are largely drawn from east Asia.
I have to admit, when I first caught glimpses of the Fire nation, I rolled my eyes because it seemed to be a mishmash of Chinese and Japanese influences. I also rolled my eyes because at first, it seemed like the Chinese/Japanese-based culture of the Fire nation was evil (this was in the first episode, before exposure to all the other cities and cultures, all Asian/Asiatic-Pacific-based). But after watching for a while, I have a lot more respect for the show.
First, there's just the fact that each element bending is based on a very specific martial art, not just a handwavy version of karate or kung fu. Water = tai chi, earth is another one that I forgot, fire is Shaolin kung fu, and air is ... eh, another one I forgot. But they had little extras on it with a martial arts expert, which was really neat!
Then, even though the Fire nation and Earth kingdoms don't correspond to specific cultures, each city that we encounter dervies its costumes and styles from very specific cultures, and very specific time periods in that culture. I have to say, that was what really impressed me -- Toph's city was based on Tang dynasty China, Ba Sing Se is based on Qing dynasty China, there was this one city that was based on Korean culture, though I don't know enough to place the time period. And it was just so cool because I could tell by looking at what the people were wearing! I was having so much fun trying to ID dynasties during the whole thing!
I really was impressed by that, especially after reading a gazillion books on "World History of Costumes" or "World History of Blah" in which they go into different eras and geographies of assorted Western cultures but have one page on Chinese culture, assuming that the Blah dynasty represents all two thousand some years of Chinese culture.
And I really liked that they had that callout to Korea, which is too often overlooked, as well as to other non-east-Asian cultures like Tibet. I'm hoping that there were a whole lot more non-east-Asian cultures in there that I just didn't catch because I didn't know enough. Still, the majority of the cultural influences are Chinese, with maybe 30% being Japanese. But it's so rare to see even an accurate portrayal of Chinese cultures (the plural is there for a reason) that just that makes me happy. I'm really hoping that there are much more non-Chinese and non-Japanese cultures put in later, especially given the amount of research that the animators and directors seem to be doing.
It's also not just limited to the costumes, though that's what I notice the most because I like that kind of stuff. The scenery, particularly around the Air cities, look so Chinese -- the pine trees and clouds and ink-painting-esque mountains. There's Chinese and Japanese music and instruments and poetry referenced. Even the background music is often done with Chinese and Japanese instruments, and it sounds rather classical to me.
Then there's the actual cultures of the cities and the nations. I can't tell how accurately the Water tribe cultures draw from Inuit culture, because I don't know enough, nor do I know enough about Tibetan culture and Tibetan Buddhism to comment on the Air nomads, though I wish I did. But I had tons of fun with Ba Sing Se, which is one of the few cities that we really get to know well in the series.
Ba Sing Se is based on Qing dynasty China (1644-1911), and probably late Qing dynasty at that. The costumes seem to be spot-on, from the aristocratic ladies' hairpieces to the peasant styles. They even have the eunuchs in power! Ok, they aren't actually eunuchs; they're called the Dai Li here. But they are so based on the eunuchs in history! There's a puppet emperor who is more a figurehead who performs ceremonies, with the real power being with the head of the Dai Li; the puppet emperor is even dressed just like latter Qing dynasty emperors, complete with the little glasses! It is SO COOL. I mean -- you can tell that whoever wrote it and illustrated it and worked on it was really doing a lot of research. And they manage to incorporate it in a way so that their world is still separate from history, but based on it closely enough so that it doesn't feel like they're just randomly adopting "exotic" trappings.
Operating under the definition of "cultural appropriation" being "any dominant culture appropriating from a minority culture" (am not going to debate this in the comments or the definition of "dominant" or "minority" in general since I am tired, but with the caveat that I am assuming that "American culture" -- scarequotes to indicate that I know culture is not monolithic -- is the dominant world culture and definitely the dominant culture for the Nickelodeon audience), this is cultural appropriation done well and respectfully.
Again, in case it was lost in the ginormous parenthetical caveat: am not going to debate cultural appropriation in the comments.
Anyway, I think my only beef with it is that I'd like to see more Asian people in the voice acting, writing and directing credits, especially given the still-memorable lack of Asian people in Firefly. The voice acting in particular weirded me out when there were hillbilly-esque accents being done for people who looked Asian. But really, other than that -- the worldbuilding in this series fascinates me, and I only wish I knew more about other Asiatic-Pacific cultures to see where they were drawing things from.
And I am just so excited to have a series in which almost every single character has black hair and brown eyes and varying shades of skin.
rilina's level of episode mainlining yet, but I feel watching 40 half-hour episodes in about four days is pretty up there.Avatar: The Last Airbender is a cartoon running on Nickelodeon about a world in which there are four types of "bending" (think elemental magic): fire, water, air and earth. As the little intro spiel to each episode says, the Fire nation, Earth kingdom, Air nomads and Water tribes all lived in peace until the Fire nation decided to conquer everything about a hundred years ago. Normally, there would be someone called an avatar who could practice all four types of bending to keep the peace. The avatar is reincarnated into each tribe cyclically, but when the Fire nation invaded, the avatar never appeared. A hundred years later, Water tribe teenager Katara and her brother Sokka find the twelve-year-old avatar Aang and his flying bison in an iceberg.
Now they're on a mission to get Aang trained in all four types of bending while also trying to avoid being captured by the Fire nation and trying to prevent the Fire nation from taking over the world.
Whew! End plot exposition!
The series is very heavily influenced by anime in terms of character design and plot arcs, but I didn't actually feel that it was that much like anime. Of course, this is probably because the last time I watched American cartoons was.... eh.... Powerpuff Girls. From assorted comments that I've seen, it seems as though most American cartoons don't even have plot arc.
I watched season one (each season is 20 eps.) and was thoroughly unimpressed. I didn't like the voice actors, the individual episodes were too easily wrapped up with digestible moral lessons, the plot itself seemed rather obvious, and everything felt too easy. I think I was expecting something more like FMA, which is a pretty difficult standard to live up to!
Season two is much improved; there are now about an equal number of male and female characters, the plot arcs have gotten less predictable and more complex, and the characters themselves feel more real and less shoehorned into whatever the moral lesson of the week needs them to be. I'm still not completely fannish, but it is now on my season pass list.
Outside of plot and character, the thing that impresses me most about Avatar is the worldbuilding. It isn't as original and complex as Sherwood Smith's Inda or other such Giant Fantasy Tomes, but it's actually very well-done in terms of cultural appropriation. The entire world is based on Asia and other Asiatic-Pacific cultures; the Water tribes seem to be based on Inuit culture and the Air nomads feel Tibetan, but the Earth kingdom and Fire nation cultures are largely drawn from east Asia.
I have to admit, when I first caught glimpses of the Fire nation, I rolled my eyes because it seemed to be a mishmash of Chinese and Japanese influences. I also rolled my eyes because at first, it seemed like the Chinese/Japanese-based culture of the Fire nation was evil (this was in the first episode, before exposure to all the other cities and cultures, all Asian/Asiatic-Pacific-based). But after watching for a while, I have a lot more respect for the show.
First, there's just the fact that each element bending is based on a very specific martial art, not just a handwavy version of karate or kung fu. Water = tai chi, earth is another one that I forgot, fire is Shaolin kung fu, and air is ... eh, another one I forgot. But they had little extras on it with a martial arts expert, which was really neat!
Then, even though the Fire nation and Earth kingdoms don't correspond to specific cultures, each city that we encounter dervies its costumes and styles from very specific cultures, and very specific time periods in that culture. I have to say, that was what really impressed me -- Toph's city was based on Tang dynasty China, Ba Sing Se is based on Qing dynasty China, there was this one city that was based on Korean culture, though I don't know enough to place the time period. And it was just so cool because I could tell by looking at what the people were wearing! I was having so much fun trying to ID dynasties during the whole thing!
I really was impressed by that, especially after reading a gazillion books on "World History of Costumes" or "World History of Blah" in which they go into different eras and geographies of assorted Western cultures but have one page on Chinese culture, assuming that the Blah dynasty represents all two thousand some years of Chinese culture.
And I really liked that they had that callout to Korea, which is too often overlooked, as well as to other non-east-Asian cultures like Tibet. I'm hoping that there were a whole lot more non-east-Asian cultures in there that I just didn't catch because I didn't know enough. Still, the majority of the cultural influences are Chinese, with maybe 30% being Japanese. But it's so rare to see even an accurate portrayal of Chinese cultures (the plural is there for a reason) that just that makes me happy. I'm really hoping that there are much more non-Chinese and non-Japanese cultures put in later, especially given the amount of research that the animators and directors seem to be doing.
It's also not just limited to the costumes, though that's what I notice the most because I like that kind of stuff. The scenery, particularly around the Air cities, look so Chinese -- the pine trees and clouds and ink-painting-esque mountains. There's Chinese and Japanese music and instruments and poetry referenced. Even the background music is often done with Chinese and Japanese instruments, and it sounds rather classical to me.
Then there's the actual cultures of the cities and the nations. I can't tell how accurately the Water tribe cultures draw from Inuit culture, because I don't know enough, nor do I know enough about Tibetan culture and Tibetan Buddhism to comment on the Air nomads, though I wish I did. But I had tons of fun with Ba Sing Se, which is one of the few cities that we really get to know well in the series.
Ba Sing Se is based on Qing dynasty China (1644-1911), and probably late Qing dynasty at that. The costumes seem to be spot-on, from the aristocratic ladies' hairpieces to the peasant styles. They even have the eunuchs in power! Ok, they aren't actually eunuchs; they're called the Dai Li here. But they are so based on the eunuchs in history! There's a puppet emperor who is more a figurehead who performs ceremonies, with the real power being with the head of the Dai Li; the puppet emperor is even dressed just like latter Qing dynasty emperors, complete with the little glasses! It is SO COOL. I mean -- you can tell that whoever wrote it and illustrated it and worked on it was really doing a lot of research. And they manage to incorporate it in a way so that their world is still separate from history, but based on it closely enough so that it doesn't feel like they're just randomly adopting "exotic" trappings.
Operating under the definition of "cultural appropriation" being "any dominant culture appropriating from a minority culture" (am not going to debate this in the comments or the definition of "dominant" or "minority" in general since I am tired, but with the caveat that I am assuming that "American culture" -- scarequotes to indicate that I know culture is not monolithic -- is the dominant world culture and definitely the dominant culture for the Nickelodeon audience), this is cultural appropriation done well and respectfully.
Again, in case it was lost in the ginormous parenthetical caveat: am not going to debate cultural appropriation in the comments.
Anyway, I think my only beef with it is that I'd like to see more Asian people in the voice acting, writing and directing credits, especially given the still-memorable lack of Asian people in Firefly. The voice acting in particular weirded me out when there were hillbilly-esque accents being done for people who looked Asian. But really, other than that -- the worldbuilding in this series fascinates me, and I only wish I knew more about other Asiatic-Pacific cultures to see where they were drawing things from.
And I am just so excited to have a series in which almost every single character has black hair and brown eyes and varying shades of skin.
(no subject)
Mon, Dec. 18th, 2006 11:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Tue, Dec. 19th, 2006 12:02 am (UTC)I'm a little on the wall about this series -- the plotting and characterization feel a little young to me, particularly after watching so much anime, but it really is a series done with a lot of care and research, which is something that I respect. And it is amazingly good on gender and race politics, which is so hard to find! And it does keep getting more complex, and you can see the writers really trying to do things with genre tropes and character tropes, only with the limitation that they have to do it for a young audience.
(no subject)
Tue, Dec. 19th, 2006 12:35 am (UTC)I have a lot of TV on my hard drive waiting to be watched, but if/when I get the chance, Avatar sounds worth at least a try.
(no subject)
Tue, Dec. 19th, 2006 01:27 am (UTC)I ended up keeping it on tv and sort of half-watching the earlier eps, when it irritated me, and got more sucked in by the second season.