Interest Check: an Avatar RPG

I hope Toph comes back at the end of this and just fucks everyone up including su.

Aranya I'm kind of glad and disheartened your prediction about Korra and her mental rehabilitation remained true with her learning nothing but oh well.. I'm still rooting for team avatar, but as far as I'm concerned Kora isn't even apart of team avatar anymore. And Milo continues to annoy me.

Hello let's talk about Avatar.

Disclaimer.  I'm a little drunk.  Other disclaimer:  Avatar is kind of awesome.

For real though, I avoided watching this series for quite a while.  Some of it was availability, but some of it was also that I am a grumpy old man at heart.  I generally dislike animation and shows aimed at children.  But this show worked very well for me.  Sometimes it reveals itself as a show aimed at kids (every fight ends with the loser knocked out or knocked away) but in general it does not condescend towards its audience, and that goes a long way with me.  And sometimes it dwells on remarkably mature themes.

And while I am used to child characters being one note stereotypes in entertainment, Avatar way exceeded my expectations.  For instance, after the first couple of episodes I hated Sokka.  I assumed he was the designated idiot character.  But while he is oafish and overbearing, he is also the team skeptic and cynic, and by the end their tactician as well.  At the end of the season he may very well be my favorite character (it's hard to decide -- there's a bunch of good ones!).

The bending stuff is also excellent.  I can't remember the last show I praised for its fight choreography, but this one deserves it.  There's some great stuff here.

Verdict:  Looking forward to Season -- I'm sorry, Book -- 2.  Superlatives:

Best Episode:  The best ones were the Blue Spirit escape, the backgrounds of Aang and Zuko, and the finale.

Worst Episode:  The one where they had to lead the two rival tribes through the canyon was just painful.  Those tribes were fucking insufferable and the plot sucked.   Shoulda left them all to die.

Best Bending Style:  It's airbending, you idiots.  It's in the goddamn title.

What the fuck was that weapon?:  What the hell is Sokka's main weapon.  It's like a machete-mace?

Best Animal Hybrid Thing:  Dude I love the animal hybrid things.  I feel like saying Appa is cheating.  So the star-nosed mole paralyzing beast ridden by Commander Shepard was pretty cool.  Momo is also pretty good.

Best Side Character:  Iroh is great.  I was so hoping he would open a can of whoop ass on Admiral Zhao, but alas.

Best Villain:  I had been conditioned to expect great villains from this show.  But unfortunately, Zhao was kind of underwhelming.  He seemed pretty standard conqueror/general with a megalomaniacal bent.  He's an adequate villain, I suppose.  Zuko was pretty good too.  But in the end I have to give it to the freaky spirit/demon face stealing thing that showed up in the final episode.  That was wonderfully creepy.  I'm also assuming the ending teaser is Zuko's sister and probably the main Book 2 villain?  Should be fun!

I remember the weapon you are talking about, that was pretty awesome. If it's the same thing I think it may be called a war club.

Iroh is everything a human being should strive to be.

I now understand Bro's weird name change.

Azula and her teen girl murder squad are pretty kickass.

These are my Avatarpinions for the day.

Edit:  and Madison is >>>>> than West Lafayette.

Horas' reactions to Avatar might be the greatest thing ever. I keep checking in, hoping he's nice watched some more.

Btw if Ozai's voice sounded familiar, it's because he's played by Mark Hamil.

Zuko Alone is also one of my favorites.

I watched the first four episodes of Book 3 -- The Awakening, The Headband, The Painted Lady, Sokka's Master. Not my favorite stretch of the show, unfortunately. I had kinda expected Aang getting his heart blasted out by lightning to be a shit-gets-real moment, but there's not a whole lot of urgency to the start of this season. That's not a terrible thing, since the show does the gang hanging out and solving problems stuff well, but it was a little disappointing.

I do like how the show is going out of its way to show that the regular Fire Nation people are just regular people, not unitedly evil. The Avatar-Footloose crossover episode was silly but fun. The Painted Lady was my least favorite episode since the canyon one. Katara seemed out of character here -- yeah I get she's compassionate and wants to help people, but sabotaging the mission to play the hero seems more like a S1 Aang thing. And the episode ends by validating her bad choice. She did look cool in her spirit disguise, I guess. But are the writers unaware that "painted lady" is slang for a prostitute?

That said, "Sokka's Master" was awesome (good call, Bro).  Loved the way it highlighted that when he's not goofing off, Sokka's true weapons are his intelligence and creativity (though I also hope he'll get to cut some dudes up with his new literal weapon, his sweet meteorite sword).  The master character himself was one of my favorite one-off side characters.  And it seems Sokka may have been unwittingly inducted into the same secret society Iroh is a part of?  Interesting.  Also looking forward to mega-ripped Iroh starting some shit.

Bloodbending!! (?)

"My first girlfriend turned into the moon."
"That's rough, buddy."

Best line/delivery in this entire show.  Zuko is great on Team Avatar.  Watched a bunch of good eps, but will save the rest of the impressions until I finish the series, since there's only like six left now.

I finished A:TLA last night and it was excellent.  The finale was well done and suitably epic; I liked how all the main crew got their own "moment of badass."  Aang in full avatar mode was a particularly great payoff.  The lion-turtle stuff was a little out of left field, but I am good with it because giant lion turtle thing was awesome.

I also loved Azula's unraveling and downfall -- she is absolutely the most interesting villain in the series (unless we are counting Zuko, who has a more complete arc than anyone, good or bad).  I read her as someone who dearly wishes/believes herself to be a sociopath and clearly is not.  She convinces herself she has no need of friendship or trust, but Mai and Ty Lee's betrayal shakes her.  And when she hallucinates seeing her mother in the mirror, what causes her to really lose it is not imagining her mother screaming at her and calling her a monster, but rather offering unconditional love.  She cannot face the fact that despite all her combat/intrigue successes she is entirely alone and unhappy solely because of her own actions -- especially when faced with Zuko, who despite all his failures has accepted them, atoned for them, and become a better and stronger man for it.  In the end she is reduced to a caged animal screaming at the world and is pitiable rather than contemptible for it.

Book 3 as a whole had some of the highlights of the series -- definitely the big set pieces like the finale and the mid-season fakeout finale, but also some strong character-developing ones and some funny ones.  The home stretch in particular was extremely strong -- all of the "someone goes on a field trip with Zuko" episodes were great, The Ember Island Players is about the cleverest and funniest way I've ever seen a show do a recap episode, and as mentioned the finale was very satisfying.  That said I did feel like it had some structural problems.  The league of minor child characters joins the gang halfway through the season, then basically disappear (I won't complain about that too much, because wheelchair boy, earthbending boy, and small boy are some of the dullest nonentities on the show).  The pacing is weird generally -- nothing really happens for a long time, followed by everything happening very fast.  The show can't seem to decide if the gang is on a tight timeline or has plenty of extra time.  The highs outweigh the lows though, and I'd say it is a toss-up between this and Book 2 for best season.

Episode recap as follows. So far in this episode I must say that the interruptions of Wu and Makko's family is the best bit and that should be saying something since normally I can't stand Wu, but Mako is on point with emotional angst right now its worse then listening to a bunch of high schoolers. (I'm just after his story of the romantic shit, will update as it progresses.) Korra and Assami's recaps was bland to me, though Varricks was highly entertaining despite some obvious flaws for recap purposes.