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turtle-paced · 4 years

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A:tLA Re-Watch: Fine-Toothed Comb Edition

I thought I could probably do this for a series I love, too.

They won’t all be as dense (and long) as this recap (’The Great Divide’, anyone?), and no set schedule. But I hope someone enjoys reading this, because I enjoyed writing it.

Also, this isn’t going to be spoiler-free. Analysis assumes familiarity with the entire series.

Book 1, Episode 1 - The Boy in the Iceberg

(0:07) The series starts with an intro. It’s a bloody good intro. First, we go through the four elements and the styles, showing Pakku, Azula, and Aang.

(0:19) Then we see a map - and if you know what you’re looking for, you can find a bunch of the landmarks visited or mentioned over the course of the series - while the voiceover starts talking about her own historical knowledge. Before the story properly starts, we get the sense of a character as well as the history. This gives us the setting. Four nations, one Avatar to keep balance between them, but this was “the old days”.

(0:34) “But that all changed when the Fire Nation attacked.” We pan to a shot of Fire Nation soldiers, who we can already tell are industrialised. More to the point, the animation shows the Fire Nation attacking, and they’re attacking the fourth wall. This helps get across the point; though the show goes into detail that the Fire Nation is made up of ordinary people, and the Fire Nation has suffered from the war as well, the war is nevertheless unambiguously wrong. Before we meet a single Fire Nation citizen, before we get a good non-intro look at the setting, the Fire Nation’s soldiers have already shot fireballs right at the neutral, uninvolved viewer.

(0:46) We’re told that what makes the Avatar different is his ability to use all four elements, and we see Roku doing so. We also see Roku vanish. So we’ve got this big, central tension in the setting established. The world is out of balance from the Fire Nation’s war of conquest, and the means of addressing this imbalance is AWOL.

(0:50) This brings us from the old days to the present of the story, where the Fire Nation are winning.

(0:59) We get more information on the character speaking. From the shots of ice and ships, a viewer might accurately guess by this stage that we’re listening to someone from the Water Tribes. Her father and the other men of her tribe left two years ago, leaving her and her brother behind. So this gives us some idea of the immediate circumstances we’ll be jumping into. Including a solid indication that the Water Tribes are patriarchal.

(1:12) Then, the most intimate character detail: the speaker, this Water Tribe girl, has not lost hope that the Avatar will return. We pan over an empty rock spire, up to the sky and the title screen.

This is a bloody good intro because in just over a minute, it’s given us an overview of the political state of the setting and the magic system in use. It gave us the narration, but it also showed the difference between the styles, the lines of the map, the Fire Nation attacking, and the Avatar using all four bending styles. On top of that, it gave us varying levels of detail as to the personal character context of Katara (who’s already got inner life), Sokka, and Aang (by implication, as the missing Avatar).

It took them just over a minute to do all that. Over the course of the series, we’ll see that the writers know how to say a lot with a little.

(2:00) The story proper starts with the siblings in the intro in a boat, in some very icy waters, a long way from anywhere. They’re fishing. We get a name for Katara.

(2:19) Katara grimaces and tentatively starts trying to waterbend the fish into the boat. So we see already that while she’s able to bend, she’s not got a whole lot of skill. We also get Sokka’s name at this point.

(2:40) Sokka ignores his sister in favour of concentrating on his own work and complains about Katara’s bending. He’s already the meat and sarcasm guy! More importantly, from his comments, it would appear that he isn’t able to bend. What’s also quickly apparent is that he doesn’t have all that much patience with Katara’s experimentation, and as a non-bender, does not feel this as a means of connection to his own culture (while Katara does).

(2:59) Sokka’s making muscles at his own reflection shows us early one of the biggest character flaws he’s going to have to work on: teenage insecurity.

(3:31) The show doesn’t go into detail here, but with the boat smashed, Katara and Sokka are in a real bad situation. ’The Desert’ levels of bad situation.

(3:42) Sokka is explicitly sexist here. The fact that he’s so openly sexist, to his sister’s face, is another solid indicator that the Water Tribes as a whole are patriarchal.

(3:49) While this is pretty straightforward ‘Katara gets angry and accidentally waterbends an iceberg into pieces’, look at the movement of the water following the movement of her arms. Specifically, we see waterbending when Katara makes those big dramatic sweeps of her arms, not when she’s making little jabbing motions towards Sokka. Who wants to bet that if Katara were a firebender, the accidental bending would be from the jabs, rather than the arm-waving? The animators put a lot of hard work and thought into the bending and it shows.

(4:29) The fact that Katara’s outburst was a fairly normal sibling disagreement is reinforced by the fact that Sokka immediately puts his arm around Katara to help steady her as they cling to the ice. They might shout at each other, but they’ve also got each other’s backs when things turn more serious.

(4:37) A glowing light appears beneath the water, quickly followed by another huge-ass iceberg. Even aside from the glowing and the vague figures inside it, this is also clearly not a natural iceberg. Far too round.

(5:12) Confronted with a strange glowing figure in a giant ice ball, Katara’s first reaction is “we have to help” and running forward to do so. An establishing character moment that shows her compassion, her courage, and her proactive nature. Sokka, by contrast, is more cautious - he follows Katara, but he emphasises that they don’t know what this is.

(5:37) When Katara breaks the iceberg, a giant beam of light flashes up to the sky, in a giant signal for anyone and everyone in the area, ‘Inciting Incident!’

(5:46) Establishing shot of a metal ship. Despite the hard lines and points marking this out as a Fire Nation ship like in the intro, the ship is all in blue-grey. No black. No Fire Nation colours.

(5:49) Someone else is involved in this inciting incident, too. A young man with red and black armour - so likely to be an antagonist, going by colour-coding - and a nasty scar on his face which can be identified as a burn scar. One shot and we can see that a) this guy is Fire Nation and b) this guy has been seriously hurt by fire. The first thing he says is “finally,” which tells the viewer that a) he’s been looking out for something of this nature and b) he’s been doing this for a while. Two seconds of looking at Zuko, folks. It’s some information-dense storytelling.

(5:54) Our as-yet-unnamed antagonist turns to “uncle” on the deck and asks him whether he knows what this means. Iroh’s first seen playing a game and drinking tea (from a Fire Nation-themed teapot), complaining that he won’t get to finish it.

(6:13) A quick exchange of dialogue and we’ve got Zuko’s name and title. It’s explicitly confirmed that Zuko is searching for a “him” who is incredibly powerful. Iroh, by contrast, is not fully on board with Zuko’s goals and wary of his nephew’s obsession. He’s motivated primarily by concern for Zuko’s wellbeing.

But what I paused here for is this single, throwaway shot, where we get to see Iroh’s game. The Fire Nation is big into fire supremacy, but Iroh’s playing a game where the ‘suits’ of his tiles are represented by all four elements. (The designs are in red, so I’m wondering if this is a colonial game, or whether fire is highest in the suit ranking.) You can see in the corners that there are secondary symbols on each tile representing the previous element in the Avatar cycle, and if you cared to, you could probably work out some of the rules to the game. And as Zuko and Iroh discuss the location of the (air) Avatar, Iroh’s trying to work out where to put his air tile.

This series has so many details like this. It’s nuts. It’s also one of the things that makes rewatching this show really, really cool. And worth it.

(6:25) “I don’t need any calming tea! I need to capture the Avatar!” Zuko shouts. Aside from the joke, this does get to some of the deeper issues here. Zuko’s not calm. He lashes out at people in his anger, which can be provoked by some pretty trivial things. He also considers capturing the Avatar to be a need.

Meanwhile, what’s on the surface the start of a joke about Iroh’s tea obsession is also an introduction to Iroh’s campaign to get Zuko to look after himself. Sit down and enjoy some tea. Sleep. Eat. Get a hobby. Do something that’s not unhealthily brooding about his mission to find the Avatar, and by extension, earning the approval of his abusive dad.

(6:52) Cut to commercial break on Katara and Sokka staring up apprehensively at a glowing, expressionless Aang.

(7:07) Other side of commercial break, Aang collapses down the slope, gets caught by Katara, and poked in the head by Sokka. Tension deflated! Not to mention repositions Aang so that the audience can see his vulnerability.

(7:17) Aang wakes up and stares into Katara’s face. This is a real love at first sight moment. Personally, I never thought the series was going anywhere but Kataang; the question wasn’t so much ‘are they in love?’ but ‘can they deal with their romantic feelings maturely enough to be in a relationship?’ Not until the end of the series, they can’t.

(7:30) Then we get our first idea of Aang’s character as he plays up the ‘tired and wounded’ demeanour, only to grin widely and ask Katara if she wants to go penguin-sailing with him. Mischievous, fun-loving, social. His enthusiasm for animals is also demonstrated.

I also love our first brief look at airbending, which Aang just uses to help him get around on the ice. (The first look we got at waterbending was similarly utilitarian.) Unlike Katara at this point, Aang is clearly a good enough airbender to use his arts almost without thought. Airbending is just something he can do.

(7:43) Meanwhile, Sokka wants to know why Aang isn’t frozen. Speaking of characterisation. Sokka wants to know how this surviving in an iceberg thing worked.

(7:55) We get a name for Appa before we get a good look at Appa. Aang’s rush to Appa and address of his bison as “buddy” establishes that Appa’s not just a pack animal but a friend.

(8:02) And the fact that Appa is not a common animal in the area is first conveyed by Sokka’s spectacular jaw drop.

(8:17) “Flying bison” is our first introduction to the weird and wonderful animals of the Avatar universe. Six legs included.

(8:32) Again, because this show is really good, I just want to highlight Aang’s simple advice to Sokka that the bison snot will wash out as excellent early characterisation. Aang’s not laughing at Sokka, he’s clearly aware of the non-effect of bison snot on clothing (implying that he’s been the one to do laundry before when a bison has sneezed on him), and he focused on a simple thing that can be done about the unpleasant situation of being covered in bison snot.

(8:46) Katara and Sokka disagree about whether Aang’s a spy for the Fire Navy. This tells us a bit about how Katara and Sokka each approach situations. Katara’s looking at the person in front of her. Sokka’s thinking of the broader situation and potential implications. And they’re both right - Katara’s correct that Aang is not a Fire Nation spy, her read on him better than Sokka’s. Sokka’s correct that the giant beam of light could attract Fire Nation attention, because as we’ve already seen, it has.

This is actually one of the things that makes Sokka one of the best depictions of “the smart guy” I’ve seen, and one of the things that makes the cast as a whole so compelling. The resident smart guy doesn’t know everything, doesn’t think of everything, and has personal issues (in this case, his untrusting nature) that get in the way of clear analysis sometimes, so he doesn’t just benefit from alternative points of view but outright needs them to be fully effective. Meanwhile, Sokka’s not monopolising the team brain, and the rest of the cast can and do make regular, intelligent contributions to group planning. Everyone gets to be smart.

Also worth noting for the future, Katara sees the Fire Nation as evil, and Sokka does not disagree.

(9:10) With a mighty sneeze and an undeniable display of airbending, we get Aang’s name.

(9:21) While the subtitle “the Last Airbender” is a bit of a giveaway to the viewer that Aang is the only surviving human airbender we’ll see in the series, Katara and Sokka’s lack of immediate recognition of airbending and Sokka’s “pfffft yeah” reaction are the first in-universe indications that airbending, much like flying bison, is not often seen in the area.

(9:25) Sokka also refers to “midnight sun madness”, and indeed, while more than a day passes in these first two episodes, we don’t see actual nightfall. This is actually a bit of an inconsistency. The constant sunshine at the South Pole indicates that it’s summer there, yet as soon as we hit the Earth Kingdom, even the southern Earth Kingdom, it’s winter. So this is a minor error, something’s real off with the hemispheres of Avatar world, or the South Pole is the only thing in the series we see in the southern hemisphere.

This is also the sort of inconsistency I’m more than prepared to forgive, because it’s been done to keep the show’s timeline comprehensible and balanced. The series starts at the beginning of winter and ends at the end of summer. One season per element - water in winter, earth in spring, fire in summer.

(9:42) “The Desert”-style crisis averted via Appa’s presence, even if he’s not flying. Though since he’s got a saddle, the fact that Appa is a means of transportation was already clear.

(10:42) Meanwhile, on the Fire Nation ship, Zuko is out of armour and brooding.

(10:54) Iroh first hints, then openly states, that Zuko should get some sleep. (Sun’s still up!) But yes, again, we’re being shown that Zuko’s pursuit isn’t just an unquiet mind but not healthy, and Iroh’s trying not just to look after him, but to get him to look after himself. This includes outright discouraging Zuko from questing at all.

(11:12) Zuko’s response is a telling one. He’s not this dedicated to the goal out of the simple belief that the Avatar is alive and that capturing him would be good for the Fire Nation. It’s unclear at this point how or why Zuko’s honour could hinge on the capture of the Avatar, but it is clear that it’s a personal obligation to him.

(11:41) Katara knows Aang if he knows what happened to the Avatar. On Katara’s side, we see the importance of the Avatar to her. About all she can do to learn what happened to the Avatar is ask the new guy ‘what happened to the Avatar?’ and this is exactly what she’s done.

On Aang’s side, he still doesn’t know what’s going on - he thinks he’s been in the iceberg for a few days. He doesn’t know that the subtext of Katara’s question is ‘do you know how the war can be stopped, my family returned to me, and my home and culture preserved?’ His most recent experience is that being the Avatar loses him friends and family. So he lies and avoids that particular uncomfortable truth.

Though from the ‘just curious’ we can see that Katara doesn’t have much actual expectation that Aang will be able to give her a useful answer. Plus her non-reaction is used to make Aang’s denial all the more awkward for him.

(12:17) We get a sepia-toned nightmare sequence of Aang ending up in that iceberg. He and Appa were flying along when they got caught in a storm and dragged underneath the waves.

(12:30) Then Aang starts glowing, his demeanour drastically changes, and he waterbends the iceberg. Though it might be obvious from the title Avatar: the Last Airbender, the fact that Aang can use both airbending and waterbending would, per the intro, be a demonstration that he’s the Avatar. The show shows us these things.

(12:46) When Katara wakes Aang up, we get a shot from her perspective emphasising Aang’s tattoos. The meaning and significance of these is not explicitly stated, just highlighted as something outside of Katara’s ordinary.

(12:55) Establishing shot of Katara and Sokka’s village. There’s one decent-sized permanent structure, a low snow wall, and a bunch of tents, many of which aren’t in the best of repair. It’s obviously a barely-subsisting settlement.

(13:02) “Aang, this is the entire village,” Katara says. The entire village is 20 people, according to this shot. Aside from this low, low number of people, the demographics are obviously skewed. No adult men at all. The village is entirely women and children.

(13:08) The village also shies away from Aang when Katara introduces him. Sokka’s wariness of outsiders is the more common reaction.

(13:17) Gran-Gran gives part of it to the audience. Nobody has seen any airbenders for a hundred years. The fact that this coincides with the vanishing of the Avatar a hundred years ago may not be a coincidence. The intro gives this context to the viewers lets them piece things together in part, i.e., the airbenders must have been wiped out very early in the war, and this possibly has something to do with the missing Avatar. Without the intro, Aang doesn’t have that context, and is shocked at hearing that airbenders are apparently extinct.

Being Aang, however, he doesn’t pursue the thought any further. We’ll see Aang avoid things he doesn’t want to deal with again and again throughout the series, but it starts here, when he hears ‘airbenders are extinct’ and doesn’t immediately start asking for more information.

(13:32) Continuing to establish Sokka’s character and the world he lives in - he assumes Aang is carrying a weapon, because of course kids Aang’s age would need and carry weapons. He doesn’t recognise it, so he wants to know what it is. But his inexperience also shows because he just grabs the damn thing. What if it was a weapon? Very safe.

(13:44) The basic mechanics of Aang’s glider are explained by Aang himself telling a bunch of curious little kids how it works. The information asymmetry works both ways. Most of the other characters know nothing about airbending and the Air Nomads.

(14:00) Aang takes flight to the oohs and aahs of the people of the South Pole. We cut back between Aang’s smile, Katara’s smile, and the villagers to show that Aang doesn’t just enjoy flying, he enjoys making others happy.

(14:12) More good Sokka characterisation: he built a watchtower. As well as personal innovation, we see that Sokka isn’t training himself personally, but putting an emphasis on technology and development.

(14:20) Meanwhile, Katara retains her sense of wonder, and she’s not afraid to show it.

(14:32) At this point, Katara does not really identify herself as a waterbender. This goes back to waterbending as a means for Katara to engage with her culture. She can bend water, but she doesn’t have the knowledge of waterbending passed down by her tribes that would help her claim the title of a waterbender.

This also begs the question: why doesn’t Katara have this knowledge, or access to this knowledge?

(14:44) Katara’s lack of training is made clearer here, as she tells her grandmother that she’s finally got a bender to teach her. So we’ve just learned there are literally no other benders at the South Pole, and probably haven’t been for years.

(15:03) Meanwhile, back on the Fire Nation ship, we see something a bit different. Zuko’s squaring off against some opponents while Iroh watches. Earlier we saw Zuko yelling at his uncle. Now we see Iroh taking charge, acting in his capacity as Zuko’s teacher.

(15:14) Power in firebending comes from the breath, Iroh tells us. We’ll see that concept come up again, and reflected in the depictions of firebending throughout the series.

(15:22) Also note the warmer colour palette for this scene, and how the sun has been clearly placed in the frame.

(15:26) Iroh demonstrates his point with a small blast of fire that peters out in front of Zuko’s face. This shows us a couple of things. One, Iroh’s got a lot of control. He’s comfortable aiming that blast at someone. Two, visibly burned Zuko does not flinch when his uncle demonstrates a move with fire in his direction. Given that we learn later that Zuko’s wound was deliberately inflicted by a family member, this reveals a lot in hindsight about how much Zuko trusts his uncle.

(15:33) Zuko demands to learn more advanced techniques; Iroh refuses.

(15:53) Zuko points out that the Avatar has had a century to master the four elements. Again, for the re-watch - Ozai banished Zuko and told him he could come home if this teenage boy could find someone who’d been missing for a hundred years and capture someone who’d (presumably) had the time to master all four bending arts. Heads, Ozai wins; tails, Zuko loses.

(16:01) Another thing that we’ll see throughout the series is Iroh refusing to let Zuko bully him, without actually getting into an open confrontation. Yes, I’ll teach you the advanced moves, Iroh says - after I finish my roast duck!

Off the top of my head, I can only think of one instance of Iroh yelling at Zuko, in a moment of some frustration for Iroh (frustration born out of fear for Zuko, at that). Otherwise, he stays calm in the face of his severely abused nephew’s anger, yet does not reward Zuko’s poor behaviour.

(16:15) Meanwhile, back at the South Pole, Sokka is telling the ‘men’ that it’s important not to show fear when facing a firebender.

(16:22) The joke being that Sokka’s talking to a bunch of kids who must all be around five years old. There are some deadly serious undertones to this joke. Sokka’s speech might be overblown and inappropriate to the audience he’s addressing, but he is legitimately trying to prepare for an attack on his home. He’s a teenager. Why is this his responsibility? Why are there actual kids getting this lecture?

Note also that nobody’s talking about getting the adult women involved in the defence of the tribe. Not even Katara.

(16:59) Within seconds of Sokka’s very serious warrior talk, Aang’s enlisted Appa and grabbed a spear to make a slide for the Water Tribe kids. Just because he thought it would be fun.

(17:09) “What war?” Aang asks.

The fact that Aang Rip Van Winkle’d his way into the show’s setting means that thought he’s not a stranger to the physical mechanics of bending, most of his information about the social and political aspects of the setting is incredibly out of date. Aang has to ask questions about things that other characters take for granted, which is often a pretty graceful way of expositing for the viewer. Plus it’s a source of conflict and tension for Aang in its own right, but I’ll get into that next episode and the episode after.

(17:15) Just like the incident with the extinct airbenders a few minutes ago, Aang ignores the information that there’s a war on to go chase a penguin. (Which have four wings and whiskers, in this universe.) Right here, we’re setting up the reveal for Aang that he napped his way into what is, from his point of view, a post-apocalyptic dystopian future.

(17:52) Katara attempts to strike a deal with Aang to score some waterbending lessons.

(17:58) Aang’s willing, but notes that he’s not a waterbender. (Technically a lie.) This shows us the extent of Katara’s ignorance of the world beyond the South Pole. She doesn’t know how different waterbending and airbending are.

Aang’s return question of “isn’t there somewhere here who can teach you?” shows his ignorance in turn. Like I mentioned before, his information about society and politics is so out of date, and his innocent insensitivity here stings Katara with the reminder of how alone she is and how much her culture has suffered in the war.

(18:11) But in a serious good point of his character, Aang just goes “okay, how about the North Pole, then?” looking for a solution for Katara’s problem.

(18:19) Katara reveals that the Water Tribes are actually cut off from each other, furthering the depiction of the isolation the war causes. As if the distance wasn’t bad enough.

(18:30) Aang is generous enough to offer to give Katara a lift to the other end of the planet. Like Katara just said, it’s not exactly turn right at the second glacier. Aang’s very casual about the distances and logistics involved. Travel isn’t a big deal to him. We’ll come back to this thought. Contrast to Katara’s hesitation.

Meanwhile, from Aang’s perspective, this is also a good way to avoid being the Avatar for a while longer.

(19:23) “I haven’t done this since I was a kid.” / “You still are a kid!” This is an oft-mentioned exchange that gets right to the heart of the differences between the world Aang grew up in and the world Katara grew up in. Aang’s a child and he knows he’s a child. (Again, more on this thought later.) Katara was forced to take on adult responsibilities years ago.

This is one of the most touching things about Aang and Katara’s relationship, though: they have fun together. It’s so simple, but Katara’s life was responsibility after responsibility. Aang’s presence in her life, his insistence on not taking on every single responsibility (at least not right this second), is a healthy way for both of them to make time for themselves and just enjoy life. Including, for Katara, age-appropriate horsing around.

(19:48) Aang and Katara come to a halt in front of something that casts a huge shadow. They stop right at the edge of the darkness the shadow casts, but don’t actually cross the visible line just yet.

(19:50) When we pan out, we see that it’s a Fire Nation ship, run aground on some more unnatural-looking ice. It’s an unmistakeable, unavoidable sign of the war’s presence at the South Pole.

(19:59) Since Aang doesn’t know about the war, he doesn’t have the same wariness Katara does about wandering into an old ship that might be booby-trapped. The dread isn’t ingrained into him like it is for Katara. And with that, they walk into the shadow of the war.

(20:28) We see here that waterbent ice punched right through the metal hull of the Fire Nation ship.

(20:56) Aang looks at the rack of Fire Nation weapons with confusion and dismay, while Katara gives Aang the rundown of how the ship’s been here since her grandmother was young, part of the Fire Nation’s first attacks.

(21:04) This, Aang can’t ignore. There’s a ship with weapons, run aground in not-too-accidental looking circumstances. He starts asking what the hell’s up with all this. In an owww my heart moment, Aang leads off by saying that this can’t be right, he has friends all over the world.

Remember that from Aang’s perspective, this is only a few days at most after the final flashback in ‘The Storm’, an episode that showed the senior monks are starting to get very worried indeed about a war starting.

(21:10) Katara spots the thread and works out that Aang was in the iceberg for a very, very long time.

(21:36) Aang reels at the news that he’s a hundred years out of time and there’s a huge war going on. At this point, I don’t think he’s got a real appreciation of what that means (because that’s something for episode three), but it knocks him on his ass anyway.

(21:44) Likewise, I don’t think Katara’s got a solid understanding of what this means for Aang, but she tries to comfort him anyway. Fittingly for a character whose inner life was illustrated by saying I still have hope, she tries to get Aang to focus on something positive. Aang, who’s also an optimist, says that at least he got to meet Katara.

(21:59) Unfortunately, before they can head back to the village, Aang sets off a booby trap. And why would Aang be looking for booby traps? He grew up in a world where he didn’t have to worry about this sort of thing.

(22:10) The result is to send up a signal flare.

(22:24) And someone is watching. From Zuko’s perspective, he can’t tell how old Aang is, but he can definitely see airbending being used.

(22:45) The pan over to the village, along with Zuko’s line that he’s found the Avatar’s hiding place, emphasises that Zuko poses a threat to the village as well as just to Aang.

(22:50) We get a lot of close-ups of halves of Zuko’s face over the course of the series, and it’s always worth noting which side of his face is being used to convey what, because he’s definitely got a duality thing going on. This time, we cut to the “to be continued” on Zuko’s unscarred eye, i.e., the side of his face where his resemblance to his father is revealed to be unmistakeable.

Given that he’s apparently gearing up to attack an already war-scarred village doing nothing but just trying to get by…fair enough.

#a:tla #fine toothed comb edition

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army-of-mai-lovers · 3 years

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Comparing ATLA’s Jet to Cowboy Bebop’s Spike

(this is so late, but. Happy birthday @the-hot-zone, hope you had an amazing day)

In my opinion, Cowboy Bebop is one of the greatest shows ever created. It hits a lot of my personal favorite attributes in a TV show: cowboys, fantastic music, absolutely spectacular animation, really deep themes and characters with rich inner lives, worldbuilding that’s thought out. Simply put, it’s a masterpiece.

I started watching Bebop this summer, at the height of the ATLA Renaissance, and the first thing I noticed about protagonist Spike Spiegel is that he looked a hell of a lot like Jet from ATLA. And it wasn’t just the looks either: like Jet, Spike is the leader of a ragtag group of misfits living on the fringes of society. Like Jet, Spike is a smooth talker. Like Jet, Spike is compassionate and cares for other people, and like Jet, the world has hardened Spike to the point where his virtues can still lead him down the wrong path. And while Jet isn’t named for Spike, there’s a character in Bebop named Jet (he sort of plays the right hand person role that Smellerbee plays for Jet in ATLA.) They’re not completely similar--Spike isn’t fighting for anybody’s liberation, whereas for Jet that’s a core aspect of his character--but it was enough to make me wonder about how Jet was designed and how much influence Bebop had on his character design and on ATLA as a whole, and whether looking at Spike can illuminate some of the conversations we’ve been having about Jet.

A little about the inspiration and process of ATLA: Bryan and Michael were working on shows like Family Guy when they decided they wanted to make something more sincere and more cinematic. They were both really inspired by anime. Bryan said “Back in the late '90s I was getting pretty disillusioned with working on sitcoms -- then I saw Princess Mononoke and I was emboldened. My heart was so much closer to that kind of story, those kinds of characters and that type of tone. After that, Cowboy Bebop really inspired us in terms of being a great example of an epic series that had a wide breadth of tones. Then FLCL came along and rewrote the rules for everything, as far as I'm concerned!” I haven’t seen FLCL, I’ll admit, but having seen both Bebop and Princess Mononoke--yeah, I get that. Both are incredible pieces of art that, for me personally, make me want to push myself as an artist, and I cannot recommend both enough if you haven’t seen them already.

So, Bryan and Michael decide they want to make something inspired by shows like Bebop and movies like Princess Mononoke, they get a pilot order from Nickelodeon and, as is custom at the time, they start reaching out to East Asian animation studios to help them with the animation. This video is a great source for how ATLA in particular interacted in this environment, but suffice to say that Bryan built a relationship with the studio that did a lot of work for ATLA, JM Animation, and gave them a lot of creative freedom in making the visuals of the show. This included designing Jet and the rest of the Freedom Fighters.

[ID: An image of Jet from ATLA from the shoulders up against a sky background fading from blue at the top to white at the bottom. He had dark skin, shaggy black hair, black eyes, eyebrows turned way up, a smirk on his face, and some wheat in his mouth. He is wearing a red jacket with a gray popped collar. End ID]

[ID: An image of Spike from Cowboy Bebop from the shoulders up against a sky blue background with trees behind him. He has shaggy dark brown hair that has a slight bit more curl in it than Jet’s, dark brown eyes, light skin, and a closed mouth smile on his face. He is wearing a blue suit with a yellow shirt that has a popped collar, and a skinny black tie/ End ID]

So, let’s look at the character design. Both Spike and Jet have these long, angular faces, shaggy dark hair, long necks, broad shoulders, dark eyes, some popped collar element to their attire, etc. While both characters are pretty tall and lanky, Spike’s height is more immediately obvious than Jet’s--in fact, I wouldn’t think of Jet as a tall character had I not seen some fandom height comparisons. The most obvious and immediate differences between how the characters physically look are their clothes, which are very different (likely due to the setting--ATLA is set in a proto-industrial war-torn society and Jet in particular has had to scavenge his clothes from Fire Nation troops, while Bebop is a space epic set in the far future), the lack of mouth wheat for Spike, Spike’s incredibly normal looking eyebrows versus Jet’s adorable long division eyebrows, and, of course, their skin tones. Colorism is something that people bring up a lot when talking about Jet’s character, and I have to wonder why Jet, a character that was so clearly inspired by this light-skinned character who was morally ambiguous in Bebop, was made darker-skinned when explicitly coded as a “villain” in ATLA.

In fact, colorism is a super important aspect of how Jet and Spike’s stories are told. To its credit, ATLA has two MCs (Sokka and Katara) with dark skin (not that the fanartists who whitewash them notice) while Bebop has just one (Ed). However, it’s important to note that Sokka and Katara are each portrayed in ways that Aang or other lighter-skinned characters in the show simply aren’t. For example, despite both characters being literal teenagers, they are sexualized within the text of the show. Another example of the colorism in ATLA is, of course, Jet, a Brown boy leading a resistance against oppressive colonialist imperialist forces, being so unambiguously vilified. Yes, within the text, Jet has some sense of complexity, especially in Book 2, but even that is undermined by his death at the hands of the Dai Li. Jet is never given the subjectivity of a character like Zuko. In fact, it’s pretty clear that Jet’s redemption and subsequent death happens when it does to demonstrate what Zuko is capable of if he makes the right choice. Whether or not this is a good decision writing-wise is another discussion, but the fact of the matter is that in using Jet to further Zuko’s arc, bryke used a Brown teenage boy/victim of imperialist violence to prop up the narrative of a light-skinned prince/perpetrator of imperial violence. This is not to say that Zuko shouldn’t have been redeemed or that Jet shouldn’t have died or that the narrative shouldn’t have dedicated time and attention to Zuko’s story, but it is to say that ultimately, the writers of the show decided that Jet’s subjectivity was a tool to further Zuko’s actualization.

Contrast this to Spike. Bebop is about a lot of things, but a core part of it is exploring Spike’s backstory and way of looking at the world. It’s part of what makes the show the show. It’s the thing that keeps you liking the guy even when he says or does something absolutely unconscionable. Nothing in the show is more important than Spike’s subjectivity. The show may have individual episodes that focus on the other main characters, but it’s pretty clear that it’s really *about* Spike. Where does Spike come from? What is his obsession with the past? Why do all these people want to kill him? Who is Julia? These are all prescient questions that I had as a viewer of Bebop, and these were questions that were not only important to understanding Spike Spiegel, but to understanding the narrative that the writers, director, and animators are telling. Bebop is nothing without Spike’s subjectivity, and the people behind the show invest in his narrative even though he does some pretty horrible things! (kills many people, is part of a crime syndicate at one point, says some pretty misogynistic crap, hell, the whole concept of the show is that he and his buddies hunt people down for money.) As I said before, Spike is morally ambiguous, an antihero, and the people behind Bebop run with that, because that is an integral part of the story that they’re telling.

You could certainly argue that ATLA, being a show for children, needs clear heroes and villains, to be unambiguous in its depiction of right and wrong. And to an extent that would be correct. But let’s not forget that ATLA is not shy in its depiction of morally ambiguous characters. That’s an integral part of what the show is. Characters like Zuko, Iroh, Mai, Azula, and Ty Lee are beloved despite (or perhaps because of) their complex moral frameworks. Zuko, Mai, and Ty Lee in particular move between designations of villain, victim, and hero pretty fluidly (Iroh and Azula are two other conversations in themselves.) I personally am okay, and in fact delighted, to have Zuko, Mai, Azula, and Ty Lee in the show because I think their stories and the ways that they move between evil, good, and morally gray are incredibly compelling. We know why they act the way they do, and we can condemn or validate their actions while always knowing exactly where they’re coming from.

But then I see Jet. Jet, whose village was burned down by the Fire Nation. Jet, who survived by himself and helped 5 other people survive along the way, while leading an organized resistance against the Fire Nation on wits alone. Jet, who somehow ended up in Ba Sing Se, his new family cut in half, wanting to start over. So much of him is a blank slate. Where Spike in Bebop, or Zuko, Iroh, Mai, Azula, and Ty Lee in ATLA, get fleshed out, have the writers convey specific information that helps the audience understand their actions and motivations, even if they’re wrong, Jet never gets that sort of care in his narrative. Jet never gets to be the center of ATLA, even for a moment, even in his own death. There’s always something more pressing, something more meaningful, than Jet. You could argue (I certainly would) that the show would be better if we spent more time with him, if the writers cared to understand him, but unlike Bebop and Spike, the show doesn’t revolve around the audience understanding Jet. The story is coherent without him. In book 3, despite the fact that Jet sacrificed his life for them, the Gaang only brings up Jet once, and that’s to condemn him. Jet’s story is a tragedy, an important one, but only insofar as it props up other pieces of the narrative. And that’s the most tragic part of it.

#jet #atla #cowboy bebop #am i doing this correctly?#i started this like a month ago and i'm pretty sure this is what I intended to say originally but not 100%#anyway happy birthday Zone! welcome to the majors #also incredible that i found such similar pictures of Jet and Spike #but like the difference is that Jet is smirking 'evilly' (he's not evil he's a child) while Spike's looking soft and happy #like that's it that's the meta #meta #atla meta

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afishtrap · 7 years

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So this sketch (from Voltron co-executive producer, Lauren Montgomery) has been going around. The theory is that each sign corresponds to a season: Pidge, in the first season, dealt with gender; Keith’s story raised issues of race; either Lance or Shiro will then (it’s assumed) deal with sexuality. Given that it’s Lance who’s looking kind of iffy (similar expression to Pidge and Keith, notably), it seems some quarters of the fandom are not just saying Lance will have some sexuality-related storyline, but that he’ll come out as bisexual.

First thing I have to say: there are a lot of things this Voltron reboot does get right. It has enough nods to the original series (which I saw in badly-dubbed reruns as a kid), but with just enough twists to make what’s really a kind of dorky super-mecha story into something with real heart. Pidge being a girl, but not being required to girl-ify herself post-reveal; Allura being strong, even harsh, instead of delicate space-princess. Hunk isn’t the butt of jokes, though Lance is still mostly comic relief... which I’ll get to, shortly.

But the reboot isn’t perfect. One bit that had people cheering had my teeth on edge: Pidge, at the alien space mall, looking at the two signs. One pink, one blue, neither representing human shape. I could’ve forgiven this if she’d been with one of the other Paladins, and they’d both been baffled. It no longer would’ve been “Pidge, because she doesn’t do performative femininity, must be puzzled as to which bathroom to use”. Instead it would’ve been, “when one’s familiar gender clues are removed, suddenly it becomes almost ridiculous to assign someone to a specific category” or some such.

Really, it felt like a failure of imagination: why not three bathrooms? Or even four? Why must aliens also divide themselves into two genders, and color-coded, at that? If the point was, “how do I know which bathroom to use when I don’t fit into neat gender categories,” how much more wonderful this question would’ve been when the animation made clear that the human/western assumption of ‘two genders’ is not everyone’s default.

The other issue is Lance. He’s supposed to be Latino (Cuban, iirc), and... he flirts, or tries to flirt, with anything that appears feminine, alien or human. (Except, notably, Pidge.) Oh come on, writers. You got so much else right, did you run out of enthusiasm for doing more? Is there some reason you couldn’t be arsed to do more, and fell back on the Latin lover stereotype?

But of course, there’s more. What, you think I was done already?

I do appreciate that the Voltron writers are proving themselves very good at laying groundwork. Given Pidge’s reveal was about mid-season, I thought they handled the revelation really well, especially with the lack of drama (or radical change on Pidge’s part) afterwards. The hints about Keith are subtle, but on rewatch I realized how many I’d missed. It wasn’t blatant; it was just enough that for those in the fandom paying really close attention, their antennae were probably up for some kind of reveal.

Which means if the hint in this image is to be taken seriously, and given Lance’s expression matching that of Pidge and Keith, welp. I guess there’s going to be some reveal of his sexuality -- but given the treatment for the other two, there should be hints in the earlier seasons.

Okay, I went looking. Even on rewatch and attuned for it, I still miss these rumored instances of Lance flirting with Keith like he does Allura. I’m left with what Lance does, and two images jumped out at me.

Remember Avatar: Last Airbender? Especially Sokka, meat-loving, sarcastic comic relief who believed in the healing power of shopping therapy. Normally that combination would’ve made him the sassy gay older brother, yet the narrative never goes that route. He falls in love with a girl, loses her, learns to love again, and never loses his quirky shopping habit. The narrative not only treats this as Just What Sokka Does, it never ridicules him for it. And he remains clearly heterosexual in his pursuits, if a bit goofy and clearly fifteen. My point is that it’s entirely possible to give a character non-masculine traits and not make it an issue of sexuality. Just saying.

So, one possibility: Lance will shift from Latin Lover to the gay guy who chases skirts in a desperate attempt to convince everyone (including himself) that he’s straight. It’s a horribly overdone trope, and it has a dark undercurrent of the lgbt person as deceitful. The person ‘plays’ at being straight, lies to others (and possibly themselves), and the reveal of their sexuality thus becomes a revelation of a scaffolding of lies. Keith may’ve gotten a pass due to his ignorance of his heritage, but the same can’t be said of Lance, unless we’re to believe he’s been unwittingly ignorant of himself this entire time (and that gets us into the gay-for-you trope and omfg please let’s not go there).

We’ve got several other options: ace, bi, trans. I doubt trans, since narratively this is too close to Pidge, and I doubt ace since flirting-as-cover doesn’t make any sense. (None of the rest of the guys feel it necessary to flirt outrageously, so not sure why Lance would feel pressured to do so; I’d expect an ace character to be relieved to be among at least two guys who seem entirely uninterested in anything sexual.) Given the narrative risks in turning all of Lance’s flirtation into deception, this is probably why a segment of the fandom thinks Lance’s reveal will be of bisexuality.

The problem is when you put together the assumptions that a) Lance will get a reveal as part of his character development, b) this reveal is related to his sexuality, and c) the demonstration of non-masculine behaviors is where the writers are laying the groundwork. Contrast Keith, who sleeps in old tanktop and doesn’t seem to notice nor care about his appearance, with Lance: proper pajamas, face mask, Pidge’s headphones, and some kind of a facial treatment mask. Add the towel around his head and the bathrobe, and, well. Lots of stereotypical ‘metrosexual’ clues, there.

So here’s the reason this makes me worry.

When heterosexuality is the assumed default, most writers seem to think indicating a non-het preference requires a sexual situation. Even one as otherwise innocent as, ‘hey, want to get coffee sometime?’ ‘Thanks, but I’m into guys.’ If there’s no way to work in that kind of interaction, the fallback is stereotypical signals. Women with short hair, who work construction. Men who lisp, or sway their hips. There are many kinds of signals used in Western media and by god I loathe all of them. But anyway.

Here’s the problem, and I’ve seen this elsewhere, which is why I’m on guard. To indicate bisexuality, the character is treated like a simple combination of two opposing things: gay and straight. It’s like Jekyll and Hyde: at night, Lance turns into Metrosexually-Gay Lance, but in daylight, he’s Flirtatious-Straight Lance. Please, no.

There’s another way I’ve seen bisexuality represented, and I hate this even more, because this is the shit that non-bi audience members carry into their everyday lives, and causes a lot of heartache for the bi community. And that’s to have Lance explicitly flirt with Keith, and when it’s noted, to defend himself by saying he flirts because he likes both men and women.

See, in a heterosexual character, we’d dismiss flirtation with the opposite sex as just a sign someone’s on the make. In a bisexual character, the layers of stereotypes twist this into, “this person isn’t capable of being attracted to only one person at a time,” which in turn becomes a charge that bisexuals aren’t capable of monogamy, or fidelity. Setting Lance up as an incorrigible flirt could play all too easily into that most pernicious of stereotypes: the bisexual who’s just biding their time to dump one lover for another. Or doesn’t even dump, just cheats, because ‘having potential attraction to multiple genders’ is apparently the same as ‘unable to be faithful to one person at a time’, in the minds of non-bi people.

This is why I’m really hoping it’s a feint, and in fact it’ll be one of the other characters who’s queer in some way. I’d actually like best if it were Shiro, simply because he’s been so stoically steadfast, and presents as extremely masculine. He’s so non-flirtatious that if he were bi, there’d be no room for that infidelity stereotype to gain ground; if he were gay, his masculinity would reinforce that one need not be a butch or femme stereotype to be attracted to the same gender. Or maybe the picture’s a total feint and we’ll find out Matt is gay, but I suppose that depends on whether Pidge manages to track him down anytime in the next four seasons.

I just don’t want to have a well-written series turn sour on me, simply because the writers wanted to represent without any understanding of the lived experience. Bisexuality does not mean someone is part-gay, part-straight. It’s an orientation in its own right, and we are long overdue for seeing that represented, and respected, in our media.

#voltron meta #voltron legendary defender #lance mcclain #analysis is my chocolate cake #lgbtqia

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