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blluespirit · 2 months

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Overall NATLA Thoughts

Okay, now that I've watched the series, I can give my thoughts.

Overall, I thought it was good!!! I had fun watching it! I'd rate it a solid 6.5/10. It's nowhere as good as the original, but it was definitely enjoyable and made some nice changes here and there that I liked. There were also some things I was also Not a fan of too.

I said in another post that it's best to treat this like an AU of the original. There will things that are great and things that are bad. That's the nature of adapting something.

Having said that, I need to get my initial thoughts off my chest... here we go.

Things I thought were good:

Sokka's characterisation - I really enjoyed him! I thought Ian did a good job! He played the funny moments well and retained the underlying seriousness/cautiousness. It wasn't perfect, but I enjoyed the changes a lot and think it was overall a solid performance.

Zuko's characterisation - Like Sokka, I do think I was most satisfied with their performances. A lot of Zuko's moments from the cartoon are sometimes... well, cartoonish and definitely wouldn't translate to live action, but I think Dallas did a nice job at balancing Zuko's desperate anger and that occasional sassiness well.

Zuko and Iroh moments were great. Had me on the floor crying. As it should have.

The bending looks a trillion times better than the movie - I understand it would not have been easy for the actors but, overall, I was very happy about it.

The scenery was stunning. It just looked so beautiful. I loved it so much.

Absolutely ADORE that they made Zuko a good calligrapher and artist. I read a fic about a million years ago where Zuko is a fantastic calligrapher and I thought it was perfect and made so much sense, and now I can say it's canon. This is perfect for me.

S U K I

The Freedom Fighters were ✨ perfect

They were so real for making Oma and Shu lesbians

Koh, Wan Shi Tong and Hei Bai looked fantastic, but I have more to say about all of them below, unfortunately.

I actually like the change they made that Katara is Aang's sole waterbending teacher.

Aang is not perfect, and needed more goofy scenes HOWEVER, I did like how they've had Aang's guilt more prominent in the story. The original didn't do a very good job with that, imo.

Zuko entering is breaking and entering era by breaking into an impenetrable Earth Kingdom prison is just perfect.

In Masks, I like how Aang and Zuko got a longer conversation - that was pretty cute.

I liked how they changed Yue a bit and got her out of the arranged marriage... how Yue saw Sokka in the Spirit World before meeting him in the real world.

Things I didn't like:

Far too much info-dumping/exposition. So much spelling things out. It was not as egregious as the movie, and I get there's a lot of information that needs to be conveyed well and quickly... but sometimes it really took me out of the show.

Why are Mai and Ty Lee here.... I was hoping the live action would give them a bit more depth (and they might as it goes forward!), but why put them in season 1 at all if they're just going to stand around???

Some odd changes - putting this as one point, but there are some bizarre changes that didn't make sense to me, as they did not benefit the story or deepen the characters. I have two main examples: a) making it so Aang didn't run away from home, and b) making it so Zuko actually fights Ozai in the Agni Kai.

Characterisation of Katara was Not Great. I don't think I got many hints of the reckless, compassionate, badass Katara until the end when she fights Pakku and rallies all the women together to fight (which happens off-screen). She was sweet and kind, but she just lacked the fire that OG Katara has.

Azula's characterisation - Azula is desperate to impress Ozai and so her character is just…. brewing with anger, frustration, desperation. I was SO excited to see the Azula we are introduced too… perpetually and irritatingly calm, calculating and ruthless. She's perfect, she's terrifying! She's literally the character of all time. But this Azula had more Zuko vibes? I don't think there's anything wrong with giving Azula more concrete motivation by wanting to impress Ozai and establishing that Ozai is abusive to both his kids, but I do think trying to do that right off the bat is a mistake.

WHY is Wan Shi Tong here. I love Wan Shi Tong, but like I said: Why Is He Here? Why could we not have his iconic, ominous as fuck introduction from The Library, and instead he's introduced in a random season 1 episode giving Aang Information(tm) about the Spirit World.

When Aang gave Koh the statue, and then he just takes it and immediately lets all the villages go, and neither of them even say anything, I actually laughed out loud. Like, I am so sorry, but what in the jesus fuck was that.

Speaking of Koh - I think Koh is better the less we know about him. Roku saying ~all Koh wants is a family like the rest of us~ just pissed me off?? I like my Koh the Face Stealer Terrifying and Unknowable, thank you.

NOTHING EVER REALLY HAPPENS WITH HEI BAI!!?? where's my precious spirit bear?? Like Aang never really does anything with him and the replacement Koh story is boring and it sucks.

Bumi.... sorry I just didn't vibe with him at all.

Things I can't decide on:

Fancy spirit knife to kill the moon spirit annoyed me a bit, but I guess they wanted to Kuruk something to work with and a little bit more interaction with Aang which I get but idk. I really flip/flop on this one.

I've been very on the fence about having Azula (and Ozai) being in the show in season 1 in general. I'm not sure if it benefited either of their characters.

Azula & Ozai's dynamic - Okay, so, I think they're trying to give Azula more depth, right? They're trying to establish what it was like for Azula to live with Ozai and that she's also (like Zuko) trying to desperately prove herself to him, but Ozai using Zuko's... achievements to do that just felt so weird. I get he's doing it to manipulate her, but that just felt so wrong when in canon it's very obvious that Ozai just didn't give a single fuck about Zuko. Ozai pits Azula against Zuko by saying he's a failure, he's a bad bender etc. Azula is born lucky, Zuko is lucky to be born - like, Ozai says that to Zuko's face. I don't know if I am communicating this point very well, but it just didn't seem right to me??

Zuko vs Zhao in the Siege of the North... I genuinely do not know how to feel about it! I didn't love it, I didn't hate it. I don't know how to feel about Zhao telling Zuko that his mission is a sham and that Azula is the prized one... It feels like it's saying the quiet part out loud? In the OG we all know that Ozai sending Zuko on that mission was an excuse to get rid of him, but we can work that out, no one actually says it. And then Iroh just fucking killing him/mortally wounding him instead of the Iconic scene where Zuko reaches out to save him despite everything Zhao has done to him, but Zhao's own pride gets in the way from letting him accept help from Zuko.

Zuko’s crew being the 41st is not necessarily a bad thing at all!!! But I do just want to say that in the original, the attack goes ahead, and presumably, those soldiers die. It’s horrible. Zuko’s sacrifice is in vain, and it was always going to be in vain because the Fire Nation as it stands would not allow Zuko's compassion to win. Ozai would not allow it. While not necessarily a bad choice (all the soldiers bowing to Zuko on the boat was so sweet I loved it!) but I think it does take away some of the horror of Zuko’s story (same as it does with making Zuko fight back in my opinion) because the whole point is that Zuko did the right thing - and he was punished for it, and those soldiers died anyway.

anyway...

Okay!! got that off my chest. I know I just had a big whine here, but I still had a lot of fun watching this show. I think some of the backlash is a bit over the top and unwarranted. It was never going to stand up to the original - and that's okay.

Enjoy it for what it is!

#zuko #sokka #katara #aang #yue #iroh #zhao #azula #ozai #jet #koh the face stealer #wan shi tong #hei bai #natla #avatar the last airbender #atla netflix #avatar netflix #jack talks #live action series

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theotherpacman · 2 months

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offsetting all my hateposting with another positivity post

things I didn't get to in my first positivity post but have since remembered

the part where katara uses her waterbending to put out the flaming arrow and stop the bombing???? cool as shit. A+ use of waterbending

having jet sneak them into omashu was pretty damn good. it's not like the live action show could've realistically pulled off the goofy fake beard thing, and it introduced jet as this kind stranger doing something significant for them at great personal risk to himself, setting him up to be a Good Guy, at once making him more complex (he isn't just angry and power-hungry - he really wants to help people) and making it hit harder when katara learns that he's,,,, a terrorist

"that wasn't you. that was me" honestly iconic

that moment where sokka goes "oh us southern water tribe warriors are more known for our hand-to-hand fighting" and suki is like "!!!! flirt opportunity!!!! I shall impress him with my fighting prowess and thus woo him!!!!!" and then she kicks his ass like ":D :D :D and now we shall kiss" omg babygirl ur too good for him

I added this to my first positivity post in an update but azula as a prodigy archer!!! adds to her characterization directly as highly talented and multi-skilled in various combat techniques, and symbolically as very precise, efficient, perfectionistic. love it

zuko's diary. oh my god zuko's diary

seriously first of all zuko as a calligrapher and artist deepens his characterization as skilled in areas his father deems worthless and weak, and secondly aang getting his hands on the thing helps him see into zuko's head more which is cool, but more importantly zuko losing his own personal diary to his fucking nemesis is a hilarious choice can you imagine how that would've driven him insane

that lady in omashu who smacked zuko with a brush bc he was beating up a child. queen

#natla #atla #avatar netflix #atla netflix #atla live action #avatar the last airbender

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citrina-posts · 4 years

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Avatar: Cultural Appreciation or Appropriation?

I love Avatar: the Last Airbender. Obviously I do, because I run a fan blog on it. But make no mistake: it is a show built upon cultural appropriation. And you know what? For the longest time, as an Asian-American kid, I never saw it that way.

There are plenty of reasons why I never realized this as a kid, but I’ve narrowed it down to a few reasons. One is that I was desperate to watch a show with characters that looked like me in it that wasn’t anime (nothing wrong with anime, it’s just not my thing). Another is that I am East Asian (I have Taiwanese and Korean ancestry) and in general, despite being the outward “bad guys”, the East Asian cultural aspects of Avatar are respected far more than South Asian, Middle Eastern, and other influences. A third is that it’s easy to dismiss the negative parts of a show you really like, so I kind of ignored the issue for a while. I’m going to explain my own perspective on these reasons, and why I think we need to have a nuanced discussion about it. This is pretty long, so if you want to keep reading, it’s under the cut.

Obviously, the leadership behind ATLA was mostly white. We all know the co-creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino (colloquially known as Bryke) are white. So were most of the other episodic directors and writers, like Aaron Ehasz, Lauren Montgomery, and Joaquim Dos Santos. This does not mean they were unable to treat Asian cultures with respect, and I honestly do believe that they tried their best! But it does mean they have certain blinders, certain perceptions of what is interesting and enjoyable to watch. Avatar was applauded in its time for being based mostly on Asian and Native American cultures, but one has to wonder: how much of that choice was based on actual respect for these people, and how much was based on what they considered to be “interesting”, “quirky”, or “exotic”?

The aesthetic of the show, with its bending styles based on various martial arts forms, written language all in Chinese text, and characters all decked out in the latest Han dynasty fashions, is obviously directly derivative of Asian cultures. Fine. That’s great! They hired real martial artists to copy the bending styles accurately, had an actual Chinese calligrapher do all the lettering, and clearly did their research on what clothing, hair, and makeup looked like. The animation studios were in South Korea, so Korean animators were the ones who did the work. Overall, this is looking more like appreciation for a beautiful culture, and that’s exactly what we want in a rapidly diversifying world of media.

But there’s always going to be some cherry-picking, because it’s inevitable. What’s easy to animate, what appeals to modern American audiences, and what is practical for the world all come to mind as reasons. It’s just that… they kinda lump cultures together weirdly. Song from Book 2 (that girl whose ostrich-horse Zuko steals) wears a hanbok, a traditionally Korean outfit. It’s immediately recognizable as a hanbok, and these dresses are exclusive to Korea. Are we meant to assume that this little corner of the mostly Chinese Earth Kingdom is Korea? Because otherwise, it’s just treated as another little corner of the Earth Kingdom. Korea isn’t part of China. It’s its own country with its own culture, history, and language. Other aspects of Korean culture are ignored, possibly because there wasn’t time for it, but also probably because the creators thought the hanbok was cute and therefore they could just stick it in somewhere. But this is a pretty minor issue in the grand scheme of things (super minor, compared to some other things which I will discuss later on).

It’s not the lack of research that’s the issue. It’s not even the lack of consideration. But any Asian-American can tell you: it’s all too easy for the Asian kids to get lumped together, to become pan-Asian. To become the equivalent of the Earth Kingdom, a mass of Asians without specific borders or national identities. It’s just sort of uncomfortable for someone with that experience to watch a show that does that and then gets praised for being so sensitive about it. I don’t want you to think I’m from China or Vietnam or Japan; not because there’s anything wrong with them, but because I’m not! How would a French person like to be called British? It would really piss them off. Yet this happens all the time to Asian-Americans and we are expected to go along with it. And… we kind of do, because we’ve been taught to.

1. Growing Up Asian-American

I grew up in the early to mid-2000s, the era of High School Musical and Hannah Montana and iCarly, the era of Spongebob and The Amazing World of Gumball and Fairly Odd Parents. So I didn’t really see a ton of Asian characters onscreen in popular shows (not anime) that I could talk about with my white friends at school. One exception I recall was London from Suite Life, who was hardly a role model and was mostly played up for laughs more than actual nuance. Shows for adults weren’t exactly up to par back then either, with characters like the painfully stereotypical Raj from Big Bang Theory being one of the era that comes to mind.

So I was so grateful, so happy, to see characters that looked like me in Avatar when I first watched it. Look! I could dress up as Azula for Halloween and not Mulan for the third time! Nice! I didn’t question it. These were Asian characters who actually looked Asian and did cool stuff like shoot fireballs and throw knives and were allowed to have depth and character development. This was the first reason why I never questioned this cultural appropriation. I was simply happy to get any representation at all. This is not the same for others, though.

2. My Own Biases

Obviously, one can only truly speak for what they experience in their own life. I am East Asian and that is arguably the only culture that is treated with great depth in Avatar.

I don’t speak for South Asians, but I’ve certainly seen many people criticize Guru Pathik, the only character who is explicitly South Asian (and rightly so. He’s a stereotype played up for laughs and the whole thing with chakras is in my opinion one of the biggest plotholes in the show). They’ve also discussed how Avatar: The Last Airbender lifts heavily from Hinduism (with chakras, the word Avatar itself, and the Eye of Shiva used by Combustion Man to blow things up). Others have expressed how they feel the sandbenders, who are portrayed as immoral thieves who deviously kidnap Appa for money, are a direct insult to Middle Eastern and North African cultures. People have noted that it makes no sense that a culture based on Inuit and other Native groups like the Water Tribe would become industrialized as they did in the North & South comics, since these are people that historically (and in modern day!) opposed extreme industrialization. The Air Nomads, based on the Tibetan people, are weirdly homogeneous in their Buddhist-inspired orange robes and hyperspiritual lifestyle. So too have Southeast Asians commented on the Foggy Swamp characters, whose lifestyles are made fun of as being dirty and somehow inferior. The list goes on.

These things, unlike the elaborate and highly researched elements of East Asian culture, were not treated with respect and are therefore cultural appropriation. As a kid, I had the privilege of not noticing these things. Now I do.

White privilege is real, but every person has privileges of some kind, and in this case, I was in the wrong for not realizing that. Yes, I was a kid; but it took a long time for me to see that not everyone’s culture was respected the way mine was. They weren’t considered *aesthetic* enough, and therefore weren’t worth researching and accurately portraying to the creators. It’s easy for a lot of East Asians to argue, “No! I’ve experienced racism! I’m not privileged!” News flash: I’ve experienced racism too. But I’ve also experienced privilege. If white people can take their privilege for granted, so too can other races. Shocking, I know. And I know now how my privilege blinded me to the fact that not everybody felt the same euphoria I did seeing characters that looked like them onscreen. Not if they were a narrow and offensive portrayal of their race. There are enough good-guy Asian characters that Fire Lord Ozai is allowed to be evil; but can you imagine if he was the only one?

3. What It Does Right

This is sounding really down on Avatar, which I don’t want to do. It’s a great show with a lot of fantastic themes that don’t show up a lot in kids’ media. It isn’t superficial or sugarcoating in its portrayal of the impacts of war, imperialism, colonialism, disability, and sexism, just to name a few. There are characters like Katara, a brown girl allowed to get angry but is not defined by it. There are characters like Aang, who is the complete opposite of toxic masculinity. There are characters like Toph, who is widely known as a great example of how to write a disabled character.

But all of these good things sort of masked the issues with the show. It’s easy to sweep an issue under the rug when there’s so many great things to stack on top and keep it down. Alternatively, one little problem in a show seems to make-or-break media for some people. Cancel culture is the most obvious example of this gone too far. Celebrity says one ignorant thing? Boom, cancelled. But… kind of not really, and also, they’re now terrified of saying anything at all because their apologies are mocked and their future decisions are scrutinized. It encourages a closed system of creators writing only what they know for fear of straying too far out of their lane. Avatar does do a lot of great things, and I think it would be silly and immature to say that its cultural appropriation invalidates all of these things. At the same time, this issue is an issue that should be addressed. Criticizing one part of the show doesn’t mean that the other parts of it aren’t good, or that you shouldn’t be a fan.

If Avatar’s cultural appropriation does make you uncomfortable enough to stop watching, go for it. Stop watching. No single show appeals to every single person. At the same time, if you’re a massive fan, take a sec (honestly, if you’ve made it this far, you’ve taken many secs) to check your own privilege, and think about how the blurred line between cultural appreciation (of East Asia) and appropriation (basically everybody else) formed. Is it because we as viewers were also captivated by the aesthetic and overall story, and so forgive the more problematic aspects? Is it because we’ve been conditioned so fully into never expecting rep that when we get it, we cling to it?

I’m no media critic or expert on race, cultural appropriation, or anything of the sort. I’m just an Asian-American teenager who hopes that her own opinion can be put out there into the world, and maybe resonate with someone else. I hope that it’s given you new insight into why Avatar: The Last Airbender is a show with both cultural appropriation and appreciation, and why these things coexist. Thank you for reading!

#this deleted idk why #so here is me reposting it #atla #avatar #avatar the last airbender #cultural appropriation #meta #atla meta #racism

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citrina-posts · 3 years

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Avatar: Cultural Appreciation or Appropriation?

1. Growing Up Asian-American

2. My Own Biases

Obviously, one can only truly speak for what they experience in their own life. I am East Asian and that is arguably the only culture that is treated with great depth in Avatar.

3. What It Does Right

#reposting this without the cut so that it survives with my new url!#avatar #avatar the last airbender #atla #cultural appropriation #culture #atla crit #meta #criticism #racism tw #self rb #citrina writes

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