I always wanted to watch Avatar, but annoying things – like wanting to watch from the beginning – kept getting in the way.   Fortunately, the DVD sets are pretty freaking cheap, so I decided to bite the bullet and buy.  Besides, my sister and brother seem to like Avatar fairly well enough, so it wouldn’t be a complete waste of money if I ended up not liking it.

Day 1

The episode starts with narrative exposition of a world split into four elemental territories: Fire Nation, Water Tribes, Air Nomads, and Earth Kingdom.  And then the Fire Nation put an end to the balance by starting a war 100 years ago.  With their navy.  Yeah.  A FIRE nation is best known for its NAVY.  Water tribes, hang your heads in shame.

Anyway, it was the job of the Avatar, master of all four elements, to maintain the balance.  But then he just went poof 100 years ago, so everyone’s boned.

Finally, the narrator reveals herself to be Katara of the Water Tribes, who believes the Avatar will one day return.

Alright, now that that setup’s out of the way, I’m totally onboard.

The first thing I noticed was that the animation quality sucks.  It could just have been my DVDs, though, because the picture seemed a bit blurry even when it was completely still.  But outside of that, there are several scenes where it’s blatantly obvious that we’re just panning across a single static painting.

On the other hand, LOADS of effort was put into the facial expressions, and the dissonance kinda forces the viewer to draw their attention to the faces.  It’s an interesting technique.  Of course, this is just the first episode, so this could eventually turn out to be silly nitpicking.

The episode quickly establishes that Katara is a Waterbender, or someone who can control water, and that her brother Sokka… isn’t.  What Sokka is , is a bit of a macho narcissist, a pointless skeptic (he lives in a world where people can control the elements, and he BLATANTLY IGNORES THAT THIS IS A THING THAT HAPPENS), and a comedic punching bag.

Speaking of the comedy, a LOT of the jokes fall flat.  I understand this is a children’s show, but… come on, throw me a bone.  What’s even more insulting is the amount of jokes that have a sound cue that pretty much shouts at you “THIS IS A JOKE, LAUGH AT IT!”

ANYWAY.  Katara finds a boy trapped in a block of ice and attempts to free him.  Because surely, this isn’t a caveman that got lost while hunting.

Once the boy is freed, a blue beacon of light shoots up, alerting the nearby Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation, who just so happens to be on a mission to find and kill the Avatar because… something about pride.  It may or may not also have alerted Leo that Lucia the Destroyer has come.

So anyway, the boy is named Aang, and he’s an Airbender.  His first words to Katara are for her to lean closer… then out of freaking nowhere, he asks if she wants to go penguin sliding.  Yeah, that’s how we establish that Aang is kind of an immature weirdo.  Or, unbeknownst to Katara, “penguin sliding” is actually an eccentric ancient marriage proposal custom.  The fact that she doesn’t take penguin sliding with the gravity it deserves was highly insulting to young Aang, and to punish her, he decides to totally fuck with her by pretending to be an idiot.

Take penguin sliding seriously.

Oh, and also frozen in the ice was Aang’s flying bison, Appa.  Aang offers to carry Sokka and Katara over to their tribe on Appa, which Katara is totally okay with, but Sokka isn’t because he’s a little bitch.

It’s at this point that I get the feeling that this relationship is similar to Goku and Bulma in the beginning of Dragon Ball, only this time, Bulma has a brother.  Oh, and Katara is that brother; Sokka is Bulma.

But then I realize that comparison is iffy and go somewhere else.  We have a young prodigy who is a master of wind.  He travels with a brother and sister.  He has an affinity for penguins.  I didn’t think I’d ever have a need for this cap again, but…

Along the way, Katara and Aang engage in what can only be described as blatant ship bait, then Aang goes to sleep and has a flashback about the reason he was trapped in ice: his boat got wrecked, so he encased himself in ice to save himself.  Um… okay.

Then he wakes up in Katara’s tribe.

What follows is a bunch of generic scenes where Aang gets to know the tribe better, everyone starts to be impressed by Aang, Sokka acts like a bitch, and Aang expresses interest in penguins.  Oh, and Aang is completely surprised by Airbenders being nearly extinct and there being a war.  Katara guesses Aang was probably trapped in ice for 100 years.

Okay.

So uh, before the reveal, Aang says he has “friends all over the world, even in Fire Nation.”  Then he finds out about being asleep for 100 years.  Then he says if any good came out of that, it’s that he met Katara.

Yeah, you just found out you lost friends from all over the world, but hey, you met some chick.  Good to know you’ve got your priorities straight, man.

Katara wants Aang to teach her to Waterbend, but he’s an Airbender, so he can’t (I guess encasing himself in ice was an air technique somehow).  But he says he can take her to the northern Water Tribes and maybe someone there can teach her.  But Katara isn’t sure about leaving her village.  But that’s okay, because when Aang and Katara enter an elephant graveyard wrecked Fire Nation ship, they trigger a booby trap (WHY would they have a need to booby trap their own ships?!) that sends a sky signal that Prince Zuko sees… because apparently it’s his special gift to see signs in the sky… and he spots the village.

So yeah, looks like we’re going to tread that tried-and-true RPG cliche of the villain destroying the hometown, forcing the heroes to leave on an epic journey.

You know what he should do?  He should slaughter the penguins while he’s at it.  That’ll make Aang an enemy for life.

Well, that’s it for today.  I just wanted to watch the first episode before I head to sleep.  I’ll probably do some binging in the morning and get at least the first disc done in my next post.