Awesome / Raya and the Last Dragon

• Raya finding a loophole when training with her father; she gets a toe within the Dragon Gem's proximity circle. He smiles with what can be described as fatherly pride and says she's now a guardian, but has to answer to him as her trainer. Overall a reasonable response to a kid that doesn't understand how War Is Hell.
  • The entire training scene in general. Both sides prove how stalwart they are as father trains daughter to ensure the gem's safety. Chief Benja (nearly) keeps his daughter at bay without having to take out his blade and use it to its full extent, and Raya holds her own pretty well with those Escrima sticks!
• Chief Benja being a One-Man Army, taking on an entire squad of Fang soldiers when they try and steal the gem and winning in seconds. He absolutely could have hurt or killed them all if he wanted, and probably fought off the other tribes too, if he wasn't aiming for peace.
• Raya evading Namaari and the Fang warriors in Tail. First by setting off a booby trap in the cave to hold them down, then by buying herself, Sisu, and Tuk Tuk time by setting off the Toot-n-Booms (exploding fart beetles), and finally by hopping in the water and making it onto Boun’s boat.
  • Sisu helps them make their escape by using her swimming skills as a dragon to get Boun's boat up to motorboat speeds so Namaari can't follow.
• Noi and the ongis give Raya a difficult chase through Talon's market. If not for Tuk Tuk slamming a gate in their way, they might have escaped with the gem shards.
  • Once Raya finds out what happened to Noi's family, she immediately requests their help for infiltrating the Talon chief's house so she can retrieve the next Dragon Gem shard. Cue Noi and the ongis distracting the guards by pretending to fight over a banana, and Raya sneaks in undetected.
• Once they reach Spine, Sisu makes a defiant gesture to the "once bitten, twice shy" archetype by take a pot of Boun's soup to the Spine Fortress as a peace offering. Bear in mind that not one day ago, Sisu had been betrayed by the Talon Chief, and she did acknowledge it shook her world to witness that woman maliciously threaten to leave her at the Drunns' mercy. Yet, Sisu still chooses to believe trust is important, rather than internalize Raya's belief that nobody should be trusted. Sure, rushing towards Spine Fortress leads to her and Raya's capture, but it shows how dedicated Sisu is to restoring Kumandra to its better days.
• After Raya and Sisu get captured by Tong, Raya's allies storm in to rescue them, quickly subduing their captor in the process.
• For most of the movie, Raya avoids a direct confrontation with Namaari. Her reasons are Combat Pragmatist; only one of them has steady access to food, an army, and the stamina to fight. Raya hasn't had any of those in years. Then she says that she's going to distract Namaari so that Tong can evacuate Sisu and the others from the Spine hut. Sisu knows from her expression that Raya doesn't expect to leave the fight alive. Yet Raya insists she has to do this because Sisu is more important.
• Raya goads Namaari into fighting her solo and while it is even at the beginning, Namaari gains the upper hand fairly and would have won if it weren't for Sisu.
• Speaking of Sisu, her Big Damn Heroes moment when she rescues Raya from Namaari. Our comic-relief sidekick charges into the battlefield, fills it with fog, and intimidates Namaari into submission with nothing but a growl.
• When Namaari breaks the truce by pulling a crossbow on Raya and Sisu, it's revealed the rest of the crew was watching. They immediately prepare to fight, saying they don't care if Namaari is armed and Tong looking like he wants to rip her limb from limb. It's only because Sisu tells them to stand down and she'll talk to Namaari that they don't.
• Boun, Noi, and Tong putting their hatred of the Fang tribe aside to help people escape from their crumbling city and the Druun, using the Dragon Gem shards to provide protection. Notably, this makes them the bigger person than the chiefs of the other tribes who left Heart at the mercy of the Druun those six years ago. Once Raya and Namaari end their duel, they join in too.
• Although it's supposed to be a dark representation of how Raya has given up on redeeming Namaari, her march towards Fang Palace is pretty stalwart, especially the way she makes a straight beeline towards it. Nothing stops her, not the panicking swarm of Fang citizens, not the Drunn (which she repels with her still-working shard of the gem), not until she reaches her target.
• Bordering on heartwarming, Raya finding the personal strength to trust Namaari with her shard of the dragon stone. Even after everything they've been through, Raya indeed takes the first step, just as her father had hoped those six years ago. Not only does it inspire her friends to entrust their stones with Namaari, but it empowers Namaari with the moral strength to fix the dragon gem and make amends for betraying Raya.