YMMV / Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Search

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • After Yu Dao blew up in his face, Aang changed. He's willing to compromise on his goals to achieve partial victories. He's become far more practical in his solutions to problems, like punting Yu Dao's reformation to an international conference and advising Zuko to burn a letter that could undermine his claim to the throne, rather than relying on good intentions, friendship, and lucky breaks. He's also being more political in how he treats Zuko, recognizing that his friend is also a somewhat shaky ally who needs propping up after an ambiguously suicidal fall.
  • Ursa is probably the biggest example: is she a sympathetic and loving mother who was broken by all the pain in her life, or a weak, cowardly, selfish woman who cared more for herself and her old boyfriend than for her own children? Ursa even derides herself for her choice; doubly so when she learned exactly how bad her ploy went.
    • On that note, her depiction in the comic: is it a contradiction of her depiction in the original series, or a more nuanced portrayal that goes beyond Zuko's fond memories of her?
  • Ozai, again. Was he always a heartless, power-hungry Evil Prince and abusive parent and husband or, just like Ursa, was he a victim of his father's eugenic schemes? In some point, did he really try to be a good father and husband? There is the fact that when he tells Ursa it's true that Azulon ordered him to murder Zuko, he's not cruel or forceful about it; just honest and resigned to it. Of course, then he gets manipulative when he says that she'll have to go into exile, and he won't let her take the children because he wants them as bargaining chips in case she ever decides to posion him.
    • Exactly what his relationship with Azula is. Did he legitimately believe she would be a better Fire Lord than Zuko or was his telling Azula about the letter, something he knew was fake, just prove that she is just another tool for revenge he is trying to use against Zuko and Ursa. Or, given Azula's mental state, was it all just a ploy to gain back the throne. Given how politically perceptive Ozai is and how good he is at reading people or situations, he could've taken one look at the state his daughter was in, and willingly told Azula in the hopes that Azula would've gone and killed Ursa just to spite his son for dethroning him.
  • The true reason behind Ozai and Ursa's Arranged Marriage. Was it, as Azulon proclaims, due to the Fire Sages' advice to breed a better, more powerful royal heir with the blood of Avatar Roku and the Fire Nation Royal Family? Or was it a calculated political strategy to avoid the rise of a potential threat to the Fire Nation Royal Family's position and power from Roku's lineage by merging the two bloodlines? Perhaps a bit of both?
  • Azula's apparent Heel–Face Turn is this in-story, as Aang and Katara are willing to believe it, but Sokka isn't and thinks she just slipped up in her craziness and will still be a threat when she next turns up.
  • Does Zuko completely forgive Ursa for wiping her memories of him at the end? Or is he being a Stepford Smiler and just trying to be a good son to her?
  • Iroh. One could ask to what extent he knew about or even if he was involved in Fire Lord Azulon's eugenic scheme to create the perfect Fire Nation heir and how much he knew about Ursa's disappearance.
• Base-Breaking Character: Ursa. See Alternative Character Interpretation above: either people sympathize with her or find her unforgivable.
• Common Knowledge: "Ozai isn't Zuko's real father" became this for a while, thanks to Part One ending on the "reveal" that this might be the case. Cue criticism about how it completely invalidates Zuko's arc from the series, which was about him finally realizing that he shouldn't be living his life trying to please an abusive father who will never truly love him. Not to mention the implication that this means Zuko continued to occupy a throne that wasn't legally his, per The Legend of Korra. Quite a few people never bothered to read the remaining parts, where Zuko, overjoyed by this supposed revelation, must be brought down to Earth and have this Hope Spot crushed by Ursa, who confirms that Ozai is, unquestionably and without a doubt, his father and, what's more, that Ozai never questioned this fact either. What's more, Ozai is even worse than Zuko realized, because he went so far as to abuse him purposefully for the sake of getting back at his mother.
• Contested Sequel: Just like its predecessor; some fans even feel these books almost as a fanfiction and would prefer to think of it as non-canon, and bringing it up risks starting a fan war.
• Fan-Disliked Explanation: The arc exploring the reason why Ozai treated Zuko as The Un-Favourite manages to give two of these.
  • Many dislike the twist that Zuko isn't Ozai's son, mainly because many fans feel it renders pointless a lot of Zuko's character development from the animated series and undermines its original aesop: "You are not your bloodline, your family does not define who you have to be." Eventually it's revealed that this first twist was a lie and Ozai really is Zuko's father after all, but the reason why it's untrue, along with what actually happened to Ursa, has become an entirely new Fan-Disliked Explanation: Ursa wrote that Zuko was not Ozai's son in a deliberate attempt to 1) see if Ozai was reading her letters (which worked) and 2) piss him off if he was (which very much worked). But Ozai, being Ozai, was more pissed that she dared play an obvious lie that he would punish Ursa by treating Zuko like he wasn't his son for the rest of his life. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero.
    • It's not uncommon to find fans who were disappointed with the explanation of how Ursa disappeared.
    • Some fans were unhappy with the Mother of Faces being Koh's mother as well as the face that he steals faces to spite her. Many felt that this made Koh, an Ensemble Dark Horse, out to be a petty mama's boy and ruined his wise, ancient, powerful demeanor.
    • Many Azula fans dislike Gene Yang's statement about "Azula's Split Personality" in the comic. Fans believe Gene Yang failed to handle Azula's character well and the "Split Personality" is a super weak excuse for how poor his writing on Azula's character is and how her "mental illness" in the comic is very unrealistic.
• Fanfic Fuel: Zuko when he believes Ikem is his father briefly suggests that he could stay with him, Noriko and Kiyi and try to have a normal family life, giving up his Firelord claim. Try to imagine that plotline.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Due to Fan-Disliked Explanation, many fans just pretend that this story never happened or happened in a very different way.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: This was the story that established Ozai as not just the Abusive Parent who wields fire as his powerset but one who married Ursa as part of an eugenics experiment to produce more powerful children, resulting in Zuko whom he personally scarred and Azula who's the Ax-Crazy child with Technicolor Fire. Later on, the anime My Hero Academia introduced Endeavor, an abusive father and superhero who wielded fire as his superpower and married a carefully selected woman as part of a Super Breeding Program to produce children who could potentially surpass his rival All-Might. Among those kids were Shoto who can produce powerful flames and has a scarred face and Toya/Dabi who's the psychotic unhinged male equivalent to Azula with his own blue flames. The only difference is that Endeavor wasn't the parent who scarred Shoto and Dabi believed himself to be The Unfavorite of the family.
• I Knew It!:
  • We get explicit confirmation that Ursa was behind Azulon's death, though the details differ a bit from the popular theory.
  • Many called that Noren and Noriko were Ikem and Ursa and that the letter revealing Ikem to be Zuko's true father is a lie made up by Ursa to strike at Ozai.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Azula naturally continues to be this, with her pain and insanity even worse than before.
  • Also, Koh the Face Stealer, who doesn't even appear here, becomes one due to his revealed backstory and Freudian Excuse.
• Just Here for Godzilla: The book initially drew viewers in so they could find out what happened to Zuko's mother, Fan-Disliked Explanation be damned. It left viewers with another reason to keep reading on: Will Azula ever recover and redeem or recover and stay a villain? Or will she not recover at all?
• Moral Event Horizon: See here.
• Never Live It Down: Ursa's portrayal in this comic. A lot of fans seem to exaggerate Ursa's faults and downplay either her good qualities or Ozai's own actions. Despite what many say, Ursa's decisions in the story are not portrayed as completely in the right, with even Ursa expressing regret for what she did and apologizing for not loving Azula enough before choosing to regain her memories and face. Yet, she is known best here for unintentionally causing Zuko to be treated worse by Ozai (Even though that doesn't excuse how Ozai reacted and in fact, makes the abuse all the more despicable.) and getting a new face at the cost of the memories of her children (regardless of the fact that Ozai's blackmail and leverage didn't give her much of a choice in the matter.)
• Replacement Scrappy: The Mother of Faces to Koh.
• Ron the Death Eater: Admittedly, what Ursa did was terribly tragic and there isn't really any excusing it; even Ursa herself agrees with this. However, some fans take it too far and actually claim she's a worse, more awful parent than Ozai.
• The Scrappy:
  • Misu and Rafa. Many readers found these two to be a pointless waste of space who took time away from more important things and an unnecessary source of conflict (they exist solely to agitate the Mother of Faces because they're an extra wish more than the mother would grant).
  • Some see Ikem as a Scrappy too, either due to being at the center of the (fake-out) twist that he's Zuko's true father, or that while he's not a bad or terrible person, there isn't much to him aside from being Noriko's husband.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The reveal of why Ursa left her family: Ozai exiled her after she gave him an untraceable poison to kill Azulon, since Ozai made it clear that he would follow orders and murder Zuko unless Azulon died and left the throne open. After she found Ikem, she met the Mother of Faces and decided to erase her memories of her children so she wouldn't be tempted to return to the capital to see them. It was supposed to be seen as tragic, but a lot of readers instead saw Ursa as a selfish jerk who threw her children under the bus to get back at her abusive husband, then abandoned them completely.
• The Woobie:
  • Kiyi, Ikem and Ursa's little daughter, who obviously ends the story being traumatized as Hell for all that gets revealed.
  • Ursa is a straight-up Woobie for most of the story (though some readers lost their sympathy for her by the end of the story).

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