Avatar: The Last Airbender

I found this video by youtuber call Hello Future Me thats talks about The Psychology of Azula.

io9 has an excerpt of Rise of Kyoshi.

...and boy, it is violent as heck. A non-spoiler excerpt:

I remember some people commenting earlier that they wanted a more adult Avatar. Well, those people must be happy now.

That's not adult, it's just Gorn. If anything, it makes the show LESS mature, I think.

The use of it is what makes it more or less mature...

It's unnecessary either way.

Context, not content, as my writing professor would say.

That doesn't seem gory for a kid's book. I've seen worse in several other Middle Grade Literature works.

Kyoshi having been The Chosen Zero is pretty interesting, looking forward to this. It also retroactively does seem to elevate Korra and Aang because their mastery and raw talent is theirs alone rather then a benefit of being the Avatar.

Edited by lycropath on May 10th 2019 at 7:11:40 AM

It's interesting because a while back, when we were discussing possible Avatar sequels, I remember theorizing that since the last two Avatars were skilled bending prodigies who knew they were the Avatar at a very young age, the next one would be an Earthbender who sucks at bending and doesn't know they're the Avatar, just to contrast.

Its also nice to go back to a more traditional wuxia setting compared to all the tech in Korra.

I agree with Pichu that that doesn't sound too gruesome.

Anyway, this sounds interesting. I'll have to check it out.

I just want to see Kyoshi and the Dai Li since she was the founder.

I found the complete series for $40 at a store. I remember when I was a kid there was some kind of joke in the show that turned me off the show forever, which apparently was another in a long line of mistakes.

Will start watching soon.

I can understand dropping it after "The Great Divide", since it's almost unanimously considered the single worst episode of the season, and I can almost guarantee it was only made to pad season length.

I get the idea that Aang needs to learn how to be a good mediator, but the episode was pretty dumb and even the Avatar got tired of dealing with them so he just came up with a lie to end it.

I've honestly never gotten people's thing with the Great Divide, myself.

Yeah. Endorsing historical revisionism isn't a great look for a series. "The Great Divide" is definitely a low point.

Also, it's not that bad of an episode but it is a pretty boring one that does nothing interesting with the characters. There isn't any depth to it. The main conflict is juvenile. The animation is weird. The resolution renders the entire endeavor pointless and none of it comes back except as a throwaway joke. No one grows. Nothing new is explored. There's no Zuko or Iroh to add any weight to it. And there are plenty things that the episode could have been used for.

You really could skip the episode and miss nothing. And in a show where even the "filler" episodes are pretty good, that's kind of unfortunate.

There's a difference between "not great" and "absolutely horrible", which is how people talk about the Great Divide.

It's not one of my favorite episodes or anything, I just find the way people go on about it to be completely disproportionate to anything actually wrong with it.

But that tends to happen a lot with shows with reputations like Avatar.

Edited by LSBK on May 13th 2019 at 6:24:44 AM

Honestly, I agree that it’s really not that bad of an episode (LOK had worse episodes in my opinion) and I think a lot of people blow it out of proportion.

However, it makes me wonder about if it’s better to have a boring episode or a bad episode. I feel absolutely nothing towards The Great Divide but I strongly dislike The Painted Lady and Civil War Part 2. And yet, TPL and CW are still the more interesting episodes that I would rather watch despite not being good ones.

Edited by deuteragonist on May 13th 2019 at 4:24:51 AM

That is a fair point. It's partially why tropes like So Bad, It's Good and So Bad Its Horrible exist in the first place.

Huh, so So Bad Its Horrible isn't a trope anymore?

Edited by LSBK on May 13th 2019 at 6:25:55 AM

Yeah, "The Great Divide" is mostly just a mediocre story by Avatar standards, but that still makes it a bit better than most. I actually liked the final lie Aang told, because it comes after an entire episode dealing with miserable people and the lie proved how stupid their source conflict was (it doesn't really work in a real world setting, as the source of a conflict becomes irrelevant in the face of hundreds of years of other grievances). I actually hold the episode on about par with "Jet" in how generic the story and characters are.

Yeah, but at least "Jet" gives some character work to Sokka and Katara. Aang lying at the end of the episode is kind of funny and ironic but...that's about it.

Edited by deuteragonist on May 13th 2019 at 4:40:20 AM

I feel sorry for the people who stumbled onto "The Great Divide" as their first episode. One of those people was me.

Personally speaking, as someone who once compared the likes of DuckTales (2017) to the masterpieces of Avatar: The Last Airbender and Transformers: Animated, I also feel that hate for "The Great Divide" (and heck, even the other filler episodes for Avatar) is strongly disproportionate.

There are far worse things to watch out there.

Edited by BrightLight on May 14th 2019 at 12:27:25 AM