Avatar The Last Airbender - Why I love Azula

Azula of the fire nation is one of my favourite villains ever. I loved to hate her, and I feared her, but I also felt for her.

There are major spoilers.

Music:
1 - The Last Agni Kai - ATLA
2 - Ocean Spirit - ATLA
3 - Seperate Ways - LOK

OUTRO: Positivity - Phi

[Thearbiter]

“I realized that I rooted for her demise all the way up until her actual demise.” Couldn’t have said it more perfectly myself.

[julijakeit]

One note - Azula was humanized before her last defeat - look at the episode where she, Zuko, Ty Lee and Mai went to the beach island. Azula could not function outside the imposed role of the firebending prodigy and the heir to throne to the point she got jealous of Ty Lee for fitting in so well and admitting that. That episode says a lot about her.

[furious_malic]

Seeing asula's downfall really saddened me, you dont see this kind of downfall every day with a well written character that is villain and feel remorse for them at the end

[ellakelso]

She's a very tragic character, isn't she? She didn't get the nurturing that she needed as a child, and so her moral compass had never really pointed north.

[unicorn]

Ozai said:She is born lucky.
You are lucky to be born.
Now I think that Azula's talent is the worst thing that ever happened to her.She is not the lucky one.Zuko is because he was loved and he loved.

[thebullmoose]

I think Azula actually represents who Zuko would have became
without Ursa and Iroh to guide him.

[Medusaapologist]

And I feel like when she cries at the very end, after she's chained up. You're reminded that she's still a child, a girl who only had these ideals to cling to, this ambition for power. And when that power was gone, she had nothing. It's shown how awkward she is in social situations, so there was no chance of her being able to surround herself with real friends like Zuko had done. She was completely alone. And in that scene you see it. It's heartbreaking, she's only 14, she would just be in middle school. With her abilities, if she'd been raised by someone other than her father, imagine what a force of good she could have become.

[carlie]

Honestly to me Azula was a bigger threat than her dad 😂😂

[etherealnolan]

When you mentioned how she uses her two fingers when other benders used their palms or Mind-blown!! Hadn't even thought of that. I've always loved her badass spirit and I too felt chills and sadness at her demise.

[wafflingmean]

I think deep down, Azula wants her mother's side as well as her father's. When they were on Ember Island, she broke form a little and asked Tai Li nervously about how to talk to guys, because she had no idea how to be kind hearted. When growing up, Zuko acted like his mother and Ozai saw the kindness as a weakness. Wanting to please her father, Azula early on abandoned as much of her mother as she could. And in the end, she was alone. Her friends left her. Her father showed he only really cared about himself, not raising her to be the greatest heir to the Fire Nation. And it's in this moment that her mother returns to her mind, and she knows that despite achieving everything her father ever wanted, she was filled with nothing but sadness. She doesn't know how to handle it, so she breaks.

[nichelleritter]

I always get goosebumps at the final fight between her and Zuko and tear up. It's so touching and relatable ...

[rrjjmrf]

My own mother thought I was a monster... She was right of course but it still hurt.

[coreyholt]

i had never noticed how she switched to an open palm attacks when she lost her control at the end. and the music from her finale fight gives me chills in any context. Was she pitiable before Mei and Ty Lee turned on her? her fall seemed quick but man was it heartbreaking.

[oscarvillalobos]

Azula is the best female villan I have seen in my life

[lrose]

I feel like, instead of her father's approval, she wanted her mother's approval. What's really heartbreaking is I don't think her mother actually cared for her. You can tell her mother resented her because she was so similar to her father.

[liambotha]

One thing to note that in her final fight with with zuko and katara there's times she uses a closed fist and palms which shows just how she was losing her calm and self and her fighting style. Another thing is she got very tired easily, struggled breathing that's why iroh always talking about breathing exercises with zuko before attempting powerful attacks

[phamthibanh]

you should run when azula uses a open palm

[PlanetZoidstar]

Azula is a deconstruction of a *Villain Sue* . She starts out flawless, efficient, cunning, ruthless, and unbeatable, but slowly the cracks in her perfection begin to show, before she is ultimately beaten and undone.

[mkg]

Can I just say that 99% of the characters are emotionally or mentally scarred? It's kinda sad if you think about it.

[SPaleocrassas]

It's so tragic, her story. Since she had all the talent, she was the one that Ozai focused hisd attention on. Since Ozai was focused on her, that left little care for Zuko. This forced Ursa to give Zuko much more love than to Azula, not due to favoritism but to try and balance it out. In doing this, she didn't realize that she was creating a monster. In the void that was left by a lack of her mother's compassion, Ozai filled with power. Eventually, when Ursa was banished, she didn't really even care because she had grown so far apart from her mother.
Then, as Azula grew older, Ozai began to put her in positions where she could use her power to its full extent. This gave her the illusion that he cared about her. Eventually, she was consumed so much in her drive for power that somewhere along the line she lost the last sliver of care for anyone other than her father. She did whatever he wanted, whatever made him happy, because she wanted him to love her. Ozai was only interested in using her as a weapon, and I think she becomes increasingly aware of that throughout the series.
Eventually, when the two are supposed to set out so they can raze the earth kingdom, Azula is hit by the harsh reality that her father never really loved her, he only cared about her for her exceptional firebending abilities, she was just a piece in his game of world domination. She realized this when her father changes his mind about her coming, that she will stay in the fire nation and not be able to witness the product of her past few years of work. To make it worse for her, Ozai appoints her as firelord, only to appoint himself as Phoenix King, thus rendering her position basically powerless.
She realizes that she can't trust anyone anymore, especially since her only two friends (Mai and Ty Lee) abandoned her. She has nobody that loves her, nobody that even acts like they love her. She becomes paranoid that everyone will try to betray her. She pushes away everyone, banishing her servants and guards. Her mental state has deteriorated immensely, and she sees a hallucination of her mother after she slices her hair off. Ursa tries to tell her that she loves her, but Azula felt she had been lied to so many times about people loving her, and that her mother was lying to her too.
During the Final Agni Kai, we can see that she is delving deeper and deeper into insanity, by her change in fighting style. Zuko is now the calm and collected one, while Azula is fueled by rage and pain. When she eventually loses, whatever bit of sanity she had left vanished. All her life's work, tirelessly training to become an elite firebender, doing all those bounties for her father seeking his approval, becoming the firelord, was for nothing. She had no one to help her, nobody she could intimidate, she was helpless. She went over the edge, finally going from a ruthless, precise, and systematic killer, to an emotional wreck. It was all just too much for her, and I think it was quite cruel for her story to end that way.


TL;DR : Azula wan't the lucky one, Zuko was. He was able to learn the skills to make it on the outside world, and didn't have much to lose. There weren't any expectations for him. Azula, though, was supposed to be the best. Her father commanded it. She had no one else in her life, and feared that if she wasn't perfect, she would lose her father too. She ended up losing her father anyways, because he wanted nothing more of her than her skills, and when he no longer needed her skills, he no longer needed her. When the last person who even tried to show a little compassion towards her left her life, she was devastated and her mental state collapsed.