Cultural Inspirations in Avatar: The Last Airbender Book 1 - Water

In which I ramble about Avatar for almost an hour!! AN HOUR!!!!!

The Waterbending Video:

[magicalgirlmel]

Sokka's first character arc is him learning to drink his Respect Women Juice and then he just never stops. We have no choice but to stan.

[valuabledoodles]

“I can’t believe Mark Hamill voices this random spirit!”

Just wait till she hears about who voices Lord Ozai

[griffin]

while avatar isn’t real representation what it does do right is introduce others (especially children) to asian & inuit cultures. while first airing in the us avatar was showing kids settings and influences that they’d never seen before & inspiring them to want to learn more about them. i remember watching the series on nick as a kid and being in awe of this world i had never seen anything like before

[Infernitar]

An interesting thing to note: King Bumi is our first real look at earthbending, but he's also rather atypical for an earthbender ... because he incorporates airbending footwork and agility into his style. Not only a good character indicator of his friendship with Aang and the Air Nomads earlier in life, but also shows that the greatest benders in the world tend to borrow elements from other disciplines to suit their own styles (even apparently contradictory styles like air and earth or water and fire), a trend that will continue throughout

[epicjoyfulcreations]

Between Katara’s harem and Sokka’s like eight girlfriends, the water tribe can get it.

[just-trying-my-best-everyday]

"The Qin Dynasty was like China's emo grunge phase."
I choked on my drink.

[ernestocarmona]

The "have you ever" intro is quickly becoming one of my favorites

[asperRader]

35:47 The cool thing is, kid media can't rely on blood and sex and violence and swearing to make itself seem deeper and more mature than it is, so to appeal to an older audience it needs to add actual complexity. It's so fun.

[iluvchess]

"In China you can see grandmas and grandpas constantly doing Tai Chi"

That is exactly what a park looks like in China

[Isa-lhmw]

"I really like my complex villains"

Fire lord Ozai: **sweats nervously**

[bigwig]

Any time Aang is not taking shit seriously, remember this is a kid without a therapist still trying to wrap his head around genocide of his culture for little to no apparent reason. Him not being present consistently is good writing imo.

[kaniq]

As an Inuit person I remember the first time I saw avatar I wasn't paying much attention then I saw the water tribe and I cried.

Never have I ever seen Inuit people in any kind of media in anyway that wasn't racist propaganda or rape fantasy and it made me just so absolutely to see our hairstyles and clothes and even hear our names coming from characters that were real people like they wereny just dumb savages but fully fleshed out people like everyone else in the show and that meant so much to me as a child.

Although I will say not all of the water tribe customs are accurate to us in real life (the sexism and emphasis on war)

[ApoasDemon]

"Meanwhile Zuko is yelling about his honor"
That's it that's the whole show.

[NIHIL_EGO]

As an European, I can firmly confirm that LoTR is good European cultures representation, everyone hates each others and only unites against common threats and even then it's complicated.

[imjustverable]

"I doubt that some background artist was googling _3000 year old Chinese pottery_ just for one shot."
Mm...as a writer who does unnecessarily in depth research for scenes and a person who knows many artists who do the same thing for one small detail in their drawings, I'd believe it lol.

[tomaszkrol]

6:39 That was always confusing for me. I'm polish and in our version, "bending" was, unfortunately, translated as "magia" which means magic so they were "magia ognia, wody, ziemi i powietrza" (fire, water, earth and air magic). Source of this translating decision was that there's no good translation in polish for "bending". They sometimes translate "to bend" for "tkać" which means to weave (tbh that was quiet accurate). When I found out that originally "fire magic" is "firebending" i rewatched this scene and in polish version Sokka called it "water tricks" and Katara replied that it's "water controlling" and then Sokka interrupted her with "ancient art ect...." Little translating trivia, great video and amazing channel ^^

[HikariTheGardevoir]

I would never say that ATLA is good (= accurate) representation. What it is however, is a prime example of Western media putting in actual effort to get their inspiration from more than the 5 Asian stereotypes you see in every Western show and treating Asian culture with respect. It's not treated as a fun gimmick, but as an actual normal part of the world, both the areas they depict and the philosophies they try to touch upon.

[Cheezbuckets]

I don’t know if this is a thing that people still talk about, but I’m going to complain about it anyway lol I used to always see people complaining/joking about how Aang’s reaction to Gyatso’s skeleton is ridiculous or unrealistic or that Aang’s an idiot in that episode for not realizing that of course Gyatso would be dead after a hundred years, and it always annoys the hell out of me! Aang isn’t an idiot, he KNOWS that everyone he knew, especially Gyatso, would be dead! Watch the episode, and look at Aang’s face after he has the flashback about Gyatso in front of his statue; he’s visibly upset, Katara comforts him because she sees he’s upset, he knows that Gyatso would have died long ago, however, he still believes that the airbenders escaped the fire nation army, and therefore that Gyatso probably died peacefully of natural causes somewhere else or something like that. It’s not until he sees Gyatso’s skeleton among those of fire nation soldiers that he finally realizes that the airbenders weren’t able to escape, everyone he knew was brutally murdered by an army, and, more than that, the man he loved like a father died horribly in battle, and THAT’S what made him lose control, not “oh, dang, the man who was old a hundred years ago is dead now?”
Like I said, I don’t know if people these days are still spreading this SLANDER, but it still peeves me off, so I wanted to get it off my chest somewhere. XD

[adi-odli]

When Aang said “do you think we could have been friends too?” it must have meant something to Zuko because when he was asking to join the gaang in season 3 he said to Aang “you once said you thought we could be friends” and idk I just find that really sweet that a comment seemingly small and just Aang being sweet meant so much to Zuko

[davilopes]

That old lady's CAT in season one is a total MYSTERY! A CAT??? Just a CAT? In the Avatar world? Like...? HOW???