Well, here I am again, having watched all three seasons of ATLA. My first impression is that the target audience shifted between ATLA and Korra. Whereas Korra seems to be targeted at teenagers, ATLA's target audience are kids. This is not to say other age groups can't enjoy either series since the themes explored are pretty much universal.
Another important difference is that Aang can only air-bend at the beginning of the series whereas Korra can bend everything but air. This seems like an extremely puzzling choice for Korra considering what I learnt from ATLA, mainly, that a bender has most difficulty mastering the element that's opposite of his or her own. Since Korra is a water-bender the element she should have the most difficulty mastering is fire. This is not the case, however, and I can see a couple of reasons why. First, Aang himself says that his training as an air-bender focused on defense and Korra is strictly an offensive player who'd rather fight every other day of the week. In this respect, an air-bender's training would seem radically different from Korra's personality. Second, the creators of the series might have wanted to try something different. If Korra had to learn the elements from scratch, it might be too reminiscent of Aang's own journey. In this way, the series can focus on what challenges still await the Avatar even after she has mastered the elements.
ATLA is divided into three books, each focusing on Aang's quest to master a particular element: water, earth, fire. In my case, the first one was a bit slow but maybe that's because I was used to Korra's rather frantic pacing. Also, not until the second book do we start to see some serious character development, mostly with Sokka and Zuko. I don't know why but Aang and Katara always seemed rather static to me. Personally, there came a point in season two where I thought to myself, "I'm more interested in Zuko's story than in the Avatar's, imagine that." I felt that there was more "wisdom" to be found in the chats between Zuko and his uncle, Iroh. Unfortunately, Zuko's story trudged rather than flowed in book two and I was a bit disappointed that its climax returned us to square one. Well, almost. Book three tells us that Zuko's act of betrayal was the final crucible and the one that made him realize what kind of man he wanted to be. Personally, I think it was mostly a case that the writers didn't want him to turn good until book three, and even then he joins Team Avatar around episode 12 if I'm not mistaken. That late in the game, the writers were forced to have him do "companion quests" in order to create bonds that would have taken at least another season. It is good that the writers acknowledge this by having Toph saying it out loud in one of the latter episodes of book three, where she insists on trekking with Zuko because everyone else "
went on a life-changing trip" with him. In fact, I've noticed that the writers seem to use Toph a lot when they want to acknowledge their oversights.
This seems like the moment to talk about Toph but I'm going with Sokka first. I do believe his character grew a lot from the first season. From a wannabe warrior he turned into a skilled fighter and smart strategist. I like how "Sokka's Master" acknowledged the issue of him being the only non-bender in the group and how he felt about that. For a while it had felt like Sokka was "the comic relief guy" (which he was) and I didn't like that. On the other hand, the same episode decided to approach his training in a rather goofy way that I didn't particularly enjoy. I feel that his training should have warranted at least another episode.
Toph took some getting used to but she kinda grew on me. She's very straightforward about her thoughts and more often that not she's the one that points out to the group what they fail to see, ironically enough. The most recent example in my mind is when she scolds Team Avatar on how quick they were to dismiss Zuko's offer to teach Aang fire bending. I was skeptical at first that she seemed to be such a powerful earth-bender with practically zero training, similar to Katara with water bending (I mean, are all kids born masters?), but her blindness sold me on how she had used her bending to see the world and how that gave her an edge nobody else had. All in all, she's an adorable force of nature, even when she punches people. After all,
it's her way of showing affection.
Katara is, well, Katara. Her life's goal seemed to train under a master water-bender and by the end of book one she does so. In fact, she becomes a master water-bender herself quite fast (perhaps a tad too fast). "The Waterbending Scroll" is an interesting episode in that she has to deal with her feelings of jealousy at seeing Aang replicating her efforts with ease. It also deals with the subject of exactly how far she's willing to go to master water bending, although by the end of the episode I'm not entirely sure she's learnt any lesson. Because that's how most (if not all) of ATLA's episodes work, with our characters learning a lesson at the end of the episode. Another episode worth mentioning is "The Southern Raiders," where she and Zuko team up to hunt down her mother's killer and in doing so she learns to forgive, though perhaps not the person we'd expect. I was disappointed that we didn't have a sequel to "The Puppetmaster," with Katara exploring her feelings about being able to blood-bend. Surely the rest of the group would be afraid at first? No? Okay. Like I said, Katara's character development appears weak, but maybe I wasn't paying attention.
Aang. He runs pretty fast? Seriously, I'm not sure what I can say about him. His character doesn't seem to grow that much, every time he's faced with a conflict an answer is provided in the form of this avatar or that spirit or that turtle. He learns to deal with his feelings of loss during the missing-Appa cycle of episodes so that's something. But then we have "The Guru," where he fast-tracks the seven chakras, refuses to let go of attachment same as Anakin, and has a vision of Katara being captured after Luke. As a result, he gets killed in the Avatar State, what should effectively put an end to the reincarnation cycle but clearly doesn't (Korra). Then throughout book three he manages to activate the (previously blocked forever?) Avatar State every time his back bumps into a rock. Unless I missed something, he never learned to let go of attachments so how exactly did he unlock the Thought Chakra? Seems like I want to talk about the finale so let's go.
It was fairly disappointing on many levels, I'm not going to lie. One of the reasons is that Zuko and Aang's "friendship" was fast-tracked way too fast, as was Zuko's integration into Team Avatar. There's also the issue that if the first fire-benders drew their power from the energy of the sun, I'm not sure how the newer version of angry fire-benders can draw even more power from a lousy comet. Also, I'm not much of an astronomy buff, but for how long can you see a comet on the same patch of sky without the aid of telescopes? Does a fire-bender need to see it in order to use its power? Is its power tied to proximity? I don't want to nitpick but it is kind of a crucial plot point of the series. I was also a bit disappointed with the Katara-Azula showdown. Considering Katara is a pretty adept water-bender I would have expected a more spectacular confrontation than having her run and hide most of the time.
But perhaps the weakest point has to do with Aang. Throughout the series he was so caught up with learning to master the elements to defeat the Fire Lord that he never considered he might have to kill him. Aang refuses to do so and asks the previous Avatars for advice. It was pretty useless. Fast forward, he enters the Avatar State accidentally, beats the crap out of the Fire Lord, and still refuses to kill him. Then, by divine inspiration, he decides to take away his firebending ability. Only that it wasn't divine inspiration, see, there was this turtle that appeared earlier and apparently shared with him something called energybending or deus ex machina. Was this even hinted at in any episode throughout the series? Not to my knowledge. I was expecting some revelation that would tie together Aang's journey, instead I watched how he pulled a rabbit out of a hat. "Hey, but Korra does it too!" Yes, the difference being that Korra had a single season of twelve episodes while ATLA had three seasons and sixty-one episodes to explore this. I think perhaps Iroh taught us a whole lot more about energybending in "Bitter Work" than Aang learned in the entire series.
What else? The explanations behind metal bending and blood bending confirm my earlier suspicions. After all, there's water in our bodies and metals are part of the earth itself. I'm not entirely sold on lightning generation, at least not on how it can be classified as a firebending specialization.
Ah, I could keep writing/talking for ages. In conclusion, it was a highly enjoyable series that could have benefited from another season before facing the dreaded Fire Lord or perhaps a longer third season.
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