Animated Discussions

Convention Bestiary: The Glomper

2012-02-21T21:48:00.003-05:00

While glompers have become rare in recent years due to cons increasingly cracking down on over-exuberant behavior likely to cause injury, they still occasionally turn up. Of all creatures in the Convention Bestiary, the glomper is among the most physically dangerous, so vigilance remains important despite its increasingly endangered status.

Identifying Features: Glompers are typically younger and female, but both older and male glompers exist. Identifying a glomper by site is extremely difficult, but they are easily identified by their behavior.

Habitat: Convention center and hotel hallways; anywhere that cosplayers congregate.

Notable Behaviors: Upon sighting a cosplayer dressed as a favorite character, the glomper will immediately emit a high-pitched squeal and attempt to hug the cosplayer, without regard for personal space or safety. There is at least one documented instance of a glomper tackling a cosplayer at the top of a staircase, throwing both of them down it.

Effective Countertactics: The only certain way to avoid glomping is to not cosplay. However, if you still wish to cosplay, your best option is vigilance. If you hear the distinctive shriek of the glomper, locate the glomper, wait for them to start their attack run, and then step out of the way. If you're lucky, they will go down the stairs instead of you.

Cautions: Do not attempt to use poor hygiene or direct violence as a defence against glompers. Poor hygiene is simply not effective; anyone unobservant enough to tackle-hug someone at the top of a staircase is not going to notice even the most powerful con-stench. Violence has a tendency to get one thrown out of cons, even when in self-defense against random glompings.

Katsucon Post-Coma Report

2012-02-20T13:23:00.004-05:00

I think Katsucon may have been the most tiring convention I've ever been to. I slept for fifteen and a half hours after I got home! I don't think I've ever slept that much straight through without chemical assistance or being seriously ill.

Anyway, Katsucon was fun, but had serious flaws. Let's start with...

The Good

Some of the good things at Katsucon were the typical good things at any con: Seeing con friends like Charles and Aaron and Tom (no Jeff, bastard went to the Doctor Who con instead), feeling like an accepted member of a community even when surrounded by strangers, not feeling threatened when people I don't know start talking to me and I don't know why, all that stuff was out in force. Also, I don't think I heard any meme kids all con--the only time anybody tried that obnoxious call-response shit was when Charles did it to make a point about fan culture.

Some high points specific to the con:

I never went to the video rooms or manga library. As I believe I've mentioned before, I don't go to cons to watch anime or read manga, because I can easily (and much more cheaply) do that at home. I will only go to a video room or manga library if there's nothing else to do, and that never happened at this year's Katsu.
We Con, Therefore We Are: A debate of sorts between an elitist jackass who was offended that anime cons don't consist entirely of scholarly gentlemen sipping tea and smoking fine cigars whilst comparing and contrasting Tezuka's linework to Miyazaki's, and Charles, who argued (rightly) that cons are and should be more about the fandom than the anime itself. Very entertaining, and the elitist jackass argued his point well despite being massively wrong and facing quite a bit of hostility from the crowd.
My Panels: All of my panels went off really well. Analyzing Anime 101 was a resounding success, despite the terrible time slot, and I am immensely happy with it. I am already making plans for a less anime-focused version to pitch to multi-fandom cons. Judaism and Anime went well, but still ran a little short even with the new content. I will have to add still more before I try again.
As for my panels with Viga, the Madoka panel was immensely successful but we were unable to film it. We promised we would record a version at home and put that up on YouTube, but we will probably not be able to until some time in March. Anime of the West managed to blow some minds and hopefully help people understand that animation is animation no matter where it's from. Finally, My Little Panel: Friendship Is Magic went amazingly--our revised material was strong, our discussions of pony biology and the Cutie Mark Crusaders generated a lot of response, and the audience was extremely enthusiastic (some of them waited in line for two hours)!
Charles' and Aaron's Panels: I finally got to see Charles' Pokemon panel after missing it two cons in a row, and it was everything I had hoped for. He even gave Vanillish some much-needed love! I also finally managed to catch one of Aaron's panels (two, actually, The Life and Works of Hideaki Anno and Evangelion, WTF) and both were quite good.

The Bad

Despite having a lot of good, there were some serious issues with Katsucon this year, and they pretty much sum up to one word: Scheduling. A lot of people (including at least one guest I know of) had complaints about the scheduling of their panels, which seemed to be done without any regard for when might be an appropriate time (the middle of the night is not a good time for any panel that expects its audience to think!) or the effects on panelists and attendees. For example, my panel schedule was:

2 a.m. Sunday: Analyzing Anime 101
7 a.m. Sunday: Judaism and Anime
9 a.m. Sunday: Madoka
11 a.m. Sunday: Anime of the West
1 p.m. Sunday: MLP:FIM

Kindly explain to me when the hell I'm supposed to get some sleep while giving those five hours of panels? And seriously, Analyzing Anime at two in the morning? What were you thinking, Katsucon!? I basically had to miss busiest part of the con because I spent Saturday afternoon and evening asleep in preparation for this absurd schedule.

The Ugly

Yes, there was worse than the scheduling fail. Much worse, and like the bad, it all comes down to one word. In this case: Communication.

Katsucon staff failed, hard, at communicating even basic information to the people who needed to know it, right from the start:

Panelists were not informed of their panels until two weeks before the convention. E-mails to con staff prior to this received no response or unhelpful responses. I understand that this was because they had not yet completely nailed down the guests, but there must have been some point well before the two weeks mark at which they were sure that they would have time for at least X panels, and they could have accepted that many panels while waitlisting an additional Y they hoped to have room for, like Anime Boston is doing this year.
The printed schedule handed out at the beginning of the con was an unreadable mess. Every con I have ever been to uses a grid layout: one axis shows the rooms, the other shows the time, and at the intersection you find the name of whatever event is in that room at that time. Katsucon has always had particularly unreadable grids that make it hard to tell whether a panel is on the half-hour or the hour, but this year was worse by far: There was no grid at all, just a list of panels organized by room.
A list would be bad enough, but organizing it by room elevated the schedule from hard to use to impossible to use. People use the con schedule either to plan their day in advance or to decide where to go right now. In either case, the question is "What is happening at a particular time?" Only after you make that decision do you then want to know what room the event is in. Organizing by rooms makes answering the second question much easier, but at the price of making answering the first question a ton of work. I am quite sure I missed out on panels I might want to see because it was too much work to figure out when they were and whether they conflicted with other things I wanted to see--not that it matters, because thanks to my ridiculous schedule, I probably couldn't have seen them anyway.
There was an online schedule using the grid format, but as the hotel did not have free wi-fi, it was only accessible to people with smartphones. There was no other attempt to communicate the schedule: No schedule grid posted as a sign at the information desks, and no signs in front of rooms showing the individual schedules for each room. Which leads to my next point...
Con staff did a woefully inadequate job of communicating schedule changes. The print schedule did not reflect changes made even before the con started, but they didn't actually tell anyone that unless they asked. They updated the online schedule with any changes, but did not provide updated print schedules at the information desks, which most cons do. Schedule changes during the con were not announced in any form except online--since there were no schedule signs, those could not be updated, nor did anyone post signs on room doors, as I've seen other cons do. Our My Little Pony panel was rescheduled from noon Sunday to 1 p.m., and not only did no one tell Viga and I, no one told the 60+ fans waiting in line for it until Viga and I saw them and started making noise. The former is an annoying oversight, but not disastrous. The latter is completely unacceptable. Oh, and when I asked why we were rescheduled, I got either the blatant lie or the egregious error that it was to give us a bigger space, even though we were still in the same room!
The convention did not have a feedback panel at the end. Apparently, buried in the unreadable mess of a schedule, there was one on Saturday afternoon at some point, which is just absurd. How can people give feedback on the con when half of it hasn't happened yet?

Conclusions

I'm still mulling this one over. Viga and I are seriously considering not coming back to Katsucon next year. She wants to make MagFest her winter con, and I am frankly fine with having one fewer con to pay for. On the other hand, if not for the shit-tacular scheduling that forced us to get a room for the weekend, this would have been nearly as cheap as AUSA, so the cost savings wouldn't be that much if I felt reasonably confident that I wouldn't have such bad scheduling. So it's up in the air right now.

Convention Bestiary: Meme Kids

2012-02-20T13:01:00.005-05:00

Identifying Features: Meme kids have the same distribution of gender, class, ethnicity, and clothing styles as con attendees in general. However, they are nearly always in the 14-21 age range and without adult supervision. Often they can be identified by their dead, lifeless eyes, manic grins, and slight drool, indicative of their lack of capacity for original thought or anything resembling normal human conversation.

Habitat: Convention center and hotel hallways, as well as the streets immediately surrounding the convention.

Notable Behaviors: Shouting out call-and-response memes is the only form of communication of which meme kids are capable, and they indulge in it continually. Their cries have been theorized to be a form of asserting membership in the herd, or possibly some sort of echolocation. Suggestions that it may be a mating cry have been met with horrified outrage, as it implies the possibility of meme kids reproducing at some point.

Effective Countertactics: There are only two known ways to stop meme kids, and both can only be accomplished by convention organizers and staff. The first is a zero-tolerance policy: Anyone caught shouting memes has their badge taken away and is immediately expelled from the convention. The second is to simply price the convention out of meme kids' range, either by making tickets very expensive or by holding it at a very expensive location. The second strategy has the unfortunate side effect of preventing lower-income fans from attending, so the first is heartily recommended.

Cautions: Despite all indications to the contrary, meme kids are still considered human beings by most jurisdictions, and so indiscriminate slaughter may result in arrest, jail time, even execution or expulsion from the convention! Even in those few jurisdictions that rightly classify teenagers as wild beasts, animal cruelty laws may still apply. Above all, do not try to make meme kids or point out that they are incredibly annoying. If they were capable of reasoning, they would not need to constantly parrot memes, and the entire point of their behavior is to get a response--yelling at them is simply rewarding them.

Convention Bestiary: Conversation Guy

2012-02-15T11:31:00.002-05:00

Going to be starting something new. It is, perhaps, a little mean-spirited, but very cathartic. I am going to start chronicling the... let's say "less than perfectly socialized" people you tend to meet at cons. Since I mostly go to anime cons with the occasional cross-geekery or sci-fi con thrown in, the list will be skewed in those directions. For our first entry, let's all meet...

Conversation Guy

Identifying Features: Conversation Guy is always a white male in his 20s or older, usually bearded and overweight, and always poorly groomed. There is no particular reason why these features should be so, but I have encountered many different Conversation Guys, and the patterns are consistent.

Habitat: Any panel, but especially ones to do with a technological or science-fictional topic.

Notable Behaviors: Conversation Guy's primary characteristics are a total lack of consideration and an inability to distinguish between a panel and a personal conversation. Conversation Guy will thus respond to every single thing the panelists say as if the rest of the audience were not in the room and instead he and the panelists were hanging out together, shooting the breeze.

Effective Countertactics: Snark. Conversation Guy is typically desperate to prove his knowledge of the panel topic, so puncturing his fragile little ego is a great way to shut him down. If you are in the audience, and Conversation Guy is disrupting the panel, ask him why his name isn't in the program, since clearly he thinks he's on the panel. If you are a panelist, try pointing out that you don't go to his panels and talk over him.

Cautions: Do not set your Conversation Guy sensors too high! Bearded, poorly groomed, overweight white dudes and people with poor social skills are both fairly common at cons, and so is the intersection. Don't immediately jump down the throat of anyone who, in a moment of passion, responds to or corrects a panelist, especially if the panelists seem okay with it! On the other hand, if an audience member seems to be talking more than any of the panelists, you have a case of Conversation Guy on your hands. Shoot to kill; you are doing everyone a favor.

Analyzing Anime 101 Notes

2012-02-11T02:10:00.005-05:00

Below are my notes for my upcoming Analyzing Anime 101 panel at Katsucon 2012. The aim of the panel is to provide an overview of the techniques and approaches of textual analysis as applied to anime. It assumes a level of knowledge equivalent to a high school education, which is to say no prior knowledge of textual analysis (hence the 101).

I welcome comments, suggestions, and criticisms, as I want to do the best job I can of presenting this. In particular, if anyone can suggest good introductory books or books for laymen on general analysis, film criticism, or anime criticism in specific, I would be most appreciative--all of my knowledge comes from the textbooks I used in college, which were expensive to begin with and now mostly out of print.

Warning: Major NGE spoilers, minor spoilers for Madoka, Cardcaptor Sakura, and Slayers.

Analyzing Anime 101

What is Analysis?

All art is collaborative process: Even when there is a singular artist, there are still two people involved in the experience of art: the artist and the viewer.
Most viewers usually are passive consumers of art, with the interpretation occurring mostly automatically and subconsciously. Few works provoke the general viewer into actively trying to construct meaning, usually by aggressively posing questions and providing ambiguous answers.
Analysis is the active, conscious participation in art. It consists of taking conscious control of the process of interpreting art, observing one's own automatic interpretations and subjecting them to test or intentionally trying different interpretations.
Analysis begins with "close reading," the careful and attentive study of a text with a focus on identifying what is actually in the text itself, rather than what is constructed by the viewer.

Why Analyze?

Because it is fun: the more effort you put into the things you enjoy, the more you enjoy them. Good art becomes better; bad art becomes tolerable, or at least instructive.
Because it adds depth to your experience of works: The passive consumption of a 22-minute episode takes 22 minutes. The analysis can take as long as you want it to, which means you get to enjoy it that much longer. You can also discover things to appreciate you never knew were there.
It gives you new things to think about, talk about, and explore: Analysis can lead you down new and interesting paths to learn about things you never thought you would be interested in, and give you insights into other works. For example, I learned about Kabbalah primarily because I wanted to understand Neon Genesis Evangelion. I learned about Jung's use of alchemical symbolism because I wanted to understand Xenosaga. And when both showed up together in Fullmetal Alchemist, I understood.

Basic Concepts

Art as Process, not Object
Multiplicity of Perspectives
Close Reading
Pattern-Forming
Interrogating the Text

Art as Process

Any work of art begins as thoughts, feelings, images, and concepts in the mind of the artist(s).
The artist expresses these thoughts, feelings, etc. through some sort of medium, for example a painting, a book, or film.
The chosen medium informs and contains the expression. There are things a painting can do that a film cannot, and vice versa. This is why, when a film is based on a book, adhering too closely to the book often results in a bad film, even if the book was good. Because the artist's expression is filtered through the medium, the text is already moving away from being a pure expression of the artist's intent.
The viewer experiences art through the medium.
The viewer interprets and filters the art through their own ideas, experiences, and current state.
As time passes, the viewer's imperfect memory further distorts the text, while at the same time the viewer continues to interpret and re-interpret it each time they think about it. The viewer constructs an interpretation and understanding of the text, forms opinions and emotional responses, and creates the final form of the experienced text in the viewer's mind.

Perspectives on a Text

Doylist vs. Watsonian: Who wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories? In real life, Doyle did. But in the stories themselves, they are accounts by Watson of his adventures with Holmes. The Doylist perspective on a text looks at it from outside, as an artificial work created in a real-world context, and all the characters and events are creations of the author. The Watsonian perspective on a text looks at if from within, as a reality of its own, and all the characters and events are real, with motivations and causes. For example, a Doylist explanation of the last two episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion might be that they were a cost-saving measure forced by the studio's near-bankruptcy. A Watsonian interpretation might be that they represent Shinji's attempt to interpret events beyond human comprehension. A spectrum, rather than a binary, and most of the following perspectives can be placed on that spectrum.
Psychological Perspectives: Focus on the characters. What drives them? Why do they make the choices that they do? What are their personalities, and how do they reflect the way real people behave and think? For example, one can view the magical girls in Puella Magi Madoka Magica as exploring different responses to child abuse: Kyoko oscillates between acting out and denial; Homura detaches and tries to shut down her emotions; Sayaka becomes violent and self-destructive. A mostly Watsonian approach.
Historical/Cultural Perspectives: Focus on the time and place in which the work was created. How does the work reflect the concerns, ideas, and controversies of its time? Does it embrace any trends in other works from the same time/place? Attack such trends? For example, Sailor Moon blends the traditionally feminine maho shojo genre with elements of the traditionally masculine sentai genre. One can argue that this was a trend in the 90s of adding shonen elements to shojo series and vice versa. A mostly Doylist approach.
Social/Values Criticism: How does the work reflect the social and political structures and conflicts of its time/place, or how can it be applied to the social and political structures and conflicts of the viewer's time/place? What values does the work express and explore? For example, one can explore Cardcaptor Sakura from the perspective of queer criticism, and look at how it depicts both a romantic reciprocal relationship between two young men (one clearly bi and the other gay or bi), and a one-sidedly romantic relationship between a lesbian or bi young woman and her apparently straight friend. Tends to blend Doylist and Watsonian perspectives.
Death of the Author: Not a perspective per se, but a concept which cuts across and influences many perspectives. The Death of the Author is the notion that, since the work in the author's mind is not the same as either the text or the final product in the viewer's mind, statements by the author about the meaning of the text carry no more weight than any other person's statements. More broadly, the only facts, as far as analysis is concerned, are the contents of the text itself. Everything else is interpretation. It is a historical fact that Hideaki Anno said that the Christian and Jewish symbols used in Neon Genesis Evangelion were just thrown in to look cool and exotic to Japanese audiences, but the only fact as far as interpreting the series is concerned is that they are there. They may be meaningless in the NGE in Anno's head, but that does not necessarily mean they are meaningless in the NGE in yours.
No perspective is the best one. If you have a particular perspective you find you prefer, by all means go for it. If you find different perspectives better for different texts, go with that. If you find mixing multiple perspectives most rewarding, go with that.

Close Reading

"Reading" a "text": Despite the terms, any human creation can be viewed as a text, from a novel to a film to a painting to the back of a cereal box to a garbage can lid. Any text can be read, which is to say, viewed and interpreted in order to construct and assign meaning.
Close reading is mindfulness. It consists of paying close attention to the text, looking for details and patterns, and noting anything that stands out.
Close reading is about the text and only the text. It is not about what you think of the text, how the text makes you feel, or anything else about you. It is not about where the text was written or what it implies about the author. It is solely and entirely about getting as clear a view of the text as possible, both as a unified whole and on a reductionist level. It is objective, not subjective.
[Example: Show the ending credits sequence of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, guide audience through a brief attempt at close reading.]

Pattern-Forming

Humans are pattern-making machines, so sophisticated and powerful we can look at two dots and a curved line and turn them into a face. Pattern-forming consists of finding patterns within the text and fitting the text into external patterns.
Patterns within a work can include repeated motifs, parallels between elements, contrasts between elements, and implied comparisons between elements. For example, NGE has a repeated motif of bad things happening to people's left arms, especially Shinji's. It parallels Shinji's troubled relationship with his father to Misato's troubled relationship with her father. It contrasts Asuka's bright colors and brash persona to Shinji's more neutral color scheme and extreme doormat tendencies. By presenting both as possible love interests to Shinji and as pilots, it implies comparison between Rei and Asuka.
External patterns a work can fit into include the use of common structures, tropes, and motifs; generic elements that place it within a definable genre; and references, allusions to and parodies of other works. Slayers uses immediately recognizable tropes such as its anti-hero main characters and Manichaean fantasy setting; its story structures, character archetypes, and themes are typical of the shonen fantasy adventure genre; it includes references such as a character in Utena's costume proffering a rose to Gourry or Lina wearing a dress reminiscent of Alice and Wonderland while lost in an absurdist dream world, and explicitly parodies (among other things) sentai teams, the movie Shane, and old Merrie Melodies shorts.
[Example: Ask audience to describe patterns within and external patterns influencing the Madoka ending credits.]

Interrogating the Text

Does the text ask any questions? A text may explicitly or implicitly ask questions of the viewer, as simple as "What just happened?" or as complex as "Who are you?" or "What does it mean to be good?" These are often a good place to start in asking and answering your own questions of the text.
Does it answer its own questions? Most texts will pose and then answer at least some questions, such as "And then what happened?" Some texts will do likewise for more difficult questions. The text may also answer a question, but then call that answer into question. For example, early on NGE poses the question of whether human science can win against a force of nature, and points to air conditioning as proof that yes, it can. Later, however, when the Eva breaks free of its binding this conclusion is denied.
Does the text take a stand (implicitly or explicitly) on any controversies? What political positions does it support or treat as true? For example, Hayao Miyazaki frequently depicts anti-war and environmental themes in his films. In Princess Mononoke, the three-way war between Iron Town, the Imperial forces, and the boars accomplished nothing but bringing destruction and suffering to all sides, and the elimination of the industrial Iron Town and restoration of the natural environment it damaged is treated as a happy ending.
What does the text have to say about the big questions of life, the universe, and everything? Bakurano depicts a universe that is bleak, hostile, and hopeless, and human existence as tiny and meaningless. Gurren Lagann, by contrast, depicts humans as beings of immense potential to affect change, who can transform portions of the universe to be friendly spaces full of hope.
What is the viewer left wondering? Does the text give any clues? NGE's final episodes are notoriously difficult to understand and stylized, but they contain tantalizing glimpses of what is "really" happening and interstitials suggesting a possible interpretation.
[Example: Ask the audience to interrogate the same Madoka clip.]

My Little Panel: Friendship is Magic

2011-08-17T23:29:00.004-04:00

I'm not dead! I've been really busy... here's a taste of some of what I've been busy doing.

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

Part Four:

Part Five:

More to come as we upload it!

The Brony Effect

2011-05-14T02:23:00.002-04:00

So, after weeks of my fiancee talking endlessly about it, last weekend I began working my way through My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic the latest installment of Hasbro's long-running toy commercial. I watched every episode of the first season, about 10 hours of cartoon, over the next six days. And I loved it.

I'm far from alone on this. The latest incarnation of MLP has three major demographics: The little girls who are the target market for the toy line, nostalgic 20-something women who played with My Little Ponies as girls, and 20-something men who until now were vaguely aware that My Little Pony existed. "Bronies," as these male fans are called, are fairly common in Internet geek circles now, especially in the overlapping circles of anime fans and gamers.

But why should this be?

A better question: Why not?

Misogyny is as rampant or more in geek circles as in the culture at large, but on the other hand male and female geeks alike often have long experience in being harassed for failing to meet gender norms. Male anime geeks in particular often watch shows which, in Japan, are marketed to girls,* for a couple of reasons:

Sex appeal: Shoujo often have a lot of young female characters, and said characters are often more attractive than their counterparts in boys' anime.
Character depth: Shoujo series, even action-driven ones, tend to have more of a focus on character relationships and emotional growth than shounen series, and thus the better shoujo series are often less formulaic and have deeper characters than most shounen series.
Brevity: Most of the best-known shoujo series have 13, 26, or rarely 50 or 70 episodes, while the better-known shounen series may have hundreds, especially shounen fighting shows.

We thus have a body of American 20-something male geeks who more or less accept watching cartoons marketed to girls.

So why haven't they watched a lot of American girls' shows before now? Simple: Most American cartoons for girls suck. Consider, for example, the Nostalgia Chick review of an early My Little Pony movie, in which she cannot tell the characters apart. Most children's television in the U.S. is deeply socially conservative. So-called "general audience" kids' shows are primarily for boys, because only boys are people, and because only boys are people, there is no need to have more than one female character, who is effectively identical to Smurfette. Rarely, as in Scooby-Doo, you'll get a Princess/Geek dichotomy, which is basically a Madonna-Whore complex with intellectual assertiveness in place of sexual assertiveness, and still doesn't allow for much variety. Most shows for girls likewise have only one female character, she just inhabits multiple bodies. Or they may have very slight differences ("all girls love to shop, but this one is The Shopaholic!"), or a Betty/Veronica pairing (another kiddified variant of Madonna-Whore).
MLP:FIM, on the other hand, has actual characters. The ponies in the mane cast**** all have distinctly drawn personalities, many of which violate the usual stereotypes, and none of them are passive:

Twilight Sparkle is intellectual and socially awkward, but rather than the usual nerd-girl stereotype she's also a highly organized, take-charge natural leader.
Pinkie Pie is giggly, silly, and random (to the point of sometimes defying the laws of physics, such as they are in a universe of magical talking ponies), but she also often intuitively leaps to the solution to some of the more bizarre problems the ponies face, and late in the season we learn that her silliness masks a rather sad, borderline neglectful childhood and a deep fear of losing her friends if she fails to entertain them.
Fluttershy is painfully shy, self-effacing, and fearful, whose gentle, soft-spoken love for all living things makes her incredibly gifted at working with animals. Then she makes a full-grown, angry, enormous, fire-breathing dragon CRY. Then she wins a staring contest with a BASILISK. I won't even attempt to describe the pure awesomeness she gets into in the season finale. (Yeah, she's pretty obviously my favorite.)
Rarity is the fashionista pony, but unlike the usual shallow, vain, shopaholic variant, she's depicted as a hard-working, somewhat temperamental (and yes, occasionally vain) artist whose medium happens to be clothes. She's also depicted as the most generous of the ponies, and a successful businesswoman. (Actually, with the exception of Twilight, who appears to be on the equivalent of a government research grant, and Pinkie Pie, who may or may not be an apprentice baker, all the mane ponies have explicitly defined jobs.)
Applejack is another successful businesswoman, a workaholic, very strong farmer who, interestingly, appears to be the leader of her family (at least in its interactions with outsiders) and de facto owner of their farm, even though she has both a grandmother and an older brother. She supposedly represents honesty in the pilot, but seems a better fit for loyalty given her patient, steadfast nature and dedication to keeping her promises.
Finally, Rainbow Dash is a very athletic pony who tends to be very blunt and a little bit of a jerk, impatient, brash, and prone to charging into danger. Also she controls the weather by kicking it in the face. She supposedly represents loyalty, but her tendency to say exactly what's on her mind makes her seem a better fit for honesty.

The pilot for the series is basically a magical girl show: a group of young women are drawn together to face a prophecy of ancient evil, and overcome it by weaponizing the interpersonal bonds between them. Most of the rest of the show follows a more episodic, Western format, alternating between episodes where the primary conflict is interpersonal (for example, the hysterical episode in which Fluttershy reluctantly becomes a model because she thinks she'll disappoint Rarity if she stops, and Rarity is jealous but pushes Fluttershy to keep modeling out of guilt over the jealousy), and episodes where the primary conflict is straight out of the D&D Monster Manual (for example, the episode with the dragon).

My own experience ran something like this: I watched the pilot, moderately enjoyed it as a magical girl show with no uncomfortable fetishization of the underage main characters, and then mostly forgot about it. A while later, I was bored so I watched another couple of episodes, and enjoyed the adventure-y aspects and the humor. And then I started to realize I actually liked these characters, recognized them as people, and cared about what happened to them. Female characters being depicted as people! Weird people who kept learning childlike lessons while filling adult social roles, who happened to be shaped like magical talking ponies, but people!

I suspect my experience is fairly typical. Certainly there are other factors in the Brony explosion, such as Hasbro's lax attitude to piracy, but I think at its core it is a combination of a group open to watching a "girls' cartoon," and a cartoon that actually treats girls as human beings.

*For the uninitiate: In Japan, manga (comics)** and the anime derived from them divide into four basic categories determined by target demographic: shounen (for boys), shoujo (ostensibly for girls, though in anime increasingly driven by the "moe"*** market), seinen (for men), and jousei (for women). Unlike American comics, which are mostly about superheroes, manga cover pretty much the same range of subjects and genres as print literature.

**To be really anal, it's actually the magazines which publish manga which are divided into these categories, more than the individual manga. Often if a given manga is borderline (such as Fullmetal Alchemist, which straddles the shonen-seinen divide at times), the magazine which publishes it will be the deciding factor in determining what category popular consensus files it under.

***A phenomenon in anime fandom that can be roughly understood as a combination of Nice Guy Syndrome, White Knight-ism, and a touch of pedophilia.

****By convention so universal it might as well be law, all discussion of My Little Pony is required to contain a particular set of horrible horse-themed puns.

Is Cartoon Network Making a Comeback?

2011-03-03T11:36:00.004-05:00

Sorry for going so long without posting. I'm going to make a real push to get back on the wagon with writing.

Today I'm wondering aloud... is Cartoon Network starting to recover some of its glory? I mean, yes, they are continuing to show loads of live action crap like the Scooby-Doo movies, Destroy Build Destroy, and Hole in the Wall. And of course they still have their share of bad cartoons, like the utterly godawful Mad, as well as shows that I just plain have no desire to try, like the umpteenth Ben 10 iteration or Generator Rex.

But... Regular Show is hysterically funny. Scooby-Doo: Mystery, Inc. is astonishingly entertaining. Young Justice is roughly on par with the lesser entries in the DCAU, which is to say it's quite good. Sym-Bionic Titan is excellent, by turns funny, exciting, dramatic, even occasionally a little scary or sexy. And of course Adventure Time! is the best damn thing in years.

Simply put, right now, Cartoon Network has more good stuff in a typical week than any time since the early 2000s. It's too soon to call this a comeback--most of the shows I mention have yet to reach 20 episodes--but it's legitimate grounds for hope.

Temporary Hiatus

2010-08-23T15:41:00.003-04:00

Not that the effect is at all noticeable, since massive delays and procrastination are the norm for this blog, but I'm going to have to go on temporary hiatus until I can get the headphone jack fixed on my laptop, which will hopefully be this coming weekend. My twice-daily train rides are my primary AtLA-watching-and-dissecting time, and it's, you know, illegal to go without without headphones on Metro. Not to mention nigh-impossible, given the background noise.

So, no AtLA for a while. I will try to fill in with thoughts on other shows as I can, but nothing with the depth of my AtLA reviews.

Site Business: August Schedule for AtLA Mondays, Otakon Report

2010-08-09T12:22:00.004-04:00

A couple of site business items:

I will not be able to post an AtLA Monday tonight. Rather than keep on making and breaking promises, for the month of August, I'm going to have to go to AtLA every-other-Monday. So, expect "The Blue Spirit" next Monday, and "The Fortuneteller" August 30.
I was a guest on Viga the Otagal's podcast to talk about Otakon 2010. So if you've ever wondered if I sound as nerdy as I write (answer: I sound even nerdier), check it out.
If you want a shorter summary of my thoughts on Otakon: They've gotten too big to keep being a disorganized bunch of unprofessional buddy-buddies whose immediate reaction to any criticism is to circle the wagons and protect their own. They need to be more open and communicative with the attendees and less defensive when they screw up. Also, the con has a very strong focus on guests, which is fine if that's what you're into, but personally I'd much rather hear a bunch of fans debating the philosophical implications of LeLouch's powers than meet his voice actor. That goes double if it's the American voice actor. Otakon just doesn't seem to care about fan-generated programming, and it shows -- I had much, much more downtime than at Anime Boston.

AtLA Monday: Zuko Explained

2010-08-02T22:59:00.005-04:00

Sokka: I'm too young to die!
Old Fisherman: I'm not, but I still don't wanna!

I live! Sorry about vanishing for so long. There is no explanation; I simply suck at sticking to things. But I am going to see this through to the end!

So, that said, let's dive back in!

Book One: Water
Chapter Twelve: The Storm

Synopsis: The Gaang are out of food and money, so Sokka gets a temporary job helping on an old man's fishing boat. The old man accuses Aang of abandoning the world to the Fire Nation, and Aang runs, followed by Katara.

Sheltering from a storm in a cave, Aang tells Katara his story: He found out he was the Avatar much younger than the normal 16, and was isolated from his friends, except for his teacher and guardian, Gyatso. Unfortunately, Gyatso's attempts to ensure Aang had some time for freedom and fun in among his training did not sit well with the other monks, and they decided Aang had to be separated from Gyatso. Rather than continue his training at the Eastern Air Temple, Aang ran away, was caught in a storm, and fell into the sea. Next thing he knew, he was waking up at the South Pole a hundred years later.

Meanwhile, Zuko is obsessing over finding the Avatar, and claims even the safety of the crew doesn't matter. One of the crewmembers takes exception to this, and he and Zuko nearly come to blows. Iroh separates them, and later tells a few of the crewmembers Zuko's story: Zuko snuck into one of the Fire Lord's war councils with Iroh's help, and was outraged at a proposed strategy that would sacrifice a unit of new recruits to draw out an Earth Kingdom force. His outburst was deemed disrespectful, so he had to take part in an Agni Kai against his own father. He refused to fight, and Ozai gave him his scar, then banished him until he can bring back the Avatar.

After the flashbacks, the storm gets bad enough that Aang, Katara, and Appa have to set out in it to rescue Sokka and the fisherman, while Zuko has to rescue his own helmsman. They come within a dozen feet of each other, but both are too busy saving their comrades to fight, and the Gaang escape Zuko once more.

-------------

And suddenly Zuko makes sense. The main work of "The Storm" is to unfold for us who Zuko really is, under the anger and obsession. Without this, the next episode ("The Blue Bandit") makes no sense; the season finale makes no sense; the entire second season makes no sense.

We get Aang's backstory, too, but it's less interesting than Zuko's because we know Aang will come to terms with it. He is a largely healthy and balanced child; he can handle it. Zuko, on the other hand, is constantly on the verge of breaking. He rages and obsesses; he sulks and throws tantrums -- and then he turns around and risks his life to save one of his crew. He's more complicated than Aang, more confusing, and therefore more interesting. We want to solve the Zuko puzzle, and so an episode like this is exciting, presenting us with so many pieces.

Early in the episode, Zuko insists he doesn't care about the safety of his crew -- finding the Avatar is more important. Iroh hastily tells the overhearing lieutenant that Zuko doesn't mean it, which sounds like Iroh is making excuses, but is actually the truth. The flashback shows that young Zuko was full of compassion for the common soldiers, and the end of the episode sees him foregoing the pursuit of the Avatar precisely for their safety, which previously he had only done for Iroh. Saying he doesn't care is the temporary aberration, which has lasted for a good couple of years at this point, but is finally beginning to change.

We see Iroh's point of view, but think about the whole incident from Zuko's point of view. He was mostly raised by first his mother, and then his uncle. He doesn't actually know his father very well, but is desperate to win his approval, praise, and love (the same approval that Azula seems to earn effortlessly). Ozai and Azula consistently present Ozai's love as a prize to be won or earned, and so Zuko absorbs that it is his failure that he does not receive praise or acknowledgment from his father.

Zuko is eager to take on an adult role, partially because he's thirteen and partially because he wants an opportunity to prove himself to his father. He tries, but an outburst of his natural compassion, in defiance of the hierarchy and social rules, earns him a brutal, painful rebuke. He is terrified to face his father, in part because he knows his father is a powerful and deadly opponent, yes, but mostly because he knows there is no way to win what he really wants, approval: if he fights back and injures his father, he is a traitor, but if he is defeated easily he is a weakling. Ozai wounds Zuko terribly, scarring him for life not just physically but mentally. The one person who should love and protect Zuko most brutally and disproportionately punishes him. It is monstrous and evil and cruel, and it turns Zuko's world upside down.

From all this, thirteen-year-old Zuko learns that compassion is weakness. He assumes, because he has always assumed, has been trained to assume, that the abuse is his fault for being weak. He cannot admit the real reason for it, that his father is a sick, cruel tyrant. What child wants to believe that? He desperately wants his father's love back, but cannot phrase it to himself that way, because the thought of being abandoned by his father, especially after losing his mother, is too much to bear. So, Zuko lies to himself, pretending that what he is seeking is his honor (which he never lost; we will eventually see, in "Zuko Alone," why he makes that particular jump). Nonetheless, what he really wants is clear: we see a single flash of it, as Zuko remembers Ozai standing beside him, one hand on his shoulder.

Zuko sees capturing the Avatar as his only chance to regain his father's love, and so he is willing to sacrifice anything -- including his honor, as the next episode will show -- to accomplish it. Zuko sees compassion as a weakness which cost him his father's love, and so he tries to be cruel to his enemies and demanding of his men -- yet his essential goodness occasionally shines through, as when he spares Zhao after their duel in "The Southern Air Temple." Zuko is unable to confront his own real need for love, and so he is unable to accept Iroh's love, kindness, and excellent advice.

Zuko's efforts, of course, cannot succeed. The abuse is entirely Ozai's choice and Ozai's false. Unfortunately, it won't be for two more seasons until Zuko finally -- and awesomely -- admits this.

Random observations:

Aang's dream is in order of closeness: Aang rides Appa, his oldest and closest companion. Sokka is alone on the glider, as the one Aang is least close to. Katara rides Momo, Aang's pet and in some ways his id and libido. Katara is the first to say "We need you, Aang." As we see much, much later in "The Guru," Katara is Aang's primary attachment to the world, and represents it in his dream. Additionally, he fears that she will be hurt because of him -- he is, after all, the reason she left her home. This fear comes to the fore in "The Deserter." Next we see Gyatso, who represents Aang's attachment to and abandonment of his old life. The storm is Aang's guilt over abandoning them, as well as a memory of how that abandonment came about. In a chorus of voices, the entire world begs for Aang's help as he drifts away, and then we get a quick flash of the Fire Lord as Aang wakes.
Katara says Aang has been having "a lot" of nightmares lately, meaning more so than when they first started traveling together. So what was the trigger? Something has upped his guilt level or brought it closer to the surface -- knowledge of the comet, perhaps? Or maybe the waterbending training with Katara in "The Waterbending Scroll" reminded him of his airbending training?
Sokka's dream about food eating people, of course, never comes true (unless it presages the coming of the ultimate evil of the Avatar world, against whom the true hero, Wang Fire, struggles epically -- the foul, demonic entity known only as Melon Lord). But it raises an interesting point: for all the talk of "destiny", there doesn't appear to be any way of predicting the future in Avatar (with the exception of known cyclical events like comets and eclipses) -- but that's more a discussion for "The Fortuneteller" a couple of episodes from now.
In Aang's flashback, none of the other children have airbender tattoos, but all of the adult monks do. The distinction cannot be simply age-based, however, because some of Aang's friends appear to be close to his age, maybe even older. Nor can it be a born distinction, such as caste or nobility; in "The Avatar and the Firelord," young Gyatso doesn't have the mark. Aang's gifts and the subconscious aid of his past selves have probably accelerated his airbending studies just as they do for the bending styles we actually see him learn. The tattoos also cannot indicate total mastery of airbending, because Aang clearly still has airbending to learn in this flashback; otherwise, they'd be sending him away to the North or South Pole, not another Air Temple. My best guess is that the tattoos are the airbender equivalent of a black belt: Aang has demonstrated the ability to use all the techniques of airbending, but not necessarily mastery of when and how to use them.
The way the monks find the new Avatar -- looking for a child born as close as possible to the moment of the Avatar's death, and then letting him choose from toys that include relics of previous Avatars -- is very reminiscent of the methods used to select a new Dalai Lama, who is also held to be the reincarnation of the prior Dalai Lama.
Is Jinju supposed to be, er, developmentally disabled or something? Or is he just a not-very-skilled airbender with a goofy laugh and hygiene problems? Anyway, his addition, apparently for a joke, is unfunny and a little bit distressing. Avatar's usually better than that.
Is Gyatso specifically assigned as Aang's guardian because he's the Avatar, or does every kid get one? Or is it an apprenticeship thing? Maybe the tattoo indicates that Aang is done with general training and ready to train with a specific master, sort of like the difference between undergraduate and graduate instruction. Regardless, the relationship between Gyatso and Aang is clearly a paternal one: play and love and instruction and the passing on of life lessons. Gyatso is not very serious, much like Iroh, but much liike Iroh (as we saw in "The Southern Air Temple," when his skeleton lay on top of a pile of soldier skeletons), Gyatso's playful demeanor conceals a powerful and deadly combatant.
Gyatso is presented in opposition to an unnamed, sour-faced monk who is clearly well-meaning, but more concerned about the well-being of the world than whether Aang gets to have a childhood. His attitude is understandable, but as Avatar emphasizes again and again, joy is a necessary part of wisdom. Iroh knows it; Gyatso knows it; Aang knows it intuitively. Zuko will eventually learn it. Those who don't understand how important joy, love, and play are (Zhao, Azula, Ozai) will inevitably be defeated by those who do.
Gyatso is right, of course, about Aang's reputation. No matter the threat to the world, it's hard to imagine it being more dangerous than an Avatar unable to appreciate freedom and fun. Think about it: a child with prodigal, but potentially very dangerous, talents is taught by all the adults around her that her talents are the only thing about her that anyone else values. Everything else must be sacrificed to honing her abilities, or else she is worthless. She is also led to believe that she is the most important person in the world, destined for greatness. How long could the world survive Avatar Azula?
Aang was not there when (if) Gyatso found his note. That entire scene appears to be made up by Aang. He imagines that Gyatso would have fought to keep him if he hadn't run away, and uses that to enhance his own guilt.
Just as 100 years ago, Aang is in a storm, goes underwater, and enters avatar state -- but before, he saw the world's needs as abstract and in opposition to his needs. This time, actual people depend on him, so he saves them. There's a parallel to Zuko here, as well: he was unable to save the soldiers described abstractly in the war council, but he can save his own crew.
Let's say Aang didn't run away. Katara's right -- he almost certainly would have been killed with the rest of his people. Now, presumably the Avatar Cycle wouldn't have ended right away -- the Water Tribe would still be there, and so there could be a next step in the cycle -- so the question then becomes, is there someone in the series who would have been the Avatar if it wasn't Aang? We'll get some hints much, MUCH later of who that might be.
I've mentioned before the solar symbolism that surrounds the Avatar. The shafts of sunlight after the storm? They're all about Aang's return, and his growing acceptance of who he is.
The fishing boat captain and the fishhauler at first bicker like an old married couple. But then the old man says he'll hire a new fishhauler at double what the old woman gets, implying she's his employee. This is further confirmed by him taking back the offer to pay double as soon as Sokka volunteers for the job -- clearly, double is more than the normal pay, so the normal pay can't be zero. But then at the end, she refers to him as her husband when she asks Aang to help him! I am confused by these people's relationship.
Telling Zuko he needs to learn respect, this episode shows, is a major trigger for his temper. And it's understandable why, given what happened with his father! But the final straw seems to be the suggestion that he's spoiled. Later episodes show how far that is from the truth; Zuko was far from the favored child, and held to a brutal standard he could not live up to.
The Lieutenant Zuko nearly fights seems kind of old to still be a lieutenant. Of course, given that Zuko's been banished, his crew is likely not made up of the Fire Nation's best and brightest.
In Iroh's flashback, he's about the same height as Zuko. In the present day, Zuko is at least half a head taller. Nice reminder from the animators that Zuko is still growing -- and has some growing to do yet.
Unlike his dour present self, young Zuko is bright, ambitious, optimistic, idealistic, and compassionate. Except maybe for the ambition, he's a lot like Aang.
So much said without any words at all! Zuko catches the falling helmsman and passes him to the lieutenant he nearly came to blows with earlier. They smile at each other; all is forgiven. The lieutenant understands Zuko better now, and Zuko is starting to re-manifest the essential goodness that his father tried to (literally!) burn out of him.
In "The Spirit World," Zuko gave up on a chance to chase Appa in order to rescue Iroh. Now he does so for his entire crew. He doesn't need to catch the Avatar to get his honor back; it never left him.
When Zuko apologizes to Iroh, is it for the way he acted earlier in this episode, or for bringing Iroh into exile with him?
In the crowd of people watching Zuko get burned, we see generals from the war council, Iroh, and Zhao. Zhao's presence is interesting, since at the time of this episode he's only a commander. Three years prior he may have been an even lower rank; regardless, based on military rank he's not important enough to be standing next to the Fire Lord's brother. Perhaps he's a member of the nobility; it would explain his high rank despite his arrogant incompetence.
Also next to Iroh, clearly revelling in Zuko's pain, is some girl. She's also the firebender in the opening credits. But I'm sure her appearance and behavior here aren't foreshadowing her appearance as a prominent character later in the series. Nope, nope, not here.
Irony alert: the Avatar gives Zuko hope, just as he does Katara.
As an adult, it is at least accepted, and maybe expected, for the heir to the Fire Nation to serve as a military leader. And in the war room, Zuko is not only right, but shows an attitude that could some day make him very popular with the troops. And Zuko is close to Iroh, who was at one time the rightful heir to the throne. All of this adds up to make Zuko a potential threat to the Fire Lord; in a few years, an impatient Zuko -- who Ozai doubtless knows has every reason to resent him -- could well try to seize the throne early. Ozai is afraid of Zuko, and burns and banishes him as a way of reasserting power.
Ozai's throne is concealed behind a wall of flames -- it is both a concealment and a defense. It seems that not even top military officials can see the Fire Lord directly. Such a taboo suggests an almost religious deference; Ozai is not just the Fire Nation's ruler but their epic hero (as we see in "The Deserter") and practically a god. He is a tyrant, used to obedience, and the way he treats his own son (disfiguring him for life, just for being "disrespectful") is an indicator of how he treats everyone weaker than him: cruelly and abusively. The entire Fire Nation is an abused child lashing out in hopes of earning its father's approval.
I believe this episode is the first time Ozai speaks. He's voiced by the incredibly talented Mark Hamill, who voiced the Joker in the DCAU. Oh, and also he played Luke Skywalker, but we don't care about that.
Given that one of the episode's major themes is characters blaming themselves for things that aren't their fault, it's possible that Iroh feels guilty for letting Zuko into the war council. That may be a factor in why he travels with Zuko, though undoubtedly it's primarily out of a paternal desire to protect and guide Zuko.
It's interesting that Iroh agrees with Zuko in the war room. Sacrificing a not-very-valuable unit to draw out a well-entrenched enemy is a pretty good strategy, but like Zuko, Iroh doesn't see that unit or those troops as being of low value. He values them for something other than their military effectiveness. Still, it's interesting that Zuko is outraged, not at the sacrifice of lives or of human beings, but of loyal citizens of the Fire Nation. Even he is not immune to the Fire Nation's nationalism.
During the storm, while Zuko is risking his life to save the helmsman, Iroh catches a lightning bolt headed for the ship and redirects it harmlessly into the water. After, he looks slightly singed and very surprised -- was this the first time he ever used the move? Entirely possible; he says later he developed it himself by watching waterbenders, so presumably it was during his hinted-at-but-never-described travels after his son died (during which, apparently, he had some kind of an adventure involving the spirit world). It seems unlikely he engaged in Agni Kai with anyone who can throw lightning (as far as we know, only Azula and Ozai), so he really probably never did try it before.
Iroh gives this great sideways glance after Zuko chooses not to go after Aang -- he's proud of Zuko's choice, and I think he really doesn't want the Avatar caught. He has to have already realized that the Avatar is the only good way to end the war.
Both Zuko and Aang have serious issues tied to events before the series began, which led directly to their first appearance. Both have those issues brought out by an older, bearded man who says things in anger, not realizing how they will resonate with Zuko/Aang's own issues. The whole episode is, in addition to filling in back story and developing characters, working to show us that Zuko and Aang are fundamentally alike. Neither can return home. Both blame themselves, even though it isn't really their fault.
The Avatar is normally told of his nature on his sixteenth birthday (four squared). Zuko is sixteen for the duration of the series. Coincidence?
Gyatso's similarity to Iroh is, of course, yet another way of playing up the parallels between Aang and Zuko.
Both Zuko and Aang face banishment in their respective stories.
That moment of Zuko and Aang staring at each other both plays up their parallel and foreshadows "The Blue Spirit," which in many ways has the opposite ending.
Aang gets over his past. Zuko won't for a long long time. But then, Zuko was abused. That's often harder to get over than survivor guilt in an otherwise healthy psyche.

Thoughts on New Futurama

2010-07-05T13:49:00.002-04:00

Avatar: The Last Airbender Monday may be late this week due to the holiday weekend. If I'm able to finish today, it will go up today; if I'm not able to finish it today, however, I may not be able to get it done for a couple of days. Sorry for the last-minute notice. As an apology, here's some proof that I do occasionally think about things other than Avatar:

The first two episodes of new Futurama, I was too excited by the new-ness and Futurama-ness of it all to form a reliable opinion. In particular, the fact that they didn't push the reset button on the Fry-Leela relationship, despite having memory loss as a plot element in the first episode and potential cheating in the second, was deeply impressive.

Last night's episode... not so much. Most of it was pretty good. Nothing on par with the best episodes of Futurama past, neither as heartwarming and -wrenching as "The Sting" or "Luck of the Fry-rish," nor as deliciously plot-tastic as "The Why of Fry," nor even as simply and happily entertaining as "The Deep South" or "Where No Fan Has Gone Before," it was for the large part entertaining enough, with a couple of laugh-out-loud moments.

But then there was Mr. Chunks. Though he did give rise to one obscure-but-hilarious-if-you-get-it joke ("Pukeme-Pooyou"), which Futurama has always done well, mostly he was the kind of moronic gross-out "humor" that all too often mars even the best episodes of Comedy Central's other big animated shows, South Park.

This worries me, to say the least. The move to cable allows Futurama more freedom than they had on network television, true, and that opens up new artistic tools for both the comedy and drama of Futurama. But the greatness of Futurama has always lain in the fact that it is capable of being smart, subtle, and (despite and sometimes because of the inherent cynicism Matt Groening brings to everything) surprisingly uplifting. That's not really possible when you have a poo-eating, perpetually vomiting goat as a major plot point.

The other thing that deeply distresses me about the episode is that there's no hint in Fry's and Leela's interactions that anything has changed between them since the original Fox run. They don't act at all like a couple, and Leela even refers to Fry as "a good friend." What happened? Did they break up over "In-a-Gadda-Da-Leela" after all, and the writers just forgot to tell us?

The reason I thought it was daring of the writers not to reboot the Fry-Leela relationship was that unresolved sexual tension -- the classic "Will they or won't they?" -- is one of the driving sources of conflict, drama, and humor in many long-running serials, from comic strips to sitcoms. While it is impossible to move the characters forward without answering the question eventually, it can be very difficult to sustain a series after one of its major conflicts is resolved. Bringing Fry and Leela closes that arc, and it also reflects how far those characters have come: the Fry of first season and the Leela of first season could have never worked, mostly because he was a thoughtless, insensitive, lazy buffoon, but also because Leela could not permit herself to have a functional relationship.

Over the course of the series, both matured. Leela discovered her homeworld and even a family, and Fry's experiences slowly made him capable of caring. Compare the Fry of the real-world portion of "The Sting" to the Fry of the first season: he's still lazy and stupid, but he is genuinely loving toward Leela, without ulterior motive; he just wants her to be well. And then, of course, there's Fry's future self, Lars. The path from first-season Fry to Lars is clear, and it leads right through the Fry of "The Sting" -- his feelings for Leela make him want to be a better person, so he becomes one. It is perhaps not the healthiest relationship in the world, but it seems to work for them in the end.

Or it would, if the writers let it. The Fry of "Attack of the Killer App" is not the Fry of "Into the Wild Green Yonder." It's the inconsiderate jerkass of "I, Roommate," the third episode of the first season. Fry doesn't act like that anymore! Not toward Leela. For Leela, he would sit by a hospital bed for days, drive out his own mind-expanding parasites, or make a deal with the Robot Devil! Of course he would swim through puke for her. That shouldn't even be in question!

I hope, very much, that this episode is a fluke. Even the best show can have the occasional terrible episode, where everyone is out of character and the writing doesn't quite fit the show. Heck, my last AtLA Monday was one. So, I remain on the fence about new Futurama, but they still have plenty of time to win me over.

Why "The Last Airbender" Had to Fail

2010-07-02T15:12:00.003-04:00

Of course we all know why, morally, The Last Airbender (the live-action movie remake of the first season of Avatar: The Last Airbender) had to fail. If you don't, look up "racebending"; the controversy has been covered well enough by others. (Remember, morality is always entirely about action; beliefs only matter insofar as they (poorly) predict action. It doesn't matter whether Shyamalan and the rest of his crew had racist intent; the casting choices were immoral.)

But even if Shyamalan had cast actors of the right ethnicities, I still skip watching The Last Airbender, and the reviews are proving me right. Here's why it was always doomed to suck:

1) Avatar is complex: A movie adaptation of a long, complex work, such as a novel or TV series, has to boil it down to its core elements. The problem is that the core elements of Avatar are hoary old cliches and the possibly the most formulaic of all stories, the monomyth: As prophesied, a child sets forth on a journey to master his power and become a man. The forces of evil try to stop him while he is still young and weak. Eventually he masters his powers and stomps out evil, ushering in a new age. Exciting the first time you encounter it, but it gets old fast, unless you have something other than plot to chew on -- which nine times out of ten, means characterization.

There's a lot of ways to make that twist. Avatar did it by making the hero NOT the sole focus of the story. Ultimately, it's an ensemble piece, and as much or more attention is paid to developing the characters of Sokka, Katara, and especially Zuko as to developing Aang. But pretty much all of that happens in side stories. Characters aren't solely or even primarily defined by how they interact with Aang, the way they would be in a typical monomyth (see Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann for example, where every character is defined by the role they play in Simon's story). Much of the character development happens while Aang isn't around, especially for Zuko. This presents a major problem if you're trying to boil nine hours of television down to 100 minutes of movie, because you either have to cut those side stories, losing all that characterization, or compress the side stories until they're so short that you lose the characterization anyway.

Of course, there's the third option of heavily rewriting the story so that the characterization is merged into the main plotline, but the level of changes needed to that to Avatar crosses the line from "adaption of" to "loosely inspired by."

2) Hollywood: Hollywood loves the monomyth. Hollywood is obsessed with the monomyth. Producers who have never studied literature outside of one required course in college will, upon hearing a pitch, ask about the Call to Action, the Road of Trials, the Temptress. The problem is that they don't understand that the monomyth is an analytical tool, not a formula for writing stories. Hollywood will always pull a story closer to the monomyth if they can -- and Avatar is pretty close to the monomyth already.

Even the most well-meaning director, who understands the craft storytelling deeply enough to know better, will still face pressure from his financial backers to follow the formula. And if the story is already almost at the formula, pulling it closer still, coupled with paring it down to series length, is going to produce an insufferably formulaic movie.

3) Shyamalan: Seriously, how does this guy keep getting backing? Every movie he's made is worse than the last -- Sixth Sense was good, albeit shallower than it thought it was; Unbreakable was decent; Signs was unmitigated crap. I haven't watched his movies after that, but broad consensus is that they're terrible.

I've seen reviews of The Last Airbender comparing him to Ed Wood and Uwe Boll. That level of awful is practically an achievement in itself.

4) Live Action, Realism, and Grit: Avatar was heavily inspired by the works of the greatest animator of all time, Hayao Miyazaki. The series is heavy on gorgeous, highly detailed scenes of natural beauty, with just a touch of the surreal and the impressionistic. Often times these aren't tracking or establishing shots, but backdrops on which the action unfolds, noticeable only on repeat viewings. Certainly a live action movie is capable of such beauty -- the Lord of the Rings movies pulled it off, for example -- but the tendency when adapting animation is to make it more "realistic", and as we all know, reality is brown and gray, filthy, and poorly lit. Or at least that's what "realistic" movies claim.

Add the last-minute decision to go 3-D (which halves the apparent brightness of the movie because each eye only sees half the light), and you have a recipe for a dark, drab, visually dull film that no amount of martial arts can save.

Not to mention, let's face it, punching and having a fireball erupt from your fist looks awesome in animation, but in live action it comes across as... kind of silly.

5) There was no need for a movie: More accurately, we already had a movie, and it was awesome. "Sozin's Comet," the finale of the TV series, was 90 minutes long (not counting commercials and opening/closing credits, which bumped it up to two hours), upped the animation quality to film caliber, took the already good music up to eleven with live strings, and told an epic, world-shattering, continent-spanning tale with multiple intersecting storylines that ultimately culminated in two simultaneous final showdowns happening hundreds of miles apart.

I'd rather have a remastered theatric release of "Sozin's Comet" than a generic live-action blockbuster any day. And don't tell me you'd need to introduce audiences to the characters -- it'd be cheap enough to make (considering that it's already made)that nobody but fans could show up, and it'd still make a huge profit.

--------------------

I made the decision months ago to boycott "The Last Airbender" for its racist casting choices. But I've never regretted that decision, because I always strongly suspected the movie was going to suck, and now the reviews are confirming that suspicion. Avoid this movie like the plague! If you feel the need for some epic, movie-quality Avatar action, pop in "Sozin's Comet" instead. You'll be glad you did.

AtLA Monday: Hidden Depths

2010-06-28T21:53:00.002-04:00

Actress Aang: (enthusiastically) Look, (points down) it’s The Great Divide. (Actress Katara looks down) The biggest canyon in the Earth Kingdom.
Actor Sokka: (looks down and throws his arm to the side dismissively) Meh. Let’s keep flying.

I've been looking forward to this review since the start, so let's jump right in:

Book One: Water
Chapter Eleven: The Great Divide

Synopsis:

The Gaang camp near the edge of the Great Divide, the largest canyon in the world, and Katara and Sokka squabble over setting up the tents. After Aang settles the squabble, they encounter two tribes of refugees seeking to cross the divide: the slovenly Gan Jin and the fastidious Zhang. The two tribes have a longstanding enmity and wounded. Appa ferries the wounded across while the rest of the Gaang go with the refugees on foot. They find the guide, and he warns them not to bring any food with them as it attracts predators.

Of course, said predators (giant insects) attack the refugees on their way across, and the guide's arm is broken, meaning he can't earthbend the paths open. The two groups resume their squabbling, and Aang splits them up. Sokka spends the night with the Gan Jin and Katara with the Zhang, and both bond quickly with their companions as they learn the story behind the conflict: an orb had to be delivered according to a sacred ritual by one of the Zhang, but one of the Gan Jin either mugged him or took up the task after the original carrier was injured, depending on who's telling the story. The Zhang, justly or unjustly, imprisoned the Gan Jin. Both groups also reveal that they brought food, because they assumed the other would break the rule.

The next day, the giant insects return in force, but Aang gets the two tribes to work together to use their attack to get out of the canyon. He then makes up the "true story" of the incident on the fly: the "sacred ritual" was a ball game, and the two years of imprisonment were really two minutes in the penalty box over a disputed foul. The two tribes agree to work in the future, and move on to the next phase of their flight to safety, while the Gaang resume their trip to the North Pole.

-------------------------------------

"The Great Divide" is, among Avatar fans, the most reviled episode. Even the creators seem to hate it: in the recap episode "The Ember Island Players" the Great Divide is dismissed as a pointless detour. But fans only believe this because they are blinded by their own absorption of the bourgeouis ideology to see its true brilliance. Even the creators, seduced by three seasons of success, have by the end of the series abandoned the revolutionary impulse which gave rise to this scathing satire and brilliant allegory.

The key to "The Great Divide" is to understand who the two tribes represent. The Zhang are wealthy, polite well-dressed, and concerned with maintaining tradition, following empty rules while fully aware that they serve no purpose. They are contrasted with the rude, crude Gan Jin, who clearly have far less wealth, if their clothing is anything to go by. What is this but the age-old conflict of the haves and the have-nots, the patricians and the proletariat, the capitalists and the workers?

Nowhere is this so clear as in the food incident. The capitalists see the workers as hardly better than criminals, and so assume that they will break the food rule. This allows the capitalists to justify breaking the rule themselves. Just as in reality: A capitalist who cheats hundreds customers out of what little wealth they have, or calculatedly kills unknown hundreds by poisoning the environment, gets a slap on the wrist, even while crusading loudly against the lower-class criminals who steal a fraction of the wealth of one rich man, or murder one person in a moment of passion. And of course, the Gan Jin, aware of the opinion of the Zhang, break the rule as well, just as a poor man who knows the system is against him will turn to crime as the only available path.

The Zhang are almost infinitely contemptuous of the Gan Jin's way of life, while the Gan Jin complain mostly about their mistreatment by the Zhang. This again is characteristic of the class struggle: The wealthy are offended by the lack of such luxuries as manners, hygiene, and fancy dress among the poor, and use that as an excuse to deny them access to the same luxuries. The poor chafe against these injustices, but can rarely do anything about them.

The story changes, of course, when there is work to be done or an enemy to fight. Then all of a sudden there is room for cooperation and comradeship, and the bourgeousie magnanimously pretend to see the proletariat as equals, in exchange for which the proletariat are expected to fight and die for the good of the bourgeousie, who may or may not even participate in the battle. This, of course, occurs in the final fight with the giant insects.

Throughout, Katara and Sokka play the role of outsiders, children newcome to the class struggle. Katara opens the episode by insisting on tradition and adherence to the rules; women often serve as the transmitters of culture to the next generation, and thus often hold a traditionalist view even when it is harmful to them. Like many in the proletariat, Katara instinctively sides with the beorgousie because she fantasizes about becoming one of them, unaware that this very dream is what traps her. Sokka, young revolutionary that he is, instead sides instinctively with the struggle of the underclass, sympathizing with their mistreatment by the Zhang.

At the end of the episode, Aang steps in as a peacemaker, but his attempt to make peace is predicated on lies. It is important to remember that he is a religious figure, a monk described as "the bridge between our world and the spirit world." What is the role of religion in the class struggle? To mollify and tranquilize the proletariat with sweet lies, to soothe them and dupe them into cooperating with the system that abuses them. The effete Zhang need the Gan Jin's strength and pragmatism, especially now that all are refugees, but what do the Gan Jin need their oppressors for? Nothing, except they are convinced by Aang's patronizing little myth that they should be friends.

Soon after this episode, Avatar's revolutionary bent reversed itself. This is perhaps inevitable given the romantic (and thus authoritarian) philosophy that dominates visual media, and the presence of a religious icon as the main character. Still, given the powerful way "The Great Divide" captured the essence of the class struggle, it is disappointing that later episodes did not further explore the historical/politico-economic narrative.

(Next week, actually serious reviews begin. I wouldn't feel the need to say this, except that Poe's Law implies a satire of Marxist criticism is indistinguishable from the genuine article.)

AtLA Monday: The fangirls will not be pleased with me...

2010-06-22T23:57:00.004-04:00

Jet: Sokka, you fool! We could have freed this valley!
Sokka: Who would be free? Everyone would be dead!
Jet: You traitor!
Sokka: No, Jet. You became the traitor when you stopped protecting innocent people.

At long last, AtLA Monday makes its (hopefully) triumphant return! Let's dive right in:

Book 1: Water
Chapter 10: Jet

Synopsis:

When the Gaang stumble onto a camp of Fire Nation soldiers, they are saved by teen "freedom fighter" Jet and his band of war orphans. Jet is a gifted fighter and charismatic leader, and Aang and Katara are immediately taken with him, while Sokka is skeptical.

Jet takes Sokka on a raid, which turns out to be ambushing and robbing a single elderly civilian. After, Sokka tries to convince Katara and Aang to leave, but Jet convinces them to stay and claims the old man was an assassin.

Sokka overhears Jet and his fighters planning to blow up a damn and flood the valley, destroying the Fire Nation soldiers and the civilian town alike, but is taken prisoner before he can tell anyone. Sokka soon escapes, but not before Jet tricks Katara and Aang into using their bending abilities to fill the reservoir. Katara and Aang realize what Jet is up to, but he fights Aang to a standstill. Katara gets the drop on Jet and freezes him, but he is still able to whistle the signal to blow the dam.

The dam explodes, but Sokka arrives on Appa and reveals that he convinced the town and Fire Nation soldiers to evacuate. Jet accuses him of being a traitor, but Sokka tells him off and the Gaang goes on their way.

---------------------------

From one perspective, "Jet" is a completely unnecessary episode. It doesn't advance the larger plot of Avatar or really develop any of the characters. It showcases how far they've come, but doesn't really advance them.

But from another perspective, "Jet" is a vitally important episode, because it shows the flipside of Iroh and Zuko. This is probably why they don't appear (well, other than the obvious reason that there's no room for them in 22 minutes): Jet is their polar opposite. Zuko and Iroh prove that the Fire Nation are human beings, with human capacity to do good. Jet proves that the "good guy" nations are human beings, too, with human capacity to do evil.

Before we get into that, though, it's important to note what this episode isn't. This is not the episode where the silly girl character (who has GIRL PARTS!) falls for a charismatic apparent good guy who, because she is a silly girl who lacks a penis, turns out to be a villain. It could easily have been that episode, if it focused on Katara and her feelings of first attraction to Jet and then betrayal, but it avoided that trap neatly: first, by having Aang as much taken in as Katara, and second by focusing on Sokka and his jealousy of Jet.

Because make no mistake, Sokka's mistrust of Jet is initially based entirely on jealousy. He has no basis to mistrust Jet other than the fact that Jet showed him up and was more interested in Katara's and Aang's bending abilities than Sokka's (lackluster by comparison) fighting. Sokka does turn out to be right, but that's because Sokka had to be right eventually. Sure, there's the running gag about instinct, but Sokka's instincts are repeatedly shown to be useless. He's an extremely clever boy, and later in the series, when he relies more on wit, observation, and fast thinking, he's much more effective. Intuition, after all, has to be trained; Sokka simply doesn't have enough experience in anything to intuit his way through it.

Of course, Sokka has good reason to be jealous of Jet. Jet is everything Sokka puffs his fragile teen-boy ego up to be: a charismatic leader, a brilliant fighter, and almost impossibly cool. His response to learning that his newest guest is Kung Fu Action Jesus: "Avatar, huh? Very nice."

Unfortunately, Jet is also dangerously paranoid, violent, ruthless, and racist. The party his gang throws after defeating the Fire Nation soldiers is deeply unsettling. There's a strong "Lord of the Flies" vibe to it, a sense that these kids have, in the absence of any parents to give them a culture, invented rituals of their own. Jet's speech is the most disturbing part: he casts himself (and, to a lesser extent, his band) as a lone and sacred warrior standing against the forces of darkness, feared and hated by them. It may be so unsettling because it is how, in a lesser show, Aang would be portrayed.

But Jet shows his true colors when he attacks and robs a helpless old man. Sokka shows his true colors there, as well. For all his talk about hating the Fire Nation (as a vast, abstract, faceless army), when presented with an actual, frightened human being, Sokka sees only their common humanity, and tries to talk Jet out of it. Jet's later claims that the old man was an assassin are obvious lies: if he were, Jet would never let him leave alive, but the old man is in the village later.

Jet is (at least in this episode; later we will see his attempts to redeem himself) as close to pure evil as Avatar characters come. While Azula or Long Feng may be more frightening, they simply don't care about questions of right and wrong. Jet thinks he's not only a hero, but the Hero. He sees the world in stark terms of good and evil, and thinks that they're a matter of what team you're on. Anything which hurts Team Evil is good, in his eyes. He is the Good Guy, and therefore anything he does, no matter how evil, is by definition Good. It's a sadly common view in real life, spouted by everyone from terrorists in caves to pundits on TV to Presidents in the Oval Office.

Later in the series, we have many more examples that evil can appear in any nation, it just happens to be running the Fire Nation at the moment. But this first major instance of that theme is particularly noticeable. Previously the Fire Nation has been by and large a bunch of thugs who burn down forests just for the laughs. Now we are presented with them as ordinary villagers just trying to live their lives, and the people plotting to destroy a forest and murder innocents are a group of Earth Kingdom children (children!)

Jet is really the first case of evil in an apparent good guy -- someone who befriends the Gaang and shares common cause with them. But Jet is not portrayed unsympathetically, either. His actions are unjustifiable, and no attempt to justify them is made, but we can understand the reasons for them. Jet and his band have suffered terribly at the hands of the Fire Nation, losing their parents and their homes. They are children, lashing out in rage. Unfortunately, they choose to do so in a horrifically adult way.

Perhaps nowhere is the difference between Jet and Sokka so clear as in Jet's attempt to convince Sokka that destroying the valley is necessary, pragmatic, and right. Jet sees himself as a pragmatist and Sokka as an idealist, but where Jet sees only the categories Jet himself created of "enemy" and "ally", Sokka sees the reality: living, breathing people, "mothers and fathers and children." Jet is not a pragmatist, he is a madman; Sokka is the realist here. The death of Jet's parents taught him to hate the Fire Nation and destroy them before they hurt him more. Sokka, on the other hand, learned the right lesson from his pain: It sucks when people you love die, so you shouldn't kill people other people might love (which is everyone).

At the beginning of the episode, Aang and Katara see Sokka as something of a joke, and to a degree they are justified. His judgment has not been very reliable for most of the series to this point. Sokka is sarcastic, cynical, and a complainer; he's difficult to get along with, where Jet is charismatic and winning. But Sokka doesn't try to kick cowering old men in the head, and eventually Aang and Katara learn their lesson: It doesn't matter what team you're on or how much charisma you have; the people to trust are the people who do what's right.

Random Observations:

By focusing on Sokka instead of Katara, the episode becomes "skeptic saves the day with the power of doubt." "The Fortuneteller" uses the same plot structure, and it's a nice reminder that, no matter how fantastic the Avatar world may seem by our standards, healthy skepticism is still a vitally important skill.
Jet is one of the few cases of a Character of the Week who is sufficiently interesting in his own right to carry the episode.
The forest seems to think it's fall, judging by the amount of red and brown foliage. Weird, considering that it's at most a couple of weeks past the winter solstice. Unless they're somewhere where the first snow is really late? Avatar seasons are messed up to begin with, considering that they appear to have the same seasons in both the northern and southern hemispheres. It's possible, given a planet with no axial tilt and a fairly eccentric orbit, but it's bloody unlikely.
Sokka talks a great deal of sense when he complains that Appa sticks out to much. The Gaang in general does a TERRIBLE job of keeping a low profile.
"Why do boys always think someone has to be the leader?" Hearing Katara say that is hilarious, considering how much of a power struggle there's going to be between her and Toph later in the series.
Katara is just a bitch early in this episode, with her snarking on Sokka's youth (even though she's younger), lack of sexual experience (like she has any more!), and claims about his instincts (okay, that one's fair).
Without making a big deal about it, this episode really shows how much Katara has improved in the last few weeks. For example, she puts out the fire on Sokka's shirt with a gentler version of the water whip. In the time between last episode and this one, she's practiced it enough to modify it. The fight against the Fire Nation soldiers even suggests that Katara has actually surpassed Sokka in combat. That scroll was good stuff! Also, I think this may be the first time she uses the trick of keeping a bottle of water at her belt. Later in the episode, she quickly takes down Jet, an opponent Aang was having trouble with! Admittedly, he was probably at least somewhat tired from his fight with Aang, and she had the advantage of surprise, but still impressive on her part.
Why would soldiers be carrying around large boxes full of candy? Sure, a little candy in each package of field rations, so they have a quick way to raise blood sugar without having to sit down to a full meal, but a big box full of nothing but candy? A possibility: They really are trying to kill Jet, and it's either bait to trap one of his younger followers or a bribe to turn them on him.
That twig in Jet's mouth serves double duty. It's an Asian culture reference, showing up in a lot of Japanese films as visual shorthand for a ronin, a masterless samurai -- the rough samurai movie equivalent of the lone gun in a Western -- and it's also a stand-in for the cigarette Jet would doubtless be sporting in a show aimed at adults. The ronin parallels are particularly strong: Jet is fighting to continue a war his lord (if, as seems likely, the Earth Kingdom is feudal) has already lost. He's also entirely without honor.
In the first few minutes after Jet appears, he seems to be set up as Katara's equivalent to Suki: a non-bending, highly skilled Earth Kingdom warrior and war leader, wielding a non-conventional weapon (hook-swords, a fan). The biggest difference is that Suki is subject to civilian, adult authority, and Jet is not. Oh yeah, and Suki is sane.
The Fire Nation killed Jet's parents when he was eight years old, prompting him to become paranoid, violent, and obsessive. He then trained himself to become an incredible fighter, able to take on people with superpowers even though he has none. Jet is Batman!
Sokka's trick with the knife and the tree is very cool, and by praising it, Jet scores more points with Sokka. Also, I love that knife; it's clearly made from the jawbone of some animal -- it even still has some of the teeth. That's a great little worldbuilding detail -- it implies that the Southern Water Tribe neither has much access to metal, nor much opportunity to trade for it.
If Sokka had not intervened, Jet would have kicked a cowering old man in the head. Just thought I'd repeat that, in case any of his fangirls are reading.
The old man in this episode is the opposite of the old man from "Imprisoned." The old man from the earlier episode was Earth Kingdom, and repaid kindness by turning Haru in to the Fire Nation. This old man is Fire Nation, and repays Sokka's attempted kindness by helping him save the village.
This episode is another rare case of the cabbage cart being destroyed by someone other than the Gaang; in this case, we don't even see Cabbage Man, but a display of cabbages is prominently shown as the wave bears down on the village.
As I mentioned, if the old man had really been an assassin, Jet would never have let him go. In fact, from a purely military point of view, Jet shouldn't have let him go -- if you're going to attack civilians in the first place, you shouldn't let them go home and tell everyone where you're hiding. The only reason to do that is if you're more interested in making "enemy" civilians afraid than any military strategy -- which is a roundabout way of saying Jet's a terrorist. Who kicks old men in the head.

State of the Animation

2010-06-19T12:07:00.001-04:00

Sorry I've been gone so long. Work has been kicking my ass, I've been planning a wedding, and I've been just too exhausted to post. It's the worst possible time, too, because I've seen a TON of great animation lately, and there's more around the corner! So, in reverse chronological order, here's where I'm at:

New Futurama comes next week. I have always considered Futurama to be the superior Matt Groening show, and I think the makers agree with me -- I believe that's why the quality of The Simpsons plummeted when Futurama was on the air. They were giving their full attention to Futurama, and letting Simpsons slide. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Futurama is not only better than Simpsons, it's the best American animated series for adults. I'm racing to get a retrospective on it done before the new show starts.

Saw Toy Story 3 last night. It was amazing! I've always liked Toy Story, but I never felt it was Pixar's best work -- I consider Up, Wall-E, Ratatouille, and Finding Nemo to be better than either of the first two Toy Stories. But somehow, I ended up caring about these characters more than I thought, because I actually cried at the end of Toy Story 3. This had better be the last movie in the franchise, though; it was absolutely perfect, both in its own right and as a finale, and it should not be messed with in future. I probably won't address it in more detail until it comes out on DVD, but I am going to see it again tomorrow!

Adventure Time! with Finn and Jake continues to be the best cartoon in years. It just so perfectly captures the essence of the worlds I would imagine with my toys, and slyly winks at the audience while it's doing it. Weirdly, it manages to do so without being the least bit cynical. Quite the opposite: It bursts with joy from every seam.

I also saw Rebuild of Evangelion 2.22 recently, and was completely blown away. To explain as spoiler-free, throughout the first half of the movie the differences (frankly, improvements) in characterization from the first movie pile up, so that in the second half it can go completely off the rails. The second half of the movie takes my favorite four episodes of the TV series and subverts them entirely, so that their outcome and meaning is utterly different even while the actual events are similar. It's pure genius, and the best anime I've seen in years. I am planning to do an in-depth analysis, something like I do for AtLA, but I'm not entirely sure when.

Speaking of AtLA, my review of "Jet" should be (finally) done this weekend. It's one of my favorite episodes, and I've been itching to it. Stupid work. Also, I want to get a post about the Racebending controversy up before the movie comes out, so expect that soon.

Apologies for flaking out lately...

2010-06-14T23:02:00.002-04:00

I got sick, and work has been a giant pile of insanity. I have a half-written post about "Jet" left over from last week, notes about the racebending controversy, and vague notions about Rebuild of Evangelion, but nothing complete enough to post. Much apologies.

AtLA Monday delayed

2010-06-07T21:52:00.000-04:00

Sorry, all, but I had to work crazy late today, and there is just no way I could get the next post finished in time (it's still in chronologically-ordered-notes form). I'll try to get it up tomorrow evening.

AtLA Monday: The moral of the story is that stories with morals are dumb...

2010-05-31T23:55:00.005-04:00

"Stealing is wrong -- except when it's from pirates."
--Katara

Book One: Water
Chapter Nine: The Waterbending Scroll

Synopsis:

Aang is worried about having to master all the elements by the end of summer, so the Gaang stops at a lake so Katara can teach him basic waterbending. Aang masters every move Katara tries to teach him almost immediately, even one she still doesn't quite have down herself, much to her annoyance. Aang also accidentally washes away their supplies, so they have to go into town to buy replacements.

After spending nearly all their money on supplies, the Gaang browses the wares on board a pirate junk. They find a rare scroll describing several waterbending moves, but cannot come close to affording it. As they're leaving, the pirates attack them, but they escape. Back at camp, Katara reveals she stole the scroll.

She insists she took it to help Aang, but of course she wants to practice the moves herself. She struggles with a move called "the single water whip," and when Aang is able to do it on the first try, she yells at him. After she apologizes, she gives him the scroll and tells him she wants nothing more to do with it.

Meanwhile, Zuko and Iroh are looking for a replacement white lotus tile for Iroh's Pai Sho set in the same pirates' shop, and overhear one of them describing Aang. Zuko makes a deal with the pirates to work together; they get the scroll, he gets Aang.

That night, Katara sneaks out to practice the moves from the scroll. Zuko and the pirates hear her and capture her, and soon after catch Aang and Sokka as well. Sokka convinces the pirates that they can get much more money for the Avatar than the scroll, leading to a fight between the pirates and Zuko's crew. During the battle, the Gaang escapes on the pirates' boat, and Aang and Katara have to waterbend together to avoid a waterfall.

Later, on Appa, Katara apologizes, and Sokka reveals he grabbed the scroll in the confusion. Iroh finds his white lotus tile, and Zuko fumes.

----------------------------------------------

The previous episode, in many ways, was the start of the real story of Avatar. It marks the beginning of the race against time that serves as the backdrop for the rest of the series. It is fitting, then, that "The Waterbending Scroll" is the first episode that really feels like later Avatar. There is little of depth here, but there is plenty of fun, some humor, scenery porn, some great action sequences, a dollop of character development, and a thorough subversion of a standard kids' show plot.

The plot to which I refer is, of course, the tired old story in which a kid wants something he can't afford, steals it, and then gets into trouble, ultimately learning that the theft wasn't worth it. In this episodze, Katara wants the scroll, steals it, and then she and her friends all get in trouble for it. However, in the end, the move she learned from the scroll is vital in fighting the pirates, and when asked what she's learned she makes clear she doesn't regret it in the slightest.

One of my pet peeves is the insistence by many, both creators and commentators, that every work of art has to be a fable with a moral, and that the value of a work is somehow connected to its moral. This view is most pernicious in children's television. Many shows can barely go an episode without trying to cram some kind of moral down the throats of the watching kids, nearly always to the detriment of consistent characterization or realistic interaction.

So I'm always happy to see a show aimed at children reject this approach (one of many reasons I'm loving Adventure Time! so much is its tendency to subvert the end-of-episode moral). Overall, Avatar is pretty good about it. There's plenty a kid can learn by watching these characters grow up and struggle with adversity, but it's all integral to and follows from the story. Rarely does an episode feel like the writers started with a moral and wrote the episode to teach it. There's no episode where the Gaang meets a disabled kid and have to learn that he fully capable of leading a normal life; they meet a disabled kid and it is simply assumed from the start that he's a regular kid. There's no episode in which they learn about child abuse; instead it remains as a constant element, never outright stated but always lurking just off-screen, in Zuko's character arc. And, most thankfully, blessedly of all, there is never an Extra Special Episode in which they learn about (dum dum DUM) drugs.

And so we have this episode, in which Katara learns that stealing is wrong. Except that she doesn't, because those guys were pirates, and the Gaang is trying to save the world, so property rights can suck it. What the episode is really about is Katara's jealousy and insecurity. For most of her life she was the only bender in her village. Waterbending was what she did; it is what made her special. Now Aang suddenly, effortlessly, can do what she struggled all her life to accomplish. In minutes of training, he is passing her.

Is it any wonder she snaps at him? Without meaning to, he makes her feel completely inadequate. Not only is she being surpassed at her greatest skill; the ease with which Aang picks up waterbending, compared with how hard it was for Katara, doubtless makes her wonder if there's something wrong with her. It won't be until near the end of the season that we see the real difference: Aang picks up waterbending faster and has more raw power, but Katara works harder, with the result that Katara has greater finesse, greater control, and greater ingenuity.

Katara's repeated awesomeness and genuine desire to help everyone she meets put her dangerously close to Mary Sue territory. This episode, along with a few others later on, helps humanize her with genuine flaws: she has a vicious temper, she can be very insecure at times, and it's easy for her to rationalize her actions by pretending that she's doing it for someone else's benefit. This is hardly the first time these flaws will create trouble.

With Katara busy being an insecure jerk for an episode, Sokka is free to show another side of his character, too. This episode reminds us that he grew up with Katara, and in some ways knows her better than she knows herself. He teases, and pretends not to understand the importance of waterbending, but the fact that he retrieves the waterbending scroll at the end of the episode makes clear that he really does understand how important it is. He just wanted Katara to be honest about her real reasons, and maybe get over her insecurity a little.

Random Observations:

Given the number of times Iroh says "white lotus" in this episode, I really, really want to see some connection to the Order of the White Lotus, but I can't find any. His description of the lotus tile bears no resemblance to the Order; far from appearing weak, its members are acknowledged masters of their respective disciplines (Piandao is a much sought-after teacher, Iroh a famous general, and so on). It is still foreshadowing of a sort, but appears to be extremely indirect.
The voice of the thin pirate in green -- the one who doesn't know what curios are -- bugged me for ages. I could not figure out who he sounded like. Then I got it -- Beedle, the shopkeeper from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, uses the same wheedling tone.
Another way in which Avatar quietly does its bit to take down the patriarchy: men who enjoy typically "feminine" pastimes. In this case, Iroh loves to shop.
The pirates are actually pretty impressive fighters. They take down the Gaang without difficulty, albeit by surprise, and prove a pretty good match for Zuko's crew.
That "reptile-bird" is totally an Archaeopteryx. And that's awesome.
Speaking of the reptile-bird, I love the aerial battle between it and Momo. Momo doesn't actually take part in combat very often, but when he does, he always proves himself to be quite capable and extremely clever.
The Gaang's money supply will be an issue again in "The Storm" a couple of episodes from now.

No AtLA Monday this week...

2010-05-24T17:52:00.003-04:00

Sorry all. Work is kicking my butt, and I've been getting a little burned out on this series, anyway. (And that's on a series I like! How does Fred do it?) I think a week off will recharge me, and I'll be back on schedule next week with The Waterbending Scroll, which is a great episode that deserves a much stronger treatment than I could give it this week.

AtLA Monday: Racing the Sun

2010-05-17T21:26:00.003-04:00

"It's good to see you, Aang. What took you so long?"
-Roku, 112 years after his death and Aang's birth.

Book One: Water
Chapter Eight: Avatar Roku (The Winter Solstice, Part Two)

Synopsis:

Aang tries to leave for Crescent Island without Sokka and Katara, but Appa won't budge. Sokka and Katara convince him to let them go, and the Gaang sets off, with less then a day to breach Fire Nation territory and reach Roku's statue. Soon after they leave, Zuko and Iroh arrive in the village to question the townsfolk.

Later that morning, Zuko and Iroh argue as their ship races back to the Fire Nation, violating Zuko's banishment. They catch up to Appa and try to shoot him down with flaming catapult shot, but Appa dodges. Then Aang spots a flotilla of Fire Navy ships in their path.

On board his ship, Commander Zhao gloats at the opportunity to catch Aang and Zuko in the same day. He gives the order to open fire. Appa weaves through the field of fire with only minor injuries, but Zuko's ship takes damage to the engines.

After two more volleys, the Gaang makes it through the blockade. Zhao's forces cannot follow them, but he surmises that Zuko knows where they're going, and gives orders to let him through.

The Gaang arrives at the island and sneaks into the apparently abandoned shrine. Once inside, they are ambushed by the Fire Sages, but one Fire Sage is still more loyal to the Avatar than the Fire Lord, and he helps them.

On Zuko's ship, Iroh explains Zhao's plan, and Zuko begins planning a counter-strategy. Meanwhile, the Fire Sage leads the Gaang through a network of tunnels carved by Roku out of magma. As they travel, the old man explains to Aang why he turned against the other Sages. He leads them to the sanctuary, but it is sealed. Only a firebending Avatar, or a team of firebenders, can open the door. Sokka, however, has a plan.

At the same time as Sokka is hatching his plan, Zuko puts his own into action, setting out for Crescent Island alone on his boat while Iroh takes the damaged ship on a different path, to create a false smoke trail. Unfortunately for them, Zhao is watching through his telescope.

Sokka uses a technique his father taught him to make small bombs, but they fail to open the door. Katara notes the soot they left behind, and comes up with a plan of her own. The Fire Sage on the Gaang's side, Momo, and the scorch marks left by Sokka's plan combine to fool the other Fire Sages that the Gaang has already gotten in, and they open the doors to go after them.

As soon as the doors open, the Gaang ambush the Fire Sages, but Aang is captured by the newly arrived Zuko. As the doors are closing, Aang manages to break free and runs to help Sokka and Katara, but Katara tells him to go into the chamber instead, and he makes it in just before the doors shut. The Avatar-light flares, and now even the firebenders can't open the door.

The last rays of the setting sun illuminate the statue, and Roku appears to speak to Aang. Outside, Zuko questions the renegade Fire Sage, and Zhao arrives to take everyone prisoner. Zuko tells Zhao he's too late to stop the Avatar from entering the chamber, but Zhao doesn't care; he'll get Aang when he comes out.

Roku explains the meaning of the comet to Aang: A hundred years ago, it appeared, giving the firebenders enormous power. Fire Lord Sozin used that opportunity to wipe out the Air Nomads in a surprise attack. Now, it is returning, as comets tend to do. By the end of summer, the comet will return and empower the firebenders to crush everything in their path, permanently ending the balance of the world. Normally, it takes years for the Avatar to master all four elements. Aang will have to do it by the end of summer, or he will have no hope of ending the war before the comet. There is hope, however: Aang isn't learning the elements from scratch -- the Avatar has mastered them all before, many times.

Outside, Zhao's soldiers prepare to blast Aang with everything they have the moment the doors open. Roku says that he is a part of Aang, and if Aang needs him again, he'll find a way to talk to him. He senses the threat of Zhao's soldiers, and Aang enters the Avatar State, channeling Roku to block the fireblasts and free Sokka, Katara, and the renegade Fire Sage. A volcanic eruption begins, and the temple begins to crumble. The Fire Nation people escape, but the Gaang is trapped, until Appa swoops in to save them.

On Zhao's ship, we see that he has taken all the Fire Sages prisoner as traitors, not just the one that helped the Gaang, and he intends to take them to the Fire Lord. The episode ends as the Gaang flies back to the Earth Kingdom to resume their quest.

----------------------

The plot begins! The main plot of the series is revealed at the end of this episode: Sozin's Comet will give the Fire Nation the power to ruin the world beyond the Avatar's ability to fix it. Before it arrives at the end of the summer, Aang must master all four elements, defeat the Fire Lord, and end the war. Bit of a tall order, given that he hasn't even started on water yet!

Racing against time is, of course, the main theme of this episode. The Gaang spends the episode racing against the sun's daily cycle to reach Roku's statue by nightfall; they will spend the rest of the series racing against its annual cycle to win the war before Fall.

The main plot of the episode doesn't actually give us much more than that to work with; it's really all about setting up future events. To that end, it gives a lot of foreshadowing. In particular, the final tableau of the Gaang flying into the moon is heavily foreshadowing the season finale.

This is the first episode since "The Warriors of Kyoshi" in which Zuko and the Gaang interact directly, and once again the episode takes pains to note parallels between Sokka and Zuko, especially when it cuts between the two of them, miles apart, hatching and executing doomed plans simultaneously. I can't stress enough how odd this is; most of the series really does draw its parallels between Aang and Zuko, especially beginning with "The Storm."

Nonetheless, the similarities between Zuko and Sokka are clear. Both are angry young men trying to win back their fathers. The main difference is that Sokka has received care, love, and bomb-making lessons from his father; all the Fire Lord has given Zuko is pressure, rejection, and pain. Of course, I suspect we'd be a lot less sympathetic to Zuko if we saw any more of how he "persuaded" the villagers to tell him where Aang went at the beginning of the episode. Between Zuko and Heibai, I doubt much of their village is left. It was a wise decision on the part of the creators to cut away when they did.

Sokka's anger is interesting, because it's a subtle repeat of something we saw more blatantly earlier on. In the first few episodes, Sokka is a misogynist, and in "The Warriors of Kyoshi" he encounters a woman who proves him wrong. To his credit, by two episodes later, in "Imprisoned," he appears completely open to letting Katara run the show, put herself in danger, even take part in combat. In this episode, he reiterates his hatred of the Fire Nation and firebenders, only to be proven wrong by the renegade Fire Sage. What happens two episodes later? We'll see in two weeks, when I discuss "Jet."

Random observations:

As mentioned last post, Sokka and Katara have strong motivation to insist on accompanying Aang after what happened last episode. Sokka is embarrassed, and Katara nearly lost the last people she has left.
Continuity touch: Iroh is still half-naked when he and Zuko reach the village. They have not returned to the ship yet.
Iroh wins the understatement award: "My brother is not the understanding type." This argument becomes much more interesting after watching later episodes, especially "The Storm"; Zuko is completely unreasonable when it comes to his father, because he cannot bear to admit the truth to himself. It'll be another two seasons until he does.
Why is there a blockade? It's unlikely that it's permanent, since Zuko is surprised to see it. Given that Aang only announced his intention to enter the Fire Nation a few hours ago, they can't be there for him unless they've been there for weeks, and then how would they know to be in that one particular spot? No, I think they're there to stop someone else entirely from entering the Fire Nation. Who? Well, by now they've doubtless heard that an entire prisonful of earthbenders busted out and took Fire Navy ships with them... Sure, one of the crew seems to assume that all Fire Navy ships are on their side, but then again, would the Fire Nation want the rank and file to know about such an embarrassing incident?
"That's exactly why I didn't want you here!" says Aang. "It's too dangerous!" Katara answers: "And that's exactly why we're here." To be completely useless? To be fair, Sokka and Katara both contribute to opening the door to Roku's chamber, but really, there's no excuse for them to believe they could be any help. It will take many episodes of skill-building and character growth before they're anything like credible allies in a fight.
Appa seems more angered than frightened or hurt by his burning fur. Later in the series he'll develop a pretty serious phobia of fire, but none of those events have happened yet.
Appa is somehow able to fall faster than Sokka and thus catch him. This doesn't bother me, because Appa is a six-legged magic flying bison with a beaver tail. Six-legged magic flying bison with beaver tails fall as fast as they want to.
Why don't the ships keep firing after the Gaang makes it through? Possible answers, by decreasing likelihood: They had all their catapults pointed "out", and it takes a while to turn them around (presumably a ship would normally have them pointed in every direction, and this is special blockade procedure), or they only had enough ammo prepared for three volleys and not enough time to bring more out on deck, or there's some rule against them firing into the Fire Nation.
Beautiful moment of Zuko and Zhao staring at each other from the decks of their ships, Zuko low down and defiant, Zhao high up and smug. Both are clearly thinking the same thing: "What are you up to?" And then a moment later Iroh, the great general, rubbing his beard and pondering why Zhao let them through.
The Fire Sages were mentioned earlier, as the ones who told Zuko that the Avatar would be a hundred-year-old airbender. This is their first (only?) appearance onscreen.
The flowing lava is, of course, not at all hot unless you're actually touching it. There's no such thing as convection in cartoons. Sigh.
The ancestors of the Fire Sages were forced to fight for the Fire Nation when the war began. Most of their descendents now appear to serve willingly, but at least one rebels. This gives something of an explanation both for the size of the Fire Nation military and for the widely varying degree of competence they show (to put it charitably): most of the military is conscripts, who of course are not very motivated or skilled. The career military like Zhao, on the other hand, are more focused and skilled and probably better equipped -- it's hinted at that nobles are both expected to serve in the military, and given special status within it.
This is one of the few times we see Aang in a rage without entering the Avatar State, as he attacks the unopened door with wind. It's not as scary as the State, but still pretty unsettling; a reminder not only that he's a little kid, but a little kid with no parents and powerful weapons.
On what basis does Zhao consider Zuko a traitor? The circumstances of his banishment didn't imply treason. Is it simply that Zuko concealed his knowledge of the Avatar? Zhao does seem the type to equate his own career advancement with the good of the Fire Nation, and thus regard anyone who stands in his way as a traitor.
Roku's attack at the end of the episode is the first we get to see of what a fully realized Avatar can do: raw power enough to unleash a volcano to destroy the temple, and control enough to melt steel chains without hurting the people wrapped in them. (Then again, he's probably helped by the fact that there's no such thing as convection.)
Why is Momo wearing a Fire Sage hat when he and Appa swoop in to save the Gaang? We'll never know, but I assume, given that it involves Momo and Appa having adventures together, that the answer is both awesome and hilarious.
What happens to the Fire Sages, especially the "good" one, after they're handed off to the Fire Lord? Normally I'd assume they were killed, or worse. But there's one scene with four Fire Sages near the end of the last episode, and one of them, albeit in the background and fuzzy, looks a lot like the "good" Sage from this episode. I choose to believe that's who it is.

Insanely Late AtLA Monday on a Thursday: Setting Up the Pins

2010-05-13T22:02:00.005-04:00

Aang: Maybe whatever I have to do will just... come to me.

Katara: I think you can do it, Aang.

Sokka: Yeah... we're all going to get eaten by a spirit monster.

Book One: Water

Chapter Seven: The Spirit World (The Winter Solstice, Part One)

Synopsis:

The Gaang is hanging out on Appa, flying along, when they see a blight across the landscape. They land to investigate, and discover it's the remnants of a recent forest fire set by the Fire Nation. Aang is depressed, and blames himself; stopping this sort of devestation is part of the Avatar's job.

Katara tries to cheer him up by throwing an acorn at him. She explains that the acorn is a symbol of the forest's eventual return from this destruction. An old man approaches, recognizing Aang as the Avatar, and asks for help.

The Gaang travels with him to his village, where many of the buildings are half-collapsed. He explains that the spirit Heibai has been attacking for the last several nights. As soon as the sun sets, it attacks the village, smashes buildings, and kidnaps one of the people. And as the winter solstice approaches, the spirit world draws closer to the human world, allowing Heibai to manifest more powerfully and for longer. The old man fears what Haibei might do if he isn't stopped before the solstice.

Dealing with spirits is a traditional part of the Avatar's job, but Aang doesn't know how to do it. He has no teacher, and the only people who have any experience being the Avatar are dead. Still, he tries to help. That night, he attempts to appease Heibai, but cannot communicate with him, and the angry spirit kidnaps Sokka. Aang chases after him to the burnt-out forest, and crashes into a wooden statue of a bear in the middle of the blight.

Aang comes to the next morning and returns to the village, but he is now invisible, having crossed over into the spirit world without realizing it. He cries out to Roku for help, and a ghostly dragon appears, the spirit of Roku's "animal guide." The dragon is able to telepathically transmit images, but not words, when it touches Aang's forehead, and it shows him an image of a comet and a distant island. Aang mounts it and flies to the island, where there is a shrine to Avatar Roku. From the images the dragon transmits, Aang figures out that the shrine is set up as a calendar, such that, on the winter solstice, the last rays of the setting sun will shine on the jewel in the forehead of a statue of Roku. At that time, it will be possible for Aang to speak to his spirit.

The dragon returns Aang to his body, and he reaches the village just as the sun is setting. Heibai returns, but this time Aang touches his forehead and learns that he is the spirit of the forest the Fire Nation burned down. Aang gives the Heibai the acorn Katara gave him earlier, and explains its significance. Heibai takes it and departs, transforming into a panda as he goes. As he vanishes, Sokka and the missing villagers return, unsure where they've been.

Meanwhile, we cut regularly to the B plot, in which Iroh is ambushed and captured by earthbenders. They mention some of his past exploits, and he rather cleverly manages to leave a trail for Zuko as they haul him off to the capital. Zuko follows them alone, and along the way sees Katara riding on Appa. He nearly turns to follow, but then chooses to go after Iroh instead, just in time to save him from having his hands smashed by the earthbenders to prevent further escape attempts. Zuko and Iroh make short work of the earthbenders, and return to the ship.

At the end of the episode, Aang tells the others about the shrine, but they have only one day to reach it before the solstice. Worse still: it's in the Fire Nation.

-------------------------------------------

The most important work of this episode and the next is to set up future events. We learn more about the Avatar and his world than any episode since the premiere, and we hardly notice we're doing it!

This episode actually reveals the last of the Avatar's powers. There will be no more reveals of new powers; everything else is a logical application of the powers we're shown here, though it does require a bit of reading between the lines. The powers of the Avatar, assuming he learns to use them, are:

Consummate martial arts skills.
Access to the accumulated knowledge, skill, and experience of all past Avatars.
The ability to bend all four elements.
The Avatar State, in which he lets the spirits of past Avatars basically possess him, multiplying his power and making him float and glow.
The ability to see and communicate with spirits.
The ability to separate his spirit from his body and wander the spirit world.

As we go on in the series, I'll explain how each of the powers he "develops" later are logical extensions of these powers, given the rules of the universe. The important thing at this stage is to understand that Aang is more than four benders in one person; he is also a bridge between the human and spirit worlds. He can act equally in both.

What exactly is the spirit world? Based on the way its portrayed, it appears to be a sort of shadow of the human world (though its denizens might argue that it's the other way around). The Avatar universe is pantheist; everything has a spirit, in both senses (there is a Spirit of Everything, and there are lesser spirits for each individual thing). Places, people, objects, animals, all have an animating spirit. The spirits are not good or evil, by and large; they obey their own, often seemingly arbitrary, rules. Some spirits are quite minor, being the spirit of, say, a forest or a lake. Others represent abstractions, such as wisdom, or major natural forces, such as the ocean or the moon. And some are downright terrifying, even if it's not clear what exactly they're the spirit of. Spirits usually dwell in the spirit world, but sometimes they can cross over into the human world, as Heibai does in this episode. This is easiest near the solstice. Some spirits, as we'll see later, can incarnate in the human world more or less permanently.

The two worlds are closely connected. If you destroy something in the human world, as we see in this episode, its spirit may rampage. This can be a problem if you happen to find yourself in that spirit's path. On the other hand, if you harm a spirit, it can have disastrous consequences in the human world.

Notably, a spirit without a body cannot use bending. This makes sense, as bending is a very physical kind of magic. The spirit world is not material, and thus not made of the elements; even if it were, without a body, how could Aang do the physical motions required to bend? Also, this makes it very clear that Aang's ability to walk the spirit world and communicate with spirits is separate from any of the four bending styles. It is an additional power in its own right, not some kind of synergistic effect of having access to four elements.

Also, Fang (Roku's dragon) appears when Aang asks for help from Roku. Why is the dragon free to act when Roku is not? Because Roku is already there, inside Aang. Aang hasn't yet figured out how to talk to Roku, but since Aang is Roku, when he is in trouble the spirit of Roku's closest companion comes to aid him. Unfortunately, Roku's experience and skill are buried deep inside Aang, and accessing them will require something special -- at least until Aang improves in the use of his spiritual powers, and learns to tap his own depths.

There's some interesting foreshadowing at work here, too. The comet is obvious, but there are subtler touches, as well. Literal touches, in fact -- first Fang, and then Aang touches a spirit in the forehead in order to link with it and communicate. This figures in the way Aang resolves the conflict with Heibai. He does not defeat him; in fact, he never even lands a blow on Heibai. He touches Heibai's forehead, uses his spiritual power (with accompanying glow), and then renders Heibai harmless.

We also get some foreshadowing in the B story, particularly in the moment where Zuko has to choose between rescuing his uncle and pursuing the Avatar. He hesitates a moment, even turns to start following Appa, and then turns back to save his uncle. That sequence, spread over rather a lot more time, will happen again.

The B story also teaches us a lot about Iroh. We learn that, despite his belly, he is actually quite buff. More seriously, we learn that he was once a great general, and led the siege of the city of Ba Sing Se for 600 days, which is a ridiculously long siege. It says volumes about the determination of both attacker and defender to have a siege last that long -- almost two years! He was defeated at Ba Sing Se, because he and his men were tired. (And, in hindsight, knowing the real reason Iroh ended the siege that he hides behind the claim to be "tired", it is heartbreaking when he says, "And I'm still tired." I immediately flashed to "The Tale of Iroh," and I am not ashamed to say I got a little misty.) Iroh then proceeds to top his effortless takedown of Zhao in "The Southern Air Temple" with one of the all-time great escape attempts. We thus learn that he is completely awesome -- or think that we do. The truth is, at this point in the series we've barely even begun to scratch the surface of Iroh's pure awesomeness.

The B story is actually quite brilliant. Think about it from the point of view from someone who's never seen this show before. An old man is taking a bath. His nephew tells him to hurry up so they can get moving. The old man doesn't listen, falls asleep in the bath, and is ambushed and captured by soldiers. The soldiers leave him almost naked, chain him up, mock him, and drag him off. He makes a couple of escape attempts, both quite clever, and the soldiers respond by preparing to crush his hands. At the last moment, his nephew arrives, releases him, and they non-lethally kick the asses of the soldiers, who outnumber them three to one. A first-time viewer would be completely justified in concluding that Zuko and Iroh are a second team of heroic characters, and the Earth Kingdom are villains.

How many kids' shows are willing to delve this deep into shades of gray? Heck, how many "adult" shows? The evening news is usually more black and white! And this episode is barely the beginning of the process of deepening Zuko, Iroh, and the Fire Nation.

Random Observations:

"Turns out clouds are made of water." Even that bit of silliness is minor foreshadowing for a few episodes from now. The fact that clouds are made of water will be critical to the plot of "The Fortuneteller."
The Gaang must be pretty near the equator by now, if it's this green two days before the winter solstice.
Sokka finds proof that the Fire Nation was at the site of the forest fire, not that they set it. It makes more sense for the villagers to have done it, possibly in an attempt to destroy a Fire Nation encampment -- it would explain why Heibai's attacking them, and not the Fire Nation.
Is Aang going to blame himself for everything the Fire Nation does? He's really not at all over the events of "The Southern Air Temple," as we'll see again in "The Storm." He feels guilty about running away, and believes that because he ran away and vanished for a century, he is responsible for everything the Fire Nation did in the meantime, from burning this forest to wiping out the Air Nomads.
Zuko really, really, REALLY does not want reminders that his uncle is a sexual being. This becomes something of a running gag: Zuko is easily grossed out by old people.
Katara throws those acorns HARD. She's really quite strong.
Iroh falling asleep in the hot spring is incredibly stupid and irresponsible of him. Sleeping in a hot spring is dangerous; it can lead to severe dehydration, overheating, coma, even death. Presumably powerful firebenders have at least some resistance to extreme temperatures, but even so, dumb move on his part.
Iroh's nickname, "The Dragon of the West," will turn out to have several layers of meaning. The most obvious is his ability to breathe fire or very hot air, which he uses in this episode to heat the spring water and, later, his manacle.
Sokka complains about having to "sit and cower" while Aang deals with Heibai. That may explain his insistence on coming with Aang at the beginning of the next episode.
I love Heibai's design in his "monster" form! I love all the monster design in Avatar. It's a pity they don't get to do more of it; there are only three real monsters in the series, four if you count the big, man-made, shambling plant-thing from "The Swamp."
Are we supposed to believe that the sandal Zuko finds in this episode is the one he uses in the finale? That's sweet and all, but what was he doing carrying a smelly sandal for months on end? Especially given that for a lot of that time, Iroh was right there next to him, hobbling around on one sandal? For that matter, how did Iroh even have his sandal to drop? Wasn't he naked when the soldiers caught him?
Heartbreaking Katara Moment #65,849: Clutching Sokka's boomerang after he and Aang leave. This episode must be completely awful for her. Her mother is dead, her father is gone, now her brother has been captured by a monster. On top of that, Katara is constantly acting as caretaker for the people around her, so she doubtless blames herself for Sokka's capture, especially when you consider that she persuaded Sokka to come on the journey in the first place, and did nothing throughout Heibai's attack. Doubtless, her misery and guilt in this episode are factors in her insistence on coming with Aang at the beginning of the next episode.
The Avatar solar motif rears its head again: as Aang approaches the village in spirit form, the sun rises. The whole plot of this episode is a variant of the Dying God trope: The sun "dies" at the solstice, the longest night of the year, just as Aang "dies" and become a Force ghost, I mean spirit. The offering is made, and the spirit appeased, and the sun returns, just as Aang returns to life. And of course, this is foreshadowing, too -- it is neither the first time (that would be the hundred years he spent frozen) nor the last that Aang symbolically dies and is reborn. Makes sense, given the solar motif; in addition to its annual cycle, the sun dies with every sunset and is reborn with every sunrise.
The dragons in Avatar are an interesting combination of eastern and western influences. The body shape, limbs, and heads are clearly eastern, but the wings and firebreath are pure western (eastern dragons are generally associated with water, not fire).
Do all Avatars have an animal guide? It's interesting that Aang has an air bison, later identified as the animal from which the first airbenders learned their art, while Roku had a dragon, the animal that did the same for firebenders. Is this a coincidence, or a tradition? Does it mean Kyoshi had a giant badger-mole for a companion? Waterbending was learned from the moon, not an animal, so what would a Water Tribe Avatar have for a guide?
Iroh sees Aang fly past on Fang. How? Has he always been able to see spirits, or did he learn this ability at some point? Regardless of the backstory, it makes thematic sense. Iroh is good at seeing things other people don't. Particularly, he sees Zuko's worth, something Zuko himself cannot until much later in the series.
What did Sokka experience during his night and day in the spirit world. Did he experience anything, or was it lost time?
This is the last episode of setting up. In the next episode, the main plot kicks into high gear, and we start the long, strange trip to the series finale. This is also the first episode we can more-or-less definitively date. It's not clear how much time the previous episodes cover, though it's probably about six weeks. We do know for certain, however, that this episode takes place roughly halfway through winter, and that from here to the end of the series covers about six to eight months.

Not going to make it on AtLA Monday...

2010-05-10T23:21:00.001-04:00

Sorry, all. Other obligations came up. It got right down to the wire, but I am simply too tired to finish. I will try to get it up after I get home tomorrow, but I may not have time, so AtLA Monday may be as late as Wednesday this week.

AtLA Monday: Heroism, Abuse, and Scenery Porn

2010-05-02T17:41:00.005-04:00

Sorry this is up so late. I had planned to proofread and post when I got home from work, and I did do that. It's just that "when I got home from work" was a lot later than I had hoped.

Anyway, you're not here to hear about my job, so let's jump right in.

Book One: Water
Chapter Six: Imprisoned

Synopsis:

The Gaang are facing a night in the woods with almost no food when they see an earthbender practicing. Katara calls out to him, and he runs. Hoping to buy some food, they follow him to a nearby town, which they learn is occupied by the Fire Nation. Earthbending is banned, which is why the boy, Haru, snuck out to the woods to practice. His father was taken prisoner by the Fire Nation years ago, and Haru's mother is afraid the same could happen to him.

Katara and Haru hit it off, and she tries to convince him to continue practicing earthbending. A nearby coal mine has a cave-in and an old man is trapped. No one else is around, and Katara convinces Haru to save him with earthbending. That night, the old man leads Fire Nation soldiers to Haru's house and he is taken prisoner.

The next morning, after Katara learns what happened to Haru, she hatches a plan. She fakes earthbending in front of some soldiers and is taken prisoner, with the rest of the Gaang to follow after her and break her and Haru out of prison in twelve hours.

At the prison, Katara meets up with Haru and his father. She tries to rally the earthbenders, but the all-metal prison has nothing to bend and their spirits are broken. That night, Aang and Sokka come for her but Katara refuses to leave until the earthbenders are free. Aang realizes that the prison's smokestacks are coal-powered, and Sokka comes up with a plan to get the coal to the benders.

The next morning, they put their plan into action, and it works: a large pile of coal is deposited on the deck of the prison platform. However, the earthbenders still won't do anything, and the warden mocks Katara. As he is leaving, Haru hits him with a piece of coal, and he counterattacks, but his flames are blocked by a wall of coal created by Haru's father. A battle erupts, and the earthbenders win. They steal the Fire Navy ships docked at the platform and flee before the Fire Nation catches on to what's happened.

As the Gaang is leaving, Katara realizes she lost her necklace in the melee. That evening, on the prison platform, Zuko finds it...

---------------------

The first time I watched this episode, I didn't think much of it. It was a good episode, but not a great one. Rewatching it while paying close attention, however, I've realized that this episode is a huge jump in quality for the series. There's a major improvement in both the animation quality and the backgrounds compared to the first five episodes, which leads me to suspect this is the first episode made after the series' ratings came in. There's also the beginning of a real effort to deepen the characters here. And, finally, this is where the series passes to the next stage of feminist media, from acknowledging and celebrating female characters who transcend gender roles, to treating that transcendence as normal.

This is the first episode to really convey how heartbreakingly beautiful the Earth Nation can be. Haru's village is all hills and pines and soft sunlight, depicted in a much more impressionistic style than previous episodes. In particular, the shot of the hillside after the scene where the Gaang meet Haru's mother could easily be framed and hung on a wall. The characters continue to use the same art style as before, however, and look a little odd compared to the backgrounds in some scenes.

The animation is also top-notch. The characters' faces are incredibly expressive; I replayed the scene of Katara walking and talking with Haru about bending and their parents just so that I could watch their eyebrows dance. And the overacting when Katara and Sokka stage their fight for the Fire Nation soldiers is a thing of beauty, from the slightly jerky, exaggerated gestures to the ridiculous facial expressions. It perfectly captured every student play I've ever seen.

And speaking of Katara's plan, isn't it interesting that Sokka not only participates in it, he praises it? Just two episodes ago he was implying that Katara is good for nothing but sewing -- a mistake he will never make again. Sokka is still a typically insecure teenage boy, as witness his response to Katara's ear cracks (and especially the way he immediately starts mocking Momo's ears), but he's letting go of the macho-man protector of all.

Aang is barely in this episode, which is interesting in and of itself. The Gaang has learned not to mention his name in every town they come across, so there is no one hunting or celebrating him. He is effectively free to not be the Avatar for an episode, and he spends most of it lazing about, barely paying attention, playing with Momo and passing butterflies. Notably, he's not bothered by the plight of the prisoners; without a clear threat to himself, his loved ones, or the world, Aang reverts to being a carefree little boy.

But not Katara, and that is why this is Katara's episode. Aang and Sokka both are essentially reactive: Aang fights threats to his friends or the world, but is otherwise content to go with the flow. Sokka, especially early on, seems more motivated by anger at the Fire Nation then any desire to better the world. Katara, on the other hand, works constantly to better the world around her, in any way she can. This episode casts a new light on her "superego" role in the previous two: She is the caretaker, the mother of the group, who tries to make things better for everyone. When confronted with people suffering, she cannot ignore it like Sokka or Aang; she must do something to help them. Even if it means a delay in the group's mission, Katara alone understands that saving "the world" is meaningless if you don't save the people in it, too.

Katara began the series as a typical female character for a children's story: she's studious, serious, full of hope for the future, a bit self-righteous, and constantly taking care of the male characters; Hermione Granger is probably the best-known contemporary example of this type. But beginning with this episode, Katara is transformed into a far more interesting character, and the most heroic in the show.

Note that I said "most heroic", not "the hero." The hero of Avatar is unquestionably Aang; he is the one with the heroic destiny and the magical powers, aided by the gods in his quest to face the world's greatest evil. But all of this destiny and divine assistance makes Aang less heroic, even as it marks him as The Hero: the odds are stacked unfairly in Aang's favor by the narrative structure itself. He is a Special Person, and therefore anything Special he accomplishes is a little less impressive than if somebody else does it.

Katara, meanwhile, works her butt off. While Aang is goofing around, relying on innate talent, Katara struggles to master waterbending, and ends up far more skilled and creative in its use than Aang, even while she is unable to match him in raw power. Aang's goofing off is consistent with his repeated attempts to run away from the destiny that is forced on him; Aang does not want to save the world, he has to save the world. Katara, meanwhile, wants to save the world. She is motivated by empathy and compassion, not duty, to help people she sees in need. When she sees an injury she wants to heal it. When she sees injustice, she wants to right it. When she sees a victim, she tries to teach them to stand up for themselves. Katara never stops trying to make the world a better place.

And she neither asks nor receives a reward for it, as we'll see at the end. By the end of the series, the other Gaang members have achieved greatness: Sokka led the strike force that stopped the [spoiler], [spoiler] and Aang are hailed by cheering crowds, and [spoiler] is the Greatest [spoiler] in the World; but Katara just fades into the background. Everyone else is rewarded because everyone else has completed their quest, because everyone else's quest is to defeat the Fire Nation. Katara, however, has only begun her quest, because her quest is never-ending. There is always something you can do to make the world better than it is.

In almost any other series, Katara would be denied the cheering crowds and the global fame because she's the girl, and it's her job to support the men and fade into the background when not needed. Why dig into her character looking for reasons? Because Avatar reminds us, again and again, that that's not what "the girl" does. That was the whole point of "The Warriors of Kyoshi," but this episode takes it a step further by simply having several of the prisoners fighting to free themselves at the end be women, including making one the main focus of one shot. This is never commented on or made a big deal of; it's simply presented as a fact: women are fully capable of kicking ass, and there's nothing unusual about them doing it. The "generic person" of the Avatar world is not always male; when there's no reason for the character to be a particular gender, the character is quite likely to be female, and that likelihood increases as the series goes on.

Avatar, in other words, portrays women as people. Katara isn't portrayed as an instance of Woman any more than Aang or Sokka is an instance of Man; she's Katara, and her possession of a vagina is just one (fairly minor) aspect of her character. More than one episode could have been played as "silly Katara gets the Gaang in trouble because of her silly girl parts," but isn't, usually by dint of having Aang be suckered as easily as Katara is ("Jet" and "The Fortuneteller" in the first season, for example).

But for all that Katara is the hero, in a sense she fails in this episode. She is not able to save the prisoners; they have to save themselves. The reason is that this episode is the beginning of one of Avatar's most important themes: abuse, and what it does to its victims. We've already met one abuse victim, Zuko, but it will take much of the series to explore the nature of that abuse and his response.

The prisoners here respond differently. Years of abuse at the hands of a sadistic warden have created such deep feelings of helplessness in them that, even handed the weapons they need to overwhelm his tiny handful of guards, they cower in fear. This is learned helplessness; it's real, and one of the most insidious effects of abuse. The warden's pseudo-friendly speech "welcoming" Katara to the prison isn't just posturing; it's all part of the game of beating the prisoners down and making them depend on him, making them afraid and convincing them that he is protecting them from much worse. Years of that could break anyone, and so it is no surprise that, when confronted with an opportunity at freedom, most of the prisoners draw back in fear.

But learned helplessness is a two-edged sword. All it takes is to be pushed a little to far, to taste power just once, and all that fear transforms into rage. This is part of why abuse victims so often become abusers themselves, if they get power over someone. (And we'll see exactly that happen with another former Fire Nation prisoner in a couple of seasons.) In this case, the breaking point is when the warden attacks Haru. Haru's father's paternal instincts break through his learned helplessness for just long enough for him to block the attack, and the earthbenders suddenly realize their power.

In this first attempt to broach the topic, the writers of Avatar allow the abuse victims to stand up to their abusers and begin to pursue justice as a road to healing. Other abuse victims will do the same later in the series. Still others will not.

Heavy stuff for what I originally dismissed as an unimportant episode.

Random Observations:

The running gag of Momo being an earthbender (first ground shaking as he tries to crack the "rock-shaped nut", and then the soldiers mistaking him for one) is hilarious. This episode in general manages quite a bit of humor while still being a generally serious story.
Another running gag, this time series-wide: the Gaang tries to come up with a solution to the crisis du jour, and one of the characters suggests an absolutely terrible plan. Last episode it was Sokka's "Rocky" suggestion for the King's name; this episode it's Aang's hurricane idea. There will be plenty more examples.
Just about everyone in Haru's village (and Omashu before it) wears green, which is the main color of the Earth Kingdom. However, unlike the other three nations, the Earth Kingdom's color is far from universal in its people's clothing. Haru wears mostly yellow with green accents, and browns, purples, and blues are common as well. Over the course of the series, we'll see that the Earth Kingdom is in many ways the most diverse of the nations; this is just one example of that diversity.
Katara's mother's necklace will be important a couple more times this season.
No explanation is given for the old man betraying Haru to the Fire Nation. It's entirely possible he's just a dick looking to curry favor or get some reward money. I prefer to imagine, however, that either he desperately needed the money, they threatened him or his family, or he was afraid of the consequences for the entire town if the Fire Nation discovered they were hiding an earthbender.
Katara bends water out of a pump, using the move she was practicing in "The Warriors of Kyoshi." It's a nice touch of continuity; she's clearly been working hard at her bending while they travel, and she's gotten a lot better.
George Takei as the warden very nearly steals this episode. He hams it up beautifully, clearly relishing every word, and transforms a character who is, going by the script alone, a generic, prisoner-abusing, minion-killing bad guy into an unnervingly polite, superficially cultured sadist whose inner thug keeps breaking through the veneer.
It is common knowledge in the Avatar world that metalbending is impossible. Remember that next season.
Earthbending apparently works only on unworked, unrefined minerals. Interestingly, it works on coal, even though coal is organic.
Katara has actually struck a pretty major blow for the resistance against the Fire Nation. She's just released hundreds of armed POWs, with three captured Fire Navy ships, into occupied territory.
One odd question worth asking: Why does the Fire Nation kill all the airbenders, but take water- and earthbenders prisoner? One possibility is that they were trying to take out the Avatar in the assault on the airbenders, and now believe the Avatar cycle is over. However, that doesn't really give them a reason to spare the water- and earthbenders. More likely is that they are following some sort of rules of war; possibly they don't kill people who surrender. The Air Nomads, struck rapidly in a surprise attack, never had a chance to surrender.
Why are so many of the prisoners old? Almost all of them have gray or white hair. It can't be that younger prisoners are kept elsewhere or killed, because then that would have happened to Haru and Katara. The likeliest possibility is that this prison is specifically for non-combatant earthbenders, and there is another prison for earthbenders captured in battle. It would not surprise me if nearly all earthbenders in the 15-40 range were in the military.
The warden hears Katara's speech to the earthbenders, so he knows she's from the Water Tribe. Why doesn't he take any precautions or send her to the prison for waterbenders (which we see in the third season, though only in flashback, so it's possible it no longer exists)? This is probably just a plot hole, though it may be a mark of the warden's arrogance.
Katara still has her necklace when loading coal into Aang's wind-gun-thing. She therefore lost it, not during the actual fighting, but during the off-screen run to the ships.

AtlA Monday: A Not-So-Crazy Old King

2010-04-25T22:25:00.000-04:00

"What's the point of tests if you don't learn anything?"
-The King of Omashu

Book One: Water
Chapter Five: The King of Omashu

Synopsis:

Aang leads Katara and Sokka to the Earth Kingdom city of Omashu, which impresses them immensely with its scale and population. Not wanting a repeat of what happened in Kyoshi, they disguise Aang as an old man. He reminisces about his friend Bumi, who lived here before Aang was frozen; Bumi was energetic, fun-loving, and "a mad genius," who came up with the idea of riding the city's cargo-delivery system. The Gaang tries it, and much screaming and property damage later, they are arrested.

They are led before the ancient, apparently senile titular King of Omashu, who tells terrible jokes, invites them to dinner, and then tricks Aang into revealing he's the Avatar. He has the Gaang taken prisoner, and challenges Aang to complete three tasks.
The next morning, Aang begins his challenges. The King has Sokka and Katara subjected to "creeping crystal", a steadily growing crystal that will engulf and suffocate them in about a day. He promises to free them if Aang completes the challenges.

In the first test, Aang must retrieve the King's "lunchbox key" from a cave. He tries repeatedly to go up or through the waterfall that blocks the way, but is knocked back each time. Finally, he uses airbending to create a momentary break in the water, and throws a stalactite through, pinning the key to the wall near the King.

In the second test, Aang has to retrieve the king's pet, Flopsy. He sees a lop-eared white rabbit and tries to catch it, but it runs when he's attacked by a giant goat-rabbit-monster thing. Aang runs after the rabbit, but then realizes the monster chasing him is Flopsy. As soon as he greets it by name, it starts licking him, and then goes to the King for a belly rub.

The third test is a trial by combat. Aang must choose his opponent from the warriors flanking the King, but -- starting to catch on to how these tests work -- he exploits a loophole to choose the King as his opponent. Unfortunately, the King reveals himself to be a hugely muscular, tremendously powerful earthbender, and gives Aang the toughest fight he's had in the series so far. Eventually, however, Aang is able to fight him to a stalemate, and the King concedes.

He announces that he will free Katara and Sokka once Aang answers a question. Aang is angry, as he's passed all the tests, but the King wants to be sure Aang learned something. His question: "What is my name?"

After pondering whether the tests contain a clue, Aang realizes who the King is: Bumi, the mad genius. The old friends are happily reunited. Bumi frees Katara and Sokka and reveals that creeping crystal is made of sugar. Finally, he explains why he did all this: first, because he thought it was funny, and second to prepare Aang for the dangers ahead by requiring him to think in new ways.

Aang and Bumi go for a ride on the delivery system, and the episode ends with laughter and carnage.

---------------------

This is a difficult episode to write about. It's a lot of fun, but significantly less "meaty" than the first four episodes. Most of what it has to offer is a couple of great action sequences and jokes so bad they eventually wrap right back around into being funny again. Still, the episode does touch on some themes we've been following since the beginning.

For starters, there's the fairly subtle way Aang's been dealing with the events of "The Southern Air Temple." The world he knew has been destroyed, and his response is to pretty much take a vacation. The last two episodes have been all about him ignoring the trip to the North Pole in favor of seeking out theme park rides -- first the elephant koi in "The Warriors of Kyoshi" and then the Omashu delivery system in this episode. But it is very telling, and a little heartbreaking, that his response to discovering Bumi is still alive is to bury himself in a hug. Bumi, with surprising gentleness, reminds Aang of his quest, and for the rest of the series Aang seems to be done with the siteseeing -- future stops at towns along the way are justified by the group needing supplies or to weather out a storm or to lay low for a while to throw off pursuit. It will be several episodes yet before he's willing to open up about how he feels about all the people he left behind, but his period of denial ends here.

There's also the effects of the war. For all the fun and humor of this episode, there's a good bit of world-building going on in the form of Omashu's readiness for siege. The delivery system appears to be used mostly for food and weapons; the walls are meters thick and have no gates, being opened as needed by earthbending. In the midst of the joyride sequence, we are treated to a scene of a drill sergeant speaking to a trio of troops. Even the challenges reveal the city's preparedness: the waterfall in the first challenge shows that the palace was built on a steady supply of fresh water.

Bumi makes for an interesting character. At first he seems like a classic example of the competence zone, the principle that, the farther a character is from the age of the target audience, the less competent they will be. Bumi appears to be senile to the point of outright insanity, not to mention bent and frail. But by the end of the episode he is revealed to be none of these things. Throwing the Gaang a feast was not the random act of a crazy old man; Bumi recognized Aang immediately, and the feast was a ruse to confirm his identity, first by testing his vegetarianism, then his airbending skills.

The challenges are likewise not random or silly; as Bumi himself says, the purpose is to teach Aang something. He tries to solve the first with speed and energy, but only succeeds when he tries moving the water out of his way. He tries to solve the second by being similarly straightforward, but is only successful when he finds a way to redirect his attacker. In the third challenge, Aang dodges in an obvious direction by picking Bumi to be his opponent, and then throughout the battle he keeps dodging in the obvious direction (for example, trying to jump over the wave of earth Bumi throws at him), but Bumi (who has obviously studied airbender tactics, unlike Zuko) is ready and smacks him down. It is only when Aang stops dodging and redirects Bumi's attacks back at him that Aang is able to fight to a draw.

Redirecting one's attacker? Reflecting attacks back on their source? Iroh describes which bending style has these behaviors at its core later in the series, and together with the need to move the water in the first challenge, it's clear what Bumi is doing here: He's teaching Aang the basics of waterbending.

Even Bumi's weird sense of humor is not, as it first appears, a sign of senility. For starters, Aang's flashback reveals that Bumi has been pretty weird since he was a kid. More importantly, this is Avatar: As Iroh and Aang know from the start of the series, and as Sokka and Zuko both learn in their respective character arcs, humor and joy are essential to wisdom. Bumi is ridiculous, but the advice he gives is solid and his city is prospering.

Random observations:

This is the first episode in which Zuko does not appear. There will be a couple more over the course of the series.
The cabbage merchant makes his first appearance in this episode. His cabbage cart is destroyed three times, possibly the most of any episode. Also, the first time it's destroyed the Gaang are merely bystanders, where usually they will be the cause.
When asked for a name while disguised, Aang calls himself "Bonzu Pipenpadelopsekopolis the Third." This sets off an actually pretty funny minor running gag, where no one ever bats an eye at or has any trouble pronouncing the name.
"Malicious destruction of cabbages" is apparently a crime in Omashu. It probably isn't one anywhere else, or the Gaang is in a lot of trouble by the end of the series.
Sokka laughs at Bumi's terrible jokes. Later in the series, Sokka will be a font of such jokes, which acquaintances of his father will point out is an inherited trait. Is this the first sign of him letting go of his Serious Macho War Leader facade? Suki was good for him!
There's something Monty Python-esque about some exchanges in this episode. The way Bumi says "WHAT... is my name?" evokes the old man in Holy Grail. And then there's this touch of farce (transcript from AvatarSpirit.net):

King Bumi: Tomorrow the Avatar will face three deadly challenges. But for now, the guards will show you to your chamber.
Guard: My liege, do you mean the good chamber, or the bad chamber?
King Bumi: The newly refurbished chamber.
Guard: Wait, which one are we talking about?
King Bumi: The one that used to be the bad chamber, until the recent refurbishing that is. Of course, we've been calling it the new chamber, but we really should number them. Uh, take them to the refurbished chamber that was once bad!

The Gaang, in classic adventure story fashion, try to escape their prison cell through the air vents! But in a cute subversion, not even Momo can fit.
Instead of torches, the windowless chamber has green, glowing crystals. Just a neat little background detail, but later we'll see caverns full of them under Ba Sing Se. Given how incredibly useful they'd be in a world without electricity, they're probably a major export.
Like the city walls, the prison cells in Omashu have no doors. The guard just earthbends a hole in the wall when needed.
Sokka and Katara are already gone when the guard tears a hole in the prison cell wall. How the heck did Aang sleep through that?
Bumi calls himself "the most powerful earthbender you'll ever see," and he is pretty darn powerful. But we'll meet one next season who's even better.
Omashu has a king, but is not the capital of the Earth Kingdom; that's Ba Sing Se. That one relatively small city has its own king is a sign of how little authority the Earth King has, forshadowing the end of the second season.
One question the series never answers is whether Bumi was royalty in Aang's time. Did Aang know he would be king some day? Did Omashu even have its own kings back then, or was the Earth Kingdom more centralized before the war tore it apart?

South Park vs. Radical Islam

2010-04-21T18:14:00.004-04:00

Cross-posted to Fluffy Iguana Cookies.

The South Park creators have received a death threat over last week's episode, "200". I was going to do an in-depth review of the episode, but that's unlikely now, because this news is far, far more interesting.

The episode in question was, as I mentioned in this post, an enormous pile of references to old episodes, gags, and plots. One of these references was to two past episodes dealing with the Prophet Muhammed.

Way back in the fifth season, in the episode "Super Best Friends," Muhammed was portrayed as an otherwise stereotypical Bedouin man with fire powers, a member of the titular superhero team of religious icons (the other members were Buddha, Krishna, Jesus, Joseph Smith, and Sea Man (an Aquaman parody), and Moses was their computer). The primary focus of the episode was making fun of Scientology (a recurring theme in the series), and it ended with the Super Best Friends teaming up to defeat the "Blaintology" cult. This was before I started paying attention to the series, so I'm not sure if there was any backlash; if there was, I suspect it was from Scientologists, not Muslims.

Five years later came the Danish cartoon controversy, in which the newspaper Jyllands-Posten published twelve cartoons, most of which depicted the prophet Muhammed, and at least some of which did so quite negatively. (I cannot read Danish, but one of the cartoons has no text and is obviously negative, while others have no text and appear neutral or positive). A few Danish-Muslim organizations held protests in response, which resulted in the cartoons being reprinted around the world, sparking more protests and even violence, including setting fire to the Danish embassies Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. Notably, most American media did not reprint the cartoons, even when reporting on the controversy surrounding them.

With this controversy only a few months old, the two-part South Park episode "Cartoon Wars" used the refusal of American media to print the cartoons as a jumping-off point to mock Family Guy and The Simpsons. The plot of "Cartoon Wars" is that Muhammed is going to shortly appear in an episode of Family Guy, but the Fox network is considering self-censoring and either not airing the episode, or cutting Muhammed. Kyle and Cartman travel to the Fox network, Kyle to help make sure the episode is broadcast, and Cartman to support the censorship.

In real life, Comedy Central stepped in at this point, and banned South Park from displaying Muhammed in the episode, even though he had been in the opening credits since the fifth season. As a result, even though the dialogue in "Cartoon Wars" says that the Family Guy episode aired uncensored, the scene in the South Park episode is replaced by a black screen and text explaining that Comedy Central would not allow an image of Muhammed to be broadcast.

And that brings us to last week. In "200", every celebrity South Park has made fun of teams up to sue South Park. However, this is actually a complicated gambit for them to get ahold of Muhammed, whom no one can make fun of. The celebrities (and other forces, revealed later in the episode) seek to steal this power, so they can never be mocked again. Stan is thus forced to seek out the Super Best Friends so he can trade Muhammed to the celebrities in exchange for the safety of South Park. Unfortunately, as Jesus explains, times have changed and it is no longer permissible for Muhammed to be seen. Thus, he is dressed in a bear costume, so no one can see him.

The poster at RevolutionMuslim.com (Fox News has his name as "Abu Talhah al Amrikee", but it's Fox News, so who knows) seems to have missed the point completely. The episode isn't about making fun of Muhammed; South Park has never made fun of Muhammed. It's about making fun of American media, who cravenly bow to the fear of "controversy" and terrorist attacks, creating a culture in which the biggest bully wins. And it is, of course, about making fun of those bullies -- that'd be you, al-Amrikee.

I hope very much that tonight's South Park depicts Muhammed by the end -- and that it mocks al-Amrikee. South Park uses a frankly ridiculous level of technology to produce such crude results, and thus is able to make or alter episodes ridiculously quickly -- so it should be completely possible for them to make the change. Stone and Parker are among the few people working in television today who understand that blasphemy is one of the most important social functions of humor. By mocking the sacred -- whether it is a religious icon such as Muhammed or Jesus, or a secular sacred cow such as the innocence of children -- humor forces us to think, and reduces the ability of such images to manipulate us, while leaving us free to continue believing in them if we so choose.

Blaspheme away, Messrs. Stone and Parker. I know you know it's the right thing to do.

AtLA Monday: Sokka's Sexism and Aang's Ego

2010-04-19T22:41:00.007-04:00

Sokka: I treated you like a girl when I should have treated you like a warrior.
Suki: I am a warrior. But I'm a girl, too.

First, some huge news, via Toonzone: Nickelodeon Animation Studios is hiring artists for a new Avatar-related project!

Or at least they said they were, until about five seconds after the job posting hit the animation-news blogotrons, at which point they announced they'd made a "mistake". I take that as pretty much confirmation.

Book One: Water
Chapter Four: The Warriors of Kyoshi

Synopsis:

Open with Zuko meditating. Iroh enters and tells him there is bad news: They have lost the Avatar's trail. Zuko examines Iroh's map, which shows Aang's random path across the islands of the south. Zuko concludes Aang is a master of evasive maneuvering.

Meanwhile, high above the ocean on Appa, the Gaang is completely lost. Aang knows what he's trying to find, and that it's near water, but otherwise he has no idea where he's going. Aang tries to impress Katara by using airbending to spin marbles, but she is engrossed in repairing Sokka's pants and ignores him. Sokka tells Aang not to bother Katara, and demonstrates himself once again to be a sexist ass with his claim that women are better than men at domestic tasks, while men are better at hunting and fighting. Katara tells him off and refuses to finish his pants.

The group lands on the beach at a small island, and Aang finds what he's been looking for: the giant koi fish he said he wanted to ride at the end of "The Avatar Returns." He goes riding, but when he looks back to see if Katara is impressed, she's distracted. Then an eel-like monster, the Unagi, tries to eat him. Aang narrowly escapes. The Gaang is about to leave the island when a group of young women in elaborate, kabuki-like armor and makeup ambush and subdue them in a matter of seconds.

After the commercial, we find the Gaang blindfolded and tied to a pillar as one of the young women and an old man interrogate them. Sokka demands they show themselves, and they remove the group's blindfolds. He sees the armored women, and demands to see the men who captured him. The women's leader, Suki, informs him that there were no men: her warriors did it. Sokka responds with more sexist idiocy, and Suki threatens to feed him to the Unagi. Katara intervenes, pleading mercy on the grounds that Sokka is an idiot.

Aang tries to apologize for trespassing, but the old man accuses them of being Fire Nation spies. In the process, he reveals the island is named "Kyoshi", which Aang recognizes as the name of a past Avatar. Aang proves he is the Avatar, and the islanders free the Gaang and celebrate.

The news that the Avatar is on Kyoshi spreads, and soon reaches Zuko. The next morning, Aang and Katara enjoy breakfast, while Sokka sulks. Katara taunts him about getting his butt kicked, and Sokka storms off. Aang is enjoying being the center of attention, but Katara warns him against letting it go to his head.

After a montage of the village's tween girls going nuts as Aang shows off for them and Katara works to prepare for their journey, we see Sokka entering the Kyoshi Warriors' dojo. Suki tries to apologize for ambushing friends of the Avatar, and Sokka makes sexist jokes. Suki plays on his macho idiocy to convince him to fight her, and proceeds to mop the floor with him as the other warriors look on and laugh.

Aang invites Katara to come play with him and "the girls", but Katara wants him to help her prepare for their journey. She warns that they can't stay long in one place, but Aang is enjoying himself and wants to stay longer. Aang accuses Katara of jealousy, and she leaves in a huff.

Later that day, Sokka returns to the dojo, apologizes, and begs for them to teach him. Suki agrees, but only if he wears their uniform. Once in the uniform, Sokka is embarrassed until Suki tells him that its elements symbolize bravery and honor. Then Aang pokes in his head ("Hey, Sokka! Nice dress!") and Sokka is again embarrassed, to Suki's evident pleasure.

Aang enters Katara's room, where she is practicing "pulling" a stream of water out of a bowl. Aang invites her to see him ride the Unagi, and Katara is neither impressed nor interested in trying to stop Aang from this obviously idiotic stunt. The two argue, and Aang storms out.

Suki and Sokka train. He is having trouble with control, and Suki explains that their techniques are not about strength, but rather about using the opponents' force against them. Sokka is able to throw Suki, and after some mutual teasing, they return to sparring.

Meanwhile, Aang sits in the water, waiting for the Unagi, but it doesn't show, and the bored tween girls wander off. Aang is depressed, but then sees Katara coming. Katara admits she was worried about him, and Aang apologizes for his behavior. As he's about to get out of the water, the Unagi attacks. Aang is knocked out, and Katara grabs him and uses some hastily improvised waterbending to get them out of the water and into the nearby rocks. The Unagi sprays jets of water at them a few times, then abruptly leaves as Zuko's ship arrives and released a party of riders on triceratops-rhino-things, led by Zuko. Katara uses the "pulling" move she was practicing earlier to get the water out of Aang's lungs.

Meanwhile, Suki and Sokka are still training when the village elder runs in to tell them firebenders have come. Zuko's riders begin searching the village for Aang, when the Kyoshi Warriors and Sokka attack. Suki attacks Zuko head on, but his rhino knocks her aside, and Sokka saves her from a fireblast while one of the other Kyoshi Warriors knocks Zuko to the ground. Sokka, Suki, and the unnamed Kyoshi Warrior attack Zuko, but he fights them off. He and Aang fight, and Aang again mops the floor with him and flies off, looking down sadly at the fire spreading through the village.

He finds Katara, leading the tween girls to safety, and she says they have to run, so that Zuko and the firebenders will follow them and leave the village alone. Sokka apologizes again to Suki, and she kisses him, then leads the Kyoshi Warriors in holding off the firebenders while the Gaang escapes on Appa.

Zuko orders his men back to the ship, and Katara assures Aang the village will be okay. Aang then jumps off Appa into the lagoon, and rides the Unagi, using its water-spraying attack to put out the fires in the village. Then he jumps into the air and Appa catches him. Aang tells Katara he knows it was stupid and dangerous, and Katara agrees, then hugs him.

--------------

Obviously, this is the "girl power" episode. A staple of children's shows since at least the late '80s, "girl power" episodes exist to teach the characters, and hopefully the audience, that girls are people, and therefore capable of the same range of skills and behaviors as "normal" people, i.e. white males.

Unlike most girl power episodes, however, both the characters and the series take the lessons of this episode to heart. This is really the beginning of Sokka's character arc: by episode six, he will be willing to let Katara plan and execute a dangerous scheme to infiltrate an enemy prison. Over the rest of the season and into the next, he will also drop the serious, macho warrior act and loosen up enormously, becoming much more fun and funny. It's a fairly subtle reminder that sexism hurts men, too.

Aang's "nice dress" is another reminder of the way sexism hurts men, by forcing them into rigid gender roles to avoid the appearance of femininity. As well, it's a reminder of the men, especially young men, use mockery to force one another and women into said gender roles.

Over the course of this episode, Sokka follows a pretty standard arc for pop-culture acceptance of "deviant" behavior. At first, the behavior doesn't exist in pop culture (Sokka denies that women are capable of being warriors). Then, the behavior is regarded as aberrant and evil or comedically misguided (Sokka is angry at the "girls" for beating him, then mocks their "dance class"). Then the behavior is regarded as aberrant and comedic, but harmless (Sokka dresses up in a "dress" and Suki teases). Next the behavior is aberrant but admirable, which is where the episode leaves us. Later episodes of the series will often have female warriors, both in the spotlight and as background elements, the final stage of development: the behavior is accepted as normal.

It's also notable that Sokka is a particularly modern sort of sexist; much of what he says at the beginning of the episode could come straight out of an article on evo-psych. "Women aren't inferior, they're just differently specialized!" And of course, it's just a coincidence that the things women are "specialized" to do all take place at home, for no pay, honor, or glory? Right, Sokka?

This all adds up to a pretty clear indictment of the sexism of our society. As we will see later in the series, the world of Avatar is a lot less sexist than ours. Sokka is very much a stand-in for our-world attitudes, while societies such as Kyoshi are presented as a superior state of living -- so obviously superior that even the villains have women on the front lines.

As long as we're talking about Kyoshi Island society, there's something interesting going on here with the costumes. This is the first culture we've seen other than the Southern Water Tribe, and they're somewhat hard to place. In most episodes, we have four clear ethnicities: each of the four nations has a consistent dominant hair color, eye color, and skin color, a consistent architectural style, and a distinctive style of clothing in a consistent color. Kyoshi Island doesn't fit. They have Earth Kingdom physical appearances and architecture, but Water Tribe clothing, except the Warriors of Kyoshi, who look more typical Earth Kingdom. But then the way Suki describes the Kyoshi Warriors' fighting style sounds rather a lot like the way Iroh describes the philosophy of waterbending later. Kyoshi Island thus serves as the first of many, many hints that Katara's opening narration is oversimplified: there's a lot more complexity to this world than four nation-states.

On the character front, this episode confirms and fleshes out the Freudian trio roles introduced last episode. Katara continues to be focused on consequences, cautious, and a little judgmental -- the perfect superego. Sokka is emotional, angry, and romantically entangled, a classic id.

As for Aang, well, reread that synopsis. Any time this episode isn't about Sokka's machismo, it's about Aang's ego. He serves as a point of balance between Sokka-style impulsiveness and Katara-style guilt, and by combining the two he is able to do something stupid, crazy, and absolutely right to put out the village's fires.

And now that we have the characters slotted into their roles, we can start shifting them: two episodes from now, we'll have a complete reshuffling of roles to put Katara into the ego spot. As I said last week, the Gaang are not three parts to a single main character; they are each a fully rounded character in their own rights.

Random observations:

The Unagi's eye is vaguely reminiscent of Eva-01 in the second episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Not close enough to be definitely a reference, but the color scheme, the way it moves, and the way the extreme close-up on it is framed, all strongly suggest NGE. And there's simply no way the obvious anime fans behind Avatar don't remember that iconic moment.
Sokka picks up the Kyoshi Warriors' fighting styles very fast. It's the beginning of a pattern for him: Sokka is extremely intelligent, and learns very quickly, especially where fighting is concerned.
Each of the Gaang storms off angrily at some point in this episode: Sokka at breakfast, Katara after Aang accuses her of jealousy, and Aang after Katara refuses to watch him ride the Unagi.
Later in the series, Sokka will prove the handiest of the Gaang at making things, while Katara significantly surpasses him in combat ability.
Update: I nearly forgot one of the observations I wanted to make! Kyoshi founded the island 400 years ago? Really? "The Avatar and the Firelord" makes it pretty clear that Roku was born 150, maybe 200 years before ~~Aang~~ the first episode at the earliest. Kyoshi lived for over 200 years? I find that hard to believe. On the other hand, the "worst village ever" seems to have the same dates for Kyoshi, so I'm not sure how much room there is to argue.

Updated 4/19/10 to add random observation.
Updated 4/22/10 to correct Roku's birth date.

South Park 200

2010-04-14T22:38:00.003-04:00

Wow. Just... wow.

I am, I freely admit, a complete sucker for continuity porn. And yeah, that's all tonight's South Park was. But it was really, really good continuity porn. I'll review it more in-depth once they have it up on the web site in about a month. (This is the first time I've ever wished I had DVR).

AtLA Monday: Birth of a Family

2010-04-12T23:05:00.001-04:00

First, a mea culpa: I said in the comments on the last AtLA Monday that Aang did not seriously damage Zuko's ship. This episode makes it clear that I was quite wrong. However, as Zuko and Iroh discuss repairs only, and not hospitals, funeral arrangements, or new recruits, I stand by my claim that there is no evidence of Aang seriously injuring or killing anyone.

I really am the last airbender.
-Aang

Book One: Water

Chapter Three: The Southern Air Temple

Synopsis:

Open on the early morning, at the Gaang's camp. Katara and Aang are up and preparing while Sokka sleeps. They are getting ready to go to the Southern Air Temple, the closest to the South Pole of the four Air Nomad temples. A century ago, it was Aang's home. Aang is excited to return, but Katara cautions him not to get his hopes up. Aang blows off her cautions and wakes Sokka with a prank.

Meanwhile, Zuko and Iroh disembark from Zuko's ship at what appears to be a Fire Nation naval base, seeking repairs for the damage Aang did. Zuko warns Iroh not to mention the Avatar, because Zuko doesn't want anyone else to capture him. A new Fire Nation character, Commander Zhao, apparently overhears the end of Zuko's comment and is suspicious. Zhao welcomes them; he is apparently commander of the base. He asks them how the damage occurred, and they lie badly and transparently. Zhao invites them to join him for tea and tell him the story in more detail, clearly not believing a word of it. Zuko refuses, but Iroh berates him for his disrespect and inists they join Zhao.

As they approach the mountain range, Katara tries to explain to Aang that the Fire Nation wiped out the Air Nomads, but Aang cheerfully refuses to believe it, explaining that the Air Temples are completely inaccessible except by flying bison.

Zhao updates Zuko and Iroh on the status of the war, then asks about the hunt for the Avatar. Zhao presses Zuko for information, questioning his loyalty, but Zuko insists he knows nothing and starts to leave. Zhao's soldiers block his path, and one reports they've interrogated Zuko's crew and learned about the encounter with the Avatar. Zhao repeats his demand for information.

The Gaang explores the ruins of the Temple. Aang points out the landmarks, but is disappointed at how quiet it is -- no one is here, but he remembers it bustling with monks, bison, and lemurs just a few days (a hundred years) ago.

Sokka and Katara come across a Fire Nation helmet. Katara calls Aang over, but then has second thoughts and hides the helmet. Sokka warns that she can't protect Aang forever. Aang finds a statue of his teacher and caretaker, Gyatso. Aang flashes back to Gyatso teaching him to bake cakes, but Aang is uninterested. He is brooding over being named as the Avatar, and hoping that the senior monks made a mistake. Gyatso says that their only mistake was telling Aang too young, instead of the traditional age of sixteen. Gyatso tells Aang his questions about being the Avatar will be answered when he enters the sealed Air Sanctuary inside temple, where he'll meet a new teacher. Aang agrees to help Gyatso with his cake project, which consists of launching the cakes at the senior monks, drawing lemurs to clamber over them after the cake.

Aang leads the others to the Air Sanctuary. Katara warns that no one could survive there so long, but Aang counters that he lived in the ice that long. They open the door and enter.

Meanwhile, Zhao questions Zuko. Zhao announces that he will be the one to pursue the Avatar from now on, enraging Zuko. Iroh is unperturbed.

Inside the Air Sanctuary are an enormous number of statues of past Avatars, arranged in a spiral with Roku, the last Avatar before Aang, at the center. Sokka is skeptical about reincarnation, but Katara insists it is true. Aang sees to enter a trance as he looks at Roku, and Roku's eyes flash, but Katara interrupts whatever is happening when she asks Aang who it is. Aang is unable to explain how he knows Roku's name. A shadow falls across them, and Sokka prepares to attack what he assumes is a firebender, but it's just a flying lemur. Aang wants to claim the lemur as a pet, but Sokka wants to eat it, and a chase ensues.

Zhao enters the tent where Zuko and Iroh are being held. He informs them that his search party is ready; as soon as his group leaves, his men will escort Zuko and Iroh back to their repaired ship and they may leave. Zuko insists he will find the Avatar, and Zhao points out Zuko has no fleet, no home, no allies, and even his father has rejected him. They argue, and Zuko challenges Zhao to an agni kai.

Aang chases the lemur to a secluded chamber containing the dessicated corpses of dozens of Fire Nation soldiers -- and Gyatso. Aang begins to cry, and Sokka enters and tries to comfort him, but Aang enters the Avatar State. Still examining the statues in the Sanctuary, Katara sees their eyes glow and realizes something is wrong with Aang.

Far away, in the Earth Sanctuary (which we'll visit early in the next season), paintings of the past Avatars begin to glow, startling a monk. Light shines from the Water Sanctuary (presumably at the North Pole?) and Fire Sanctuary (we'll see more later this season), too. A Fire Sage tells his startled comrade to send word to the Fire Lord: the Avatar has returned.

Back at the Air Temple, Aang ignores Sokka's pleas to snap out of his trance and summons an enormous whirlwind, which threatens to throw Katara and Sokka off the mountainside. Katara staggers forward through the wind in an attempt to reach Aang.

In the arena, Zhao and Zuko face off. Zuko is utterly overmatched in actual firebending, but he is able to unbalance Zhao with a mundane kick, and then able to use low-to-the-ground fire attacks to keep Zhao off balance until he falls. Zuko closes in for the finish, and Zhao tells him to do it, but Zuko intentionally misses with the killing blow. Zhao accuses him of cowardice, but Zuko walks away. Zhao attempts to blast Zuko in the back, but Iroh blocks the attack and throws Zhao halfway across the arena with a gentle push.

Iroh: So this is how the great Commander Zhao acts in defeat? Disgraceful. Even in exile, my nephew is more honorable than you.

Back at the Air Temple, Katara pleads with Aang, saying that she knows how it feels to lose her family to the Fire Nation. She offers herself and Sokka to be a new family for Aang, and he descends from his rage. Back to normal, Aang finally understands that he really is the last airbender. Katara hugs him tightly.

In the Sanctuary, Aang wonders how Roku can help him, and Katara says he'll find a way. The lemur appears and gives Sokka an armful of fruit, which Sokka eats greedily. Aang adopts the lemur, saying that he, the lemur, and Appa are the last survivors of the Southern Air Temple, so they have to stick together. He names the lemur Momo after it steals Sokka's peach. ("Momo" is Japanese for "peach.")
That night, Aang and Momo watch quietly as the Southern Air Temple vanishes behind them into the distance.

-----------------------
"The Southern Air Temple" is one of the more melancholy episodes of Avatar, and probably the saddest in the first season. It is also the first to use an A-B plot structure, and the only episode to not have a white background to the title card, using a rising sun instead.

The last is easiest to explain: This is the morning of the series, the beginning of Aang's journey. The previous two episodes served to set the stage; from here out we're on the road. The sun is an important symbol in Avatar, connected to several pivotal events: the winter solstice and lunar eclipse in the first season, the desert in the second season, and the solar eclipse and Sun Warriors in the third season. The sunrise is, of course, the beginning of one solar cycle: the day. This episode, notably, takes place in precisely one day: it begins at dawn and ends in evening twilight. Sunrise is also symbolic of birth, and this episode is thus bookended by metaphorical births: the sun is born at the beginning, and the Gaang are born as a new family at the end.

Just as the daily solar cycle is embedded in a larger solar cycle, the year, this episode is embedded in the one-year (actually, about nine months -- there's that birth symbolism again) span of the series. Each season, though broadcast over a real-world year, is one season in-story: Water/Winter, Earth/Spring, and Fire/Summer. This annual cycle is, in the Avatar world, embedded in the still longer Avatar cycle: Water/Winter, Earth/Spring, Fire/Summer, Air/Autumn, and back to Water/Winter. This cycle appears in the statues of the Air Sanctuary, forming a spiral, a classic symbol of the way history cycles, constantly repeating itself, but with each loop nonetheless unique, just as each year is unique even though the order of seasons stays the same. Just as Aang is unique, even though he is the Avatar.

The A-B plot structure is an interesting device, and one used heavily throughout Avatar. It is quite common in prime-time dramas, but rare in children's shows; the basic structure is to cut between two groups of characters, each engaged in separate storylines that have no impact upon one another (at least within the particular episode). There is no immediate plot connection between the stories, but usually they serve as thematic counterpoints to one another.

What, then, do the two stories tell us about each other? Both are, in a sense, the same: A lost child trying to return home is informed that he can never return home, and responds violently. Both are particularly upset by mentions of their (in Aang's case, metaphorical or adoptive) father. Both are reminded of the family ties they still possess after they return from the brink.

Of course, there are enormous differences. Aang's violence takes the form of elemental rage, and he needs an outside force, Katara, to pull him back. Zuko, on the other hand, is able to pull himself back, and resist the urge to kill Zhao. Later in the series, while the two will be paralleled often, their positions will generally be reversed: Aang will be the one with greater self-control, while Zuko is the one who needs to be pulled back from the brink.

As we will learn later, Zuko's and Aang's lost father figures could not be more opposite: Firelord Ozai is proud, demanding, vengeful, abusive, and violent, where Gyatso was humble, gentle, wise, playful, and loving. However, there is someone in Zuko's life very similar to Gyatso: Iroh. Like Gyatso, Iroh is a font of wisdom, both wise old man and trickster -- a mentor in the vein of Yoda or T.H. White's Merlin. And, like Iroh, Gyatso's gentle exterior hides an incredibly lethal warrior: just look at how many Fire Nation corpses surround his one!

Both Zuko and Aang live in massive denial. Aang refuses to believe that his people are gone, while Zuko refuses to believe that his father has rejected him. Aang believes that if he looks hard enough, he can find where the Air Nomads are hiding; Zuko believes that he can earn back his father's love by completing his quest. The difference is that, by episode's end, Aang is beginning to accept that his people are gone, and thus is able to begin forging new bonds with the Gaang. Zuko, however, still searches for the Avatar, and thus still cannot fully accept Iroh's obvious love for and pride in him. (Note that Iroh seems perfectly content to have Zhao take over the quest for the Avatar; he realizes that the sooner Zuko gives up on his father, the sooner Zuko can move on to healthier relationships.)

We get a few hints of things to come and a touch of world-building in this episode, some of it a little dubious. For example, Zhao claims to have "hundreds" of warships under his command. Even allowing for exaggeration, he isn't an admiral yet. How big is the Fire Nation navy? Although Zhao does predict total global conquest by the end of the year -- maybe the navy really is that big.

Then there's the Air Temples, all of which seem pretty stationary. If the Air Nomads lived in the temples, in what sense were they nomadic? If they were nomadic, how was the Fire Nation able to find them all so easily? (Later, we'll learn that the Fire Nation wiped out the Air Nomads in a single day!) Of course, Aang is outright wrong about flying bison being the only method of entering an Air Temple. As we'll see later in the season, first Teo's people and later a number of Fire Nation tanks will be able to enter one of the other Air Temples, and, as we'll see much, much later, under rare circumstances powerful firebenders can fly or hover. Still, that wouldn't help much in tracking down nomads, who could naturally be anywhere. (And in the second season, there's a group of people who might possibly (but it's not likely) be related to the Air Nomads: the Sandbenders.

The most important world-building and backstory elements come in Zuko's half of the plot, however, with the agni kai. This is, apparently, a traditional Fire Nation duel used to settle disputes between firebenders; the name contains "Agni," the name of a Hindu fire god, which shares a common origin with the English words "agony" and "ignite." It is a fitting name: Zuko has a history of ill-advised agni kai, as Iroh hints. We'll see what happened in a flashback later in the season, and it will explain much about not only Zuko but the Fire Nation as a whole. Zhao also teases the audience about Zuko's scar: its origin is connected with his shame and his reason for exile, and common knowledge among at least the social elite of the Fire Nation.

The Gaang also get some development. This episode marks the first of many times they are represented as a classic Freudian trio: Sokka, with his complaints about hunger and demand for food, is the classic Id character; Katara, by berating him for his lack of respect for the unique honor of being the first outsiders in an Air Temple in a century, is the classic Superego; and Aang, more or less by elimination (in this episode, at least) is the Ego. (McCoy, Spock, and Kirk are one of the best-known trios of Id, Superego, and Ego; Ron, Hermione, and Harry form another.)

However, the Gaang do not fit completely neatly into these roles. Each is a bit more complex, even at this early stage: Sokka's skepticism and Katara's openness to believing in reincarnation, for example, are a reversal of the usual Id and Superego roles. Aang's descent into the Avatar State is pure Id, and he really doesn't do much of anything to put him in the Ego role in this episode (the next episode, on the other hand, is all about Aang the Ego).

In the end, the Gaang are not (as the Freudian trio generally is) a single main character split in three in order to externalize what would otherwise be purely internal processes. They are, as Katara says, a family: complementary but complex, each one a complete person capable of being a fully independent character, but becoming something more when brought together. How much more, we'll discover as the series progresses; for now suffice to say that Aang is a hero, not the hero, of Avatar.

Anime Boston Con Report

2010-04-11T13:44:00.003-04:00

Scroll down for my thoughts on Dreamworks in light of having just seen How to Train Your Dragon. I don't want it to get buried due to posting this right after.

Anyway, I guest-starred on Viga the Otagal's podcast for her Anime Boston episode. You can find it here.

How to Train Your Dreamworks

2010-04-10T04:36:00.004-04:00

I saw How to Train Your Dragon last night. I originally wasn't going to, as the trailers made it look like a bog-standard kiddie action-comedy of the sort Dreamworks churns out by the bucketful. But word of mouth was good, so I decided to give the movie a shot.

I'm very glad I did. It was definitely worth $15 and a couple of hours: good story, great visuals, decent voice acting, good soundtrack, and solid use of 3D. By my count, this is Dreamworks Animation's 15th movie (not counting Chicken Run, Wallace and Gromit, or Flushed Away, because those were more Aardman than Dreamworks) and their second or third good movie (Kung Fu Panda is the other good one; Antz is borderline).

Dreamworks is a weirdly schizophrenic studio. When they're good, they're really, really good -- Kung Fu Panda is better than most of the Pixar catalogue -- but most of the time, they're terrible. What is it that drags down the bad ones? Here's a partial list:

Pop culture references: Satirizing pop culture can be funny, though it can date a movie badly. Randomly referencing bits of pop culture and repeating memes blindly? Not funny, just stupid.
Toilet humor: In the context of something either really dark or really beautiful, it can still be surprising enough to be funny. In general, though, it's just obnoxious jokes I got my fill of when I was 10.
Eddie Murphy: Has he done anything worth seeing in the last 20 years? We all know the answer: No, because he sucks.
Aping Pixar: Pixar makes a great movie set in the ocean, so Dreamworks makes a terrible movie set in the ocean. Pixar makes a movie about living mechanical devices (caveat: I have not seen Cars), Dreamworks makes a terrible movie about living mechanical devices. Noticing a bit of a pattern?
Postmodern detachment: Badly hurts the Shrek franchise in particular. The characters are all snidely aware of fairy tales and mocking their tropes, which in the hands of better writers like Patricia Wrede or Terry Pratchett could be great. Dreamworks does not have writers that good. Instead, the viewer ends up unable to really care about the characters, because the characters don't seem to really care about much of anything; they're just going through the motions to put on the big show.

What marks the good movies, on the other hand? Dreamworks has plenty of strong points. Here's a partial list:

Tense father-son relationships: In particular, the internal conflict in sons desperate for the approval of their single fathers, but unwilling to follow the careers said fathers have picked out for them. This conflict was a minor but important point in Kung Fu Panda and a major driving force in the plot of How to Train Your Dragon, and it was well-done in both. (Between those two Dreamworks movies and Sony's Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, I'm starting to get the impression that a lot of animators have fathers who disapprove of their career choices.)
Scenery Porn: Kung Fu Panda portrayed a China so beautiful that the Chinese started wondering why they can't make movies this good. How to Train Your Dragon is loaded with breathtaking flying sequences, from gorgeous aerial views of the Viking village at night, to stunning runs through seaside cliffs, to majestic vistas of cloud.
Strong Women: Tigress in Kung Fu Panda especially. She is tough as nails, a great fighter, proud -- and never once is the fact that she's a woman made a big deal. Astrid is less awesome than Tigress, but that's largely because Tigress is more or less mature, while Astrid still has a lot of growing up to do. Especially cool, however, is the existence of background female warriors. Completely ahistoric, of course*, but awesome that there's big burly women fighting side by side with the big burly men against the dragons -- and it's again portrayed as not at all remarkable. Dreamworks is probably the strongest major Western animation studio on this front -- Pixar movies in particular are near-total sausage-fests.
Fight Sequences: How to Train Your Dragon, like Kung Fu Panda before it, has absolutely jaw-dropping action sequences. Like Panda, Dragon has brilliantly choreographed, fluidly animated, surprisingly intimate scenes of combat between single-digit numbers of characters; unlike Panda, it also has big-canvas fantasy war battle scenes, like something out of Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings.
Enthusiastic Protagonists: Part of what makes both Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon so much fun is the complete lack of ironic distance. The main characters of both movies are completely invested in how utterly awesome the events occurring to them actually are. After all, who wouldn't be excited and happy at the prospect of training with kung fu masters or riding a dragon? An enthusiastic main character gives the audience permission to enjoy the ride and suspend disbelief, where a sarcastic or snide character just serves to remind the audience that this is silly make-believe.

Now, admittedly, Dreamworks could easily churn out a bunch of formulaic crap that follows exactly the patterns I describe above, but on the other hand they could produce a lot of varied and interesting movies that incorporate some of the elements they're best at. It would be better than the formulaic crap they shovel out under the Shrek and Madagascar franchises, anyway. The point really isn't that Dreamworks should keep making movies with these elements; the point is that Dreamworks does do some things well, when they're not squeezing a franchise dry, and hopefully they can drop the stupid franchises and focus on creating original films that play to their strengths.

It's not likely, but we can always hope, right?

*Yes, I am aware of the Valkyrie myth. It's just a myth -- the Viking warriors were still an all-male club in real life.

Update: Based on Dreamworks' patterns and the people involved, here's some predictions:

Shrek Forever After, MegaMind, Kung Fu Panda 2, Puss in Boots, Madagascar 3, and The Guardians of Childhood will suck.
The Croods might be good.

AtLA Monday: Hope Returns

2010-04-06T22:43:00.001-04:00

Water, Earth, Fire, Air...

Long ago, the four nations live together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked. Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them, but when the world needed him most, he vanished.

A hundred years passed and my brother and I discovered the new Avatar, an Airbender named Aang. And although his airbending skills are great, he has a lot to learn before he's ready to save anyone.

But I believe Aang can save the world...

-Katara's opening narration in every episode except the first

Book One: Water

Chapter Two: The Avatar Returns

Synopsis:

The episode begins with Katara and Aang returning to her village. The entire village has seen the Fire Nation signal flare and is waiting to meet them just outside. Most of the children run happily to Aang, but the adults are angry and suspicious. Sokka again accuses Aang of being a Fire Nation spy, and Katara defends him. Sokka banishes Aang; Katara appeals to Gran-Gran, but she supports Sokka's decision.

Katara declares that she is banished as well. She intends to go with Aang to the North Pole to find the other Water Tribe and a waterbending teacher. Sokka is angry, and Aang says he doesn't want to break up her family. He and Appa leave.

Sokka tries to organize the village boys for the coming Fire Nation attack, while Aang rests some distance from the village and admits to Appa he liked Katara. Aang sees Zuko's ship through the fog, and tells Appa to stay behind while he goes back to help the villagers. Sokka and Zuko both arm themselves for battle.

Later, Sokka stands atop the village wall. Ice cracks, destroying the guard tower Sokka built, as the Fire Navy ship forces its way through the ice. The ship emerges from the fog, towering over the village, as Sokka stands alone to face it. Katara rescues a child from falling into a crack in the ice, and Sokka falls back as Zuko's ship smashes through the wall.

The ship's gangplank descends, nearly crushing Sokka, and Zuko marches down, flanked by firebenders and followed by spearmen. Sokka charges Zuko, who disarms him with one kick and knocks him off the gangplank with a second. Zuko demands information about the Avatar, mystifying the villagers. Sokka charges again, and Zuko again sends him flying. Sokka throws his boomerang at Zuko and misses. Sokka attacks Zuko with a spear, and Zuko destroys the spear barehanded and hits Sokka repeatedly with the haft, dazing him. Then the boomerang returns and hits Zuko in the back of the head, dazing him.

Zuko glares at Sokka, and little jets of flame emerge from his clenched fists. Before he can attack, however, Aang penguin-sleds in, knocking Zuko off his feet. Zuko has his men flank Aang, but Aang uses his staff and airbending to kick up waves of snow that temporarily blind or knock over all but Zuko.

Zuko incredulously asks whether Aang is the Avatar, shocking the villagers, especially Katara. Zuko attacks Aang, and Aang dissipates his flames, but is soon showing strain. Some of the flames get past Aang and frighten the villagers. Aang immediately stops defending, and offers himself as a prisoner if Zuko agrees to leave the village alone. Zuko agrees, and his men take Aang prisoner and return to the ship, which departs.

Later, as the villagers work to repair the damage to their homes, Katara passionately argues to Sokka that they have to go rescue Aang. Sokka, however, has already provisioned a canoe for them to do exactly that. After they say their good-byes to Gran-Gran, Katara realizes that they will not be able to catch Zuko's ship with a canoe. Appa, presumably following Aang, appears over the horizon.

Zuko orders Aang's staff taken to his quarters and Aang taken to the brig. Aang takes out both guards with his hands literally tied behind his back, and runs after Zuko. Meanwhile, Katara pleadingly and Sokka sarcastically try to get Appa to fly. Sokka accidentally stumbles onto the correct command, and Appa flies.

Aang is attacked by a trio of swordsmen and then a firebender. He dodges past them, and uses the horns on the firebender's helmet to cut the ropes on his hands. Aang finds his staff in Zuko's quarters, but it's a trap. Zuko attacks Aang, and Aang dodges for a while. Eventually Aang is able to get Zuko enough off-balance that he can recover his staff, and then the fight ends in seconds as Aang throws a mattress at Zuko and runs.

Aang runs to the conn tower and jumps out the window to fly off on his glider, but Zuko leaps after him and manages to grab his ankle. They fall to the deck, and Zuko is about to attack Aang, but then Appa appears, distracting Aang. He barely parries Zuko's flames, and falls overboard. Katara calls out, and Aang's eyes and tattoos begin to glow. He creates an enormous waterspout and uses it to knock down a number of fire nation soldiers and send Zuko overboard.

Aang collapses as the glow fades, and Katara and Sokka swoop in on Appa to pick him up. Sokka goes to collect Aang's staff, and Zuko grabs the other end as he pulls himself out of the water. Sokka hits him repeatedly with the haft until Zuko lets go and falls back into the water. Some Fire Nation spearmen try to attack Katara and Appa, and she tries to waterbend the puddle Aang left on the deck; however, she succeeds only in freezing Sokka's boots to the floor. As the men advance, Katara turns around and does the same motion again, freezing them. Sokka chips himself free with his boomerang

Iroh arrives on deck and helps Zuko up. Zuko and Iroh together create an enormous blast of fire, but Aang is able to airbend it into a nearby iceberg, which collapses across the front of the ship and blocks it from following them. Zuko orders his firebenders to free the ship so they can follow the Avatar, but they are busy freeing the men Katara froze.

Later, on Appa, Aang admits he has no idea how he made the waterspout. The conversation that follows sets up the premise of the next season-and-a-half or so (all transcripts from AvatarSpirit.net):

Katara: Why didn't you tell us you were the Avatar?
Aang: Because... I never wanted to be.
(Overhead, a cloud passes over them, momentarily blocking the fading sunlight. After it passes, they enter a shaft of sunlight.)
Katara: But Aang, the world's been waiting for the Avatar to return and finally put an end to this war.
Aang (looking down sadly): And how am I going to do that?
Katara: According to legend, you need to first master water, then earth, then fire, right?
Aang: That's what the monks told me.
Katara: Well, if we go to the North Pole you can master waterbending.
Aang (now smiling): We can learn it together!
Katara: And Sokka, I'm sure you'll get to knock some firebender heads on the way.
Sokka (somewhat dreamily): I'd like that. I'd really like that.
Katara: Then we're in this together.

The episode ends on a lighter note, with Aang outlining all his sightseeing plans en route to the North Pole.
------------------

With most of the critical world-building out of the way in the last episode (though there is definitely more to come), this episode is free to focus on character and action, and it does an excellent job of balancing both. In particular, Sokka gets some good moments that make him come across as far less of a jerk, and sow the seeds of the first stage of his character development.

Early in the episode, Sokka is still the serious, angry jerk of the previous episode. He is also nearly completely ineffective in his fight with Zuko. Sokka soon shows another side. He requires no convincing to help Katara rescue Aang; the willingness of the stranger to help Sokka's people has apparently cracked his cynicism a little bit. The facade falls completely, even if only for a moment, when Sokka's sarcastic attempts to get Appa to fly actually work, and Sokka responds like a gleeful little boy -- until a knowing look from Katara switches him back into apathy mode. But the little smile he has when she's not looking is utterly delightful. The boy Sokka ought to be isn't completely dead, and we'll be seeing a lot more of him soon.

We get another glimpse of Sokka's real character near the end of the episode. Sokka's dreamy "I'd like that," suggests he isn't really listening, since it's not the tone of voice one uses to contemplate violence. What is it Sokka is thinking about that he'd like? Traveling with the Avatar opens so many possibilities for him -- he may be beginning to allow hope to replace anger, or he may be thinking about the opportunity to meet girls his own age that aren't related to him.

However, I think he's dreaming of something else. Early in the episode, in the "arming for battle" montage, we are invited to compare Sokka and Zuko -- an unusual moment in the series, as most of the time we are invited to compare Zuko to Aang. Zuko obsesses over his rejection by his father through most of the series, and that rejection is what has forced him to take on the responsibility of hunting for the Avatar. Sokka has also been abandoned by his father, though the circumstances are entirely different, and been forced to take on overwhelming responsibility as a consequence.

After finding and capturing the Avatar, we see an interesting moment with Zuko: He barks "Head a course for the Fire Nation," in the same tone as every order he's given in the past two episodes. Then, in a much softer, dreamier tone, he says, "I'm going home." Just like Sokka and Katara, Zuko is seeking to escape the life of adult responsibility that has been thrust on him far too soon. He wants to return home, to be a child again, to receive praise and love and comfort from his father.

It's no accident that Sokka takes on the same dreamy tone later in the episode, after he and Katara take the Avatar. Sokka is also dreaming of returning to a childlike state, unburdened by his current responsibilities. He's dreaming of finding his father.

Speaking of fathers, there's an odd moment in this episode when Zuko takes Aang's staff:

Zuko: This staff will make an excellent gift for my father. I suppose you wouldn't know of fathers, being raised by monks.

The look Aang gives him is pure venom. As we'll see in the next episode, and even more so in "The Storm" later this season, Aang may not have a biological or legal father, but he had a definite father figure, and the threat of losing that father figure is what ultimately led to him being frozen. Aang is clearly furious at this dismissal of the most important relationship in his life so far, and it makes his coming fight with Zuko all the more impressive.

Aang, you see, doesn't hurt anyone during his escape. He smacks some people around, sure, but never does any injury worse than stunning them momentarily. Even against Zuko, he is clearly trying to reach his staff without having to actually attack Zuko, at least at the beginning of the fight. As Zuko finally manages to get close to hitting Aang, Aang's face shows near-panic. Given that it's quite likely Aang has only been in training- and play-fights before, and that he is realizing for perhaps the first time that his opponent is prepared to seriously injure or even kill him, his fear is utterly unsurprising. What is surprising is that, even though we are shown that Zuko angers and frightens him, Aang does him no real injury in this episode, just knocks him aside long enough to escape with the staff.

One of the core elements of Aang's character is his gentleness. A vegetarian and technical pacifist [ed link to TVTropes], he does not kill people or animals, and he avoids hurting them as much as possible. It makes the few moments in which Aang is enraged genuinely frightening, and lends credence to Aang's fear of his own destructive potential, which is addressed several times throughout the series. In the Avatar State Aang's face hovers between impassive and quietly furious, neither of which is a typical expression for the hyperactive, gentle-hearted boy. Especially early in the series, the Avatar State plays almost like demonic possession.

Aang seems not to be fully in control of the Avatar State. When he enters it near the end of the episode, the wrath he unleashes on the ship's crew is impressive, and they are lucky that no one is killed. Two interesting things about Aang's Avatar State in this episode: First, he waterbends like an airbender, using circular motion to create a waterspout, rather than the pushing and pulling to create waves and whips we will see waterbenders use throughout the series. It helps to explain why it is necessary for Aang to train: even in the Avatar State, he is at least somewhat limited by Aang's (as opposed to the Avatar's) accumulated skills. The other interesting element of the Avatar State is the glow. The same phenomenon occurred, on a grander scale, when Aang was released from the ice in the first episode. It occurs every time Aang enters the Avatar State, and thus foreshadows a pretty important point that we'll come back to later: The Avatar is not limited to the four elemental bending skills. There are other powers that come with being the Avatar, one of which is generating light as a side effect of entering the Avatar State and other major events.

As for the series' most interesting relationship, Zuko and Iroh, we get only subtle touches in this episode. There's the neat little detail that, despite his claim to have spent years training, Zuko clearly has no idea how to fight an opponent as agile as Aang -- not surprising, given that Zuko would be unable to find a teacher who'd ever actually fought an airbender. There's also a nice Zuko moment at the end of the episode, when he orders his men to dig the ship out and pursue Aang. When he sees that they are busy freeing their frozen comrades, he relents and allows them to finish. His kneejerk response is to pursue his quarry no matter what, but there's the seed of a good leader in there, who cares about the well-being of his troops.

And, of course, when Iroh comes on deck to see a flying monster leaving and the crew frozen or knocked over, his first instinct is to run over and help Zuko climb back up. It's a sweet and subtle moment. Shortly after, we get an exchange with a lot of subtext packed into it:

Iroh: Good news for the Fire Lord. The nation's greatest threat is just a little kid.
Zuko: That kid, Uncle, just did this. (Shot widens to show the prow buried in ice) I won't underestimate him again.

Iroh, remember, has been abroad before. He fought in the war and saw with his own eyes what the Fire Nation's enemies truly are: A balkanized Earth Kingdom that lacks the organization to threaten the Fire Nation; an Earth Kingdom city that lacks the will; two Water Tribes that lack the willpower. Now the last great threat, the Avatar, has been found, and he's no threat at all. Though Zuko does not pick up on it, Iroh is almost certainly being sarcastic, or at least ironic; he knows that it isn't good news at all. The Fire Lord needs the Avatar to be shadowy and dangerous, not real and mostly harmless; maintaining a war footing for a hundred years would be impossible without some form of propaganda machine.

Zuko, meanwhile, takes everything personally. He cannot even consider the possibility that his quest is misguided; catching the Avatar is success and proves his quest was not in vain, and losing the Avatar proves that the Avatar is a threat and his quest is necessary. There is no conceivable event which does not somehow justify Zuko's quest, at least in his eyes.

Zuko's determination brings us to the end of the episode, and Aang's "I never wanted to be." These first couple of episodes are nothing but characters who don't want to be who they find themselves being: Sokka doesn't want to be a lone warrior, Katara doesn't want to be her brother's mother, Aang doesn't want to be the Avatar, and Zuko doesn't want to be an exile. Aang's sudden appearance has started the gears of story turning, however, and all of these characters are going to be transformed in the months to come. The ice has cracked and light is spilling out; spring is a long way away, but it is coming.

AtLA Monday will be on a Tuesday this week...

2010-04-05T23:19:00.004-04:00

Sorry, all, but AtLA Monday will be delayed this week. Anime Boston just took too much out of me, and I couldn't finish it before bedtime. I'll have it up tomorrow evening. Possibly earlier, but that's unlikely.

Also, Adventure Time! with Finn and Jake is easily the best show on television right now. I can confidently say that after one episode; it lived up to my hopes and then some. If you are not watching this show, you are leading a joyless shadow-existence.

Also also, saw a preview for the new Scooby-Doo. It looks like it might actually not completely suck, which has utterly blown my mind. Scooby-Doo being inevitably, inexpressibly terrible is one of the cornerstones of my existence.

Giving a panel at Anime Boston...

2010-03-30T09:42:00.003-04:00

If you'd like to hear me natter in person and are planning on attending Anime Boston this weekend, my fiancee and I will be giving a panel on "Reading too Much into Gurren Lagann" at 1 p.m. Friday.

Any schlub can find depth in Evangelion or Utena; we're going to go beyond the impossible, kick reason to the curb, and drill down into Gurren Lagann. That's the Gurren-dan way!

Update 04/04/10: And it was AWESOME! I did not realize they were putting us in the big panel room, or that we were listed under the Mad Science theme in the schedule for some reason. We filled the room! I estimate around 200 people showed up, which is more than every panel I've given combined.

And the people there asked some great questions, gave me lots of ideas for revising the panel for the summer and fall cons -- it was just an awesome crowd. Viga also did a great job on her segments of the panel, and a great time was had by all. I'm going to clean my notes up and post them up here later this week.

Avatar: The Last Airbender Monday: It Begins

2010-03-27T22:12:00.022-04:00

Note: I couldn't get the formatting to work right, and decided I hated the way the original post was structured, so this post is heavily revised from its initial appearance. This hopefully will not happen again, now that I know how much work this kind of post entails and can therefore plan it in advance so I'm not doing half the work at 2 a.m.

For years now, Fred Clark over at Slacktivist has been methodically shredding the Left Behind series, or, as he refers to them, The World’s Worst Books. His weekly posts, each one covering anywhere from a few pages to a couple of sentences, are by turns funny, insightful, enlightening, and utterly damning of the books, the authors, and the cultural elements that produced them.

A few weeks ago, I was on TV Tropes and found a link to a series of blog posts, by someone called Seraph4377, on the Nickelodeon cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender. Seraph did a detailed analysis of the series, mostly from a feminist perspective; in the second of five posts, she said that she planned to dedicate one post per season, because “I don't have the stamina for a proper Fred Clarkian episode-by-episode treatment.”

To keep this introduction as short as possible: I decided I would do exactly that. This blog exists primarily as an excuse to do so, though having a link to give people at my anime con panels is certainly a plus.

Unlike Fred, and like Seraph, I am analyzing Avatar as a labor of love. It is quite possibly the best American cartoon of the last ten years, and one of my all-time favorites. I'm going to be going through each episode scene-by-scene, so expect lots of spoilers. I very, very much recommend having watched at least the episode under discussion before you read each entry. They're pretty easy to find on DVD, and less easy but possible to find on line, though I (and doubtless the creators and copyright holders, as well) would prefer you go with the former.

Without further ado, then, let us begin out very first AtLA Monday.

Book One: Water

Episode One: The Boy in the Iceberg

Water, Earth, Fire, Air...

My grandmother used to tell me stories about the old days. A time of peace, when the Avatar kept balance between Water Tribes, Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation, and Air Nomads. But that all changed when the Fire Nation attacked. Only the Avatar mastered all four elements. Only he could stop the ruthless Firebenders. But when the world needed him most, he vanished.

A hundred years have passed, and the Fire Nation is nearing victory in the war. Two years ago, my father and the men of my tribe journeyed to the Earth Kingdom to help fight against the Fire Nation, leaving me and my brother to look after our tribe. Some people believe that the Avatar was never reborn into the Air Nomads, and that the cycle was broken. But I haven’t lost hope. I still believe that, somehow, the Avatar will return to save the world...

- Katara's opening narration

Synopsis:

Open on teenagers Sokka and Katara in a canoe, fishing amidst ice floes. Sokka is trying to use a spear, while Katara is trying to use Waterbending -- a technique (the term "magic" is explicitly rejected) to manipulate nearby water through the motions of her body. The two attempts tangle, resulting in the fish getting away and Sokka getting soaked. They argue, and don't look where they're going. The canoe is destroyed, and they're left on a floating block of ice. Sokka blames Katara for the crash in a blatant display of sexism, which Katara rightfully takes him to task for. Unfortunately, her angry gestures trigger motion in the water and ice around her, cracking open an iceberg behind her. A block of ice containing a large creature and a boy appears; Katara breaks it open to free the boy, ignoring Sokka's protestations that he may be dangerous. As soon as the boy is released, a column of light emerges from the ice.

The flare of light is seen from afar by a steamship traveling through the ice. Aboard we meet the main antagonist of the first season, the Fire Nation's Prince Zuko, and his mentor, conscience, and comedic sidekick all in one, Iroh. Zuko believes the light indicates the Avatar is near; Iroh suggests it is the aurora, and implies that they have followed many false leads to the Avatar before. He suggests Zuko relax, and Zuko snaps at him, which seems to phase Iroh not at all.

Back with Sokka and Katara, a boy emerges from the ice. He is initially somewhat frightening, with glowing eyes and symbols on his hands and forehead, but then the glow fades and he is just a bald, tattooed 12-year-old in the yellow robes of a Tibetan monk -- the same style identified in the opening as associated with Air. He faints, and Katara rushes to help him. We are soon introduced to the boy, Aang, and Appa, the large creature in the ice with him. Appa is Aang's pet, mount, and best friend, a flying bison, but he is currently unable to fly. Although Sokka is still immensely suspicious, Aang gives them a ride home on the swimming Appa.

Back on the Fire Navy ship, night is falling, and Iroh pleads with Zuko to sleep. We learn that Zuko is the fourth generation of the ruling family to hunt for the Avatar, and none have succeeded. Zuko argues that he will succeed because his honor depends on it.

Back to Aang, Katara, and Sokka. Katara asks Aang about the Avatar, and Aang says he doesn't know the Avatar, but knows people who know the Avatar. The trio riding on Appa go to sleep, and Aang dreams how he got into the ice: he and Appa were trapped in a storm, and Aang used a combination of Air- and Waterbending to freeze them both and save their lives. In case we hadn't figured it out already, the scene makes it clear: Aang is the Avatar.

Aang wakes to find he is in the village. He is introduced to the entire village by Katara: nine women ranging in age from young adults to wrinkled, bent old women, and ten children from toddlers to maybe eight or nine. Other than Katara and Sokka, there are no teenagers; there are no babies or adult men at all. The villagers are frightened of Aang, and Katara explains it's because they've never seen an Airbender.

Most of the rest of the episode is dedicated to contrasting Sokka's attempts to turn the local children into a fighting force with Aang's attempts to play with his new friends. Aang, it seems, has never heard of the war. He comes from a world where a young Airbender can have friends from every nation, a world with no hint from the war. He thinks he's been frozen for a few days, but Katara reveals it has actually been a hundred years.

The episode also has another scene showcasing a different aspect of Zuko and Iroh's relationship: Iroh is teaching Zuko Firebending. Zuko is impatient and wants to move on to more advanced sets, but Iroh wants him to master the basics. Zuko says that the Fire Sages (we'll meet them later in the series) told him the Avatar is the last Airbender, and therefore has had a hundred years to master all four elements. Zuko must be more advanced to be able to fight the Avatar, and he angrily orders Iroh to teach him the next set.

The episode ends on a cliffhanger, with Zuko watching Aang Airbending through a telescope. Still thinking he's after a hundred-plus-year-old man, Zuko prepares to attack the Water Tribe village.

---------------

This episode, being the introduction to the world, characters, and stories, has to do a lot of work. It therefore touches lightly on many of the themes that will be present throughout the series, but doesn't go very far into most of them.

Probably the most notably subversive element of the episode, and indeed of the series as a whole, is the total absence of any white, European characters. Even most fantasy settings have some form of fantasy Europe, and most American cartoons, especially those aimed at children, are dominated by white characters or stand-ins for white characters. For example, Donald Duck is pretty obviously a "white" character, in the sense of being descended from Europeans (his uncle is Scottish) and living a typical white, middle-class American lifestyle. It is unclear whether other cultures even exist in the modern Duckverse; certainly in the classic Barks comics there were (racist caricatures of) Asian and African ducks and Asian and Native American dogs.

But in the entirety of the Avatar world, there are no whites, and no culture resembling Europe. In this episode, we start with Katara and Sokka and their people, who are dark-skinned and -haired, with flat noses, and whose clothing and equipment is clearly modeled on Native American designs, especially the Inuit. True, their eyes are blue, but that's to match their water-themed color scheme. We then see the Fire Nation, with their armored uniforms clearly inspired by Mongolian and, to a lesser extent, Imperial Japanese designs, their very samurai-esque topknots, and "almond-shaped" eyes. Finally, we get Aang, the most white-looking character, but even he is shaved completely bald and dressed in the yellow robes of a Buddhist monk. (Not that he actually is Buddhist; though the teachings of the Airbenders do seem to resemble aspects of Buddhism and Hinduism, the series generally avoids giving any detail on the religious beliefs of its characters. There are hints of pantheism, polytheism, and the aforementioned Buddhism and Hinduism, but in general religion seems not to be a big part of Avatar characters' lives.)

With all of these different cultures running around, there's a lot of worldbuilding here. In this episode we see a few uses of Bending: Zuko uses it for combat, of course, but Aang uses it to fly and to help himself in little ways, such as lifting himself up after Katara first frees him. Katara isn't very good yet at Waterbending, but she tries to make practical use of it in fishing. We'll see many more variations on this theme; the Earth Kingdom in particular will prove quite imaginative in finding uses for Benders in addition to combat. We get to meet representatives of two of the major cultures, the Southern Water Tribe and the Fire Nation, and can see part of why the war has been so devestating: Not only does the Fire Nation have a massive technological advantage, with ironclad steamships to the Water Tribe's canoes and ice walls, but they are able to send at least four combat Firebenders (Zuko, his sparring partners, and Iroh) on a wild goose chase while the only Waterbender in the Southern Water Tribe barely understands her own abilities. Not to mention that, from what we see, Zuko's ship has a crew compliment comparable to the entire population of the Southern Water Tribe.

That difference of numbers throws new light on Sokka's and Katara's behavior throughout the episode. Sokka's suspicion and coldness toward Aang -- inclusing recommending that they leave him on the ice floe unconscious, presumably to die -- are actually quite understandable given the world in which he lives, in which a powerful and advanced empire has been trying to systematically eradicate his people for generations -- trying and succeeding.

Sokka has all the typical anxieties of a teenage boy, as we see when Katara catches him "making muscles" at his reflection, but he is carrying the weight of his entire world, as well. He is the sole defender of his dying people, now that the men have gone off to war, and in that light his attempts to shape a handful of easily distractable kindergarteners into a fighting force is no longer quite so funny. He is desperate, and frightened, and trying desperately to act as he thinks an adult -- a "warrior" -- should: stern, suspicious, defensive, and a bit misogynistic. He has divided the world into three camps: the warrior men who left, the protectors of the village; the villagers, who exist to be protected and to take care of all the other tasks; and outsiders to be fought. He is trying desperately to take on the role of the men who left, and to transform the male children in the village into fighting comrades so that he will no longer have to carry the burden alone. Ironically, there are several adult, healthy women in the village who could help him, not to mention his sister with the magical powers, but he has grown up in a village where only men fight, and so he ignores that solution. Ironically, we’ll see in a much later episode that sixty or seventy years ago, female Waterbenders did fight to protect the tribe.

Katara has also taken on a caretaker role, in her own way. Her instinct is to help the troubled and comfort the afflicted. She has taken on a motherly role toward Sokka, even washing his socks, and she will attempt to extend that role to pretty much everyone she meets for most of the rest of the series. In other words, like Sokka she is taking on the role (and gender role) of an adult of her people, and like Sokka she is showing the strain. Where Sokka is overwhelmed and frightened, Katara seeks to escape, to learn Waterbending. Sokka has more or less given up, and retreated into cynicism and suspicion; Katara still believes that someone will come to save her. And yet she doesn’t passively sit in her village until Aang blows into town and sweeps her away; the first rescue we see is Katara freeing Aang from his prison, empowering him to save her from hers.

Aang is enormously different from Katara and Sokka; the viewers’ first impression of him is of a fun-loving free spirit. Yet there is more to him than meets the eye: His expression when he tells Katara he doesn’t know the Avatar betrays both guilt and fear. He believes he is lying to her, because of course Aang knows that he is the Avatar; however, as we will see in the first few episodes, Aang really doesn’t know himself. He fears his own power, and neither understands nor, at this point, wishes to understand what being the Avatar entails.

Seraph points out a very important scene to understanding why Aang is initially so different from the other two:

Katara and Aang go sledding together, and Katara glees: "I haven't done this since I was a kid!" Aang's reply: "You still are a kid!" He's wrong. In his time, she would have been a kid. But the world's at war, her mother is dead, and she hasn't been a kid for a long time. If you blink, you'll miss it, and if you think about it too much it'll break your heart.

But Aang isn’t a kid anymore, either. He is the incarnation of a millennia-old spiritual being of godlike power, and he knows it. We will see later that Avatars are usually not informed of their power and destiny until their sixteenth birthday; the monks of Aang’s order told him years too early, overriding his mentor’s attempts to shield him. He also knows that it is his responsibility to be the protector and peacekeeper for the entire world: Sokka’s and Katara’s burdens both, multiplied a thousandfold.

At the same time, however, Aang has wisdom they do not. Katara tells her grandmother that she senses that wisdom in Aang, and we cut immediately to him licking his staff to freeze his tongue onto it, entertaining the children. At first glance it is simply a bit of ironic comedy, but there is actually great wisdom in Aang’s playfulness. He is bringing laughter to children who probably haven’t had much to laugh about for a long time, and he’s also keeping himself from turning into a Sokka-style cynic or a Katara-style wet hen.

This is the thematic thread that connects Aang to Iroh, even though they have virtually no interaction in the entire series. Both are aware -- Iroh consciously, Aang instinctively -- that real wisdom cannot be separated from joy; that peace, happiness, and love are both necessary to and a consequence of the pursuit of enlightenment.

Iroh struggles throughout the episode -- and indeed, throughout the first two seasons -- to help Zuko understand that honor is neither what Zuko truly desires nor what he needs, and that his pursuit of the Avatar is not going to bring him peace. His offer of tea, and Zuko’s refusal (“I don’t need calming tea! I need to capture the Avatar!”) are particularly prescient, foreshadowing the fateful choice Zuko will have to make at the end of the second season, and in a sense sums up his entire character arc.

Also of note is the incredibly patience Iroh shows. His expression reveals that Zuko manages to get under his skin once or twice, but Iroh is never angry toward his nephew. Stern, yes, but always loving and helpful. Iroh is, quite simply, the best parent in the series, always there for his surrogate son, always loving him unconditionally even when scolding him or expressing disappointment.

And Zuko… is utterly incapable of reciprocating. Zuko will not, can not, recognize the gift his uncle is constantly offering, until nearly the end of the series. Zuko has wounds much deeper than that nasty burn scar on his face.

Which brings us to the third incredibly daring move on the part of the writers. First was to air an American children’s show not only devoid of white characters, but set in a world where white people don’t exist. Second was to make that show a serial. The title card proudly proclaims “Chapter One, Episode One”. This show is going to be divisible into chapters; it is a single story spanning three seasons, divisible into three chapters and sixty episodes. Only a year after Lost created a space for the prime-time serial, Nickelodeon is daring to attempt it on Saturday morning.

But we are talking about the third incredibly daring move: the refusal of the creators to make this a story where “heroes” mass-murder (or, since this is a kid’s show, brutally beat) their way through hordes of faceless mooks to defeat a cackling self-parody or a soulless Voldemort. In Avatar, everyone is a human being. Main characters, enemy soldiers, terrorists, strange-bedfellow allies, even genocidal megalomaniacs are insistently, aggressively portrayed as human beings, with lives, loves, warts, and quirks outside the immediate conflict. Again and again, we are reminded that there are both good people and bad people on every side of ever conflict, and that good or bad, they’re still people, and still have worth as people.

Heavy stuff for kids, perhaps. But I’d rather see kids forced to stretch a little than spoon-fed pap that says fighting is awesome and any problem can be solved by finding someone to blame for it and blowing them up. Avatar makes the kids stretch, and the rewards it offers are handsome.

Will Convergence Kill Traditional Animation?

2010-03-27T08:45:00.004-04:00

In comments on the last post, Ian Perez (our first commenter ever! All hail Ian!) expressed concern that the convergence of live action and animation is bad for animation:

As an animation lover, I look at this trend with some dismay. Animation is already looked down upon by some segments; now that it's losing its one trump card, I expect that traditional 100% animated features will go down the wayside, and we'll likely never see something like "The Secret of NIMH", "The Last Unicorn" or "The Great Mouse Detective" again.

I'm not worried about this at all. Every time a new medium or genre of art emerges, fans of the old media express dismay. "CGI is going to kill 2D animation." "Home video is going to kill movies." "Radio is going to kill live orchestras." "Writing is going to kill oral performances." (No, seriously, Plato worried writing was going to destroy society. He also complained about how today's youth dress strangely and don't listen to their elders or respect tradition.) It doesn't happen.

Now, it's true animation is going through a bit of a bad spell on American television right now. Cartoon Network pretty much took over in the late nineties to early two-thousands; the major networks no longer bother with early afternoon or Saturday morning cartoon blocks. And Cartoon Network itself is showing more and more live action as part of their ongoing network decay. I'm not worried, for a few reasons:

Fox is showing The Simpsons, Family Guy, The Cleveland Show, and American Dad every weekend, put the first two in wide syndication, and occasionally experiments with other animated sitcoms.
Comedy Central is also releasing a couple of new animated series for adults this year, along with renewing South Park for several more seasons.
Although Cartoon Network has created a lot of new live action crap, they are also still commissioning new animated series, some of which look really good. (I am counting the days until Adventure Time! with Finn and Jake comes out).
Television animation was nothing but half-hour toy commercials when I was a kid. Then came the Disney Afternoon, the Warner Brothers-Spielberg co-creations, the DCAU, the birth of Cartoon Network... there have been dark times before, and it got better.

Ian's comment was mostly about film. Again, I'm not worried; animation in film is the healthiest it's been in my lifetime. Every single movie Pixar has made is a hit, and almost all of them are wonderful movies as well. Most of Dreamworks Animation's movies aren't as good, but they've mostly been hits, too. And if Princess and the Frog is anything to go by, Disney is ready for a second renaissance.

Not to mention, if all else fails, there's always Japan.

Converging on Alice

2010-03-26T18:46:00.006-04:00

So here I am, brand new blog all about animation, and the first thing I want to talk about isn’t even animated. Take that as you may.

Seriously, though, there is a purpose, because something very interesting has been going on in the last few years, as both special effects and computer animation have made leaps and bounds: the convergence of live action and animation. Two recent films (both, coincidentally, in 3D) showcase the growing convergence: James Cameron’s Avatar and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.

I haven’t actually seen Avatar, so I can’t speak too much about it, but I do have to say it does an excellent job of looking not animated at all, at least in trailers. Which would be why I didn’t bother to see it – what’s the point of animation if it isn’t any different from live action? One of the great joys of animation is that, better than any other medium, it can play with our conception of reality: animation is more direct and visceral than a book, more mobile and, well, animated than a painting, and able to depict images that would be impossible for live action. Even comic books, animation’s closest cousin, are a series of static vignettes arranged in sequence, unable to incorporate tone of voice, music, and motion into the stories they tell and the images they create. Avatar, as near as I can tell, does none of this. The Na’vi are less alien than Marvin the Martian, let alone Neon Genesis Evangelion’s Angels. The images in the trailer are not particularly different from any other sci-fi* action blockbuster of the last few years, a sadly missed opportunity to do something genuinely different.

Alice takes the opposite side: a live-action film that incorporates animation to do impossible things. (Six of them before breakfast, of course – a line sadly butchered into feel-good mantra pap in the film.) The Red Queen is the best example in the film: Helena Bonham Carter’s face on a bulbously overgrown head, attached to a tiny, childlike body. Clearly, a great deal of computer animation had to be used to create the character; nonetheless, every time she speaks, every time she emotes, it is clearly the expressions, the gesture, the face of a real actress.

The film takes several opportunities to do what, until a few years ago, was the sole province of a fully animated work. Perhaps the best example is Johnny Depp’s dance near the end, which involves his body contorting in strange ways and his head spinning like a top. The routine resembles nothing so much as a Tex Avery character after eating spicy food – all it’s missing is the steam erupting from Depp’s ears. Much of Burton’s live action filmography has been cartoon-like – the titular Beetlejuice and the Penguin in Batman Returns come immediately to mind – but it is only now, with the technology of the 2000s, that he can completely fuse live action and animation, fulfilling his penchant for dark, yet joyful, grotesqueries. In doing so, he gives us what may one day be remembered as the first true live-action cartoon.

Of course, between the trailer and the source material, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World seems set to take the live-action cartoon even further. We'll revisit this topic when it comes out in a few months.

*This term sometimes arouses some rancor, so let me explain my use of it: Science fiction is a genre of literature. If it must be abbreviated, the correct term is “SF.” Very, very rarely some other medium will actually attempt true science fiction. Most works in other media, however, simply take some of the superficial elements of science fiction (spaceships, aliens, explosions) while ignoring its stylistic and thematic tropes; for these I reserve the term sci-fi. Most sci-fi films are actually fantasies, and of course they vary wildly in quality, from the execrable Plan 9 from Outer Space to the excellent Star Trek (the 2009 film).