Avatar:- The Legend of Aang

Anime. It polarises reviewers, especially over here in the strange land of England. In Western culture, and I hate using that phrase, cartoons are for children. The moment there is any adult content, for example Perfect Blue which was an adult thriller that happened to be animated, it gets ripped apart by critics and tabloid newspapers declare it an attack against the innocence of childhood by those vile foreigners. That's been well documented over the years so I'm going to avoid it, needless to say it;s total rubbish and should be ignored out of hand.

What I will point out is three things. Anime is extremely good, when it's done well. Akira is incredibly overrated and has done more damage than good. Finally my favourite Anime, that I have seen, is Nausicåa.

Now Avatar is not strictly Anime, but it is heavily influenced by it. It is also influenced by classical fantasy novels. Split into three seasons (known as "books") the story takes place over a year. The plot is fairly simple fantasy fair:- Three teenagers travel the world, learning ancient skills and magic to fight and defeat a great evil. These three are chased by the bad guys, knowing that if they were to learn everything the bad guys would lose. A lot happens to the characters involved during their quest, not only is it a time of growth for the characters, from childhood to adulthood, but they are driven to save the world. Something dangerous and daunting for adults let alone people only just really finding their way way in life. This makes for an interesting an compelling fantasy story. Unfortunately it hit a problem.

It's difficulty is that it slips between the cracks. It is not anime, so the hard core fans dismiss it as a bastardisation of the form. It didn't fit in the nice little box TV producers and distributors think kids live in so they were cagy about showing it. It was animated so adults and most critics ignored it completely. The result was it's target audience of students had to go out of their way to follow it. As such it isn't as well known as it should be, believe me when I say it is one of the best animated shows of the last five years. Easily better than Ben 10 and on par with Transformers Animated.

As ever, for me, the most important thing is character development. That's exactly what we get with this series. As much as I love Star Trek nothing that happens effects the characters. Kirk is the same womanising egotistical hero in the last episode that he was in the second pilot. The original transformers cartoon was great fun, if seriously flawed, once again there was no development. Now admittedly in both there wasn't much to develop, between them Kirk and Optimus have enough pure awesome to blot out a sun.

Avatar didn't start out with fully developed people and at the end there was still room for growth. Even in the midst of all the magic and fantasy this made them realistic, watching them grow and develop as people, not simple cartoons. As they do develop they make choices, choices that have repercussions down the line. The most impressive developments come from Zuko. We are introduced to him as a villain, but as we learn more about his past we discover just how conflicted he was. Watching a villain convert to the good guys side is a massive cliché, but when handled correctly you really route for the outcome. It's a sign of good writing that when he makes the wrong choice you practically want to put your fist through the screen.


Another character I want to single out is General Iroh. This here is all you need to know.




Avatar:- The Legend of Aang is a brilliant adventure that, even though it's getting it's own live action movie, is under appreciated. If you want my advice get hold of the DVD's and enjoy.