Avatar: The Last Airbender
Avatar: The Last Airbender, also known as Avatar: The Legend of Aang in some regions, is an American animated fantasy action television series created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. Produced by Nickelodeon Animation Studio, it originally aired on Nickelodeon for three seasons from February 2005 to July 2008.
Avatar is set in a largely Asian-inspired world in which some people can telekinetically manipulate one of the four elements—water, earth, fire or air—through practices known as "bending", inspired by Chinese martial arts. The only individual who can bend all four elements, the "Avatar", is responsible for maintaining harmony among the world's four nations, and serves as the link between the physical and spirit worlds. The series follows the journey of twelve-year-old Aang, the current Avatar and last survivor of his nation, the Air Nomads, along with his friends Katara, Sokka, and Toph, as they strive to end the Fire Nation's war against the other nations and defeat Fire Lord Ozai before he conquers the world. The series also follows Zuko—the exiled prince of the Fire Nation, seeking to restore his lost honor by capturing Aang, accompanied by his uncle Iroh—and later, his sister Azula. Avatar is presented and animated in a style that combines Japanese anime influences with those of American cartoons and relies on the imagery of primarily Chinese culture, with various other influences from different East Asian, Southeast Asian, South Asian, North Asian, and indigenous American cultures.
Avatar: The Last Airbender was a ratings success and received widespread acclaim from critics and audiences, with high praise given to its characters, cultural references, art direction, voice acting, soundtrack, humor, ending, and thematic content. The series explores themes rarely touched on in youth entertainment, such as war, genocide, sexism, gender roles, imperialism, totalitarianism, class warfare, political corruption, indoctrination, animal cruelty, and free choice. It won five Annie Awards, a Genesis Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, a Kids' Choice Award, and a Peabody Award. Since its release, the show has been regarded by critics as one of the most acclaimed series of the 21st century, and one of the greatest animated television series of all time.
The extended Avatar franchise includes an ongoing comics series, a prequel novel series, an animated sequel series, and a live-action film, as well as a live-action remake series produced for Netflix. The complete series was released on Blu-ray in June 2018 in honor of the tenth anniversary of its finale and was made available to stream on Netflix in the United States and Canada in May 2020, on Paramount+ in June 2020, and on Amazon Prime Video in January 2021.
Series overview
Setting
Avatar: The Last Airbender is set in a world where human civilization consists of four nations, named after the four classical elements: the Water Tribe, the Earth Kingdom, the Fire Nation, and the Air Nomads. In each nation, certain people, known as "benders", have the ability to telekinetically manipulate and control the element corresponding to their nation, using gestures based on Chinese martial arts. The "Avatar" is the only individual with the ability to bend all four elements.The Avatar is an international arbiter whose duty is to maintain harmony among the four nations, and act as a mediator between humans and spirits. When the Avatar dies, their spirit is reincarnated in a new body, who will be born to parents in the next nation in a set order known as the Avatar cycle: Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. By tradition, the new Avatar will travel the world to learn all four bending arts, after which they will begin in earnest their role as global peacekeeper. The Avatar can enter a condition known as the "Avatar State", in which they temporarily gain the skills and knowledge of all their past incarnations. Although this is when they are at their most powerful, if the Avatar were ever killed while in the Avatar State, the reincarnation cycle would be broken and the Avatar would cease to exist.
Synopsis
A century ago, young Avatar Aang, afraid of his new responsibilities, fled from his home and was forced into the ocean by a storm. He encased himself and his sky bison Appa in suspended animation in an iceberg near the South Pole. Shortly afterward, Fire Lord Sozin, the ruler of the Fire Nation, launched a world war to expand his nation's empire. Knowing that the Avatar must be an Air Nomad, he and his army carried out a genocide against the Air Nomads, which he timed with the arrival of a comet that gives firebenders tremendous power. A hundred years later, siblings Katara and Sokka, teenagers of the Southern Water Tribe, accidentally discover Aang and revive him.In the first season, Aang travels with Katara and Sokka to the Northern Water Tribe to learn waterbending and be prepared to defeat the Fire Nation. Prince Zuko, the banished son of Fire Lord Ozai, pursues them, accompanied by his uncle Iroh, hoping to capture the Avatar in order to restore his honor. Aang is also pursued by Zhao, a Fire Nation admiral aspiring to win Ozai's favor. When his navy attacks the Northern Water Tribe, Zhao kills the moon spirit; Yue, the princess of the tribe, sacrifices her life to revive it, and Aang drives off the enemy fleet.
In the second season, Aang learns earthbending from Toph Beifong, a blind earthbending prodigy. Zuko and Iroh become refugees in the Earth Kingdom, eventually settling in its capital Ba Sing Se. Aang's group travels to Ba Sing Se to seek the Earth King's support for an attack on the Fire Nation during an upcoming solar eclipse, during which firebenders will be powerless. Both groups are pursued by Azula, Zuko's younger sister. Azula infiltrates Ba Sing Se and instigates a coup d'état against the Earth King, bringing the capital under Fire Nation control. Zuko betrays Iroh and returns to the Fire Nation.
In the third season, Aang and his allies invade the Fire Nation during the eclipse, but are forced to retreat. Zuko abandons the Fire Nation to teach Aang firebending. Aang, raised to respect all life, wrestles with the possibility that he will have to kill Ozai to end the war. When Sozin's comet returns, Aang confronts Ozai and uses his Avatar powers to strip Ozai of his firebending ability; meanwhile, Aang's friends liberate Ba Sing Se, destroy the Fire Nation airship fleet, and capture Azula. Zuko is crowned the new Fire Lord and the war comes to an end.
Episodes
The series consists of sixty-one episodes. The first episode—an-hour-long premiere—aired on February 21, 2005, on Nickelodeon. The series concluded with a two-hour television movie broadcast on July 19, 2008. Each season of the series is known as a "book", in which each episode is referred to as a "chapter". Each book takes its name from one of the elements Aang must master: Water, Earth, and Fire. The show's first two seasons each consists of twenty episodes and the third season twenty-one. The entire series has been released on DVD in regions 1, 2, and 4.the complete series is available on Netflix in the United States. It became the most popular show on U.S. Netflix within the first week of its release there, despite not being featured on the main page. The show broke the record for longest consecutive appearance on Netflix's daily top ten list, with 60 straight days on the list, one of only two shows in the top ten record holders that was not a Netflix original series as of July 2020. Later in June 2020, the complete series became available on Paramount+ and later on Amazon Prime Video in January 2021.
Voice cast
Development
Conception and production
The creators and producers of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, met at a Halloween party in 1995 during their time as students in the Rhode Island School of Design, and began their professional partnership later that year when Konietzko assisted DiMartino in painting backgrounds and cels for the latter's student film. DiMartino and Konietzko moved to Los Angeles in 1996 and 1998 respectively to pursue careers in the animation industry. In between jobs, DiMartino animated a short titled Atomic Love that he pitched as a TV series, but was unsuccessful due to the amount of robot-based animated series already in development. During Konietzko's stint as an art director on Invader Zim, he and DiMartino formulated the idea of pitching a coming-to-age series based on their childhoods, but were too busy with their respective jobs to solidify the concept. When Invader Zim was abruptly canceled in January 2002, Konietzko declared to DiMartino his resolution to get their idea made at all costs.By this time, Konietzko had established a good relationship with Nickelodeon head of development Eric Coleman, who was interested in the prospect of Konietzko creating and pitching his own show. Upon the end of his job on Invader Zim, Konietzko met with Coleman, introduced him to DiMartino and discussed their intent to create a series that held heart and integrity while meeting the network's commercial requirements. Although their meeting went well, Coleman revealed that the network was not looking for coming-of-age stories based on human characters. He added that the network was following the success of the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter film series and was thus searching for non-violent action and adventure concepts with an emphasis on legends and lore. Lastly, he established that the show would require the point-of-view of either a kid hero or a non-human character, emphasizing that middle-aged human protagonists would be off-brand for Nickelodeon. Konietzko concluded the meeting with the promise of a pitch along those directives within a month.
DiMartino and Konietzko indiscriminately laid out their conceptual sketches in their effort to establish a new idea. Among them was a sketch that Konietzko created during his time on Invader Zim, which featured a robot cyclops monkey with an arrow on his head and holding a staff, a balding middle-aged man in a futuristic outfit, and a bipedal polar bear-dog hybrid. Konietzko cited Cowboy Bebop as the sketch's primary influence, describing the sketch as a "half-baked" attempt at a similar science fiction adventure concept. Recalling Coleman's advice against middle-aged main characters, Konietzko redrew the human character as a boy, but retained his baldness and transferred the robot's staff and arrow to him. After adding the new drawing to the collection of sketches, Konietzko began drawing other fanciful animal hybrids, which culminated in a drawing of a good-natured and nomadic "Huck Finnesque" boy herding a group of flying bison-manatee hybrids. The sketch was influenced by the works of renowned anime film director Hayao Miyazaki, of whom Konietzko and DiMartino were fans.
DiMartino drew inspiration for what would become the Southern Water Tribe from a documentary on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, and he pitched Konietzko the idea of a group of people similarly trapped in the South Pole. Two weeks after their meeting with Coleman, Konietzko was suddenly inspired by DiMartino's idea and formulated a concept of a group of children in the South Pole who were terrorized by "fire people" and rescued by the young nomad from his earlier drawing. Konietzko and DiMartino reconvened that evening and began developing the series' setting over the next two weeks. Although DiMartino and Konietzko were themselves fans of the two successful British fantasy series that Nickelodeon sought to emulate, the pair chose to differentiate their own series by inserting influences from Asian cultures and philosophies, traditional martial arts, yoga, anime, and Hong Kong cinema. The co-creators successfully pitched the concept to Coleman with early sketches of Aang, Katara, and Sokka, three color images depicting the desired action, adventure, and magic aspects, and a description of the series' characters, setting and full story arc. The series was introduced to the public in a teaser reel at Comic-Con in July 2004, and premiered on February 21, 2005.
According to head writer Aaron Ehasz, Konietzko and DiMartino originally envisioned the series as three seasons long. However, Nickelodeon asked Ehasz about his ideas for a potential fourth season, which he later discussed with both Konietzko and DiMartino. Ehasz believed that a fourth season would be created, but this plan was interrupted when Konietzko and DiMartino decided to focus on assisting M. Night Shyamalan as executive producers for The Last Airbender film. Ehasz claims that Shyamalan insisted they create a fourth season, but Konietzko and DiMartino wanted to work on the live-action film and reverted to the original three-season plan. Konietzko and DiMartino have denied Ehasz's statements, asserting that a fourth season was never considered by them or Nickelodeon. Shyamalan has made comments that align with Ehasz's, such as acknowledging uncertainty at the time about whether the series would conclude after three seasons. He also mentioned that while he was supportive of the co-creators continuing the animated series beyond three seasons, he refused to sign on for the live-action adaptation if that happened because he wanted to direct a trilogy.