Caught this with my little one this past weekend. Better than a lot of the anime on American TV, but I was a bit confused about several plot points. have not been able to find a good summary.
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The Avatar is supposed to be able to use all of the elements…but this kid is apparently only able to use Air. Did I miss something/
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How exactly do the fire nation folks manage to take out everyone else? Wouldn’t all of the powers be roughly equal? It appears that there are no shortage of ‘benders’ for any element.
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In at least the initial episode, he displayed the ability to use all of the elements. He becomes the Avatar, complete with glowing eyes, and gets very powerful. Unfortunately, he can’t sustain it for very long. Most of the time, he’s just Ang, an airbender.
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I think it has to do with the dependency of the Earth and Water folks on having quantities of their element there to bend. In the most recent episode, all of the earthbenders were imprisoned on a drilling rig (or something) out at sea, made entirely of metal. Since metal is not earth (which I think is dumb, but oh well) they had nothing to bend. Firebenders, on the other hand, are able to produce fire from nothing. So once they took out the airbenders (and I have no idea how they were able to do that, but they apparently managed it), they had a tactical advantage over the other folks.
My kids like it, and the animation is good. I’m kind of disappointed with it – the characters are two-dimensional and the plot is simplistic. I like my animation with a little more subtext. It doesn’t have to be **Noir **or even Trigun, but I would like a bit of depth.
Aw, give it some time to get complicated. It’s only been a few episodes so far, and it’s on Nick for pete’s sake.
My kid and I love this show. So far as I remember, they are headed for the North Pole to learn waterbending. Sokka and Katara (she’s the waterbender) are from a small settlement at the South Pole. I guess an ice-covered island would have plenty of water around…
I’ll second the idea about the firebenders being able to produce fire from nothing. That, and they’re the villains. They conquered because they went a-conquering, and they were mean, warlike types. Fire=war, get it? The airbenders seem like a bunch of Tibetan monks, after all. They seem to have developed a “spiritual” power. The waterbenders we’ve seen so far are small tribes, who use waterbending for fishing. The earthbenders look like engineers. I would expect everyone to get together to fight off the Fire Nation (behind Aang, of course) at the end of the series.
Just making guesses, of course. I don’t know any more about what’s coming up than any other viewer does. And that’s why I’m watching it–it’s actually something original. Beats watching one more show about a Misunderstood Tween with Perfect Skin Facing the Problems of Preadolesence.
By the way, it’s not anime–it’s produced by Nickelodeon, in Burbank. Some of the animation is farmed out to a Korean company, but the same is true of “The Simpsons.”
(Please feel free to jump in and correct any mistakes. I am operating off my crappy memory, and it’s pretty late right now.)
Wow, more people watching then I would have though. Personly, I have never seen it, thaugh I am a fan Of “Hey Arnold”, and “My Life As A Teenage Robot”
Before I saw so many responces I was going to recomend that the OPer go to The Toon Zone Forums, but never mind.