Avatar: Rewatch- The Boy In the Iceberg

[eastofthemoon]

Alright, started the Avatar the Last Airbender rewatch and here are some random thoughts:

-Ah, 'When the Fire Nation attack' the start of a classic meme for generations

-I feel like it does say something that Katara, and not an unknown person is the narrator for the series, but not sure what? Maybe to show how hopeful she is as a character

-Nice hinting at how strong Katara's bending is going to become later with the breaking of the ice, and also how emotion is tied to bending and probably for the Avatar State for Aang later

-Okay, something I didn't realize until now but Iroh is setting an air element tile on the fire tile. Foreshadowing of Zuko having to work with Aang later on?

-Boy Aang sounds so young in this, showing he really is a kid. Granted, his crush on Katara is clearly established here which again is normal for a kid his age. (I also recall how fleeting they are too, at least normally but that's a rant for later in the series)

-Katara is hero worshiping Aang a lot here, which granted he is the first other bender she met and is FINALLY seeing the legendary air bender from the stories she heard, but it makes sense. Granted, I note that hero worshipping never seem to fully go away either in the show...need to watch the whole thing to be certain on that.

- THey're called 'penguins' when they're clearly 'otter penguins'. Why? The first season had a regular cat, so why not just call them of their mix animal.

-The music in this show is really good.

- The ship they find seems older. Katara says it's been there since 'Gran Gran' was a little girl, but the flashback to this attack in season 3 Gran Gran was a teen at least? The timeline is a bit fuzzy.

-They do hint that Zuko is the antagonist, but not the final villain. He clearly states he is doing this for his honor, and if you know your trope, honorable characters are not 'pure evil' characters. He is doing because he firmly believes this is the honorable thing aka the right thing for him to do, at least for now.

Comments

[gullwhacker]

I have thoughts too!

• "We've been through this before." Iroh is remarkably non-chalant about a giant glowing pillar of light; one wonders how much Spirit World Weirdness he and Zuko have encountered before.
  
• Some of the storytelling is well-framed - the introduction to Zuko, as you said, sets him up as an antagonist but not necessarily a villain. Redemption arc for the Honourable Prince is already a go. On the other hand, Aang's sudden flashback showing exactly how he survived - glowy Avatar Shenanigans Making Ice feels like it gave the game away a little too early - especially after his coy little 'well, I don't know the Avatar, but I know people who know him'.
  
• There's admittedly some Early Installment Characterization Weirdness, and the biggest thing is how Sokka is being spun as 'paranoid' for worrying about Fire Nation attacks. The war is elsewhere - the warriors of the tribe went off to face them in the Earth Kingdom, with few qualms about leaving a single teenager behind to feel like an important 'protector'. Taken at face value, and tied with the spooky Fire Nation ship from literal decades ago, it appears that the Southern Water Tribe hasn't personally seen any attacks from the Fire Nation in a couple of generations.
  
• ...except Katara's mother would beg to differ. This is characterization that probably gets adjusted later, but at this stage that backstory - Katara's near nonchalance at the idea of the Fire Nation attacking - it just doesn't fit.
  
• So let's talk about the Water Tribe. To be blunt, I do not like how they get presented. As shown, they're backwater primitive savages who know nothing about how the world works. As evidence:
  
  
  
  • Sokka's weapons largely seem to be bone, at least at this stage. I could be wrong about Boomerang but that treasure doesn't exist in episode one, and I'm still not sure what that club is. Spear, though? Bone shaft.
    
  • Lack of metalworks is one thing - but there are metal weapons available. Yes, the Fire Nation shipwreck is 'forbidden', but given the lack of bodies to be seen it seems likely that the Water Tribe went cleaning in there at least once - and the armory was readily available. Lots of pointy tools ready for the grabbing - were 'metal weapons' too spooky for the Water Tribe?
    
  • Tent village. Tent village for the home base of the Southern Water Tribe, which has been established there for a long time. If Fire Nation attacks were frequent that'd be one thing, but the story doesn't know what it wants that situation to be. They don't feel nomadic and the area is all kind of frozen, so...what.
    
  • Spirit world. We know that it's a thing, even later in this season, and while not many people are experts (apart from maybe Iroh) generally people have some kind of superstition about it - at least being aware that spirits are a thing. We see later that the Northern Water Tribe literally worships the spirits - which I'll get into when we get that far - but the Southern? Oh hey, the water's glowing. We should do absolutely nothing about that, it's definitely nothing.
    
  • Finally, while this could be kids being kids, I didn't hear many objections to calling Aang's folding wooden staff-glider magic. The whole picture suggests that the Water Tribe is primitive with no merits to make up for it, and this I do not like.
    
  
  
• Bonus round: oh hey, casual sexism. I note with curiousity that Katara didn't get a paddle for the two-person canoe trip, and that she was literally the only person asked to do chores. Hard to blame her for blowing up.
  

Overall I feel like the episode was a good introduction to the series - but it's shaky in bits and there's some parts of the worldbuilding that makes me flinch.

[eastofthemoon]

Yyeeaahhh. I mean it's fair that they didn't have a solid plan for the later seasons, especially given there's solid evidence they were planning on four books instead of just three, but other animated shows are more solid and consistent with their character traits and history then this is. (Gravity Falls, She-Ra, heck even Gargoyles which was before ATLA).
Also, the fact that the tribe didn't take the weapons from the ship is weird. If humans are met with something from an enemy they haven't seen before history as proven they will mostly try to learn about said weapon/technology for themselves to use.
Also, if the Water Tribe was hit constantly by attacks of the Fire Nation that would better explain their tent like state, but it's literal years between attacks. I mean possible that last attack hit them like a truck and really cripple them, but if that was the case they show doesn't show that in the flash backs later on. Just the worst thing that happened was Katara's mother getting killed.

[gullwhacker]

I had some thoughts in the shower, and making it clear that their current settlement is a hiding spot while the warriors are away might have helped. Maybe penguin-sledding leads to the ruins of what was once a more...fortified location.

I mean for Tui and La's sake, the village doesn't even have access to trees to make boats out of! How is this any kind of civilization? Are canoes 'lost technology' now?