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Avatar: The Legend of Korra.

What's wrong with the female characters being as important and fleshed out as the male characters?

Did you even watch this series? How about Zuko's character arc over the three seasons? The characters in Avatar are more than the typical caricatures in the shonen shows you mentioned. Not to mention this series actually ended within three seasons. A feat even Naruto has not managed. I can only listen to that kid say his "dattebayo" or "Believe it" so many times. I also can't think of any strong female leads in either Naruto or DBZ.

DBZ is so over the top it's hilarious. Fights going on for several episodes, and they still needed to "power up". At least the animation is very consistent in Avatar as compared to Naruto. Those shows don't nearly have the same depth as Avatar.

So, I have to ask again, did you even watch the entire series?

On another note, the creators never said they were envious of shows like Naruto. They apparently forced the staff to buy and watch every episode of FLCL. Other anime that were influential on Avatar were Miyazaki's films and Cowboy Bebop. Let's not give Naruto that much credit.

There's nothing wrong with that. I love the female characters and all but what I am saying here is that they shouldn't rush the development way too quickly and should occur naturally as time goes on.

Would you say that the series should have had more casualties during those battles? I felt that Season 3 should have been a lot more darker than it should have. Instead they just wasted time on lighthearted filler in some of those instances.

And Azula pretty much was perfect until the series final episode where she randomly broke down, which came off more as a plot device since it happened so suddenly.

What we do know of Toph is not much. They never explore the thing with her parents much. There's a season 3 episode about it, but it's kind of filler and doesn't amount to much other than 'Toph is homesick, despite showing no concern for her family outside of this episode'

Mai and Ty Lee, well, we got one line about their personalities in a filler Beach episode. Then they get arrested and we never hear from them again for the rest of the series. I don't have much opinion on them because we don't see them do a whole lot or know really much about them... but I care more about them as characters than their power levels, and their characters were definately lacking for me.

I guess they're strong (minus Mai not being able to hit anyone with knives, I guess),

Yue's the same way, we know her for like two episodes (which, by the way, she falls in love with Sokka because, I don't know, he's a main character I guess), so it comes off again as a plot device when she needs to revive the moon spirit.

Same with Ursa, the whole business with her was so unclear and poorly written; I actually thought she offered to kill herself in Zuko's place until they started talking like she was alive and Zuko had to find her, and my interpretation was too violent.

The whole thing with her was very poorly done, especially the lack of resolution about it.

Some of those examples in general seem really weak arguments. Suki fighting Azula? How was that an example of her character? That wasn't even shown since they cut away from the fight, and we don't even see Suki again until like twenty episodes later.

Suki in general felt very underused and underdeveloped (by the way, the next time we see her she's a master martial artists and takes down legions of soldiers by herself: I really think this show substituted personality for physical strength too much)

Katara fighting Zuko in the North Pole also had no real weight for me, which is probably a good example since she's fighting to protect Aang similar to the example I gave. That scene was nowhere near as powerful or endearing as Sakura's to me. Maybe it was the writing, or the censorship (because obviously no one was going to get hurt there; and we don't see just how much pain Katara is willing to go through for Aang), and at best we saw Katara panting because she was tired, not hurt, so it didn't seem as powerful.

I think because we see Sakura actually want to better herself to pick up the slack of her team from the first time they actually fight (against the Mist Ninja) so it's an extension of her character, so her last stand had more impact than Katara who stood up because, well, she needed to fight the villain.

She had no speech about how she wanted to be useful and how Aang was always saving her. It was just 'you're bad, I'm good, let's fight'.

The fact you're using June makes me think you really value physical/fighting strength over character (since she was a one-shot character, with a cameo in the final episode), and it's fine if you do, but I don't.

I think it falls too much into the Hollywood trap of [physically] strong female character. Maybe it was the writing, or the censorship, but the girls in Avatar just didn't do much for me. They never got to delve into any truly deep or motivational themes for me.

And in Japanese media we have weak female characters that pander after the "handsome" male protagonist and generally always fail. Hurray for generalizations!

It's kind of interesting you mention character caricatures, because Zuko is just a watered down Vegeta at the end of the day. They even directly "borrow" one of Vegeta's iconic scenes of him yelling up at a storm about how it was his destiny to become a Super Saiyan. Zuko's yelling about his destiny and learning to bend lightning. It's pretty much scene-for-scene.

Not to mention Aang is pretty much just Son Goku.

Dragonball is the granddaddy of all shounen, and without it we wouldn't be here today. It may not be as complex compared to recent day shounen, but it set the groundwork and made a lot of the tropes Avatar uses. The fact Avatar borrows a lot from it should tell us something.

Konoha was devastated by the Sand/Sound invasion, Central City was devastated by the Briggs/Mustang/Ed gang invasion, but Ba Sing Sei and the Fire Nation Capital were just kind of, quietly taken over. No deaths, no real complex conflict, just sort of happen. One thing I loved was seeing all the inner workings and plotting that came with war and invading a city. The Sound allying with the Sand ninjas, using the Chunin exams to take over, with spies like Kabuto, and a huge conspiracy taking foot. In FMA, I loved Olivier going from Briggs to infiltrating the Fuhrer's cabinet and her grand plan of kicking her family out of her home as a ploy to build tanks inside the city. Plus Mustang using the radio and propaganda to make himself look like the good guy was awesome. In Avatar, the most strategy they ever employed was 'invade on a day the sun was blocked and charge in the main gates'. Nothing really clever or interesting.

And I'm not one to relish in death and blood, but seeing soldiers die in those two invasions does add impact. Every Briggs soldier that died had weight and meaning, like when they defended those stairs at the cost of their own lives. The people who died during the Konoha invasion also helped add weight; not to mention the Hokage himself. Avatar's world never felt like they were in a war. Having huge invasions where not a single person dies really kills the mood and takes you out of the experience; especially if they go out of their way to show you someone didn't die (like jumping off a ship before it explodes)

It just seems they went into depth a lot more in those shounen anime. We don't even get to see how the Fire Nation copes with a new leader, despite most of its citizens were supporting the war (as seen in The Deserter, Ember Island Players, and other episodes) Sure, Iroh and a few others didn't, but they're in the minority. We don't see how Ozai's cabinet feels about Zuko, and honestly I expect Zuko to be assassinated within a few days of taking over, but instead they show us people drinking tea and everything is perfectly fine and the Fire Nation had a huge change of heart, despite all the propaganda showing they want the other nations to burn.

Plus the fights and villains were more interesting. Azula and Ozai were kind of boring and only used fire/lightning, Naruto and other shounen tend to have a lot more varied villains with different powers and abilities to keep things fresh.

I already realized that compared to other shonen shows like Fullmetal Alchemist or Naruto, the show feels very tame compared to them and whether or not it is a compliment is left debatable.

We never really learn too much about the girls in Avatar

What? She was shown to be breaking down following the betrayal of her friends.

And you could say that in Naruto, Sakura was never in any danger of dying.

I genuinely like June, because I find her lines to be amusing.

What more do you want to know? Seriously. The histories of those characters are fully explained and explored.

Oh, A:TLA has its faults. The end of the series was kinda anticlimatic and rushed, and a few episodes midseason from season 1 were kinda boring, but overall I thought the series was strong. I think what sold me on it were the characters - I liked a good majority of the cast (specifically Toph, Sokka, Zuko and Iroh) and liked how each one had their own personality and didn't feel like another cookie cutter stamp out. I liked how characters changed during the course of the story and were affected by their situations, some more radically than others. I liked how culture played a big issue in the series and how the culture was shaped according to the elements they bended, and, on a smaller level, how people's personalities were shaped by the elements they bended.

I also loved the animation and how fluid it was. It made the fight scenes that much better, especially when you could see the differences in style and techniques between the benders. The show’s creators based each Bending style on a style of real-world martial art, leading to visual differences in the techniques used by Waterbenders (tai chi chuan), Earthbenders (Hung Ga kung fu, for the most part), Firebenders (Northern Shaolin kung fu) and Airbenders (baguazhang). I thought the combination of martial arts with elemental bending was pretty cool and fun to watch.

Furthermore, I like all of the elements the series drew from Asian culture. It borrowed a lot from Asian art and mythology to create the universe. In the end, I thought a lot of thought and effort went behind the series, and that they did a good job blending the styles of anime and US western cartoons. Was there anything really original about the series? Not really, but how they blended everything together and developed the storyline and the characters was very well done. And the fighting looks awesome. I give props where it's due and A:TLA is a really well-constructed series.

And as for it being a "watered down shounen anime", at the risk of sounding like an annoying fangirl, I'm going to disagree. If I were to compare it to a shounen series, I'd compare it to FMA. The world of FMA is based around laws and logic that we can recognize, and Avatar is the same. I mean even just something as simple as the concept of Water Benders being capable of bloodbending (technically bending the fluids within one's body, but it's referred to as bloodbending) because 70% of the body is composed of water. In several shounen series, it feels like the possibilities for attacks are limitless and the amount of power behind attacks are limitless, and as such, *** pulls and godhax and constant power-ups happen. Avatar stays within its limits and amount of power-ups... in fact, some characters win battles not because they're stronger but because they're innovative and strategists. FMA also has a big cast of characters and does a good job at giving most of them some spotlight and developing them (some more than others); Avatar is the same. FMA has some strong, kickass female characters that actually DO something and contribute to the group and can fight on par with the guys; Avatar is the same.

Watch the first twenty episodes again. Is there one spot—one thing Sokka says or one thing Sokka does—that isn't designed to set him up for a sock in the face? His instincts are 100% wrong—an entire episode is built around his bad instincts, and the other characters snigger ceaselessly over them. He almost always says exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time, and those few times that he is right he is made to act like a jerk so that someone else can smugly deflate him. The other characters play jokes on him. He is never the hero, and the few times he manages to save someone or contribute to a success, his actions are glossed over in the rush to get to some other plot point. When any other character does something right, countries on the other side of the world celebrate by declaring a national holiday. When Sokka does something right, everyone rolls their eyes.

Here is the brutal truth: Sokka is the designated schmuck, the boob who sets up the ball the other characters can tee off. Everyone else looks wiser, stronger, quicker, smarter, and funnier when they are standing next to him. And that is his only purpose: to make the others look good. The writers could have made Katara and the other characters look good on their own. Instead they chose to make Sokka look bad so the others could look kinda-sorta not-pathetic by comparison.

This is why I accuse the writers of hating him, because this is an utterly ignoble way to treat a character and to write for him. It also reflects no credit on the other characters—on Aang and Katara—that they can only look good because Sokka looks bad. It makes them look contemptible, too.

At this point, certain readers are probably dying to argue that Sokka is meant to grow and evolve over the course of the story, and that he has to start off as this raw moron if he's going to turn into a seasoned and halfway intelligent fighter. But that's a non sequitur. You don't have to make a character a relentless dumb-*** or everyone else's punching bag at the start of your series so he can get better as it goes along. What you do is give him some good, attractive, but irrelevant qualities at the start and then let him acquire other good but needed qualities as the story progresses. But what positive qualities does Sokka start with? You might argue that he starts with bravery and ambition, but the stories don't portray these qualities positively. On the contrary, from the very start they play him as a doltish, cloddish, clueless nimrod.

I've dwelt on Sokka because he's the one whose failure of characterization is most catastrophic. But the others come off almost as badly, mostly because they are stranded by the writers' inability to make layered revelations. Instead of flashing us many of their facets, the writers will build an entire episode around one or another big facet, spotlight it until it smokes under the glare, and then completely drop it after the credits roll. Is Katana jealous of Aang because he's a water prodigy, quicker at picking up the bending art? Why, yes—for one episode. Then the writers drop this promising source of conflict so they can turn Katara herself into a water-bending prodigy by the end of the season. Does Aang develop a serious crush on Katara, so that all their encounters become weird and awkward? Why, yes—for one episode. After that, it's easier to imagine the Sokka-Katara bickery turning into cutely forbidden incestuous puppy love than to picture their sexless little cueball friend feeling anything but a eunuch's tepid affection for a colleague. Meanwhile, what little development Prince Zuko gets is done in a talky-talky episode full of backstory exposition, and with a few moments when he ostentatiously refrains from kicking a dog. (The latter moments are offset by other moments when he chases and kicks two dogs, just so we won't miss the contrast.) Only Uncle Iroh suggests layers and evolves in a believable way; and his evolution feels like the result of writerly neglect as they were busily sucking the life out of their principals.

Watch the first twenty episodes again. Is there one spot—one thing Sokka says or one thing Sokka does—that isn't designed to set him up for a sock in the face? His instincts are 100% wrong—an entire episode is built around his bad instincts, and the other characters snigger ceaselessly over them.