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Forum - View topicHow Avatar: The Last Airbender Made Me A Late Bloomer Anime Fan
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InfiniteNothingness
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So reject flattened live action, return to the vibrant cartoon of yesteryear, huh?
More seriously, I do always enjoy reading accounts of people's coming into the fandom and embracing being a fan. Even more so when there's a nod to the silliness of shame and trying to stake claims towards being more "respectable" than that other guy, over something meant to spark joy. Also amusing to me how despite being a fan for longer, I actually still need to get to Fullmetal Alchemist; truly the world of anime is unfathomably massive. |
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BadNewsBlues
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Don’t feel too bad I’ve never watched the entirety of the original Gundam (thank CN for that), have never seen the entirety of the original Fist Of The North Star anime (which is to blame on either manga entertainment or Showtime), have tried to get into the Saint Seiya anime’s but don’t know the exact order I should start in, and have a shit ton of anime in my CrunchyRoll queue some of which I believe they’ve lost the licenses too. |
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Turtleboy76
Posts: 168 |
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Saint Seiya is a little more digestible these days. Sentai a few years back were the first to ever dub and widely release the original series of 114 episodes. After that the next canon episodes to watch are the Hades arc episodes; however, no official release exists for those (yet). After that the only rough canon anime to watch is the heavens chapter, but even that is pretty hit or miss. Saint Seiya Omega, the golden saints series, Lost Canvas are all expandable universe sequels but arent technically canon. The manga continuation; Next Dimension is close to being completed and it may get adapted one day, but thats the true continuation and conclusion to the main timeline. Hope that maybe helps. |
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juaifan
Posts: 154 |
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I didn't really care for Avatar much back in the day. I felt it was Baby's First Shounen with the very simple writing with low-stakes action scenes with no weight or consequence due to network limitations, and an ending that felt like a cop-out. I'm a bit more receptive to it these days, perhaps because so much of modern animation is just... not great. In addition to all the since-then attempts are reviving it and trying to make it a franchise haven't been good. I suppose I should not have been comparing Avatar to shows like One Piece or Naruto back then and instead to other western cartoons. It's much more favorable when you put it up there with Justice League and Wakfu as some of the best stuff to come out of the west, although to be fair it was the fans that kept comparing it to anime and insisting it wasn't a cartoon.
It's also a bit odd to think that something like Avatar is now one of those shows that fall into the "couldn't be made today" category - at least as far as the live-action Netflix version's handling of certain characters and topics would leave us to be believed. It was never a show I would ever consider being 'too edgy' by any stretch of the definition, but everything is relative I suppose. |
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Cho_Desu
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Find it amusing that the author went from The Last Airbender straight to Neon Genesis Evangelion. NGE always gets recommended to newcomers (and always has, ever since it first released), but it truly feels like just about the most inscrutable thing you could start someone off for anime in general. XP Whatever works, I guess. I suppose Serial Experiments Lain was one of my first anime (though I at least had a few more "approachable" series beforehand, like Trigun and Last Exile).
The Last Airbender was something that was hyped to high heavens while I was in college. I eventually got around to watching it, and found it just okay, probably a good time for kids (and something I could easily see serving as a gateway show to the likes of popular Shounen Jump franchises). The "What a Cartoon" podcast recently did an episode on The Last Airbender, and noted how it indeed was a show that got away with a lot more than you'd expect of a Nickelodeon TV series for kids. For example the episode they covered, The Blind Bandit, ends with a main character (a young child) running away from home, and that being portrayed as the right thing to do. |
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Zimmer
Posts: 201 |
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nyaa
Posts: 160 |
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I've been watching anime for more than 20 years and what got me started was watching Tenchi Muyo, Sailor Moon and a few other series on Toonami in the mid 1990's. I've since long out grown those after watching countless other series of various types. I watch anime to be entertained and if what I'm watching at the time doesn't do that I quickly move on to another series. God knowns there's more than enough of them to choose from.....!
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6363 |
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I don’t think it’s a series that couldn’t be handled in today’s climate. Especially if the live action remake is anything to go by. I see it as a series where depending on what network it airs on would likely be sabotaged either by the network or the writers leading to an unsatisfactory conclusion. Which is more or less how the series ended anyway.
It does. |
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oilers2007
Posts: 130 |
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You might want to give the live-action show a try. It has a more mature feel, but not in a gratuitous way like Castlevania or similar shows that want you to know it's an 'adult' show do. They can actually show violence now, plus some of the changes they made were actually... nice? Ozai's a bit more of a complex character now with more emotions than being a one dimensional evil lord that just sits on his throne waiting for the hero to challenge him with little screen time until then. Although from what I've seen some people don't particularly like those changes and which it was more lighthearted and straightforward like the cartoon was. Not all the changes and casting are great and it still has issues, but I find it interesting that most of the complaints focus on stuff like "they cut out classic The Great Divide episode!" which I thought everyone agreed was the worst episode to the point the Ember Island Play episode made fun of it. |
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Top Gun
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It's funny, because having seen my fair share of shonen anime, I'd argue that Avatar has much better character writing than many, if not most of them. It deftly handles some very weighty topics for a show aimed at its demographic: The crippling pressure that can come with outside expectations. The inherent struggle in dealing with past trauma. The desire for a peaceful resolution in a situation where everyone is demanding violence. And it does all of this so well that the characters going through it feel like fleshed-out, living people. I think that's what its fanbase loves the most about it. One modern shonen that I think compares favorably to it is My Hero Academia, which does a good job covering similar themes. (Hell, Zuko and Shoto Todoroki have a scary amount in common, only Zuko's garbage dad didn't get the redemption arc that Shoto's did.) Contrast that with the likes of mega-hit Demon Slayer, which does precisely nothing of interest with the vast majority of its cast. Or Naruto, which spent hundreds of chapters/episodes ham-handedly insisting that Sasuke was a super-interesting character who totally deserved chance after chance, despite acting like an insufferable git the entire time. I'd rank Avatar well above the likes of either of those in a heartbeat. (From everything I've heard, this Netflix live-action attempt is just shy of a trainwreck in that its creative team has publicly admitted they were trying very hard to make a Game of Thrones-esque production. Out of Avatar. Just about the most non-GoT thing you could imagine. Tell me that doesn't reek of meddling by some know-nothing stuffed-shirt executive.) The column itself made me smile, because I had a similar experience with getting initially turned off to anime, only to stumble across it in another context years later. I watched the first bit of Pokemon back in the day like just about everyone else on the planet, but that was mostly despite "those weird Japanese parts," not because of them. I probably caught a couple of random offerings on the old afternoon Toonami block, but what pushed me away was, of all things, DBZ. A bunch of freaky-looking characters spending most of an episode standing around yelling at the top of their lungs...it had just about every element in it that confirmed my vague negative stereotypes about anime, and so I steered clear afterwards. (Kind of amusing in retrospect, considering it's easily THE biggest gateway anime ever for international audiences.) I kept those bad associations all the way up until I decided to watch [adult swim] on a random Saturday night in college, and stumbled across a whole world of shows with incredible visuals and music and storytelling and, well, pretty much everything. I haven't looked back since. |
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King Chicken
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Well, the live-action writers did say they changed out a few things to fit with the times. Sokka's sexism, the Aang and Katara romance, the Iroh taking advantage of a paralyzed June thing. I found it a bit funny they reversed the Iroh/June dynamic so June is the one who hits on him now. Also the fact almost all the OG VAs were white and some of them have gone on record mentioning they're not returning for any future animated stories set in the original series universe due to that. It is true the live-action show has more violence compared to the cartoon but that's probably more of a "violence good, sex bad" thing. Seeing Firebenders finally burning people alive is fine, but the age gap between Aang and Katara was a bit too controversial. |
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InfiniteNothingness
Posts: 200 |
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Haha, right? At least for me, the backlog never ends. Even if purely thinking of the classics and long since forgotten. That's hardly a bad thing though! (Mostly...)
Exactly where I'm at. Can be so incredibly refreshing, too: So many snapshots into a time where anime was truly from a different era, not that we don't obviously still have so many skilled creatives bringing such vibrancy to this landscape. |
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Gray Lensman
Posts: 145 |
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We all have our weird spots with anime that one of us can't get into for one reason or another.
For me the two super-popular ones I can't get into are Cowboy Bebop and Toradora. With Bebop, it's because I started watching because of what a cool badass I was told Spike was, only to see the crew of bounty hunters fail to collect the bounty again and again. Badasses succeed, and these guys never could. I always felt I was sold a bill of goods when watching it, like someone saw an entirely different show than I did. With Toradora, it's because I have picked up a pure hatred of the Hospitalize First, Ask Never style of Tsundere. Who's best girl? The one who tries her hardest to kill the protagonist every episode! I still want to find a show where the overly punchy Tsundere is left sobbing and alone at the end, rather than be rewarded for being the most miserable character in the cast - sometimes even including the actual villains of the show. I think I got to episode 8 before the only person I wanted Taiga to get with was the truck that ushered her into an isekai. My path back into watching anime was when the Sci Fi channel used to run Saturday Anime - Record of Lodoss War, which was catnip for the devoted D&D player that I was at the time. I grew up watching several badly dubbed anime, the 2 Voltron series, Tranzor Z, and even some reruns of G-Force (although that was the name of the team, I think it wasn't title that at the time). I didn't have the network that carried Robotech in my area, I lived in the radio shadow of a mountain between me and the station, and in those days cable was EXPENSIVE in rural areas. The company charged by the foot for how far you were from the closest customer, meaning it would have been a couple thousand dollars for the install, then you can pay for the service! |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6363 |
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I presume you’re being facetious. Cause unless the character is being written by an author whose very very into the character they’re writing. You don’t see stuff like characters who never fail. Not to mention Spike being a badass is hella funny when he gets his ass kicked at least 3 times in the series |
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Everlasting Coconut
 Posts: 316 |
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I relate to this part so much. Back when I was 11-12, I would look at anime screenshots and feel repulsed by it, which is weird considering that when I was little I adored shows like Digimon. There was some serious cognitive dissonance going on, where the anime I watched during my childhood were good but all other anime was bad. I suppose it was a mix of me being hesitant to explore a medium that was so different from what I used to consume, as well as wanting to reject anything that could be considered "nerdy/geeky" out of fear of alienation. Then one day, I looked up "Digimon" on Google to see if any new seasons were ever made, and found out that Digimon Xros Wars had just begun airing. I started watching it, and then slowly but surely started checking out other shows. And here I am now 
Now, I can't really say that Avatar was the show that led me to give anime a try, but it still remains one of my favourite shows ever, if not my absolute favourite overall. It has some of the most beautifully realized characters in fiction, and it's nice to know that it was the gateaway to anime for so many people. Also, just like the author of the article, I need to check out FLCL. I remember the creators of avatar mentioning it in the atla artbook, and I've wanted to watch it ever since then.
The fact that they decided to get rid of Sokka's sexism, which is such an important part of his character arc, or the fact that they decided to ramp up the sense or urgency by not letting Aang and co. goof around and take detours, goes to show you these live action shows don't understand what made the source material great on a fundamental level. They always boast about "fixing" things that were never an issue in the first place. Then again, it's not like we can ask for much, since live action is synonym for death of creativity. Last edited by Everlasting Coconut on Mon Feb 26, 2024 5:17 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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