Cultural Inspirations in Avatar: The Last Airbender Book 1 - Water

have you ever had such complicated feelings about whether avatar the last airbender is good cultural representation that every time someone asks you the question it sends you into like a 10-minute philosophical crisis that's me that's happened to me for years now but i'm finally starting to impact my thoughts before i unpack though huge disclaimer everything i'm about to say is strictly personal opinions and other asian or inuit people might feel differently i'm just one perspective and mine is that the question of whether avatar is good cultural representation is a fundamentally unfair one because avatar never set out to represent real life cultures the characters aren't chinese or japanese or inuit they're fire nation water tribe earth kingdom or an air nomad asking if it's authentic representation is like asking whether lord of the rings is authentic rep of european cultures so like it doesn't make sense to put this burden on avatar when it's very explicitly loosely inspired fantasy i think where this debate about authenticity comes from is when some fans put avatar on too high of a pedestal when it comes to representation and that's a detriment to both avatar and the cultures it's inspired by a lot of kids like me loved the show because it had so many familiar elements for us that don't typically appear in western media but if you ask my perspective as a chinese person whether avatar represented my actual culture well i would say no because if i started looking for chinese things i would start finding like japanese or indian stuff in the same places and like that doesn't happen in real life so i guess the deeper question is whether avatar contributes to the sin of conflating asian cultures and contributing to the notion that we're an interchangeable monolith and i would say not when i never claimed it was representing any specific culture like it would be different if it said this story takes place in fantasy ancient china and then had this whole bunch of influences that clearly aren't chinese but it didn't it's also not one of those fantasy works where the european inspired parts are all complex and diverse while the asian inspired part is like one big blob or where the western names are real but the asian ones are just random syllables so i'm cool with avatar as long as the fans don't overly praise avatar in the representation front i'm cool with it but what real-life cultural inspirations did avatar take i'm gonna rewatch the whole series and go on a scavenger hunt for them for fun and also to try and give credit to the cultures that avatar borrowed from and again i'm not any sort of authority these are strictly personal observations and opinions unless it's explicitly taken from an official source i'll make it clear so like this is not a definitive guide remember this and comment if you see any observations you disagree with or you want to add something we can make this a discussion so right away there's a four element system according to the art book it was developed before the asian and inuit influences were decided all the creators brian and mike envisioned in the beginning was that a bunch of water people were in trouble because of attacks by fire people they mentioned in the art book that they did find the five element system that's native to east asia but they eventually chose the four element system over it because the four element system is more universal and easy to understand some people including me have been disappointed that they didn't go with the five elements it's not really criticism though like i'm not taking points off because of this but it just would have been really nice if they could have went there because then it wouldn't be so difficult to explain the system to people like it would have become part of the pop cultural consciousness though of course they couldn't have foreseen how big of an impact this show would have even like over a decade after it's airing but in case you don't know much about the five element system let me explain it here it's wood fire earth metal and water instead and they're not really elements in the sense that they're the fundamental building blocks of the world they're more like metaphors for the forces that interact throughout the universe gonna oversimplify here but wood represents like the nurturing and rising forces fire represents powerful and destructive forces earth represents balancing and stabilizing forces metal represents precise and disciplining forces and water represents flexible and calming forces it gets a lot more complicated than that like they each represent one of the cardinal directions too and then one of the planets and they have their own mythical creature and they have this almost like pokemon type style interaction system where they either like overcome or generate each other so i can see why the avatar producers would think it's too confusing to understand but honestly it's not hard if you grew up with it deeply embedded in your culture i don't think modern east asians give it too much thought on a daily basis we're not going around being like hmm what does the five element system tell me i need to do today but like it's in a lot of random places in our cultures like japan name the days of the week after it so like in japanese tuesday is fire day wednesday is water day and so on also as a sci-fi and fantasy author who uses this system a lot in their stories my life would have been a lot easier if avatar had established this in the cultural consciousness but no we can't have it all you know anyway on to the actual avatar element system in the title cards they're each accompanied by a trait that generalizes their nation water is kindness earth is strength fire is passion and air is harmony when they show the map it says the many mighty powers divided in four up top i don't know if this was intentional but it reminds me a lot of the warring states period of chinese history which is like two thousand and five hundred years ago where the seven warring states were called zhang washington the seven mighty powers of the warring states then the bottom says something like all under heaven are pacified by one this is a spin on a saying from a really old chinese text and this is probably a reference to the avatar and the avatar production staff hires an actual master chinese calligrapher so it's all legit and the fire nation backstory specifically reminds me of how the warring states ended when the chin state conquered the other six and created china imperial japan might have been a more direct inspiration for the fire nation but at some point late in the production the fire nation aesthetic was changed to be more chinese probably to distance itself from imperial japan which did cause a lot of like recent trauma still remembered by people alive so like that would not have been good there's like this stereotypical view of chinese dynasties is all very confusion and scholarly and stuff and the qin dynasty was definitely not that the qin dynasty was like china's emo grunge phase their national clothing colors were red and black and they were all about like strict laws and going off to war and they were almost like an mmo like world of warcraft they had a whole system of 20 ranks and then you ascended through the ranks by cutting off the heads of your enemies and turning them in i'll do a video on them someday because they break all sorts of stereotypes about imperial china despite creating it and then we're introduced to the concept of a reincarnating avatar this is taken from hinduism where certain deities are believed to incarnate on earth lifetime after lifetime the chinese subtitles for this show up top literally means the deity who descends upon the world cool right and then episode 1 officially begins oh man when we first see katara waterbending saka is very dismissive of it to which she insists that it's an art form not magic i think the distinction matters to her because magic implies a very like willy-nilly thing that's not well understood but bending is based on martial arts so they do in fact have a whole system of techniques that you can't learn and water bending in particular is based on tai chi which is the perfect choice because tai chi is all about soft and flowing movements and it's done mostly for health benefits in china you could constantly see grandmas and grandpas just like doing tai chi in a park or something and according to the art book this idea of adding like a fun supernatural element to martial arts is inspired by steven chow movies like shaolin soccer a martial art consultant called sifu kisu was the one who assigned a specific martial art to each element i'll talk more about them as we see more bending then i love how we're immediately introduced to saka's character arc where he starts off with like a hefty serving of annoying misogyny and toxic masculinity and this probably comes from him being like the oldest dude left in his tribe so he feels like he has to overcompensate and speaking of overcompensating zuko's here god isn't it so weird to see his season 1 look again this hairstyle of his is influenced by samurai and imperial japanese nobility who shave their heads in interesting ways but in universe there's actually like a new explanation in the rise of kiyoshi a novel by fce about kiyoshi's life and it's considered canon to the avatar universe it's stated that if you lose an agni kai and you're spared by your opponent you have to shave all of your hair except the top knot part so this is retroactively a hairstyle of shame that zuko wears everywhere i think uncle iro just has male pattern baldness though but man he is such a good foil for zuko i really appreciated how they did make the fire nation this generic like evil to be defeated but a whole distinct culture with its own complexities i really like my complex villains you know also random fact from the art book aang wasn't frozen solid in the iceberg but he was hovering in a sphere of energy the air nomads are heavily inspired by tibetan culture and the monks there wear a lot of orange yellow and red so that's probably why the aeronomins are color coded this way also aang's name may only sound like one syllable but they actually picked two chinese characters to represent it peace and soaring very fitting one gripe people had with a live action movie is that they pronounced his name ang there that is actually how you pronounce his name in mandarin chinese but i'm not going to be too nitpicky with the names in this show nor am i going to like read too much into them because they're not technically supposed to reflect real asian names even when they sometimes do like tao another fun fact from the art book is that the avatar world was heavily influenced by miyazaki films like spirited way and my neighbor totoro this influence is obvious when it comes to stuff like appa he's so cute i want a plushie of him i can't wait to be emotionally destroyed whenever we watch book two meanwhile zuko is yelling about his honor this is influenced by the perception that honor is a big deal in asian cultures but i think it gets overused in asian-inspired media made in the west thankfully zuko's character ends up being more complex than the singular motivation and then ang wakes up in the southern water tribe according to the art book the look of the tribe is inspired by the movie adenardra the fast runner which depicted life in a small inuit tribe there's an amazing thread on twitter by ruth dan an inuit person that speaks more about the inspiration avatar took from inuit cultures plural they're not a monolith like inspirations such as katara's hair loopies and a lot of water tribe names i'll link the thread in the description below meanwhile zuku is practicing firebending firebending is based on northern xiaoling martial arts which have a lot of fast strikes and aggressive kicks uncle iro tells zuku that his fire comes from the breath which is probably a nod to the concept of chi in chinese culture chi is literally translated as air or breath though it's more of a vital energy that flows through all things qi can also be divided into subtypes according to the five element system like fire chi is a thing it's believed to give you mouth ulcers if your fire chi is too imbalanced so like zuko probably gets a lot of ulcers in his mouth in this penguin sledding scene it's pretty sad that qatar considers herself an adult even though she's only 14. it speaks to how the war has disrupted life in her tribe so much that she feels like she has to take up all these extra responsibilities when she and and get into the abandoned fire nation ship there are a lot of weapons modeled after ancient chinese ones there's like a crescent moon sword at the very left which is most popularly associated with guanyu in romance of the three kingdoms though there is debate on whether he actually had a weapon like this there's also achi which is like a combo spear and polax these have many variations and this is only one of them and there's also a pull down um a blade weapon attached to a long pole it's reportedly used to cut the legs of horses during battle i'm not a military nerd at all though so forgive me if i got any of these wrong in the next episode when zuko's ship gets to the southern water tribe saka puts on war paint i don't think this particular look is inspired by any particular culture official sources say that it's just meant to look like a wolf and serve as camouflage as for the fire nation armor the artbook says that it was originally inspired by samurai armor but they had to streamline the details when actually animating it i have to say though having your troops wear skull masks is a bit on the nose though i guess the fire nation is into that grunge aesthetic oh and random fun trivia here it's revealed in the quora comics turf wars that the arab matters were very open-minded and accepting when it comes to relationships and sexuality so like queer airbenders didn't even have to have like a whole coming out process the fire nation was really homophobic on the sosan though and here the pottery in the background is probably based on an ancient chinese vessel called a good which were basically clay pots with three hollow legs to conduct heat and cook porridge quickly it's so obscure that i'm pretty sure that the production team just saw it in the chinese drama somewhere and then added it in this is the thing to keep in mind about these influences there were so many artists who worked on this that it's impossible to really tell who got inspiration from what i have a hard time imagining some background artist is like specifically googling 3 000 year old chinese pottery for one shot so like sometimes it really isn't that deep when aang fights zuko he demonstrates how airbending is based on bhagwajang or a trigram pom it's a martial art that uses a lot of evasive circular movements to dodge your opponent's attacks and lure them into exposing their weaknesses this is why you see ang swiveling behind people a lot and then we go to episode three do you guys even know how it feels to have your only name representation in the west be this guy fun fact though he's voiced by jason isaacs also known as lucious malfoy what so the gang gets to this other air temple which is built on the potala mountain range this is probably named after the patala palace in tibet which by extension is named after mount puttalaka um i'm probably pronouncing that wrong a mystic mountain in buddhism and according to the art book air temples were for ceremonies festivals and training apprentice monks while adult airbenders are just out there vibing all over the world but oh my god i'm not ready to experience this episode again i swear i was like traumatized by this episode as a kid i really appreciate how deep the world builder goes in avatar though like just for one scene they created and animated this whole air ball game but hold on how was saka supposed to play fairly he can't bend anything i'm pretty devastated by the slow build-up to aang realizing the airbender genocide really did happen though i mean man this show really went there monk gyatso is named after the second name that all dalai lamas except the first one had it means ocean and tibetan and guess what the current dalai lama's name is tenzin gyatso no wonder this show never aired in mainland china then momo is here the avatar extras say that flying lemurs were originally trained by the air nomads to fetch their staffs that's cute also apparently there was almost an episode about momo being monk yatto's reincarnation alright okay meanwhile zukul and zhao get into a spat and challenge each other to an agnikai agni means fire in sanskrit and kai means meeting in japanese clearly when firebenders go fight me one-on-one they mean it and then oh god here it comes no i kid you not i was legitimately like traumatized by this scene as a child i had to straight up close the episode and hide for aang though it sent him into the avatar state and a bunch of stuff starts glowing across the four nations the tower in the fire nation is explicitly based on the yellow crane tower wuhan china if you make a virus joke i swear i'm gonna anyway zuko trounces down in the agnikai which surprised me i don't know why i expected him to lose and then katara calms aang down by telling him that she and saka are his new family man man it really is a lot for like a 12 year old kid to process i mean from his perspective his whole culture was still alive and vibrant a few days ago it's amazing that he can still look on the bright side he decides to take momo as his new pet momo means peach in japanese so he might be holding a peach here or maybe like ang just based it on his face shape and ah i really love this final shot which shows that like despite aang cheering up on the surface he's not really over what happened to his people and that's realistic i mean he can't possibly get over something like that that fast and then of course like later on we get a whole episode about it which is great we'll talk about it when we get there and then episode four in this shot aside from more ancient chinese food vessels there are a pair of crescent moon blades hanging on the wall they're also known as deer horn knives this is another kind of ancient chinese weapon and interestingly it's associated with bhagwajang which is what airbending is based on also for those of you who read daughter of smoke and bone this is karu's signature weapon in this episode we're introduced to the kiyoshi warriors who are heavily influenced by japanese culture this speaks to the internal diversity even among the earth kingdom i've seen people say that the earth kingdom is strictly based on ming and qing dynasty china this is not true like none of the nations strictly correspond to a real culture even airbenders have more than just tibetan influence and by the way unagi is japanese for freshwater eel or if you watched friends a state of total awareness that's not real don't be a clown like ross and the character on the kyoshi warriors sleeve is red kill in japanese meaning capital and their face paid is heavily inspired by geisha and kabuki face paint though in universe it references the face paint kiyoshi war when she was part of a criminal organization called the flying opera company this is revealed in the kiyoshi novels this organization was created by kyoshi's criminal parents an earthbender thief named hark and a renegade air nun called jessa literally jesso was a young airbending master before she met hark and realized that you know what she liked the criminal life better and then she tattooed snakes over her airbender tattoos and so her parents disguised themselves as a theater trope to keep on the down low and they painted their faces like picking opera actors this sequence this is randomly one of my favorites in the entire show it's just such good world building like the way it showed how food actually gets to the character's table and how gossip can spread along the supply chain oh it's like it's so effective and it's like oh my god oh my god the world building of the show later the food the kyoshi islanders give to team avatar there are a few that look like japanese snacks like vaguely not like entirely accurately but vaguely like the discs on the left are probably based on dolayaki which is like pancakes filled with red bean filling and then the ones below could be norimaki rice crackers and then the flower shaped things could be monika also a pastry filled with bean paste if you haven't had any of these i highly recommend trying them japanese snacks so good so when saka goes to attempt to flex in front of the kyoshi warriors they're practicing with metal fans based on real war fans used in japanese martial arts in the kiyoshi novels though it's revealed that they were first created by kyoshi's mom jessa because like after she turned into a criminal i guess she had more like worldly attachments so her air bending ended up getting really weakened so she created these fans to supplement her fighting also there's a katana in the background i don't think i need to explain that to you weebs out there here avatar extras say this little girl coco was named after kyoshi's daughter who governed the island after she died and coincidentally it's also the name of my cat though my cat is named after the mongol princess kokuchin instead then when the fire nation attacks everything changed no i mean and gets very angsty this moment was really well done because even though he won the fight aang didn't feel any spark of joy or pride at all his expression immediately just wilted this town treated him so well and was so excited to have him yet because of him it was destroyed so i like how they explored the instant fame aspect of being the avatar that would appeal to a young kid but also the realism of getting dragged into a war and having a bunch of responsibilities being famous is uh not as fun as it seems like trust me also i really like this part where asaka apologizes to suki for treating her like a girl instead of a warrior but sookie says that she may be a warrior but she's a girl too see i don't really vibe with when feminist messages go in the direction of rejecting feminine things like makeup and fashion altogether when a strong female protagonist demonstrates how strong she is by scoffing at other girls who only have makeup and boys on their minds i don't think this is the way to go it's just a different breed of misogyny actually it's like saying women only deserve respect if they distance themselves from what people usually think of women from like those traditional feminine things and that not only further belittles those feminine things it continues to put stereotypically masculine qualities on a pedestal and that's how we get nonsense like boys getting beat up for wearing dresses women aren't the only people who have feminine traits come on belittling feminine traits it's just it hurts everybody anyway mini rant but i appreciate the diversity of female characters in avatar it's not just one type that's portrayed as respectable like qatar is awesome and she uses seaweed lotion for his skin and finally appreciation for aang dunking on zuko yet again episode 5 the king of omashu here we can see the earth kingdom symbol which is based on bamiyan coins the first standardized coinage of imperial china they were created in the qin kingdom and they're round on the outside to represent the heavens and square on the inside to represent the earth they're pretty iconic and we also have the first appearance of my cabbages guy the art book says that him as a recurring gag character was inspired by those three old guys and cowboy bebop that would just randomly show up on a bunch of different planets once again omashu demonstrates an incredible level of world building in the avatar universe they didn't have to go this hard on the details but they did then we meet king boomi his headdress is generally something worn in chinese operas by very fierce characters like lubu from romance of the three kingdoms or songkong the monkey king from journey to the west bumi then tricks aang into airbending to confirm that he is indeed an airbender as if the orange and yellow robes and the tattoos didn't make it clear enough here if aang had slid a few more centimeters down he really would have been the last airbender the final one then when aang is picking between the fighters and thinks he's so clever for picking boomi it reminds me of that scene in kung fu hustle where stephen chao keeps trying to challenge the people that look weak but then they reveal themselves out of the crowd and then they're like super tall or super buff or whatever i'm not sure that it's an inspiration but it's just something i was reminded of watch kung fu hustle if you haven't by the way it's it's an amazing movie it's so funny uh the artwork confirms that boomi's physique was inspired by the mecca's in evangelion though like his arms are super long boomi demonstrates how typical earthbending is based on hungar a martial art from southern china that has a lot of low stances firm kicks and powerful punches it's like a combination of a tiger's power and a crane's grace after realizing boomi's identity and gives him a kung fu salute where you like wrap your right fist in your left palm and bow this is a far more hygienic reading than handshakes and i think it's about time we brought it back in fashion the relationship between boomi and aang also makes me super emotional like lots of things about this show makes me emotional just because like come on boomi is his only human connection to his former life it's been a hundred years and yet they can still meet so episode six we mean haru also known as great value i'm kidding i'm kidding her was great saka suggests caution but katara goes right up she just goes right in scaring haru off in haru's town aang buys what is apparently referred to as an asian kuniko hat in english it's just a popular style in asia not much to it haru makes a very good point about the gang looking very out of place with obviously water tribe and airbender clothing though their lies would probably be way easier if they just like bought or borrowed some local clothes like in book 3 but you know what they're new at this when the fire nation soldiers come to collect taxes we can see a shot of actual badly on coins in the avatar universe they're apparently made of several different minerals and copper seems to be the cheapest later katara has her first of many bonding moments with a pretty boy over how the fire nation destroyed their families i wasn't involved in shipping when i was younger and watched this show but man she has chemistry with so many people she convinces haru to save an old man from a mining tunnel collapse but the old man ends up turning him in instead you know this is the thing with helping people you can't expect them to automatically treat you the same in return you have to do it out of principle not for the gratitude the gang hatches a pretty ingenious plan actually to make fake earth bending though i think aang is being a little bit out of character here i mean it's a big deal that katara is about to get herself captured i don't know why he's like not taking this seriously katara gleefully wrote saka for his big years though and eventually the plan works out katara gets taken to the prison rake the warden by the way is voiced by george takei george takei is like this entire rig is made of metal you can't possibly bend your way out tough is on her way as we speak there's another interesting piece of world building and the way he speaks to the earthbenders though like he calls earthbending brutish savary that passes for bending which is very telling to the attitude that the fire nation has developed toward the earth kingdom to justify their invasions i mean isn't this how colonialism happened the fire nation made a bunch of technological advancements and suddenly they wanted to civilize everywhere else from katara's perspective though the earthbenders were mighty courageous heroes in her bedtime stories so that's a really interesting dichotomy katara's inspiring speech does not inspire them but the gang uses something similar to the fake birth bending plan to vent a bunch of coal to the earth vendors all it takes is for one person haru's dad to stand up and the rest gained the courage to fight back they go ahead and dump george decay into the ocean this episode feels great it's like the true start of this momentum against the fire nation's imperialism kotaro loses her mom's necklace though and zuko finds it the avatar extras say they were originally supposed to become a couple but the creators brian and mike have also denied that so like i can sense even conflict within the production team itself over whether zutara was supposed to be canon next episode 7 the spirit world it opens with aang being devastated at a devastated forest man people have been discoursing about environmental degradation for decades now and still we don't learn i was almost a biology major in university and i swear half the course content was just like crying meanwhile uncle irela is having a soak in some hot springs while zuko was angry as usual air heated the water himself that's so convenient unless jet is watching i guess the new town the gang has arrived at is plagued by a forest spirit though its name is hey bye and they do explain in the show that it means black and white it was originally a panda the symbol of conservation of course uncle iro gets ambushed and captured by earth kingdom soldiers i like how this show has made iro so sympathetic that you actually feel a sense of anxiety for him even though he's one of the imperialists i think this complexity is necessary when writing villains just because someone has a lovable personality it doesn't mean they're not capable of doing terrible things in fact they're the most dangerous people to deal with ira was a general he wasn't innocent he invaded the earth kingdom and put basing say at siege for 600 days tons of ordinary citizens probably died because of him if his son hadn't died and he had become fire lord like he was supposed to i honestly don't think he would have stopped the war he may not have committed the airbender genocide but he still would have kept going with the invasions i don't know this is a topic for discussion and debate i guess anyway aang meets hebei for real the artwork says the haybai is again inspired by evangelion the angels this time man the producers really love that show aang enters the spirit world by accident and gets taken for a ride on roku's dragon very neat detail here that uncle arrow can see the dragon while no one else can also there's some discourse about asian dragons being creatures of water more often than the fires so that's what avatar should have betrayed but it's honestly not a huge deal to me i mean the distinction between western and eastern dragons get muddled a lot in modern asia too i do think it would have been cool to see water dragons being represented though i mean we see fire breathing dragons all the time it's nothing new when ang gets to the fire temple the writing on the floor correspond to the spring equinox and the winter solstice not a big surprise there but what is a big surprise is zuko straight up shattering iro's chain with one kick damn you know zuko gets dunked on by the gang so often that it's really tempting to clown on him but when he's fighting anyone else he's actually like pretty impressive loving uncle in the loincloth by the way finally ann convinces haybai to have hope that the forest will grow back the way that katara cheered him up with an acorn at the start of the episode he buy turns back into a panda and releases all the people it captured from a spontaneous bamboo grove man if only we could have had the same hope for our planet then episode 8 avatar roku once again i so appreciate how they didn't paint everyone in the fire nation as straight of the villains in this fire temple we stand shayu the only one with his priorities straight here the whole sequence where saka tries to blast open the door fails but then katara realizes that it could be used to trick the fire stages anyway brilliant writing this is what satisfying problem solving should look like in fiction it actually makes the characters look clever instead of lucky which are very different experiences to the audience and then after the sages are duped into opening the door the moment of suspense before it's revealed that zuko caught aang the action beats in this episode are spot on and then of course there's a moment where the door opens and then everybody sees roku instead xiaoyou shayu's dead no i'm kidding he appears in the sequel comics as the new fire sage so he was only imprisoned not executed episode 9 the water bending squirrel katara finds it on a pirate ship the moves on it are based on the 24 step form of tai chi and the chinese characters on it just say water bending practicing first scent second episode with the cabbage merchant i really liked katara's character arc in this episode like jealousy is a natural emotion and if you deny it you're only going to end up lashing out at people who haven't necessarily done anything to deserve it it's easy to think people are gloating or bragging when they talk about their accomplishments but most of the time they're probably not doing it with any malicious intent they just want to share good news because they're happy if you start feeling negative about a successful person you gotta take a step back and consider if your reasons for hating them are actually valid or if you're really just frustrated at yourself for not having what they do i say this from experience the best way to overcome jealousy is to achieve your dreams yourself you can only move ahead if you focus that energy inward not at work and i guess that is what katara tries to do and while uncle iro says that it's kind of her fault that zuko find her i don't think it's something she could have anticipated also this episode i can definitely see why people ship zukul and katara that hard again i'm neutral and will remain neutral do not drag me into your ship wars but i will say that i personally would never date a guy with a hairstyle like that at the end i'm glad they didn't do the typical kids show moral of returning the squirrel it's okay to steal from pirates if the fate of the world is on the line i am most definitely not lawful good chaotic evil next episode jet the art book says that he was inspired by spike from cowboy bebop the avatar extras say that the design of the forest was inspired by the movie house of flying daggers though the art book says that it's also inspired by the ewok forest and return of the jedi jet's hoax swords are based on chinese tiger head hooks weapons that are mostly used by northern shaolin monks he is also the second hot boy qatar bonds with over fire nation trauma i love her harem and i actually really like jed's character because i'm a huge fan of like morally complicated characters he has almost like a cult leader level of charisma he easily ropes people into doing what he wants by appealing to their egos his psychological tactics are honestly brilliant like up until the final reveal you honestly have no idea if he's telling the truth each episode of the show so far has explored a different aspect of how this hundred year war has changed the avatar world and i'm glad they didn't leave out this type of extremist on the rebels side i guess this episode also explored why katara didn't become team leader though i honestly think that she's the one holding it all together anyway the avatar extras say that the fight scenes in this episode were inspired by naruto and samurai champloo the resolution was kind of a bummer though i mean the gang can't win at everything but it's sad that jet actually destroyed the village like the people may have been saved but that is a lot of property damage i actually do like the romance between katara and jet though as in i like how it didn't have a happy ending if you're gonna do awkward whirlwind teenage romance then you should show a few instances where things just go terribly wrong and then episode 11 the great divide nothing happened here bye next one i'm kidding i don't actually don't mind this episode it's true that it's not as deep as the previous ones but it was still entertaining the landing kings i mean the ganjins literally mean the cleans they give off the vibe of ancient aristocrats seen in chinese period dramas they're all wearing very fancy hand foo the so called traditional clothing of china though i have to say that han food styles vary greatly and this particular style looks more like a modern interpretation like one of those period costumes that's meant to be more pretty than historically accurate which isn't necessarily a bad thing i mean fashion is fluid also the gangings all have long hair which was the norm in ancient china because of the confucian belief that your body is a sacred gift from your parents and you shouldn't tamper with any part of it not even like cutting your hair i talked more about this in my mulan 1998 video i'll link it below the fancy hair pieces the guns you wear over their top knots are called guan or crown and it's generally something exclusive to ancient aristocrats ancient commoners just wrapped their top knots in dark cloth on the other hand the zhongs are close to sounding like the dirties in mandarin they're clearly just inspired by like the stereotypical cave people aesthetic these two tribes represent the public health dichotomy of i'm kidding it's probably not that deep but that's probably why this episode wasn't received as well as the others it's a rather simplistic dichotomy for avatar i mean we have high expectations by now famous last words by the canyon guide here you may have noticed that the animation style and the john flashback is really stylized and it's inspired by the work of hiroyuki imaishi this is from avatar extras when the gems and the genjiings finally duke it out the gajin leader uses a giant this type of straight sword is actually considered very refined and elegant in ancient china and you could totally find poets who are well trained and using them like libai in general the ganjins have a very shienshia vibe which is that genre that has a lot of pretty people fighting each other prettily and gets furious when he finds out both the tribe smuggled food but becomes weak when he spots an egg custard tart fun fact chinese egg tarts are actually inspired by a portuguese type of egg custard when they colonize macau in the 1900s avatar extras say that this is aang's favorite food though he doesn't know that this particular tart is like 4 weeks old in the end this episode did deliver a clever problem-solving moment with aang figuring out that they can ride the canyon crawlers safely if they tie their food pegs over their snouts pretty good tactic as for how he ultimately solves the feud between the tribes by lying i feel about it not because i have a problem with him lying it was just what i think is that this episode missed the opportunity to explore the effects of propaganda and how history can be distorted through bias retellings in context of the war remember when ang goes to a fire nation school in book 3 and they asked the students about the so-called air nation army having something like that in this episode would have made it feel a lot more connected to the plot it's probably intentional that this episode is more lighthearted though because the next one is the storm oh boy let's explore some trauma kids honestly if i were a member of zukul's crew at this point i'd be pissed at him too for some reason it's hardly ever immediately obvious to people that aang is the avatar even though them eventually recognizing his airbender tattoos means they know what they are so how many bald monks in yellow and orange do they see on a regular basis in the flashbacks when the monks explain that they believe aang is the avatar because he picked the four avatar relics out of thousands of toys this is based on one of the ways that the dalai lama's reincarnation is confirmed in the zuko flashback the artbook says that the fire lord's throne room was inspired by chinese and egyptian architecture and zuko losing everything because he spoke out in war council it may seem extreme but it's not that surprising in a regime that's this authoritarian the fire lord can't maintain his authority if his kid's son is like yelling at his generals in his war room this is the thing with authoritarianism it is so damn fragile i also like the complexity on the other side with gang and the monks you can see both perspectives like the other monks are obviously nervous about the impending war and they want aang to be trained as fast as possible but gyatso also realizes that as a kid aang shouldn't be put under a hundred percent pressure all the time it was pretty cruel for the other monks to suggest like straight up separating and gyatso though even though they were separated in the end see how ozai wears a fancy headpiece over his top knot sign of an aristocrat azula wears one too but zuko and iro don't because i honestly don't think the character designers were sticking to the convention that closely this is another thing about these potential inspirations that i'm using about this show isn't necessarily adopting them as strict internal rules just the occasional aesthetic this is the first shot of azula though one of the greatest villains of all time in general not just kid media though i'm of the opinion that most of the kid media have seen like avatar and transformers prime they are legit like so much more well written than adult media the most relatable exchange here between sakka and the fishermen then aang sayings with menaul is better we're leaving this episode before it makes me any more emotional next up the blue spirit the you and yuin archers is probably based on the mandarin word for feather since you know that's what's at the end of arrows i don't know if the yen has any special meaning though ginger tea is commonly used to treat colds in many cultures famous last words katara go self quarantine for 14 days this wanted poster of aang reads wanted the avatar this fugitive has the ability to airbend being able to create tornadoes and run faster than the wind be careful beyond careful when capturing issued under command of the firelord avatar extras say the stairs to the herbalist were inspired by the movie crouching tiger hidden dragon after the uen archers capture aang zhao makes a good point they'll just have to start the avatar hunt all over again if they kill aang even if the fire nation wins with the power of sodon's comment cora will be born waiting to lead a rebellion hey that's not a bad fanfic idea actually somebody write this someone who isn't me avatar extras also say this fortress was originally an important earth kingdom trading outpost guess the fire nation is so dedicated to their brand that they repainted all the roofs read and the art book says that zuko's blue spirit mask was originally red but got changed because it gave off too much of an ancient korean spider-man vibe ultimately it was inspired by the mask of the dragon king gnoll though in universe it's an earth kingdom opera mask again it's like zuko has some mad skills when it comes to anything except capturing or fighting aang he's using two dowel swords here a chinese broadsword with one slightly curved blade edge the action in this episode my god how do you even choreograph a sequence like this i have nothing but respect for action choreographers especially in animation then the quiet moment between eng and zuko at the end ah just kill me okay next episode the fortune teller so some of you may be inclined to say katara friendzone aang here no eng relationship zone katara the whole concept of the friend zone is unfair to the person doing the rejection because they likely had no idea of your feelings until you confessed them so like how does it make sense to say that they did something to you instead of the other way around there will be no friend zone propaganda in my house in general the people of anwu's village give me a very strong tongue dynasty vibe the tang dynasty is considered the peak golden age of imperial china this kind of hat with the two droopy flaps in the back is very iconic to this era one day i'll do a video on how to identify a historical chinese drama's precise dynasty by clothing alone this is a superpower that a lot of chinese people have we see like one hat in the palace drama and we're like song dynasty also another fun fact the avatar extras say that this calm dude is based on a security guard and nickelodeon that's so funny speaking of the tongue dynasty though i wonder if anwoo was named after woozatien the only female emperor in chinese history or she could be named after the word for shaman ooh and this white hair guy i swear he must be a reference to some anime character i just don't know which one mong is voiced by jesse flower the eventual voice actor of toff our's fortune telling is based on oracle bone divination also known as osteomancy this is an ancient and i mean like neolithic ancient form of fortune telling in china they carved writing on the shoulder bones of oxen or the shells of turtles and then threw them into fires the bones would then crack and the cracks across the writing would be interpreted to tell the future it is thanks to this tradition that we have archaeological findings of chinese writing that's like more than 3000 years old they are primary sources from the shang dynasty and you can trace modern chinese writing directly to this oracle bone script imagine if you were reading up on your horoscopes and then 3000 years later someone found your fossilized hard drive and were like whoa so these scorpio people had a tough time back then huh also in the background there's a large bell that's probably inspired by bienjong a type of bronze instrument that's especially iconic to this super ancient shang and joe dynasty times they were hung on a frame as a large set and played with mallets so they were like extra hardcore xylophones they made real music back in the shang dynasty i was born in the wrong generation no for real though there's a really well preserved bienjon set that was found in a tomb about 2400 years old and this is what it sounds like when [Music] played [Music] aside from tongue dynasty and shang dynasty vibes though there are also qing dynasty vibes in this one shot this style of clothing with a straight collar and not buttons it comes from the qing dynasty the qing dynasty is china's last imperial dynasty not to be confused with the qing dynasty which is china's first i know the qing dynasty was actually ruled by an ethnic minority in china the manchu people who were originally nomads and different from the han people or the dominant ethnic group in china what people usually think of when they hear chinese but china's not a monolith like even the government recognizes at least 56 distinct ethnic groups alone and there are a lot more that they don't recognize it's a big country english honestly doesn't have enough nuance to fully express just how diverse being chinese can be it just groups us all under chinese it can be really stressful sometimes though fun fact this style of clothing is what china makes world leaders wear at apex summits aang tries to confess to qatar during the crowds cheering she doesn't hear it oh well anwoo says the katara will have her third great grandchild before passing away quietly in her sleep no wonder she's still alive in korra pity that aunt wu didn't predict that aang would only live to like 66 though biologically oh soccer no the number one mistake nice guys make is having being nice be their only personality trait and if you're nice to someone just to get them to date you are you really nice the solution isn't to act aloof it's to bond with a person on a deeper level if you can't find ways to bond on that level then you're probably only attracted to the person on a superficial level and then that was never gonna work out anyway it's pretty funny to watch aang seriously take relationship advice from saka though but one thing is true you shouldn't come on too strong in the beginning that actually makes you feel less genuine because if you're doing so much for a person you barely know how easy would you move on to the next person this whole town feels like a nest of anti-vaxxers in the making but i love the casual reminder that things work totally different in the avatar world because of the existence of bending they could just talk about digging a huge trench within a few hours because of the existence of earthbenders seriously why are the people with shovels even there they just get in the way this is the first moment where kotara seriously considers aang as a love interest i think if they wanted to make the katang ending more convincing then they should have had more moments like this because throughout the rest of the show she seems very conflicted about a potential relationship with him you know what i mean her attitude is totally different from when she had chemistry with haru and jet that in itself might be a statement but it's never a good look to give up the vibe that a female character was pressured into a relationship if they didn't have those scenes where she seemed conflicted and pressured i think it would have gone over better with audiences but we'll get to that when we get to later seasons for now episode 15 bottom of the water tribe no come on we all know the bigger star is the bounty hunter june the artbook says that she's based on lisa yang a post-production supervisor though she i blame her for feeling zutara when ann gets the map to katara and saga's dad it says under protection of the ocean and moon up top and then them locations are labeled with tribal chief and soldiers here this cat i need her backstory chin did you get in trouble with the fire nation again i really need to thank the avatar and korra producers for never giving us um an uncle ireland deathbed scene i don't think we could have handled it june continues to represent zutara shippers though she is right in that they don't match on an aesthetic level until zuko grows around and here scene like this is what i mean zuko seems so powerful and badass until he fights in i'll go i will hear this is technically harassment come on seriously this episode though so much ship tease and although i'm not a katang shipper it's interesting to note that last episode was the first time katara considered aang as a potential love interest and then in this episode she kisses him on the cheek so i guess there were signs okay next episode 16 the deserter the art book says that this episode was partially inspired by the heart of darkness once again appreciating how the writers gave the fire nation a vibrant culture that isn't just war and pillaging though avatar extras do say that this festival is meant for fire nation occupied territories in the earth kingdom to like bring them a slice of home and then it also says that jon jon is based on the president of one of their animation studios dr movie his wanted poster says jon jon former fire nation admiral age 60 white hair looks gentle but is actually a master of fire bending captors be careful the gang seriously needs better disguises dancing dragon if you've been to like a lunar new year parade you've probably seen one of these here really puts things into perspective when you show these fire nation kids being worried for the fire lord puppet i mean imagine growing up in the fire nation actually i can i'm from mainland china despite what you've heard we're not all brainwashed in fact every single person i know from mainland china including my own family has some sort of grievance with the government they're just not vocal about it because the consequences are too severe but seriously like among regular chinese citizens there really is this collective sense of at the government even my grandpa he's like an actual member of the communist party and he would write poems praising it but on the down low he would he would admit that oh yeah they're not all that so that's what it's like to live under an authoritarian government you act like everything is fine for your own safety but you know everyone is side eyeing in secret and these kids they're gonna grow up side-eyeing too here i'm surprised the end doesn't get the point of jonjon telling him to meditate i mean i know he's anxious to learn firebending because of the deadline but he's a monk he should be used to stuff like this after this moment where he burns katara he actually sticks to his vow he doesn't fire ben again until sugo comes teach him in book 3. next episode 17 the northern air temple another episode that shows a very interesting side of people who are impacted by this war when you see the sacred murals being destroyed by technology you actually do feel for aang he ends up accepting the changes in the end though i do think that the refugees could have been more respectful i like how this episode set up the steampunk aesthetic that would become the focus for legend of korra though like some people say that the technological advancement in quora came out of nowhere but really like look at this episode technological advancement has always been like this point of conflict in the avatar world and then this episode also shows a good side of it like with the right technology you can remove the barriers that keep people with disabilities from participating in society technology can be a good thing but it also has its negative sides because okay pay attention here you can see teo's dad designing the drill that would be used on passing say in book two it was him it was him all along i don't have much else to say that i haven't covered already so let's move on episode 18 the water bending master the gang has finally arrived at the north pole for some reason koalas live near the north pole in the avatar world or actually i think they're called koala seals or something avatar extras say the water chambers here were influenced by the locks at the panama canal and the waterways in the city are inspired by of course venice the art book says that the structure support of the buildings are made from whale bones and then everything else is made from ice that's so cool let me tell you the northern water tribe is probably my favorite setting in avatar the first time i saw it i was amazed i really loved the whole winter and ice aesthetic you know i'm canadian and i love that so much of it was made possible by water bending though if you want to see an ice city like this in real life you can go to the harbin international ice and snow festival that happens every winter in china whenever the songhua river freezes over they haul out blocks of ice and make a whole city of sculptures out of them then they light it all up with leds and it's all very cool the festival runs for however long the ice stays frozen so it'll probably get shorter and shorter every year i don't think this is a direct inspiration for the northern water tribe because ice cities are just like a thing in fantasy but if you wanted to experience something like it in real life go and catch the festival the instrument being played here is an ancient chinese one called a pipa also known as the chinese loot though unlike bianjong they're still pretty popular today probably because noah normal can fit a whole set of bienjeong in their house and practice on them it's explained in show that princess yuei's name means moon and that's how it is in mandarin chinese though if you were speaking mandarin you wouldn't pronounce it ue it's just one quick syllable since tailee's chi blocking confirms the existence of chi in the avatar world then this is a model of chi meridians in traditional chinese medicine qi your life energy runs through your body through a network that's separate from your veins it's the basis of stuff like acupuncture by sticking needles in someone's shima radians you can manipulate their chi flow uh the most annoying thing about paku getting mada ang for teaching katara waterbending here is that it's a very familiar attitude some people think that the sexism in their cultures is a rightful part of their traditions and that any attempt to questioning them is bad western feminist influence women's rights and women's bodies have always been necessarily tangled up in politics and that is just so annoying according to the dvd commentary this move where pacu drops katara with icicles was inspired by a scene from house of flying daggers i don't know if i liked paco doing a 180 with his attitude just because he found out that katara is the granddaughter of his former fiance i think it has something to do with him realizing the life he could have had if he wasn't such a sexist jerk but i wish that we got a deeper emotional moment from him you know but of course these episodes are pretty packed here's saka's second kiss ever next up episode 19 saka uses oppa to impress yue note to villains never include a mask in the design of your minion uniforms it only ever causes trouble for you but it's great that the fire nation regularly updates their uniforms this is a really neat detail about how the north hasn't fought the fire nation in so long that they almost blew their entire cover with data uniforms i think this scene is the first time that uncle iro gets really deep and emotional man i highly relate to han getting zao's name wrong every time you wouldn't believe the mistakes people make with mine i swear it's just four letters but actually this is a korean family name that uses the same chinese character as mine the moon and the ocean spirits are push and pull in mandarin and if you consider that the moon only pulls tides not pushes them that means that the ocean is tui and the moon is la they are clearly inspired by the concept of the yin yang which ties into the fact that water bending is based on tai chi tai chi itself is named after the concept that yin and yam merge into a single ultimate epic fight between zukul and katara here love how the moon and sun both come into play it ends with zuko finally capturing aang but how will he get away he doesn't next episode the finale siege of the north part two this baboon spirit is voiced by mark hamill you know luke skywalker i really don't know why they keep getting these big name actors to voice random characters and then don't even tell people about it in the comics it is explained why ozai inherently dislikes zuko so much it's because of a whole drama where ozai forced zuko's mom ursa to marry him even though she was already engaged and then after they got married she kept trying to write letters to her former fiance but then ozai kept secretly intercepting the letters and then suspecting him of intercepting her letters ursa wrote a fake letter saying that zuku is actually her fiance's son and then after osa confronted her with this info she was like aha i knew you were messing around with my letters but he was still so pissed that she would write this letter to begin with that he was like fine you know what from here and on i will treat zuku as if he's not really my son people have never called me xin and jay troy but they call me sir and jay joe a lot i don't know why the writing on the ancient scroll that zhao found is indeed super ancient chinese i think seal script over 2000 years old zuko never has a good time with fighting the gang i love how this is what makes uncle iro finally turn against the entire fire nation no you know it's understandable why would you fight the moon things would be so inconvenient at night if there was no moon yeah giant spear monster probably inspired by the night walker from princess monan okay sako's first girlfriend turned into the moon that's rough buddy zukul finally just lies down in exhaustion that's relatable buddy i love how the final shot of the season is azula oh boy we we were not ready when we first watched this we were not ready for her none of us were so after all of that you might be inclined to still be like oh my god avatar has such amazing representation look like all the research they did but i have to put in another reminder here that yes while they did do a lot of research a lot of it was adapted for superficial aesthetics and were blended with aspects from other cultures or were streamlined for easier animation so in the end this was all just fun trivia and guesswork avatar does not attempt to depict real cultures they're also not perfect when it comes to handling the process of taking inspiration from underrepresented cultures for example while they did have actors like dante bosco for zuko and mako for uncle iro and they did work closely with korean animation teams they could have hired more asian or inuit creators in prominent voice acting and production positions especially inuit creators my opinion is that when it comes to making a big media production that's inspired by underrepresented cultures production companies should have an instinct of prioritizing hiring creatives who are actually from those cultures make sure that if you're gonna be making such a huge profit off of their aesthetics that you're actually supporting their communities too nowadays people of color are pushing hard for the opportunities to tell their own stories but every so often someone fires back with well stuff like the original mulan cartoon and avatar the last airbender were created by white people and they're considered masterpieces so why aren't white people allowed to tell these stories anymore first of all it's not that white people aren't allowed to tell these stories they're going ahead and doing it anyway all the time what you're talking about is whether they can do it without backlash and you have to understand that this type of backlash comes from the frustration that the creative industries inherently favor white creators so creators of color constantly lose out on opportunities even for projects related to their actual cultures to have someone who like didn't even grow up in your culture suddenly decide how to present it to the world that's just a very terrible feeling and then in the creative industries projects are rejected all the time for being like even a little bit too similar to something else if you're white and you're thinking of working on a project based on a culture you don't belong to you have to take a step back and think am i actually the right person to have this opportunity am i potentially taking it away from someone who's actually of that culture there is no shortage of talent among creators of color but they still struggle way more especially if they're from cultures that aren't too enthusiastic about pursuing careers in art like mine i've had so many huge fights with my parents over my book writing and only when i started landing multiple book deals did they stop yelling at me seriously they didn't even back off after my first book deal they thought it was a fluke if you didn't know this book is iron widow a pacific rim meets the handmaid's tale reimagining of china's only female emperor it comes out fall 2021 from penguin random house when it first sold my parents were not impressed but guess what now it's sold to four more publishers it'll be translated into french italian spanish and german so far the cover should also be revealed soon so stay tuned but like during the submission process to publishers it did get rejected plenty of times for being too similar to something else and while i don't know what exact books these were if it was a white person who didn't grow up in chinese culture who used it and then caused me to be rejected that's that's just tragic you know and i'm not saying that what white people create are necessarily like poorly written mulan and avatar are extremely well done but as i've explained in my mulan video it is not the masterpiece of representation for chinese culture that some people think it is it got plenty of things right but plenty of them wrong as well and then avatar avatar isn't even actual representation don't put these works on a pedestal in this regard and especially don't use them to shut down creators of color who are just fighting for opportunities anyway no more rambling if you want to see more videos from me like dissections of the other two avatar seasons consider supporting me on patreon or tipping me on kofi on patreon you'll get updates about where i am with the videos instead of waiting in the void and you'll be able to suggest a vote on future topics you can also get sneak peeks of book content like what my cover might look like anyway thanks again for watching all of that i hope you enjoyed it goodbye

Channel: Xiran Jay Zhao

Views: 703,566

Rating: 4.9737215 out of 5

Keywords: avatar, the last airbender, ATLA

Id: x8MD8U1Ilwc

Length: 55min 38sec (3338 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 23 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/AshMainsBigGay]

Ok so shameless plug I am planning on writing a post Korra fan fiction and I made subreddit for putting my ideas together (r/avatarblacklotus) and I’ve had a big problem of coming up with lore friendly names, but also not making them culturally insensitive. I love this series to death but treading the line of a canonized lore and being culturally sensitive is very frustrating especially as someone who isn’t from any of these cultures. I find her perspective in this video really interesting and it makes me kinda intrigued at how actual people of Asian and Inuit decent view the show/series. I think the writers did a lot to show respect to Asian culture even going so far as to learn the martial arts used to create the bending battles in the show, but this coming from a white guy means nothing. I just wanted to vent my frustrations so thank you for listening.