Cultural Inspirations in Avatar: The Last Airbender Book 2 - Earth

have you ever discovered hidden details and jokes in the show over 12 years after it ended that's me that's me with avatar the last airbender because a lot of people have clearly worked very hard on this show and i am here to expose their underappreciated efforts anyway no long introduction this time if you missed my video on avatar book 1 go watch it to hear my thoughts on whether it handles its cultural inspirations in a respectful way or short summary here i personally think it was respectful for its time but they could have hired more asian and inuit people in prominent voice acting and production positions and the fandom shouldn't overly praise it in the representation front when it's fantasy that takes huge creative liberties and never set out to represent real cultures but this is also my personal opinion and others may feel differently these videos aren't meant to be an authoritative guide but a fun scavenger hunt from the perspective of one single chinese person which also means that the potential references i talk in detail about will skew chinese i will make it clear though which inspirations are confirmed by official sources and which are my personal speculations anyway let's begin book 2 episode 1. the gang has won the battle at the northern water tribe but now aang faces a dilemma is there a point to mastering all the elements when he gets to summon the power of the avatar state and charge right at fire lord ozai general phone will force him to confront this his design gives me strong three kingdom vibes probably because this type of hat appears a lot in three kingdom adaptations he wants ang to go fight the fire lord right away which is understandable because general phone has been personally fighting on the front lines so of course he wants this war 10 as soon as possible technically if aang were as ruthless as zaheer he could just bend the breath out of ozai's lungs and kill him but the avatar riders were not allowed to be that hardcore back then so they advocated for practice study and discipline instead this is definitely something you see more in eastern stories than western speaking of very general terms here eastern stories tend to make their protagonists obtain their incredible abilities through hard work more often than getting granted by it by being the chosen one or whatever though of course stories are no longer made in a cultural vacuum like avatar itself is a mix of both aang is a chosen one but he still has to work hard for his abilities side note i once had someone yell at me because they saw a dragon spinning fire in a chinese movie when they heard me say that chinese dragons are creatures of water well yes traditionally they're creatures of water but western influence is a thing creators can play around with their own cultures just understand that whenever i talk about east versus west differences there are always exceptions because of their influences on each other i'm only pointing out general vibes and trends so like please do not take the things i say that literally and that rigidly anyway because there are people dying ang he decides to go through with general phone's plans to trigger the avatar state the art book says that every earth kingdom base has a shaman who has a special connection to the earth and the spirits no not sure how in tune this one is and then the kyoshi books by fce highly recommend them by the way further explains that the earth kingdom also has earth-bending masters called sages who have a lot of influence over earth kingdom politics though by kiyoshi's time they had become very corrupt and detached from spirituality the vessels in the background of this temple remind me of chinese bronze dings though i can't be sure if this is an influence because they still look pretty different after several failed attempts to trigger the avatar state aang decides that he just can't go into it unless he's immortal danger and so general phone puts him immortal danger i haven't talked about saka's boomerang yet so here boomerangs were a weapon originally used by aboriginal australians which fits with the water tribe's general inspiration from indigenous cultures one ang proves harder to attack than expected general phone puts katara in mortal danger instead he gets what he wanted and goes into the avatar state but starts causing uncontrolled destruction then broke whisks hang off and warns him that the avatar cycle itself would end if he's killed in the avatar state a much needed nerf so the audience would shut up about why he doesn't use it more often and also an excuse for the gang to move on meanwhile on zuko and uncle iro's end they've apparently drifted for weeks and finally found a fire nation spa fire nation architecture seems to be influenced by not only chinese and japanese architecture but thai buildings as well though according to avatar extras this resort used to be a retreat for earth kingdom monks but we have seen that the fire nation is committed to staying on bran whenever they conquer a place so remodeling cannot be ruled out zuko may have been so tired at the end of last season that he just gave up and lied down but it's not stopping him from starting the new season brooding under cherry blossoms which is a common motif in japanese media and benoit's to them azula is popping in and a pelican this is a type of transportation method common in ancient asia which is when you're carried around in a litter by a bunch of servants okay about this maybe you should worry less about the tides who have already made up their mind about killing you and worrying more about me who's still mulling it over moment it's iconic but i don't think it's really as badass as people think it is you can't fight the tides unless you're a waterbender it's honestly pure luck that the ship didn't sink and everyone on board didn't die just because azula's so gassed up and detached from reality that she thinks she can fight the ocean though that's not without precedent in this show my point is this is one of those moments that appears badass on the surface but if you think deeper about it it really reveals that she's unreasonable and delusional and here is the first appearance of lo and lee azula's fire bending teachers though apparently they're not fire benders themselves which is an interesting choice on the monarchies part lowen lee must be really good at the stances and forms then azula somehow tracks now zuku and ira and popped in on them i find it hilarious that zuko gets so offended when the zula calls him zuzu when you know he could call her that too imagine them just like calling each other zuzu in an infinite loop that's what the fire nation royal family gets we're using too many zeds of their names but azula goes on to deliver some precise psychological strikes to zuko saying that their dad finally wants him back ira of course sees through the lie but zuko wants his dad's approval so badly that he goes with azula anyway and her plan actually would have worked if this one guy didn't blur out the truth apparently the writers originally had her vaporize him on the spot but decided that that was too dark i'm sure we could not perfectly imagine that happening though zuko and iro barely managed to escape with ira showing off his lightning rear direction skills and they cut off their top knots an official avatar cannon as explaining to the kyoshi books the top knot is a symbol of honor in the fire nation and cutting it off represents renouncing your honor or social status this is probably inspired by how in ancient east asia haircuts were a big deal because according to traditional confusion beliefs you are not supposed to cut your hair it's a gift from your parents so when it does happen it tends to be for some very dramatic reasons like renouncing your material life to become a monk or even just being a form of symbolic execution the writing on zuko's dagger says lettuce no it means never give up without a fight and the writing on him and uncle's wanted posters says the fire lord orders the arrest of iro and zuko two traitors general ira was once the dragon of the west prince zuko was once the heir to the fire lord these two rejected imperial orders and refused to battle the water tribe barbarians and capture the avatar kill on sight the chinese word for barbarian used here men's is especially evocative because it's one of many terms that were historically used by han chinese rulers to justify the subjugation of minority peoples and it's very telling to the fire nation's attitude of superiority and then we go to episode 2 the cave of two lovers the place where aang and katara are training is pretty clearly inspired by the elephant trunk hill in guilin or the water moon cave because at night the moon's reflection can be seen under the arch and then of course here come the avatar world hippies the gang dismisses the hippies at first but then they keep getting attacked by the fire nation's projectile while trying to travel by air so they decide to follow the hippies into the secret tunnel these statues are probably influenced by the guardian statues in east asian buddhist temples they're called the two generals hungan ha in china or neoguardians in japanese meanwhile uncle iro is so devoted to tea that he's made tea out of a poisonous bush on the off chance that it might be a rare bush that makes delicious tea instead now he needs urgent medical attention the character above the clinic just says doctor song is based on one of the avatar character designers and she's wearing a handbook a type of korean traditional clothing the other dude in the clinic is getting treated by fire cupping this is a practice in traditional chinese medicine where you light a fire inside a glass cup and then stick it onto someone's skin the fire burns up all the oxygen inside the cup and then the negative pressure forms an airtight seal between the cup and the person's flesh this reportedly sucks their blood to the surface of their skin and therefore dislodges stagnant blood and she to cure stuff like colds and pneumonia it can leave some pretty scary looking bruises though is it actually effective i can't comment on that i'm not a doctor i never ended up getting my medical degree because i decided to write books instead and in the background there's also a traditional medicine cabinet all those little drawers would have a type of medicinal herb inside and they would help you build holistic wellness over a long term period song graciously invites zuku and iro for rose stuck her house is directly modeled after a building that the avatar creators brian and michael took a picture of on a trip to beijing the art book says that they went to an architecture park where there were a collection of different traditional buildings from various eras and ethnicities isn't it wild how there are a bunch of random buildings out there in beijing that have just ended up an avatar by pure chance so after dinner song tries to bond with zuko over fire nation trauma as teenagers in this show do but zuku is still in the middle of his character arc and so he betrays her kindness by stealing her family's ostrich horse ugh the things hot people get away with meanwhile in the gang has gotten separated by a caven but aang and katara have stumbled upon the tomb of oma and shu their story is written in seal script which is like 2 000 years old to show how ancient the story is there is a flashback done in the style of traditional ink brush paintings which is super cool this is the character for war and this story is clearly inspired by romeo and juliet though it's much cooler because earth bending is involved oma and chu being the first humans to learn earth bending seem to contradict the avatar wand stuff in legend of korra though i think the continuity still works if you interpret this as they were the first to learn earth bending from badger moles because before that earth bending was given by lion turtles also extreme sign no but i'm pretty sure the protagonist of guilty crown is named after oma and shu maybe there was an avatar fan on the production team anyway after seeing a carving of the two lovers kissing with the seal script inscription of love is brightest in the dark katara gets the idea that they might find a way out if she and ang kissed aang awkwardly tries to hide how utterly stoked he is which pisses katara off but i'm pretty sure they actually kissed here i mean aang's reaction afterward that smile what happens if the secret tunnels stay in the secret tunnels then they meet up with saka again and part with the hippies and they're all excited to go back to omashu so boomi can teach and earthbending but plot twist the city has fallen to the fire nation that brings us to episode three return to omashu the kiyoshi books revealed that the real disease that killed this mass guard's cousin is called septopox also the guards give some very good and very relevant advice meanwhile azula coerces tightly into forming a squad with her establishing that her friendships are mainly based on fear and here's something you might not have noticed this circus that tylee is performing at is the same one that appa will get sold to the whole reason they're going to buy appa is because they'll be missing a star attraction after tai li leaves back in omashu the gang has run into the resistance but and convinces them that you know what they're better off escaping and regrouping so they make all the citizens pretend to get coveted i mean pentapox and so the governor mae's dad freaks out and orders them all expelled from the city can't believe the fire nation handles epidemics better than many modern countries but after the citizens make it out they realize that momo has somehow kidnapped mae's baby brother here the nova may's dad sends was not translated to its full hilarity in the show it says pathetic kidnappers i am willing to trade your lowly king boomi for my son tom tom meet you for the exchange at noon under the statue of the city summit when the gang gets there they discover azula and her posse instead and that boomi has been imprisoned in a metal case which would not pose a problem for him if he were tough and he tries to rescue boomi but boomi reveals that he got himself captured on purpose because he's practicing neutral jin jin as defined by boomi and aang here is not a real concept of martial arts it's an avatar original that's probably inspired by jing a term that translates to like force or strength as in the amount of force you can use to push someone to the ground in the end aang decides to leave mumi there and find another earth-bending master who really listens to the earth though not before returning tomtom to his parents ang's too nice i would have kept the kid until they gave a proper ransom and then it's episode 4 the swamp the cart that passes zuko and nairo as they beg for money is labeled happy travelers opera trope it also shows you how zuku's blue spirit mask is an earth kingdom opera mask as i've said in my book 1 video the mask is inspired by a dragon king noah mask which is a type of ancient ritual dance mask but the rest of the masks here are inspired by the face paints and chinese operas instead in those operas face paint colors represent certain qualities like white symbolizes deceptiveness red symbolizes loyalty green symbolizes aggressiveness and so on so when a character walks on the stage you can immediately tell what kind of character they're supposed to be the patterns of these face paints are called limpu literally face charts or facebook meanwhile the gang has crash landed into a swamp after and heard it calling to him this swamp actually contains the third grade water tribe the louisiana swamp benders they're descended from waterbenders who moved away from the south pole can you imagine if cora was born here instead legend of korra would be a very different show anyway the swamp gives the gang hallucinations with saka seeing yue and katara seeing her mother and aang seeing a foreshadowing of toff she's wearing a root ring a type of robe that's heavily associated with the prosperous tongue dynasty the tang dynasty was all about that flowy ethereal aesthetic also chubby was beautiful back then the gang eventually runs into who who can bend plant matter like he's piloting a mecca he tells them that he achieved enlightenment under the banyan grove tree that the whole swamp is connected to avatar extras confirmed that this is a reference to how buddha achieved enlightenment under a bodhi tree then the swamp benders capture apa giving us a foreshadowing of what will happen to him in the desert the gang manages to save him this time though once the swamp banners realize that katara and saka are kin meanwhile zuko gets himself a new pair of broadswords from a swordsman who made ira dance for a gold coin arrow himself was pretty chill about it though i mean when you're truly confident and self-assured you don't care about what other people think of you pride is an illusion now episode 5 avatar day avatar extras says the rough rhinos are named after theodore roosevelt's rough writers and they're kind of like the navy seals of the fire nation also their leader apparently served under ira in the army while running from them the gang stumbles upon a village celebrating an avatar dave festival aang is very self-satisfied until he discovers that it's an avatar haters festival because kyoshi apparently killed the village's homegrown tyrant chin the great several hundred years ago this is obviously a reference to ting shuang the first emperor of china chin is just another romanization of qing also chin the great's name is literally written as emperor ching in seal script the actual script that the first emperor spread across china the people of the qin village are wearing hats and hairstyles inspired by the tongue dynasty styles though it's tall hats that tend to have the two droopy flaps in the back aang agrees to stand trial because that's how much of a goody-goody he is and so he gets thrown in jail and made to wear a pillory which is like the go-to imprisoning device in chinese dramas is your chinese drama protagonist even suffering if they're not being paraded through the streets with a pillory on to clear aang's name saka and katara decide to conduct their own investigation saka puts on a hat that's probably meant to reference famous chinese detectives like detective d and judge bao but they're from the tongan song era while the hat that saka is wearing is the ming dynasty style instead with the short and straight flaps as i've said a tongue dynasty hat would have droopy flaps instead and his own dynasty hat would be street and very long fun fact the song dynasty had was actually designed by its founding emperor zhao huang ying so his officials couldn't whisper to each other during state meetings zhao ying invented social distancing meanwhile zuko robs a rich person is this what rich people do to sit in their carriages and stare greedily at their money can't relate but zuko the former one percenter robs the current one percenter like reddit robbing wall street and we support him yeah back on qatar and sakazen they've decided to visit kyoshi island again to find clues apparently this elder of the island is called oyaji which is an affectionate way of saying old man in japanese he takes them to a shrine of kyoshi's belongings and actually uses the word kimono to refer to her robes i had to have your culture be so recognizable in the west that you don't have to translate terms on this painting the writing says avatar kiyoshi on this day split and created kyoshi island may our people and culture forever be isolated from the tyranny of the world kotara and saka discovered that the angle of the sun on the painting gives kyoshi an alibi and they rushed their findings back to the chin village but turns out the court system there is not as fair and evidence-based as they thought which also applies to our world this is a departure from the actual chin state which took its laws very seriously i mean chin has historically had a very bad reputation of being very dracronian but some actual laws dug up from the era in recent decades have revealed that they were very meticulous and detailed like there's a difference of punishment between picking a lock getting caught in the middle of picking a lock and failing to pick a lock and the running away and they were very strict i mean stealing one mulberry relief lands you 30 days of hard labor anyway the gang goes through a bunch of effort to try and improve kyoshi's innocence only for kyoshi to pop up spiritually in the end like yeah i did it i did it because he was a tyrant it doesn't even matter that it was an accident i'd do it again on purpose in the flashback chin the conqueror is wearing a tonkin gwen a type of hat that emperors actually wore more often than the beaded headdresses that they're usually depicted with but modern sea dramas don't show emperors with a very often because it's so associated with famous officials like chugalyon of the three kingdoms fame the flashback reveals that kiyoshi had physically separated the kyoshi island from the mainland with her incredible earth bending in the kiyoshi novels it's actually a plot point that she can bend whole landmasses but struggles with tiny rocks anyway aang is found guilty and sentenced to be boiled alive but just before that happens the rough rhinos show up again and the mayor suddenly does a 180 in his attitude aang saves the village but not before roasting the hell out of them and he claimed he wasn't gonna fire bend again then it's episode six the blind bandit oh i know you guys were waiting for this one the flyer that gets handed to the gang says master use earthbending academy best in the country guaranteed mastery then the back says with this flyer your first lesson is free all you need to do is buy a high quality uniform so it's not free then never trust discounts the plaque above the academy just says master use earthbending academy though if this were actually set in ancient east asia the characters will go from right to left instead the dvd commentary says this academy is a parody of those shady martial arts schools that care more about making money than teaching you actual stuff and you can tell by the way master yu tries to sell his students belt promotions those belt ranks are so shady i say as a red belt in taekwondo then to get more information about an earthbending tournament that they overheard about katara reveals that she has gotten much more savage this season you can really see her get comfortable with her water bending across the episodes it's great so earth rumble 6 is clearly a parody of wrestling i mean the boulder avatar extras say that they actually tried to get the rock to voice him but the rock was too busy being the rock so they got the rock's friend mike foley to voice him instead fire nation man is a parody of how some heel wrestlers used to pretend to be soviet russian he even speaks in a russian accent during the intermissions the sign holding lady is wearing a chi pao a type of dress that was popularized in 1920's shanghai intentionally meant to be sexy and bold after centuries of conservative women's clothing i love that this show was so dedicated to the asian aesthetic that they even knew to choose the sexiest traditional clothing for sign holding ladies after a bunch of fights toff shows up a last she easily defeats the rock i mean the boulder but gets caught off guard by aang's airbending and leaves in a fury the gang goes back to the earth bending academy to find more information on her and so comes the iconic moment water tribe the gang finds toff's family because aang saw a flying boar in a swamp vision this emblem foreshadows how toff eventually becomes a cop here you can see top's fancy ruching more clearly her high bun is also super tongue dynasty they were all about big hair but her mom's hair is even more tongue dynasty it mimics the shape of a peony which was a super popular flower in that era also the musical theme of the beifong family is the chinese folk song the jasmine flower you can hear playing whenever the bay phones come up in the plot here toff's dad is drinking from a gaiwan a little cup that was invented during the ming dynasty for more refined control during tea brewing the larger opening lets you see the leaves as they brew and the cup is glazed so it doesn't absorb flavors and you can use the cup to brew multiple types of tea without the flavors cross-contaminating each other later in the night tough chills down and makes amends with aang but then they get kidnapped the ransom note says if you want to see your daughter alive again in this life bring 500 gold bars to the arena signed large chunk of rock i mean the boulder and xinfu at the arena top finally reveals her true earth bending powers to her parents instead of hungar she uses a completely different martial art the southern praying mantis style it uses strong stances but more quick hand movements than kicks the artbook says that it was reportedly invented by a blind woman but i've checked both english and chinese sources and could not confirm this instead of being impressed though her parents just think they've spoiled her with too much freedom and become determined to restrict her further in the house but toff sneaks out anyway and lies to the gang about her parents changing their minds classic tough the gold pieces that top's parents offer shinfu and master yu are in the shape of yambao another iconic form of chinese currency they were made of gold or silver and their value was determined by weight and purity now episode 7 zukul alone this episode is avatar's take on a western previously he parted ways with ira because he was just too angsty and it's very hard to keep being angsty when you're around uncle iro zuko almost robs two travelers but changes his mind when he realizes that the woman is pregnant this is the same couple that the gang will help cross the serpent's pass the flashbacks in this episode revealed that uncle irel had written very giddily about the siege of bossing say iro no honestly though i like that ira himself wasn't immune to the fire nation's conditioning it's clear here that he's always had his fun personality and the part where he pretended to slay the last two dragons to keep them safe presumably happened before the siege so he's always had a noble side to him but still he invaded the earth kingdom willingly and eagerly he didn't conceptualize the full scope of the horror he was bringing down until his own son died in battle i think this is why he connects to zuko so much he can see that zuku is also someone who struggles with the fire nation ideals that he grew up with plus let's not forget that ira was complacent in the war up until the end of season one like ira was even fine with invading the northern water tribe it was only when zao went after the moon that he snapped so uncle iroh has had his own character arc going on all this time in another flashback after iro's son died zuko and azula overheard ozai using this to argue that he should be the heir instead but it just made azolan really mad zuko ran away at this point but azula stayed and apparently heard that azulan was going to make oza kill zuko so that he would also feel the pain of losing a firstborn son the sequel comics confirmed that she was telling the truth azlan did actually order this the whole reason ursa disappeared was because she killed azlon she was raised as a master herbalist and knew how to make a colorless odorless and untraceable poison to kill someone but ozai made her leave the palace after assassinating azlon so that she would never get the chance to use the poison on him as for what happened to her after that it's complicated go read the comics during azlon's funeral the royal family can be seen wearing white which is the color of mourning in many asian cultures then episode 8 the chase i like that katara and taw for having a personality clash and you can kind of see both sides it was a little disingenuous for katara to go up to toff apologizing only to be mad when toff didn't apologize back though it is also true that toff could have done the courtesy of helping out it is so funny to me that the gang is losing it out of exhaustion but azula and her posse who have presumably also been awake this entire chase are totally fine they are ready they are high off the excitement of pursuit the gang is so frazzled that even aang blows up when toss suggests that alpha's shedding is what's leading azula to them aman saga on this they were jerks to toff aang fakes the trail of oppa's fur to lead azula away while tov runs into uncle iro who's been giving zuko space but secretly following him to make sure that he's okay aww finally the entire gang plus zuko and ira converged in a small abandoned town a corner of zula avatar extras say that the town was a mining town named two zin and abandoned because there were no more minerals to mine a little detail here that i'm not sure all of you noticed the reason that iro got hit with the zula's lightning is because he was distracted and surprised to see toff among the gang azula clocked the opening instantly and used it to escape the fight was six on one and she still got out of it unscathed iconic honestly sadly uncle iril fell in the process and zuko won't even let the gang help and that brings us to episode 9 bitter work this title is a loose translation of kung fu kung fu doesn't strictly mean martial arts in chinese it's not even like the most commonly used term for it which would be shu it really just means to put in work in general or you can even refer to the passage of time uncle ira dreams of his son luton and then how he buried luton near base we'll see this place again and it will make us cry after he wakes up zuko asks him to teach him more advanced fire bending skills so he can stand a better chance against the zula zuku was ready to hear ira will convince him to just get along with azulla but then iro drops yet another iconic line now i've seen people say that ira was wrong to say this because azula is just a 14 year old and more in need of his guidance than zuko but there's a fundamental difference between azula and zuko she has power while he doesn't and when she's in that position of unchecked power she's not going to be accepting any guidance iron knows this better than anyone else i mean he didn't even have a personality as ruthless as hers yet he didn't think to question his attitude toward war until he suffered the personal loss of his son you need to be taken down a peg to have the capacity to change so i don't think ira was advocating for zuko to straight up killed azula but for him to check her power and not worry or hesitate just because she is family family members can be toxic sometimes you don't have to forgive them or maintain ties with them especially if they're racist to teach zuku advanced firebending uncle arrow basically explains the concept of qi but what's super interesting here is when he says that the ability to separate negative yinchi from positive yanchi is what can let a firebender create lightning in real life lightning is created by an imbalance of positive and negative ions between a storm cloud and the ground so there is science behind lightning bending i love it when the mechanisms of a magic system has an explanation that makes perfect sense within its world building despite arrow's science lesson however zurgo still can't do it and so he gets very angsty about it as per usual so then arrow switches gears to teaching zuko lightning redirection instead because well if he can't generate lightning he still has to prevent himself from getting killed by azulla's lightning this draws on techniques that ira will learn from waterbenders because he is wise and open magnet like that he goes on to explain that you must like the lightning pass through your stomach not your heart the sea of chi he's talking about here refers to the dantian or more specifically the lower dantian a reservoir of chi and other vital energy in traditional chinese medicine zukul absorbs this information and then wants to try it himself right away ira was like no i will not shoot lightning at you so zuko runs off and finds a thunderstorm on his own unfortunately or fortunately the storm doesn't strike him either on the gang's end top's first attempt at teaching earthbending isn't going that well either she tries to taunt him into doing it while he tries to meditate to ignore her he utters the syllable um a secret sound in many indian religions it's considered the ultimate mantra the entire universe condensed into one sound or so i think feel free to correct me on this meanwhile saka has gotten himself stuck in a crack in the ground avatar extras say this was inspired by tom hanks in the money pit when saka almost gets attacked by a saber-toothed moose lion aang manages to stand his ground against the beast finally acting like an earthbender he even stands up to toff which is even more impressive and thus he unlocks earthbending a much more productive study session than zuko's then episode 10 the library the drink the guy makes in the misty palms oasis bar actually looks incredible in the bar the gang runs into professor zay an anthropologist at base university him whipping out a head measuring device makes him border on one of those weird anthropologists of the 19th century who did more harm than good to the cultures they studied but ultimately i have more reasons to like them than dislike him when chaton's library is possibly modeled after both taj mahal and the ag sofia and by the way the swan desert just means death desert in chinese foreshadowing here ugh toff champions audiobooks she must have been so happy when the radio was invented by korra's time more foreshadowing oh god can't confirm this is what his name means avatar extras say that saga contributes not because the men of the southern water tribe have to know how to tie many different knots for sailing purposes foreshadowing again but not about oppa being taken this time and something that will only come to fruition near the end of the series damn okay here they actually did some major world building when it came to the avatar world calendar this slip of paper says in the pager era in the year of the dragon on the ninth day of the seventh month it was the darkest day in fire nation history so there was an actual date on it and in case you don't know what era names are let me explain there's special names used to keep track of years and they started in imperial china before spreading to other asian countries but it can be a really confusing system because they're dependent on the specific monarch of each country and those monarchs can pretty much change them on a whim because something really great or something really bad happened so this system by nature cannot be universal most countries have abolished them because they've abolished their monarchies including china itself but japan still uses them you may have heard a while back that they changed the era name from heisei to reiwa with the new emperor on the calendar wheel the gang finds there are 16 era names and they are scarily detailed here's a screenshot from the avatar wiki of loose translations of them they're basically just auspicious sounding terms but what's notable is that the first character in each has a radical that corresponds to one of the four elements and they repeat in an air water earth fire pattern the era that the show takes place in is which has an air radical so it's possible that each avatar gets their own era name but it's unclear if these error names are set in a repeating pattern which is not how error names work you have to make a brand new one each time or if the wheel magically updates whenever a new one is added and who's in charge of deciding the new one we can only speculate but yeah the day of the black sun that happens in book three actually has a precise date the yangwu era year of the monkey the first day of the eighth month and here's something else incredible toff held the library from sinking while they checked at least four months worth of dates she cannot be held responsible for apple getting kidnapped as the gang finally flees the library professor zayd chooses to stay i'm pretty sure you can see his skeleton in legend of korra that is dedication but after the game makes it out they're met with the reality that apa has been captured and so it's episode 11 the desert aang is so distraught that he immediately blames toff four months of dates aang we're all devastated the oppo is gone but still then saga drinks the iconic cactus juice and starts hallucinating which is a real side effect of some cacti water many of them are also poisonous when you're stuck in the desert you should not drink from a cactus at this point katara is single-handedly holding the entire team together seriously they would have all died without her meanwhile zuku and uncle iron have also arrived at the oasis bar there ira uses a secret pie show code to communicate with a fellow order of the white lotus member pai sho seems to be based on a bunch of different board games like chinese chess go and chinese checkers even though chinese checkers is not chinese at all it was invented in germany the order of the white lotus is possibly named after the white lotus society in chinese history though they were pretty different the white lotus society wasn't about sharing knowledge across state lines but it was a secret religious moment that was like part buddhism and partialism they first started about a thousand years ago in the song dynasty and they were just a normal religious sect back then and they believed that the matreya buddha would eventually reincarnate again and bring light to the mortal realm but then after the mongols came and established the yuan dynasty the white lotus society became experts at organizing rebellions they also started worshiping a bunch of other deities like the venerable and born mother but the common focus was on plotting rebellions during their late night incense burning sessions the founder of the ming dynasty chuanjong even rose in association with white lotus but after he became emperor he tried to ban it that didn't stop them though they continued rebelling throughout the ming dynasty and then the subsequent qin dynasty and the worse societal conditions were the more they flared up it got to the point where every time an emperor heard that the white lotus was stirring up in a certain region he was like oh my god i guess this kind of ties into how the white load has eventually helped kick the fire nation out of the earth kingdom though here this sand sailor top stumbles into is later revealed to have been buried by appa and if apple hadn't done it the gang would have been trapped in the desert indefinitely so he got them out of the desert after all avatar extras say that in sand bender lore the sea wong rock was dropped from the sky by the gods to prove their power or it was a meteorite saku could have gotten his sword early and oh man ain't bursting into the avatar state when they run into the sand benders relatable honestly i love this super power berserk moe trope pre-order my book if you like it too it's in there pacific rim meets the handmaid's tale means china's only female emperor buy links at ironwiddle.com and i love how katara isn't even afraid here she's just sad with that we go to episode 12 the serpent's pass the gang runs into the refugees dooku decided not to rob jed runs into zuko the gang runs into tsuki and the cabbage guy runs into devastation again amazing everyone's converging in bossing say avatar exercise full moon bay was inspired by half moon bay in california this stamp says rejected while toff's passport says earth kingdom first class passport toff beifong bayfall means the northern direction by the way not sure if that's meant to symbolize anything after hearing that the zukul alone refugees had all their stuff stolen aang decides to lead them through the dangerous serpent's pass or coiling serpent's pass that the writing here actually says this type of gate is called a python an iconic gate structure in chinese architecture for whatever symbolic gates are needed hanging katara parting the water here is obviously a moses reference though the gang also whips out two other ways to cross the water the serpent itself looks like a vaporwave gyarados it originally appeared in the unaired pilot of the show and the production team brought the design back for this episode here i'm pretty sure this is the first hint that toff has a crush on suck i kind of like that it didn't go anywhere though because i don't like it when a fictional friend group entirely subdivides into romantic couples this is why i didn't ship joey and phoebe and friends not that i shipped ross and rachel either anyway the group makes it out of the past unscathed but now the baby's coming katara demonstrates yet again why she is the glue holding everything together the baby comes out successfully and her parents name her hope and even aang is happy again but then they see the drill that the mechanist designed coming right for bossing ce's walls which leads into episode 13 the drill aang shows the cairns of the world were really calls for asking for the manager however this manager insists that basing say is the impenetrable city its name possibly comes from the cantonese for unbreakable city though the chinese characters chosen for mean forever sturdy city instead and i read nothing close to bossing say and neither mandarin or cantonese the manager sends the elite terror team to go against the drill but they get single-handedly taken down by tightly and herchy blocking i freak out too i just hand the city to her also her chi blocking is likely inspired by a real type of kung fu the ensuite where you strike your opponent's pressure points i mean ever been punched in the solar plexus meanwhile zuko and uncle iro have arrived at the basics a station this isn't mentioned in the show but they actually use a family name on their passports hong kong the same character that's in hungar the martial art that inspired earthbending this probably isn't the real family name of the fire nation royals though if they even have one jet tries to get zuko to join his freedom fighters for real but zuku refuses to further social interaction then jet spots uncle iro drinking steaming tea that he was complaining was cold just a moment ago and so jet activates conspiracy mode honestly we clan on jet a lot for this but when he lives in a world where fire bending exists his suspicions were perfectly plausible especially when he was right back at the drill the gang has compromised it from the inside while the bossing sea soldiers are just randomly chucking rocks at it i swear teenagers are carrying this entire war and by the way the royal earth kingdom guard uniforms are clearly designed after qing dynasty armor finally the gang combines their efforts at the front and back to overload the drill with its own slurry making a very interesting shot but anyway this shot of bouncing save from the inside makes it clear that its walls are inspired by the great wall of china and then it's episode 14 city of walls and secrets the art book says judy's design and personality was based on their line producer micken wong i wonder how she feels about this and as i've mentioned in my book one video basing say appears to have heavy influences from china's final two dynasties ming and ching most men in the city wear their hair in queues which is a long braid down their back this is the traditional male hairstyle of the manchu people rulers of the qing dynasty professor zay also wore his hair like this though in the qing dynasty you actually had to shave the like the whole front part of your head then the earth kingdom royal palace is like basically a copy and paste of the forbidden city which was built 600 years ago in the ming dynasty and used during the qing as well the type of hat that the daily are wearing seemed to be modeled after the hats that qing dynasty officials wore in the summer the concept of the daily is probably inspired by the jingyue the royal secret police during the ming dynasty established by its founding emperor julian zhang legend has it that surveillance was so intense that julian rang was once talking with an official and was like hey so what were you up to last night and the official replied well i had some dinner with some friends oh really which friends what were you eating the official replied honestly and then julian zhang very satisfied pulled out a drawing of his exact dinner party seating arrangement and everyone there which of course freaked the official out because he had no idea that he was even being watched so yeah it was very hard for any of joy and john's officials to be up to any white lotus activity but it did not stop them from trying the name dai lee itself might come from the name of the head of the secret service of the chinese nationalist party which was in charge of the republic of china after the ting dynasty fell like tai li was the actual dude's name and see more cues here and i've also explained in my book one video that this type of high collard and street button vest is derived from manchu riding wear the people in the background are wearing changshan another type of clothing that developed during the ting dynasty and here's an example of inspiration derived from manchu women's fashion the gowns they're wearing are chipao but the original manchuchipan not the sexy 1920s kind the headpiece is called chito usually decorated with flowers and tassels the headpieces worn by the women like the ticket agent and judy are likely also inspired by chito here the sign says mr bao's tea house katara and toff successfully infiltrate the earth king's party but gets stuck under the supervision of long fong or long fang i guess gotta pronounce it the white way his name might mean dragon phoenix or dragon wind meanwhile jed finally confronts zuko and iro about being firebenders and gets into a fight with zuko to this day i don't know who is more hardcore uncle arrow risking it all for tea when he's being wanted by both the fire nation and the earth kingdom or jet for following this suspicion through until he got arrested back at the party aang accidentally spills water all over a noble woman he air bends her dry instead of just water bending it off her airbender instincts i guess he also does a trick that has the potential to be very unsanitary i hope he didn't put that combined water back in the cups here we get a first look at the earth king he is clearly inspired by puyi the last emperor of china i mean the glasses and the ting dynasty emperor gear come on so they had characters inspired by both the first and last emperors of china this season the king's name kwei can mean either chief or puppet in chinese depending on which character you use so it's a pun avatar extras say he took the throne at age 4 which is pretty similar to puyi taking the throne at 2. then both of them were cooped up in the palace until they were forcibly kicked out they were also fed very distorted realities kwei had no idea that there was a war happening and pui had no idea his regions had dissolved the entire qing dynasty on his behalf and china had actually become a republic kind of beyond the palace seriously he thought he was still emperor for like several years after his dynasty was overthrown because they still let him and his staff live in the palace there is no republic in the forbidden city then after he got kicked out he became a puppet of the invading japanese in the puppy regime they established in manchuria his life was pretty tragic he just can't believe getting used by different political entities to push their own agenda though apparently he was pretty terrible and sadistic sometimes so you don't need to feel that bad for him he was probably also gay or at least on the very gay leading side of bisexual i mean on his wedding night he married two women at once an empress in a consort but then he fled the wedding bed instead of consummating the marriages and the two women were like then this censorship of all talk of conflict by the daily mirrors modern china the ccp calls it preserving harmony harmonization has now become slang on the chinese internet for censorship seriously it can get so wild you never know when a post of yours is going to trip a censorship filter but as i've said in the book 1 video you can't stop people from sinai to the gang's horror though a whole different judy appears then they dally inside the city for like a month because the next episode is the surprisingly good the tales of bassing sing i see surprisingly good because it was mostly written by a bunch of staff members who aren't writers they bring a different perspective i like the slice of life format because it showed a bunch of things that we don't typically get to see like a first confirmation that aang actually has to shave every day to remain bald and that toff is susceptible to feeling self-conscious about her appearance i know the story that god saw was uncle iros though while he is gearing up to destroy us he's plucking a peapot which i've described in my book one video then the long instruments in the background are gojin or zithers he helps a string of people embossing say even a mugger who held him very poorly at knifepoint but then he returns to his son lieutenant's grave the writing on lewton's portrait says general iro see you when we obtain victory signed your loyal son lieutenant so this isn't a commemorative portrait actually it's a selfie that lieutenant sent iro whatever i'm too devastated to care this scene hits extra hard because ira isn't just crying out of grief he's also crying out of guilt it was him who led the siege on passing say and he didn't realize what the war was doing to ordinary families until he lost lutein himself consequences man and then after the tale ends it hits you with a dedication that reveals that ira's voice actor mako one of the most legendary asian actors in the west had passed away during production mako from legend of korra was later named after him rest in peace sir after that emotional roller coaster saka's tale revolves around haikus which is a form of japanese poetry that's supposed to be in a five syllable seven syllable and then five syllable format the poetry instructor madame makmuling is inspired by the writer lauren mcmullen then in zuko's tale it is amazing that jin smooshed zuko in the end after all the nonsense he put her through i don't care if he's the future fire lord i would have gotten up and ghosted him the moment he started yelling he knows what he did alright i gotta start a poll though what was worse uncle iro exposing his firebending to heat his tea or zuko exposing his firebending to impress a girl reply in the comments then we get to an even more devastating episode appa's lost days honestly i'm suing this episode for emotional trauma but i'm about to deliver more trauma to all of you because look at this imagine how much it shaved to get dragged across the desert like that that napa gets sold to tyler's old circus and abused and dressed up like a dancing lion then my god all the stuff he goes through the writers why did you do this why didn't you feel me do this in the eastern air temple that apa eventually gets to he runs into guru patik the art book says that the northern and southern air temples used to be run by monks while the western and eastern temples were run by nuns guru patik attaches a note for aang to appa's horn and output eventually makes it a bossing sei but the daley gets him before he can get and that brings us to episode 17 lake laogai the poster the gang made says searching for a flying sky bison named appa has six legs weighs 10 tons if you have any info please contact avatar eng in the upper ring 96th district building 217 so the address was right there yet after zuko got a copy of the poster he was like he could have just shown up in the middle of the night in a sneak attack yet he resorted to going through the trouble to go find appa was he planning on using up as a hostage or something who knows probably not even zuko himself laoghai itself is a real term it's short for reform through labor in mandarin which is a horrible forced labor camp system in china they say it's meant to reform criminals but many of the criminals who end up there are just political distance or religious minorities they're made to do basically slave labor and terrible conditions brainwashing was also a real aspect prisoners will be made to listen to and repeat propaganda about how great the communist party was for hours on end and none of this is a thing of the past it's still going on especially in xinjiang where they're locking uyghurs and other muslim minorities up and making them do slave labor like picking cotton watch out for the shows in the comments who are going to try to deny this stop denying an ongoing genocide when there are so many first-hand accounts of not only this but forced sterilizations of family separations when your only counter evidence comes from china's state media you might want to reconsider its legitimacy see if i said this in china i get harmonized i still might the next time i go back it doesn't even matter that most people in china can't even go on youtube without a vpn and see this video so if i suddenly disappear from all social media after a trip to china you know what happened to me anyway zuku pulls a body substitution jutsu to capture a daily agent and get info about apa while jet breaks through his brainwashing and leads the gang to lake laughing then long fang kills him like actually the creators confirmed it in multiple sources then episode 18 the earth king yes he and the last emperor pui have indeed both been through many conspiracies aimed to control them and like cuevo pui was born outside the palace but given that he was dragged inside when he was two he probably had no memories of the outside world he didn't even see his mother again until he was nine and he'd forgotten her face by that point his first conscious venture outside the palace was i believe an escape attempt when he was 16 like right before his wedding given that quay was never shown with a queen i would bet that he's a teenager here as well through some effort the gang successfully convinces quay that the war is real and that long fang is a traitor and then a search of lone fang's offices turns up a bunch of letters and documents that temporarily compels the gang to split apart it's like they've never seen a horror movie why in the world they happen i guess not until varric comes and invents them here saka's probably thinking of fugu you know those fish that people insist on trying to eat even though it could be deadly if done wrong humans are so weird then we get the cannon cursed image of airbender zuko that i must make all of you see again then it turns out azula and her posse have stolen the kyoshi warrior's identities and the real horror movie begins episode 19 the guru juke is rice boiled overnight until it breaks down into a starchy paste and then it's usually garnished with toppings chakras are a real concept that originated in india but they've gotten so muddled by western new age beliefs that like i tried to research them and couldn't even tell what was actually written by ancient indian philosophers and what was written by white people in like 1990 what i'm pretty sure about is that they're meant to be focal points for meditation because they're considered centers of spiritual energy also there are many different chakra systems beyond the commonly known seventh chakra one and a lot of associations with the seven chakra system like the seven colors were mostly invented by new age white people and i should know that chakras are not the same as the traditional chinese medicine system of qi and meridians avatar invented its own system of chakras that's approximately based on the seventh chakra one so there's no such thing as the light chakra or sound chakra in real meditation practices anyway if you know more about chakras than this please leave a comment oh one very fun fact here the calligraphy in uncle iro's tea shop says i'd rather go three days without eating than one day without tea such dedication toff has a subplot where she gets captured by master you and shingfu and then invents metal bending changing the bending game forever it's unknown if anyone actually ended up finding master yu and xing fu so there's a distinct possibility that they just died here in this cage suffocating lovely now finally the season finale the crossroads of destiny having captured qatar and zuko azula is now plotting a coup a coup is the sudden unconstitutional overthrow of a government in the dungeons katara and zuko successfully bond over fire nation trauma can you imagine if she actually used of the spirit water to heal his scar and ain't bit the dust because of it it would be tragic but it would also be really funny meanwhile azula pulls off the coup the entire fire nation couldn't take passing say in over a hundred years and yet she just snuck in and took it down from the inside in a matter of days and even psychologically manipulated the daily and zuko into joining her god damn you know some might not understand why the daily ended up betraying long fang in the end i think at this point they saw that the earth kingdom was a lost cause and that joining the fire nation was their only chance at survival thankfully qatar did not use the spirit water on tsuku's scar so she brings aang back from the brink of death but the earth kingdom has officially fallen aang is still unconscious airo has been imprisoned as a traitor azuko and azula are now on the same side seriously though this is one of the best season finales ever in writing there's a concept of using a three-act structure and at the end of act two the protagonist is supposed to be brought to their lowest point this was one hell of a low point a story is not exciting unless your antagonist is competent you know anyway that was my deep dive on avatar season two now on to personal news in the long while since my season one video yes my book actually is available for pre-order now if you haven't heard of it it's a pacific rim meets the handmaid's tale polyamorous reimagining of china's only female emperor uza tien it's officially coming out september 21st from penguin random house and if you're pre-ordered now you might be able to get exclusive annotations after its release where i explain all my historical and cultural inspirations so like doing one of my videos but for my own book i'm not exactly sure like what format the annotations are going to take yet though i still have to work it out with my publisher but anyway you can pre-order it at ironwiddle.com i swear the cover is being finalized so it should be revealed soon this book and its sequel will also be translated into french italian spanish and german and another foreign territory i can't talk about yet but this also isn't going to be my only published series i can finally announce my second book deal zachary yin and the dragon emperor it's a middle grade series that's like chinese percy jackson meets yu-gi-ho it's about a chinese-american diaspora kid who's like not really connected to his heritage but then the first emperor of china possesses his ar gaming headset and sends him on a journey across china to heist real artifacts and fight figures from chinese history and mythology so the perfect book to get into chinese history myth through a fun adventure add this book on goodreads and sign up on my website to hear major news about it it's releasing summer 2022 hopefully from simon schuster anyway thank you so much for watching this video i hope you've learned something new if you want to see more videos from me like a deep dive on avatar season 3 or kung fu panda or mulan 2 please consider supporting me on patreon or tipping me on kofi you'll get updates about where i am with the videos instead of waiting in the void and you'll be able to suggest and vote on future topics also i made a discord server go to my patreon to find out how to join and that ends my hour of rambling thanks again for the amazing support and for watching and i will see you next time

Channel: Xiran Jay Zhao

Views: 356,037

Rating: 4.9846539 out of 5

Keywords: chinese culture, chinese new year, lunar new year, ATLA, avatar the last airbender, chinese history, qing dynasty, the first emperor, the last emperor, ming dynasty

Id: i6SNxykp2MA

Length: 55min 16sec (3316 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 13 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/EmperorL1ama]

I am so pleased she's doing a Part 2, part 1 was so interesting. Watching this immediately.