Overanalyzing Avatar: The Avatar and The Firelord

it's time you learned my history with fire lord susie i like that aang in his dream here sees himself in this old outfit with no hair as well as it being how he appears in the spirit world later in this episode as well that does make you think though if you show up as you picture yourself in the spirit world why does roku show up how he looked when he died i guess it makes sense you just kind of picture yourself how you are but i'd probably want to be young jack roku personally you actually can hear footsteps here that wake zuko but that still leaves the mystery of who left the note it was ira who sent it surely but who has a connection with ira in the prison system that could have set this up there's ming who as far as guards go is pretty pleasant but past that it doesn't seem like he has too many white lotus visitors hanging around more cloud bending actually does a similar move to what he does in the fortune teller where he leans back and throws his arms over himself here we get a pretty wide shot of a wall of firelord murals so we actually get to see sozen's father here who was only ever mentioned once in the whole series later in this episode and there's even an obscured portrait of sozin's grandfather too also these pictures actually illustrate the fire lord's rule too or at least if you're looking at sows as it does we've got the comet and firebenders at his feet representing the army he unleashed during the comet there's not a lot more you can really glean from the portraits unless you're really looking to stretch but it does look like oza's has machinery and stuff in it so it could be that the fire nation just made a lot of technological or industrial advances under ozai's rule where is this on the island it looks pretty uniformly messed up but here we have this little alcove with this giant area shooting upwards i thought for a second it might be something that roku earth bent from later in this episode but nah that was up towards the summit of a volcano and this looks like it's pointing out towards the ocean it's interesting that roku told ag to meet him here on the day of the summer solstice considering that roku just straight up showed up that one time it would lead me to believe that aang still needs a spiritual place and date to speak with roku but this actually breaks some other rules as well roku and ang couldn't keep talking because the sun set on the solstice last time but here he's meditating at sunset and he stays with roku all night it could be that he's just better at it now maybe obedience chakras helped him out even though one is permanently locked right now we we won't get into that so it's still weird a lot of what i like about the spirit stuff is that it's vague and unknown but when you set up a hard and fast rule like this it's weird to contradict it and then just go back to following it there's a lot of comments that i get that are just people making excuses for the show with their own head canon you can do that all you want but i don't think it actually makes the show any stronger something i really do like from this moment though is that aang seems to go to the same mountaintop in the spirit world as the one that he went to back in book one when he first met roku what does it mean [Music] boy that was strangely lucky usually avatar is better than having things just coincidentally work out but it's only once in a blue moon so i'll let it slide in the dragon bone catacombs i would be remiss if i didn't mention how sick dragon bone cat bones sounds very nice to be entirely honest this isn't a very good locking mechanism right i mean not everyone's a firebender but there's a lot of them oh you son of a [ __ ] they're making the full moon the focal point of the shot now it's like they're purposely antagonizing me from 13 years ago also this time lapse would have me believe that this fire sage didn't ever end up leaving he's probably still down there i guess zuko just got fed up of waiting dragon bone catacombs is right look at all these small dragon skulls that line this hallway even the ceiling and walls sort of seem like a spine with ribs coming off it maybe from an enormous dragon and we get a statue of sozin that works at the door so i think it's safe to say that this was built in sosan's time at sozen's request and it's not like a hyper ancient place we get this lineup of what all seems to be equally important scrolls here so it could be that these are the final testaments of firelord's past but if they go in order from left to right we'd have sozan's grandfather and father sozen a zulon and then ozai who's still alive he might have already written one up who knows but to my knowledge that dude's still alive i think i could be though that these are just general important souls and documents and not other final testaments once more we get an entire episode set to flashing between ag and zuko paralleling them which i'm always down for and we get some really cool shots and contrast as well so even though we've thoroughly treaded this ground i'm down [Music] looks like i win again roku i haven't talked about how avatar characterizes its characters in the first scene for a long time now because we've kind of been introduced to everyone but here we go again sozum is characterized awesomely he's quick thinking a little bit of a gamesman but good-natured overall you also already get a feeling of his relationship towards roku as he says i win again but they're clearly both fine with that you instantly know they're good friends even before you even realize this is so the writing in the show is incredible man say something to her [Music] even this tiny little detail of literally piling onto roku is some real friendship like yeah i'd probably do that to my friend if they just chickened out that heart just tiny little stuff like that goes so far you think anyone ever caught prince susan and spectral roku wearing the same headpiece in this scene the first time around that would be some [ __ ] [Music] [Applause] even here prince ozin shows a lot of humility by bowing to his friend who suddenly has this position of power which is odd when you think about how proud the present royal family is they do a really good job of making sosan likeable in a very short amount of time and they had to or else the emotional side of this episode wouldn't have worked so hats off to them come on show me how it's done using all four kinds of bending wow that was pretty good like i got a feeling that sozen had a rough understanding of each kind of bending from that alone and during peace times that seems like it wouldn't be ordinary in a prince maybe he just likes fighting and studying how people fight that's a pretty cool character trait here i hope you're at least allowed to have this but this is a royal artifact it's supposed to be worn by the crown prince i want you to have it this is a big part of what makes this show so special to me friendships aren't explored enough in media it's always romantic relationships that get the spotlight but i think there's a real merit just showing friends who are really good friends the kind of friend that can razz you when you mess up but be there for you when you're down real friendships are just as fulfilling to watch on screen if you ask me and avatar is one of the few shows that give the viewer the chance to enjoy them [Music] do they have bathrooms in the spirit world as a matter of fact they do not this joke is a little tough to get actually this is a reference to when saka actually went to the spirit world himself and the first thing he said when he got back was this you were trapped in the spirit world for 24 hours how are you feeling like i seriously need to use the bathroom hey gyatso you want to see a new glider trick holy [ __ ] did he just do a couple loops i bet that's brand new no one ever thought of that one i can't believe you were friends with monkeyatso just like i was some friendships are so strong they can even transcend lifetimes yeah yeah i'll leave the last big friendship diatribe to the end of the video i'll try not to repeat myself too much here i travel to the northern water tribe looks like roku's water bending master is wearing something similar to a betrothal necklace here just like han was huh maybe that is commonplace water bearing was especially challenging for me obvious one but roku struggles with water bending because it's the one opposite of fire in the avatar cycle the same concept hawaii aang struggled with earth bending but in time i mastered it as well if you pause here you can see that roku actually made a little ice platform to brace himself on just to completely attempt to kill his master here [Applause] my earthbending master said was uncompromising stubborn and blunt i'm pretty sure i already mentioned this in an earlier episode but i'll be inundated with comments if i don't mention it here said bears a very close resemblance to the shadowy earth banner in the intro to the show probably the closest resemblance out of anyone it was bitter work but the results were worth it this is one of the coolest shots in the entire show and roku actually says the title of a previous training episode bitter work in reference to completing his own training which is super cool earlier we saw five like scroll holding things on this table and if this is the empty one that zuko took since last testament out of then where'd the fifth one go roku it's that girl who didn't even know you were alive that is a funny way to phrase it ang i don't know though every time it showed her and roku in the same scene she seemed pretty bashful it's cool that it seems like there's people from all four nations present at roku's wedding we've got all the different colors that represent them in this crab here even some air benner orange and an even better shot of the other three nations right here you know what's interesting i don't think roku's wedding took place in the fire nation capital i always just assumed that it had but in this shot we don't see the ring of the giant volcano that the city sits in on top of that it's sunset in the shot and the fire nation capital looks towards the east if you're looking out towards the water so i wonder where this is in the fire nation obviously the west coast but it seems like roku probably lived here for a time if he's getting married here we should share this prosperity with the rest of the world in our hands is the most successful empire in history it's time we expanded it i can buy that honestly we've seen sosan be largely good-natured and opportunistic to this point which helps make this feel more gray than just a straight turn to evil i don't think sozen had bad intentions with this plan when it started but obviously things change don't do this susan don't challenge me it will only end badly oh [ __ ] hold on soson's nuts that's a lot of fire for a non-comet enhanced bender that's some zhongjung [ __ ] this is one of my favorite little details that goes totally unmentioned and can totally go over a viewer's head have you noticed that sojun's throne room isn't the throne room that we've become acquainted with the fire lord using sosan has a more traditional one when compared to the burning one that a zulon and ozai use and you want to know why it's because roku [ __ ] obliterates susan's throne room right here and they had to make a new one even a single step out of line will result in your permanent end oh it's going to be tricky getting him down from there in it susan and i didn't speak or see each other for 25 years after our battle all right this is a big one you got to focus up here you got to dial in because this isn't going to be the easiest thing to follow in the world i've done the math and it turns out that sozan is very very old when he dies like older than you would think all right so lock in here we go at the start of this episode it's shown that roku and sozen share a birthday they're 16 at the start of the episode sozen then states roku didn't return home for 12 years while he traveled and learned the elements making them both 28 at the time roku marries and sozen proposes the expansion of the fire nation the next time skip is only revealed to be quote many years but looking at the two physically graying hair and wrinkles i think around the 40 to 45 years old ranch would be a fair guess and that's undershooting it if anything so it's around that age that they have their duel in the throne room the final time skip is 25 years according to roku putting them both at 65 at the youngest at the time of roku's death ang lives out the first 12 years of his life with only the idea of war being on the horizon and aang is born immediately when roku dies aang freezes himself in an iceberg at 12 years old making sozen 77 at the time i'll assume that the comet arrives very shortly after aang runs away within a year it could be more but we're trying to give sozen the benefit of the doubt here so that puts sozen at the age of 77 at the youngest when the comet arrives okay now here's the real [ __ ] in the episode zuko alone were shown zuko around the age of 10 at the end of the reign of firelord of zumon sozen son so that places these events around five or six years before aang comes out of the ice which is agreed to be a hundred years so this is about 95 years after ango's in the ice at a zulun's funeral it's said that a zulon served as firelord for 23 years until his death setting the precedent that the fire lord rules until his death meaning 95 years subtracting the 23 years of a zuma's rule leaves us with 72 years of sosan still ruling as firelord after he leaves roku to die that puts zozen at his youngest remember i've undershot everything to a reasonable amount at 149 years old at the time of his death and yes i know this has been retconned the creators made a zoulon's rule way longer with some hindsight but i'm not analyzing what the creators edited after the fact i'm talking about the 61 episodes they put in front of us so i don't care to hear about this retcon talk i like that even though they show roku having seriously aged here they immediately have him leap out of bed and get into position to show he's not some feeble old man good visual storytelling okay this is a really weird thing to include right it very specifically shows the royal artifact being left here on the ground as both roku and tom in flee their home and only minutes after this their home is buried in volcanic ash roku's got his hands full this whole time so unless tommen remembers her husband's headpiece and turns around to go get it therefore running towards an actively exploding volcano i don't see any way for this to not be buried along with the town but iro has it at the end of the episode so why include the shot it's really strange this scene is great we haven't gotten to see it fully realized avatar struck their stuff since kiyoshi and since we're more familiar with roku it feels even better a really cool payoff to seeing a summarized version of roku's avatar journey you'll also notice that in this shot roku didn't just make a way to the top of the volcano with this move he actually raised the whole ass wall i think we could have probably shown that a little better but it's still a cool feat for roku this is amazing roku you're battling a volcano and you're winning i agree the spectacle is really cool but this scene is pretty horribly undercut by the fact that aang also battled volcano with the objective of saving a town and he actually survived and saved the town and he was just an airbender and a fledgling waterbender i guess he did have some things working for him though as he got to plan before it erupted it seemed like a much less violent eruption the town seemed further away and there wasn't an entire ass second volcano but the way ang phrases it still makes roku seem kind of lame [Music] [ __ ] that's a cool shot god the spectacle is incredible in these last few minutes i'm not gonna lie need a hand old friend i like that in this shot sosan shows up and literally covers the second volcano as if the shot is trying to tell us that sozen has that one covered this show is a really cool language it speaks it when it comes to blocking shots here we get some more roku lava bending which we first saw him do back in book one in the spirit form cool to see him do it in life too this is the biggest meme form of bending in the entire show this is a form of fire bending somehow what is this what is he even doing he's stealing the heat from the lava in the form of volcanic fumes this just doesn't track man and even if it does somehow scientifically it doesn't track with this somehow being firebending i'll tell you that much please without you all my plans are suddenly possible i have a vision for the future roku i'm not the first one to point this out but sozin's betrayal here mirrors the first scene we see these two share sozan goes to help roku catches him but ultimately lets him fall that's a pretty cool little detail sozan also has a blue dragon by the way which plays back into the imagery of zuko's dream back in book 2. the red dragon was the angel on the shoulder rohu's dragon and the blue one was the devil susan's dragon that's a really nice touch of course these dragons are both related to zuko because of a reveal we get later in the episode so we'll get to that in a sec [Music] overall i think sozin was a great character well fleshed out and despite his heel turn on roku seeming a little quick once again we've got 24 minutes in an episode we gotta get this [ __ ] done was he a bad guy in the end yeah what he did was messed up but like all great villains we can kind of see where he's coming from to an extent so i think his character works really well ah come on dude that shit's sad as hell fang was ride or die man literally interesting to note that these look like female air nomads so unless these guys came to the southern air temple to help deliverang aang was either born at the eastern or western air temple i have more than one great prince zuko zozin was your father's grandfather your mother's grandfather was avatar roku this reveal is so good man what an awesome angle to take it enforces the struggle between good and evil and zuko so much more and it just ties together parts of the story that you wouldn't think would be intertwined this is masterful storytelling and just amazing scene writing as well the way it builds up to iro saying it and i finally get to talk about the cinematography in these prison scenes zuko and iro share too not just in this episode but this episode especially most of the time the shot is framed from within iro cell so it looks like zuko is the one that's in prison there are a lot of shots of arrow behind bears too but most of the shots actually zoom in through the burst on the flip side a lot of the shots do the opposite rizuka they zoom out to show the bears in front of them this is a metaphor to show zuko's mental imprisonment in this broken cycle of hate and anger he's found himself in while ira was free of it and on the other side of the bars that can find zuko look at this shot especially if you didn't know the situation here who would you say is in prison zuko is the one behind bars and the light and iron are just beyond them he's the one that needs to break free what happened generations ago can be resolved now by you because of your legacy you alone can cleanse the sins of our family and only on this shot when iro explains the role zuko can still play does the zoom in on zuko's frame start he begins to realize he can break free not totally yet as we cut away before the bars are totally out of shot but he's starting to see it the way the camera works on the scene is simply brilliant it's amazing roku was just as much fire nation as susan was right if anything their story proves anyone's capable of great good and great evil i like that aang has his own take on his vision here i don't think that point was pushed very hard at all in the narrative but it's cool that aang had the chance to take it that way i like that a lot do you really think friendships can last more than one lifetime i don't see why not now that i can agree with [ __ ] yeah and you got a good squad here this episode is amazing i know a lot of people who say it's their favorite we get a cool bite-sized version of an avatar journey of a character we already think is really cool and we learn a lot more about them the themes of friendship and growth and responsibility are right throughout the entire show but this episode is a highlight of all of them i really really buy roku and social's friendship and falling out even though we only spend less than half an hour watching them it stops this episode from just being a lore dump when you frame it around a really close friendship falling apart it makes it feel personal and on top of that of course it's very visually appealing and it's really nice to finally see where everything changed from the fire nation attack really started from patron shout outs if you want to be two episodes ahead of the youtube releases you can support me on patreon for just a few bucks link as always is in the description below the video the don't tear agent rhino and garrett kane you guys are insane you mad men you complete lunatics you maniacs you psychopaths are you enjoying the perk of me calling you synonyms for crazy is that worth all that money no i should probably think of something better of course shout out to my other top patrons bradley ralph who went up to space and turned those billionaires right around donnie snow who sees the world in big head mode like he's playing a game of nba jam dylan calvo who has a walk-in closet that's bigger than your parents house elder zeldenthis who can grow hair anywhere like on the ground or on the 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Channel: Overanalyzing Avatar

Views: 1,162,728

Keywords: Overanalyzing avatar, avatar, avatar the last airbender, atla, Roku death scene, Roku vs Sozin, Roku backstory, Avatar Roku, Avatar roku backstory, the avatar and the fire lord, AVATAR THE LEGEND OF AANG, Roku dies avatar, Avatar the last airbender video essay, avatar video essay, avatar netflix, netflix avatar, netflix avatar the last airbender, avatar studios, netflix avatar review, avatar netflix trailer, avatar studios trailer, minecraft, avatar minecraft

Id: 9rmD2VN2JTc

Length: 19min 56sec (1196 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 03 2021