The Avatar the Last Airbender Iceberg Explained

avatar The Last Airbender an undeniably iconic piece of art when I was growing up this is what the cool kids watched while the rest of us were watching Ed Ed and Eddie Avatar was an incredibly mature show for both its time and for the audience it was made for I don't remember any shows as a kid that respected my ability to understand complex plot lines or emotions like grief and characters in the series deal with that on a regular basis I think the risk that the Creator took to present a show that didn't fit the mold is what allowed it to flourish and continue building popularity over time so today let's look at some lore urban legends and behind the-scenes action but first make sure to subscribe to the channel it'll bring you more videos like this right to your homepage without further Ado sit back relax and enjoy the Avatar Iceberg explained as always let's start out at level one azula's blue flames we all love a good villain and aula was a menace I think we can all agree on that from the first moment you're introduced you can tell she's going to bring trouble for the rest of the series and what better way to kick off the seberg than with one of Avatar's most villainous characters when isula is on screen it's hard to look away her skill with firebending is evident and it's well supported by her father Fire Lord oai and her brother Zuko but what's another way that you can tell that the good times are over and zula's there to throw down it's not the dull red flames of your everyday 9 to-5 Firebender but the brilliant blue flames of a once in a generation talent that seems to be the long and short of it her blue flames are nothing more and nothing less than pure skill in firebending not only are her blue flames a visual sign that she has surpassed most practitioners they also burn hotter than yellow orange and red flames in fact if you look at the color of flame in relation to its temperature you'll find this to be true in the real world yellow and red are cooler than blue and in between them are white Flames which we see from rangi described in the rise of Kyoshi novel worth noting that even though white is hotter than red it's still not as hot as blue begging the question what comes after blue well in the real world we would say purple and in fact there are only two other times where we see purple Flames from ran and Shaw the firebending dragons and in the post animated series comic smoke and Shadow where Zuko redirects some blasts of fire turning it into a Vortex of flame with hints of green and purple the only way to get hotter would be to have infrared Flames or microwave bending I don't really know how that would work but it sounds like a cool idea for an arc honestly it sounds a little bit like like combustion bending Airbenders survived here's one of the story points that I think set apart the series The Air Nation genocide it's obviously a deeply emotional topic and it takes a lot of guts to bring such a serious concept to a kid's show as we saw in the Animated Series the Fire Nation orchestrated ruthless raids on the air Nomads and their temples all but wiping out the nation from existence but what if Ang wasn't the only one who escaped a death sentence what if other Airbenders made it out or hid long enough to evade the murderous campaign of the Fire Nation now because the air nation was inherently a nomadic people it's true that wiping them all out would have been particularly difficult not only that but their bending in particular lends itself well to evading and escaping sure during the comet firebending Powers were heightened so much so that maybe some of them could fly or maybe they had dragons to get out the temples no one really knows for sure but if an air Nomad could evade the Fire Nation for just a little bit I'm sure they could have kept in hiding for a while we do know that the Fire Nation did try to round up any Airbenders who escaped they placed artifacts in abandoned temples to make them appear like safe places for refugees while hiding a trap to wipe out the remaining Airbenders but what if they didn't get all of them if we make parallels to real life I think it's entirely possible that some Airbenders escaped or were otherwise sheltered by someone else potentially even firebending families who didn't agree with fire lord San's politics in fact it's entirely possible that some of those genetics were passed down and would eventually be expressed in a new generation of Airbenders we'll see some evidence of genetics at play further down the iceberg fire Nations inspiration the Fire Nation is obviously the big bad guy in the series they have a bending style that is inherently violent and destructive except for you Uncle iro keep being you it makes perfect sense for them to be the antagonist but what could have inspired such a violent and deadly regime let's take a look at the geography of the nation to start notice anything familiar unlike the other nations of the Avatar world it's clearly a series of islands off the coast of a larger land mass I think it's most obvious comparison is Japan now before people get all upset the Nations and cultures that make up Avatar are inspired by a host of different real world societies true many of them are Eastern countries like Japan China India and Korea but there are many Inspirations for different parts of each nation that said the political context of the show reflects very closely the political stance of imperialist Japan I'll let this article from scii elaborate quote the closest inspiration for the Fire Nation comes from the era immediately following the Magi The Tao era was marked by heightened militarization along with the Empire of Japan's encroachment into and colonization of other Asian countries leading into the events of World War II which fell under this show era from the voiceover in Avatar's opening sequence we find out that the Fire Nation began a war 100 years ago and has been attacking the other nations since decimating them and conquering them in a bid to control the entire world the Fire Nation is militarized and structured around a totalitarian Monarch the fire lord as the head of the nation and quote man that was a mouthful in the words of fire lord sosan himself our nation is experiencing an unprecedented time of peace and wealth our people are happy and we're so fortunate in so many ways 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 this one is pretty high in the list because I think it's pretty commonly accepted but it's still nonetheless very interesting because it's one area where we continue to see how real world events influenced the series lava bending the legend of Kora really expanded the Avatar world I remember watching it in college as a way to re-experience some of the Nostalgia I remember from the original series and I remember not liking it very much at the start the series quickly grew on me though and though I don't remember it as much as the original I do love how they expanded more on the lore and added all kinds of new bending techniques into the mix lava bending was one of those new techniques teques it was an exceedingly rare technique that we discovered one of the protagonists Bolan to possess and man it is one of the cooler bending techniques I remember except for maybe blood bending Nickelodeon was wild for that there were also attempts to force out this strange bending technique by placing Earth Benders in a volcano and hoping that the adrenaline and Peril would allow them to awaken lava bending techniques this was an utter failure and all the test subjects were believed to have died I don't think it's ever been super clear as to why lava bending is a subskill of earthbending and not fire bending in fact in an early avatar Book lava bending is explained as a combination of both earthbending and fire bending but it was L later retconed to be a subskill of Earth bending what's confusing to me is that when we see lava bending in action it looks a lot more like water bending than anything the flow and control required seem to be much more reminiscent of controlling water rather than fire in fact the sound effects used for lava bending are actually modified sounds of flowing water if anything maybe this really was just a way to strengthen the case for the Avatar and all the bending Styles really do just descend from one unifying bending style but to understand more about that we'll have to move down to level two brutal gatso our good friend gatso the master Airbender who mentored Ang before he sealed himself off for 100 years I still remember the episode where Ang makes it to the air Temple only to discover that all his friends have long since passed likely at the hands of Fire Nation soldiers during the genocide among the old friends that are discovered that day is the skeleton of gatso and surrounding him is a room full of dead Fire Nation soldiers now there are a couple couple points to note from this first and foremost despite the playful attitude and fighting techniques that gatso displayed while he was alive there's no doubt about it he was an absolute Master of the air bending technique Ang even called him the best air bender in the world when he was alive second he undeniably killed the firebenders that he was surrounded by which makes it the first and only time in the original series that we see an airbender responsible for killing people that is if you don't count all those things that Ang did but we'll get to those later lastly let's talk about the manner in which gso's body is found notably there are no Burns or Scorch marks on his clothes leading some to speculate that gatso used a frowned upon or forbidden technique to fight off the Benders it's not clear to me if the fire in the Avatar World requires oxygen to burn and if it does that would give a pretty big advantage to an air bender especially if they were in a closed off space what if backed against a wall gatso used a bending technique that literally sucked the air out of the room leaving no oxygen for the Fire Nation to bend and no oxygen for them to breathe gatso went down swinging taking as many Fire Nation Soldiers with him as he could and no one can tell me otherwise original to to has to be one of the best characters in the series and that is in large part due to a decision made late in the game to change to's design entirely instead of the short blind little girl to's original design was that of a tall muscular jock type this design seems to have had the purpose of being the foil to Saka the opposite while Saka was the intellectual original toe was the muscle brain and Brawn we still got that just in a different different form now supposedly the reason for this change was simply that showrunners Brian ketco and Michael Dante de Martino supposedly thought that the version of to that eventually made it to the finished show would be funnier that seeing a little girl beat up big bad guys twice or three times her size would resonate better with audiences and I think they were right to stands as one of the most memorable characters in the series and one of the few that actually made me laugh one more fun fact about this version of to is that you can actually see him in the series in fact you see him in every episode that's right the Earth Bender that you see in the title sequence water Earth Fire and Air is the original character design for to in addition if you watch the original pilot episode which I'll get to later on you can see a short intro for each of the team Avatar friends and when the earthbending section comes up you can see the original version for to in action Tye the Airbender all right I will admit this one is a little bit of a stretch and Airbender is definitely misleading let's think back to a topic from not too long ago the survival of Airbenders from the original Fire Nation attacks imagine for a moment again that there was a family somewhere along the line in the Fire Nation that was sympathetic to the struggles of the people from the air nation and imagine they stumbled across a group of hiding air Nation refugees rather than turning them into the government maybe they instead chose to provide shelter maybe they provided shelter long enough for those refugees to blend Into the Fire Nation as everyday citizens eventually going so far as to integrate with their society to survive those refugees might have one day had children that would have passed down and spread the airbending genes amongst the people of the Fire Nation in fact I would go as far to say that this almost definitely happened if we know anything about Avatar The Last Airbender we know that it was inspired by real world culture and events there's nothing more real world than someone breaking with the authoritarian rule of their country to shelter refugees against the will of their government so now imagine all this happened and then fast forward a few Generations suddenly it's entirely plausible that Ty Lee the Fire Nation circus performer actually has Airbender genes in her DNA this would explain a few things well she's obviously an acrobat there's no reason that she should be able to jump 15 ft in the air maybe a little bit of airbending jeans gives you a few more inches or feet of vertical and there's also her self-reported ability to read auras an indisputably spiritual aspect of her character and most characters except Ang who's con constantly meditating lack that skill this latent spirituality could be lingering influence of her great great great grandfather in Airbender Ang's lost son we don't know a whole lot about what happened in between the conclusion of The Last Airbender and the legend of Kora but we do know a few things we know that Ang and qara did get together and ended up having kids we also know that Ang supposedly dies of old age in his mid 60s about six or so years before the start of the legend of Kora what we don't know is if we're actually seeing all of Ang's kids or if there was possibly a secret fourth child that we saw plenty of but never knew was related to Ang that's right this theory proposes that sahir the antagonist of the third season and the grittiest Airbender of them all is actually the Forgotten and discarded son of Avatar Ang there's a few ideas that contribute to this Theory the first being that the new Airbenders that appear in the season thanks to quora are not actually random but were in some way related to the original Airbenders that fled the Fire Nation attacks during the hundred-year war the point being that the new Airbenders actually had some sort of genetic disposition to becoming Benders meaning that Zahir had a predisposition to becoming an airbender also Zahir seems to have both lots of knowledge about the historical air Nomads and respect for their spirituality now I'm not totally sure but I kind of doubt that he could have learned that on his own unless he were close to someone that could teach him and what better teacher than someone that lived in the air Temple 150 years ago his potential father Ang so well we'll probably never get any confirmation and it's probably not true I for one think that the resemblance between the two is pretty uncanny minus the blue arrow of course and speaking of hairstyles let's move down to level three Zuko's hair if you watched our boy Zuko through the entire series you'll note that while most everyone's hairstyle Remains the Same Zuko goes through many different stages in fact he goes through as many hairstyles as he does changes and points of redemption in his character art when we first encounter Zuko he has what can only be described as the world's worst top knot and that seems to reflect how terrible of a person he is when we first meet him then we see a banished version of Zuko one who's chopped off the top knot in favor of a more lowprofile haircut that reflects him trying to blend in with the crowd while serving tea with Uncle iro third his Redemption Arc begins but before that we see a mop of hair that seems to reflect how lost he is rather than the Tidy haircut that we see before and after the hairstyle screams I have no idea what I'm doing or where I'm going and I'm angry about it trust me we've all been there finally we see Zuko in the last episode Redemption Arc fully realized and top knot back on his head albeit this time it looks much better I don't think there's really any way to deny this Theory his hairstyle perfectly reflects his journey and signifies his growth over the series but what do you think intro Benders it's not often that you remember the title sequence of a show in fact the title sequence is rarely included in shows anymore so when you hear water Earth fire air and are immediately transported back to the couch after school how can you not recognize greatness but who are those characters in the intro of the show back when I was a kid I used used to think they were all different incarnations of the avatar from different eras but now we know for sure that one of them is actually the original to so I'm not so sure if you skipped ahead by the way go back to level one you cheater so we know the Earth Bender but what about the water bender well that distinction goes to paku you might remember paku as the old waterbending instructor that originally refused to teach qara how to waterbend well it turns out he was widely believed to be the strongest water bender while he was alive it's no wonder that he got the distinction of being in the intro and because he's the first in the opening sequence he's actually the first character in the series that is seen bending in any way shape or form now the fire bender this one is a little bit more obvious and if I primed you with the first few topics in the video you might already recognize her it's of course aula the firebending Prodigy as possibly the most talented firebend Bender of her generation it makes sense that she would take the spot in the intro scene lastly we have the Airbender drop into the scene a lot of people incorrectly say that the Airbender is ang but that's not quite true if you look very closely the figure in the scene appears to have a mustache meaning it can't possibly be a the fandom Wiki lists him as an unknown air Nomad though when you read through the fan series The Common suggestion is gatso Ang's original mentor from before the 100-year war and if you really zoom in that mustache seems pretty accurate glass bending here we have another subsection of Earth bending we started with lava bending but here's another one that I didn't realize at the time was in fact distinct from earthbending we first encounter sandbenders when the gang is trapped in the desert they're cruising around in their sand Sailors stealing Opa and Ang well Ang almost kills him he definitely destroys their mode of transportation though stranding them in the middle of the desert and I don't know how they got out of that but that tribe specifically the SEI Wong tribe is the one made up of sandbenders distinct in that they Bend individual grains of sand rather than solid earth historically glass Benders were sandbenders first who then learned how to Glass Bend though it was possible for regular Earth Benders to learn as well sand and glass Benders would make glass by focusing on individual grains of sand and superheating them melting them into the glass forms and then wielding it much in the same way as a water bender would in fact glass bending is said to be very very similar to Lava bending and we've already discussed how similar that seems to water bending I guess the main difference here is the level of control needed when we see earthbenders they're typically moving around huge chunks of Earth and don't really need all that much control with sand you're lifting something tiny and control is needed apply that to Glass bending and it's no wonder Earth Benders don't have the innate skill required honestly I love these little extensions to the bending world but sometimes they feel like they were good ideas at the start but there are so many weird rules about bending that have to be retconed each time a new bending style shows up that you have to wonder if it was actually thought all the way through use meteor one of the sweeter entries on this list involves you I'll forgive you if you don't exactly remember you she was not present on the screen for very long but she was one of the most emotional departures and maybe one of the first indications that this show wasn't going to pull any punches just because it was for kids you was the princess of the northern tribe that was born with some unknown illness the moon Spirit gifted some of its own life force to you saving her life the balance was later restored when you sacrificed yourself to restore that of the Moon Spirit returning the waterbending abilities to all of the tribes that's the background and you disappears from the show quite early showing up occasionally as a reference from Saka drunk on cactus juice and then again to guide and save Ang's life after getting Zapped by Zula other than that we don't see much from you EX except for one fan theory that shows the affection from Saka is not entirely one-sided in season 3 Saka goes through the process of disguising himself as a member of the Fire Nation and training in the art of sword fighting as part of this process he must make his own sword and decides to incorporate a minor as part of the material in that sword what if as a personification or spiri ification of the Moon you was actually responsible for sending that meteor given the connection between the moon space and meteors it's not an enormous leap to make Saka clearly had a connection with you and maybe you found a way to return some of that affection after her sacrifice energy bending this seems to be one of the more hotly debated components of the Avatar series and I suppose it's for good reason it was the finale of the series and to many people the manner in which Ang both learned turns about and uses energy bending felt poorly executed lazy and a bit too convenient so what's the argument basically the third and final season of Avatar the Last air bender is 21 episodes long Ang meets the lion turtle in episode 19 and learns about energy bending only two episodes before the series concludes Ang is presented with his hardest decision approaching his battle with oai either lose to him and die dooming the world to an even more powerful Fire Nation or kill him saving the rest of the world this is a direct contradiction to Ang's Arc for the past three seasons as he famously refuses to kill taking a passivist approach instead so entering this battle and concluding with Ang not having to make either decision feels like a slap in the face to some viewers on top of this the fact that he's given the solution to his problem by a god two episodes earlier is literally the definition of deis ma and I'd agree on that point I do think there could have been some more foreshadowing that laid the groundwork for energy bending that said after reading a few different opinions on the ending I don't fully agree that it was a lazy ending in fact I think it might actually be the perfect ending for Ang's character throughout the series he's always finding other ways to do things to avoid violence to avoid killing kind of in the same way way that Batman doesn't kill anyone and faced with his tallest task rather than succumbing to the world he completes his Arc as a savior figure by not compromising himself whether it was intended this way or not Ang likely would have been the only character in the series capable of energy bending due to his steadfast character according to the lion turtle the true mind can weather all the lies and Illusions without being lost the True Heart can tough the poison of hatred without being harmed Ang's true mind and heart are what allowed him to use energy bending and come out unscathed so in the end I'll give it a satisfactory way of ending the story but our story is not over we need to go deeper to level four lion turtle plot holes speaking of the lion turtles let's talk a little bit more about them and their role in the Avatar Universe we're first introduced to them in the leadup to Ang's battle with oai but we see much more of them in the legend of Kora honestly the lion turtles were a little bit weird to me their lore felt like it didn't quite fit within the already established lore of the world and in some cases it seemed to undermine what we already knew about bending for example we're introduced to the dragons in avatar The Last Airbender and to the civilization that woried and learned from them the sun Warriors the sun warriors were supposedly the first tribe of human firebenders in the world which they learned from the dragons however as soon as the lion turtles are introduced we're all instead told that all humans were granted the ability to firebend whenever they were out hunting that seems to cheapen the idea of firebending to me and it makes more sense as an art that was studied and eventually mastered rather than something that was gifted there are also different lion turtles roaming around each attuned to a different element water Earth fire or air and in turn they each grant that power to the humans on their back so let's talk about water bending while the lion turtle could Grant this we're also told by you that the original water benders learned by watching the push and pole effect that the moon had on the tides to take away that lore and replace it with the lion turtle touched my head and now I can bend feels cheap to me instead I have my own Theory I know we're told about the lion turtles in a way that is basically Canon but what if instead the lion turtles are more akin to fables or biblical stories of creation they were stories that different regions came up with to ascribe spiritual explanations to physical phenomena in some narrations of the story there were lion turtles that gifted bending but on the other side of the world dragons did the teaching and at the poles watching the tide taught water bending I don't know I think I just prefer those explanations of bending over it being a gift from the lion turtles but what do you think Avatar U let's go back to U for a really fascinating fan Theory The Story Goes that you who we talked about earlier was born with an unknown illness which was not so much an illness but more of just an endless Slumber it takes the moon Spirit in order for her to be woken or healed from that Slumber so what was her illness what caused it and why was a spirit able to fix her well the theory goes that when Ang fled the air temples and eventually froze himself solid for 100 years he messed up the Avatar process and the balance in whatever system was managing that when he did that the process continued without the ability for the Avatar Spirit to inhabit a new human host enter you a baby born with a mysterious illness that looked more like like a deep Slumber what if youu was supposed to be the Avatar after Ang but because of his suspended state was born before the Avatar Spirit could get to her leaving her in a state of deep sleep because her illness was caused by the lack of a spirit the only thing capable of Reviving her was in fact another spirit I really like this Theory but there are a couple holes in it I'm just going to talk about the most glaring one the Avatar is based on a theme of reincarnation so it doesn't quite make sense that a baby would have been born without a spirit as it seems more likely that the spirit just finds a new host when it needs to whether or not that happens exactly at the time of birth I don't know if that's ever explained so well it's a really cool Theory I do think it undermines the story around the theme of The Avatar in a way that probably makes it unlikely to be true but it's still a fun one animal guide bonds we all know that these bonds Run Deep the friendship between Ang and apaa is nigh unbreakable and we've seen the same thing with other avatars Roku had a dragon and Kora had Naga even the first avatar Juan has an animal companion Moola who is a cat deer as an aside this just kind of reinforces my idea that when the legend of Kora came out they just started stretching for some ideas but anyways we know these bonds are strong but how strong are they is it possible that their very lives are tied together and that the death of one would ensure the death of the other as far as I can tell most of the evidence for this theory is based on the fact that Roku and His companion Dragon Fang died together now it's pretty clear that the death of one didn't cause the death of the other in this case Vang chose to die with Roku laying down with him as an erupting volcano overtook them but maybe you could argue that their Bond compelled Fang to join Roku either way despite the sad ending for both they do end up in the spirit world together so they seem like they're doing fine the other piece of evidence is a little bit lacking the main idea is that we know Ang is dead and apaa is nowhere to be found it's assumed that however Ang died if it really was from old age apaa was right there with him in the end as far as the cannon goes Ang died of old age because all that time Spence trapped in the ice took a toll on him and so who knows maybe Opa having spent the same amount of time was also ready to move on unired Avatar pilot did you know that there's actually a readily available version of an unired pilot that you can watch as the industry goes the show creators would have had to pitch the series to Nickelodeon with a pilot episode in order to Peak their interest in it we see all kinds of interesting details ever so slightly different than the final version of the show that made it to air starting at the character design you can see the main characters except for Toof as we covered earlier look very similar to their final versions though I will say there was some significant polish put on them between the pilot and the real first episode Ang and Zuko look very close to their finished versions but qara and Saka have had some work done speaking of qara that was a big change katara's original name in the series was going to be Kaa the official reason for the change was one of trademarking it seems another video game character already had the name Kaya locked down so they had to change it onto Saka supposedly the original version for his character was actually much meaner than the version we saw in the finished series The Character we saw was more of a snarky sarcastic one I for one am glad that they made that switch on to the other not so tiny detail that you'll notice in the pilot Ang enters the the Avatar state in the very first episode and he does so to overcome what is a pretty standard battle if you watch the actual series you'll know that it essentially takes Ang the entirety of the series to master the Avatar State well in this version he does it effortlessly on day one it's worth noting that this was probably never the actual intention it was likely a way for the creators to tease the full potential of the show so they pull out all the stops and powered up Ang all the way the good news is it worked but I'm also glad that they upped the stakes for Ang to enter the Avatar State rather than making it easy for him to solve any issue by turning into An Almighty Bender at the drop of a hat the episode is pretty easy to find go check it out you can just Google it the fight scenes are actually so well done despite it being such a lowbudget creation it's just fascinating to see where it started and where it ended up Ang's Dark Side speaking speaking of Ang he is famous through the whole series specifically for not killing anyone even the fire lord in the climax of the series gets spared he repeatedly comments on how he avoids violence except as a last resort and he never uses it to kill but let's explore for a moment just how merciful Ang really is there are a few moments that come to mind but we'll start back with those sandbenders that stole apaa in the desert now Ang justifiably freaks out but then he takes it a step further and begins entering the Avatar state in an uncontrollable fashion and almost murders them in Cold Blood but stops short thanks to qara that said he definitely destroyed the stand sailor that they were using to Traverse the desert leaving them stranded I'm not sure what odds they had of making it all the way back to their Village on foot but I'm sure they managed right but also right off the bat in the first season when is in the form of the ocean Spirit he's destroying Fire Nation soldiers left and right sweeping them into the ocean with massive tidal waves and Blasting them with what must be an immensely powerful force of water I think that being thrown into the icy water in the middle of the night is not great for your odds of survival he also demolishes like a dozen warships which probably had whole battalions of people on board that were just wiped out as sinking ships are not famously rate for survival either and then there was also that time at the Northern Air Temple where a bunch of fire soldiers were up on the cliffs Ang zooms by and creates an avalanche that almost certainly sweeps them off the edge other air temples are shown to have a 3,000 foot elevation so I think it's safe to assume that no one was surviving a fall off that mountain but anyways if you didn't see the death on screen we'll just assume cartoon physics I'm sure those Fire Nation soldiers just rode the snow down to the base of the mountain mountain and everything was okay keeping it in the family think for a moment about the characters that we see lightning bending it's a skill that's pretty far in few between for the most part it's a technique that is restricted to the upper levels of the Fire Nation government and not something that has slowly trickled down into lower tiers of society in fact look at the royal family in general almost all of them are powerful enders in their own right and in a world where your bending ability is in part determined by your genetics how might you keep those genes strong that's right the theory goes that in order to maintain the power of the Royal Line the family very much kept it in the family and let's look outside the fictional world for a second we know of course that much of Avatar was inspired by the real world and what's more real world than a royal family arranging marriages both for political reasons and to keep their bloodline quote unquote pure what's interesting is that unlike in the Real Worlds there aren't necessarily any benefits for inbreeding humans don't actually have magical powers like they do in Avatar or Harry Potter there isn't any actual reason to maintain a bloodline in the Avatar World on the other hand we know that bending is in fact genetic and we're in a Royal air to be born without the ability to bend they would likely be a disgrace at least in the ation so there's a good reason to separate yourselves from other Gene pools the counter to this Theory though is that the royal family didn't actually have the best bloodline they just had the best training which again reflects what you see in the real world the child of a world-class athlete might have some genetics that give them a slight leg up but in reality they have access to the best training and coaching in the world if they end up being an All-Star it's most likely the training and not the genes in the same way the royal family members were able to learn how to lightning Bend not because of their genes but because of incredible training and coaching what do you think was bending power based more on genetics or on training is it more Talent OR skill let me know in the comments and while you're typing we'll move down to level five azula's Redemption Arc we've almost come full circle we started with aoula and now let's revisit her as we know she is one of the main villains in the series and alongside her brother they introduce us to a fire nation that is ruthless both in their politics and in how they raise their children training them from a young age to be Warriors and Killers Prince Zuko Begins the series as an antagonist to Ang hellbent on capturing him and turning him into his father which as a side note if you watch back with the context of the full series oai was definitely going to kill Ang there's no question about that I think my childhood brain thought that he was just going to beat him up or something but we all know the Avatar world is much more ruthless than that but anyways as the series progresses we continue to follow Zuko who becomes more and more conflicted with his role in the current world until eventually we see the full Redemption Arc of his character even going so far as to battle his sister aula to complete that Arc but what if I told you that even aula was capable of change and Redemption and what have I told you that originally she was also planned to have a Redemption Arc that might have outshined even Zuko I'll read from headwriter Aaron ehz I think I'm pronouncing that correctly who wrote on Twitter or x 5 years ago about the plotline he intended for aoula quote I always intended for aula to have a Redemption Arc in the story of avatar The Last Airbender longer and far more complicated than Zuko's she had not bottomed in the end of season 3 she had further to go at the deepest moment in her own Abyss she would have found Zuko despite it all her brother Zuko would have been there for her believing in her sticking by her doing his best to understand and help her hold her pain that she could no longer hold alone Zuko patient forgiving and unconditionally loving all strengths he gained from Uncle iro that's how she would have gotten out and changed with the faith and love of someone she had hurt but who stuck by her anyway just as he had been saved by faith and love from someone he had hurt but who stuck by him I also imagined that after coming out the other side she would have been one of those people who hilariously overshares her own feelings all the time and that she would have been a bit over apologetic like a Canadian version of aula end quote honestly with the way that Zuko's Arc was written and choreographed I would have loved to see aulas fifth Nation the world of avatar The Last Airbender is famously divided into four nations I've probably talked about the intro scene like five times at this point water Earth fire air but what if I told you there was once a fifth Nation not one with its own unique bending technique but a Melting Pot of the other four nations one where water Earth Fire and Air Benders all got along that would be a little bit misleading as by all accounts it wasn't so much a nation as it was a roaming band of pirates they did exist for quite some time though and were influential enough to be considered their own Nation with their own culture that said the fifth Nation itself was less diverse than they would have had you believe despite claiming to be a nation and Society with quote no avatars and no Masters they were largely made up of individuals formerly from the southern water tribe while they might might have been more diverse than other nations it seems this was the case largely because of an early treaty signed between them and the Fire Nation meaning that the pirate nation was slightly more likely to have firebenders in their ranks that said when you live on the water firebending isn't going to do you much good it's not really clear if they had many or any Earth and air Benders in their ranks but based on how they went about kidnapping civilians from Earth tribes in the future I'm guessing they didn't have many as part of their crew the nation doesn't really exist by the time we see Ang running around as it was largely destroyed on two different occasions once by a master Airbender who summoned an enormous storm that sunk and killed most of the pirate nation and then a second time when the nation tried to kidnap the Avatar and instead kidnapped the Avatar's friend causing the actual Avatar to unleash the Wrath of the Avatar State on their boats and crew honestly based on the background I've read read from this fifth Nation I'm surprised they survived as long as they did World size speaking of the nations of the Avatar world how big do you think their world actually is we see a map quite often but it really only shows the four nations which seem to be made mostly up of chains of islands the map we often see is laid out in a way as if to imply it represents the entire globe and if that's the case then how big is the planet that Ang and his friends live on let's start with what I think is probably the most boring of those schools of thought that the world is essentially the same size as Earth there's not a lot of lore here it just seems like the easy answer but I don't think that's necessarily the truth so let's do some math and try to figure it out first let's look at a few different methods of calculating its size on the world map we can see very clearly the outline of bossing say it let's let's be as generous as possible and call it roughly the size of New York City New York has an area of about 300 square miles let's be generous and give the intersection of bosing an area of 500 square miles almost twice that of New York City now we'll remember our middle school math and we'll work out that if the city is 500 square miles then the diameter of the inner Rim is about 25 miles extrapolate that out and based on the world map that we can see you get a planet with a circumference of only about 650 Mi for comparison the circumference of Earth is about 25,000 mil the circumference of Pluto is about 4,600 mil so we're talking about a planet about the 10th the size of Pluto that's tiny in fact for comparison if you drove from the top of California to the bottom that's about 750 Mi so 100 Mil further than it would take to drive around the Avatar world that seems way too small for me so let's try another way we're going to assume that bosing say is actually much larger than New York and is in fact a mega City that houses most of the nation's people however many people that is Earth King Ying Ming once said that it takes 2 days to walk from one side of bosing to the other now let's give the benefit of the doubt and assume that they're walking at a good pace for 2 days straight for mph is a very fast walk but let's assume they keep it up for 48 hours that makes the diameter of bosing SE 192 mil using the same math as before that gives us an avatar world with a circumference of about 5,800 miles which honestly is about 25% bigger than Pluto which doesn't seem like a bad estimate the other idea I'll say here is what if the map isn't showing the entire planet there's a good chance that it's only only zoomed in on a small section of the world and if that's the case imagine that there's actually a whole other half of the planet half the world we've never seen what could be there entirely new Elemental forms of bending if you have any theories let me know in the comments original sketch I put this one at the bottom not because it's the most secretive of all the topics on here but rather that I think it's the most interesting and inspiring part of the iceberg back when Tumblr was a thing Brian ketco posted some of his original sketches that inspired the series along with an inspirational message quote just keep drawing and follow the characters on the page wherever they may take you end quote I don't know why but it's just a relief that the series hasn't been spoiled by some Revelation that the creators are terrible people or something it's stood the test of time and has remained a testament to Great storytelling worldbuilding and character development speaking of character development let's take a look at that original sketch as Brian mentions this is the first sketch of the Avatar Universe some elements are the same it's interesting to me that even the first sketch of Ang had a tattoo arrow on his head in fact all the characters have arrows on their heads Ang also still had a staff albeit a futuristic looking one other things though have changed quite a bit for example take a look at Momo yes he is still a sort of small companion but in the original sketch he was actually a cyclops Robot Monkey guide which is a really interesting idea Momo in the series that we know is a mute companion more animal than guide he doesn't really have any intelligence in the way that would help Ang navigate the world this robot on the other hand is shown pointing in the very first sketch which would seem to imply that he has an intelligence to offer Ang also instead of apaa being there with Ang we got a bipedal version of Naga who despite not appearing in avatar The Last Airbender does make a return as kora's companion in the follow-up series it's just fascinating to me that even though this sketch is from 2002 the character of Naga still makes a comeback a decade later for the legend of Kora let's also look at another early sketch that was included in an art book for the series here we can see the creators expand on the early inspiration for Ang and Avatar as a whole we see Robot Monkey Momo again and a little more of Ang's staff the show was originally thought up as a futuristic sci-fi type of Adventure but later shifted to the setting we know now interestingly Ang didn't really have a name in the beginning only wind boy or Buddha boy only later being referred to as the Keystone being you can pause and read the rest of this screenshot if you want I bet this entire book is really a pretty good read anyways I love how the character developed from a rough idea to the one that we saw in the series and despite some major changes the creators had a vision for Ang that was unwavering all the way from the beginning and we've also come all the way from the beginning we' finally made it to the end of the iceberg if you made it this far and you haven't clicked the Subscribe button do me a favor and press it now let me know in the comments what your favorite topic was and let me know your own theories I'm sure there are some great ones out there and I love seeing what stories people have made up lastly if you're looking for more Vault content I've got other videos on my channel exploring the lore behind some popular series like Harry Potter Game of Thrones Star Wars and Pokémon with that thanks for watching the Avatar Iceberg and I'll see you next time

Channel: Vault

Views: 19,842

Keywords: Iceberg video, iceberg, facts, spooky, fan theory, long form, videos to fall asleep to, avatar the last airbender, avatar the last airbender iceberg, legend of korra, legend of korra iceberg, avatar iceberg, Aang, avatar aang, avatar lore, fire nation, korra, toph, avatar plot holes, plot holes, nickelodeon, avatar azula, lion turtle, avatar pilot episode, avatar state, airbending, airbender, fire bending, earth bending, water bending, lore, nickelodeon iceberg, nickelodeon lore

Id: io0gTiJFifc

Length: 50min 47sec (3047 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 26 2024