The Secrets Behind Sand-Bending

[Music] if one type of element bending technique has remained mysterious in the avatar universe it's sand bending the bending arc only used by the c wong tribes has rarely left the desert's borders the problem is while bending a grain of sand is child's play controlling thousands at the same time requires a very particular set of skills in today's avatar video i'll talk about sand bending how it works common uses and its relationship with jing now hop on your sand sailors and let's get started in avatar the last airbender and the legend of korra sand benders are actually rare and scattered across the sewang desert what could be the reason behind sand bending not going mainstream it's for sure more common than lava bending as we record only a few earth benders throughout the franchise that can master that power the same thing applies for blood bending and lightning bending or at least it's the case during yang's time when you think about it amazing earthbenders you can lift giant rocks like the boulder or the self-proclaimed best earth bender in the world toff bae fong we're never really seen sand bending to any impressive degree if they can control such massive elements then logically they can bend a single grain of scent the problem here doesn't seem to be with the material itself but the amount of it earth being the element of substance and earth benders are known for adopting a fighting style that can be quite rigid grounded and focused on brute strength using the same technique with sand could be useful to blind one's enemy by throwing sand all over the place but in order to really sand bend and not just earth bent sand a particular form of skill is required what makes it so difficult for earthbenders to unlock the secrets behind sand bending is that the technique used to achieve such a trick lies in water bending i know weird but sand bending is only possible through a form of bending art close to how waterbenders push and pull water during battle the sand needs to be thought of in terms of flow and the bender needs to focus on lightness instead of heaviness in terms of difficulty level you can also think of sand bending by comparing it to the way toff discovers metal bending in order to metal bend an earthbender has to focus on the object's inner components and locate the trace amount of earth impurities that are still part of the metal these fragments are quite small and hard to detect but once an earthbender can locate all of these little pieces of earth within any type of metal besides pure ones like platinum they can gain control over the metal through moving the earth particles within it to understand how sand bending works you can apply this idea but towards thousands of tiny free-floating finely divided rock and mineral particles the fact that these pieces are not held together by another material like metal makes it very very tricky to master this is why toff could not defend herself against the c wong tribe that ended up kidnapping appa while washi tong's library was sinking into the desert scene you have to be in a mindset to waterbend when trying to master the sub element toff complained that the element of sand made her bending abilities fuzzy due to the fact that it's rather shifty sand bending goes against how earthbenders are traditionally trained to be immovable and direct when in combat mode they're taught to become unshakable pillars of strength so there's a thing or two some earthbenders could learn from other elemental benders that could facilitate the way they handle sand now let's turn the concept of jing as used in the avatar universe to find out what makes sand bending different from other elements but also similar to one in particular to understand the relationship between earth bending and water bending we have to turn to the concept of jing every elemental bending technique is linked to a positive a negative or a neutral jing in the avatar universe the concept helps to categorize how fighters direct their energy during battle this energy can be channeled internally and its expression can be seen externally through action in the case of positive jing it can be described as an aggressive and forward way of directing one's energy firebenders who more often than not use violent tactics during battle are said to have a positive jig a firebender will rarely wait for his opponent to strike first and through a combination of aerial kicks and punches will shower their opponents with flames everything about firebending is about directing your energy ahead while minimizing defense the only real defense firebenders have been known to practice is either evade incoming hits and well using full on fire attacks on whatever element is thrown at them maybe besides with uncle iro the same positive jing philosophy can be applied to most fire nation citizens zuko won't hesitate to say what he thinks which led to his scarred face azula literally has no filter and rangi from the kyoshi duology novels has the temperament of an erupting volcano when it comes to negative jing air benders are the ones exercising the most it goes hand in hand with the air nomads way as they see every single life as precious no matter what sin people have committed so compared to positive jing practitioners like firebenders who move forward no matter what airbenders are masters of evasion being quick and agile airbenders would do anything to avoid conflict and they often use acrobatics to trick their opponents into hitting themselves or simply falling down through negative jing the airbenders direct their energy backward and will rarely engage into battle unless absolutely necessary as we've seen with aang battling ozir tenzin versus the red lotus when it comes to earth benders they neither use positive nor negative jing they express their qi through what is called neutral jing according to the wacky king boomi this type of jing can be summed up as doing nothing in other words it involves a lot of waiting listening and analyzing the situation an earthbender will typically wait for their opponent to make the first move to let them come to them it might be one of the many reasons the fire nation had such a hard time taking over the earth kingdom their use of positive jing can lead them to action which is a good thing but it can also mean that their impulsive personality can easily be taken advantage of by a neutral jing practitioner while a firebender rushes towards an earthbender the earthbender has already evaluated the situation and can answer appropriately by either attacking or defending themselves in the case of water bending they use both positive and negative jing which to some extent makes it so that they use a form of neutral jing or at least navigate somewhere between the two ends of the jing spectrum while balancing both positive and negative let's look a little bit closer at the art of water bending to find out how surprisingly close to the water bending technique sand bending actually is for starters the c wong tribes are basically pirates of the desert they mainly travel across the dunes using what they call sand sailors these crafts are boat-like transportation devices equipped with yellow sails while cora used air bending to move the sand sailor asami created out of their flying ship's wreckage this is actually an unusual way to do so sand benders would usually create whirling columns or as i like to call them tiny tornadoes out of sand which in turn generates wind now in this scenario it can be tempting to link sand benders to airbenders but as cora has shown on various occasions whirling columns of water is actually a common thing as well since sand benders are still working with the element of earth they do adhere to neutral jing and are somehow grounded but this aspect needs to be mostly channeled through their legs and feet and as their connection to the earth stays strong they have to adopt a more water bending based technique when it comes to moving the sand around as i have briefly mentioned before waterbenders or tai chi practitioners adopt the push and pull technique they inspire themselves from the relationship between the moon and the ocean which create a sort of never-ending movement back and forth this allows a waterbender to switch their defense into an attack using their opponent's force against them and turning it to their advantage we haven't seen a lot of sand benders charge into battle but their combat styles would look like something between the traditional earth bending and water bending techniques a hardened body and a strong core while adopting a more fluid and light way of thinking to turn every grain of sand into a flowing entity capable of still unknown powers since we know that glass bending is possible thanks to the shadow of kiyoshi it's highly probable that a highly trained sand bender like avatar genji from the fan project the legend of genji could bring glass bending to the next level if a sand bender would accelerate and rub the sands molecules together at high speed it could create a form of glass this could turn sand bending into quite a lethal weapon and even more so in the avatar state imagine a rain of shards of glass appearing out of a sandstorm or a giant glass sword cloud strife style the only issue with that type of glass is that without being mixed with soda ash it would dissolve in water it's kind of ironic that the technique sand bending is based on at least partly also comes from the bending art style most likely to defeat them under our genji video user halo 20601 liked to see genji reconnect with his past lives with the help of korra's spirit this could make for quite the amazing trip to the spirit world and like gang did while he was healing for missoula's attack genji could meet with the past avatars one by one

Channel: CBR

Views: 505,604

Keywords: aang, airbending, avatar, avatar studios, avatar the last airbender, earthbending, firebending, kitara, sandbenders, sandbending, si wrong tribes, sokka, the legend of genji, the legend of korra, zuko

Id: y0fGD2-ee8A

Length: 9min 14sec (554 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 25 2021