Avatar: The Last Airbender, episode 11, The
Great Divide is widely considered by the fanbase to be the worst episode of the show, with many
arguing that it’s best to just skip the episode all together. I mean, even the creators knew it
sucked. They lampshaded it in the recap episode. "Look! It's the great divide, the
biggest canyon in the Earth kingdom." "Ehh, let's keep flying." Now, no one is saying this episode is great,
and I won’t be in this video, but the the fact that this whole “you can just skip The Great
Divide altogether” idea has just kinda passively been floating around the Avatar fan community for
years and years is absolutely unacceptable to me. First of all, I think The Great Divide helps the
pacing of book one overall. Immediately preceding it is Imprisoned, The Winter Solstice
parts 1 and 2, The Waterbending Scroll, and Jet. A pretty heavy batch of episodes
overall, so I think giving the audience some lighter, less serious adventuring was
appropriate before launching into The Storm. The Great Divide also gives us some of the
first discussions we hear about Earth spirits, reinforcing the lore of this world. It
reinforces the requirement of physical movement in bending when the canyon guide
becomes unable to Earthbend after breaking his arms. And it’s the first time we see
refugees of the Earth Kingdom traveling to Ba Sing Se for protection from the fire
nation, planting the seeds of how important the capital city is in this war an entire
season before we’ll go there ourselves. But most importantly, The
Great Divide is absolutely worth your time because of the Gan
Jin and Zhang flashback sequences. While the rivaling tribes each explain their
shared history to Sokka and Katara respectively, the show switches to a completely different art style for each side of the story. The
first of the two is the Gan Jin tribe, whose perspective is represented in an art style
that takes influence from Vampire Hunter D, an anime film from 1985 adapted from the novel
series of the same name, which could later get a sequel film, in 2000 called Vampire Hunter D:
Bloodlust. Its artstyle is very crisp, moody, and sharp, which is very appropriate for
the refined, posh nature of the Gan Jin. On the other hand, the Zhang’s telling
of their past is extremely geometric, proportionally warped, and high contrast. This art
style was done as an even more direct homage to the anime film Dead Leaves, a 2004 Production I.G
movie which is the brainchild of Hiroyuki Imaishi. These scenes are some of the most overt examples
in the entire Avatar series of the crew wearing their love for anime on their sleeve. Up there
with Aang dressing up as Goku from Dragon Ball Z and Vash from Trigun. Certainly the most
overt example at this point in the show. Everyone knows Avatar was influenced by anime, but I think that despite the series being nearly
2 decades old and still relevant and beloved, only a very small portion of its extremely
passionate fan community understands or is even interested in understanding just how much
anime is infused into the very DNA of Avatar. To people who do know, it's obvious, but
my problem is that there aren't enough of you. My problem is that on a video
with half a million views specifically made for the purpose of talking about
every relevant aspect of this episode, I have to scroll down to the dozenth comment
on that video to see anyone even acknowledge the radical shift in animation style and I
have to read the response to that comment to find someone pointing out what that
animation style is a direct reference to. So let’s do some exploring, shall we? As I just mentioned, the more overtly
referential of the two flashback sequences in The Great Divide, that of the Zhang’s, was
pulling from Hiroyuki Imaishi’s Dead Leaves, but his influence on the Avatar
crew was not nearly isolated to just this scene. Imaishi was one of the
key creative forces on one of the Avatar team’s favorite anime, FLCL. In a Q&A,
Avatar director Giancarlo Volpe said. "FLCL was a huge one. We all were like, ordered to- to buy FLCL and watch
every single episode of it." Yeah so you know how Aang’s eyes glow white
when he enters the Avatar state? That super iconic thing he only does a handful of times
throughout the whole show. That was inspired by the glowing white eyes of FLCL’s 12-year-old
protagonist, Naota in its final episode. All those hyper stylized facial expressions,
including the most iconic one from The Great Divide. Pretty safe bet that those were at
least partially inspired by FLCL. I’d even bet the fan favorite cut where Sokka says [play
clip] comes from this scene in episode 2 of FLCL where the shot is framed in the reflection of
Canti- a robot-'s CRT television head. It has the fisheye effect, very similar framing,
Sokka and Haruko both animate very chopilly and Naota and Katara make almost identical faces
in reaction to what Haruko and Sokka are doing. This one is also unconfirmed but you cannot
convince me that the shot from behind Aang as he stands on top of a rock while Katara narrates
that she believes Aang can save the world, was not directly pulled from this shot in FLCL
where Mamini looks up at Naota from behind in admiration of him before snapping a picture of the
moment. It’s like she’s going “wow this is iconic. I gotta get a shot of this.” And the Avatar crew
was like, “damn, Mamimi. You right as hell.” Co-creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante
DiMartino especially have explicitly pointed out that they were fans of anime studios like Gainax
which co-produced FLCL along with Production I.G. These two studios also cooperated on The End
of Evangelion, a 1997 movie following the 26 episode TV anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion.
In Evangelion, the main characters fight aliens called Angels with giant mecha robots called
Evas and it is confirmed that King Bumi’s character design was inspired by the hunched, long
limbed bodies of the Evas. And Hei Bai, the forest spirit who first appears in Book 1: episode
7, had his design inspired by the Angels. More on the topic of character designs,
Cowboy Bebop, which needs no introduction even to western audiences, gave Avatar
co-creator Bryan Konietzko inspiration to draw his own group of futuristic,
fantastical, space traveling companions, consisting of “a robot cyclops monkey
with an arrow on his head holding a staff, a morose-looking balding human man in his forties
wearing a futuristic outfit, and a bipedal polar bear-dog hybrid.” After revisiting the sketch some
time later, he would refine it, switching around accessories and elements such that they more
resembled who we now know as Aang, Appa, and Momo. Bebop’s main character, Spike Spiegel, also
inspired the design of Jet which just makes so much sense it hurts. LIke, knowing that
they were thinking of Spike when making Jet reinforces so much about everything
to do with Jet’s character which I’d go into more depth about here but it gets
into some very spoilery territory that isn’t necessary for the point of this
video. So I’ll just leave it there. Cowboy bebop was directed by Shinichiro
Watanabe, who also directed Samurai Champloo, another of his anime which became
especially popular among western audiences, including Bryan Konietzko. By the way, one
of the protagonists of Samurai Champloo, Fuu, has a flying squirrel for a pet named Momo. Maybe it’s a coincidence, maybe not. Either
way Konietzko has expressed how much he loves Watanabe particularly, his combat
scenes including the fight between Spike and this drug dealer from episode 1 of Cowboy
Bebop, as well as the battle between Mugen, a main character in Samurai Champloo, and a
blind woman working as an assassin named Sara. If I had to come up with a parallel between each
of these scenes and Avatar, I’d say that the way Sara cuts through rain with her spear when
fighting Mugen feels very much like some of the waterbending moves Katara has performed
in the rain. And this might be a long shot, but the way Spike dances around the drug smuggler,
evading all his erratic punches and kicks… It feels kinda like Aang’s “twinkle toes” style
of airbending. I mean obviously, airbending is largely based on the real life martial art of
Baguazhang, but the way that Aang stays light on his feet in a manner that only a cartoon character
could, might have some of its roots here. The only other confirmed inspiration Cowboy
Bebop had on Avatar that I found was that the one and only cabbage merchant is a recurring
character in part because the Avatar crew loved Bebob’s Antonio, Carlos, and Jobim,
a group of three old men who coincidentally pop up in many of the locations that the
main characters visit throughout the show. More on Watanabe, he directed Space Dandy which
is one the greatest anime ever made -card in the corner for a video explaining why- under studio
Bones, who are responsible for this niche little show called Fullmetal Alchemist, and hey, look
who key animated for episode 22. It’s our old pal Hiroyuki Imaishi. I mean according to Wikipedia
at least. I couldn’t find his name in the credits. But regardless, this episode does contain a
scene that I am absolutely sure the Avatar crew watched and loved because they recreated
it almost beat for beat in Book 2 Episode 11: The Desert. And the scene I’m talking about is
the last one in the episode, wherein Aang finds out that sandbenders captured and sold Appa, a
revelation which sends him into the Avatar state. In episode 22 of Fullmetal Alchemist, co-main
character Edward Elric is being forced by central antagonists to try to create a philosopher's
stone, essentially an amplifier of the user's alchemic abilities. And it is revealed to Ed
that in order to create this philosopher’s stone, Envy and Lust, the antagonists, are going
to have him sacrifice many human lives to do so. Then after stepping in a pool
of liquid philosopher stone material, Ed gets supercharged with an uncontrollable
amount of alchemy energy which only subsides when he is embraced by Maria Ross, a military
soldier who cares deeply for him and his brother. Obviously the very conceit of the main
character, a young boy, being overcome with power shortly after an upsetting revelation and
a female character putting themselves in harm's way to approach the main character and give
them a hug, which finally calms them down, is already pretty similar. But the
extremely similar shot composition, editing, and effects animation, combined with
the fact that these scenes both take place at the very end of their respective episodes, and the
fact that this would only add to the list of anime that got very popular in the west which Avatar
took influence from. Is enough to convince me. Y’know it’s funny how the Avatar team
seemingly was so inspired by Imaishi’s work but they may have not even known who
he was at the time because I cannot find a single instance of anyone who worked on
Avatar even saying his name. Kinda cool that he was so clearly being recognized by
other animators before he went on to direct the works that he is now most well known for,
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and Kill La Kill. At this point, I’ve almost exclusively discussed
visual similarities between Avatar and its predecessors, but I’ve neglected to discuss how
anime inspired its structure and themes, and this information is actually pretty well known unlike
some of the more miscellaneous connections I’ve drawn thus far. In the early 2000s, there were
very few western cartoons that really utilized serialized storytelling, rather there were lots
of shows that were very episodic. And this was largely the result of cartoon studios, at the
time, believing that serialized storytelling would be economically infeasible. In fact Giancarlo
Volpe, episode director of The Great Divide, has pointed out that because The Great Divide was
one of the few completely self contained stories in Avatar, Nickelodeon aired it much more
frequently than others for this very reason, possibly contributing to the negative
reception of the episode via oversaturation. "It wasn't just Nickalodeon. A
lot of animation studios thought, 'Oh this continuity based story telling kills
us in the ratings'. So Great Divide was their prized episode where the fact that it is fillery
- it's a stand alone episode- it's a stand alone. So they were like 'this is the episoe we're
gonna air all the time'. So in some wierd way, I don't mind if people are anoyed with The Great
Divide because it was kinda marketing's fault." The fact that The Great Divide stands
out so much in the memories of fans who watched Avatar as it was airing or during
the reruns may have also been because it was a completely episodic story surrounded by a
much more serialized show. That serialization, of course, came from anime and it was one of, if
not the biggest reason Avatar was such a landmark in western cartoons. Uncountable numbers of
fans have expressed how Avatar was the first cartoon they watched which developed a world
they were captivated by and wanted to learn more about. One that could have more resonant
character arcs and more meaningful themes. And would you believe it? Anime also had a huge
effect on those arcs and themes. Once again, this is of the more well known influences
on Avatar, but it cannot be overstated how important the work of Studio Ghibli, and
specifically the work of Hayao Miyazaki was to the creation of Avatar. It’s been
confirmed that Miyazaki’s sensibilities rubbed off on Bryan and Michael and it is very
clear when placing their works side by side. The anthropomorphization of nature being used
to promote an environmentalist philosophy. The insistence on giving antagonists
understandable motivations that just conflict with the protagonists rather than simply
having them be pure evil. Themes of anti war, etc. And yes, plenty of visual parallels. Koizilla,
aka: Aang spiritually fused with La, the ocean spirit looks very much like the Nightwalker
form of the Forest Spirit in Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke. Koh, the face stealer bears
resemblance in design and in name to No Face from Spirited Away. This is another long shot
but in the director's commentary for the finale of Book 2 of Avatar, Crossroads of Destiny,
the cave prison that Katara and Zuko end up in had the green crystals covering its floors
and wall inspired by “some pictures from some anime” according to DiMartino. Knowing that he’s
a huge Miyazaki fan, I’d say he might have been looking at the glowing rock crystals from Castle
in The Sky. They talk about how to make something look like it’s glowing, a good technique
is to darken everything else in the frame, and that’s exactly how these crystals in Castle
in the Sky are revealed so it’s possible. Back in the realm of confirmed Ghibli influences,
Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro influenced the character designs of Appa and Momo. The iconic
Catbus is what led to Appa having six legs and Momo’s facial proportions were referenced
from Totoro’s. My Neighbors the Yamadas, a Ghibli film directed by Isao Takahata
gave the Avatar creators inspiration for the “super deformed” or “Chibi” art style
that the Avatar shorts, which were included in the DVD release of Avatar, were animated
in. This is also an artstyle which Avatar dips into occasionally throughout the series,
for the first time in The Great Divide, during the sequence where Aang tells his fabricated
version of the Zhang and Gan Jin’s history. Now you may have noticed that much of what
Avatar drew from was contemporary anime at the time. I’ve discussed almost nothing that
came out more than 10 years before Avatar. But I think that the team’s appreciation
for anime may have gone a lot deeper than the shows and movies that were appealing to
western sensibilities anyways. For instance, in Book 2 Episode 6: The Blind Bandit, the
montage sequence of The Boulder defeating multiple opposing wrestlers makes
use of several postcard memories. That’s the name for these single cells that
are given more detailed illustrations which frequently get panned across or zoomed out
from. They are frequently used as the final image of an episode of anime, almost everyone
has seen one of these at some point because they make their way into A LOT of anime. And in
the director's commentary for The Blind Bandit, Ethan Spaulding who directed and
partially storyboarded this episode, notes that these illustrations were based
off of those in “old Japanese cartoons”. And I think this is telling because he
doesn’t say “anime” almost like he’s referring to a time when the line between
anime and cartoons wasn’t so defined. And the fact that he’s talking about the use
of postcard memories, a technique that was popularized by the legendary, but rarely
discussed, Osamu Dezaki in the 70s and 80s, leads me to believe that Dezaki’s work was
what they were pulling from here. Especially because this scene in Avatar is depicting
a wrestling match, and one of Dezai’s more well known works is Ashita no Joe and
Ashita no Joe 2, which are boxing anime. Check out this awesome video by Shaybs
aka: Caribou-kun breaking down the history and greatness of Osamu Dezaki. It’s super
informative and contains a wonderful sequence at the end containing tons of anime that also did
postcard memories showcasing Dezaki’s influence. I find this especially cool because it seems to be
an example of Avatar not just pulling inspiration from anime but from the same anime history that
modern anime still pulls from. And on top of that reverence for the people who made madoren anime
what it is now, they also are willing to poke a little fun at some aspects of anime like
its prevalence of impractical battle armor. "What do you think? Pretty slick huh?" "Nice." Stuff like that. The respect for the medium’s
history combined with the good spirited ragging that showcases so perfectly why people
used to have conversations about whether Avatar actually is an anime or a cartoon.
Avatar and anime are just so authentically cut from the same cloth. They feel like
family members because they are. Luckily, I think the increased internationalization of
animation talent we’ve seen over the past decade, with studios from east and west both taking
more and more cues from each other has reminded audiences around the world that the terms
“cartoon” and “anime” are just words we made up. Avatar is special for many reasons but the
main one to me is that it embraced a truly global perspective of what animation could
be. And this is why despite recent efforts to make a live action adaptation of
Avatar that clearly stays more true to that global mindset than past attempts,
I still feel like the mere idea of doing Avatar but without animation is an ill
advised one, and almost by definition makes it impossible for the successor to
achieve what the original did so well. I would so much rather watch a live action
telling of a totally unique story in the Avatar universe than a recreation of one that’s very
foundation was the medium it was told in. Like, that’s what they did with Rise of Kyoshi and
it turned out great. How will the inspiration from Hayao Miyazaki not get lost? How will
the inspiration from Shinichiro Watanabe not get lost? How will the inspiration
from Hiroyuki Imaishi not get lost? How will they convey Aang riding the Elephant
Koi Fish? How will they handle “drink cactus juice!”? How will they handle Appa and
Momo fighting as Samurai in Aang’s sleep deprivation hallucination? By the way, Momo’s
samurai design was inspired by the character Miyamoto Usagi from the comic book Usagi Yojimbo
whose design was inspired by Japanese swordsmen. This is the stuff I worry about with the
new adaptation. How do you capture that magic that animation provides *without animation?* I just rewatched the trailer again and
like, I swear I'm not trying to be a hater, but just like, look at these
two clips side by side. Come on. Like, I'm sure this show is gonna be
fine. I'm sure it's gonna be fine. I just like- I just- I- I need to stop myself.
This is supposed to be about why I love Avatar. In all honesty, I don’t really care
what they do with the Avatar brand. I’ll always have the original and the
original will always be a masterpiece in huge part because of its influences. And
Avatar was inspired by so much more than just anime. The reason I focus on anime is
because out of everything Avatar pulls from, it’s what I know the most about and feel I
can spread the most knowledge of. I would be very eager to learn about the other
artists and mediums that influenced this show which I love so much from people
who are as into them as I am into anime. Here’s a video I enjoyed by The Caipa
Effect which provides an introduction on Avatar’s production history as well
as which martial arts the animation crew referenced when developing
each characters’ fighting style. I’d also recommend picking up a copy of
the Avatar Art Book which is where I did much of the research for this video
and the DVD collection which has all those director's commentaries and the Avatar:
Braving the Elements podcast which has tons of cool insight on the show from Dante
Basco, voice of Zuko, and Janet Varney, voice of Korra. By the way, Dante Basco
agrees with me about The Great Divide. "You have not two, not three, but
four different artstyles in this episode. You have each tribe with their
specific art episode which is so amazing, and then the first showing of the actual
Avatar chibi art. In spite of everybody being a jerk in the episode, the actual art
may actually make it a can't miss episode." There is tons of publicly available information on
this stuff and all it takes to learn about it is your interest. And I'm advocating for more people
to tug on that little string of curiosity when you notice something interesting or unusual in a show.
Both because it's just an incredibly rewarding and enriching process to learn how the things you
love are made, often in ways that deepen your love for them, but it also gives credit to the
people responsible for making the thing you love, and the people who *inspired* them,
and the people who inspired *them*. So go. Go do your own research and get
back to me with all the cool stuff you find that I didn’t touch on in this
video. I’m sure there is plenty more I didn’t mention or couldn’t find a source for. For example, I have a hunch that legendary
anime director screenwriter and animator, Masaaki Yuasa may have influenced Avatar
in some way because there’s more than a few cuts in Avatar that look like his style
and he animated for My Neighbors the Yamada’s and an episode of Samurai Champloo both of
which we know the Avatar team saw. However, similar to Imaishi, his most known works came
out after Avatar and I couldn’t find mention of him anywhere in the places I Iooked
for researching this video… So who knows. One last thing before I go. If you’re interested
in more discussion of Studio Ghibli since it was such a huge part of the Avatar inspiration,
I have literally reviewed all of their films so I’ll put a link to the playlist of that video
series in the description and probably on screen. Anyways that’s all for now. Thanks for watching.
Have a nice day and I’ll see you in the next one.
