May 26, 2020

Avatar: The Last Airbender: a much better She-Ra than Noelle Stevenson's pop cultural appropriation of She-Ra.

There, I said it. Noelle's Bastardization of She-Ra is a really bad copy of Avatar: The Last Airbender. But why does Avatar: The Last Airbender works while Fake She-Ra fails?

Before I start, I need to point out that I had seen a few episodes of Avatar back when it originally aired, but didn't care much for it because it was faux anime. Also, I was in a Fuck Rufio phase. As you know, Dante Basco, Rufio, is the voice of Zuko, so hearing his voice didn't help my 00s weeb self. Thanks to a friend, I decided to give it an honest chance, just like I did to Fake She-Ra. I was so ready to tear this show apart worse than Lisa did Johnny...

Also, the episode before the finale pretty mucb did a great job of poking fun at itself AND the Shyamalamadingdong movie.

OK, so we have Aang, a kid who ended up in the future and has the potential to stop the Fire Lord and his Fire Nation who threatens the world. Aang is The Avatar, a mega powered warrior who has the power of mastering all elements.  He teams up with a pair of Siblings: Katara, a Waterbender, and Sokka, normal guy who relies on his non-powered abilities to fight. I guess you can see the comparisons...
The Avatar is obsessively hunted by Prince Zuko:

An exiled prince who is teying way too hard to impress an uncaring parent... also turns good in the end and becomes close with The Avatar...

I must also mention Zuko's Sister, Azula, who enters later in the series, but she's a psycho bitch, who manipulates everyone to do whatever she wants  also goes mad with power...

Toph is blind and the best character in the series.

The Best Friend Squad is a copy of Team Avatar and Frosta is a Great Value brand Toph... Catra is a combination of Zuko and Azula. Ty Lee and Mai are Kyle, Lonnie and Rogelio. Iroh is Scorpia. Fire Lord is Hordak, Shadow Weaver and Horde Prime... you get the idea.

Avatar had a LOT of Relationship stuff in it and it worked better than She-Ra. This was because the relationships were being nurtured in an Organic manner. There were no weird Shyamalamadingdong tweests on one sided relationships. (Also, on Network television over 10 years before Noelle's Bastardization, with some heavy restrictions that Noelle didn't have. And Korra was 4 years before...)

The Fire Nation WAS A REAL THREAT. Hell, they LITERALLY ANNIHILATED AN ENTIRE CIVILIZATION, the Airbenders. They virtually eliminated the Southern Waterbenders, with only the Earth Nation as their last big enemy... (and that one was being corrupted from within.)

Every battle had actual stakes and the good guys didn't always win. You had characters with shades of grey, that suffered for their actions. For example, Jet, who claimed to be a freedom fighter, but was willing to kill innocents to stop the Fire Nation. We have Zuko, who on one episode runs off on his own and helps a family from a band of soldiers who behaved like bandits. When they find out he's from the Fire Nation, they immediately turn on him.

Aang goes on his hero journey and struggles. The Guru episode was a tribute to Empire Strikes Back, but it didn't feel like a rip-off. Aang had to choose between achieving control of the Avatar state or his feelings for Katara.

Near the end, Aang had to choose between his stance of respecting all life, or killing the Fire Lord. He summons his oast lives to consult on what path to take.

Zuko's redemption arc takes its time as the pieces fall in place. It's not rushed because there are less than 10 episodes till the end.

It helps that the writing on Avatar is top notch MOST of the time. There are a few cringy bits of dialogue, but for the most part it's really well written. Even the Ember Island Play episode, which is a recap is pretty well written and the cringy stuff is on purpose as the showrunners poke fun at their work, theater tropes, and the clip show cliches.
Heck! The series is SO WELL WRITTEN that out of 61 episodes, the Filler episodes can be count WITH a single hand and there are fingers to spare.

The fact that it's an entirely original IP allowed the creators to be super diverse, zero White Characters and they pulled it off with VIRTUALLY ZERO BACKLASH... This demonstrates that diversity on its own is not bad,  but when FORCED by race swapping established characters, you get backlash.

The reason I'm bringing up Fake She-Ra, is because I finally realized what Noelle wanted to do if she hadn't been held back by the pesky She-Ra canon... she wanted a gayer (nothing bad with that, but using LGBTQ as a shield to deflect criticism is a load of bullshit) and shittier version if The Last Airbender. Can't fully comment on Korra, since I have no access to the series.

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