oh yes, and I'm still watching AtLA
Mar. 8th, 2011 09:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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deird1's recommendation, I've been watching Avatar: the Last Airbender again. If I'm going to do it justice, I should probably say something about the excellent pacing, the purposefulness of the plot, the surprising complexity of the character arcs, and other such stuff.
But really, all I want to talk about is the fact that I JUST WATCHED A HAIKU BATTLE.
Also, that the show is unbelievably gorgeous. Each of the four elements has its own color scheme. Earth kingdom, my favorite, is all rich greens and golds and earth tones, but each culture has its own fashions, architecture, and decor. Just gorgeous. I love it.
deird1's recommendation, I've been watching Avatar: the Last Airbender again. If I'm going to do it justice, I should probably say something about the excellent pacing, the purposefulness of the plot, the surprising complexity of the character arcs, and other such stuff.But really, all I want to talk about is the fact that I JUST WATCHED A HAIKU BATTLE.
Also, that the show is unbelievably gorgeous. Each of the four elements has its own color scheme. Earth kingdom, my favorite, is all rich greens and golds and earth tones, but each culture has its own fashions, architecture, and decor. Just gorgeous. I love it.
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Date: 2011-03-09 05:37 am (UTC)Isn't this show fun? :)
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Date: 2011-03-09 06:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-09 07:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-10 01:42 am (UTC)Thoughts:
* The writers are going to wring this will-he won't-he Zuko tension out for all it's worth, aren't they? Argh! Silly boy.
* I thought "The Guru" was a real drag in an otherwise well-paced season. The long interlude about chakras bogged things way down, I thought. (It doesn't help that Hinduism and eastern mysticism in general just don't strike any chords with me at all; the less explicit the show about those aspects, the stronger the story feels to me.)
* However, I appreciated that the show problematizes the idea of entirely letting go of attachments.
* It occurred to me that Iro would be the perfect person to teach Aang firebending, but Iro's stuck in the earth kingdom and our heroes are fleeing, so logistically it's difficult.
* Loved the bit where Iro comes to our gang looking for help.
I dunno. In general, I feel my reaction to the finale is, watch and wait. The finale itself was mostly actiony; I thought the build-up in episodes 12-18 was a lot stronger and more interesting than the finale itself. "Tales of Ba Sing Se" was marvelous - HAIKU BATTLE - and everything with Long Fang, the Dai Li, and brainwashing was big and plotty, and also a bit more twisted than I was expecting the show to go.
I will say that I'm a little tired of the adults nearly always being either villains or dumber than the kids, or both. The Earth King in particular comes to mind. Surely there must be more sensible adults than just Katara and Sokka's family and Iro.
But in general, I continue to enjoy it very much, and I'll continue once I finish up my Supernatural disk, which came in the mail today. :)
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Date: 2011-03-10 02:05 am (UTC)Not all of them. There's Iroh, and Katara and Sokka's father, and Monk Gyatso, and Master Paku...
* The writers are going to wring this will-he won't-he Zuko tension out for all it's worth, aren't they? Argh! Silly boy.
They really are. Except that it's fairly clear...
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Date: 2011-03-10 02:52 am (UTC)Well, yes, but it's taking longer than I expected. Although, I'm glad they didn't just leave it with the happy adjusted Zuko we saw after he set Appa free and had the fever. That seemed a little too easy for me.
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Date: 2011-03-10 02:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-10 06:41 am (UTC)And the haiku battle is one of my favorite scenes. Ever.
I read the thread above. I must say that The Guru is one of my least favorite eps. I feel the opposite about the inclusion of eastern mysticism--I feel the show is strongest when it incorporates these elements. However, The Guru is an example of such incorporation gone wrong; since the mythology of chakras and half of what the Guru says isn't built in earlier, it all feels like something directly taken out of something else and plunked into this elaborately imagined world. But I think some of the most beautiful elements of the show are the integration of Eastern mythology (which, unlike The Guru, can be translated as Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and probably several other faiths) into this different world, esp. in S3. I'd be interested in your thoughts once you watch it all.
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Date: 2011-03-11 06:07 am (UTC)I think this was a lot of what I was reacting to, although I was also annoyed that the process appeared so easy; clearing a chakra just didn't strike me as being the sort of thing you do in 90 seconds and without any previous preparation.
I'd be interested in your thoughts once you watch it all.
I haven't been very good about blogging this show as I watch it, but I'll try to at least post something when I'm done. :)
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Date: 2011-03-11 06:26 am (UTC)This is part of the reason this episode was just so annoying. This mythology wasn't built into the mythology of the show :o( Seriously I just think someone was watching too much Star Wars and wanted a Luke-forsakes-Yoda's-advice-because-Leia's-in-trouble moment. I mean seriously. If they wanted it to be about the struggle between forsaking the world and being in love with it, they needed to establish that earlier. Biggest failure of the show, imo.
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Date: 2011-03-13 01:47 am (UTC)Yes! I neglected to mention this in the initial complaint, you're right, but the writers weren't exactly subtle in their flight-from-Dagobah moment. Feh.