Avatar: The Last Airbender

Behold... marblebending	Zuko captures Aang	Toph, Earthbending master	Aang captures Zuko?

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The Avatar, master of all four elements (Water, Earth, Fire, and Air), was the world's supreme arbiter. When he suddenly disappeared, the Fire Nation rose up and attacked the other nations. 100 years later, a waterbender and her brother from the Southern Water Tribe find a 12-year-old boy and his buffalo companion encased in an iceberg. When freed, he claims to be the Avatar. However, the Fire Nation is now a militaristic society bent upon conquest.

This show was originally on while I was in high school. My only real exposure to anime before this was the Pokémon anime and Speed Racer (English title for Mach Go-Go-Go!), but interestingly, despite being made in anime style, this show was entirely developed in the United States. 3D CGI was used for more complex shots, notably the towers and divisions of the Fire Nation army in the opening title sequence of series 1, but in general it was the first mass-produced American anime. Also, the show made the unique decision amongst programmes to feature a principal cast of children to age the characters along with their voice actors, so that story continuity could take place as well as not needing to create auditory disconnects between series. The only major substitution to occur was out of necessity. Mako Iwamatsu died in 2006, requiring the voice of Iroh to be recast.

The only time we had cable TV with Nickelodeon included was when I was in elementary school in [REDACTED]. We got another subscription when we moved back here in 2007, but it didn't include most of the networks I used to watch as a kid, it only had WGN, CNN, HGTV for some reason, and the 3 area public access channels. Avatar was winding down by that point, anyway. Series 3 was already halfway over and I wasn't very interested in TV at the time anyway. I started watching this show with Riza in May 2026 since they get free access to Paramount+ through their job and we'd wanted to watch it at some point anyway. At the time of writing (June 2026), we've gotten as far as 116-"The Deserter", and I've already heard several very familiar voices. I want to tell you who they are, but Riza always advances to the next episode before the cast list comes up and Wikipedia has been surprisingly unhelpful. I know for certain that I've heard René Auberjonois, Richard McGonagle, Dan Castellaneta, and Tress MacNeille, and either James Hong or Tzi Ma, I can't decide which.

8/10 stars

The n-2 rating is only because I'm not the target audience anymore. I know that if I had seen this when I was a kid, I would have developed an unhealthy obsession with it, to the point I would have been watching several episodes over and over, and I would have probably reserved 1 or 2 to watch by myself. I'd do that sometimes; occasionally when you're a kid, you find an episode of TV or a film or something that you watch once and you so closely associate it with yourself that you can't bear to watch it with other people around. Those 2 episodes in my case would probably have been 110-"Jet" and 114-"The Fortuneteller". Oh, let's tell it like it is: I would have fallen in actual love with Katara, okay? Either that, or I would wish I was her. As an adult though, the shows' "plot twists" are just a bit too predictable for me. I find myself coming to the correct conclusion at least 2 acts before the characters do. But that's only because I'm an adult. I would still judge this show to be very good for children to see. It presents several very adult subjects in a TV-Y7(FV) format, such as betrayal, sexism, death, and injustice. It also presents the rather unique position amongst superhero shows that superheroes aren't super all the time and someone manifesting superpowers is actually scary as all hell.

Anyway, don't be like me and subscribe to Paramount+ just to watch this. Go to your local branch library and check out their box set, then take it home and rip it all to MKV.