Inner Voice ([info]innervoice_chan) wrote,
@ 2006-03-26 01:09:00
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Current mood: in love

Avatar: The Last Airbender is LOVE. ♥
Avatar: The Last Airbender is the most incredible thing I have ever SEEN. ♥

The art is okay; slightly better than other Western anime-copycats ("Martin Mystery"...UGH). It reminds me of the new Teen Titans series, actually...

The humor is GREAT. It makes me giggle out loud every few minutes, a feat achieved by few things save the Eroica manga and Gordon Korman's Macdonald Hall books.

The pacing is also great. The story is very compact and fast-paced, and most of the episodes I've seen could stand pretty well alone. (which is good given my erratic memory concerning TV schedules...)



But what really makes it stand out...is the FIGHTING. Oh my God I have no words to describe the fighting.
The way they MOVE!!! It's SO BEAUTIFUL!!! ♥ ♥ ♥

I will never again be content to watch stupid tournament-anime-style fighting, where one match takes about three episodes and is filled with five-minute pauses to soliloquize/power-up/miraculously recover from a near-death experience (not that I ever really WAS content to do so, but that's not the point)...basically, Avatar is animated fighting done RIGHT.

It's just so incredibly physical (incredibly muscular, if I may venture to say that about an animated cartoon), and incredibly graceful. The characters move in a controlled whirl of limbs, and it's rare for a fight to last more than two minutes. It's...sort of like an animated kung-fu movie, I suppose would be the closest thing. And the characters are manipulating the elements like fire and earth and throwing them around, and it's effortful, but not in the overdramatic screaming way like in anime, but in a very understated, competent way, like real martial arts. (I state this mostly on the authority of my two years of Taekwondo experience)

I leave you with some pictures to try to convey the physicality of the fighting, but you really can't imagine it until you see it.




^It doesn't hurt either that there's a totally hawt badguy-but-not-really-evil prince who coincidentally has a Filipino voice actor (the guy who played Rufio in Hook) XD


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[info]mprice
2006-03-25 06:54 pm UTC (link)
According to my son, they have actual Martial Artists assisting with the fight choreography. I agree, it's a cute show, from the few that I've seen. I find it amusing that everyone is so in awe of the Avatar, and he's still just a kid. And he actually acts like one!

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[info]innervoice_chan
2006-03-25 07:25 pm UTC (link)
According to my son, they have actual Martial Artists assisting with the fight choreography.
I'm not at all surprised. There's an authenticity about the fighting that pretty much blows everything else out of the water. It's like dance teachers have been saying forever...you can imitate the surface forms and look pretty slick doing it, but NOTHING beats the genuine article that's built on training and theory.

I agree, it's a cute show, from the few that I've seen. I find it amusing that everyone is so in awe of the Avatar, and he's still just a kid. And he actually acts like one!
It's great how the show can make me ooh and ahh in awe at the beautiful fight scenes, and then turn right around and have me giggling at the weirdness, insanity, and crazy antics. :D

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