«Feuds, pirates and storms»
With a time limit newly imposed on the Avatar's save-the-world-from-fiery-conquest goals, "Avatar The Last Airbender - Book 1 Water, Vol. 3" leaps back into loosely-entwined one-off stories. And the third volume further explores both the characters and the kingdoms at war -- the trio of kids encounter some moral ambiguity, terrorism, feuding, and the story of how Aang ended up frozen in an iceberg for a whole century.
Katara discovers an ancient waterbending scroll that some pirates stole from the North Pole -- and desperate to be able to tutor Aang, she steals it from THEM. Unfortunately, Prince Zuko is in the area (VERY reluctantly looking for a new lotus tile for his uncle), and he joins forces with the pirates to capture the Avatar.
Then the gang encounters a young outlaw named Jet and his band of teenage warriors, who are striking out against the Fire Nation. Katara is swept away by Jet, but Sokka is dubious about him and his fanatical hatred of the Fire Nation people... ALL of them. And when the kids arrive at the Great Divide (think the Grand Canyon with insectile monsters), they end up in the middle of a feud between two rival clans who have hated one another for a whole century. Aang tries to mediate them as they go through the Divide, but old grudges die hard.
Finally, a massive storm hits the town where Sokka is working for a fisherman, bringing back memories of Aang's past. Guilt-ridden, he tells Katara about his early life as the Avatar, about the separation from his kindly father figure, and why he ended up in the iceberg. In the meantime, Zuko's abrasive manner starts rubbing his crew the wrong way, but then Iroh tells them the terrible reason why he's so obsessed with capturing the Avatar.
Despite mostly not addressing the big new arc revelations, "Avatar The Last Airbender - Book 1 Water, Vol. 3" starts dipping into remarkably mature waters for a show aimed at kids -- you've got terrorism, long-running feuds, running away from home, and a truly nasty scene where it's shown how Zuko got that big burn scar. Thankfully the writers avoid the typical preachy attitudes you find in most kids' TV; instead, they just let the conflicts unfold pretty naturally.
All four episodes are solidly written standalone stories, with plenty of dangers (pirates! bug-monsters! hurricanes!), solid fight scenes (a double hijacking), and a hefty dose of humor ("He's a gigantic fluffy monster with an arrow on his head! It's kinda hard to miss him!"). Each of them moves along at a brisk pace (although "Jet" is a bit slower than most) and has some spectacular moments speckled throughout -- breaking dams, waterfalls, and that whole eye-of-the-storm scene.
And courtesy of the last episode, Aang and Zuko get a lot of development -- Aang's carefree childhood was abruptly being turned into all-Avatar-all-the-time, and he hides quite a bit of guilt over his past actions. And we see how Zuko became the grim, scarred, Avatar-obsessed outcast he is today, due to a minor discourtesy that blossomed into a disastrous fight with his own father. Yet we also see that he does care about his crew, even if he doesn't always act like it.
This isn't a very good volume for Katara, since her brain apparently implodes for two whole episodes. But though Sokka doesn't display any massive personal growth, he also gets to show that he's more than comic relief -- he has some solid intuition and rock-hard morals, even towards the Fire Nation civilians.
"Avatar The Last Airbender - Book 1 Water, Vol. 3" is a nice solid foursome of standalone episodes, fleshing out the characters and the greyer shades of their world. Definitely worth checking out.
[Saturday, August 01, 2009]
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