Lets begin then.
Avatar the legend of aang or Avatar: The last airbender in EU. is about the world and its balance.
From centuries the people of Avatar universe lived in peace and prosperity and then the fire nation attacked and a 100 years war began.
Thats the official story,now i want to tell how the bending was born and real life meanings to that.
In the begining,humans only bended chinese-common culture Chi,doing martial arts and such. The world was surrounded by spirits and the humans needed to defend themselves. Thus they began to mix martial arts with chi bending. Soon elemental benders began to arise,learning from the elements.
Firebenders began with the Warriors of the Sun in a Aztec-like culture,learning with the Dragons.
THe Waterbenders began looking at the Tui and La [Sea and Moon spirits],learning how to control Chi like a wave inside himself.
THe Airbenders began with a Indian-style culture,evolving to the budhist-like culture that they are now. They learned the style with the Flying Bisons [Avatar Aaang has one,Appa]
The Earthbenders began in the traditional chinese-culture style,learning the bending with the earth-moles.
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For each bending,we have 2 additional bendings.
For fire,we have eletricity and heat bending.
For Water,we have ice and blood bending.
For Earth,we have lava and metal bending
For air,we have sound and energy bending.
Each bending style has one real martial art behind it
Fire- Kung Fu Shaolin [Agressive,kickass]
Air- Ba Gua [The "monk" style i think,fast and used to protect yourself from damage]
Water- Tai Chi Chuan [The "medicinal" art used by many old people. Today´s its used to calm the mind and as a treatment for stress. But can be used offensively,combining defense and attack the same way that a wave comes and go ]
Earth - Hung Ar [Made to resist damage and break the enemy. Tiger style,althought Toph earthbending is from teh Southern Mantis style]
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The animation is superb for many reasons. First,the war is treated for real.
Normally in cartoons and animes,war is treated in this way:
There is a war happening
protagonist is attacked
in the way he learns what is friendship
and in the end he kills the main villain in a single battle,while the war itself does not ends with normality.
In the Avatar,we have genocide,mindwash,corruption,and the most important battles of the cartoon were held with real strategy,while losing some of then because of comunicaiton errors [The battle of black sun,were the firebenders lost the power because of a comet]
Second,we have a consistent history
The avatar universe is big and much of it can be explored. Its like Fallout or Skyrim,the history itself is not that important and what is most cool is the lore and story behind it. This was so big that a second cartoon [Avatar: The Legend of Korra] was created to explore the "What If the world advanced 70 years in the future?" .
Third,the fighting is awesome;
Normally,in a cartoon the two rivals go at each other,fighting for 3 seconds and then stop with a blood dip on the lip,saying "Oh no,i did not know that you were that powerful".
In avatar,they used real martial masters to create the fights,thus creating experiences of dream matches. For me,watching it is like watching jackie chan vs bruce lee vs Yip Man vs Jet lee!!
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Avatar as a whole is part of my life,made me want to learn martial arts and now i know the four martial arts listed above for this single reason.
THANKS AVATAR!
EVERYONE,WATCH IT ! its cool and not only Legend of Korra! Watch the first before Korra,it will be more interesting.
and a bonus:
- Spoiler:
Tue Nov 26, 2013 3:48 pm
