Avatar

And no we're not talking about the intergalactic smurfs and red-neck piloted robots acting out the plot of Pocahontis. This is Avatar: The Last Airbender, a series of such quality it seems impossible that it is a Nickolodeon cartoon intended for children.

For hundreds of years there has been a balance between all five continents of the world; the Northern and Southern Water tribes, the Eastern Earth Kingdom, The Western Fire Nation and the central abode of The Air Nomads. Taught by the observation of nature, residents of each culture have learned to manipulate the elements to their will. Each element is exclusive to the country of origin of the user or 'Bender'. As all the elements work in harmony, so do the continents. That is until the Fire Nation launch a massacre against the rest of the world and desemate the Air Nomads, beginning a horrendous war. Only the Avatar, the only one capable of mastering all of the four elements, can stop the advancement of destruction but in the planets hour of need, he is nowhere to be found. A hundred years later, Sokka and Katara, a brother and sister from the Southern Water tribe discover the Avatar, Aang, frozen in a block of ice off their villages shore. To their surprise, he is just a 12 year old boy who is more concerned with fun than his century old destiny. But when an exhiled Fire Nation prince comes to capture the Avatar to rid the Fire Nation of their only obstacle in conquering the rest of the world, Aang must reluctantly step into his fate as the worlds saviour and travel to each continent to master all four elements with the company of Katara, Sokka and his 200 ton flying byson, Apa before the passing of a meteorite that will embalm the Fire Benders with infinite power that not even he can stop.

After we've all stopped giggling that they're all calling each other 'benders' as terms of endeerment, the characters become incredibly 3 dimensional for a childs cartoon series. which tend to retain the schematic assumption everything that happens is there to make you laugh/learn. This show scraps these trivialities and tells a unique, Eastern orientated epic,referencing the concepts of yin and yang and rich culturalism. And all the more surprisingly for a kids cartoon; it works to a conclusion and ends. WELL.


With all the formatting amazement aside, Avatar: The Last Airbender does everything a good show should. It has characters that can be sympathised with, a captivating and unpredictable story, a beautiful soundtrack and (to a slightly lesser extent) ninjitsu action mixed with shooting fire,water,earth and air out of characters hands in battle. This doesn't mean it's just been rammed onto Nickolodeon as no other networks would pick it up, as it balances out the abundance of subject matter with surprisingly high quality humor as none of the characters do what they're supposed to for quite a while. Aang takes breaks from saving a world in peril to ride giant coyfish on an outset island inhabitated by Geisha like warriors, Sokka (the secondary hero) is a sexist, food obsesed idiot, being constantly flumoxed by Katara who advocates strength in women and saying it's okay to be a bit of a hippy (take notes, children, this is an important trait for you!) to become the comic relief character and, of course, each of them engage in many (usually ill advised) pre-pubescent love affairs along the way. At the other end of the spectrum, the drama is also very highly crafted with perilous emotional struggles between and for the characters creates fluent empathy and adds to the enjoyment so much more when you are given the respect to deal with genuine emotion instead of any seriousness being smothered by a sublimonal flash of 'KIDS, DON'T DO DRUGS!' or a fart joke.

Forget HBO, it's time you reconnected with Nickolodeon. Spongebob will forgive your absence. Sit back and enjoy a cartoon like when you were a child when the weight of the world hadn't crushed all the wonder out of your spirit like a steroid induced grizzly bear squeezing the pulp out of a pomegranate