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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2277 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 4, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Avatar the Last Airbender is probably the best, most well-rounded show ever created. Fight me.

Counter Argument: Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood

Edit: I see someone else has already made this claim.

I recently rewatched the whole thing after first seeing it 10+ years ago and it holds up really well. I would add a few more caveats than you but it is very well rounded. Definitely a show I would be happy to have my kids watch.

Season 1 is by far the weakest, just some dud episodes before they get into the flow of the story. Unfortunately I think the kid show vibes from the first half of season one turn off some older viewers. But it is ultimately a kids show so I can't knock it too much for that

It's hard for me to see how many show can be more well rounded than The Wire even if the last season dipped a bit.

Twin Peaks would like a word.

Not as well rounded. Also way too short and the storyline doesn't really make sense b/c it was cut early.

Still a great show.

I'll fight you. Avatar is just OK. It has moments of genuine greatness, but most episodes are pretty mediocre and the show as a whole drags on way too long. It isn't even innovative in that it can appeal to both kids and adults, because other shows did that first (Batman: TAS comes to mind as explicitly being made trying to appeal to both audiences).

I'll never say Avatar is a bad show, because it absolutely isn't. But it's vastly overrated by its fans. I watched it all, it got a solid "meh" from me and I have no real desire to watch it again.

NYEH!!!

i've never seen it, but it doesn't sound that good. It sounds like a bog-standard shonen battle-anime, power fantasy. An orphan boy gains superpowers to defeat the evil monsters and save the world. Along the way there are many fight scenes, against a progression of increasingly strong yet easily-defeated opponents. woo. Never saw that one before... What about that is "well-rounded"?

Nah, it pretty much avoids the shonen power curve as seen in Dragon Ball. The main character starts out reasonably close to the top of his game. It’s his relationship with the world that has to develop.

It’s worth noting that it also avoids the Naruto reliance on Talk No Jutsu.

Nah, it pretty much avoids the shonen power curve as seen in Dragon Ball. The main character starts out reasonably close to the top of his game.

What? The whole arc of the show is for Aang to learn to wield all four elements so that he can have the power he needs to fight the Fire Nation. Not to mention that he only beats the big bad through the use of the soul-bending power he gets late in S3. The show is shonen anime power curve through and through.

The soul bending bit is by far the weakest part of the show and is the one thing I truly dislike about it (much more than season 1 starting clearly as a kids show). It undermines the roll of the Avatar and one of the most important lessons Aang has to deal with - to be the arbiter of justice, you must sacrifice your own spiritual needs to protect the world. In the same episode, they completely undermine this important lesson with the soul bending. I understand why they did it (it is a kids show) but it undermines an important parallel of the real world, that to be the arbiter of justice is to sacrifice your own humanity protect other peoples.

What makes avatar great is that there clearly is a power curve where characters get more powerful over time, but what's much more important and prominent is that the characters grow and have emotional and physical challenges over time. The avatar is stupidly powerful, yes, but in Shonen anime the character arc is about getting more powerful to defeat the bad guy, while in Avatar it's much more about the change from a kid to an adult, and the emotional and moral growth you have in that journey. Diminishing it to just a 'shonen anime' overlooks a lot of what makes it popular.

But it starts with him already being a master of Air, and once he has good teachers he learns Earth and Water near instantly. Fire is only a problem because he is reluctant to use it due to an incident.

Aangs arc has more to do with accepting his role and using his inherent power rather than getting stronger by beating progressively stronger foes.

well-rounded

not OP, but it's suitable for all age groups and most people in a way you rarely see. Like, if you ask me for my favorite shows, I'd say Tatami Galaxy, Erased, Haibane, Mushishi ..., but all of those are special interests that I wouldn't necessarily recommend to random people. For Avatar I would.

It has all the superficialities of a typical kids show, while having a lot of mature topics, messages and fundamental world-view underneath. It's basically the opposite of modern hollywood, which tries to hide its childish attitudes behind a mask of sex and violence to seem superficially mature.

Watch it and find out, my friend. Quality is quality.

You're just wrong man. Aang has anything but a power fantasy, and that's kind of where all the dramatic tension comes from.

A monk steps out of a time capsule to find a world at war. He works the rest of the series to end the war while traveling through villages that have been affected by it in different ways.

Can't really disagree tbh. Though Fullmetal Alchemist:Brotherhood is imo even more consistently good, its only "fault" being that it's slightly less family-friendly.

That show is too long. That's a fault in itself.

Problem I have with most anime tbh. I'm not gonna sign up to watch like 300 episodes or w/e the fuck.

? Avatar has 61 episodes, FA:B has ... 64 episodes.

Oh fr? Thought it was longer huh

FMA:B is probably one of the best examples of a shonen anime/manga that told its story and wrapped things up in a timely manner. Stuck the landing as well which is damn near unheard of in the anime world...

Second adaptations weren't nearly as common back then, and I think part of the satisfaction with Brotherhood is because the first adaptation didn't land properly at all. It's been ~20 years, but the whole meeting in London, then later Weimer Germany including Hitler struck me as some of the goofiest shit imaginable. To keep with the metaphor, didn't quite stick the landing, looked at the judges, and then decided to make an incredible jump launching themselves headfirst at the ground.

Well as you probably know the manga wasn't finished at the time so they winged it. Badly, as you say. Still, the faithful parts of the original adaption are quite good, music/animation etc. Kino in its own way

Yeah, the original FMA had some very memorable scenes early on, but it jumped the shark more than Hellsing's OVA did, and that one was supposed to include random nazis.

Is very good. It’s a shame about the tone of the first episode. It’s hard enough to sell peers on a cartoon.

what do you think is off about the tone in the first ep?

It’s too goofy. Aang has a serious attention deficit and shouts too much (“Will you go penguin sledding with me?!”), and it’s overall too manic for the sole purpose of not giving away exposition in the first episode.

The show gets so much better once they leave the Southern Water Tribe. But I don’t know any adult friends I could convince to push through till then.

Mmm fair. It is a kids show.

My wife watched it as a kid and tried to get me to watch it with here not long ago. We stopped after the first 2 episodes because it felt pretty kiddy and her pov was that it must have been more childish than she remembered.

That's understandable, but it's a shame. I think the very next episode is the one where Aang is confronted with physical evidence of the genocide of his entire people in the ruins of his hometown. The humor (and even some slapstick) does stay throughout the series, but it's woven in better.

Then there's this great short scene that hits very hard when you've already seen all of Zuko's antics Uncle Iroh has had to guide him through.

Struck me as very childish. Stopped there.

In retrospect, Hunter X Hunter had the same issue and turned out great. Might be grounds for giving it another shot.

It's literally a kids show hah. But it dives into much more mature themes and handles them better than almost any other show I've seen.

If you liked hxh, then you will like avatar as well. In fact Hxh imo has serious issues with padding towards the later arcs, while Avatar has solid pacing throughout - if anything, it's the early episodes which feel more like that and it gets better.

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