Avatar: The Last Airbender TV Show
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Avatar: The Last Air Bender
Avatar: The Last Airbender, also known as Avatar: The Legend of Aang in some PAL regions, is an Emmy award-winning American animated television series that aired for three seasons on Nickelodeon and the Nicktoons Network. The series was created and produced by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, who served as executive producers along with Aaron Ehasz. Avatar is set in an Asian-influenced world of martial arts and elemental manipulation. The show drew on elements from East Asian, South Asian, and Western culture, making it a mixture of what were previously traditionally separate categories of Japanese anime and Western domestic cartoons.
The series follows the adventures of the main protagonist Aang and his friends, who must save the world by defeating Fire Lord Ozai and ending the destructive war with the Fire Nation. The show first aired on February 21, 2005 and the series concluded with a widely lauded two-hour television movie on July 19, 2008. The show is now available for purchase on DVD, Blu-ray, the iTunes Store, the Xbox Live Marketplace, the PlayStation Network, Amazon and YouTube. It is also available on streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, the Nick website, and ViacomCBS owned streaming platform, Paramount+. The show is occasionally being aired on Nickelodeon's spinoff network, Nicktoons.
Avatar: The Last Airbender was popular with both audiences and critics, garnering 5.6 million viewers on its best-rated showing and receiving high ratings in the Nicktoons lineup, even outside its 6–11-year-old demographic. Avatar has been nominated for and won awards from the Annual Annie Awards, the Genesis Awards and the primetime Emmy Awards, among others. The first season's success prompted Nickelodeon to order second and third seasons. The first part of a movie trilogy titled The Last Airbender was released on July 1, 2010, and a live-action reimagining produced by Netflix in partnership with Nickelodeon is due to enter production in 2021.
Merchandise based on the series includes scaled action figures, a trading card game, three video games based individually on each season, stuffed animals distributed by Paramount Parks, and two LEGO sets. The series' popularity spawned a sequel series, titled The Legend of Korra, which takes place seventy years after the original series.
Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko began work on the series at Nickelodeon Animation Studios in Burbank, California. According to Bryan Konietzko, the program was conceived in the spring of 2001 when he took an old sketch of a balding, middle-aged man and re-imagined the character as a child. Konietzko drew the character herding bison in the sky and showed the sketch to Mike DiMartino. At the time, DiMartino was studying a documentary about explorers trapped in the South Pole.
Avatar: The Last Airbender takes place in a fantasy world that is home to humans, fantastic animals, and spirits. Human civilization is divided into four nations: the Water Tribes, the Earth Kingdom, the Air Nomads, and the Fire Nation. Each nation has its own natural element, on which it bases its society, and within each nation exist people known as "benders" who have the innate power and ability to control and manipulate the eponymous element of their nation. The show's creators assigned each bending art its own style of martial arts, causing it to inherit the advantages and weaknesses of the martial arts it was assigned. The four types of bending arts are waterbending, earthbending, firebending, and airbending.
Each generation yields one person who is capable of controlling and manipulating all four elements, the Avatar. When an Avatar dies, they are reincarnated into the next nation in the Avatar Cycle. The Avatar Cycle parallels the seasons: autumn for the Air Nomads, winter for the Water Tribe, spring for the Earth Kingdom and summer for the Fire Nation. Legend holds the Avatar must master each bending art in order, starting with his or her native element. This can sometimes be compromised when the situation requires it, as Aang demonstrates in the show. For the Avatar, learning to bend the element opposite his native element can be extremely challenging and difficult. This is because opposing bending arts are based on opposing fighting styles and disciplines. firebending and waterbending are opposites, as are earthbending and airbending.
The Avatar possesses a unique power and ability called the Avatar State; a defense mechanism which endows the Avatar with all of the knowledge, powers and abilities of all of the past Avatars and acts as a self-triggering defense mechanism, although it can be made subject to the will if the user opens his bodily chakras. If an Avatar is killed in the Avatar State, the reincarnation cycle will be broken, and the Avatar will cease to exist. Through the ages, countless incarnations of the Avatar have served to keep the four nations in harmony and maintain world peace and order. The Avatar also serves as the bridge between the physical world and the Spirit World, allowing him or her to solve problems that normal benders cannot. Another ability that nobody but the Avatar can do is energybending, which Aang demonstrates in the fight with Fire Lord Ozai at Wulong Forest.
Avatar is notable for borrowing extensively from Asian art and mythology to create its fictional universe. The show's character designs are influenced by both American cartoons and anime; the show, however, is not considered an "anime" because of its origination in the United States. Explicitly stated influences include Chinese art and history, Korean clothing and folk tales, Japanese anime, Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, and yoga. The production staff employed a cultural consultant, Edwin Zane, to review scripts.
Traditional East Asian calligraphy styles are used for nearly all the writing in the show. For each instance of calligraphy, an appropriate style is used, ranging from seal script (more archaic) to clerical script. The show employs calligrapher Siu-Leung Lee as a consultant and translator.
The choreographed martial art bending moves were profoundly affected by Asian cinema. Western film series such as Star Wars, and literature series such as Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings, were a heavy influence in developing the story of Avatar. In an interview, the creators revealed that they wanted to tell their own epic "legend & love story"
The term "Avatar" comes from the Sanskrit word Avatāra, which means "descent". In Hinduism, the gods manifest themselves into Avatars to restore balance on earth, usually during a period of great evil. The Chinese characters that appear at the top of the show's title card mean "the divine spiritual medium who has descended upon the mortal world".
When Aang was young, he unknowingly revealed that he was the Avatar when he chose four toys out of thousands, each of which were the childhood toys of the previous Avatars. In Tibetan Buddhism, there is a similar test for reincarnations of a Tulku Lama. In Magic and Mystery in Tibet, Alexandra David-Neel writes that "a number of objects such as rosaries, ritualistic implements, books, tea-cups, etc., are placed together, and the child must pick out those which belonged to the late tulku, thus showing that he recognizes the things which were theirs in their previous life". Each successor is expected to show signs of continuity with the previous Avatar, such as being born within a week of the previous Avatar's death.
Avatar draws on the four classical elements common to most ancient philosophies, rather than the five classical Chinese elements, for its bending arts: water, earth, fire and air. Although each has its own variation, most ancient philosophies incorporate these four elements in some way: examples include the classical Hindu, Buddhist, Greek and Japanese elemental traditions.
The fighting choreography of the show draws from martial arts; the fighting styles and weaponry are based on Chinese martial arts, with each bending art corresponding to a certain real-world style. The creators referred to Baguazhang for airbending, Hung Gar for earthbending, Northern Shaolin for firebending, and Tai Chi for waterbending. The only exception to this is Toph, who employs a Chu Gar Southern Praying Mantis style. The series employed Sifu Kisu of the Harmonious Fist Chinese Athletic Association as a martial arts consultant.
One hundred years before the start of the series, a twelve year old airbender named Aang learns that he is the new Avatar. Fearful of the heavy responsibilities of stopping an impending world war and with the impending separation from his mentor, Monk Gyatso, Aang flees from home on his flying bison, Appa. During a fierce storm, they crash into the ocean, and Aang's Avatar State freezes them in a state of suspended animation inside an iceberg.
The series follows the adventures of the main protagonist Aang and his friends, who must save the world by defeating Fire Lord Ozai and ending the destructive war with the Fire Nation. The show first aired on February 21, 2005 and the series concluded with a widely lauded two-hour television movie on July 19, 2008. The show is now available for purchase on DVD, Blu-ray, the iTunes Store, the Xbox Live Marketplace, the PlayStation Network, Amazon and YouTube. It is also available on streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, the Nick website, and ViacomCBS owned streaming platform, Paramount+. The show is occasionally being aired on Nickelodeon's spinoff network, Nicktoons.
Avatar: The Last Airbender was popular with both audiences and critics, garnering 5.6 million viewers on its best-rated showing and receiving high ratings in the Nicktoons lineup, even outside its 6–11-year-old demographic. Avatar has been nominated for and won awards from the Annual Annie Awards, the Genesis Awards and the primetime Emmy Awards, among others. The first season's success prompted Nickelodeon to order second and third seasons. The first part of a movie trilogy titled The Last Airbender was released on July 1, 2010, and a live-action reimagining produced by Netflix in partnership with Nickelodeon is due to enter production in 2021.
Merchandise based on the series includes scaled action figures, a trading card game, three video games based individually on each season, stuffed animals distributed by Paramount Parks, and two LEGO sets. The series' popularity spawned a sequel series, titled The Legend of Korra, which takes place seventy years after the original series.
Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko began work on the series at Nickelodeon Animation Studios in Burbank, California. According to Bryan Konietzko, the program was conceived in the spring of 2001 when he took an old sketch of a balding, middle-aged man and re-imagined the character as a child. Konietzko drew the character herding bison in the sky and showed the sketch to Mike DiMartino. At the time, DiMartino was studying a documentary about explorers trapped in the South Pole.
Avatar: The Last Airbender takes place in a fantasy world that is home to humans, fantastic animals, and spirits. Human civilization is divided into four nations: the Water Tribes, the Earth Kingdom, the Air Nomads, and the Fire Nation. Each nation has its own natural element, on which it bases its society, and within each nation exist people known as "benders" who have the innate power and ability to control and manipulate the eponymous element of their nation. The show's creators assigned each bending art its own style of martial arts, causing it to inherit the advantages and weaknesses of the martial arts it was assigned. The four types of bending arts are waterbending, earthbending, firebending, and airbending.
Each generation yields one person who is capable of controlling and manipulating all four elements, the Avatar. When an Avatar dies, they are reincarnated into the next nation in the Avatar Cycle. The Avatar Cycle parallels the seasons: autumn for the Air Nomads, winter for the Water Tribe, spring for the Earth Kingdom and summer for the Fire Nation. Legend holds the Avatar must master each bending art in order, starting with his or her native element. This can sometimes be compromised when the situation requires it, as Aang demonstrates in the show. For the Avatar, learning to bend the element opposite his native element can be extremely challenging and difficult. This is because opposing bending arts are based on opposing fighting styles and disciplines. firebending and waterbending are opposites, as are earthbending and airbending.
The Avatar possesses a unique power and ability called the Avatar State; a defense mechanism which endows the Avatar with all of the knowledge, powers and abilities of all of the past Avatars and acts as a self-triggering defense mechanism, although it can be made subject to the will if the user opens his bodily chakras. If an Avatar is killed in the Avatar State, the reincarnation cycle will be broken, and the Avatar will cease to exist. Through the ages, countless incarnations of the Avatar have served to keep the four nations in harmony and maintain world peace and order. The Avatar also serves as the bridge between the physical world and the Spirit World, allowing him or her to solve problems that normal benders cannot. Another ability that nobody but the Avatar can do is energybending, which Aang demonstrates in the fight with Fire Lord Ozai at Wulong Forest.
Avatar is notable for borrowing extensively from Asian art and mythology to create its fictional universe. The show's character designs are influenced by both American cartoons and anime; the show, however, is not considered an "anime" because of its origination in the United States. Explicitly stated influences include Chinese art and history, Korean clothing and folk tales, Japanese anime, Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, and yoga. The production staff employed a cultural consultant, Edwin Zane, to review scripts.
Traditional East Asian calligraphy styles are used for nearly all the writing in the show. For each instance of calligraphy, an appropriate style is used, ranging from seal script (more archaic) to clerical script. The show employs calligrapher Siu-Leung Lee as a consultant and translator.
The choreographed martial art bending moves were profoundly affected by Asian cinema. Western film series such as Star Wars, and literature series such as Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings, were a heavy influence in developing the story of Avatar. In an interview, the creators revealed that they wanted to tell their own epic "legend & love story"
The term "Avatar" comes from the Sanskrit word Avatāra, which means "descent". In Hinduism, the gods manifest themselves into Avatars to restore balance on earth, usually during a period of great evil. The Chinese characters that appear at the top of the show's title card mean "the divine spiritual medium who has descended upon the mortal world".
When Aang was young, he unknowingly revealed that he was the Avatar when he chose four toys out of thousands, each of which were the childhood toys of the previous Avatars. In Tibetan Buddhism, there is a similar test for reincarnations of a Tulku Lama. In Magic and Mystery in Tibet, Alexandra David-Neel writes that "a number of objects such as rosaries, ritualistic implements, books, tea-cups, etc., are placed together, and the child must pick out those which belonged to the late tulku, thus showing that he recognizes the things which were theirs in their previous life". Each successor is expected to show signs of continuity with the previous Avatar, such as being born within a week of the previous Avatar's death.
Avatar draws on the four classical elements common to most ancient philosophies, rather than the five classical Chinese elements, for its bending arts: water, earth, fire and air. Although each has its own variation, most ancient philosophies incorporate these four elements in some way: examples include the classical Hindu, Buddhist, Greek and Japanese elemental traditions.
The fighting choreography of the show draws from martial arts; the fighting styles and weaponry are based on Chinese martial arts, with each bending art corresponding to a certain real-world style. The creators referred to Baguazhang for airbending, Hung Gar for earthbending, Northern Shaolin for firebending, and Tai Chi for waterbending. The only exception to this is Toph, who employs a Chu Gar Southern Praying Mantis style. The series employed Sifu Kisu of the Harmonious Fist Chinese Athletic Association as a martial arts consultant.
One hundred years before the start of the series, a twelve year old airbender named Aang learns that he is the new Avatar. Fearful of the heavy responsibilities of stopping an impending world war and with the impending separation from his mentor, Monk Gyatso, Aang flees from home on his flying bison, Appa. During a fierce storm, they crash into the ocean, and Aang's Avatar State freezes them in a state of suspended animation inside an iceberg.