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With Dee Bradley Baker, Zach Tyler Eisen, Mae Whitman, Jack De Sena. In a war-torn world of elemental powers, a young boy reawakens to undertake a dangerous mystic quest to fulfill his destiny as the Avatar, and bring peace to the world.
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Avatar: The Last Airbender, also known as Avatar: The Legend of Aang in some regions, is an American animated fantasy action television series created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and produced by Nickelodeon Animation Studio.
- 3
- 61 (list of episodes)
- February 21, 2005 –, July 19, 2008
- Nickelodeon
- Overview
- Production
- Cultural influences
- Characters
- Series synopsis
- Response
, 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 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 Paramount Global owned streaming platform, Paramount+. The show is occasionally aired on Nickelodeon's spinoff network, Nicktoons.
: 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 planned movie trilogy titled The Last Airbender was released on July 1, 2010, and a live-action reimagining produced by Netflix in partnership with Nickelodeon was released on February 22, 2024.
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.
"We thought, 'There's an air guy along with these water people trapped in a snowy wasteland ... and maybe some fire people are pressing down on them ...'"
―Konietzko describing their early development of the concept.
The co-creators successfully pitched the idea to Nickelodeon VP and executive producer Eric Coleman just two weeks later.
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.
•Aang (Zachary Tyler Eisen) is the fun-loving, 112-year-old protagonist of the series, who is biologically twelve years old but was frozen in an iceberg for one hundred years. He is the current incarnation of the Avatar, the spirit of the world manifested into human form, whose duty is to maintain balance among the nations of the world. Aang is a reluctant hero, who would prefer adventure over his job as the Avatar and making friends over fighting the Fire Nation.
•Katara (Mae Whitman) is a fourteen-year-old female waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe, the only waterbender in the tribe. Katara discovers and frees Aang from an iceberg in which he had been trapped for a hundred years. With her fifteen-year-old brother Sokka, she accompanies Aang on his quest to defeat the Fire Lord and bring peace to the world. In the original unaired pilot episode, Katara was known as Kya; this name was later used for her mother.
•Sokka (Jack DeSena) is a fifteen-year-old warrior of the Southern Water Tribe. With his sister Katara, he accompanies Aang on his quest to defeat the Fire Lord. The joker of the group, Sokka describes himself as "meat-loving" and "sarcastic". Unlike his companions, Sokka cannot bend an element, but the series, though it often makes him the victim of comedy at his expense, frequently grants him opportunities to use his ingenuity and weapons, including his trusty boomerang, a battle club, and a sword he forged from a meteorite.
•Toph Beifong (Jessie Flower) is a twelve-year-old blind earthbender. In Book Two, she leaves her wealthy family and comfortable home to join Aang on his quest, with a plan to teach him earthbending. Though blind, Toph "sees" by feeling the vibrations in the ground through her feet. She becomes the first earthbender to learn to bend metal and is considered one of the most powerful earthbenders in the world.
•Zuko (Dante Basco) is the sixteen-year-old exiled prince of the Fire Nation and original main antagonist of the series. Due to events in Zuko's past, his father, Fire Lord Ozai, deems him a complete failure, and Zuko feels he must capture the Avatar to regain his honor. Over time, Zuko struggles to deal with his anger, self-pity, and familial relationships; meanwhile, he grows sympathetic to the peoples his nation has terrorized. In Book Three, he defects from the Fire Nation and joins Aang and the team in order to teach Aang firebending. At the end of the series, he is crowned ruler of the Fire Nation.
•Appa (Dee Bradley Baker) is Aang's pet flying bison and best friend, who was frozen alongside him in the iceberg. Appa serves as Team Avatar's main mode of transportation, carrying them on his saddle during flight. Despite his outward simplistic behavior, Appa is a lot more intelligent and emotionally complex than he initially appears to be, and is fiercely protective of and loyal to those he considers his friends.
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...
Ratings
When the show debuted, it was rated the best animated television series in its demographic; new episodes averaged 1.1 million viewers each. A one-hour special showing of "The Secret of the Fire Nation" which aired on September 15, 2006, consisting of "The Serpent's Pass" and "The Drill", gathered an audience of 4.1 million viewers. According to Nielsen Media Research, the special was the best performing cable television show airing in that week. In 2007, Avatar was syndicated to more than 105 countries worldwide and was one of Nickelodeon's top rated programs. The series was ranked first on Nickelodeon in Germany, Indonesia, Malaysia, Belgium, and Colombia. The series finale, "Sozin's Comet", received the highest ratings of the series. Its July 19, 2008 premiere averaged 5.6 million viewers, 95% more viewers than Nickelodeon had received in mid-July 2007. During the week of July 14, it ranked as the most-viewed program for the under-14 demographic. "Sozin's Comet" also appeared on iTunes' top ten list of best-selling television episodes during that same week. The popularity of "Sozin's Comet" affected online media as well; Rise of the Phoenix King a Nick.com online game based on "Sozin's Comet", generated almost 815,000 game plays within three days. The average tomatometer score of Avatar: The Last Airbender is 100%, with an average audience review of 98%. IMDb gives the series a rating of 9.3/10.
Anime or cartoon
The debate over Avatar being considered an anime is a controversial one; one reviewer commented that "Avatar blurs the line between anime and (US) domestic cartoons until it becomes irrelevant". Avatar has many features typical of anime, such as a color palette distinctive from most American cartoons. "The best anime balances great action sequences with humor and emotion, something we try to do on Avatar. We love all the films of Hayao Miyazaki, especially Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. Both movies deal with spirituality and the environment in an entertaining way. Also, there's a lot of great animation." ―Avatar creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino confirming a particular anime influence in a magazine interview. According to an interview with the artists of Avatar, Appa's design was based on the Catbus in My Neighbor Totoro, due to the peculiar task of creating a mammal with six legs. draws inspiration from Shinichiro Watanabe's Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, as well as FLCL (Fooly Cooly) of Gainax. Other various studios from which inspiration was drawn include Studio 4 °C, Production I.G, and Studio Ghibli. Bryan has commented that some of his most cherished Watanabe fight scenes were the fight between Bebop's Spike Spiegel and a drug smuggler in "Asteroid Blues" as well as the duel between Mugen and a blind female Jojutsu-user in the Champloo episode "Elegy of Entrapment (Verse 2)". Avatar director Giancarlo Volpe also claims the staff "were all ordered to buy FLCL and watch every single episode of it".
Avatar: The Last Airbender: Created by Albert Kim. With Gordon Cormier, Kiawentiio, Ian Ousley, Dallas Liu. A young boy known as the Avatar must master the four elemental powers to save the world, and fight against an enemy bent on stopping him.
- Action, Adventure, Comedy
- 1 min
- 2024
- 1
A live-action reimagining of the acclaimed animated series, following a young boy who must master the four elemental powers to save a world at war. Watch the trailer, episodes and behind-the-scenes videos of this fantasy show based on comics.
- 1
- February 22, 2024
Mar 6, 2024 · The live-action reimagining of the beloved animated series follows Aang, the young Avatar, as he learns to master the four elements (Water, Earth, Fire, Air) to restore balance to a world threatened by the terrifying Fire Nation.
