Following on from my post yesterday I thought I would talk about another fandom that I was involved in for a little while which was Avatar: The Last Airbender. In Australia it was call Avatar: The Legend of Aang. The show ran on Nickelodeon and the ABC but I mainly saw it on Nick. It was also another show that I would consider to be a gateway show into my current love of anime as though an American cartoon the animation was very anime like as well as locations and fighting styles.

It is another one of those shame on you shows if you have never seen or even heard about. I don’t remember the date or anything of when I first saw the show but I do remember the episode. My older brother and his family had come over for a visit and we changed the channel so the kids could watch cartoons while we all talked. We put it on Nick for them and though I don’t think the kids were all that interested I was. It was the second episode of the second season “The Cave of Two Lovers”. I think from then on I found the first season on iTunes and the rest is history.

I found a podcast called “From the Spirit World” and started listening to that where they analysed episodes and also compared it to other entities like Harry Potter. They also had a website called Dongbu Feng which I joined and was a member of. Eventually I stopped listening to them as I believed that took it a little too seriously and was over analysing the show to the point where the podcast was not really fun to listen to anymore.

If you have never seen the show then I will give you a little background. The show is set it a fiction earth like planet where the population is broken up into different groups. There is the Earth Kingdom, The Water Tribes, The Fire Nation and the Air Nomads and certain people within each group are able to bend and element within their group and then one person of all is called the Avatar and they are able to bend all the elements and is reincarnated into one of the four groups after they die and is able to access their past lives through meditation.

In the show we follow Aang who is a 12 year old Airbender who is the current Avatar. He went missing after finding out he was the Avatar. He and his pet sky bison, Appa, were placed in suspended animation for 100 years in an iceberg. During this time the Fire Nation started a war and wiped out all the Air Nomads, which makes Aang the Last Airbender. He then has to learn all the elements by the Summer Solstice so that he can beat Fire Lord Ozai and bring balance to the world.

The world is made of many interesting animals which are hybrids of our own including the badgermoles. The badgermoles are said to be the first earth benders and were the ones to teach humans the art. They were also who taught Toph, a blind earthbender who ends up teaching Aang earthbending. Below is song about badgermoles which appears in the episode “The Cave of Two Lovers”.

The series went for three seasons which were called books starting with Water then Earth and then Fire, as this is the way that Aang had to learn each ability. There then was a sequel which followed the next Avatar called Korra who is a Waterbender. She had 4 seasons starting with Air then Spirits then Change then Balance.

Song Of The Day