An Anime Fan (at last) Watches Avatar: The Last Airbender

When I decided I'd rewatched as far into The Simpsons as I wanted to, I was aware of just how sharply my viewing habits had come to focus on anime, and thought I could do well to keep up just a little variety by taking in another "designed in North America" animated series. A few shows I already had a fair bit of familiarity with came to mind, but so did Avatar: The Last Airbender, which I hadn't seen any of but which some other people seemed to have taken a good bit of interest in, including even a comment or two that this was a show "influenced by anime" that could nevertheless be enjoyed by anime fans themselves (even if they might not see it as so much of a singular without dwelling on thoughts of it only appropriating surface details like "sweat drops" and "SD mode."

I wound up returning to Batman: The Animated Series, though, and with one thing and another it took me a while to get through that show. In that time, I did manage to buy all three "books" of Avatar: The Last Airbender and conclude it would be the next thing I got to when I could, but I'd wound up sort of conscious that in the years since it had premiered the first part of its title had been appropriated by a big special-effects movie, the other half had been applied to a much less critically successful film, and while a sequel animated series had begun Avatar: The Legend of Korra just didn't seem to have won the same approval from fans. (There seems to have been just a bit of pushback against that general dismissal of late, though.) The North American animated series that anime fans took the most interest in now seemed to be My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (although as I write this, even it now seems to not quite be "the big new thing" any more). Even so, there can be something to watching a series without the pressure of other immediately available and evolving opinions, so I started into it.
( Into the elements )