Top 10 Great Things About Avatar: The Last Airbender

Since The Last Airbender movie sucked unbelievable amounts of @$$, I thought it was worth reaffirming what was so awesome about the actual TV series so that one crappy film wouldn't tarnish its street cred. So, here's my top 10 reasons why the ATLA series totally rocked!

10. The hero is a bald kid!

With every anime hero having an insanely complex mane of hair, its refreshing for once for the main protagonist to be bald, even it is because he shaves it off.

9. The Ember Island Players

Probably the single greatest recap episode ever is done by a theatre group that retell the entire story of the Avatar and his friends up until the final story arc. The exaggerated portrayals of the characters are hysterical, and the fact that Aang is played by a female midget is so keeping with all those cheesy Peter Pan plays your parents used to drag you to as a kid.

8. Wuzzles

In ATLA, nearly every animal is half of one animal and half another one. Appa is half-bison and half the Catbus from Totoro, while Momo is part-lemur/part-bat. The blending of two animals is very creative, although the appearance of a "just bear" completely baffles our heroes.

7. Fan love

The love from the fans on this show is STRONG, more than most "cartoons" have. The ATLA otaku are seriously into this series, but treat at with a real appreciation, and not just some passing fad. It has gained followers from both fans of anime and of general animation.

6. Detail on martial arts

Where as most action animated shows just have the characters learning basic martial arts or just leaping around and giving karate chops, ATLA actually went a few miles further with studying and getting assistance from genuine ancient Chinese fighting styles. Shaolin, Tai Chi, Ba Gua, Hung Gar, and Praying Mantis style were incorporated to show the different types of "bending".

5. Toph

Toph is one of single most interesting characters to show up in a TV show, animated or otherwise. Appearing as a secondary character halfway through Season 2, she takes center stage as Aang's Earthbender sensei. During the rest of the series, Toph grows, and shows she's practically one of the strongest ones in the cast, both in power and in spirit. Despite her handicap, she has a great sense of humor, and fills out the role of the token "tsundere girl".

4. Not just another "anime ripoff"

During a time when alot of anime-styled or anime influenced series were coming out like Totally Spies, American Dragon, and Puffy AmiYumi, ATLA stands alone as an original concept involving an epic quest, grand adventure, and breaking alot of anime tropes. Even though there's some fights during the last season that seem that might be out of Dragonball Z, the series stays the course with being its own genuine story.

3. Mako

ANYTHING with Mako is solid gold! This Academy Award nominee made Samurai Jack an even better experience as the villain Aku, but as the sympathetic Uncle Iroh was one of the best mentor characters since Yoda. RIP, Splinter!

2. It's all about LOVE!

Now, it might not seem like its a new thing in an American animated series, but ATLA sheds a serious light on the characters' relationships. This isn't your regular cartoon infatuation where some guy falls totally in love with some girl and spends the entire series trying to win her affections, but where the characters develop their feelings over the course of three seasons. There's some "head-over-heels" stereotypes, like Ty Lee's small obsession with Sokka, although some romances seem to spark a little to early, like Sokka and Suki. But mostly, they're handled very believably.

1. No damn fillers!

The series runs a perfect 3 seasons, with no pointless filler story arcs. Something that shows like Bleach and Naruto could learn from.

JESI THE GENIE, *Part 4: Page 19

Story by Jer Alford, art by E. Aedo.

ANI-MOVIES, *Futurama: Bender's Big Score

After four solid seasons of sci-fi sitcom gold, “We’re back, Baby!”, Futurama returned with the first of four made-for-video movies(or OVAs)which on its own made for the beginning of the unofficial Season 5 of the series. This was also a major payoff for hardcore fans of the series.

Set about two years where Season 4 ended, Hermes gets his head cut off, and then put in a jar like most of the other long-dead celebrities. At the hospital, Leela meets the heads’ attendee, Lars, who starts dating her. After the Planet Express crew accidently give all their personal info to some alien Scammers, they take over the company. Its later shown that Fry has a tattoo of Bender on his butt that contains a code which opens a time travel portal that can take anyone to anytime in the past. The Scammers get control over Bender from a virus, and use him to go back in time to steal treasures from Earth’s history, and then waiting out in an underground cave until the future/present. Fry gets sad with being rejected by Leela, so he uses the code to go back in time to 2000 just after he was frozen. The Scammers send Bender back to kill him to make sure the code can’t be used against them, and several other time-duplicates are made of Bender and Fry in the process. Bender eventually believes he kills Fry, and then becomes free of the Scammers control in the future. The Scammers then swindle everyone on Earth, and they all have to move to Pluto. The outcast Earthlings team up with Robot Santa and his holiday army to launch an assault on the Scammers gold-plated Death Stars to take back Earth. Bender’s old switcheroo of one of the Professor’s doomsday devices defeats the Scammers, although their leader Nudar survived. He is later killed by Lars, who sacrifices himself with an exploding Bender duplicate. It’s revealed that Lars was really Fry from the past who spent several years in the 2000s before finding out that he Lars from when Bender attacked him, and froze himself to wake up two years before fry was first let out. Bender then lets out all the other duplicate Benders from the cave, which causes a tear in time and space. This leads directly into the sequal,The Beast Of A Billion Backs.

This was a really good movie. It played on alot of small things from the original series, and blended it together wonderfully in a single story. Granted, the first musical number is kinda bad, although the “Holy Trinity” one with Mark Hamill as Chanukah Zombie was great. I really enjoyed this release, and the full episode of Everybody Loves Hypnotoad included with the DVD/Blu-Ray is hysterical. Granted, if you’re not a fan of Futurama and haven’t seen anything of the series prior to this, then you’ll really be lost. Although, that alone should be an incentive to go out there and get the last four seasons.

JESI THE GENIE, *Part 4: Page 18

Story by Jer Alford, art by E. Aedo.

ANI-MOVIES, *Batman: Mask Of The Phantasm

The very first original animated movie of our favorite caped crusader was this spinoff of Batman: The Animated Series. The story reveals several “secret origins”, plus goes a step further than the TV series did with its dark subject matter.

Several old mafia bosses keep getting bumped off by a unknown vigilante(never actually called the Phantasm in the movie), but just because he wears a dark oufit and a cape the cops think that Batman is the one doing the killings. Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne’s old flame, Andrea Beamont, comes to town. Batman thinks there’s some kind of connection between her return and the murders. He deduces that all the gangsters were part of an old gang run by the dying mob boss, Valestra. It turns out that the Joker was his hitman, and goes to him to stop Batman who he thinks is the killer. Joker betrays him, and uses him as bait to flush out the killer, and learns that its the Phantasm. Batman then nearly gets caught by the police, but rescued by Andrea who had already known his identity. The masked killer then tracks down the Joker, who figures out that the Phantasm is really Andrea. They fight for a bit, before Joker nearly kills her with a giant fan. Batman shows up to save her, and chases after Joker who almost escapes with a jetpack. But, Andrea makes off with the Joker as his entire hideout blows up. Batman remains unaware of Andrea’s fate, although we see her later moping on a cruiser, and obviously Joker survived too.

This movie is probably one of the best stories used in a superhero film ever done, and up until Batman Begins it was definately one of the best Batman movies. Their use of the Joker wasn’t just done for fan service, but actually served the story in the end, although it would’ve been interesting to see Robin in this too. You’d think if his mentor was wanted by the police that he’d look into it. There could’ve also been a little more interaction between Batman and the Phantasm aside from a brief fight they had that only lasted a few seconds. Aside from this though, the film opens up some major windows into Bruce Wayne’s past, and the hard decisions he had to make between leading a normal life or becoming Batman. Most of the other episodes in the animated series didn’t go this deep into Batman’s character, or his motivation for being a crimefighter. Once again, Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill are great as Batman and Joker, plus Dana Delany is fine as Andrea, which helpled her nab the role of Lois Lane in Superman: The Animated Series. You simply must check out this awesome superhero epic.

JESI THE GENIE, *Part 4: Page 17

Story by Jer Alford, art by E. Aedo.

ANI-MOVIES, *Starchaser: The Legend Of Orin

Hoping to capitalize on the success of the original Star Wars trilogy, this foreign movie was put together as one of the first ever animated films to blend computer & standard animation. It was also one of the very first animated 3-D movies.

Set in the far off future, a society of humans is subjegated by an underground cult who use them as slaves for mining. The youthful Orin finds a sword one day while mining, and a vision appears from it of an old man claiming that there is a world beyond there own, and once the blade of the sword is found, then their people will be free. The blade then disappears, and Orin sets out to look at the world above. In the escape, his lover Elan is killed by the cult leader, the super-strong Zygon. Orin makes it to the surface, and is almost cannibalized by some Mandroids, but uses the sword to get away, as it creates a blade of pure energy when needed(aka: a Lightsaber!). He is rescued by Dagg, a space smuggler and this movie’s obligatory Han Solo character. Dagg takes him to a military station, but Zaigon’s robots are after them, so Dagg makes off with a bootylicious fembot called Silica, who he reprograms to be more agreeable. After a pitstop at a smugglers’ city, the crew gets shot down by Zygon’s robot goons, and Dagg gets captured. Orin is found by Avaiana(a buxom clone of Teela from He-Man)who is the daughter of the planet’s governor. She revives him and helps him learn about the history of his mysterious sword. It was an ancient deus ex machina used to free the galaxy time and again from evil overlords, the last of which was a tyrant known as Nexus. Aviana then leads Orin to the head of the mining operation, which she thought was completely run by robots. The one running it is in fact Zygon, who reveals himself to be the long-thought dead Nexus in a robot body. He has been infiltrating the entire galaxy with his loyal robots and androids for years, and is planning on making his final push to take over the galaxy. Through some major “use the Force” mojo, Orin manages to pull his crap together along with Dagg and Aviana to stop Zygon, and liberate his people.

Starchaser was done with a little bit of the same treatment as Heavy Metal as it was mostly intended for older audiences. Sorta like if you had grown up on Star Wars and wanted to see something a little more mature in a sci-fi/adventure. The animation is actually pretty good for the mid-80s. It’s not Akira, but around the same quality as Transformers: The Movie. I’d say that this one is at least a rental for fans of cheesy space flicks like Barbarella or Flash Gordon(but which are actually good!).