Avatar: The Last Airbender - Water

We've had some disagreements about M. Night Shyamalan's Avatar: The Last Airbender in our household. Hannah thinks it's great, and that the anime bores unfairly dismiss it as different to the series; I think it is a beautiful film with some very real problems, especially in terms of pacing and failure to 'show, not tell'. I also point out that Avatar: The Last Airbender is actually not technically an anime, but a western 'anime style' animation, but that just gets me glowered at, and rightly so.

Anyway, that's not why we decided to watch through the series on Lovefilm, but it's something to bear in mind.

Avatar is set on the world of Pandora, where the peaceful Na'avi...

No, wait; I'll start again.

Avatar is set in a fantasy world (and it is the entire world, Book 1: Water takes us from the South Pole to the North in 20 episodes), divided between four great cultures, the Earth Kingdom, the Water Tribes, the Fire Nation and the Air Nomads. Each culture has its own signature mystical elemental martial art, or bending art, allowing them to control their nation's element. For centuries, the four were in balance, watched over by the Avatar, who mastered all four elements, and was reborn - like the Dalai Lama - into each culture in turn in a never-ending cycle: Water, Earth, Fire and Air.

A century before the start of the series, the Fire Nation mobilised its vast military and set out to conquer the world. The Avatar vanished, only to be found by a brother and sister of the Southern Water Tribe in episode 1. Book 1, like the film, then charts the journey of the Avatar - Aang, lone survivor of the exterminated Air Nomads and titular Last Airbender - and his comrades, Katara and Saako, from the South Pole to the North, in order for Aang and Katara to learn Waterbending.

In some places, the series is much better than the film; in particular, it tends to be more willing to think big, especially when it comes to Earthbending. Moreover, the Earthbender prison makes more, which is to say any sense in the series. Far more time is devoted - because it is available - to Aang's growth as a character, and the same goes for Katara and Saaka. My biggest complaint - the condensing of the key relationship between Saaka and Princess Yue to a single line of narration - stands, although the series still only gives it a few establishing scenes.

The arc story is compelling, although the quality of the individual episodes varies, with a few employing pretty blatant straw man aesops, but when it is good it is good. Certainly, I am looking forward to moving on to Book 2: Earth.

The one thing I feel that the film did noticeably better than the series is the final siege at the North Pole. While not perfect, I found that the great wave in the film worked better for me than the series' giant glowing aqueous carp man. Your mileage may vary.