Well, well, I guess I'm just on a kid's fantasy cartoon series binge.
I'd heard some good things about the Dragon Prince and, having finished Avatar: The Last Airbender (which was fantastic, and ended in a very satisfying way) I decided to check it out - only realizing then that some of the same people were behind it.
It's funny, I think that my fascination with fantasy as a genre (other than Star Wars) was really born more during my teen years, reading Lord of the Rings my freshman year of high school and then getting into Stephen King's Dark Tower when I was a senior. (I guess I shouldn't count out my growing up in the midst of the Disney renaissance that started with The Little Mermaid in '89, which might have been the first movie I saw in theaters.) But the point is, I think I've often discounted children's fantasy when thinking of my influences, looking more to folks like Neil Gaiman and George R. R. Martin - namely authors who write dark and violent fantasy stories.
Immediately, the nature of the Dragon Prince's world bears some resemblance to that of Avatar - rather than four elements, we learn of six primal sources of magic - the Sun, Moon, Sky, Earth, Stars, and Ocean. Way back, the land of Xandia was unified, but a human invented a new form of magic - Dark Magic - that so terrified the Dragons and the Elves that they forcibly drove all humans west, and a thousand-year-long conflict began. Most recently, humans struck down the Dragon King and, it's said, destroyed the egg containing the Dragon Prince. (No spoilers, but do consider the name of the show.)
So you have a world where there are humans on one side who fear and hate the elves for banishing them, and the elves who fear and hate the humans for their dark magic and dragon-killing.
To start, we're introduced to Callum and Ezran, the two princes of the human kingdom of Katolis. Callum is older, but is only the king's stepson, with his younger half-brother the heir apparent. Callum is bad at standard princely stuff like sword-fighting and horse-riding, but has an artistic talent and a fascination with magic. Ezran is a benignly mischievous little kid who has a silly little color-changing toad-thing named Bait that he seems to get along better with than other kids. Their mom seems to have died at some point, and King Harrow seems to struggle to be a good father to Callum, despite having no blood relation to him.
Meanwhile, a group of Moonshadow Elves have come to Katolis to assassinate the king as retribution for the death of the Dragon King and the destruction of the Dragon Prince. Among them is the young Rayla, who is skilled, but clearly inexperienced and not hardened to the violence expected of her. We're introduced to her chasing down a human soldier who saw their band, but when she has the young man at her mercy, she cannot follow through to deal the killing blow. Her moment of hesitation/mercy is what gives the humans the chance to prepare.
At the castle, Harrow's closest advisor is Viren, who is a mage and also the father of Soren and Claudia. The former is Callum's fencing trainer (and a bit of a dumb jock, but at least in the first season fairly good-natured) and the latter is following in her father's footsteps, learning magic, and is also Callum's crush.
Over the course of the first few episodes, Rayla breaks into the castle and tries to go kill Prince Ezran, even though she's conflicted about doing so, but as she chases Callum and Ezran, they discover that, in Viren's secret dungeon/laboratory, the egg of the Dragon Prince is actually intact. In an effort to stop the war, Rayla, Callum, and Ezran (with Bait) decide to go and return the egg, hoping that this will end the war.
Overall, I've enjoyed the show. It has a lot of the humor and humanity of Avatar, not to mention beautiful artistic design and worldbuilding.
There are two major flaws, as I see it, having watched through the first season this evening.
First, as apparent from that previous sentence, is that it goes so damn quickly. The first season is only 9 episodes long. While we can perhaps be grateful for no "filler" episodes, the best shows use those stand-alone stories to flesh out characters and allow them to develop. One of ATLA's best qualities was the believable way in which the characters evolved over time. For instance, (Spoilers for Avatar: the Last Airbender to follow:) Prince Zuko's transformation from "the main villain" in the first couple episodes to one of the show's most likable heroes happened organically and even had time for that heroic transformation to hit a major relapse, which made the arc so satisfying. I'm still getting to know the main characters by the end of season one with the Dragon Prince, given how quickly the plot flies by.
Second, and I think they might have addressed this in subsequent seasons, but the animation is distracting. The show is CGI, but it is shaded and the framerate is adjusted to make it appear as if it is hand-animated. While this often works fine, there are moments where there's a particular turn or angle that creates this kind of uncanny valley for animation.
I suppose a third complaint I might register is that I'm waiting for a bit more nuance. Clearly, the show is focusing on the way that people on both sides of an issue can have their perceptions of "the enemy" warped. But as we see Viren (and to an extent, his kids, particularly Claudia) perform some seriously spooky magic, I'm hoping to discover more complex motivations. While Zuko was a fantastic anti-villain/redeemed hero, his father and the series' main antagonist Fire Lord Ozai never seemed to have any redeemable qualities. In the case of Viren, it would be easy for him to simply be the ambitious, power-hungry manipulator, but I'm hoping we'll get a more complex character out of him.
There are, of course, two more seasons of the show on Netflix, so I'm sure some of these issues might be addressed. But I do want to see more character development - and really just more time to let the characters assert themselves, thus making future transformations something to be invested in.
Wednesday, June 17, 2020
Monday, June 15, 2020
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Well, it's another late-to-the-party entry.
I've now got two episodes left of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the wildly popular Nickelodeon cartoon that came out in the late aughts. The show is essentially a western-made anime, with a Japanese-inspired art style but produced in America.
The premise: the show is set in a world divided into four primary cultures, based on the four elements: the Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation, Water Tribes, and Air Nomads. The peoples of these cultures can practice a mystical art known as "bending," in which they can manipulate their given element magically as a sort of martial art. In each generation, there is an individual known as the Avatar, who has the ability to master all four kinds of bending. But 100 years ago, the Avatar disappeared, and in that time, the Fire Nation has launched a global war of conquest against the other three cultures.
The show begins with two teenagers from the Southern Water Tribe (the Water Tribes live at the poles of this world,) a pair of siblings named Katara and Sokka, come across a boy frozen in ice with a massive six-legged bison. Opening the iceberg, they revive the boy and his creature, who is revealed to be Aang, the Avatar, and the last survivor of the Air Nomads after the Fire Nation wiped them out.
The show follows Aang and his companions as they journey across the world, each learning and growing more powerful as they prepare to face down the Fire Lord and end the war that threatens the world.
The early episodes of the show are fairly episodic, largely focusing on Aang, Katara, and Sokka traveling across the world to get north, where Aang hopes to learn waterbending from the Northern Water Tribe (aside from Katara, who is still a beginner at this point, the Southern tribe's waterbenders have all been killed) while they are pursued by Prince Zuko, the badly scarred son of the Fire Lord, and Zuko's amazingly cool uncle, Iroh.
The focus on Zuko and Iroh is actually one of the first things that jumps out as interesting about the show. Zuko, when introduced, is the embodiment of the aggression and cruelty of the Fire Nation, but his humanity, which is nurtured by his uncle, begins to show through as the early episodes go on. Zuko's role in the series transforms over time, and his internal struggle is one of the primary sources of drama in the series.
As an adult watching the series, (it came out while I was in my last years of college, so I never would have seen it as a kid) it did take a few episodes for me to adjust to the tone of the show, which was particularly simplistic to begin with. However, over time, the show introduces more nuanced and complex ideas about anything from abuse to nationalism to ableism to war crimes. For a kid's show, the background is actually profoundly dark, and while there's no Game of Thrones-like graphic violence (the show is intended for kids, after all,) the psychological scarring of war and other forms of violence are omnipresent throughout.
It's also a really interestingly realized fantasy world, using color-coded artistic design to give you a sense of how central its four elements play into it, while still allowing for variation and distinct subcultures to form within its established world-structure.
Like many "young people have to save the world" kinds of shows (Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the one that jumps to mind,) there's a major theme of having the dual pressures of having all the normal challenges of growing up on top of the pressure to do what no one else in the world can do. That being said, the show thankfully does not get bogged down in what I like to call "high school bullshit" - the show acknowledges the lower-stakes issues of teen (or pre-teen) hormones but never lets those overshadow the life-and-death issues.
One thing I appreciate about the show is the character Roku. The Avatar is reincarnated when they die, and the reincarnations do a rotation of world's four cultures. Periodically, Aang can commune with the spirits of his past lives, and the one he tends to see most frequently is his immediate predecessor, Roku, who was from the Fire Nation. Even while the Fire Nation is on its fascistic, imperialistic war of conquest, we're reminded that their people are also just people, and have the capacity for good in them.
I have two episodes left in the series, having made it halfway through the four-part finale. I'm very curious to check out the Legend of Korra, which is set in the same world, but follows Aang's successor, a girl from the Water Tribes, and is said to be on par with the original show in terms of quality.
I've now got two episodes left of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the wildly popular Nickelodeon cartoon that came out in the late aughts. The show is essentially a western-made anime, with a Japanese-inspired art style but produced in America.
The premise: the show is set in a world divided into four primary cultures, based on the four elements: the Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation, Water Tribes, and Air Nomads. The peoples of these cultures can practice a mystical art known as "bending," in which they can manipulate their given element magically as a sort of martial art. In each generation, there is an individual known as the Avatar, who has the ability to master all four kinds of bending. But 100 years ago, the Avatar disappeared, and in that time, the Fire Nation has launched a global war of conquest against the other three cultures.
The show begins with two teenagers from the Southern Water Tribe (the Water Tribes live at the poles of this world,) a pair of siblings named Katara and Sokka, come across a boy frozen in ice with a massive six-legged bison. Opening the iceberg, they revive the boy and his creature, who is revealed to be Aang, the Avatar, and the last survivor of the Air Nomads after the Fire Nation wiped them out.
The show follows Aang and his companions as they journey across the world, each learning and growing more powerful as they prepare to face down the Fire Lord and end the war that threatens the world.
The early episodes of the show are fairly episodic, largely focusing on Aang, Katara, and Sokka traveling across the world to get north, where Aang hopes to learn waterbending from the Northern Water Tribe (aside from Katara, who is still a beginner at this point, the Southern tribe's waterbenders have all been killed) while they are pursued by Prince Zuko, the badly scarred son of the Fire Lord, and Zuko's amazingly cool uncle, Iroh.
The focus on Zuko and Iroh is actually one of the first things that jumps out as interesting about the show. Zuko, when introduced, is the embodiment of the aggression and cruelty of the Fire Nation, but his humanity, which is nurtured by his uncle, begins to show through as the early episodes go on. Zuko's role in the series transforms over time, and his internal struggle is one of the primary sources of drama in the series.
As an adult watching the series, (it came out while I was in my last years of college, so I never would have seen it as a kid) it did take a few episodes for me to adjust to the tone of the show, which was particularly simplistic to begin with. However, over time, the show introduces more nuanced and complex ideas about anything from abuse to nationalism to ableism to war crimes. For a kid's show, the background is actually profoundly dark, and while there's no Game of Thrones-like graphic violence (the show is intended for kids, after all,) the psychological scarring of war and other forms of violence are omnipresent throughout.
It's also a really interestingly realized fantasy world, using color-coded artistic design to give you a sense of how central its four elements play into it, while still allowing for variation and distinct subcultures to form within its established world-structure.
Like many "young people have to save the world" kinds of shows (Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the one that jumps to mind,) there's a major theme of having the dual pressures of having all the normal challenges of growing up on top of the pressure to do what no one else in the world can do. That being said, the show thankfully does not get bogged down in what I like to call "high school bullshit" - the show acknowledges the lower-stakes issues of teen (or pre-teen) hormones but never lets those overshadow the life-and-death issues.
One thing I appreciate about the show is the character Roku. The Avatar is reincarnated when they die, and the reincarnations do a rotation of world's four cultures. Periodically, Aang can commune with the spirits of his past lives, and the one he tends to see most frequently is his immediate predecessor, Roku, who was from the Fire Nation. Even while the Fire Nation is on its fascistic, imperialistic war of conquest, we're reminded that their people are also just people, and have the capacity for good in them.
I have two episodes left in the series, having made it halfway through the four-part finale. I'm very curious to check out the Legend of Korra, which is set in the same world, but follows Aang's successor, a girl from the Water Tribes, and is said to be on par with the original show in terms of quality.
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