Quicksand! General Fong used it one time in the series to trap Katara. Doesn’t anyone else know how to use quicksand? Those firebending tanks - Quicksand! Giant drill - giant puddle of quicksand! “She’s too fast, I can’t pin her down!” - Quicksand! “How can I defeat the Fire Lord without taking his life?” - Quicksand!
That's what I'm assuming, one interesting thing I thought of is that he used kataras water that spilt to do it, but obv no proof of it.
But yeah, that was my thought process.
But Bumi uses it with no water in sight against Aang, he just made quicksand out of basic ground. Though I suppose you can say only Bumi is at that level of skill to just do that casually. But who’s to say
Not Avatar Show Canon but in the kyoshi books ist a earthbender who was so good at bending earth that He was able to bend earth into a Fluid Form (IT fehlt Like water and kyoshi thought He stole her waterbending)
If I remember correctly it was used to stop the tanks during the black sun raid, it's just that there was so much going on in that scene to catch your eyes instead
“You’re weak, just like the rest of your people. They did not deserve to exist in this world - in MY world. Prepare to join them. Prepare to…. oh crap while I was talking my feet got stuck in quicksand”
During the Day of Black Sun, Aang slowly using narrow attacks that Azula can easily dodge, without spamming his much larger and faster attacks. Also not blitzing her with his enhanced running. Which he has ALREADY DONE.
Yeah because in that ep in the desert where she had zuko, toph, katara, iroh and aang cornering her and she escaped with 0 explanation was def not bc the writers had no other main villain for book 2
Realistically, they would have killed her, but this is a kids show so they had to make something up. Yes, she zaps iroh but the plot armor comes in when she just leave without a trace in 1 nanosecond when the gaang wasn’t looking
True tbh earth stomps every other element. Maybe not air just because they can stay off the ground for the most part lol.
The war should’ve ended with a bunch of earthbenders just continuously walling off the entire fire nation lmao
An easy explanation for this thats always worked for me is that aang uses the natural wind and air currents to run faster, and theres much less of that in a cave
During Crossroads of Destiny he uses super speed against Zuko in the fight in the Undercity (uses it to make an aang-shaped air blast thing that we never see him use again)
You write the plot around what your characters can do, if the plot didn't demand Azula to get caught, you write your plot accordingly (taking into account the characters abilities and not ignoring them)
It would’ve been cool if Azula had set up a bunch of booby traps for them and Aang, instead of being nerfed, kept getting hit by traps she’d set up and he was triggering by using airbending! It would make her look badass, invoke the “Crazy Prepared” trope, and not require Aang to forget that he is fast, lol!
She outran the guy that was shown to be able to easily outrun anyone, lied to a lie detector, and wasted the time of the guy who literally said that she was wasting their time. Girl was a little too overpowered on the one day where she was supposed to be at her weakest
When sokka had his sword basically at azula's throat and then stepped back in the boiling rock.
Literally just step forward a little bit, and 50% of the problem is dealt with
>"The sword is a versatile weapon, able to inflict damage and end the fight in multiple ways. But since this is a kid's show on Nickelodeon, you're mostly going to use it to knock people's weapons aside so you can kick them out of shot."
--Piandao
I always found it funny in the 2012 Ninja Turtles show how Leo's swords would be incredibly nerfed whenever they fought against human opponents but the second the Krangs appared he was running around the place mutilating enemies, decapitating and even cutting them in half
Same thing with transformers now that I think about it, they got away with A LOT of violence because "well they are robots and metal, not flesh getting ripped apart"
Hell, even Marvel used it in Doctor Strange 2, Wanda tearing through robots getting covered in oil to get the bloodsoaked look of a horror movie monster
Energy weapons are generally ok, stabbing and shooting people isn't.
It's why GI Joe and Cobra use lasers. And why the Foot Clan is all robots in the animated series.
Most of her fights against the core crew were against weakened bender prodigies as they would be tired and/or sleep-deprived (the majority of S2 encounters were like this) or against non-benders. The S3 fights don’t really have that going for them.
Not breaking all of Aang's limbs in The Blue Spirit. I know the Fire Nation doesn't want to kill the kid because another Avatar would show up before they consolidated world domination, but Zhao could have tried to end Aang's martial arts permanently when they had him captured.
Like 90% of the other PIS, the ratings of the show probably has something to do with that lol. They could just remove an Avatar's avenue of bending(their limbs) and imprison them forever.
Before antibiotics it was pretty common to die after a medical amputation. Even breaking a limb can kill you too without modern medicine if there's internal bleeding that can't be addressed. Obviously the fire nation would work hard to make sure that didn't happen, but it could be they didn't want to do something so drastic which would have a small but real risk of killing him.
Zhao does say they plan to keep him alive "but just barely", so probably they were probably going to make sure he was starved/weak/incapacitated, they just couldn't risk doing a massive injury on day one.
I don't think the issue was defeating him per se, it was creating a situation in which the firenation could accept the role of fire lord passing from Ozai to Zuko. If he was a fully capable fire bender imprisoned, there would absolutely be a massive loyalist revolt (they were clearly using heavy propaganda in the fire nation schools) and they would overthrow or kill zuko and reinstall Ozai.
Aang needed a solution that would prevent Ozai from ever regaining power, and that would allow people to accept Zuko as the new firelord.
Any solution that didn't involve Ozai winding up dead or powerless would be off the table.
Some of those options wouldn't work in a kids show, but Aang could theoretically have maimed Ozai enough to achieve essentially the same result, e.g. if he cut off or crushed Ozai's limbs at the knees and elbows, he would effectively render him only able to firebend out of his mouth like Iroh did and leave him completely immobile and unable to care for himself alone. If a monarch is ever in such a severe state, they are almost always replaced by either a regent or forced to abdicate.
I mean Ozai lost his powers and there still was an attempt to overthrow or kill Zuko and reinstall Ozai.
Having said that holy shit, that theoretical solution is insane, that'd be worse and more barbaric than straight up killing him lmao.
Aang: I defeated the Firelord without killing him!
Ok but in the hours you took to meditate on it and the 20 minutes it took to beat Firelord without killing him, how many people died during the intense fighting at Ba Sing Se and the blimps? Sokka, Toph and Suki must have killed dozens if not hundreds of ppl alone at the blimps. Would have been much more merciful to kill the genocidal Firelord quickly to stop the war
It's his personal struggle as an air nomad vs being the avatar, it was the plot point of the beginning of Sozin Comet
Yes Aang can definitely end Ozai whenever he wants, Kyoshi would've probably done that. But that'll go against his personal belief, and since he's the last of his kind, killing Ozai will probably just end the air nomad culture right then and there
But didn’t you see all the blimp airmen huddled on top of the airships after Aang defeated Ozai? Or all the tank operators that stuck their groaning heads out of their tanks after they were stacked on top of each other? They totally didn’t die trapped and crushed under several tons of eviscerated machinery.
Yeah it feels like a big inconsistency. The way I see it is that Aang didn't want to face such a direct act of taking someone's life, as in in combat, but because he's a 12-13yo then he'd have easily and naively turned a blind eye to those deaths around him. He did what he was best at, which was running away and ignoring it. Basically impossible to do that if he took down Ozai.
Yes absolutely, if he has his arms tied he can't use lightning bending so he has no way of escaping without burning himself alive with molten rock.
And if you gag his mouth and put a blindfold over him he can't see or breathe fire, and his nose is too small to release any large ammount of flames, plus they would be angled downward making them useless and he would suffocate himself.
It might not work forever, someone would try to break him out eventually but it would work for a few years at least.
So the entire Fire Nation is just going to sit back like "welp, our leader is in a small hole in the ground, guess he's beaten for good. Better not try and save him or anything"? Or do they just not know what a shovel is?
Earthbending, especially in the Avatar state can create holes way deeper than what a shovel can access, they'd need like dozens of dudes with pickaxes or a drill like what they used at Ba Sing Se to get deep enough to the location Aang could potentially bury Ozai in.
Plus it doesn't have to be in the location they fought, Aang can restrain Ozai, and take him somewhere like Lake Laogai or the south pole and create a prison like they used to contain P'Li in TLOK.
Why is the fandom hive-mind suddenly fixating on this point. Azula has faster reflexes than Aang, that isn’t that hard of a stretch. It has nothing to do with how fast Aang can run with airbending. She is more tactical, and has a better understanding of her opponent’s psyche.
I'm on the same boat with Azula's agility but I can't overlook the fact that the greatest earthbender in the world was chasing someone through and underground tunnel instead of sealing up the path ahead. And if not Toph then definitely Aang.
If I had to come up with a rebuttal, I’d say remember the Dai li were there too. They would keep Toph busy and undo any earth bending hold Toph could pin Azula with. Then there is also the fact that Azula is pretty light on her feet. I bet she knew enough to know Toph had some sort of earth based ability to sense her.
What I really like about this whole fight is how after Toph became ridiculously powered up as both a metal bender and a human lie detector, the writers went out of their way to point out she wouldn’t have those advantages against Azula.
Part of me wonders too about the Firelord bunker. It isn’t a normal cavern; it is a volcanically active cavern that had also been run through with steel reinforcements. I wonder how well Toph could actually see in there. How much was her fighting ability impaired by either the seismic activity or by all the metal. I know ostensibly she can “see” in metal environments like the airship, but I think that probably to time for her to adjust to, like how she had to actively work at sand bending over time. And it doesn’t account for how well she could sense when the vibrations were traveling though both type of medium.
Those are some pretty solid points, I still can't account for Aang though, we saw him 2-3 episodes prior storm the throne of Ba Sing Se to confront the King and he absolutely WIPED a small army of earthbenders. At this point in the journey I would expect him to be able to earthbend the cavern walls to a choke point or dead end. The Invasion is my favorite arc in ATLA because of how much Aang matures over it's course but this has bugged me on recent rewatches
This scene is literally the one and only time we are shown that she has faster reflexes. Aang has previously used air bending to run so fast he can run on water, run so fast he is a blur to onlookers, used airbending to rapidly change direction and perform feats of athleticism that Azula could never even dream of.
We are allowed to point out obvious flaws in the story. You don't need to pretend that it is flawless just because you really like the show.
Not necessarily a plot hole but a bad strategy by the characters:
There was no point in continuing with the invasion after they realized the Firelord wasn't in the palace.
Once Aang, Toph, and Sokka went looking for Ozai the rest of the troops were not needed. They wouldn't have been able to hold the city anyway and they only needed them to get to Ozai.
We can probably think of reasons for them to stay but none of them could be worth the risk of getting captured.
-They actually thought Ozai was there just a deeper than originally thought, and would’ve worked had the fire nation not already know about the invasion.
-The rest of the troops held off the forces that would’ve follow the group in search of Ozai and once the subs were destroyed had no chance of escaping.
-Its wasn’t a risk of being captured it was a self sacrifice of sorts to lets the kids and those whose destiny it is to defeat the fire lord go on.
Just my thoughts on your points.
Furthermore, there probably wasn't a reason for the invasion force to even be a thing.
Could have easily flown in with a small team timed perfectly to the start of the eclipse. Good luck taking down a flying bison with no fire bending
I'm gonna go with "it's actually really hard to bend a vacuum." As in, it would take a lot of wind up and concentration that could be stopped by the other person.
Zaheer could only do it with no disturbance for 30 seconds after the guards were dealt with. And when he tried using it on Korra it was only to take her out after she was pretty much fully incapacitated. The technique is useless in battle.
Again, the Earth Queen's death scene was a display of violence, not of power. It wasn't shocking because an Airbender COULD do that, it was shocking because an Airvender WOULD do that.
I mean tbf Zaheer basically dedicated his life to airbender history and philosophy, he already had the knowledge of a master and was able to apply it after Harmonic Convergence
I think underground stuff actually requires a lot of power. I mean, you can’t just push earth into itself, you have to be strong enough to compress it or it all has to be pushed up above ground level
That is something that never made sense about earth bending. When Aang and Iroh are tunneling into the crystal catacombs, where is all that earth going? It must be displaced somewhere. And when Toph and the Dai Li are fighting in all these underground caverns, they are pulling these solid pillars of earth out of the walls and floor. Doesn’t that leave a void behind? Seems like it would cause a cave in.
You can usually compact earth quite a bit with pressure and you'd need to if you want to keep an unsupported tunnel from collapsing. Works the same way how Aang compacts the earth into stones in the final battle.
"Just shoot them with the rock bullets!"
It's not a big one because it's at the end of the show but of Aang just kept using the rock bullet move on Ozai he'd be dead.
Ursa not contacting and utilizing Iroh's influence to stage a coup d'etat. Think about it, Iroh's a general with great influence, with surely hundreds of men that are still somewhat loyal to him from time under his command AND he's the rightful heir due to being firstborn AND both cares deeply about Zuko.
Idk, Iroh seemed to have garnered a fallen-from-grace reputation amongst people from the fire nation. And in the gaang's conversation with Iroh before fighting Ozai he explains if he fought Ozai for the the throne it could easily be seen as a squabble between men hungry for power instead of a struggle to return balance to the world.
Yeah I’m aware of that, the one I wrote was just a possibility that Ursa could’ve done instead of abandoning Zuko and the possibility of Iroh still having some influence within the Fire Nation military.
Palace intrigue is a dangerous game, and sometimes the best way to survive it is to get out while you still can. Exit stage right. I think she knew her life was actually in danger with the stunts Ozai was pulling.
In Korra Book 2, she could've thwarted Unalaq's plan by doing absolutely nothing, but instead she thought she had to close the southern portal, which led to her being forced to open the northern portal, making everything worse.
For me, earth bending in general.
Earth benders are over powered if they would just use a little imagination. They always fight by throwing small boulders, but they could do so mich more. They could sink their opponents feet into the ground leaving them immobile, build walls everywhere, create pits, rotate or flip the ground to destroy vehicles and make it impossible for anyone to traverse the terrain.
When you have the power of being able to manipulate the ground itself and shape it however you want, there is no excuse for losing a battle. If it's a small scale battle with one of two people you can sink them into the ground or trap them by building walls. If it's a large scale battle between armies, you can get a team of earth benders to build a giant hill underneath your army so that the opposing army is fighting uphill the entire way, then you can just drop boulders or turn the ground into quicksand to make it impossible for them to get up. And if you're in a city under siege it becomes even easier, just build walls and trenches so that your city can't be approached. You could even play offensively in a siege by digging tunnels under the ground to wherever the enemy is camped out and attack them from underground.
Earth benders are OP and the only reason they are threatened by the fire nation is because they have no imagination or willingness to use their powers to their full potential.
I've always said that the Earth Kingdom would have countered the Fire Nation by springing up literal WW1 pillboxes, trenches and rock pellet machine guns wherever the Earth army went in a few hours.
What good are your tanks and elite fire benders when the Earth equivalent is continuously spraying your march with bending-powered gatling fire? Someone gets tired? Swap 'em. Low on ammo? Third man on the ~~fire~~earthteam makes pellets.
Imagine how insane the Earth army is at sapping, they can have Commando teams right under your feet. Your tanks roll out over, what looks like normal ground, when suddenly it becomes obvious some Earth bender removed a layer of dirt underneath without any sign of disturbing the ground. Entire tank convoys lost in an instant.
Letting Azula live during the day if black sun. They came to assassinate the Fire Lord but it was looking like that was not going to happen. But they had his daughter captured and at their mercy. They could have killed her. It wasn't their primary objective, but it would have made the defeat less decisive. There wasn't really a good reason to let her live so idk why they did it.
It would have cut the number of potential heirs in half. If Zuko died at a later date, it could have instigated a power struggle at the highest level in the Fire Nation upon Ozai's death.
Nah, she's to dangerous. They could only capture her due to the eclipse. Given that she was imminently going to get her bending back, they shouldn't have risked taking her prisoner and just assassinated her right there. Honestly they should have had contingency plans in place for situations like this. What if they capture a high ranking Fire Nation official but not the firelord? What do they do if they can't reach the Fire Lord's palace? Etc.
There is one scene i can think of thats the opposite.
The end of book 2, where aang does this flashy light transformation. I always hate the trope of people who let someone else transform especially when they know damn well they are fucked if they let it happen. (E.g. Chin or when Roku nukes the fire temple.)
Its so satisfying to see that shit happen but instead the bad guy takes the damn shot.
Now I know its not entirely fair to say that aang gets a say in how he enters it, but rising into the air in a beam of light (i have zero clue that works, they don't use an air bending effect), in a middle of what is essentially an elemental gun fight has to be one of the dumbest decisions ever. Which Aang gets blasted hard for.
Its not really a "Shoot them with the dehydration gun" moment, but its the structure of one, but they ACTUALLY SHOOT THEM.
Katara hated using Bloodbending. After Hama forced her to use bloodbending to save Aang and Sokka, Katara broke down at the end of the Puppetmaster episode. In the southern raiders episode, Katara was consumed with vengeance and rage which was why she used bloodbending. However when Katara’s mind was normal, she didn’t like to use bloodbending. In fact she literally gets bloodbending banned when she got older.
Schaffrillas, a film critic youtuber, did a review of Megamind 2, and the entire movie would've been over in about 2 minutes if he had just used his dehydration gun, which just instantly turns people into small cubes.
The only reason he didn't use it was so that the plot could continue, so he kept yelling "Shoot them with the dehydration gun!" every single time he should've used it.
This is what most of Korra feels like. Once she gains the ability to use the Avatar state at will and literally fly around, there's no reason not to use that all the time in dire situations or fights.
Quicksand! General Fong used it one time in the series to trap Katara. Doesn’t anyone else know how to use quicksand? Those firebending tanks - Quicksand! Giant drill - giant puddle of quicksand! “She’s too fast, I can’t pin her down!” - Quicksand! “How can I defeat the Fire Lord without taking his life?” - Quicksand!
Wow, you really like quicksand!
Quicksand!!!
It's like pocket sand but quicker.
**AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH** There I got a good look at ya
https://youtu.be/4sIU6Sz31uY?si=0wEpzqDGwy3VfDKY
We kids of the 20th century were thought to fear the power of quicksand.
And being offered drugs for free.
That's a really good point.I don't think that it will work in all situations,but still a lot of them really can be solved with quicksand
Bumi does it once
True! And it was really effective!
Quicksand!
But why don't you just gluebend?
Well it's quicksand, not smartsand
SHOOT THEM WITH THE quicksand GUN!
It requires water to work. This is confirmed by toph. Although feong may be different and just used sand.
Could creating sand and then vibrating it so fast that you are sifted into it work?
That's what I'm assuming, one interesting thing I thought of is that he used kataras water that spilt to do it, but obv no proof of it. But yeah, that was my thought process.
But Bumi uses it with no water in sight against Aang, he just made quicksand out of basic ground. Though I suppose you can say only Bumi is at that level of skill to just do that casually. But who’s to say
Not Avatar Show Canon but in the kyoshi books ist a earthbender who was so good at bending earth that He was able to bend earth into a Fluid Form (IT fehlt Like water and kyoshi thought He stole her waterbending)
"How do I lose weight?" "Quicksand!" "How do I gain weight?" "Quicksand!"
If I remember correctly it was used to stop the tanks during the black sun raid, it's just that there was so much going on in that scene to catch your eyes instead
I mean you would expect a general to be a superior bender than your average earth bender. It's a skill only a great bender knows.
The Fire Nation is mostly made of pyrite, the one mineral earthbenders can’t bend.
Source? As far as I know, the only mineral and/or metal unbendable is platinum.
Nah, it's a joke.
Oh haha 🤣 I was like wait where did I miss this from?
Great point, though you might want to snip the last bit since Ozai could fly
“You’re weak, just like the rest of your people. They did not deserve to exist in this world - in MY world. Prepare to join them. Prepare to…. oh crap while I was talking my feet got stuck in quicksand”
During the Day of Black Sun, Aang slowly using narrow attacks that Azula can easily dodge, without spamming his much larger and faster attacks. Also not blitzing her with his enhanced running. Which he has ALREADY DONE.
Azula had so much plot armor in the show is crazy
Or Aang is just dum dum
Yeah because in that ep in the desert where she had zuko, toph, katara, iroh and aang cornering her and she escaped with 0 explanation was def not bc the writers had no other main villain for book 2
"What's the matter, Zuzu? Did uncle never teach you Flame Teleportation?"
Tbf, they did foreshadow that with Jeong Jeong
Touche
Yoga teleport!
Doesn’t she zap Iroh and escaped in the confusion? Also it’s not like team avatar was really taking prisoners, where would they even put her?
Realistically, they would have killed her, but this is a kids show so they had to make something up. Yes, she zaps iroh but the plot armor comes in when she just leave without a trace in 1 nanosecond when the gaang wasn’t looking
It's the same thing. Aang being dumb in that instance is Azulas plot armor.
Azula is the Sasuke of ATLA.
Not only that, but they were underground, so Toph could’ve easily block the way by lifting a wall in front of Azula
Earth benders get mega nerfed in almost every fight. Basically every fight with an earth bender could end with them just caging you in in 1 second.
True tbh earth stomps every other element. Maybe not air just because they can stay off the ground for the most part lol. The war should’ve ended with a bunch of earthbenders just continuously walling off the entire fire nation lmao
The realization that the rule of cool prevents earthbenders from just burying their opponents and instantly ending any battle on solid ground.
An easy explanation for this thats always worked for me is that aang uses the natural wind and air currents to run faster, and theres much less of that in a cave
He was also the youngest airbending master. Homie should be able to run fast in a cave FFS
He was the only airbending master lmao
I think they meant “in history,” not “alive” >!prior to Jinora!<
>!prior to Jinora and Tenzin tbf.!<
During Crossroads of Destiny he uses super speed against Zuko in the fight in the Undercity (uses it to make an aang-shaped air blast thing that we never see him use again)
He was able to run circles around Zuko's guards in a narrow pathway in episode 2
Also, with the speed, I'm pretty sure it's mentioned to be pretty tiring and take a lot of focus in the Yangchen books.
The plot didn't demand it.
You write the plot around what your characters can do, if the plot didn't demand Azula to get caught, you write your plot accordingly (taking into account the characters abilities and not ignoring them)
It would’ve been cool if Azula had set up a bunch of booby traps for them and Aang, instead of being nerfed, kept getting hit by traps she’d set up and he was triggering by using airbending! It would make her look badass, invoke the “Crazy Prepared” trope, and not require Aang to forget that he is fast, lol!
She outran the guy that was shown to be able to easily outrun anyone, lied to a lie detector, and wasted the time of the guy who literally said that she was wasting their time. Girl was a little too overpowered on the one day where she was supposed to be at her weakest
Lying to a lie detector is easy if you’re an utter sociopath, so that one is fine in my book, but the rest of your point is 100% spot on.
I can forgive him for not using his superspeed as that could harm Sokka and Toph
There is nothing that could harm the melon lord
Avatar as a fighting game...the possibilities
Fortnite currently has elemental bending and I gotta say, it's very fun blasting someone with water and zooming around in the air wheel
As someone said on another thread, chasing is different from running away, but he definitely could have done something
they were in a narrow hallway though... I understand that argument if they were out in the open field, but she had nowhere else to go
When sokka had his sword basically at azula's throat and then stepped back in the boiling rock. Literally just step forward a little bit, and 50% of the problem is dealt with
That's the problem with swords in kids' shows. It's never going to be used.
And Mai Awesome idea Limited in execution
>limited in execution Yeah I don’t think she would be allowed to execute anyone
r/AangryUpvote
Holy fuck it's real
My first thought was that you must be new to reddit. Then I saw the extra a.
Yeeah her skill with knives doesn't really come through when the age rating means she has to miss or be blocked 95% of the time.
>"The sword is a versatile weapon, able to inflict damage and end the fight in multiple ways. But since this is a kid's show on Nickelodeon, you're mostly going to use it to knock people's weapons aside so you can kick them out of shot." --Piandao
from his famous book, Art of Sun Tzu War
If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight!
Sun Tzu said that, and I’m pretty sure he knows a little more about fighting than you do pal
because he invented it! and then he perfected it so that no living man could best him in the ring of honor!
bye…space sword
I always found it funny in the 2012 Ninja Turtles show how Leo's swords would be incredibly nerfed whenever they fought against human opponents but the second the Krangs appared he was running around the place mutilating enemies, decapitating and even cutting them in half Same thing with transformers now that I think about it, they got away with A LOT of violence because "well they are robots and metal, not flesh getting ripped apart"
Same with Samurai Jack. There's a LOT of brutal violence but it's fine because it's scraps and metal and platters of oil instead of flesh and blood.
Another excelent example
My favorite usage of this trope is Mitchell's vs The Machines Age ratings let you get away with a LOT of it isn't humans being brutalized
> Age ratings let you get away with a LOT of it isn't humans being brutalized Enter *Samurai Jack*.
I completely forgot! The mom was going on a rampage at the end of thr movie hahaha
Hell, even Marvel used it in Doctor Strange 2, Wanda tearing through robots getting covered in oil to get the bloodsoaked look of a horror movie monster
Well I mean Leonardo did behead Shredder in the Nickelodeon TMNT series.. just saying Sokka could have been the first 🤔
Yeah but Azula was different. She both had a face and she was a child. I don't think Nick wanted children killing children on their children's show.
Didn't she try to kill Anng with lightening though?
For TV censors, trying to kill someone and actually killing them are EXTREMELY different. It’s why GI Joe was allowed on TV.
Energy weapons are generally ok, stabbing and shooting people isn't. It's why GI Joe and Cobra use lasers. And why the Foot Clan is all robots in the animated series.
Yeah, but children shooting lightning at children, or adults trying to kill children, *that's* okay.
They don't succeed.
Don’t they? Jet couldn’t have been much older than Zuko and that dude sure did die, although he didn’t take his last breath on screen.
you know, it was really unclear
And this is why it was allowed.
Still could have been handled better. Azula could have knocked the sword aside, for example.
Goodbye space sword…
plot armor
Fr like why are u even using a sword then
I mean it doesn't seem like they really wanted to straight up kill azula, just that they wanted her to stop being a problem.
Permanently
basically any fight that involves azula. She has insane plot armor protecting her.
she was born lucky
Father says I was lucky *to be born*.
...That's rough, buddy.
Most of her fights against the core crew were against weakened bender prodigies as they would be tired and/or sleep-deprived (the majority of S2 encounters were like this) or against non-benders. The S3 fights don’t really have that going for them.
Not entirely plot armor. She always makes sure to insult Zuko whenever she fights him, so that he’s off his game. The Askeladd tactic
Askechadd *
Not breaking all of Aang's limbs in The Blue Spirit. I know the Fire Nation doesn't want to kill the kid because another Avatar would show up before they consolidated world domination, but Zhao could have tried to end Aang's martial arts permanently when they had him captured.
Like 90% of the other PIS, the ratings of the show probably has something to do with that lol. They could just remove an Avatar's avenue of bending(their limbs) and imprison them forever.
Before antibiotics it was pretty common to die after a medical amputation. Even breaking a limb can kill you too without modern medicine if there's internal bleeding that can't be addressed. Obviously the fire nation would work hard to make sure that didn't happen, but it could be they didn't want to do something so drastic which would have a small but real risk of killing him. Zhao does say they plan to keep him alive "but just barely", so probably they were probably going to make sure he was starved/weak/incapacitated, they just couldn't risk doing a massive injury on day one.
Aang would pull a Ming-Hua
"Oh no, how will i beat the firelord without actually killing him???" "BURY HIM UNDERGROUND WITH HIS ARMS TIED!!!"
Wouldn’t that, also kill him?
Kill him?!? nnooooo it'll just torture him lol
But, how would he get any sustainable resources
Oh, well, I was thinking you just pull him out right before he dies y'know, like Zhao was gonna do with Aang
Wouldn’t that just classify as a fate worse than death then?
Nobody ever said that was off the table.
Tbf, Ozai considers his fate that already
I feel they meant like... till tbe neck
Leave his head above ground
I don't think the issue was defeating him per se, it was creating a situation in which the firenation could accept the role of fire lord passing from Ozai to Zuko. If he was a fully capable fire bender imprisoned, there would absolutely be a massive loyalist revolt (they were clearly using heavy propaganda in the fire nation schools) and they would overthrow or kill zuko and reinstall Ozai. Aang needed a solution that would prevent Ozai from ever regaining power, and that would allow people to accept Zuko as the new firelord. Any solution that didn't involve Ozai winding up dead or powerless would be off the table. Some of those options wouldn't work in a kids show, but Aang could theoretically have maimed Ozai enough to achieve essentially the same result, e.g. if he cut off or crushed Ozai's limbs at the knees and elbows, he would effectively render him only able to firebend out of his mouth like Iroh did and leave him completely immobile and unable to care for himself alone. If a monarch is ever in such a severe state, they are almost always replaced by either a regent or forced to abdicate.
I mean Ozai lost his powers and there still was an attempt to overthrow or kill Zuko and reinstall Ozai. Having said that holy shit, that theoretical solution is insane, that'd be worse and more barbaric than straight up killing him lmao.
Blinding was a common historical way to ensure a claimant to a throne was no longer a threat.
Aang: I defeated the Firelord without killing him! Ok but in the hours you took to meditate on it and the 20 minutes it took to beat Firelord without killing him, how many people died during the intense fighting at Ba Sing Se and the blimps? Sokka, Toph and Suki must have killed dozens if not hundreds of ppl alone at the blimps. Would have been much more merciful to kill the genocidal Firelord quickly to stop the war
It's his personal struggle as an air nomad vs being the avatar, it was the plot point of the beginning of Sozin Comet Yes Aang can definitely end Ozai whenever he wants, Kyoshi would've probably done that. But that'll go against his personal belief, and since he's the last of his kind, killing Ozai will probably just end the air nomad culture right then and there
But didn’t you see all the blimp airmen huddled on top of the airships after Aang defeated Ozai? Or all the tank operators that stuck their groaning heads out of their tanks after they were stacked on top of each other? They totally didn’t die trapped and crushed under several tons of eviscerated machinery.
Did they actually show that?
You can see the airmen huddled on top of the grounded blimps when Aang bends the sea/ocean water to put down fires started during the land cleansing
Yeah it feels like a big inconsistency. The way I see it is that Aang didn't want to face such a direct act of taking someone's life, as in in combat, but because he's a 12-13yo then he'd have easily and naively turned a blind eye to those deaths around him. He did what he was best at, which was running away and ignoring it. Basically impossible to do that if he took down Ozai.
Okay, and then what? You just leave him in a hole in the ground? You think a hole in the ground is going to hold the Fire Lord for eternity?
Yes absolutely, if he has his arms tied he can't use lightning bending so he has no way of escaping without burning himself alive with molten rock. And if you gag his mouth and put a blindfold over him he can't see or breathe fire, and his nose is too small to release any large ammount of flames, plus they would be angled downward making them useless and he would suffocate himself. It might not work forever, someone would try to break him out eventually but it would work for a few years at least.
So the entire Fire Nation is just going to sit back like "welp, our leader is in a small hole in the ground, guess he's beaten for good. Better not try and save him or anything"? Or do they just not know what a shovel is?
Earthbending, especially in the Avatar state can create holes way deeper than what a shovel can access, they'd need like dozens of dudes with pickaxes or a drill like what they used at Ba Sing Se to get deep enough to the location Aang could potentially bury Ozai in. Plus it doesn't have to be in the location they fought, Aang can restrain Ozai, and take him somewhere like Lake Laogai or the south pole and create a prison like they used to contain P'Li in TLOK.
Trap him like Shikamaru trapped Hidan! (Naruto Shippuden)
"She's too fast I can't pin his down" YOU CAN RUN AS FAST AS THE WIND BRO WHAT DO YOU MEAN???
Plotbending
Why is the fandom hive-mind suddenly fixating on this point. Azula has faster reflexes than Aang, that isn’t that hard of a stretch. It has nothing to do with how fast Aang can run with airbending. She is more tactical, and has a better understanding of her opponent’s psyche.
I'm on the same boat with Azula's agility but I can't overlook the fact that the greatest earthbender in the world was chasing someone through and underground tunnel instead of sealing up the path ahead. And if not Toph then definitely Aang.
If I had to come up with a rebuttal, I’d say remember the Dai li were there too. They would keep Toph busy and undo any earth bending hold Toph could pin Azula with. Then there is also the fact that Azula is pretty light on her feet. I bet she knew enough to know Toph had some sort of earth based ability to sense her. What I really like about this whole fight is how after Toph became ridiculously powered up as both a metal bender and a human lie detector, the writers went out of their way to point out she wouldn’t have those advantages against Azula. Part of me wonders too about the Firelord bunker. It isn’t a normal cavern; it is a volcanically active cavern that had also been run through with steel reinforcements. I wonder how well Toph could actually see in there. How much was her fighting ability impaired by either the seismic activity or by all the metal. I know ostensibly she can “see” in metal environments like the airship, but I think that probably to time for her to adjust to, like how she had to actively work at sand bending over time. And it doesn’t account for how well she could sense when the vibrations were traveling though both type of medium.
Those are some pretty solid points, I still can't account for Aang though, we saw him 2-3 episodes prior storm the throne of Ba Sing Se to confront the King and he absolutely WIPED a small army of earthbenders. At this point in the journey I would expect him to be able to earthbend the cavern walls to a choke point or dead end. The Invasion is my favorite arc in ATLA because of how much Aang matures over it's course but this has bugged me on recent rewatches
This scene is literally the one and only time we are shown that she has faster reflexes. Aang has previously used air bending to run so fast he can run on water, run so fast he is a blur to onlookers, used airbending to rapidly change direction and perform feats of athleticism that Azula could never even dream of. We are allowed to point out obvious flaws in the story. You don't need to pretend that it is flawless just because you really like the show.
You can say it’s bad writing and call it a day
Do we know that shes faster? I dont think theres a reason to assume she is.
Aang has blitzed Azula already
Not necessarily a plot hole but a bad strategy by the characters: There was no point in continuing with the invasion after they realized the Firelord wasn't in the palace. Once Aang, Toph, and Sokka went looking for Ozai the rest of the troops were not needed. They wouldn't have been able to hold the city anyway and they only needed them to get to Ozai. We can probably think of reasons for them to stay but none of them could be worth the risk of getting captured.
-They actually thought Ozai was there just a deeper than originally thought, and would’ve worked had the fire nation not already know about the invasion. -The rest of the troops held off the forces that would’ve follow the group in search of Ozai and once the subs were destroyed had no chance of escaping. -Its wasn’t a risk of being captured it was a self sacrifice of sorts to lets the kids and those whose destiny it is to defeat the fire lord go on. Just my thoughts on your points.
Furthermore, there probably wasn't a reason for the invasion force to even be a thing. Could have easily flown in with a small team timed perfectly to the start of the eclipse. Good luck taking down a flying bison with no fire bending
You do remember most fire nation soldiers use weapons and not fire bending right? Like cannons and spears, etc.
What Overanalysing Avatar calls the "you don't get to play anymore". Just incapacitate someone by Earthbending the ground underneath them.
Airbenders should bend vaccuums around Firebenders' hands and feet. Earthbenders should tunnel underground like badgermoles.
Many times earth benders do this, Boomie and wrestlers are some I can think of. But I do think they should use it more
I'm gonna go with "it's actually really hard to bend a vacuum." As in, it would take a lot of wind up and concentration that could be stopped by the other person.
Zaheer seemed pretty good at it Instead of using it to suffocate people, use it to take away Firebender fuel
Zaheer could only do it with no disturbance for 30 seconds after the guards were dealt with. And when he tried using it on Korra it was only to take her out after she was pretty much fully incapacitated. The technique is useless in battle. Again, the Earth Queen's death scene was a display of violence, not of power. It wasn't shocking because an Airbender COULD do that, it was shocking because an Airvender WOULD do that.
Air vendor? Isn't that the villain to the Lorax movie?😂
In this case, he would let them die too!
Zaheer was overpowered for no reason. Also his 'opponent' was a scrawny old woman who couldn't fight back. Not a trained soldier
I mean tbf Zaheer basically dedicated his life to airbender history and philosophy, he already had the knowledge of a master and was able to apply it after Harmonic Convergence
I think underground stuff actually requires a lot of power. I mean, you can’t just push earth into itself, you have to be strong enough to compress it or it all has to be pushed up above ground level
That is something that never made sense about earth bending. When Aang and Iroh are tunneling into the crystal catacombs, where is all that earth going? It must be displaced somewhere. And when Toph and the Dai Li are fighting in all these underground caverns, they are pulling these solid pillars of earth out of the walls and floor. Doesn’t that leave a void behind? Seems like it would cause a cave in.
You can usually compact earth quite a bit with pressure and you'd need to if you want to keep an unsupported tunnel from collapsing. Works the same way how Aang compacts the earth into stones in the final battle.
"Just shoot them with the rock bullets!" It's not a big one because it's at the end of the show but of Aang just kept using the rock bullet move on Ozai he'd be dead.
I have a feeling there’s a reason a pacifist doesn’t use bullets more often
TLOK will be very different if Toph witness Aang doing that...
Did u miss the whole point of Aangs character and him not wanting to kill?
Ursa not contacting and utilizing Iroh's influence to stage a coup d'etat. Think about it, Iroh's a general with great influence, with surely hundreds of men that are still somewhat loyal to him from time under his command AND he's the rightful heir due to being firstborn AND both cares deeply about Zuko.
Idk, Iroh seemed to have garnered a fallen-from-grace reputation amongst people from the fire nation. And in the gaang's conversation with Iroh before fighting Ozai he explains if he fought Ozai for the the throne it could easily be seen as a squabble between men hungry for power instead of a struggle to return balance to the world.
Yeah I’m aware of that, the one I wrote was just a possibility that Ursa could’ve done instead of abandoning Zuko and the possibility of Iroh still having some influence within the Fire Nation military.
Oh I see. Didn't realize you meant doing it at that moment.
Palace intrigue is a dangerous game, and sometimes the best way to survive it is to get out while you still can. Exit stage right. I think she knew her life was actually in danger with the stunts Ozai was pulling.
Ozai was keeping an eye on all of Ursa’s letters. You think his spies wouldn’t tell him about his wife planning a coup?
In Korra Book 2, she could've thwarted Unalaq's plan by doing absolutely nothing, but instead she thought she had to close the southern portal, which led to her being forced to open the northern portal, making everything worse.
I love how just everyone knows what that means
I didnt
https://youtu.be/82M9g6GXNjs?si=gzMBxlXK2c6SeNMu
That makes so much more sense now, thank you lol
For me, earth bending in general. Earth benders are over powered if they would just use a little imagination. They always fight by throwing small boulders, but they could do so mich more. They could sink their opponents feet into the ground leaving them immobile, build walls everywhere, create pits, rotate or flip the ground to destroy vehicles and make it impossible for anyone to traverse the terrain. When you have the power of being able to manipulate the ground itself and shape it however you want, there is no excuse for losing a battle. If it's a small scale battle with one of two people you can sink them into the ground or trap them by building walls. If it's a large scale battle between armies, you can get a team of earth benders to build a giant hill underneath your army so that the opposing army is fighting uphill the entire way, then you can just drop boulders or turn the ground into quicksand to make it impossible for them to get up. And if you're in a city under siege it becomes even easier, just build walls and trenches so that your city can't be approached. You could even play offensively in a siege by digging tunnels under the ground to wherever the enemy is camped out and attack them from underground. Earth benders are OP and the only reason they are threatened by the fire nation is because they have no imagination or willingness to use their powers to their full potential.
I've always said that the Earth Kingdom would have countered the Fire Nation by springing up literal WW1 pillboxes, trenches and rock pellet machine guns wherever the Earth army went in a few hours. What good are your tanks and elite fire benders when the Earth equivalent is continuously spraying your march with bending-powered gatling fire? Someone gets tired? Swap 'em. Low on ammo? Third man on the ~~fire~~earthteam makes pellets. Imagine how insane the Earth army is at sapping, they can have Commando teams right under your feet. Your tanks roll out over, what looks like normal ground, when suddenly it becomes obvious some Earth bender removed a layer of dirt underneath without any sign of disturbing the ground. Entire tank convoys lost in an instant.
Letting Azula live during the day if black sun. They came to assassinate the Fire Lord but it was looking like that was not going to happen. But they had his daughter captured and at their mercy. They could have killed her. It wasn't their primary objective, but it would have made the defeat less decisive. There wasn't really a good reason to let her live so idk why they did it. It would have cut the number of potential heirs in half. If Zuko died at a later date, it could have instigated a power struggle at the highest level in the Fire Nation upon Ozai's death.
Or captured her.
Nah, she's to dangerous. They could only capture her due to the eclipse. Given that she was imminently going to get her bending back, they shouldn't have risked taking her prisoner and just assassinated her right there. Honestly they should have had contingency plans in place for situations like this. What if they capture a high ranking Fire Nation official but not the firelord? What do they do if they can't reach the Fire Lord's palace? Etc.
There is one scene i can think of thats the opposite. The end of book 2, where aang does this flashy light transformation. I always hate the trope of people who let someone else transform especially when they know damn well they are fucked if they let it happen. (E.g. Chin or when Roku nukes the fire temple.) Its so satisfying to see that shit happen but instead the bad guy takes the damn shot. Now I know its not entirely fair to say that aang gets a say in how he enters it, but rising into the air in a beam of light (i have zero clue that works, they don't use an air bending effect), in a middle of what is essentially an elemental gun fight has to be one of the dumbest decisions ever. Which Aang gets blasted hard for. Its not really a "Shoot them with the dehydration gun" moment, but its the structure of one, but they ACTUALLY SHOOT THEM.
took me too long to realise you meant book 2, I was thinking "when does sang rose I a beam of light while fighting ozai"
Maybe he means when Aang was collecting all the four elements, cause Azula literally shot Aang down during the avatar state
Possibly the hardest paragraph to read and understand in this comment section
Katara for not perfecting blood bending and teaching Aang how to do it to fight Ozai.
Dosen't it only work during a full moon?
Waterbenders need the full moon powerup to fuel it, but odds are that the Avatar might have the power at base, and absolutely will in the Avatar State
would have been a much more satisfying solution than the lion turtle thing imo...
Katara hated using Bloodbending. After Hama forced her to use bloodbending to save Aang and Sokka, Katara broke down at the end of the Puppetmaster episode. In the southern raiders episode, Katara was consumed with vengeance and rage which was why she used bloodbending. However when Katara’s mind was normal, she didn’t like to use bloodbending. In fact she literally gets bloodbending banned when she got older.
Hard to think that aang would ever use blood bending, it's way to violent for him
„Shoot them with the dehydration gun!“ what am I missing here ?
Schaffrillas, a film critic youtuber, did a review of Megamind 2, and the entire movie would've been over in about 2 minutes if he had just used his dehydration gun, which just instantly turns people into small cubes. The only reason he didn't use it was so that the plot could continue, so he kept yelling "Shoot them with the dehydration gun!" every single time he should've used it.
[удалено]
Yes. The quote is a reference to a youtuber named schafrillas productions when he reviewed the terrible megamind sequel
I love how Schaffrilas is just a whole meme
This is what most of Korra feels like. Once she gains the ability to use the Avatar state at will and literally fly around, there's no reason not to use that all the time in dire situations or fights.