AtLA Rewatch: The Southern Air Temple & The Warriors of Kyoshi

[frith_in_thorns]

Book 1 (Water), Episodes 3: The Southern Air Temple & 4: The Warriors of Kyoshi

In which there are flashbacks, giant fish, duels, and various attitudes about losing. And Team Avatar aquires a flying lemur.


Zuko: But uncle, I want a flying lemur too! >:(

The Southern Air Temple

This show really doesn't pull its punches with the whole "this is a war, and a lot of people have died", does it? I think you can really see this episode solidifying for Katara that she has to look after Aang now. And I love how Sokka is able to switch so fast between apparently taking nothing seriously and acting like a fantastic big brother to both Katara and Aang.

Also, the world-design and art in this show is gorgeous.



In Zuko-story, we get great glimmers of Iroh's awesomeness-that-he-hides, Zuko's backstory, and Zhao's lack of control. This show is really good at parcelling out these sorts of things, rather than giving them via info-dump. And I really love Iroh's discipline and how he does truly believe in things like courtesy and honour, even to people who have shown that they don't respect those qualities themselves.


The Warriors of Kyoshi

So, a lot of my thoughts about this episode could be summarised by shouting SUKI SUKI SUKI over and over...



And I'm going to blatently steal from Joel's comment last week: "One thing I like about Sokka is his willingness to learn from his mistakes. His great character flaw is he makes assumptions about people - being female, being Fire Nation, etc. But his great strength as a character is that when he is proven wrong he accepts it." And it's really hard to go back to face someone whom you've insulted and who has utterly humiliated you, admit that you were wrong, and ask to be forgiven and taught.

Another related thing: I love how, at the end, when Sokka says to Suki he should have treated her as a warrior, not as a girl, she points out that she wants to be treated as both. Female-ness isn't a label she's trying to take off by being a warrior. This show is so very feminist and I love it.




COMMENTING RULES
1. No character bashing, please.
2. No future episode spoilers in the spoiler-free thread (and comments containing them will be hidden), but expect to find them in others! If you're talking about massive plot twists it's nice to put a spoiler warning in the header, but it's not required.
3. Spoilers for Legend of Korra are also fair game everywhere except the spoiler-free thread; again, labelling them is friendly.
4. Feel free to illustrate your squee with caps. And gifs!

SPOILER-FREE THREAD (Only on LJ; let me know if I need to add one to the DW post too.)

Comments

[kaberett]

YES. ;_________________________________;

I - rewatching, every time, Iroh breaks my heart again, and Zuko breaks my heart again.

YES this show is feminist; YES I cannot even with how feminist it is, and how Suki demands respect and Sokka finally gets it -- and the nuance that's pulled out by it being Suki who makes him get it, rather than his-sister-the-weird-bender, and how much it obviously fucked him up to be left In Charge Of The Village, and how his father clearly did that to help him feel he had a place, that he was helping, and how it worked - but also how heavily it weighed on him and distorted his ability to cope with interacting with people as equals, and how it does break his heart to leave the South Pole, but also what it means for him - even as he enters war zones - to be only responsible for himself, and for a group of friends who are able to stand alone, who do not always need defending.

[kiezh]

I think it's really interesting to keep "The Southern Air Temple" in mind when looking at Aang in other episodes; it's rarely visible on the surface, but there's a deep well of grief and rage in him. Of course there is, how could there not be? But he doesn't want to think about it, he dances around it and dodges and redirects, that's how he deals with pain and anger and any kind of conflict, really. (Airbending his emotions!) You'd never know he'd just encountered Gyatso's corpse by the way he's frolicking in "The Warriors of Kyoshi," but that's not a writing oversight, it's a characterization point.

Part of Aang's arc (and I love how all the main characters and several of the supporting cast get these arcs) is to learn other ways of dealing: reaching out to others (water), standing firm and facing things head on (earth), exerting his will to change things (fire). As Iroh tells us in season 2 ("Bitter Work," one of my favorite episodes), it benefits everyone to learn methods of approaching the world beyond their instinctive response or their early cultural training.

Which is relevant to Sokka's lessons on Kyoshi Island, of course. Questioning your assumptions and prejudices is really an ongoing theme of AtLA, and it's pretty blatant here. I wish we'd gotten more of Suki in the rest of the series, particularly in relationship with characters other than Sokka; imagine the possible Suki and Aang interactions. I mean, how weird must it be to meet the reincarnation of your idol/patron spirit/founder of your order as a goofy 12-year-old boy? Cognitive dissonance, whoa.