>>220363229
it was a sign that the franchise and the authors were turning retarded.

You always have to look at patterns, OP. They exist for a reason.

>>220363229
>& somehow drooling retard kidults think this is the greatest Western animated show of all time?
I mean it's one instance of weak writing. I don't really think it's bad enough to retroactively ruin the entire show up to that point. but yeah, it was stupid. the finale also had Zuko vs Azula though which is pure kinography so that makes up for it

>>220363570
>one instance of weak writing

it was the resolution to the main aspect the entire series was structured around and building towards
you'd think they'dve put some thought into it prior to literally the last minute

>>220363229
>>ahhh we can't have our MC can't kill the Big Bad because he's a mincing gay vegan monk or whatever
>>plus our show is literally a cartoon designed to be viewed by 7 year olds
>>I know, lets have a literal God-Being show up out of nowhere and gift him "BENDING-bending" so he can take the Big Bad's powers and defeat him without lethal violence.
>>but lets not introduce or even hint at any part of this incredible new power until literally a 30 second flashback DURING the climactic fight of the series finale.
>>& also lets not explain this power's risks in any way so that the only way we can convey the dramatic tension is through fluctuating red light and blue light
all of this before we even mention the pointy rock
ATLAs ending is fucking GoT-tier and its coasted by for too long because redditor milennials are nostalgic for it

>>220363229
>Aang beats Ozai not as the avatar but as himself
Good
>It's literally pulled out of nowhere aside from I think TWO vague hints
Shit

yeah, turtle shit was gay. the rest of the finale was great, though, and the episodes leading up to it, like the play recap of the series, were top tier kids tv

>>220363229
>lets not explain this power's risks in any way so that the only way we can convey the dramatic tension is through fluctuating red light and blue light

There’s a literal voice over from the Deus Ex Machina Turtle saying “your own spirit must be unbendable” or “you will be destroyed.”
And even the light show makes it pretty easy to follow. He’s getting swallowed up and corrupted.

>>220363229
It was pretty gay. All of his past lives gave good advice telling him to shut the fuck up and do what needs to be done, he was just a little bitch who didn't like it. Yangchen in partciular was the best, totally impossible to refute. The avatar can't be an air nomad cuck.

>>220363229
Stripping another guy of their Martial arts is actually a very common kungfu trope

>>220363229
>chucked Azula in prison without taking her powers
they're just asking for something horrible to happen later

>>220363694
Sudenly has an issue killing oeoplde, deapite throwing people out of windows and ledges before.

>>220363934
that's not even getting into the fact that "flash-freezing" her like that would've insta-killed both her & katarra

>>220363694
>because redditor milennials are nostalgic for it
It's fucking crazy man. Every person I know roughly in their 30's that doesn't have kids is completely obsessed with shit from their childhood.

>>220363616
I just don't think endings are all that important to be honest, but I know that's not a popular opinion. it was still a great show up to that point. do you listen to a song just for the last note? is a book only good if the last page is good? I get that a bad ending can leave a sour taste in your mouth, but looking at the show as a whole with some distance from it, the ending doesn't really affect my opinion that much.

>>220363694
GoT fell apart long before the finale and had nothing as good as Zuko and Azula's Agni Kai. they're not really comparable imo.

>>220363229
ive said this before ill say it again. that this show doesnt age quite as well as people want to admit. its a heavily nerfed show that has to cater towards a kid audience. and many of the characters lack a good depth you would see in a more adult themed show.
the only people that like this show so much are women who love baby shit, and people with rose colored glasses that refuse to be hypercritical of it.
then when they had a chance to break some barriers of what is acceptable and fine in a kids show with the legend of kora. they just made it gay. which i can almost guarantee you they would have done to ALTA if they could.
7/10. far from the best animated show or just in general. not deserving of the 9/10 IMDB that was boosted into existence by women and manchildren.

>>220364073
>Zuko and Azula's Agni Kai
you mean where azula jobbed because she went crazy because the plot needed her to, katara got involved for no fucking reason, and zuko was robbed of a clean win to conclude his arc?
go back

>>220363229
They should have foreshadowed it better, but taking away his bending was an optimum choice geopolitically.
Also they shouldn’t have spent several episodes with Aang deliberating over taking a life. Because we the viewers had pretty much assumed they’d been killing people the entire time but since it was a kids show the violence had been abridged or offscreened. The show then telling us he’d not killed anyone despite fighting a war and fending against/orchestrating several large scale military operations made it impossible to suspend disbelief

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its a good show.......but is it really deserving of 7th place in IMDB "Top 250 TV Shows" list? ahead of the Sopranos?
you really think your shitty kids cartoon is a better tv show that tells a better story than a adult themed show like the Sopranos?
Grow up redditor.

>>220364265
>They should have foreshadowed it better, but taking away his bending was an optimum choice geopolitically.
remind me how taking away ONE guy's powers lets them win the war?

>>220364375
ofcourse the sopranos is better, but the last airbender reached a far wider public so gets more votes.
These ratings are broken as fuck and should be ignored.

>>220364375

>its a good show.......but is it really deserving of 7th place in IMDB "Top 250 TV Shows" list?

Yes, yes it is.

Absolutely outstandingly well crafted "children's" entertainment that anyone of any age can watch.

I don't have a problem with the ending. Aang was absolutely not ever going to murder a dude, and even if he wasn't the main character of a Nickelodeon show, the nature of his personality forbade it. He was always going to disable or otherwise neutralise Emperor Badman without doing a Zod neck snap.

My only issues with the show as a whole are very minor:

1. fuck the woketards, we should have had a brief shot of Uncle Iroh walking off into the sunset with his arm round the waist of that hot goth woman

2. katara should've used bloodbending on Azula and the powerlessness Azule experienced should've caused her to break down

>>220364615
go back

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>>220364103
It's firmly a children's cartoon, don't understand why you tried to judge it as anything else. It's not nerfed compared to another version of itself?

>>220363900
The idea here isn't unsalvageable, they just couldn't make it work. There's a pretty constant tension in the series with the idea of reincarnation and the ways in which Aang is both his own person and a soul who has lived an unbroken chain of lives across centuries. As a climactic plot point, choosing to disregard his past lives' advice and forge his own path is very solid. They gave themselves a difficult scenario to use that, though, because Ozai absolutely should have just been fucking killed lmao. The only out would be something like
>i know that what i choose here is irrational, but these are the ethics by which i choose to live this life and i will prove that they are as good as any others

>>220364375
number 10 is the neil degrasse tyson cosmos series lmao, this is not a list with any kind of gravitas

It made sense, for his character, he spent the whole series being a pacifist monk who never killed anyone, not even animals.
A bunch of adults forcing a 13 year old to murder a guy because THEY couldn't think of a better solution was pretty shit.

>guys if we kill hitler were just as bad as he is, what if we just take away his public speaking abilities?

korra vs zaheer was better than aang vs ozai. i have spoken

>>220364962
It has korra in it, that's automatically -1000000 points.

>>220364939
it's not really a moral equivalence thing, i think you can just look at aang's life as a kid who was raised in a fairly pacifist culture and then saw his entire race genocided at the age of 12 and conclude he probably just came to hate all killing. overwhelmingly, axiomatically despised the act of taking a life
the writers are themselves pussies, so they didn't have the balls to depict this sentiment as flawed or a weakness, but if they'd been willing to frame things like Trigun i don't think anyone would complain about it

>>220365050
Kid hurt katara once bending fire and flat out refused to use it or learn it.
Aang really wasn't an avatar, he was an air nomad, with the role of an avatar.

this thread is a chilling demonstration of how many redditors occupy this board

>>220365084
ok, but that actually was portrayed as a flaw on his part. and all the avatars are a reflection of the culture they're raised in, that's why it cycles through them

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>>220364962
You spoke shit. Zaheer was a doodoo retard.

it can be assumed azula, another megaevil megapowerful bender was arrested in some hyper secure prison. this idea that aang had to literally kill ozai is such a nothingburger moral conundrum when he just had to incapacitate and arrest him and you dont need some super speshul magic asspull deux ex machina for that. remember the invasion? aang had every intention of "facing the firelord" at that time, why was that bullshit dilemma not part of it at all?

season 1 > season 2 >>>>> season 3

>>220365145
It's nice they basically made it so you can blame korra for destroying the world.

>>220365162
>why was that bullshit dilemma not part of it at all?
Because they were going to use the eclipse, incapacitate and imprison him. Aang was never ever murdering someone.

>>220365145
man, korra is so incredibly fucking bad. the first season has some good ideas that they executed like shit, but every other season is just worthless. awful concepts with awful execution. mindboggling

>>220363229
Couldn't he just have outlasted him? He was turbo stomping Ozai even with the comet. Just knock him out and wait until the comet is gone and then put him in prison. If he starts acting up just have Aang beat his ass again.

>>220365203
>incapacitate and imprison him
which is something that can be done without the eclipse(again, refer to azula), albeit harder to pull off, which is fitting for the final challenge of the show

>>220365162
the moral quandary isn't about the practical question of how to handle ozai, it's the ethical one about what is just. ozai is a psychopathic murderer attempting to commit genocide. you're just going to throw that nigger in prison? after all he's done?
everyone knows he deserves to die. aang doesn't want to kill, though, so he's trying to find literally anything else he can do. he decides that stripping ozai of all his power is cruel enough to balance the scales. the show doesn't bother having anyone question whether this is actually justice because, shit dude, we got five minutes of runtime left, wrap it up

>>220365203
after the eclipse aang says he is still keen on facing ozai, the gaang just talks him out of it and convinces him not to

>>220365380
>ozai is a psychopathic murderer attempting to commit genocide. you're just going to take away his bending? after all he's done?

>>220365413
>the show doesn't bother having anyone question whether this is actually justice because, shit dude, we got five minutes of runtime left, wrap it up

>making up head canon to justify bad writing

>>220365436
if it's not worth exploring it's not worth making it a plot point(not that it is because that was just your assumption/interpretation) when again, there clearly were other solutions

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What is this haunting like Sauron's freaking shadow.

>>220365488
i am absolutely not justifying the gay ass turtle twist

>>220365380
Because ending the epic with a legislative debate about capital punishment between teenagers would not have been entertaining you mongoloid.

>>220365527
shit man, it's been 15 years since i saw the episode in question, maybe i am just misremembering the events. i don't remember there being any real doubt that aang could stop ozai, though. and if the practicalities are not in question, then what else could the conundrum be? that's not rhetorical, you are free to offer alternatives. i am not invested in staking out any particular position here, it's just fun to talk about writing that is nearly great but held back by some obvious flaw

>>220365608
i again point to trigun as the archetype they should have modelled their finale around

>>220364962
>>220364977
>>220365250
korras hot which counts for a lot

>>220365611
my main issue with the "bendingbending" was that it was a complete asspull

Aang speaks with multiple spirits older than recorded history throughout the series. maybe one of them couldve dropped a hint about it at least once?

it's painfully obvious the writers pulled it out if their ass at the last minute.

if I was going to avoid using "bendingbending"
I'd say maybe imprison Ozai, but in the Spirit World? where its been established since season 1 that no bending exists.
No armies, no bending, now Ozai is just a dude lost in the murky abyss.

>>220365611
>i don't remember there being any real doubt that aang could stop ozai
there was because aang had no access to the avatar state(which was solved by the asspull chiropractic rock that hits his back when ozai smashes his protective earth sphere). the "what will happen to ozai after we detain him" should have not have been a plot point that drains the entire finale as arresting him and replace him for a just leader is a perfectly reasonable solution. the idea of talking to other avatars to acquire wisdom is a good idea, imo the finale should have involved aang going into the spirit world(remember koh in season 1 said they would meet again) on a quest to unlock the avatar state

>>220365720
yeah the path they took was just bad. i'm not sure bendingbending would have been good even if they had set it up, it's simply not good
trapped in the spirit world would have been a cool idea, honestly. lots of room for some kind of awful karmic punishment there

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>>220365659
Soul bending as an alien power from the avatar didn't shock me when i saw it happen and clearly chakras were not pseudo science in that universe but actual magical unlock points.

>>220363229
>somehow drooling retard kidults think this is the greatest Western animated show of all time?
Well the bar is pretty low for story driven western animated tv shows.

>>220365878
shit, when avatar first came out what was even the competition? i don't remember anything other than anime

>>220363229

Can't show someone getting killed in a war.

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>>220365780
A torpedo sized air vent that leads straight to core isn't that a bit stupid too?
Why didn't they put a fence over it?

>>220363229
Yeah, shit was retarded. The finale as a whole is pretty shoddy writing. It gets away with it purely on paying out on the action so hard.

>>220365911
korra had a murder/suicide at the end of its first season, and it's not even a good show. we can let the first series kill a couple people, as a treat

>>220364543
He was really strong. It was also symbolic
The war was basically at a standstill and the airships were a last ditch effort

>>220365983

My kid binged Avatar and liked it, and then was watching Kora, and lo and behold she's a lesbian. Around the same time, he wanted to watch that apple godzilla series... protagonist lesbians.

We prefer Gundam 00 in our house.

the 2 invasion episodes were infinitely more satisfying than the 4 of the finale

>>220365908
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YO0rFnA2Ds&list=PLEYAll4PuSQR8qILv5S18Z64qWpRvzh63

>>220363900
>just turn your back on your entire belief system, bro
I liked that Aang said no and wanted to find his own way. The issue was that the other way was dropped in his lap at the eleventh hour.
I also take umbrage with the idea that taking Ozai’s bending away removes the threat he poses, when it’s really his control over an advanced, militaristic country.

>>220363229
Wasn't this just a copy of the fifth elements ending?

>>220364543
Removing his bending is honestly just a cherry on top. The more relevant bit is that they removed the king and the princess from power simultaneously and installed the prince, who promptly ordered a withdrawal and a cessation of hostilities. The politics around Zuko assuming the throne would be messy, but in any case the Fire Nation would no longer be in any position to maintain its holdings in the Earth Kingdom even if they wanted, which effectively means an end to the war.

>>220363229
Back in the day it was criticized too, yes

>>220366014
The war proper was over with the fall of Ba Sing Se. After that it was just a very tenuous occupation. The comet plan was Ozai trying to skip the coming decades of fighting perennial rebellions.

>>220365659
Vash is forced to kill a dude though (in the manga, not sure how the anime does it), and you obviously can't do that in a kid's show.

we saw jin the great fall to his death when kyoshi faces him. aang even mentions this to kyoshi how she technically didnt kill him which she rebutes that she doesn't see the difference

>>220364615
stay here

>>220363229
this.

the finale was always the weakest part of the series for me. they had so many loose ends to tie up that none of them got resolved in a satisfactory manner.

> azuala begin rushed into going apeshit with no adequate buildup
> azula vs. katara was a letdown
> the retaking of ba sing se went by way too fast
> sokka and the others had almost nothing worthwhile to do

as for the final showdown, a better option:

> ozai is about to pull off some super powerful fire move he thinks will kill aang
> doesn't know how to properly pull it off, even aang warns him to stop
> too prideful to listen, does it anyway
> blows himself up. death by his own hubris and aang wins who technically never killed him. win win

why the writers never thought of that, who knows?

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>>220365145
But he was right.
The only way their world can hope to be just is if there isn’t one all powerful being forcing their will on everyone.
Killing the Avatar is the objectively right thing to do.

>>220364962
Aang vs Ozai is a fucking SICK fight.
Even if you dislike the deus ex machina avatar state, the subsequent beatdown is legendary.

>>220368336
>the world can't be just because the avatar is all powerful
>even though avatars have been killed and defeated many times in the past
>and even though my plan relies on defeating and killing the avatar
truly there is nothing worth saving from korra

>>220364615
Daniel. im calling you by name so i can make sure you know I am talking directly to you.
dont reddit space. and go back.

>>220364771
k thanks for completely ignoring why it doesnt age well.
Yeah if you grew up with this show it was probably one of the best pieces of TV you might have enjoyed.
but just like me, you grew up. and your tastes in tv shows should have as well.
and i bet if you were to sit down and rewatch it. you will come to the same conclusion I did.
wow this is very childish and thats kind of a problem for my inner adult self, so much so that im having a hard time enjoying the story.
>ITS A KIDS SHOW AND ITS A GOOD THING
well its a kids show, and its not a great as you remember.

it's like harry potter. really cool fantasy universe but the story/plot is just not great

>>220368734
>I am no longer the target audience of this show for children
>THIS MEANS IT IS BAD!!

>>220363229
test and bump

>>220368777
didnt age well. but i presume you dont want to engage in an adult conversation anyways and your child like mentality shows it. are you a woman or a man under the age of 25 without a fully developed brain yet?

>>220363229
Taking his bending was the ultimate power move. Destroy his ego,make him harmless, force him to live with the shame of defeat