It's time to start the marathon, looking at the first two episodes of the first season, which pretty much act like a two-parter. The seasons are referred to as "books", and the first book is "Water".
The Boy in the Iceberg
Man, that's such a cool intro and a neat way to explain bending and the avatar. Anyway, I talked about most of that in yesterday's post, narrated here by Katara, a young waterbender from the Southern Water Tribe. However, it also talks about the overall story: a hundred years ago, the Avatar disappeared at a time when the imperialistic Fire Nation sought to conquer the rest of the world. Katara and her older brother Sokka have been left in charge of the village after their father and the other able-bodied men of the tribe went to the Earth Kingdom to fight two years prior to the beginning of the story.
Anyway, we open with Katara and Sokka (who isn't a bender) as they attempt to fish in the South Pole. The pair get stranded on an ice floe after their canoe is caught in rapids, but they discover an iceberg containing a young airbender named Aang and his flying bison, Appa. Katara quickly warms up to his goofy and fun-loving persona, while Sokka is more wary; nobody has seen Air Nomads in a century, and the iceberg emitted a skyward beam which could serve as a beacon to the Fire Nation. He's not wrong on that, as it attracts the attention of one warship commanded by Zuko, a Fire Nation prince who has been assigned a mission to capture the Avatar.
Being the first episode, a lot of this is pretty much worldbuilding, but handles it well. Aang's a goofy kid, Katara's caring and optimistic, while Sokka's more of a wisecracking cynic. Although he's also a bit of a misogynist at this point. That makes it a bit difficult to find him endearing, but it also provides some schadenfreude from his misfortunes. In fact, Katara actually unearths Aang and Appa by gesticulating while calling him out for that attitude. Fortunately, he gets better as the series goes on.
There is some underlying tension with Zuko's ship being drawn to the skyward beam, but even then we get some comic relief from his more reserved uncle, Iroh. Some of that jasmine tea sounds nice. The tension ends the episode on a cliffhanger as Aang and Katara trigger a trap while exploring an abandoned Fire Nation ship. This sends out a signal flare which Zuko spots, leading him to the village.
The Avatar Returns
We've built the world, now it's time for some action.
Upon their return from the ship, Sokka has Aang banished from the village. It's actually quite poignant, as Katara is torn between staying and going with him in the hopes of learning to waterbend with the Northern Water Tribe. Anyway, Zuko promptly arrives and single handedly defeats Sokka. Aang promptly returns and offers to surrender to Zuko in the hopes that the village will be of no further interest to him. After they leave, Katara opts to rescue Aang and Sokka offers to go with her. Their grandmother gives them her blessing, having realised that Aang is the Avatar.
While Zuko is pretty much an angsty teen who can bend fire, this is the first episode to show his honourable side when he accepts Aang's surrender. We also get to see Katara's determination as she opts to go after Aang, not wanting to see an innocent child being taken away by the Fire Nation.
As mentioned above, there's a lot more action in this episode. Sokka confronts Zuko despite not having any bending abilities, and even lands a hit with his boomerang after getting completely curb-stomped. This is followed by Aang escaping from the ship, and when he almost drowns after falling overboard, he subdues his pursuers with the hidden ability that later gets called "The Avatar State".
The episode ends with our trio escaping on Appa, planning to travel to the North Pole (after Aang plans a few detours). We also get a hint to a darker past for Aang, when he mentions that he never wanted to be the Avatar.
All in all, these two episodes do a fantastic job of opening the series. In fact, I'm getting the urge to watch the next couple of episodes even as I sit here writing about it. I'll probably do that and schedule the next post for tomorrow.
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