So for the review/synopsis for those of you who don't already know, the word of Avatar is based around the four classical elements, air, water, earth and fire, in that order so remember it. There are people who can bend these elements and are called benders, and each ca only bend ne, except the Avatar who can bend all four and ust maintain balance between the four elements, the four corresponding nations, between benders and non-benders, between man and nature, and between the spiritual and the physical. It's a pretty tall order, but the Avatar reincarnates through the cycle and every generation, steps up and keeps the balance. Before I get carried away into the story, I want to point out that each nation manages to make the most of their element to develop unique technology. Water benders stay at the poles where they can sculpt ice, fire benders live in a volcanic area where they can smelt metal, earth benders use stone for everything including transportation because earth benders can move stone easily enough to make trains out of stones, and air benders stay in the mountains because while they can't build with air they have unique manuverability at high altitudes.
The story of Avatar begins with a water bender named Katara who lives in the south pole with her non-bending brother Sokka, a proud Water Tribe warrior. Their mother died protecting them and their fatehr went to war, and now they're stuck with a dwindling village that Sokka is struggling to feed on a fishing trip when they find an iceberg with a boy frozen inside. They break the boy out and it turns out that he is Aang, the last airbender and the Avatar who disappeared one hundred years earlier. They are soon pursued by Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation and are forced to go on the run with Appa, Aang's sky bison, a large six legged beast that can airbend and fly. They round out their little group with Momo, a lemur bat that seems to be the last survivor of the Southern Air Temple where Aang grew up. Flashback time, the Avatar is usually not revealed until he or she is 16, but Aang found out when he was 12, panicked and ran away before he learned the other elements, got caught in a storm and reactively froze himself. Within a few days, a comet passed by empowering the fire benders, including Fire Lord Sozin who wiped out the Air Nomads in one day. The Water Tribes were next, but the Earth Kingdom allied with them and managed to keep the war at a stalemate ever since. Aang also learns from his previous incarnation Roku that Sozin's comet will come back this summer and the war must end before then or the Fire Nation will destroy the world. Meanwhile, Prince Zuko spoke out against his father who was considering a plan to sacrfice expendable non-bender soldiers in the vanguard while fire benders took out the enemy. Zuko did not approve of sacrificing innocent yet loyal subjects, but his father would not yield and punished him with exile until he could bring back the Avatar, which was an impossible task given that the Aang had not yet emerged from the iceberg and his people died before they could figure out where he'd even gone in the first place, so nobody knew where the Avatar was. Zuko was accompanied by his uncle Iroh, Fire Lord Ozai's older brother who was once a mighty warrior until his son died in battle and he retired heartbroken and abdicated the throne. Iroh's actually a nice guy and wants to help Zuko accept his fate rather than fight and waste his life, though the arrival of the Avatar ruins this. Even Zuko is made sympathetic, particularly in the first season's most moving episode, the Blue Spirit, in which Aang is captured by te Fire Nation and he is rescued by a silent masked stranger who only fights with swords. After an impressive chase sequence leading to Aang's escape, the mask is pulled back to reveal Zuko. When you think about this episode you realize, Zuko isn't the bad guy, he just wants to go home.
The second season transitions with Aang and Katara mastering water bending and seeking an earth bending teacher. They find Toph a blind girl who compensates by feeling vibrations in the earth. She joins the crew and work there way to Ba Sing Se, the capitol of the Earth Kingdom where they cross paths with Zuko again. Zuko had been invited back home by his sister Azula, but when one of her soldiers accidentally refers to Zuko as "prisoner" he realizes it's a ruse and runs away. Iroh tries to get him to settle down in Ba Sing Se and work at a tea shop(Iroh really likes tea, he even works at the tea shop after the war ends). Zuko finds out that Appa was captured and is being held prisoner outside of Ba Sing Se and tries to get to the sky bison to hurt the Avatar, leading to what I believe to be quite possibly the most moving scene in the entire series which I will post below.
The third season concludes Zuko's journey, which has been eerily paralleling Aang's up to this point when he becomes his Fire Bending teacher. Iroh reveals himself to the Avatar as a member of the Order of the White Lotus which includes many of Aang's other friends and mentors and they all support the Avatar in his fight because they know there will be no tomorrow for any of them unless the Avatar can defeat Fire Lord Ozai. Zuko and Katara go to settle things with Azula while Aang fights Fire Lord Ozai and the rest buy time by holding back the Fire Nation forces. It should also be noted that Zuko was dating Azula's best friend Mai and when forced to choose between them, mai chooses Zuko. This is brave because Mai doesn't bend, though she is skilled with a knife and she knows better than anyone how volatile Azula can be, so it shows true love to choose Zuko, but it pays off for her because she becomes his queen after he is appointed the new Fire Lord after Aang manages to depose the rest of his family(really his father and sister are psycho, even Zuko realizes it's the right thing). Sokka presumably ends up with Suki, the warrior from Kyoshi Island, who they met in the first season, is rescued in the third season and fights alongside the rest in the final battle. Aang ends up with Katara which leads into the next series.
Aang had three kids, one of them, Tenzin, is an airbender and he has four kids, all air benders. Aang passed away at the ripe age of 66 and the next incarnation is a water bender named Korra. Unlike Aang who was very reluctant at 12, Korra is all about being the Avatar when she comes out at 16. She's confident, but not too cocky, she's a heroine who knows the lagacy Aang left to her and intends to live up to it. Tenzin is her mentor and they live in Republic City, a place built for all people to come and live together in peace. The good news is, technology has jumped from feudal era to 1920's New York City, the bad news is, not everybody is getting along, and Korra feels responsible to resolve the issues. But first, Korra gets into pro-bending, sport for teams of three benders, one of each element and Korra plays water with brothers mako the fire bender and Bolin the earth bender. The first season reolves around the Equalists who are trying to undo benders, though ironically the leader is revealed to be a waterbender who uses his power to blood-bend, a very rare ability that allows one to bend the water in blood to manipulate people and in this particualr cae he is able to undo bending. The second season revolved around the spirit world and Korra's uncle Unalaq, who was probably the nastiest villain yet as he set out to become the dark Avatar. We also learn the true origin of the Avatar. 10,000 years ago people lived in cities built on the backs of Lion Turtles which could each give humans power over one element so they could leave the city and collect food from the wilderness around them, which was dangerous because of the spirits which did not like humans. the rule was the humans had to return their element when they returned to the city, but one poor boy named Wan sneaked back in without giving back his fire and fought against the rich people opressing him. His punishment was exile, but he was allowed to keep his fire so he could have a fighting chance in the wild. His first fight is to protect a cat deer from hunters which earns the respectof the spirits, but then he makes a mistake, he intervenes in the fight between two spirits named Ravi and Vaatu, who are the supreme spirits of order and chaos, and he mistakenly frees Vaatu the spirit of chaos. Ravi explains that they have a year to set thigns right or Vaatu will throw the world into chaos. Wan discovers other Lion Turtles with other elements and tries to take their elements, but the Lion Turtles explain that a human can not use more than one element or it will destroy him. To resolve this, Ravi holds his extra elements and helps him switch so he can use all four alternately. However in the final battle with Vaatu, Wan needs Ravi to bond with him so he can use all four elements at the same time. They succeed in defeating Vaatu, but Wan becomes permanently bonded with Ravi and is bound to spend the rest of his life trying to maintain order as the Avatar. To his credit, he does his best, but he is mortal and eventually ravi passes on to the next Avatar and begins the cycle which leads up to Kyoshi, Roku, Aang and Korra.
Quite obviously, Korra defeats Vaatu and saves the world, but much as Wan changed the world, so too has Korra, and the new world is restoring balance by spontaneously awakening air benders, some good, some bad, some not yet decided. So begins season three, tune in to Nickelodeon next Friday to watch the continuing adventures of Korra and her friends and catch up on past episodes on Nick.com, and as always, please consider my book, because 7th Moon is written in the same vein and if you like Avatar you'll love 7th Moon.
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