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July 28, 2020
PAGE DESIGN BY MELINA HUANG
The Avatar and Me On falling in love with a childhood favorite as an adult. By MEERA SASTRY
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efore I continue, I need to make something clear: I watched Avatar: The Last Airbender for the first time last month, and I wholeheartedly consider myself a fan of the show. I’d been recommended Avatar many, many times throughout my youth and adolescence, told it was a genuinely good show regardless of its target age range. I chalked most of that up, though—as I did with so many of the culturally iconic things I missed out on when I was younger—to the nostalgia of the recommenders. As a kid, I wasn’t really allowed to watch TV, so I missed the window to see Avatar when I was younger than or the same age as the characters, and assumed that that would deplete it of the magic it seemed to hold for so many others. Those who told me to watch it were very emphatic about their love for the show, but I’ve also spent the past 10 years of my life hearing people gasp in horror when it comes up in conversation that I’ve never seen a single episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, so excuse me for being a little
discerning. Childhood baggage aside, I decided to finally take a stab at Avatar after classes ended for the summer, now that it was on Netflix and I wouldn’t have to deal with the extra obstacle of a low-quality stream on a janky anime site. And, yeah, I kind of fell in love with it, as much as a judgmental eighteenyear-old can fall in love with a children’s cartoon that she’s seeing for the first time. I could wax poetic about why, exactly, I’ve converted to an Avatar admirer— about the world-building and how the character arcs foil against one another, about how Azula is a perfect villain who reignited my fear of 8thgrade-girl-bullies despite the fact that I thought I’d laid that to rest upon my entrance to high school. But I’d rather tell you to watch (or re-watch) it and realize how well it holds up on your own. Praises of Avatar are cheaper than a dime a dozen, and I won’t waste your attention on an ode to Prince Zuko. Critiques of the show and its worldbuilding primarily based on Asian cultures, however, are too often overlooked. The chief creative team behind the show—creators Michael Dante DiMartino, Bryan Konietzko, and Aaron Ehasz—are all white Americans, and so is the CONTINUED ON PAGE 6