It's not the sort of episodic show that's meant to run in place and sell toys for as long as possible. The best thing the series has in common with Japanese action cartoons, though, is that it has a destination in mind. Certainly there's some superficial visual resemblance – Aang's great big googly eyes, for one thing. A lot of hay has been made over what influence Japanese animation has or hasn't had on Avatar. So it's off on a trip around the world, with the Fire Nation in hot pursuit, in the hope that Aang can someday establish the peace he was meant to keep. Obviously, his training hit a snag – he can airbend, as the title suggests, but he never got around to the other three arts. This is Aang, who, it turns out, would have become the next Avatar if he hadn't accidentally wound up in the deep freeze. Two young kids from a depleted Water Tribe (since all the grown folks have gone off to fight the Fire Nation) find another youngster frozen in a giant block of ice, not very far from their village by the south pole. After the momentous introduction, the story settles down to a very personal scale. If this sounds like a cast-of-thousands epic, well, it doesn't exactly start that way. But the last Avatar disappeared that same hundred years ago, inspiring the supremely humorless goons of the Fire Nation to take a crack at ruling the world. Back in the day, the Avatar could do all of the above, and thereby kept everybody else more or less in line. The Water Tribe can waterbend, and the Air Nomads can airbend, or they could if there had been any Air Nomads for a hundred years or so.

People from the Fire Nation can firebend, or manipulate fire. The previous edition of this season has been and gone for nearly four years. About the series itself, well, most people have probably already made up their minds. It includes the exact same discs as in the previous box set (in the exact same fold-out case, for that matter), but adds some new packaging around it to encompass another disc of extras, among other things. This is Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Complete Book 1 Collector's Edition, which is not to be confused (if you can help it, anyway) with Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Complete Book 1 Collection. It means we get this extra-schnazzy DVD re-release of the original cartoon show, with a big fancy box and new bonus material. We bring it up here because angry fans should know that there's at least one up side to the widely-condemned adaptation. Exactly why, well, you can learn about that from somebody else if you really, really want to. Avatar: The Last Airbender built up a hefty cult following over its three-season run on Nickelodeon, and a lot of those folks have spent the last year or two loudly complaining about the upcoming movie version.

Avatar the last airbender ep 1 book 1