How Avatar: The Last Airbender Made Me A Late Bloomer Anime Fan

When my father asked me what anime is, I realized this fandom is part of me now. Anime is not a passion I hide (you wouldn't be reading this if I did), but it's also one I've only had for a few years. I've been calling myself a “novice weeb,” even if the first part of that description probably isn't true anymore. My infatuation with the medium and so many stories it contains is a classic story of Green Eggs and Ham. It begins not with a proper anime, but Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is drawn in anime-like style. Nickelodeon Animation Studio drew the human characters with all the anime hallmarks (big eyes, small noses, smooth skin, etc.), and the characters are surrounded by creatures right out of a Studio Ghibli feature. The series climaxes with an aerial mano-a-mano clash rivaling anything seen in Dragon Ball Z. The series acknowledges its inspirations by modeling its world on the cultures and history of Southeast Asia; the characters' powers, "bending," is done in martial arts styles. Since Avatar is not a Japanese series, many still argue it does not “count” as anime. I'm not here to resolve this divide, but one can't deny how it incorporates anime flourishes. I certainly picked up on this, which is how the show became my long-delayed gateway.

I've known about anime for a long time. I had a big Pokémon phase in elementary school. Occasionally, at friends' houses, I'd see a few scattered episodes of Naruto and Inuyasha. Perplexed, I found myself asking, “Why does this show look like Pokémon?” Instead of inspiring curiosity, it repelled me. It didn't help that the episodes I saw weren't introductory ones; I was thrown into the middle of a story and spent the episode trying to decipher the context instead of enjoying what was happening on screen. Cartoons with serialized arcs, imagine that?

When I grew out of Pokémon, I never graduated to Toonami and Adult Swim — the programming blocks that created so many American anime fans of my generation by playing anime with an adult edge (the woes of living without cable). The other otaku path, the internet, pushed me in the other direction. I read and absorbed disparagement of anime and its fans; being a dumb teenager, I took on (bad) faith that these negative stereotypes about anime were true. Every series must have hundreds of filler episodes, a bad English dub, and excessive fanservice. Shamefully, I also wanted to avoid feeling too nerdy and decided anime would be that red line of respectability.

Then, 2020. You'll need to understand where I was that year. After an adolescence of adoring superhero films, I was growing disillusioned with the homogeneity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The colossal disappointment of the Rise of Skywalker had snuffed out my passion for Star Wars. Like everyone else, I was also stuck at home, thanks to COVID-19. I had time to kill and was especially open to new media.

Lo and behold, Avatar: The Last Airbender arrived on Netflix in May 2020. I'd seen a few episodes of Avatar years earlier but never watched the whole series back to back — the way you must to appreciate it fully. Since I knew it hewed so closely to anime, I'd dropped it in the same pile and written off getting into it. This time, though, I bought into the hype and decided to check it out. Soon, I saw where all the praise for the series came from.

The more I enjoyed the show, the sillier I felt for ignoring it. The world-building, from the four nations to the element each one bends, is simple yet effective. How can you not be charmed by the characters? Especially Prince Zuko, the angsty teen villain with a heart of gold. I'm not sure I can add anything to the conversation about his masterful redemption arc except to say both the highs and lows he experienced made my heart ache.

I was consistently impressed by the show's willingness to let even the good guys be fallible. While the show's humor is broad enough for the young target audience (not to say I never laughed), this maturity is why it endures.

The story is inseparable from how it's told; Avatar made me realize how animation could tell the kind of stories I already liked and do them even better. Instead of being the minor leagues for stories that don't warrant live-action, animation is the purest artistic expression of cinema: moving images transplanted directly from an artist's mind to the screen, beginning and ending with an artist's pen.

Come August of that year, Netflix added the Avatar sequel series, The Legend of Korra. I devoured that show with the same voracity, this time in my dorm room. But there are only so many Avatar episodes out there. Soon, I was craving something that would scratch the same itch, i.e., original fantasy storytelling rendered in beautiful art. As I stayed one step removed from anime, I read about what inspired Avatar creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante Dimartino.

One name stood out to me — Neon Genesis Evangelion — and come 2021, I decided to take that plunge. If nothing else, I thought, I might gain a deeper understanding of Avatar by watching a favorite of its creators'. I got that and much more out of Evangelion — one of the most profound and personal experiences I've ever had with art. If Zuko's story tugged at my heart, Shinji Ikari's pierced it.

It took me about six months to become an anime fan instead of just an Evangelion fan, but I was finally sold. If anime can tell a moving story, I thought, it must be worth exploring. The natural next step was FLCL, also produced by Studio Gainax and another of Konietzko and DiMartino's favorite anime. Then Cowboy Bebop, partially to catch up before the live-action remake dropped (I never finished that show, but I remain in love with Shinichiro Watanabe's original).

After that, I briefly told myself I had enough anime for one year. Then, in December 2021, I saw Fullmetal Alchemist was being pulled from Netflix come January. So, I pulled the trigger to binge that series in the last two weeks of the year.

By 2022, all trepidation had gone away. I've made it my mission to make up for lost time and binge classic anime or recent acclaimed ones. The best series please my cinephile brain with bolder filmmaking than I see in my old passions like Marvel. I've even started reading manga; like anyone newly in love, I want to know everything about the one who's caught my eye.

As I immerse myself in anime more and more, I don't think about Avatar as much as I used to. But you can't forget your first love, especially when it's back in the news. The live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender has just dropped on Netflix. Retell this story removed from animation, and you'll introduce your audience to only one new world, not the possibility of dozens more.

Anime is a medium of imagination, and thanks to Avatar: The Last Airbender, it now captures my heart time and time again.