02-23-2024, 12:30 AM
(02-21-2024, 01:51 AM)Drunk Monk Wrote:
This drops Friday. I’m in.
By Friday I meant Thursday (today). It’s 8 eps, each about an hour.
After watching the premiere, my first thought was ‘well, it’s better the M. Night Shamalamadingdong’s version.’ That’s not saying much. I hated that film and that was before I fell in love with the original anime. It was making some of the same mistakes, losing the chemistry and the humor, racing to compress a whole season into one movie.
The Netflix series is also racing to get through it. I’m 3 eps deep and they are already in Omashu, which doesn’t happen until the 2nd ep of the 2nd season in the original (the original series is 61 eps). Nevertheless, by e3, the Netflix series is settling into a rhythm. There’s some chemistry in the cast. The actors are well suited for their roles. The settings and costumes look good.
There are some nice Easter eggs for us fans, like the cabbage man. In the original, the cabbage man was a reoccurring side character that kept getting his cabbage cart tilted during chase scenes. In the Netflix series, he’s teased twice, always getting cut off before he says ‘cabbages’ and the third time, when his cart is incinerated by fire nation, he finally utters his signature ‘my cabbages!’ line. He is also played by the original voice actor.
The Netflix series is darker. There are many live immolations. It has some humor, mostly with Sokka, who was always the comic relief. But it can’t get at that singular cartoonish humor that only anime can achieve, a sort of caricature absurdity that fully exploits animation exaggerated dynamics. The manifestation of Avatar Kyoshi in e2 is dark and terrible, which wasn’t something in the original but I liked how it came out.
I miss the Kung Fu. The fight choreo is basic superhero magic fights. The original was mo-capped off my KF cousin Kisu, who based each elements fighting method on traditional Kung Fu styles. He’s a Bak Sil Lum guy like me and the cfs and some of the forms of the fire nation are lifted directly from forms in our style. If you know Kung Fu, the original anime works on a completely different level. There’s even some full on opportunities to bring in my KF - like with Jet and his Tiger Hooks - but only one unique move of linking the two hooks together for more reach is seen. I’m particularly sensitive here because I luv tiger books - I still practice them but haven’t been able to do so lately due to rain and illness.
At the same time, some stuff like the cabbage man and the way that Azula (one of my fav characters) was introduced was great. Some of the twists on the original are well played.
It’s also preachy. There are a lot of gems of wisdom within the original, but here, the dialog is so forced that it sounds like mansplaining. Here, the morals are too heavy handed in their delivery.
The original series is hard to live up to. It’s unmatched in what it achieves for so many reasons. I need to let go of that to enjoy this fully. I am enjoying it but I can’t help but compare.
The most praise I can give it now is that I shall see this through. Perhaps that’s dedication tto the original.
Not D00M recommended because none of you are in the ATLA fandom, although I would be curious to know how this works with the uninitiated. I suspect the characters will all fall flat. Knowing the show, I know the backstories so the characters seem full, well developed, but the live action left alone might not enough:
More to come.
Shadow boxing the apocalypse
