Avatar: The Last Airbender is a Masterpiece

"Masterpiece" is a word that gets thrown around a lot. For me, I actually enjoy most things I watch but it is rare that something holds emotional weight after I've finished it. The Last Airbender stands out because of its maturity, storytelling and characters and I firmly believe its a show everyone should take the time to watch.

Now it may seem a tad silly to put a kids cartoon on such a high pedestal. I think the real silly thing is demeaning this work of art with the stigma of it being for kids. The Last Airbender is so much more than a prime time Nickelodeon cartoon.

First of all, the themes that are explored make Greys Anatomy look like Spongebob Squarepants. I found myself caught off guard on numerous occassions by how deep and raw it was willing to go. When the supposed "bad guy" is crying and you feel tempted to cry yourself, you realize that this show is more than meets the eye. No human being with a functioning heart can make it through this show without becoming emotionally invested.

The Last Airbender also has the most cohesive and layered plot of any cartoon I've seen. Every episode is a piece of a larger puzzle. The characters suffer real consequences for their actions and instead of forgetting about these consequences in the next episode, they are made core themes for multiple seasons. When Appa gets kidnapped there's a stretch of episodes where he's straight up absent before they find him. When Aang burns Katara his regret makes him reluctant to learn fire bending for an entire season.

My biggest praise for the show is how unique and wonderful every main character is. It easily could have been "Aang and his Sidekicks" but a lot of the time, it's the sidekicks that steal the scene. Everyone has their own carefully hand woven emotional journey that slowly unravels, resulting in a thoroughly intriguing quilt of character development. I could write a blog post on each character but here's quick summary of what they individually bring to the show.

• Aang: A protagonist that has an unwanted destiny thrust upon him. His acceptance and realization of what it means to be the Avatar is the core of the show.
• Katara: The straightman that was forced to grow up too quickly.
• Sokka: Amazing comedic relief and a necessary non-bender presence.
• Toph: Insanely badass. A cool contrast to Aang where she is powerful but isn't afraid to flex it.
• Zuko: An amazing antagonist that has the best character arc of any character in any show ever.
• Iroh: Any scene that contains Iroh is automatically the best scene of the episode.
• Azula: Genuinely threatening because her morals seem so unhinged and a good foil to Zuko.

The show has everything you can expect from a typical Nickelodeon cartoon: non-stop humour, fun adventures and hilarious hijinks. But it also has some of the best writing, storytelling and heart of anything I've seen. It's a show that once it's finished, you wish that you never started, so you could experience it all over again.