Avatar Recap: Book 3, Chapter 8.
Now that good ol' ASN has some nice screenshots for me to steal, it's time for a discussion of the latest episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender. A bit late after Halloween, we get a nice spooky episode to enjoy. Once again, on the outskirts of a Fire Nation town, the crew are hanging out in a forest, trying to remain inconspicuous. And this time, they're telling spooky stories. Katara actually comes up with a good one when suddenly a mysterious old lady appears and startles everyone. Who is this lady? And what's been going on in her town? Click on in for spoilers, spoilers, and more spoilers!
Well, it turns out the scary old lady is just a nice old lady from the town who happened to be walking in the forest. Being the obviously nice lady she is, she invites them to stay at her inn. And what could possibly come from that right? Sokka is suspicious, but then he always is.
I enjoyed the idea of this episode pretty well, but the execution just wasn't quite up to par. It was still good, but it wasn't the fantastic that I'm used to. There was only a little bit of bending, so maybe that's it. I'm really a sucker for the amazing animation they do for all the bending.
We and our plucky heroes find out through a little bit of snooping and some well-timed exposition that the kindly old lady, Hamma, is from the Southern Water Tribe, just the same as Sokka and Katara. And like Katara, she's a waterbender! In a pretty neat and fairly emotional flashback, we learn why Katara ended up being the only waterbender in the South. Before she was born and the Fire Nation was on a rampage, they slowly gathered up all the known waterbenders from the Southern tribe. After a few episodes of learning that the Fire Nation is full of regular decent people, we are reminded about how ruthless and powerful their military force is. It really tugs at you. And we have a nice little call-back scene, showing how that big ghost ship frozen in the ice down south ended up being that way. Eventually captured, Hamma somehow escapes from the Fire Nation to live in peace in a small town, away from it all.
Meanwhile, there is apparently some kind of cranky monster or spirit that steals people away from their families if they go into the forest on the night of a full moon. It doesn't take a whole lot of figuring to figure out that the waterbender in the village is probably behind it, since waterbenders have their greatest skill during the light of the full moon. But what's not so apparent is how she's doing it.
Hamma takes Katara out into a field full of flowers to help demonstrate some of the techniques she's taught herself over the years. She's a impressed that Katara figured out how to use her own sweat to waterbend in a pinch. She uses that to explain how every living thing has water in it and how a skilled waterbender can draw out that water to use. She demonstrates by pulling the moisture out of the flowers and making water blades to slice up a nearby rock. Katara is impressed, but a bit saddened at the loss of the flowers.
The real shock comes later in the night when she explains just how she escaped from the Fire Nation prison. Her hands were always bound when she was fed and given drink, to prevent her using it to escape. But she always felt a surge in power every full moon. Soon, she discovered she could manipulate the water and moisture inside animals, and then people. She had created bloodbending. She used the guard's own body to make her escape, forcing him to lose control of his own limbs. Hamma has been using the power of the full moon to blood bend innocent civilians and make them march into a secret underground prison. She has basically gone nuts and is punishing every Fire Nation citizen she can for what she has suffered in her life.
She wants Katara to learn this new technique, but Katara does not want that much power. Hamma feels betrayed by her own kindred and uses her bloodbending on Katara. But Hamma is no match for her. She may know something that Katara doesn't, but she's far from being the master waterbender that Katara is. Katara easily overpowers her. But just then, Aang and Sokka show up, and become her new puppets. There's some pretty cool animation of their bodies being pulled around by bloodbending, attacking Katara and eventually about to attack each other when Katara involuntarily reacts and uses bloodbending to finally stop Hamma.
Hamma is finally turned in to the local authorities, and Katara is left with the knowledge that she has this awful new power.
It's actually fairly surprising that they went this far with it. For a kids' show, they tend to get away with more mature situations than Nickelodeon typically allows. But this really shows that the creators of the show are well aware of the implications of some of these bending abilities if taken to extremes. It'll be interesting to see if Katara ends up having to use the power again. I don't know if there will be another full moon before the Day of Black Sun or before Sozin's comet arrives. But like always, knowing the creators of this show, they wouldn't introduce something this big and not bring it back later. Much, much smaller things are revisited.
It won't be long now before it all comes to a head.
What say you?!