The Avatar the Last Airbender to Anime Pipeline
May 18, 2020– maybe the best decision ever made by Netflix, Avatar the Last Airbender (ATLA) shows up on the US streaming service catalog of watchables. For 58 consecutive days, the show never left Netflix’s top 10, which became a record-breaking achievement in the vastly saturated television landscape.
Perhaps it was a carefully crafted cocktail of escapism in the midst of the pandemic lockdown, and the nostalgia for a show we grew up with, but all of a sudden I am being absorbed into the story just as millions of others are.
Firstly, this isn’t that strange for me. Unlike some, where this event initiated their first re-watch since they were ten years old, I love ATLA and bring it upon myself to re-watch it at least yearly anyway. But what was different all of a sudden, was how the show, which had been the perfect dose of whatever I needed at the time, no longer satiated me.
Frankly, it’s not all that surprising in hindsight, seeing as the context of the world just brought on an ever fervent, ever-growing desire to escape. But at that moment, I was not very keen on the inner workings of my psyche’s desperate need for fantastical stimulation. Frustration just turned to action and the quest for instant gratification.
So, on a random day that was supposed to be unmemorable, I found myself scrolling through Netflix and pausing on a title, which in the past always skipped my attention.
The title? Parasyte: The Maxim¹.
Adapted from the manga of the same name, the science-fiction horror story follows Shinichi Izumi as he is infected with an alien being. But after failing to infect his brain, the parasyte is forced to share Shinichi’s body. Residing in his right arm, the two must navigate each other’s conflicting agendas while humanity is at stake.
Me, a 21-year-old, who surprisingly evaded anime her whole life², unbeknownst to the implications of a single button click, just willingly jumped down the rabbit hole.
A year later, I’ve surpassed the 20 anime mark and I haven’t taken a single breath yet.
Cruising speed: obsessive mph.
As a shameless TikTok user, per the algorithm, the app caught on to my newfound interest. It flooded my for-you-page with anime content. And between the lines of simping, edits, and memes, I was reading the experiences of random people’s anime insurgencies. Turns out, this random personal phenomenon wasn’t so personal. Thousands of likes and comments shared in the agreement that ATLA was the catalyst to their obsessions as well.
So, wait. What the hell?
What once was a coincidental blip in the larger scheme of my viewing habits, turned into a personal investigation on why such a flow of events crossed outside my own unique experience.
My conclusion: ALTA is the boats to the Undying Lands³, transporting us from the American animation industry into the Japanese industry.
(I choose this reference, instead of say, the River Styx, because instead of traveling to the underworld, I imagine a heavenly and fruitful world of endless opportunity ripe for my enjoyment. In either case, a boat-to-another-place metaphor works well in describing the animated spectrum and its crossing of boundaries).
If you think about it, ATLA consists of many elements that align with a typical anime: the hero’s journey, high school-aged characters fighting in life-threatening situations, morally grey characters, music themes assigned to the different characters and moods, choreographed martial-arts fighting, recaps, fillers, “the beach episode,” etc., etc., etc. One could even note the heavy Asian influence within ATLA’s world. For some, all these examples justify the show as an anime. To be blunt, in my opinion, they’re wrong.
Style, tone, and story are all important markers, but the big difference here is the platforms in which they are erected.
We can all agree that ATLA is not the same as a superhero comic adaptation or an adult animated show like BoJack Horseman or Bob’s Burgers– these being classically what you imagine when you hear American, Hollywood, televised, animated productions. But on the flip side, ATLA is not a Japanese manga (or in some arguable cases Korean web-toon) adaptation.
Where these two stark differences lie on unmovable platforms, ATLA lies on a fluid, metaphysical, and moving one that lives between and inside the examples previously stated. Simply, the perfect boat (or pipeline, if you will) to safely take us to our next destinations in the most pleasant and interesting way possible. Is it our way of acclimatizing while going up the mountain? Possibly. Or maybe it doesn’t have to be that deep.
It just seems to be a natural course to not only bring you within its own world but in my case and many others, into the world of anime that was once a locked and intimidating vault of media.
I may not be nearly as immersed, knowledgeable, and determined as the ones who began their journeys years ago, but brushing off the gatekeepers, the show that has always and will always have a special place in my heart continues to give 16 years later.
¹When I tell people this is the first anime I ever watched, surprise is always their reaction. It isn’t exactly canon for newly born weebs. (If anything, the ‘big 3’ jump out as the first taste of a newfound addiction –Naruto, One Piece, Bleach…or at least shōnen classics like HunterxHunter, FullMetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, or Dragonball Z). But hey, I came in with zero knowledge, zero plan, and zero justification for a seemingly random choice. Deathnote came second on the growing list, though, so hopefully, that provides a little bit more respect by furthering my anime genre education with a time-honored criterion for every anime watcher.
²To clarify when I say ‘anime’ in this context, I mean tv-length anime productions that are not treated as ‘cinema.’ I watched countless Studio Ghibli films ever since I was eight–which all the more proves how it was not those but ATLA that opened the gateway for me…
³This is the place where the Elves, Gandalf, Bilbo, and Frodo go at the end of the story in Lord of the Rings when they leave Middle-earth. Bye-bye Earth corrupting ways of man!
