Something from ATLA that totally blew my mind...

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

I was re-watching Overanalyzing Avatar on YouTube the other day, enjoying it as usual, when the guy running that show pointed out something incredibly interesting to me, a detail that both has an entire scene framed around it AND is likely to go unnoticed on a first-time viewing:

Turns out that the super secret Order Of The White Lotus signals its hideouts and welcomes its members to them through a simple (yet impossible-to-crack) code: they set up a board of Pai Sho --an in-universe board game-- and have both players go through a specific series of moves coordinated between them, playing through an entire game using only those moves, effectively resulting on a board game secret handshake.

It'd be like if you could walk into a place, sit down to a chess board and have an entire wordless conversation with its own rhythm and meaning by shuffling pieces around. Just awesome.

I thought that was incredibly neat and a very creative use of a piece of the setting that seemed to only be there to enrich the lore without actually playing a big role on it.

Stuff like that is why I still watch this show twenty years later.

 

[TheMinuMaster]

I love details like that too. It’s one of the reasons I keep rewatching Avatar—every time you notice something new. One of my favorite small touches is the dagger Iroh gives Zuko: one side says ‘never give up without a fight,’ and the other says ‘made in Earth Kingdom.’ It’s such a clever nod to the whole ‘made in China’ idea, and it fits perfectly with the show’s world. Little things like that make the Avatar universe feel incredibly alive.

 

[Stingy Perry Stingy Perry]

I still watch ATLA every now and then because it’s brilliant as it is. It really boggles me that everyone knows not all animated series/film can be transitioned to live action but they still try only resulting it in butchering the IP.