I guess one good thing to be said about the M. Night Shyamalan’s version of the story is that it got me and my wife watching the original series. The reviews for the film were uniformly horrible, so we had no desire to watch it. But its release prompted plenty of discussion about the cartoon series and more than a few QT3 posters wistfully reminisced about how great it was and how far short the film fell in comparison. As we had just finished watching Naruto Shippuden and were looking for something new to watch, she agreed to try a few episodes. We ended up watching all three seasons.

For the benefit of those who have no idea what it’s about, here’s a quick overview. The series is set in a fantasy world composed of four separate nations, each representing one of the four elements of Air, Water, Fire and Earth. Certain people from each of the nations are capable of bending their respective elements, manipulating them with a combination of concentration and martial arts moves. The four nations are supposed to co-exist in harmony but the Fire nation has become aggressive and has embarked on a war of conquest against the other nations.

In this world, it is the duty of the Avatar to restore peace and balance. An Avatar always exists as when one dies, his or her replacement is always born to the next nation in the cycle. Knowing this, the evil Firelord has preemptively attacked and wiped out the Air nation as he knew that the next Avatar would be an Airbender. Fortunately, the 14 year old Avatar was not present during the attack but was instead caught in a storm and frozen in ice. One hundred years later, two young members of the Water tribe find and revive the Avatar, setting the stage for the series and the Avatar’s quest to master all four of the elements and depose the Firelord.

So far so generic, you say? Far from it. First at all, despite this being an American production, the series has a very strong Oriental theme. All of the characters are recognizably Asian with no whites at all (one of the major blunders made in the film version). Even all of the writing shown in the cartoon are in Chinese. The entire world and story are suffused with eastern thought and philosophy. The concept of the Avatar himself is based on Buddhist reincarnation of course and spirits are very much a part of the world. The little stories and bits of culture shown are all distinctly Asian in character.

Secondly, the elemental bending that is the obvious highlight of the show are all based on movements inspired by Chinese martial arts. For example, the waterbenders use the flowing, gentle forms of tai chi, the earthbenders use the low stances of Hung Gar and so forth. All of their fighters use their abilities in spectacular and creative ways, which combined with excellent fight choreography, makes for some very entertaining television. The characters do grow in power throughout the series in accordance with genre convention, but this happens in a very convincing fashion and the fights never devolve to contests of raw power.

Best of all, while the show is targeted at kids and it never forgets this fact, it’s uniformly well written and consistently interesting. The overall plot is a tad predictable to adults and it’s a bit incongruous that nearly every character of consequence is a kid, but it’s done with such competence and flair that it still manages to entertain. Heck, even the jokes are genuinely funny and one particular gem of an episode involving a visit to the theater demonstrates just how well the writers understand what makes the different characters tick. Best of all, unlike genuine Japanese anime, Avatar: The Last Airbender never tries to drag things out or go into tiresomely long recap mode. All of this makes this a genuinely fun series to watch.

But what makes this really interesting for me is that like Kung Fu Panda, this show successfully mines Asian culture for inspiration and comes up with something utterly new with it. This means that the creators needed to understand Asian culture enough to know which elements would work well together to craft an epic story and create an entire fantasy world plus the characters to populate it. And these guys are not Asians. So how come Americans came up with something like this, but not China, or Taiwan or Hong Kong? How come Asian television series just like to tell the same stories in the same settings again and again?