One thing I love about Katara’s fight with Hama is when you see an attack from Katara get redirected (as waterbenders typically do) by Hama, then again by Katara, and when Hama sends the next attack she makes it more powerful hoping to stress out who she thinks is a younger and inexperienced bender. However, Katara SHUTS THAT DOWN immediately by pulling up with an earthbending stance that stops this MASTER’S attack. That fear in Hama’s eyes is entirely from the determination and unwavering calm of Katara in this situation. She took on Paku when she WAS a novice. To her, Hama NEEDS to be stopped and she knows that she’s the best to do it. If not the only one who can do it.
That's such an amazing detail! I knew ATLA plays around with different fighting styles for different techniques and approaches. But I never noticed it here.
I love this detail so much! Goes to show she might be learning some stuff from Toph and maybe vice verse but also it's such a good way to fight a bender, having them go against one of their own but using techniques from the other nations would throw anyone off. Hoping to see more of this now as I love how connected it makes the group feel with how there learning from each other but I'd also love to see this used elsewhere with others bending just to see what happens.
@@benspiller I think so too!! I love that as it evolves, metal bending DEFINITELY gets a more fluid form that I’m guessing comes from Katara. Just like how it seemed the Sandbenders incorporated air and water bending movements to hone their craft! So well done!
Same! Just in one episode she managed to make her self such an incredible villain and I love how it was done, her story is horrifyingly sad and her abilities are even more so!
It’s a good thing that there’s only three books, or Katara would have found some reason to trust a character in one episode and then be betrayed in the same episode. She did that with Jet all the way in book 1, she even trusted Zuko for like 3-5 minutes because that was certainly a “choice”, and now Hama. When something seems to be too good to be true (in this case finding a waterbender from the Southern Water Tribe); it probably is. Katara learned it the hard way.
Katara and Hama are quite interesting: both are Southern water benders, and both are traumatized by the fire nation, but they chose different paths. Hama chose a path of revenge, and Katara chose a path of compassion. While Hama misplaced her anger by targeting civilians, her anger was completely justified, given what she endured.
Love how these two are depicted, they're both so similar but it goes to show that no matter your past it's up to the individual to choose the way forward.
They were sending so many fire benders to the water tribe because they were assuming they killed off all air benders so they were expecting to find a water bending avatar.
In regards to your comment about fire bending and body pressure, yes fire benders can warm up peoples bodies etc, we do actually see this with Zuko in season one when he kidnapped Aang at that spirit place, he uses his body temperature to heat up his body when he goes into the frozen water and then uses a thermal ability to melt the ice in order to escape, we also see this a lot with Iro he uses his heat breath to warm his tea and things like that, we do see it in the way that you're imagining later in the show as well, but it's very cool what the different bindings elements are capable of and what people are able to do when it comes to fire, water, earth and even air.
I just love how creative it all is, just on the surface, all the bending is super cool but there so much extra detail and thought into how they work which allows for all this insane stuff, can't wait to see what else can get explored like this.
This is another episode I've been waiting for you to react to, I told you earlier how so many of the different bending elements have extra things, but didn't want to give anything away, I did mention how water has ice and earth has rockin all of that stuff and then obviously now you know each has metal bending and that water has blood bending but it's just amazing what you can pull water from Just like what you can pull from, same goes for fire with lightning bending and where you can get fire from, the only one is air bending but that's already pretty overpowered being able to fly etc.
I loved this episode so much just for how creative the bending got, all the other styles were starting to feel so powerful especially with lightning and metal bending but now Waterbending has this crime against nature and it's made that style of bending as a whole so much more powerful!
Without a doubt one of the darkest episodes of the series and an example of how war can turn good people into vengeful ones. Although bloodbending seems fascinating, it is quite the opposite, it is horrible to be controlled at your will and it is painful. That's unnatural. Pdtt: If you haven't noticed during the fight Katara uses waterbending with earthbender moves.
I loved how dark this episode went and it's made me so excited for the rest if the writers are playing around with this sort of thing early in the season, didn't realise the bending was actually painful for the person, makes sense since their blood is moving weird but that would have been really cool ton emphasis more in the episode, rather than have it just look uncomfortable actually have the characters express the pain. Love that Katara used an Earth-bending style there!! Made me so excited for other possibilities which could come from that with other benders using styles from other nations.
I know and truly understand Hama took the wrong way, but when she says, “They threw me in prison to rot along with my brothers and sisters”, man I really feel the pain and suffering she went through. 😢😢😢😢
This is what makes her such a fantastic villain, and I love that she isn't the stereotypical sympathetic villain as with that it's more of feeling sorry for them while with Hama it's fully understanding why she's doing this and honestly if she was only doing this to soldiers I'd probably be on board with her, it's doing this to civilians that pushes her into full villainy but the way she's written is just phenomenal.
Just to clarify, sub-bendings (Healing, BB, MB, etc) are specialized bending skill requiring immense amounts of natural talent and training to perform, they are not natural bending abilities as you cannot be born w/ the capability to use them. BB specifically is tied to the Full Moon because blood is only 50% water by technicality of Plasma, and you are working directly against the body’s chi-flow, which by standard laws of the verse should not be possible, which is why Hama needed the full moon boost. Techniques such Ice-bending, vapor control, “Plant-bending”, etc, do not apply as Ice and vapor are natural forms of water thus they’re acquired by default… Plants are merely an environmental specialization as Huu (Hue) states: “I just bend the water in the plants…”, meaning the plants themselves are really just a container for the water to be stored in, no different than Katara’s sling pouch…
"Requiring immense amount of natural talent and training." Katara learns bloodbending in one try.... that was the only flaw of the episode. I dont care how powerful she is...its silly for Hama to say it took her YEARS to master, and then here comes Katara in one go... so lame
Well it doesn’t say how long it took Hama to actually physically do the technique, just how long it took to for her to master it to the point she could escape; she could have gotten it relatively fast too. Also keep in mind Hama had to start from scratch, whereas Katara had a reference point in both how the technique came about and how it was to actually experience it being used on you. Katara never actually makes any notable progression in BB past Atla and something people don’t include often when discussing this is Katara actually needed to draw on more power than just the full moon in order to fight against Hama. She had to absorb water from the grass at her feet because she didn’t have enough control over the fluids already in her body…🤔🤷🏾♂️
I love how much detail goes into all this!! Just looking at Bloodbending this way makes it feel that much more unnatural, it's not just someone forcing their Will on someone else but also acting against Chi which needs extra power as well. Plus I love how the writers have found a way to make each of the bending styles feel so interesting on their own when compared to the Avatar who could use them all, this way Aang can't do healing, Bloodbending, Metalbending or the rest which makes the rest of the cast feel closer to his prominence.
@@benspiller Actually Ben, technically speaking, Aang can do all of these, as he is in theory the most powerful bender in verse, he doesn't because of his lack of discipline; remember when he first tried WB? he learned in a day what took Katara, a natural born water-bender, two months...
this episode is my fave from this season excluding the ending, the victim to villan arc of hama is great, you can understand her even if you are against it and it makes it so much interesting been personal. for the water out of thin air is because of the moisture in the air, in the desert might not be as much as in the town, jungle or swamp, and air has so cool abilities but since aang is the only one left a lot was lost to time, in the comics of the past avatars we see a lot of that
This episode was absolutely amazing and I loved what they did with Hama, she's such a good example of a victim villain cause even though she's even you can understand her and even feel sorry for her after everything she's been through. I have to check out these comics cause all the other bending styles keep getting more insane and Air just keeps getting left behind 😂
We saw avatar Roku and his friend fire lord zozin fight the volcano. They sucked the heat out of it n dissipated it in the air. N we saw the lava turn to rock bc of it.
One could wonder if the Fire Nation's obsession in the past with capturing and torturing Waterbenders may have been a later precaution of the next Avatar appearing after the destroying the Airbenders.
That's so true, they may have thought they did get rid of the air nation Avatar and moved on to the next and then the current focus on the Earth Nation could have stemmed from them going into the next phase of the cycle as well until it came back to the fire where they could control the Avatar.
I'm not so sure going back home was much of a viable option for Hama. It seems too far to take a smaller ship and either way she'd have to use bloodbending to steal the ship and she'd probably need someone to sail the ship as well. With the likelihood of the Fire Nation noticing a ship missing from formation and someone secretly sending a messenger hawk, Hama would be putting the whole Southern Watertribe at risk by heading there if she were able to make it at all. In terms of how old Hama was when she escaped, all we know is that Hama said it was about 60 years ago when the Fire Nation came to abduct Southern waterbenders. She looked like she was in her late teens (Gran Gran was at least of marrying age in the North (16) when she ran away to live in the South) or early twenties in the hometown flashback so either way, it's close to 20. That would make Hama's current age around 80 years old. Hama said it was "decades" before she escaped so it must be at least 2 decades for the usage of the term "decades" to make sense so the youngest she would be is close to age 40. She still had black hair and non-wrinkly skin so she definitely wasn't in the prison for the full 60 years. If we assume that aging could take at the very least on decade, her max escape age would be 70 so she would've been imprisoned between 20-50 years, she would be between 40-70 years old when she escaped and making Fire Nation puppets for 10-40 years if she started right away after escaping.
I LOVE this episode. And it's interesting, I always was a bit confused as to why blood bending is seen as so bad and "taboo", but my fiancé explained it to me as an inherently unnatural thing to do (controlling someone's body)and that people really don't like being controlled or manipulated. I thought of it as more of a "all's fair in love and war" type of thing, where you're trying to kill each other, so it's kind of silly to draw lines on how. However, I thinnk he's right, it seems extremely unple4asant and upsetting to people being controlled, and I don't want that. :( It's an amazing power tho, so creative. I believe this was a "Halloween" episode. :) They really created a lot of unique bending in season 3, with "sparky sparky boom boom man" (lol) and now Hama.
This episode was amazing and it really made me wonder what would have happened if she left the Fire Nation when she escaped instead of staying, like you said this style is seen as bad and taboo but I think that might come from the way it's been originally used if Hama immediately went to the North Water Tribe after escaping I'm sure they would have used her abilities to fight the Fire Nation and they'd view it completely differently after all this ability is super close to mind control which isn't seen as an inherently bad power. Love that this aired on Halloween 😂😂 I'm sure this helped to terrify some kids!
@benspiller Wonderful point, it would be amazing to see a world where Hama went back to the water tribe and taught them her skills. Imagine how frighteningly powerful waterbenders would be! XD
Honestly, if you pardon my bluntness, blood bending makes me think of rape. A non-trivial number of victims of that experience arousal during the attack, so it's a similar way of your body doing something you didn't want it to do because else is in control.
True 😂😂, still Katara and Sokka feel like natural world travellers now, Hama just full-on set up shop in the heart of the place that destroyed her home.
Pulling water from thin air is not exactly like firebenders. There's humidity in the air, so it makes sense a water bender can gather it but the amount is very little. It really doesn't come from nothing. Firebenders can actually create it and a lot more of it.
The idea is really cool, even if it's more limited than Fire Bending I still think the look on a firebender's face when Katara has no immediate water around her would be hilarious if she just pulled it out of thin air 😂
I hate people who think the way Hama does. What I mean is, grouping an entire nation, ethnicity, religion, etc. and looking at them all as if they're less than human. For example, if someone had a family member killed by a person who happened to be black, and then they think it's okay to kill black people because everyone with darker skin is somehow a monster. Or when you're growing up in a country who is at war with another country, and you have no sympathy for the regular citizens of that country just because they're the "enemy", as if that makes them less human, and makes it okay to kill them. This is why I can't stand tribalism as a whole. Anything that divides us is bad. We need to look at everyone as unique individuals, but also look at everyone as one. All equal. Never blame the many for the actions of a few. A more personal example is, I live in Ireland. Bad things were done here in the past by the British Empire. But do I look at all British people as evil? Of course not. I don't care where a person is from. I'll give everyone a chance, and judge you only based on your own actions. Dehumanising people is disgusting in every way, and is what leads to most of the world's problems. Of course it was easier for Hitler to justify wiping out the Jews when he believed every Jew was to blame for Germany's problems. How can people justify this? Being on the receiving end of it is also no excuse for becoming the monster yourself. Then you just become the very thing you're supposed to be against, and you will be responsible for the same hurt being caused to others. The cycle will never end.
That was the perfect way to showcase Hama was pure evil, she comes off as so sympathetic to begin with when we see what was done to her but the minute she starts attacking civilians, it cements how wicked she is, she's basically become racist to the Fire Nation, and what makes it worse is that she pretends to be friendly to the people in the town who don't suspect her. I agree, this sentiment is something I hope the show is building towards as I'm not sure how much the main cast have progressed in their opinions of the Fire Nation people, makes me so curious as to how the show will end and how the world will be left if Aang wins cause I imagine he'll still have a lot of work to do even when the Fire Nation are no longer a threat just by how everyone effected by this war will think.
@benspiller Jet was basically a similar case. He was personally hurt by Fire Nation soldiers when he was younger, and then he became radicalised and wanted to kill an innocent old man just because he was from the Fire Nation. Not to mention, wiping out a village of Earth Kingdom civilians just to take out a few Fire Nation people along with them. I don't think our protagonists really have these biases to begin with, or at least, not since they've met Fire Nation people (outside of combat). They used to look at it as black and white back in season one, when they had less experience. But more recently, Aang was able to help those Fire Nation school kids by inspiring them to think for themselves, and Katara wanted to help that village on the river so badly, that she put their invasion plans on the line just for the sake of helping them. They seen those people as innocent people who needed help, not just as Fire Nation people. Sokka even had a deep level of respect for his master, Piandao. I don't think they could go back to seeing these people as enemies after spending some time amongst them. The Avatar must restore balance to the world, but balance means all nations living in harmony. So they still need the Fire Nation for that balance to exist. Though I wonder how the lack of Airbenders has impacted that.
I would pick metalbending over bloodbending. Bloodbending is broken but you can use it only once or twice a month. The drawbacks are insane xD. Meanwhile, you can spam metalbending if you've got the talent.
True! I honestly love how they limited such an insane power, it alone could end the war no Avatar required, so the moon being at its fullest grounds it so well.
@@benspiller Definitely, I agree it needs limitations, but if I had to choose a power to have, I wouldn't choose the one that I can only use once a month 🤣
This kiddie show. They could not show the fire nation and Hama kill people on screen, so they came up with something darker. And all the moral shades of grey here. But in the end Hama is just like Jet.
Yep 😂 It's so fascinating how the writers keep finding ways to make this show darker without actually killing people, it's really quite amazing that that restriction has allowed them to come up with all this.
hama could had ended the war with blood bending this made the series become mid, give it a C, but ATLA dont have no good villains all the best villains are in korra, season 2 korra villain is slightly below all 3 books of atla villains
