I honestly prefer this mid-season finale over the Sozins Comet stuff. It's surprisingly tactical and the stakes feel so high with how many established characters are involved. The final battle has ships ready to be knocked down like bowlings pins and it shares the spotlight with three other conflicts, two far more dramatic. (Azula vs Zuko, Aang vs Ozai) Appa getting battlearmor was also one of the sickest things ever at the time I first watched it. Whenever Antoine had Azula lose or not decisively win a lot of people disagreed and she is held in extremely high regard by many people debating Avatar fights. IMO a lot of that comes from her showing here, with Toph, Aang and Sokka not catching her without powers. Along with Azula blocking everyones attacks in The Chase people have really come to handwave her worse showings like getting kicked away by Iroh, struggling against Katara in Season 2, Sokka and Zuko fending her off on the Boiling Rock gondola or Aang blasting her in The Drill. You have people saying she would destroy Kuvira, any Red Lotus member or that she is tiers above Zuko when she is not mentally ill. The airbending thing is a classic moment of superspeed being too broken in setting where it is not a stock power. People think of strength and speed as being comparable, but even someone who is slightly faster (like 30%) can beat someone dozens or even infinite times stronger as long as they can damage them. Aside from characters like the Flash infamously, Deku from MHA is another good example imo. Since speed is not a stock power even in base he should not necessarily be slower than anyone else, but even with several versions of One For All power-ups he is still moving relative to many of his non-speedy classmates at many points.
I think I was the only kid who was interested in romance at 8-12 years old. So I guess that's why I never really grew out of Aang crushing on Katara. But like you said, most kids don't think that way.
Considering his incompetence he genuinely might have just forgotten, but to be fair the original invasion plan was to use earth kingdom troops. For all he knew all plans were ruined with the fall of the earth kingdom. It's kind of like if France had a specific plan agtainst Nazi Germany, people would not expect that plan to be executed by various scattered forces after France fell. Azula simply knew of a time of weakness and she knew that the enemy knew, that was enough for them to enact elaborate countermeasures.
