Part 3 of How Netflix's Avatar Lost Its Martial Arts Identity 

I saw a girl at an anime convention dressed as Tai Li and she could have been the real Tai Li! She did the pose where she back bends upside down with peace fingers! She was adorable!

I mean if they change the characters this much, i dont even know why they even bother calling it ATLA. Tai Lee's entire personality, the reason why she joined the circus, is to get out of her family. Thats why she has these abilities. If the deviations actually continue at this rate, this is essentially a live action fanfic.

I do think this Azula's cuter face can pull off a very different yet very effective kind of chillingness from the animated Azula.

I suppose the main reason for some people yelling at the actors is the fact, that they are the only ones who go places and participate in videos on behalf of the adaptation. Average person wouldn't know who to blame, as not as many people are fully invested to read credits and search listed names. But it's pretty likely to randomly stumbl upon interviews and stuff with actors. While in OG show runners's names were shown with each opening, and they were those who mainly gave interviews. P.S. Memorize how the spies were unalived and perfected by Sokka balloon blueprints weren't given to Fire Nation. It may throw you off a little in future ;)

Another Natla video 😭😭 Thanks for doing the lord's work 🙇‍♂️

I mean I tried holding my stylus the way Smellerbee holds her knife and it literally hurts my hand to do that. Like why???? xD It's like the most basic grip a human can do. Even babies do it. xD Also this maybe a nitpick but 22:37 the way Longshot is pulling on his bow feels like he's holding a toy bow. Almost like there's no tension. Maybe because the slightly bent left arm and the camera angle and the way he's holding the string in front of his nose while leaning forward and him not showing the tension of the bow on his body make it feel like that arrow won't travel more than 5 feet. Also he's aiming down. Like you can argue that he's on higher ground but I'm pretty sure that's not how projectiles work. Like for shots that needs to travel a big distance you need to aim upwards. He's targeting something that is like 5 feet from him and clearly he doesn't want to penetrate the target. I went back and checked this shot on the OG and yeah they pretty much nail it. Although they also do more of a horizontal aim (Still not downwards) but that kinda makes more sense because he's on higher ground. But you can definitely feel the tension of the bow in that scene. Ugh a show for adults indeed.

I imagine Bryan an the others in a typical meeting discussing the logic of the scene and the movements saying stuff like: "Yeah he already needs to wind up here and we need a close shot there and back to an establishing shot here. To be honest on my umpteenth view of the show I am still catching little details that fascinate me. I think to myself "Why would they ever care about this detail? These are just a few frames. And of course on reactions you have those highly attentive people who are pointing out stuff like that. And I love it. To see how shoddy some of these scenes were made is such an insult. Yes, of course live-action is always hard to compare to a medium in which you can do literally anything. This is a whole other topic I won't even get into. It's just the rough mistakes that irk me and kind of offend me knowing all the care and attention to detail the orginal show put into their lovechild.

Idk anything about martial arts but you do and that's great to watch! loved the video

Tai Lee really should've probably been cast with a more athletic actress, acrobatics and circus work is kind of her main thing, even more than qi blocking. If you don't have an actress who can believably fit into that, then you're losing so much of what Tai Lee is that you end up with a character that shares little more than a name with the original. None of that is the actress's fault, but you'd think that the casting would've considered one of the most important things about who her character is.

Love your perspective about the martial arts and outside that too! I’m team “don’t blame the actresses for the roles they were given” but I especially like your take on their animated vs real life character abilities. Never considered that before, but it was eye opening! Would you consider doing an “over analyzing avatar” style series but through your martial arts perspective? I watch these natla videos so I don’t have to watch the actual series 😅 but it would be cool to see you (hopefully) gushing about the originals availing to depict martial arts!

11:37 Netflix wants it to be realistic so getting hit by firebenders leaves scorches and burn marks but getting hit by waterbenders does not make you wet, at least in majority of the scenes

10:18 By her flipping FINGERS no less! 😵‍💫

I won't lie, I don't think there's any justification whatsoever to complain about the actress' bodies. The amount of vitriol they've received over this is frankly ridiculous. It's also very telling that I haven't seen a single comment against Sokka's actor for this. In the original show, Sokka is super skinny at the start of the story unlike his live action counterpart. It even serves narrative purpose as it plays into him trying to overcompensate and overstate his role as warrior and protector. It also juxtaposes Zuko's muscular build in book 1, showing the disparity between the southern water tribe and the fire nation in how, unlike Sokka, Zuko has access to specific diets and expert training even in his banishment. Sokka in the live action not only has an athletic build, but the show made a point to have Suki ogle his body as the camera lingers over his abs to make extra sure we didn't miss that he's muscular. "Accuracy" clearly isn't what matters to these people, the hate these young actresses are being subjected to is fueled by pure misogyny (even if subconscious) because I haven't heard a peep from these so called critics in regards to "inaccuracies" in the male characters' body types. I dislike how the characters are portrayed in this show as much as the next guy but that is never an excuse to scrutinize someone's body in this way and bully them for it. It's especially gross considering some of these actresses are actual minors.

love these breakdowns! can't wait for more

I am actually ashamed that I missed the finger on the knife. I think the overly close camera just caused me to check out of a lot of the fights. How do you enjoy something you can't see?

I d be curious to know who designed the fight chorégraphies (did they hire a consultant from hong kong for ex?) and how many takes they could do. I know that the working hours on child actors were one of the main limiting factors, so maybe they just couldn t make multiple takes, ending with only a couple try and having to make do the best they could during montage and editing. The grip on the bow and smellerbee s knife, or katara just standing still doing nothing, tells that they gave very little direction to theses kids.

Why in the actual fuxk is no one talking about the terrible fight scene with sokka and sukki taking down one fire bender

Zuko and Iroh are the best parts of the show!

This was the best episode. If the whole season was like this, I'd have really enjoyed it.

I might think Azula was missed cast but never would send hate to the actor. I’m more sad that she gets such a bad script/character writing to work with so she can’t even show off how well she could do. Ah don’t worrie about smeller-bee they didn’t even mention her name when introducing everyone so seems like the writers also didn’t care to pay attention to her as the coyagrophers/directors to catch the knife mistake. The aang and zuko fight was a supper fun fight to watch! Also didn’t know the linked hooked sword thing was real! so cool to hear your knowledge on this stuff!

Why would they introduce Mei and Tai Lee in Book One…? What significance was there to that? Yeah, Azula has a COUPLE voiceless cameos in the original Book One, but those two straight up don’t show up till Book Two. And they’re not even in the Fire Nation in the events of Book One! There’s differently interpreting events, and then there’s just lazily throwing in plot elements from the original work in your remake because they exist in the original.

I had to agree if you

I really appreciate that you pick out good things, too. There's a lot of reviews I've tried to watch that quickly devolve into blind hate and rage that's just really unfair to the entire show (like saying that everyone working on the show had no love for the cartoon, which is incredibly dumb and demonstrably not true). Good critique and break downs cut both ways, and these are good critiques. I didn't notice the arming swords, but not only do those indeed have the exact arming sword silhouette, they appear to be a single chunk of material. No actual hilt, no pommel to hold the hilt on, maybe a wrap for the hilt to have a grip. Maybe they're just painted one color or we don't have that great of a view of the swords. Regardless, it feels like they just pulled whatever swords the prop department had on hand. As for Smellerbee, her grip reminds me of a grip historically used with rapiers, which does put the finger onto the blade (I can't recall if this is also called a pistol grip, but pistol-shaped hilts shaped for pistol grips exist with olympic-style rapiers, which exist for the same reasons as the historical grip). All of this is to get the wrist at an angle that wont eventually destroy your tendons when you're primarily using thrusts and draw cuts. I can believe this could be useful with knives as well. It could easily be that Smellerbee just isn't sharpening her knives all the way to the hilt, which you wouldn't do on a sword when using this grip, but that seems less useful for a knife, especially ones so short. Plus, even if this is the case, she is only slashing with her knives, so the grip she is using wouldn't facilitate her usage. Personally, I really like Mai in the original, but it took me a long time to warm up to her (i.e. multiple rewatches). Her character is definitely the least developed of the three and given the short end of the stick almost always. But her Book 3 character growth is a mirror for Zucko and really informs all the subtleties she has in Book 2. As for the adaptation... I feel like we're getting only a surface-level understanding of her character, though it's not like the adaptation even has any reason for having them involved at this point (I'm not against the change in principle, but so far there's been zero reason for it). My only real problem is in the casting, but not for any body shaming reasons: the trio all look too similar to one another, like they could be sisters, which is weird.

Why is the firenation archers stance eupean in influence rather than Asian

Kind of want to heard your thoight on Punch 4 Punch recreation on Avatar there no bending just hand to hand combat

First. Split landing request?

Hey, are you still alive?

Open your mouth!!!

Ty lee was fine. Azula i could live with. But Mai? WHY? She is supposed to be tall and slim, and they made her short and fat. That is the complete opposite. Azula not being as slim(not fat mind you) might breal the illusion a bit but it's not as big of a leap as maj. Ty lee was fine ig

Man, I was enjoying these videos but did you just call the actresses "heavy"? Really?