Overanalyzing Avatar set piece - the episode. The Drill. TWO EPISODES AHEAD ON PATREON: www.patreon.com/Overanalyzing... TWITTER: / overanalyzinga #avatarthelastairbender #atla #overanalyzingavatar
Hey guys, give me a hand and leave a like and comment on this video! RU-vid has really been on my with copyright stuff, so posting less often has really made me take a hit on algorithm side of things. You can help by liking and commenting though! Also go watch The Serpent's Pass, and do the same over there, since RU-vid royally fucked me on that one the hardest, and that one can't even be monetized. (If that video is even still up at the time you're reading this.) Thanks for the help guys!
Imagine not automatically liking before watching, the comments I owe you most time, but asking for a like is almost an insult, OF COURSE I already did way before I hit play.
I feel like Mai is so useless because her style using knives and arrows has the same problem with those dang archers. They can't kill on screen with bladed weapons which just leaves them having to have their attacks blocked or dodged a bunch of the time. It sucks cause Mai's weapon of choice is lethal whereas Ty Lee can just... hit pressure points and win.
@@Windjammer19 completely so. It's entirely for show. At leadt Sokka gets to use his sword in some interesting ways and actually shows a good mind for tactics later but I can't think of anything like that for Mai unfortunately...
yeah that's kind of the problem with having any kind of "weapon user" character in a kid's show, standards and practice won't let you show anyone (or at least any HUMAN character) actually being cut or stabbed or anything that might cause bleeding, so they never get to do anything cool. they could have given mai or sokka some kind of blunt weapon like those "jitte" swords feudal japanese police used
@@Beem0b0t Her using her knifes as a means to stop the gears and hold back people in the prison episode is pretty badass. He obviously doesn't hurt anyone (Would have been cooler with her having say...throw a dagger into someones hand and have it hold it in place..but obviously that would be WAY too much) but she does have some awesome moves when she is fighting those guards.
It was a problem I had in how to train your dragon. All the characters had swords but nobody gets stabbed, they all just get bonked or tossed or tackled. Made all the fight scenes seem so soulless
It's worth noting that Sokka is Toph's seeing eye on places she can't "see": in the desert, on Appa, on ice. Toph, on the other hand, is Sokka's seeing eye on dark places: the invasion and entering the drill.
@@WCWEstopmotion By that point, she could metalbend, so she could probably see to some extent. He does protect her from falling debris, though, so your point stands.
@@panther-nk2hn think they mistook the fact of Sokka pointing prior to getting on the airships, as he had to point at the nearest one and be launched by Toph.
9:40 Azula's spinning wheel kick might be my favorite attack in the whole show, just so powerful and flashy. Not just the attack either, but the fact she has to deflect the first couple rocks from Aang's wall/punch, recognizes him overusing the same move, instantly and brutally punishes it. Genius villain
Whoa it’s interesting how he suddenly Aang starts to face his problems head on right after learning Earth bending. The essence of earth bending is to stand your ground and face your issues.
I also understand as to why Jeong Jeong said he wasn't ready. As you mentioned, just Aang learning Earthbending has made him think more Earthbender and adding it to a problem he might have not been able to solve. That is what Jeong Jeong needed in Aang, control and steadiness.
She was just badly written and her character wasn't as fleshed out as it could be. I think in order to make a proper Azula redemption arc, you gotta take a little of Azulas evil and dump it on other characters. I wished they would have gone into detail about Ozais manipulation and abuse and Ursas neglect of her in the comics, so we could better understand why she is the way she is. A fanfic that does this excellently with what we know from the show is called "Dominion", in which we not only see what happens to her after the finale, but also flashbacks of key moments of her childhood.
@@1999yasin Imma read that fanfic. Have you heard what her redemption was supposed to be? Apparently she becomes over-apologetic for a while and that sounds hilarious
My favorite subtle detail in the entire show is when the general says the Dragon of the West was quickly "expunged" (which in this context means "erased from the records"), instead of "expelled". Subtle early hint at the Dai Li's influence, showing that the Earth Kingdom leadership cared more about removing any record of war within the walls than about actually driving out the Fire Nation.
I think after "Bitter WorK" Aang and the crew take more fights, because Aang now has the "Stand your ground" Mentality that he needs to be an Earth Bender, he knows these issues and fights aren't going to go away. in Book One and early Book Two he still has the Air/Water Bender mentality of avoid conflict and look for a way to use the enemy's momentum against him. By the halfway point of Book Two he learns that running away or looking for new angles won't work on their own anymore.
It's also because in season 2 is the first time when they have more than one confident fighter other than aang, kataras water bending is non-existent sokka is honestly pretty pathetic and toph isn't their yet
Her very first scene is her being unreasonably angry! She expects a captain to fight against the tides and put his ship at risk just because she said so. She's very intelligent, but when she power-trips, she power-trips like _WHOA._
Azula: you're fired! War minister: but i didn't do anything Azula: exactly, the avatar was inside the drill and you nothing War minister: but- Alzula: I SAID YOU'RE FIRED!
I'd like to think given the length of the drill, the plan was to park it halfway through, then march troops *through* the steel-protected body of the drill after it breached the other side. That way the Earthbenders couldn't just chuck rocks at any troops moving through the breach. Heck, once the slurry tunnel was cleaned out, it'd be the perfect tunnel to march the troops through. Also as an Engineer, I can tell you EXACTLY why that one pipe had 2 valves on either side of a 90 degree turn. That's what happens when somebody screws up and you find out one of the pipes you ordered was 6 inches too short halfway through the assembly process. But you're on a timetable and you don't REALLY need all the valve-pieces in that box yet, so you stick a spare valve between the short pipe and its intended socket and put in a work order for another valve later. We call this phenomenon "F**k it, I'm not delaying this critical job over a bad manifest"
On the first note, I agree. If they pulled the drill out, the earth benders could just earthbend the wall closed like any other doorway, no door required. Any hole blown through the wall can be quickly repaired by a team of earthbenders as long as there's nothing non-earth in the way. I'm sure the plan was to have a metal shell penetrate the wall and stay there to have constant passage, plus shelter from falling rocks since that seems to be their primary form of defense. I'd like to see some sand/mud traps used, but those wouldn't have done much to the drill anyway. And as for the second point, LMAO! Too real xD
@@Rocketsnail1000 Not much of a choice. Walls kinda do that. Especially this wall. Only ever been broken through once. The bottleneck probably did them in, tbh (RIP LT). But there's not really many other options...until they get those war balloons in the sky.
@@DogsRNice it would not sound like a vacuum cleaner, at least not like mine. As an engineer, I was looking for a comment related to the large diameter, relatively short pipe segments. These absolutely do make sense. The shorter pieces are cheaper as far as manufacturing, shipping, and installation logistics. Also, if there was a problem with one, it's easier to replace or repair.
The poor engineering is probably due to the fact that it was probably one of the first large, complicated machines they have built, along with the fact that it was probably rushed, because the origional attempt at breaking through the wall was not very long before, and a (good) build of that size would take a lot more time than it did.
Indeed, nothing else in the entire series comes close to the drill's scale in terms of vehicles or machines. I would guess that brainstorming for such devices started not long after Iroh's defeat at Ba Sing Se.
@@copterinx0468 must had been hella costy for the fire nation too, makes you wonder how much state money got burned (no pun intended) to build that thing and how much they lost when it failed. might be why we only see the blimps WAY later, they had to delay the production because they spent all the budget for it on the drill.
@unkindled6410 i refuse to believe that the firenation industrial power didn't win the war for so long but was able to build and transport this monster of a drill. It's not like they copied a smaller drill design, they simply made it from scratch and it worked very well. If only they could fill it with more guards inside to avoid sabotage
@@divoulos5758 they might have had outposts and rransportations routes to build the drill not so far away but near enough the wall and then start moving it instead of just going through the whole earthkingdom landmass with the thing already assembled. maybe they repourposed a bunch of battleships hurls and other stuff that was already around.
4:20 i object to the part where the clerk stamps their passports being "bad animation" - i LOVE this shot specifically for that reason! the way she effortlessly stamps both passports without looking and then slides them forward with barely a thought or a wasted movement shows not just how experienced she is at her job, but also looks really smooth and almost flirtatious in itself. i love that the animators of this show can imbue such a mundane action with so much character and intent, especially when it's conveyed through purposeful LACK of motion!
Zuko sitting next to the couple was so smart cause it shows positive consequences of his morality. If he had stolen from them, the couple would've remembered him and then he prolly would've been caught by the dai li
on aang’s core strength: makes perfect sense to me he’d be able to lift katara and sokka honestly. given the core strength it would take for him to stay in position on his glider where he’s basically planking for up to hours at a time, it doesn’t surprise me he can lift them
But when you do a plank, you resist the gravity, thats how your core gets stronger. When Aang glides with his glider, gravity is not pressing on him though, its on the glider, he just holds onto it, like paper airplane when you throw it out the window it just glides over air
I think she was spinning it at the balance point of the knife. She has to spin it at just the right speed so the knife falls a bit with each half rotation. If the knife didn't fall a bit, her finger would move towards the tip of the knife. It shows her insane level of dexterity and practice with the knife.
Imagine a more hard-core version of avatar where people could actually get injured and die. It would make for an interesting take on the story especially with Aangs pacifism.
No it would just highlight how much the world sucks by making the entire show grimdark by showing the Southern Water tribe getting ravaged, the Earth Kingdom being enslaved, the Fire Nation being brainwashed under an oppressive regime with LAST hope of the world in the hands of a 12 year old boy.
Mai's problem, I feel, is that throwing knives are too gruesome a weapon for a kids show. Other weapons can feasibly be animated to be non-lethal and not cause any major injuries, but you can't have a throwing knife actually hit a person without there also being blood at the very least, and a corpse in the worst case scenario. I feel if she had a different weapon or fighting style, she'd have gotten to be less useless.
It's really sad that Mai has to pin people to surroundings intead of hitting them just for the sole purpose of keeping it a kids show. We need a 16+ version where she shoots everyone down with knifes and arrows! Also this comment is three weeks old, wtf RU-vid???
10:32 Actually, this concept is prevalent in bowling. The front of the lane has more oil than the back, so the ball slides before it rolls. Aang and Azula slide until they hit the part of the drill without mud, where they start to lose momentum and friction begins pulling them more one way or the other based on their initial trajectory and curvature of the drill.
When I first watched ATLA back in the day when it was airing, I thought that this episode was one of if not THE best episode of the show. It had perfect pacing, Aang and Azula's fight was the first time Aang used multiple elements to fight, and the most epic and satisfying climax. Probably the best episode of the show.
also to add to the fact that its the first time Aang used 3 elements in a fight, there are some visual hints that hes moving the boulders with airbending as well, hinting his habit of relying on airbending to move things, as opposed to simply earthbending the boulders
I just realized that Jet is actually the only one of the Freedom Fighters that heard Iroh complain about his tea being cold, so it makes sense that he's the only one who puts it together that they're firebenders.
It always weirded me out that Jet didn't even try to mention he complained his tea was cold earlier I feel like his friend's argument of "The man had a hot cup of tea! That doesn't prove anything!" Would've been instantly invalidated if Jet just told them that info 😅
"Azula couldn't *reasonably* be angry with him-" In her first speaking appearance, she threatens to murder her ship's captain for telling her that the tides wouldn't let the ship reach their destination before nightfall. The captain was apparently wrong about that, judging by her appearance in Zuko and Iroh's house that evening, but that was a lucky guess. Assuming it wasn't an empty threat, she would have murdered the captain if he hadn't done something that could, as far as she knew, have been impossible. "Reasonably" doesn't always come into it with Azula. As intelligent and capable as she is, she's also a spoiled brat with a very pronounced streak of petty sadism. I think she has enough sense to only take her sadism out on people she considers expendable and not important officials, but War Minister Qing might not know that.
@@deeznoots6241 She can be very patient when she needs to be, but she can't stand being told "no" by her subordinates and that can lead her to throw caution to the wind.
10:54 I think the reason why the plot convenience made it a stronger moment was because the rocks were originally an obstacle, but AAng worked it for him. From what I noticed in films and shows, even when it's kinda convenient, characters turning a negative into a positive is always more satisfying. It shows the characters' more strategic side I think. In this case, the rocks were falling on AAng and he had to avoid them, but he figured out a way to blow the drill using the rocks that were originally a bother for him. This show has moments like that sometimes. Example, on Kyoshi island, AAng nearly died swimming when he was faced with a Unagi, but in the end of the episode he saved the town by using the same Unagi as a hose for the fire.
And don’t forget his reaction from his nephew Zuko for the “all tea taste like hot leaf juice” line. That drew the line to innovate a tea shops menu of hot tea and of course getting attention from a businessman in letting him open up his own tea shop.
@@CevicheGato In the comics he comes up with the idea of bubble tea of which he gave some to the ganng of which they commented how they've never had a tea that was chewy before, just goes to show how he can revolutionize tea as a whole. I also believe that he turned the anniversary of the 100 year war into a tea appreciation holiday for the fire nation
This was such a killer episode both in the show and Overanalyzing Avatar. You noticing the clothing of the abbey women and then the direction of the sun back to back blew my mind, and it's clobberin' time had me cry-laughing. Thanks so much, dude. You're the best.
I can’t believe you didn’t bring up what I think is the most important moment of this episode, which is when Toph and Katara team up to backup the drill’s exhaust. That blew my mind as a kid because it demonstrates how OP earth benders are. Essentially suggesting that if there’s muddy water, or water with any significant sediment content, earth benders can become pseudo water benders
i would argue air benders could dubble as fire benders if given fine burnable powders also there is like one sceen in season one where they are in the abby and are fighting the shersho and zuco and ang are fighting over a well and the two of there attacks result in an explosion wich makes me think an air bender can increase the burn rate of a fire benders fire pitty we never realy see mixed tandem bending much outside of muddy water i would have loved to see ang and zuco bend there respective eliments to make blue fire like azula which in my mind alway showed that asula understood the idea of stoichiometry and applied it to her fire.
3:58 It's an interesting detail that Zuko uses a name Lee as a disguise, because that's the name Sokka's sword Master said was a perfect disguise in the fire nation. He said there was like a million Lee's.
It's interesting, the only character we meet actually named Lee is an Earth Kingdom citizen. So that makes me think there are lots of Lees in both the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom.
@@13vatra I think there was a fire nation general named Lee. He was only mentioned one time by Ozai if I recall correctly but he was on screen for a few seconds so I think that counts.
@@staszek8098 ooh okay, I didn't remember him. So I googled him, and its captain Li (pronounced the same way) he reports to Zhao and was part of the war meeting about invading the Northern Water Tribe. Props on remembering this dude existed haha! So turns out we have examples from both the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation.
I have to wonder if Piandao told Zuko about how there are a million Lees while training him, so that was just the first thing Zuko jumped to when coming up with a name.
A note on May: she is the one who causes the Terrateam to go on the defensive, making it much easier for Ty Lee to close the distance, at least that's how it seems they synergize. It's also how they take Azula unawares at the Boiling Rock, likely coincidentally.
That's exactly true because with their wide guard and numbers, she wouldn't have been able to close that distance without a bit of luck or a distraction
"Azula couldn't reasonably be mad at him right?" That's part of her characterization. She gets mad at her subordinates when they give her news she doesn't like. Its classic "This character is a controlfreak" traits.
Calling her control freak is really undersealing her character, she's a fascist nasaistic princes of a fascist regime. She doesn't care what is possible or not, failure is weakness, and weakness needs to die. In her logic things going wrong means somone should have done a better job, and there exist no such thing as "not my fault" Controlfreak makes me think of people that seek to control others out of there own fear, but Azula is not seaking control out of personal fear, not even sure if she has any fear. For her control is is her blood born right, she the princes of the fire nation and her word is final.
@@MouseGoat Azula would be a control freak whether or not she was a fascist with power, so I think that is more fundamental to what she is. And yes, she does fear people. She's afraid that people see her as something she doesn't want to be. She was afraid of her mother labeling her a monster, so she reacted by trying to "own" being a monster. Azula's entire personal arch revolves around how her fear of how others will think of her causes her to alienate herself, harm her friends and become a worse person generally. Its the entire reason her best friends go against her in the end.
Terra Team (and Toph, when she fought Aang) uses the "jut some earth up" move to displace a grounded opponent. The movement is meant to shift balance and put a groundedopponent on the defensive, but against airbenders and acrobats (which military/police earthbenders typically don't encounter) it has lessened utility.
The reason the Gaang start taking on more fights is because aang has just learnt earthbending, which is about facing things head on and being stubborn. During his training, aang struggles because he is used to using airbending, and using tricks to win or escape, but after he learns earthbending he takes on more fights, facing them head on, like an earthbender would.
To be fair, when Mai pins a person to a wall with a knife by their shirt, she isn't missing; that takes the same amount of precision as hitting them in, say, the throat. She is choosing to take prisoners rather than lives.
I was hoping someone else had said this. 2 valve isolation is actually the standard in engineering now, especially in higher energy or "a break will kill you" piping systems 💁♂️
Can’t say I’ve seen double valve redundancy being standard in PVF. What type of valves are they, look like quarter turn butterflies? Don’t look like gates so it’s most likely for throttling which you wouldn’t have two valves in a row for. Too much redundancy can be over redundancy and costly as well.
@@tarot3078 the tiger II is still a fantastic tank. Would have been better if it hadn’t been rushed. I’m pretty sure it’s transmission problems could have been fixed if Germany had the time too. But still it’s an impressive tank despite its failings.
One detail i really like is that when they show the braces breaking, all of them snap and slide a bit exept for one that completly breaks which is the first one that the gaang cut clean all the way thru.
Stemming from the "Fire Nation control the west side of the Serpent's Pass and they're working on something secret" referencing the drill being transported by no small means to Ba Sing Se, probably by water. If it was transported by water, it could have come from that factory in The Painted Lady, which apparently sits on one of those islands at the very eastern tip of the Fire Nation.
Fun fact: Grey is one of the few colors that changes drastically according to the color of light to which it is subjected. so the grey rocks becoming that yellow-beige in the orange light of the setting sun shows that the avatar Team were paying attention to the changes in the lighting throughout the episode.
I’m not gonna lie I kinda think their main reason for changing colors could be the same reason azula has blue flames. It was easier to Animate than keeping track of a bunch of boulders that blended into the background for a whole fight scene.
@@TheRealDrClef Its not lightning. Her fire is blue because it's hotter than other firebenders. Think of a lighter where the closer to the fuel the more blue the flame is
I just realized that since we only ever see seal script used in this universe and not the Latin alphabet, it actually makes no sense that the passport lady mispronounced the name "Mushi"
The serpents pass and the drill are combined as one 47 minute episode on netflix right now, never would’ve made that connection that i’ve seen them separately
Re: Mai's knives. If you look closely, you can see the knives strike in roughly two waves. Given how thin they are, and how skilled she's shown to be, two between each set of fingers for six in each hand, one hand thrown then the other.
As an engineer, I was looking for a comment related to the large diameter, relatively short pipe segments. These absolutely do make sense. The shorter pieces are cheaper as far as manufacturing, shipping, and installation logistics. Also, if there was a problem with one, it's easier to replace or repair.
Looks a lot like Victaulic, which was created for quick wartime installations during one of the World Wars. Victaulic is short for Victory through Hydraulics!
Totally agree with you here. As an engineer who spent a few years managing a pre-fab shop for an industrial piping contractor. Especially for larger diameter piping systems, straight runs as short as 10-20 feet are often the best option. Many factors contribute to this, not the least of them is the reduction of field welds, being able to fit on a flat bed truck, and ability to install in a relatively tight space. You nailed it with this comment Dub.
@@xyro3633 I mean, we've seen their omni-directional Panzer IVs and their airships, why wouldn't they have some kind of support vehicle somewhere off screen.
flange systems will be much more expensive to build if it doesent needs constant repair it would be just easier and much much cheaper to do with welding
You said it yourself this technology is a huge leap for them, manufacturing those high pressure pipes is quite difficult, boring them might not be possible in longer than those lengths, they probably just don't have the tooling or large enough machines so they need multiple short ones to make a long run, I know this is a stretch because they have ships but the drill needs an order of magnitude more steam pressure and they can probably generate it with a lot of fire benders, they still need the pressure system and turbines to be sound though.
At first I thought you were going to analyze the litterall drill as a machine, but than I realized that I just stumbled across one of the best series on youtube. Thank you for putting in the Workl to provide us with this series
OK, so the "Earthbending a rock to lift someone up a couple feet" thing. I think I understand. Earthbenders take a very solid stance when the fight and root themselves in place. So when they are fighting an unknown force, they try to break this stance as a way of probing the enemy. Now, in the cases of The Lee and Aang, this proved to be advantageous for them, but for the other 99% of people who aren't Airbenders or crazy circus acrobats this would probably be a very effective way to totally fuck with somebody's sense of balance. If you've ever been standing on a surface that moved when you didn't expect it to, especially on the vertical plane, it's _extremely_ disorientating and can easily cause you to fall over just from the surprise of it. I imagine most people would probably be knocked flat on their ass if they had the Earth under them fly up 2 or 3 feet suddenly. And we do see this sort of technique work. Toph threw _Azula_ flat on her face just by making the ground under her shift a foot or two. Sure, this was horizontally, but I imagine that the effect would have been about the same vertically as well. And we see other Earthbenders disorient and gain a serious advantage just by making the very ground under their opponents unstable a few times. It would be a great way to keep 99% of your opponents from being able to keep any sense of orientation or stability.
And it was only after Azula spent weeks in the earth kingdom did she manage to catch on to the similar technique that allowed her to avoid Tophs attack on the day of black sun.
I think the better approach would have been to move the ground below them down rather than up. If the ground suddenly rose beneath you and you were quick enough to crouch and lower your centre of mass, you'd be ok, but if the ground suddenly dropped away there's not much you can really do about it
9:57 the plan would have been to keep going, there are inner walls too that would need to be tunneled into. The fire nation would know this from espionage or at the very least when Iroh broke through.
This randomly came out of recommendations, I’ve watched this cartoon at least five times over, so a random dude breaking down random parts of random episodes is literally perfect for me, gonna binge watch this all now thanks
I absolutely LOVE the fact Aang uses his own move as a way to attack rather than avoid. The fact his fighting style have changed over those two seasons is fucking amazing. We have seen his airscooter being able to move around on walls but him using it to scale a wall at least 50 meters and then using his super speed (Something I don't believe we have seen since the episode where Katara and Sokka are sick) as a way to increase the weight of his "punch" is freaking amazing. The techniques he have either used to avoid combat or run away is now being used as a setup for one of if not his most destuctive airbending moves we have ever seen (Outside of him being in the avatar state) is amazing character building. He uses his earth bending lessons while using airbending in an amazing mix and it is freaking awesome!
Air bending is about evading attacks so it made sense for him to always be doing that but earth bending is about standing your ground which you not only see in his fighting but also in the way he communicates with others
I feel like Aang starts to engage in more fights and hit things head on right after he learns Earth Bending, which focuses on coming at your problems head on.
one of the best written shows of all time. I liked how they didn't have one character overwhelm every episode. Sometimes it was Toph, sometimes Katara, every now and then Sokka, etc
Jet’s expression when he sees iroh’s hot tea always gives me such ghibli vibes. Just feels like his hair should be puffing up in shock and outrage lmao
I still remember the day this episode aired. Had went to a buddy’s birthday part at this huge indoor soccer field. On the way home, we were all pleading for his dad to go faster as we were minutes from it airing. We all got home in time, ran to our tvs, and watched it. It was the talk of our grade school.
7:14 this is a nice gesture I think. One of the ways countries get to a place of going to war and killing others is by reducing their enemies into basically less than human. Sokka acknowledging that the fire nation are part of the world, that they're people, shows a great deal of perspective and maturity
Especially since he was the most vocal about his bigotry. Suspecting any outsider of his village as a spy for the Fire Nation (Aang an airbending child), wanting to travel the world to knock some heads, getting mad at a fire nation baby for playing with his club, "those savages make me sick" when witnessing the burned down forest, being against Aang learning firebending, calling it a stupid element, jerkbending etc. I love Sokka for saving the villages in Jet, The Painted Lady, the Puppet Master and choosing not to pursue his mother's killer.
The firenation would definatly kept going, because there is an inner Wall. Plus the drill is the perfect diversion. On top of all that, you can see the fire nation invasion force behind the drill at 2:35
The reason he pointed it out is because the drill stopped. If they were headed for the inner wall (as makes senses), why did they stop right after breaching?
@@Igneusflama because they likely would have had to pull the drill out and reinsert it. Kinda like an actual drill in real life. Plus, the drill would have been vulnerable to get in without why support prior to getting past the wall.
@@howardbaxter2514 agree on the vulnerable part. That's a good enough reason on its own to stop. Guard duty on this thing would be a huge undertaking considering the length of it, but no guard duty is asking for trouble in enemy territory. Hope they weren't planning on a war while drilling lol. As far as having to reinsert though, that would only be the case if it's still hitting something solid. Since this has broken through, reaching the second wall would essentially be a reinsertion.
+ninjarosias I always thought the holes at the front of the drill were partly so troops inside could disembark and they'd use the drill as a beachhead to get past any archers and rock throwers. Granted, those pipes were being used for the mud, but nobody said the expeditionary force would be clean. Once the drill was messed up, the pipes were probably in pretty bad shape and many had probably collapsed, which is why they didn't do that.
I'm surprised you called out how they start facing more fights in book 2 without pointing out it's because Aang learned earthbending. The key to earthbending is facing problems head on and being grounded. The natural opposite of going with the flow and avoiding things like airbending. The way Aang fights is very different after he learned earthbending. I took a moment to watch your The Chase video to check you haven't already mentioned what I'm about to. In book 1, generally Aang fights always go like this: 1. Aang doesn't fight and tries to leave, blocking attacks with his glider/staff. 2. Aang loses his glider and is forced to evade in different ways. 3. Aang has a close call or something else is endangered. 4. Aang figuratively puts his foot down and ends the fight. We very rarely get to see Aang airbend with a weapon. It's always impressively powerful when he does.
I love the detail of aang using a little burst of air on the falling rocks in order to stop them, because it shows how he’s both still a novice with earthbending and learning to blend his elements together.
The Avatar theme is so cool dude. I loved every time they used it. I must have watched that Aang going up the wall and then dropping down scene like a 100 times as a kid. It's so perfect, perfect build up, perfect timing, perfect score. Just hype as hell man!
I've been rewatching some of the videos and it's so cool how you make me appreciate how great this show is so much more. You point out so much about what makes it truly amazing.
Honestly Mai doesn’t feel that important or useful because she’s only ever allowed to pin people to the wall. While impressive, is non-lethal and not as effective as straight up killing them.
The reason Mai seems useless is that they gave her a weapon which can never, ever work in the format. Do you think Nick would okay a shot of her knife thing actually hitting an earthbending soldier? As a result she gets off-screened to focus on the PG-friendly harmless ki jabs of Ty Lee. I think this *is* the fault of the writers though. They shouldn't have given her weapons which are 100% non-threatening because of censorship. Even as a kid I knew her knives would be harmless because it was impossible to imagine someone getting hit with a knife in ATLA. The problem is what do you replace those weapons with? Nets? A bola?
They finally got around it at the Boiling Rock, where Mai would use her knives to ensnare enemies using their clothes rather than actually attack them.
@@ziqi92 it's an okay workaround but her hitting someone's clothing at the wrist so hard that they're propelled into a nearby wall and pinned to it just looks weird.
@@GrapeCheckerBoard oh yeah she's far from useless, but moments like that are dumb. And it just brings more attention to the fact that her knives can't *actually* hit anyone.
The valves on either end of the elbow. 5:34 Maybe it is because the inlet side of that elbow is very high pressure/flow rate, and the sudden change in direction is causing cavitation damage to the inner radius of the bend. This causes that part to fail fairly frequently and because it is a military project with likely near limitless budget due to the desires of the empire, they decided it was more cost effective to have valves enabling quicker replacement. This vs re-engineering that fluid system that is only planned to be used to capture this city once.
I think the rock plot convenience goes a step deeper. It works especially well because we've already been shown that these rocks are being thrown down at the drill, and it was initially an INconvenience for Aang since he was trying to focus on fighting Azula. But then that fight ends, and we as the viewers see the rock fall and think "yeah that makes sense, the General told his men not to stop thrown those so of course another one would fall down there right as Aang needed it. It's a plot convenience that was properly set up so that it just makes sense and is about as far from arbitrary as you can get. Excellent writing right there.
I think the creators of the show ran into a problem with Mai when they realised that for her to do anything effective with her fighting style, she would have to draw blood. Cartoonish violence is easy to pull off with the elements, and yeah fire bending would probably burn people in horrible ways realistically, but if any of Mai's knives or arrows actually connected on screen there would be blood, which would immediately crank up the rating of the show.
It isn't the tounge of a flame that burns your flesh, it's the flesh burning after it's been ignited. Being struck by a blast of superheated air won't set you on fire, even if that air is already burning. The specific heat of air relative to flesh is just too low to cause ignition in a timely manner. That's why flamethrowers spew flaming oil: the oil burns in direct contact with the target, directly delivering sufficient heat to ignite the target. A firebender needs a sustained fireblast at close range to set someone on fire, but Aang and the gang either block, dodge, dissipate or retaliate before they get seriously burned. The firebenders throwing fire punches are basically angry hair dryers.
@@bodaciouschad Let's just be in agreement that if the show was rated higher. the fire would scorch people, and the throwing of giant rocks would make a nice tomato paste.
To answer the 2 valves question: redundancy is often done as a security measure. You never want to have a single point of failure, two valves means both have to fail in order to cause a problem.
All the bad engineering is intentional, their engineer is designing this stuff against his will, while he would be killed for providing schematics that did nothing he can still confuse them and waste their time and resources by having them make tones of spare parts and creating non-obvious weak points.
Mei suffers from the same problem as Wolverine in the 90s cartoon. They both use sharp weapons, which if actually used effectively wouldn't be suitable for the target audience, so they're there to be threatening and get incapacitated before they actually do any damage.
If you assume Avatar's world is smaller than ours, thus it has a lower gravity, that would explain a lot. Like giant flying bison, Ty Lee's crazy acrobatics, Aang's insane core strength, Azula's ability to survive 50 feet falls, and Zuko's crazy jumps.
@Lolopopolo To be fair the Fire Nation is working with the resources of most of the world so it would make sense why the home island wasn't that affected by the drill's existence.
@Lolopopolo I'll give you the gravity thing, but I would like to point out that the Fire Nation is a fascist dictatorship. Subservience to the state would've been heavily emphasized for the past 100 (I think) years. More to the point, do you really think the Fire Nation government is gonna be telling its citizens about virtually any of its defeats?
So many people forget that the Fire Nation is already in the middle of an Industrial Revolution. They have war balloons, zeppelins, tanks, factories, jet skis, ironclad warships..if not for Fantasy Gun Control they would have firearms and cannons too!
Man, the avatar series hits me in a place no other series, movie, game or song can hit. It's like there's an unique set of emotions thats reserved just for this show
This episode is really emblematic of one of my favorite aspects of this show: The sheer creativity present with the threats it poses to these characters is _overwhelming._ It's actually one thing I think seasons 1 and 2 do a lot better than 3, actually. Seriously, how do you even come up with a setup this inspired? It's genuinely a sight to behold.
Azula holding Aang to the collar and trying to shoot fire at him point-blank already hints that Azula would exploit every opportunity she got to kill Aang. This already foreshadows her almost successful attempt to kill Aang during his completion of the avatar state at the end of Book 2.
Sometimes I wonder if Appa's kidnappning was necessary for Aang to take fights more seriously. Now he is and he fight with more fire in his heart. And getting Appa back was just heart warming and now Aang make sure this never happens again to anyone he cares about.
One thing I wish you mentioned was the (I think) unique visualization of earthbending in this episode. When Aang moves the boulders, first over his head to throw at Azula and second to get it in position to destroy the drill, there’s a brief clear “ring” around the part where he’s moving the rock. I’m pretty sure there’s no other visual representation of earth being moved in any other depiction of earthbending in the show. As a kid I always thought this looked like air and it confused me on whether he was earthbending or just high effort airbending in those specific instances. This moment also reminds me of the Cave of Two Lovers when you call attention to Aang’s weirdly blue airbending.
7:32 Qin might not be worried about being blamed, but he still dosen't want to loose. His worry might be more about his plan failing at all, rather than Azula holding him accountable for it.
I think it is interesting you point out how Aang changes throughout the series and goes from running away, evading fights, to taking them head on. It shows he's developed as a character and actually took the lessons from Bitter Work to heart. Remember that Air Nomads avoid and evade, while Earthbenders are more head on and aggressive. Aang changing around the same point he learns Earthbending is a really cool mirror of this
The "hellish torture" hypothetical when Ty-Lee was stuck in the water sphere is why I'd love to see a more brutal avatar series that explores blood/bodily fluid bending and other dark aspects of bending more frequently
Problems would be resolved too easily. For example air benders snatching the air out of people's lungs or earth benders shooting unsuspecting people with earth bullets.
Good call - this is one of the first times in a while that we see a matchup between the Gaang & Azula's trio. Yet I think if we're being picky, I feel like some of this is where they pull some of their punches. Ty Li easily should have either been crushed or drowned by all that water pressure, especially when she landed on the rock wall. And the supposedly the elite "Terra Team" (like ~20?), taken out by one agile girl under cover of a single barrage of mini daggers. Suspension of disbelief waning...
@@MemeMarine Tank crews often survive their tank getting destroyed. For one historical example, despite myths about Sherman tanks being death traps, on average 4 out of the 5 crew members survived when a Sherman was destroyed. Oftentimes all 5 did, and occasionally the ammo storage was hit directly and everyone died in a massive explosion. Destroy more than a handful though, and it's almost certain you've killed someone.
I'm here for the algorithm. Can't imagine why you'd be getting hit for copyright. I feel like your work absolutely falls within the bounds of transformative and educational. Could probably accurately call it critique as well, honestly.
Because the copyright strike system RU-vid uses has all the precision of a sledgehammer. I get it that they had to step up their moderation game to avoid getting sued into oblivion -- I remember a time when people would routinely post entire episodes of shows or whole movies, which is obviously copyright violation. But it's impractical to have people moderate every video on the site, and bots aren't good at telling what's fair use or not. Unfortunately, when it comes to striking fair use content vs letting copyright violators slip through, RU-vid leans towards the former, because they judge that avoiding lawsuits from big companies is more important than avoiding false strikes. I get their reasoning. Still annoying though.
this was the video that introuduced me to your content, it is problaby your most watched one, now i'm back after watching the prior episodes, great video man
I mean, the let's take fights head-on attitude could also be seen as starting at the episode bitter work, an episode centered on Aang needing to take things head-on to be a good earth bender
About the colour inversion on Momo's tail: That was propably a key frame with the right colour and the rest are inbetweens, outsourced to a different animation studio
i think another factor in aang becoming more independent and taking charge is losing Appa, since that type of sudden traumatic loss can explain a sudden personality change
8:08 That water is evacuating the drilled parts from the drill head of the drill drilling into the wall, so the drill can drill further. It's used in modern drills, too. Industrial diamonds embedded into metal are used to scrape away at the stone, and water is evacuating the scrapped stuff so the drills can drill new parts of the wall instead of trying to drill the dislodged parts of the wall and progress slower and get the drill bits consumed for less progress. And the water also helps cool down the drill head, allowing the drill to operate for longer periods without rest. So it's a water-cooled drill train/truck. Also, export your content to Odysee, please!
So odd for them to use a solid tool though when they could machine much faster and longer, for much cheaper by using modular cutting edges because nobody is asking for crazy precise tolerances.
This is a bit of a random time to comment this but this series has become such a comfort series for me. I really like atla but don't always have time to watch it all but this I can watch for some fun entertainment that doesn't take too long. Thank you for making this series it's a lot of fun.
2nd rewatch of this series now. Crazy it being 2 years already since this video blew up and made this channel huge and made me start watching. Glad I found this
Ok so Mai is pretty much a trained assassin, which is why she seems useless in the grand scheme of things, due to target audience reasons she can't be used as an actual assassin, and she wasn't actually useless as Book 3 showed. Book 2 just needed her to have some sort of skill to have a trio of girls, and Mai got the Assassin that can't assassinate anything short stick.
