So my experience with the Avatar IP up until receiving this box set for review was actually more based in the Wii videogames than in the cartoon. I have good memories of those Avatar videogames, they used the Wii controls reliably well and they were fun. The setting of those games and its characters was interesting and I knew that, someday, I was going to finally watch the complete series.
Personal anecdotes aside, for anyone that hasn’t seen this series, I can tell you that it’s really something special. Unlike some animated, story-based adventures that you may have grown up with, or many of the modern offerings, Avatar transcends age. It’s instantly likeable, if I can be vague for a second, and that’s due to a variety of production elements and timeless themes. The premise, as you probably know even if you haven’t watched the series, is that a world, long at peace, has now been at war for over 100 years. The people of the four elements — Air, Water, Earth, and Fire — have all lived peacefully until the Fire Nation decides to suddenly attack the others. They’re successful, and now repress the other nations and their conquests continue. The only way to stop them is for a special being known as the Avatar — master of all four elements — to come forth and put an end to the misery the Fire nation was wrought. But in the darkest hour, the Avatar disappears, and the Fire nation becomes unstoppable.
That is of course, until one day, in the very first episode, two siblings from a small Water tribe stumble upon an iceberg which contains Aang, a twelve year old who is, it seems, the last of the Airbenders. Bending is the term used to describe manipulating the elements; each bending style is based on a real world Chinese martial arts style, Hung Gar for the Earthbenders for example. Anyway, it’s soon realized (and this is no spoiler), that Aang is the Avatar. He has much to learn — but it’s soon evident that he is the true Avatar and essentially humanity’s last hope to restore peace and order. The trio of Aang, Katara, and Sokka, along with Aang’s cute flying bison named Appa, and eventually lemur friend Momo, set out on a long adventure to repel the Fire nation, learning much about themselves and each other along the way.
The journey of Avatar goes through three ‘books,’ each being a separate season of the show. The box set contains all of these seasons and all sixty-one episodes. As far as I know, these episodes are the complete originals, no alterations were made. Packaging and general presentation of the physical materials is one of the most impressive aspects of this new release. The exterior box and the three DVD cases within look fantastic thanks to new cover art by one of the co-creators of the series, Bryan Konietzko. The artwork blends clean, pure simplicity with a sort of intangible confidence that, yes, this is an excellent series that has absolutely withstood the test of time and defied age limits. It’s a shame then, that the content of each DVD is exactly the same as it was when they were previously released. In other words, the attention to detail given to the packaging of the artwork and discs is new and impressive, but the disc contents are the same as they were on previous DVD releases.
The worst part about this re-hashing for me was the stupid trailers and previews that pop-up everytime you spin up the disc. There are seriously about a half dozen of these that you have to chapter skip (cannot skip to title) every.single.time. It’s disappointing, and honestly, Avatar and its fans deserved better. Is this nuisance a deal-breaker? Well, it shouldn’t be, but it’s sloppy and lazy. The trailers are for releases that came out years ago — Spongebob Squarepants DVDs and other miscellaneous Nickelodeon stuff. Years ago, this practice of front-loading trailers was common place, but for re-released complete series, these should have been stripped out.
The disc menus are also lackluster, and that’s disappointing, but again not in itself a reason to skip this release. The lack of alternate languages or even subtitles is a shame, though. That the disc menus only allow you to episode select rather than chapter select within the episodes isn’t a big deal, given that each show is only about twenty-five minutes long. Had Nickelodeon really wanted to go the extra mile, it would have been great if you had the option to watch all episodes on a disc back-to-back with the credits removed in between episodes. But, that type of thing takes time and money, and ultimately, this release is intended to generate some revenue this holiday season and as efficiently as possible.
I can’t blame Nickelodeon (or parent company Paramount) for that, and this is a fantastic way to own the complete series if you prefer a hard copy to the digital versions that are, at least at the time of this writing (never know when they might be removed) available on streaming services like Amazon Prime at no charge for Prime members. That said, just know that the content here is the same as the previous DVD releases, right down to the extra features, and that the image and sound quality are untouched, and you should be all set to make an informed decision. Normally I would do a disc-by-disc breakdown of the extra features and talk about them, but, seeing as they are the same as a previous Avatar DVD release, I’ll forego that and head to the summary…