Newbie's Perspective Avatar the Last Airbender Reviews The Rift 3 & Smoke & Shadow 1
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00:00Avatar The Last Sarabender, The Rift, Issue 3.
00:04Why is the first page wasted on Toph's annoying students?
00:08At least they've graduated to being teachers.
00:11It should have started with Sokka recruiting them,
00:15and there's no reason to have panels in the scene after that one.
00:18How did the writers not realize there's no enjoyment to be had in their dialogue?
00:22Katara thinks she needs to give Toph some water
00:25so she'll be able to stay focused on keeping the mine from collapsing.
00:29So Satoru gives her some, and she tells him to talk to her
00:33because she doesn't think she needs to concentrate on this.
00:36Satoru explains that he's not with his parents
00:39because he ran away from them after they joined the pro-osai society because of Aang.
00:45He spent months on the streets until his uncle adopted him.
00:49Why did he take months to do that?
00:52I have to assume he was just that far away from him.
00:56He admits Toph was right about him, and he wishes to see out her bravery.
01:00Toph's father calls her his daughter and lampshades that this isn't the right time
01:05before trying to apologize to her,
01:08feeling too embarrassed to say the words right away.
01:11It shouldn't have taken until this point when she's saving his life for him to apologize.
01:18I don't find it impressive that he's apologizing and excusing himself to her
01:24only because she's saving his life.
01:27She's probably not going to get the opportunity to save her mother's life,
01:31so her mother will never like her.
01:33He explains that her running away from him caused his divorce
01:37because his wife blamed him for losing her,
01:40which makes no sense because I thought her mother was exactly like him in the racing department.
01:46They're equally at fault.
01:48Why didn't she grow a spine and tell him off otherwise?
01:52Then she'd be better for her to reunite with.
01:55He says he's here because the divorce caused him to move here,
01:59so it's convenient that he still forgives her for saving his life
02:03when she's just saving him from the mess she got him into in the first place.
02:08Because he doesn't know whether he'll survive this or not,
02:11he admits that he's worried about her every day and loves her and is sorry for everything.
02:16Toph says what I was thinking, that if he knew the real her,
02:20he'd know he has nothing to be afraid of.
02:23Katara hears some good news, and somehow thinks Toph can't hear it two feet away from her.
02:29Why are these metalbenders having a conversation instead of spending all their time trying to save the day?
02:34Couldn't they have been told they needed to dig these people out by Sokka on the way here?
02:39The pacing drags until eventually the metalbending starts,
02:44and they dig up a big mess,
02:47and once again they doubt themselves even though they're teachers now,
02:51because we need more padding,
02:53and the metalbending digs up the people underneath,
02:57and Toph faints.
02:59Katara and Aang kiss,
03:01and eventually, Notha thanks Katara.
03:05The uncles learn not to be happy because he's surrounded by a fortune's worth of iron,
03:10and plans to ship the iron to his plant in the Fire Nation to process it,
03:15so the lot won't have any claim on its profits.
03:18He'd still have claim on it,
03:20if he knew that it was from here.
03:23I guess his idea is, he won't know he has claim on it.
03:28Aang wants to finish the ceremonial meal, but their vase is broken,
03:32and he remembers the avatars are linked,
03:34and earthbends a rock into a new Roku artifact to connect himself with Roku again.
03:40Well that was easy.
03:42There's no logical sense that he can just connect to the avatars with any old things,
03:46as long as he feels like they're connected to him,
03:49because otherwise it'd have to be that there's some magical spells on the artifacts themselves
03:53to let him only do it using them.
03:56It's convenient though.
03:58If it wasn't this way, it would be impossible to contact the earliest avatars
04:02who wouldn't have any remaining artifacts connecting them.
04:05Aang starts trying to explain himself to Roku,
04:08when Roku would know why he did that already,
04:11because he wants a conversation started with him.
04:13Thankfully, Roku puts his arms out, letting him hug him.
04:17He apologizes and says he missed him, despite showing no signs of it earlier.
04:22I wish I got to see something like this in the latest Sonic comic.
04:26It's actually making me feel things.
04:29Even if it's sad, it's also a relief.
04:32It's more engaging and respectable to have a comic cause emotions like this,
04:36than nothing but frustration.
04:38Roku admits that the avatars can only advise him based on their own lives,
04:42and that Aang should find the balance between them and him.
04:46So he asks Yangchen for the terms of her agreement.
04:50It turns out the iron that was dug up is the evil spirit's armor.
04:54Apparently he's too incompetent to keep it with himself.
04:58So now he might come back.
05:00If he valued it so much, why did he just leave it here instead of taking it with him to wherever he went?
05:05It's implied by her lack of a proper yes or no,
05:08that bearing the armor again won't stop the rampage from happening.
05:11Or she's just too scared of being wrong to say no.
05:15Aang doesn't get the hint, because he still thinks that'll work when he reunites with his friends.
05:19He plans on making this place look the way it did before humans were building here,
05:23even if it means destroying the town.
05:26Which really makes him no better than the spirit, who plans on destroying the town anyways.
05:30At that point, why even bother trying to placate the spirit?
05:34Maybe he thinks the spirit's gonna destroy more than just the town if he doesn't do this.
05:39He tells Katara to get everyone here to evacuate.
05:43And Satoru says he saw his uncle drag the mask down the beach.
05:47He drives the forklift this time.
05:50And the cabbage salesman sees a forklift and is amazed.
05:54The uncle refuses to listen to reason that he won't be able to sail in this weather.
05:59Katara tells Aang everyone's left the buildings.
06:03Aang at least says he hates the fact that he has to do this.
06:07The pacing's unnecessarily slow here, as usual.
06:11Toph's father tells someone to keep his voice down because Toph needs rest while he's holding her hand.
06:16He sees Aang in the sky.
06:18She wakes up and he only wants to tell her to rest.
06:21And she cathartically tells him to stop treating her like a flower and let her know what's going on.
06:26He tells her to forgive him and explains things, thinking Aang would ruin him.
06:31He convinces her to go against Aang for believable reasons because of this.
06:36Sokka conveniently hits away a shot arrow and gives Satoru his club and throws a boomerang.
06:42And talks too much boringly before he slams the archer to the ground.
06:47Satoru runs away from someone dangerous and hits something, causing a machine to spit stuff at the bad guy's head.
06:54Eventually, the evil spirit floats the mask that Satoru's uncle is still holding.
07:00Aang reasons with Toph and says there's no time to explain, even though in the amount of time he spent saying that,
07:07he could've finished explaining and convinced her.
07:10As usual, this kind of scene is exciting, but not worth describing in detail.
07:15I'm sure the comic fight scenes don't do anything the show didn't.
07:19And even if they do, it's not plot relevant.
07:22Satoru waterbends to get her way up to Sokka.
07:25And the uncle doesn't want to let go of the mask.
07:28But Satoru effortlessly convinces him to do so.
07:31And he's grateful to him.
07:33I like that the evil spirit was smart enough to interrupt Aang, saying he knows who the Avatar is.
07:39Aang doesn't get it and again recaps him.
07:42I guess it makes sense that he doesn't know how else to have this conversation start.
07:46The spirit only wants to destroy this place.
07:49And rather than explain that he was gonna do that, Aang earthbends to have a giant fight with him.
07:55Toph tells her students to help Aang by peeling off the armor.
07:59After predictable dialogue, Aang eventually attacks the spirit,
08:04who admits that the humans are more powerful than him and there's no more place for spirits in the world,
08:09because the Avatar always ends up siding with the humans.
08:13I'm not the only one who didn't find him sympathetic here.
08:16He's just a bully.
08:18He keeps complaining that humans always dominate and takes off.
08:23And somehow Aang is shaken by this instead of thinking,
08:26well you always want to be the one dominating.
08:29Toph shows respect for Aang and thanks him and they hug.
08:33Toph's father calls his employees his friends and urges them to rebuild with him,
08:37conveniently not acting like he's ruined.
08:40If the factory being destroyed would ruin him, he shouldn't have the funds to rebuild.
08:46I guess he thinks Aang and his friends will get him the money.
08:50And he didn't think of that beforehand.
08:52Satoru's uncle gets given food.
08:55And Katara plans on going back to her tribe.
08:58And Nitha admits she acted stupid and that Katara and Sokka make their tribe proud.
09:04Why didn't she know that obvious fact all along?
09:07Why wouldn't they know that they were necessary to the Avatar?
09:11Because you think after the Avatar won over Ozai,
09:14his friends would have made him know what exactly they did for him that was necessary?
09:19Katara decides to go comfort Aang when he's pitying those evil spirits.
09:24And he eventually gets talked to by the evil spirit of the Ark's girlfriend.
09:28So how did he feel her last breath and start the Ark?
09:32As for why she didn't just tell him she was still alive,
09:37either she did and he didn't care because the fact remains that her mortal body died.
09:43That has to be it because she knows that he loves her,
09:47so she wouldn't be too scared of him to go talk to him.
09:50She explains that once a year,
09:52she used to take the form of a human for a night and walk through the city streets,
09:56which could have easily backfired on her.
09:59Why only once a year?
10:01This caused her to fall in love with the mortal and become mortal herself,
10:05so she could always be near him.
10:07Always yeah right because she's still here.
10:10She married him and he blamed himself for losing her immortality.
10:14She says to Aang that spirits don't die.
10:16They just take on new form.
10:18So General Iron should have known that and not freaked out.
10:22Because spirits change form like this all the time if it's a thing that can happen
10:26and doesn't inconvenience them at all apparently.
10:28She should have known that.
10:30So she should have known it was pointless to make herself not immortal.
10:35She puts faith in Aang to make the world better.
10:39So it cuts ahead to months later,
10:41where Sato's selling meat at the Spirit Friendship Festival Aang started
10:45and a compromise between keeping traditions and nuns.
10:50Avatar The Last Airbender Smoke and Shadow Issue 1
10:55It starts with someone called Kano getting told he failed at being the governor of New Ozai.
11:02Even though he didn't fail, he was fired.
11:05And he's told things to scare him about Zuko being in charge.
11:09And he doubts the existence of a type of spirit,
11:12even though he lives in a world where spirits can be a real thing.
11:16So that doesn't make sense for anybody.
11:18You'd think what he'd be questioning would instead be the fact that a spirit is interested in
11:23who's running one of the human nations at all.
11:26Which he'd have to be in order to get a vision of the future caused by him.
11:30Spirits don't care about humans.
11:33If he doesn't believe in spirits like this,
11:36who I'll call the chem spirits or evil spirits since it's easier to say,
11:41he should wonder if this is a bender posing as a spirit,
11:44because that's the only rational explanation.
11:47He should especially think this,
11:49because obviously the spirits would prefer Zuko over Ozai no matter what,
11:54because the Avatar fought Ozai, and the Avatar is part spirit.
12:01Then there's a bunch of panels that are just boring,
12:04with him talking to his Ozai fan club.
12:07Because of his spies reporting to him that Zuko will return with his mother,
12:12he plans against him.
12:14This is only here for padding,
12:16because there's no entertainment and no reason to show it.
12:19The tension gotten from this would have also been felt when his followers attack anyways.
12:25One of the people in the fan club doesn't like his plan,
12:29and he's called Kalo.
12:31He just doesn't have faith in his plan to work.
12:34For no reason,
12:36Ukano doesn't go into details when telling him why he should trust his plan,
12:40just expecting him to believe he had a premonition.
12:43He could have kept his loyalty if he was more specific.
12:47At least I get to see Ki and Aang have fun riding a dolphin.
12:52It's relatable to me that Sokka thinks they're too slimy for him to have fun on.
12:57It's sweet that Ursa says he still gets a sparkle in his eye when he gets excited,
13:02and she says sorry when it embarrasses him.
13:05He says it'll be good to have him home.
13:08Ikem asks her if she's okay,
13:11and explains that whenever she's scared, her hands get cold.
13:14It's weird that she's still calling him by his fake name.
13:18He likes it better than his real name after all of this time,
13:21even though he doesn't have to go by it to hide his identity anymore.
13:26And the brain implicitly recognizes its name,
13:30so you're more likely to hear your name in a conversation.
13:34She's just scared of going back to the palace.
13:37And she panics at seeing Ki on a dolphin,
13:40even though she should know that she's safe with an airbender,
13:44who's also a waterbender, so he could easily go after her if she fell into the ocean.
13:49It's just annoying to see drama that's forced.
13:52He brings her to her, and she says she doesn't want to lose her,
13:56and I have to just assume it's because she lost contact with her kids before.
14:01Realistically, her daughter tells her to let go and wants to get away from her,
14:05because she's still getting used to the fact that her mother changed faces.
14:10It's not as dramatic as it could be, thankfully,
14:13because her father just humors her and her mother understands.
14:17And she even admits she's embarrassed that she overreacted earlier.
14:21A bad writer would have not done this.
14:24Instead, he shows respect for the character to make up for the apparent disrespect instantly.
14:30After Ty Lee hugs Mae's mother, my time is wasted.
14:35And she hugs Mae, too.
14:37Mae plans to have fun at the tea shop,
14:40and her aunt tells her she can spend as much time with her as she wants having fun with her.
14:45Then Ty Lee's paranoid that Azula's gonna go after her.
14:48This was to make her more relatable, but I'm still bored.
14:52Speaking of boring, the story has her talk about a story I already read instead of having plot progression.
14:58It turns out Mae's mom only left her father right after he formed the new O-Side Society
15:04because she thinks he was putting her family in danger for no reason.
15:08They wouldn't have hurt them.
15:10Maybe Zuko would get some huge supporters who would,
15:13but they'd never find out that Mae, her mom, and brother were related to the leader of that club,
15:18and his supporters would know that he doesn't support violence.
15:22I feel like this is a retcon.
15:25Why did her father have to go to great lengths to get her to him?
15:29Getting K-Lo to get her to him?
15:33If her father was still with her mother, I thought her father was already divorced at that point.
15:39It's nothing but padding until Mae explains that for the past few weeks,
15:43she's been letting K-Lo keep visiting her as just a friend because she hoped she could use him to stop her dad.
15:49Mae wants Ty Lee and Mieke to get a read on him to see if he's telling the truth.
15:54Apparently, she trusts her to figure that out better when she's not an earthbender and used to like Azula.
15:59I guess she only means to read his aura.
16:02And she lets him kiss her cheek.
16:04So they are dating?
16:06Zuko's disappointed that his friends are already leaving the city
16:10because going back here is gonna bring up all sorts of stuff for Zuko and his family,
16:14and they need to figure it out as a family, and bond with just each other.
16:19Zuko admits that makes sense instead of being a jerk and hugs Aang, thanking them.
16:24Sokka shows him affection too and calls him buddy, saying he's happy to be there for him.
16:29And it's sweet to see Zuko smile looking forward to seeing them again.
16:33He feels sorry for his mother, asking if she's okay.
16:36And K ended up telling Mae about the plan.
16:39That happened faster than I thought.
16:42K eventually leaves, and it's satisfying to see Mae get called out on leading him on
16:46when all she had to do was just be friends with him.
16:49She's right. It is for a good cause.
16:52But she should know that he wasn't doing this to her.
16:55Of course, Ty Lee says he was being honest.
16:58And it's sweet to see Zuko admit he's lucky he has such good friends.
17:02He reassures her that K will come around.
17:04And out of nowhere, she reveals that she was actually thinking about Zula
17:08and asks if she's safe, warm, and happy.
17:11Zuko reassures her, thanks her, and despite her trying to talk like she's cheerful,
17:15he notices that she's scared.
17:18A bird gives him a letter from the Kyoshi Warriors.
17:21Which matters because he's decided not to sail to Harbor City
17:25and instead arranged for some friends to meet them there with a submarine.
17:29Based on the one Sokka designed, despite being someone who grew up in a tribe,
17:34he just conveniently found out how to design a submarine in a tiny amount of time for no reason.
17:40Iroh gets out of the submarine and hugs him, and he thanks him.
17:43Most of the story has no plot progression,
17:46but there's enough heartwarming moments to make it worth it anyways.
17:49You can't say that the Sonic comics are constantly like this,
17:53and that's what sucks about not having any families in their main cast.
17:57Iroh apologizes to Ursa for the suffering she went through,
18:01and she hugs him and says that he always gave her hope,
18:04even though he only stopped being an evil war monger after he lost his son to a war,
18:09and it didn't take very long after that for Ursa to leave the city.
18:12Zuko thanks Sookie for taking care of all of this.
18:16She says she'll have Zuko and his companions go to the palace along a hidden route
18:20while a decoy will go up the main road,
18:23Iroh, who says the crowd's only gonna see his hand.
18:26The story tries to have a funny joke,
18:28because he asks if his hand waving is filled with enough angst,
18:31and says he's been practicing all morning,
18:34and somehow Kii thinks someone in white makeup is pretty.
18:37She's just being nice and assuming.
18:40Zuko makes up some excuses to get Kii to hold Ursa's hand,
18:44and she agrees.
18:46It's weird that even Ursa has some people welcoming her home.
18:49It's surprisingly realistic,
18:51because we see some people disappointed that they can only see a hand in the window,
18:55and it could be funny that Iroh's looking sad to make sure he'll get the hand waving right.
19:00Tai is made more relatable again by saying she feels like she's suffocating in her outfit.
19:05Mei says this is the most heavily fortified road in all of the Fire Nation,
19:10and doesn't see why her dad would attack here in broad daylight.
19:13So she assumes Kei lied,
19:16even though she's got a living lie detector who vouched for him.
19:19Eventually, one of the bad guys keeps the useless motivational speech going,
19:24and doesn't let someone warn him about the people approaching him.
19:27So I don't know how he knew to dodge the fire.
19:30As usual, there's more panels than there needs to be in action scenes that only involve fire,
19:35which are inherently extremely repetitive and pointless with nothing actually happening,
19:40because the things showing people get burned a lot isn't for kids.
19:43Why would a flash of light censor the impact when a bad guy gets hit?
19:47Just because it's done in other things doesn't make it okay.
19:51It nearly ruins the panel.
19:53Eventually, Aira leaves after the fighting's over.
19:56And Mei's suspicious because her dad sent these six idiots to take out Zuko,
20:01even though he gathered an army.
20:03There's a distress flare from Suki, and a tree falls,
20:07and the carriage gets surrounded by bad guys.
20:10Eventually, Zuko points out that the bad guys are too scared to even show their faces,
20:16so he firebends, and I love that it impresses his sister.
20:19There's more action scenes ruined by the flash of light,
20:22and Suki gets tied up, and the same thing happens to Zuko
20:26because the bad guys have a convenient tool for tying up really quickly...
20:30in the 1800s.
20:32Zuko's family is threatened, so Kei decides to free Zuko,
20:36and his boss is surprisingly smart because he knew a while ago that he had stopped being loyal,
20:41and that's why it proved useful to him.
20:43Mei shows up throwing things and warns Zuko to duck
20:46and throws another knife at the rope-shooting cannon.
20:50Mei doesn't trust Kei, even though he was obviously just fighting on Zuko's side,
20:54and he explains that the society fed him bad information and gets vouched for.
20:59Eventually, I see Ursa and Ikam hugging Kei, who's saying brave,
21:04and Mei's dad tells his grunt not to hurt her.
21:07Kei attacks one of the bad guys with no impact shown, and Mei kicks someone over.
21:12Kei admits he deserved for her to fool him and gets hurt,
21:16and at least she cares about that.
21:18I don't know why people expected a firebender not to control people's fire.
21:22Of course he'll survive.
21:24And I have to remind myself that he can't stop holding back or his new family would be scared of him.
21:29There's a lot of panels not worth talking about this story.
21:32And it turns out Mei let her dad get away.
21:36I guess she did it because he's her dad and not because she believed him.
21:40But you have to assume that because of what he just had to be written to say.
21:45Mei gets reminded Kei was fed lies and says she believes him.
21:49Zuko thanks the warriors, and eventually Kei is impressed by how big his castle is and wants to explore.
21:55She calls him Zuzu, and Zuko wonders where she picked that up, and so does Ursa.
22:00Now I have to wonder if Zula called him that in the search in front of her.
22:04They shouldn't be wondering this.
22:07Eventually, Zuko thanks Iroh and is worried enough to tell Iroh to attend the Yu Dao ceremony instead of him
22:13because he needs to stay here.
22:15He was about to suggest the same thing.
22:18Why does Zuko keep a portrait of Ozai in the palace?
22:22Why show us Mei's dad being threatened again?
22:25A month later, Kei says Mei wouldn't go out with him unless his leg healed.
22:30And that's because she didn't trust him because she doesn't understand him.
22:34Do they think it would take more than a month to bring him to a waterbender to heal him?
22:41That's needlessly cruel to heroes.
22:44He says he joined the new Ozai society so he could finally belong to something since he's an orphan,
22:49and he doesn't care about politics.
22:52Eventually, Mei sees cloaked people on the roof and finds out her brother is being kidnapped.
22:58Do we have to see or tell her family about it in the morning?
23:02It just leads to recap.
23:04I mean, go figure, we already knew that they would be upset.
23:09Zuko offers to help.
23:11Nothing valuable happens, and the story ends.
23:14This issue by Jean Gang has Aang vanquish the evil spirit in one hit
23:20after Toph and the others in the mine get saved by her students
23:24after Father reconciles with her only because he needed her to save his own skin.
23:29It's kind of hard to stop hating them when we barely get to see them be a good father to her after that.
23:35And then Aang decides to let the refinery get rebuilt and just change the festival,
23:40purely to symbolize the fact that he's not being too traditional anymore,
23:44even though he's going to keep being too traditional.
23:46There's a lot of padding in between actual plot progression,
23:50which is always the main problem with these comics.
23:53This was the best arc so far, but it was always a little boring because of the needlessly slow pacing.
24:00Considering that the evil spirit was unlikable, I hate that we didn't see a lot more hits against him.
24:06One hit isn't enough catharsis for an arc of buildup.
24:11You could have replaced all of the padding caused by Toph's father being awful
24:16with more hits against this guy.
24:19The rift's mostly forgettable because its only sources of conflict were
24:23an evil spirit of the weak wanting to bully humans for a reason only he understands,
24:28which is done to death in the series.
24:31And one of the bad guys being greedy,
24:33which is the most understandable motive,
24:36but has way too weak of an impression in an action series full of magic.
24:40It's not like I saw Satoru's uncle being handed a wheelbarrow full of money
24:45and pushing it around to have fun after all,
24:48so there's no visual to remember with that.
24:51I never remembered that Toph's father was unaware of the mine being used
24:55because he thought it was too dangerous,
24:57because normally mines are a safe place that provide us with useful things,
25:01so the idea of a mine existing being bad is unintuitive.
25:05I never forgot that Toph had to keep a ceiling from collapsing on her and her father,
25:09but I did forget why she was put in that situation.
25:13Maybe if it was someone like Azula doing it on purpose, it would have been memorable.
25:18This issue by Gene Yang has the outside society threaten Zuko and his mother on their visit to the city,
25:24and that goes exactly as you'd expect,
25:27with a million panels with fire just for show.
25:30All of the slapstick was ruined by censorship,
25:33so the scene should have been much quicker since it was pointless.
25:37Even though I was looking forward to seeing Ursa enjoy her visit to the city,
25:41it was completely skipped over by only showing her get scared of the castle,
25:46so we don't get to see her enjoy parts of the city she'd like.
25:50Mei gives Kilo a chance because he defends,
25:53and her brother gets kidnapped because her dad's plan failed.
25:57He could have been kidnapped with the excuse that Ukro was considered a failure because of his failure before the issue,
26:03and it would have made just as much sense,
26:05so there really was no point to the scene.
26:08As usual, it was an interesting story, but it was absolutely full of padding,
26:14but it had an unusually large rate of heartwarming moments in its make-up for that,
26:19which made it good.