How Azula was important to me (or Why I love this character so much)

Everyone knows I’m crazy about Avatar and Azula is my favorite character ever. I talk about her all time mostly on my social media and I’m always talking about she could possibly have a redemption arc. What most people don’t know is WHY I love her so much and why she was so important to me. So, well, I decided to write about it.

Yeah, Azula is an amazing complex female character. She is smart, strong and powerful. But there are many female characters like this in Avatar — Katara is an exemple. However, unlike Katara, Azula is not one of the good guys, she is not a hero, she is not nice… And not only because she is a villain, but because that’s her personality. I always had the theory and Azula was just a villain because of the circunstancies (being born in the royal family, during a war, and raised by Ozai), if she was born in better situation… she would not be a good girl either, but the damage she would cause would certain be smaller. Because although many people like to call her a psychopath, she never showed such behaviors. She is cold, scheming and sometimes even a little sadistic, but she had showed humanity and she never hurt unnecessarily (maybe people’s feelings only… but what teenager doesn’t? hahaha) . Of course, that doesn’t justify most of her actions, but just because she was a terrible person it doesn’t mean she was a psychopath or a monster as she used to say. I think Azula liked to make herself look much worse than she really was (also I think Bryke said something like that in some interview, I’m not sure).

That was thing that called my attention back there when was about 16 years old. I guess nice girls who watched Avatar would certain relate to Katara. And the not so nice ones… Well, some of them had Toph and others, like me, had Azula. I never thought of myself as a nice girl, and to be honest I could totally understand most of the choices Azula would do. Just like her I wanted (and was expected) to be perfect all time, I was competitive, ambitious, I had problems with romantic relationships (because I thought they were waste of time), I was just as full of myself as I was insecure, most of time I felt really alone, and whenever things went out of my control — just like any teenager — I felt like having a breakdown.

So when Azula lost the Agni Kai and had the mental breakdown, it was horrible to see it (although I knew she had to lose since she was the villain), because it was really easy to see myself in a situation like that back there. Surprisingly, there is where the good part of my story comes. We know that the series ends with her going insane and being sent to an asylum (I’m not counting the comics here because when I watched it there was no comic yet). However I couldn’t accept that. For me she was just too much of a good character to be waste that like. She could have some sort of redemption (but keeping her bad habits and sharp personality) and use her ‘evil powers’ to do something great with her life (in my mind she and Zuko would rebuild their relationship and she would end up being his advisor, but that’s a story for another hour). The thing is, as I imagine a better story for Azula, I started to imagine a better story for myself (not that my life was horrible back there, but just like any teenager I had my problems and dramas). So if I believed someone like her could have a happy ending, I myself could also live a great life. Just like I imagined her learning with her mistakes and accepting that she wasn’t perfect, and that was okay, and learning to love herself after that, I started trying to do that myself (and I keep doing that until today, because it’s not exactly easy xD). Just like I imagined her keeping her personality and using her dark side for good and to improve herself, I could do so. I could accept that I had my bad side and I could use it to make things better… And all of that helped me to realized that I loved being myself, good and bad sides.

It must sound really crazy how a cartoon character made me not only learn more about myself, but also start feeling much better about who I am and feeling happier with myself. But that was what happened xD. So yeah that’s why Azula is so important to me. I don’t know if she will ever get a redeemed or a happy ending, but in mind she already did since she did so good to me :)