Notes on Avatar — Azula and Zuko
Writers, like everyone, have things they want to achieve. In their case, things that they need to write, and also, a limited time in which to achieve these things. Unfortunately for writers they also have obligations to write some things, at times, things that may not really move forward their goals but that they are duty bound to write because they are writers, as a general rule these are observations about the art of other writers.
And so, today, I have been thinking about something I put on the back burner for a long time because I don’t really want to write it, but I guess I have to. I have to write about what is one of the greatest television shows ever made (I say one of them instead of the greatest, because if you are at the top levels of quality it is difficult to rank what is actually the absolute best, there is just the top level and those who reach it sit there amongst each other, each unique and really untouchable, unbeatable. Each the greatest of all
Of course I am talking about the TV show Avatar — The Last Airbender. And in that show I am obligated to discuss two of the greatest characters — Azula, and her brother Zuko.
Lots of brilliant, astute criticism has been written about both Azula and Zuko, and it is difficult not to repeat these observations because after all, they were brilliant and astute and really great insights into the characters, but I shall attempt to do so, after all when one writes because of an obligation it surely can’t be that one is obliged to say what others have said before.
I’m going to focus on one scene in one of the best episodes, one of the best episodes of one of the greatest shows ever made, The Beach. When our bad guys in the show go to a fun summer getaway on Ember Island.
In the episode we get a scene when our villains all discuss what happened to make them turn out they way they did, and because they are bad guys most of the exposition is them fighting. And during the fighting Zuko reveals that even though his life seems to be going much better now he is angrier than ever.
Zuko: I’m angrier than ever and I don’t know why!
Azula: There’s a simple question you need to answer, then. Who are you angry at?
Then everyone gangs up at Zuko trying to get him to say who he’s angry at, while he won’t say, until finally he cracks.
Zuko: I’m angry at myself!
Azula: Why
Zuko: Because I’m confused. Because I’m not sure I know the difference between right and wrong anymore.
Azula: You’re pathetic.
And you really have to agree with Azula here, Zuko is pathetic! He doesn’t know they’re the baddies! Everyone else knows, but not Zuko!
What an idiot!
Azula on the other hand knows so well they’re the bad guys, she realized it at a young age and decided to do what it took to survive as a bad guy. Which is her main dislike of Zuko, she would like to break him, to make him see that they are the bad guys and to accept that as she has.
Of course when Zuko announces hey I’m so stupid I think our Fire Nation uniforms look like Demon Skeletons because it’s more honorable (translation into English from Zukoese)
That’s when Mai his misanthropic girlfriend gets over how mad she has been at him the whole episode.
Mai’s primary attraction to Zuko is that he wants to be good, Mai is aware that they’re the baddies, and she doesn’t like it but that’s just how it is. Everyone around her is either amoral or committed to being bad, but not Zuko. The doofus. It’s very endearing to her.
This is why later, after Zuko follows the path of goodness — ‘betraying’ the Fire Nation — Mai complains that he was a traitor but when he said he saw it a different way she couldn’t really say she disagreed. Mai knows Zuko is right to betray the Fire Nation, and she loves him because he is strong enough to do the right thing. Essentially Mai is the portrait of a misanthrope without a comic defense, her defense is that maybe humans aren’t all self-serving amoral jerks — because she knows one that gives her some hope.
