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edenfallingStill watching Avatar! Here are some thoughts on season 2 episode 3:
Return to Omashu:
1. Hmm. Those half-built wooden bridge things... are they really bridges under construction, or just battle platforms made out of material earthbenders can't affect? Inquiring minds want to know!
2. Ah, and another mention of Ba Sing Se. I like how it's been mentioned a couple times in season 1 and now here, so it won't come out of nowhere later on.
3. Aaand, they sneak in through the sewer. Poor Sokka. Aang can bend air to keep the yuck out of his face, and Katara can bend the liquid as if it were water (hey, if she can bend perfume, which she can, she can most certainly bend sewage), but Sokka just gets smacked in the face over and over again. *offers him a clean towel, from a judicious distance*
4. Those pentapuses (pentapi?) are awfully cute, for sewage-dwelling critters. Heck, if you can get past the staring ring of eyes, they're awfully cute in general. *grin*
5. Creepy old ladies are still creepy. And Azula is out to collect new characters!
6. Aha, Mai! (...Her name is spelled wrong. If it's pronounced may, it should be spelled Mei, not Mai. Mai is pronounced my. I am just saying.) She fights pretty damn well for someone hindered by long formal robes!
7. I love Ty Lee's introduction sequence. Love it, love it, love it. The way it starts upside down (I was seriously wondering if they'd goofed in post-production or in putting together the DVD), the way she's clearly happy to see Azula and considers her a good friend... and the way she knows Azula is dangerous, which you can clearly see by her reaction when Azula says she'll be watching the show before she leaves. Also, she has a pug nose. She's adorable.
8. Bumi surrendered? Huh. I wonder what that old man is up to. He is obviously up to something; he's crazy like a fox, not like a loon.
9. When the rebels of Omashu do listen to Aang decide to leave, they leave en masse; they won't abandon their fellow citizens. Yay for solidarity!
10. Pentapox! *dies laughing* You go, Sokka! Way to take Katara's spur of the moment inspiration and turn it into something large scale useful! This is shaping up to be a good comedy episode, just like "The Cave of Two Lovers." I love the running gag where first the Fire Nation soldier and then Mai's father think they've heard of the bogus disease before.
11. Mai doesn't look like she buys the whole plague thing. Interesting. Also, I am unclear on how many people were evacuated. Was it just the resistance, their families, and their friends? Or was it the entire population of the city? This series uses so few extras in crowd scenes that it is very difficult to know if the group of 'pentapox victims' is meant to be the entire group of evacuees, or if it's just a representative sample.
12. What is Flopsy anyway? Some sort of goat-dog mix, grown to absurd size?
13. The sequence with Momo and the baby had me in tears of laughter. Poor Momo! All he wants is something to eat, and his poor tail is so abused. At the end, when he just smacks his foreleg against the ground and curses up a storm, I felt so bad for him. (I like how that was neatly set up, both with Mai's brother toddling away from his family earlier, and Aang telling Momo he'd feed him later.)
14. Azula, that is no way to treat your friends! *thwaps her* *ducks flames*
15. Hostage trade! Hmm. How can this go wrong? Because it will go wrong.
16. Azula can show up, that's how.
17. Interesting about-face on the exchange. The question is, does Mai trust that Azula will get her brother back somehow anyway, or does she genuinely not care? Because I could be persuaded to either interpretation at this point; her affect is that flat. (Or, alternatively, is she that afraid of Azula? No, probably not yet, based on her laughter when she greeted her old friend.)
18. I really like this whole fight sequence. Aang is actually making some use of waterbending this episode, but only when he absolutely can't get a similar result from airbending; basically, he is using ice to weaken metal. I like how Mai and Ty Lee work in tandem to knock Katara out of the fight. I also like how Katara and Sokka work in tandem to get the baby to safety, and then to bring Appa in as the cavalry. Good use of teamwork all around! And I get the sense that Azula's blue flames are not just a pretty color; they seem fiercer, somehow, than normal fire... which would make sense from a temperature perspective, since blue-white is the hottest shade of flame.
19. "There are three jin?" Aang asks in disbelief. "Well, technically there are eighty-five, but let's just focus on the third," Bumi replies. *sporfle* (Interestingly, I think Aang says 'jin' but Bumi says 'jing.' I can't tell if that's just pronunciation slide, or if they're honestly using different forms of the word.)
20. Aaand we get the first hints of Maiko. See, that is what I call actual subtext. *grin*
21. Aww, Aang returns the baby to his parents. Observing his methods, it strikes me that airbending is a very useful talent for a spy or saboteur. It's lucky for the airbenders that they were mostly peaceful monks and nuns; otherwise, they would probably have been hunted down a lot sooner. People do not like ninjas in real life.
-----
Dinner now.
Return to Omashu:
1. Hmm. Those half-built wooden bridge things... are they really bridges under construction, or just battle platforms made out of material earthbenders can't affect? Inquiring minds want to know!
2. Ah, and another mention of Ba Sing Se. I like how it's been mentioned a couple times in season 1 and now here, so it won't come out of nowhere later on.
3. Aaand, they sneak in through the sewer. Poor Sokka. Aang can bend air to keep the yuck out of his face, and Katara can bend the liquid as if it were water (hey, if she can bend perfume, which she can, she can most certainly bend sewage), but Sokka just gets smacked in the face over and over again. *offers him a clean towel, from a judicious distance*
4. Those pentapuses (pentapi?) are awfully cute, for sewage-dwelling critters. Heck, if you can get past the staring ring of eyes, they're awfully cute in general. *grin*
5. Creepy old ladies are still creepy. And Azula is out to collect new characters!
6. Aha, Mai! (...Her name is spelled wrong. If it's pronounced may, it should be spelled Mei, not Mai. Mai is pronounced my. I am just saying.) She fights pretty damn well for someone hindered by long formal robes!
7. I love Ty Lee's introduction sequence. Love it, love it, love it. The way it starts upside down (I was seriously wondering if they'd goofed in post-production or in putting together the DVD), the way she's clearly happy to see Azula and considers her a good friend... and the way she knows Azula is dangerous, which you can clearly see by her reaction when Azula says she'll be watching the show before she leaves. Also, she has a pug nose. She's adorable.
8. Bumi surrendered? Huh. I wonder what that old man is up to. He is obviously up to something; he's crazy like a fox, not like a loon.
9. When the rebels of Omashu do listen to Aang decide to leave, they leave en masse; they won't abandon their fellow citizens. Yay for solidarity!
10. Pentapox! *dies laughing* You go, Sokka! Way to take Katara's spur of the moment inspiration and turn it into something large scale useful! This is shaping up to be a good comedy episode, just like "The Cave of Two Lovers." I love the running gag where first the Fire Nation soldier and then Mai's father think they've heard of the bogus disease before.
11. Mai doesn't look like she buys the whole plague thing. Interesting. Also, I am unclear on how many people were evacuated. Was it just the resistance, their families, and their friends? Or was it the entire population of the city? This series uses so few extras in crowd scenes that it is very difficult to know if the group of 'pentapox victims' is meant to be the entire group of evacuees, or if it's just a representative sample.
12. What is Flopsy anyway? Some sort of goat-dog mix, grown to absurd size?
13. The sequence with Momo and the baby had me in tears of laughter. Poor Momo! All he wants is something to eat, and his poor tail is so abused. At the end, when he just smacks his foreleg against the ground and curses up a storm, I felt so bad for him. (I like how that was neatly set up, both with Mai's brother toddling away from his family earlier, and Aang telling Momo he'd feed him later.)
14. Azula, that is no way to treat your friends! *thwaps her* *ducks flames*
15. Hostage trade! Hmm. How can this go wrong? Because it will go wrong.
16. Azula can show up, that's how.
17. Interesting about-face on the exchange. The question is, does Mai trust that Azula will get her brother back somehow anyway, or does she genuinely not care? Because I could be persuaded to either interpretation at this point; her affect is that flat. (Or, alternatively, is she that afraid of Azula? No, probably not yet, based on her laughter when she greeted her old friend.)
18. I really like this whole fight sequence. Aang is actually making some use of waterbending this episode, but only when he absolutely can't get a similar result from airbending; basically, he is using ice to weaken metal. I like how Mai and Ty Lee work in tandem to knock Katara out of the fight. I also like how Katara and Sokka work in tandem to get the baby to safety, and then to bring Appa in as the cavalry. Good use of teamwork all around! And I get the sense that Azula's blue flames are not just a pretty color; they seem fiercer, somehow, than normal fire... which would make sense from a temperature perspective, since blue-white is the hottest shade of flame.
19. "There are three jin?" Aang asks in disbelief. "Well, technically there are eighty-five, but let's just focus on the third," Bumi replies. *sporfle* (Interestingly, I think Aang says 'jin' but Bumi says 'jing.' I can't tell if that's just pronunciation slide, or if they're honestly using different forms of the word.)
20. Aaand we get the first hints of Maiko. See, that is what I call actual subtext. *grin*
21. Aww, Aang returns the baby to his parents. Observing his methods, it strikes me that airbending is a very useful talent for a spy or saboteur. It's lucky for the airbenders that they were mostly peaceful monks and nuns; otherwise, they would probably have been hunted down a lot sooner. People do not like ninjas in real life.
-----
Dinner now.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-16 03:31 am (UTC)I spelt it Mei for the longest time, before I realized >> It's so weird!
I'm assuming the jin/jing thing is pronunciation slide, because there to native english speakers the two endings sound basically the same?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-16 04:31 am (UTC)*loves Ty Lee some more*