Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra is an American animated television series that aired for three seasons (referred to as "books" in each episode's title card) on Nickelodeon from 2005 to 2008. Avatar: The Last Airbender is set in an Asiatic-like world in which some people are able to manipulate the classical elements by use of psychokinetic variants of Chinese martial arts, known as "bending". The show combines the styles of anime and American cartoons, and relies on the imagery of various East Asian, Inuit, Southeast Asian, South Asian, and New World societies. Therefore, whether or not the series can be considered as an anime work is often discussed.
The series follows the adventures of protagonist twelve-year-old Aang and his friends, who must bring peace and unity to the world by ending the Fire Lord's war against the other three nations. The pilot episode first aired on February 21, 2005, and the series concluded with a widely praised two-hour episode on July 19, 2008. The show is obtainable from various sources, including DVD, the iTunes Store, the Zune Marketplace, the Xbox Live Marketplace, the PlayStation Store, and Amazon Video.
In other media, the series has spawned a 2010 live-action film, titled The Last Airbender, directed by M. Night Shyamalan; scaled action figures; a trading card game; three video games; stuffed animals distributed by Paramount Parks and two Lego sets. An art book was also released in mid-2010. A sequel series, The Legend of Korra, aired from April 14, 2012 to July 25, 2014 on Nickelodeon; though the remaining episodes premiered on Nickelodeon's website until December 19, 2014.
PhantomStrider heavily praises Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra for its beautiful animation/visuals, emotionally touching/mature subjects, interesting characters and its wonderful stories. He also praises the show's spin off Legend of Korra since it had an amazing follow up to its predecessor and discusses its more mature subjects. He also loved the fact that they take Korra's timeline 70 years into the future and introduced Korra, an apprenticed airbender, who's learning to use her air bending skills against certain types of danger.
However, he hates the live action feature, The Last Airbender by M. Night Shyamalan, because of its cringeworthy acting, plot holes and how the movie even got the races wrong (all of the characters in the cartoon were mixed races; while the live-action features has all caucasian actors).
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Lists Strider Includes Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra
- It made it to Best Nickelodeon Shows at #2 (February 24, 2016).
- The episode The Great Divide made it as an honorable mention in Worst Episodes of Good Cartoons (May 8, 2016).
- It's sequel Legend of Korra made it to Best Modern Cartoons at #5 (June 10, 2016).
- Its live action feature adaptation The Last Airbender made it to Worst Cartoon Live Action Remakes at #4 (September 29, 2016).
- The episode The Puppetmaster made it to Spookiest Cartoon Episodes at #4 (October 13, 2016).
- Its sequel Legend of Korra made it to Top 10 Cartoons That Need Sequels at #3 (December 7, 2016).
- It (along with its sequel Legend of Korra) made it to Best American Cartoons at #5 (December 25, 2016).
- Its live action feature adaptation The Last Airbender made it to Worst Nickelodeon Movies at #2 (July 11, 2017).
- Korra from Legend of Korra made it to Most Powerful Animated Women at #1. Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender also made it as an honorable mention (February 5, 2019).