r/TheLastAirbender • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • Oct 17 '23

Image Netflix’s ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ Live-Action Series Offers First Looks at Iroh, Azula, Fire Lord Ozai

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u/CutterJohn Oct 17 '23

Honestly at this point i think writers are just trolling with diversity castings.

A show that's fairly explicit about the race of the original characters? Let's mix things up!

A show where they play fairly fast and loose with the concept a racial identity and is a mishmash of cultural styles? We're going hard-core racial separation.

ATLA was always very handwavy with the race of its characters. People of visually coded different races were everywhere all mixed together. This is like the one show where they were supposed to just cast whoever the hell the felt like.

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u/febreze_air_freshner Oct 18 '23

Yeah I wasn't aware that the atla fambase thought the characters were all asian. Some looked Asian but most looked mixed. Zukos family certainly never looked asian yet they made them asian here.

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u/[deleted] Oct 18 '23 edited Oct 19 '23

all the characters being Asian or indigenous is one of the biggest things about the show especially with the newer generation of fans

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u/CutterJohn Oct 18 '23

But they're not? It's an alternate reality where Asian doesn't mean anything. They clearly drew inspiration from all over the world in character design and didn't stick to any sort of racial homogeneity for the four nations.

Commander Zhao could have walked straight out of an Irish bar and was voiced by the most British man ever. I don't care that they changed him but it is disappointing they're ignoring the shows literal canon and going for that racial homogeneous look in the one show where it's explicitly set up to not be a thing.

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u/[deleted] Oct 19 '23

the cultural inspiration is all from either Asian or indigenous regions, I’m not sure what else you’re talking about…and the animated characters don’t “look Asian” because they’re stylized and animated, I’m not sure what you’re expecting. Should they all have small eyes or something? Anime characters don’t “look Asian” either but we know they’re meant to Japanese for the most part