roseembolism | Nothing like a good review to make me feel better.

So far this week has been a never-ending litany of minor annoyances that have led to my being as irritated as a bear that's been kept awake from hibernation bay a bad tooth.

But I feel better, because someone I respect actually mentioned in LJ that he hadn't seen Avatar: the Last Airbender, and I got to do a glowing recommendation of it to him. Which makes me feel better, since it's good to have a chance to say nice things.

Here it is:

I have to admit that from seeing the initial pictures of it, I was dismissive of Avatar as some Yu-Gi-Oh or Dragonball clone, until someone who's opinon I trust forced me to sit down and watch the first episode. And then I was hooked.

Avatar, is literally, not only one of the best animated fantasy series I've ever seen, it's one of the best fantasy series I've ever seen in any media. Not only is the world building and plotting excellent, the character design, personalities and development is top notch. The series goes from somewhat light-hearted in the beginning, and becomes more and more series as the stakes are raised and the characters mature- and yet there is still a large dose of humor. One sign of the care involved in the series is that early on I had several questions raised about the home of two of the characters...which were answered in grim detail in the third season. Avatar also has one of my favorite villains; one who not only considers himself the hero of the story, has an excellent motivation to be doing what he's doing, and also really WOULD be the hero, if he didn't keep making the "wrong" decisions for all the best reasons.

The bottom line is this is a well crafted product, which has stretched the notion of what an American animated series is capable of, just as much, if not more so than Batman: the Animated Series did back in its day.

So my recommendation? Go on Amazon, and just grab the first season collection. It's well worth the price.