*SPOILERS*
Series Conception and Birth
Avatar: The Last Airbender is co-created and produced by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko at Nickelodeon Animation Studios in Burbank, California. Like most recent animated series, it is animated in South Korea. The first episode of Avatar was created six years following its original conception, a period much longer than the norm for animated shows. While it was originally set to premier in November of 2004, the first episode of Avatar aired on February 21, 2005. New episodes air on Fridays at 8:00 Eastern Standard Time, while reruns are broadcast on weekday evenings. Following the conclusion of the first season of Avatar, Nickelodeon promptly ordered a second twenty-episode season that premiered on March 17, 2006 and concluded on December 1, 2006.A third season will begin airing in the Spring of 2007.
Story
Avatar: The Last Airbender takes place in a fantasy world, home to humans, fantastic animals, and supernatural spirits. Human civilization is divided into three pre-industrialized nations, the Water Tribes, the Earth Kingdom, and the Air Nomads, and one industrialized nation, the Fire Nation, capable of manufacturing various kinds of machines. Within each nation, an order of men and women called "Benders" have the ability to manipulate their native element. These Bending arts combine a certain style of martial arts and elemental mysticism. The Bending types are Waterbending, Earthbending, Firebending, and Airbending.
In each generation, one person is capable of Bending all four elements; this is the Avatar, the spirit of the planet manifested in human form. When the Avatar dies, he or she is reincarnated into an unborn baby native in the next nation in the Avatar Cycle, which parallels the seasons: winter for water, spring for earth, summer for fire, and autumn for air. Beginning with the mastering of his/her native element, the Avatar achieves mastery over all four elements in the order of the cycle. Learning to bend the element opposite one's native element is extremely difficult because opposing Bending arts are based on opposing fighting styles and doctrines.
The Avatar possesses a unique power that resides within him or her, called the Avatar State. It is a defense mechanism that empowers the Avatar with the skills and knowledge of all the past Avatars. When the Avatar enters this state, his or her eyes and mouth begin to glow. The glow is the combination of all the Avatar's previous incarnations focusing their energy through his or her body. However, if the Avatar is killed in the Avatar State, then the reincarnation cycle will be broken, and the Avatar will cease to exist.
Through the ages, countless incarnations of the Avatar have served to keep the four nations in harmony and maintain world order. The Avatar also serves as the bridge between the physical world and the Spirit World, home of the world's disembodied spirits.
Full Synopsis
A century prior to the series' opening, Aang, a 12-year-old Airbender of the Air Nomads' Southern Air Temple, learned from the elder monks that he was the Avatar. Usually, the Avatar is told of his or her true identity after turning sixteen; however, the monks feared that a war between the four nations was on the horizon and that soon the Avatar would be required to maintain balance and order in the world. Shortly thereafter, the monks decreed that Aang would be separated from his guardian, Monk Gyatso, and sent to the Eastern Air Temple to complete his training.
Confused, frightened, and overwhelmed by these recent events and his new responsibilities as the Avatar, Aang fled from his home on his flying bison, Appa. While traveling over frigid southern ocean waters, a sudden storm caused Appa to plunge deep into the sea. Aang unconsciously entered the Avatar State, and used Airbending to protect Appa and himself by creating an air bubble around them. However, the air bubble quickly froze into a sphere of ice, forcing the two of them into a state of suspended animation.
The series opens one hundred years later, with the Fire Nation on the brink of victory in its imperialist war. The Water Tribes are in crisis — the Southern Water Tribe's warriors have left to wage war, leaving their home defenseless, while the Northern Water Tribe, though largely intact, is continually on the defensive. The vast Earth Kingdom is now the only true barrier to the Fire Nation's conquest, but as the Fire Nation continues to encroach on its borders and conquer its territories, hopes of victory grow bleaker with each passing year.
Two teenage siblings from the Southern Water Tribe — Katara, an inexperienced Waterbender, and her brother Sokka — discover and free Aang and Appa from the iceberg. Aang soon discovers to his horror that, during his absence, a century-long war has been waged. The very year he vanished, Fire Lord Sozin took advantage of both the Avatar's absence and the Firebending-enhancing powers of a passing comet to launch a war on the other nations. To Aang's shock and disbelief, the Fire Nation's opening gambit had been a genocidal assault on the Air Nomads. The Air Temples were stormed and the Airbenders slaughtered in the Fire Nation's effort to break the Avatar Cycle, leaving Aang as the last known Airbender in existence.
As the Avatar, Aang's duty is to restore harmony and peace to the four nations. Along with his newly discovered friends Katara and Sokka, his flying bison Appa and his winged lemur Momo, and later the blind Earthbender Toph, Aang travels the world to master all four elements. During his quest, he must constantly evade capture by the banished Prince Zuko and his sister, Princess Azula.
Although normally years of disciplined training are required to master a single Bending art, Aang must be a master of all four and defeat Fire Lord Ozai by summer's end, when the return of Sozin's Comet will give the Firebenders the power to win the war. If these events come to pass, not even the Avatar will possess the ability to restore balance to the world.
All information from Wikipedia.
