Avatar: The Legend of Aang on Netflix summarizes the first season of the anime of the same name in eight episodes: what are the most important differences between the two versions?
The original Avatar: The Legend of Aang is an animated series produced by Nickelodeon Animation Studio, aired between 2005 and 2008. It received enormous critical and public success, finding itself renewed for three seasons with a total of 61 episodes. The work of Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko revolutionized the serialized cartoon, appealing to all ages with brilliant writing, unforgettable characters and breathtaking fights.
Years later and with a sequel in the middle, The Legend of Korra, Netflix has transposed the cartoon into an acted series available on the digital platform with eight episodes which adapt the winds of the first animated season. This necessarily led to a compression of the story and changes to the original screenplay: let’s look at the most important differences together.
Avatar: The Legend of Aang: Massacre of the Windbenders | Differences between anime and Netflix series
The animated series begins with Katara and Sokka finding Aang imprisoned in ice and leading him to their village, where he discovers what happened in the 100 years he was frozen. Only later will we indirectly find out what happened to the other airbenders. The live action adaptation, however, begins with a different prologue, in which we get to know Aang, we see him discover that he is the Avatar and turn his back on his responsibilities, escaping just as the Fire Nation attacks the Temple and exterminates the airbenders, including his friend Gyatsu. Netflix shows us the entire scene, making it clear that the live action series will be more explicit in this sense.
Avatar: The Legend of Aang: Sozin’s Comet | Differences between anime and Netflix series
We can see her in the sky at the beginning of the live action season, but Sozin’s comet it doesn’t have the same importance as it does in the animated series. The comet passes close to the planet once every hundred years and during this period significantly increases the powers of the firebenders. This is why in the cartoon it represents it as a deadline for Aang and his companions to stop the Fire Nation. In the live action series this detail was omitted for a simple reason: if Avatar – The Legend of Aang is renewed and continues, the young actors will grow up, so it would become impossible to frame the story within a single natural year. That’s why, at the end of the season, we only know that the comet will pass “soon”.
Avatar: The Legend of Aang: Omashu | Differences between anime and Netflix series
In an attempt to summarize and compress the first animated season the live action adaptation of Avatar uses the city of Omashu to cross multiple subplots, in particular those of the anarchic Jet, the Mechanic who contributes to Sokka’s maturation and the underground tunnels, often changing some aspects of the original storylines. In the cartoon, for example, the Mechanic appears only towards the end of the first season and it was Aang and Katara who explored the tunnels. The character of Re Bumi, then, it was significantly modified, becoming more hostile to the Avatar due to his disappearance one hundred years earlier, while in the cartoon the two old friends are reconciled.
The other Avatars
The live action adaptation delves into the stories of the Avatars that preceded Aang by drawing on the novels and comics published during and after the original animated series. Kyoshi, for example, even comes to possess the body of Aang, who transforms into her to defeat the firebenders on the island; in the cartoon she is another Avatar, Yearto do the same, but at a different time, and Roku himself has been changed in character since, in the flesh and blood version, he is much more ironic.
A final change of some importance concerns the World of Spirits, in which the Netflix series condenses some subplots that develop at different times in the cartoon. To begin with, Aang also drags Katara and Sokka along, instead of going there alone, anticipating the swamp sequence in Book Two of the cartoon: it is in the Spirit World, in fact, that Katara and Sokka have the same hallucinations and they are kidnapped by Koh. Furthermore, Aang also meets Gyatsu in the Spirit World but this does not happen in the cartoon: it will in fact be Korra, in the sequel series The Legend of Korra, who meets Iroh in the Spirit World only many years later.
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