Okay. I’ve heard the title before. I’m vaguely aware that the show is on the air. I think I saw the main character on the front of a candy bar when I was in line at the grocery store not long ago. But I’ve never felt any particular urge to check out AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER.

Then Jim Cameron announced that he was making his new movie. That, uh, turns out to have nothing whatsoever to do with this show. And that same day, M. Night Shyamalan announced he was making this show into a trilogy of films. One announcement was not a surprise. One most certainly was.

That same day, I got a letter from a publicist I know, sending along a press release for the new DVD release of AVATAR – BOOK 2: EARTH, VOL. 1. I wrote back and asked them to send it along, and she asked me if I’d like to run an exclusive AVATAR comic for you guys on the day of release.

I watched the episodes before I wrote back to her. I wanted to at least know what the show is. The show, created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, is not what I expected at all. I find most kid’s programming these days shrill and annoying, and I have a hard time sitting through a lot of it with Toshi. But this show is smartly designed, and it’s written smart. There’s no talking down to an audience, at least not in the episodes I saw. It’s a fairly simple set-up. It take place in a world where everything has been divided into elemental kingdoms. Fire, water, air, and earth. Everything was balanced in a sort of harmony until the Fire Kingdom developed into a warrior race set on conquering each of the other kingdoms. Each elemental caste can “bend” the element they represent, meaning they can channel it, move it, control it like a weapon. Only one being can bend all four elements, and that is the Avatar, a powerful being who has been reincarnated from one persona to another over generations. The most recent Avatar, a boy named Aang, was accidentally frozen when he was needed, and so the Fire Kingdom was able to get a foothold with their plans of conquering. When two kids (Sokka and Toph) find the Avatar and unfreeze him, they are shocked to realize he is still untrained, and they set out with him to find the wisdom he will need to face the Fire Kingdom and reunify their world.

It sounds complicated, but it’s not. I was able to pick up with the first episode of season two and not feel like I was really missing anything. This disc has five episodes on it, and if there’s any one I would recommend as a showcase for how good this show can be, it’s “The Swamp,” which is the closest thing I’ve ever seen to Miyazaki on television. And it doesn’t come across as some crass ripoff of anime, either. AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER has real soul, and it seems respectful of the ideas it borrows from Eastern philosophy. It’s not an expensive show, but it’s so smartly stylized that the inexpensive animation never comes across as a negative. The show definitely has a sense of humor, but it also has some thrilling action scenes that are not just place-holders. There’s a sense that the show really is progressing, that these characters are growing. It’s all heading somewhere, and isn’t just some stagnant meandering repetition of a basic formula. None of the five episodes I saw struck me as being the same story, and that’s rare enough with this sort of program. The voice work is strong and well-directed, no surprise since Andrea Romano is involved. Her work on the BATMAN animated series set a standard for modern TV animation, and she appears to be bringing her same high quality of work to this show as well.

Overall, I am intrigued by the notion of M. Night Shyamalan doing this as a trilogy of films. I wish him luck in trying to find the right Aang for live-action. You need a kid with the chops of young Haley Joel Osment, but the physical prowess of Bruce Lee. No easy thing, that. I’ve said for a while that he needed to take on the challenge of playing in someone else’s sandbox for a while, and I think he’s found really potent material here. I look forward to going back and catching up with the whole series now, and I’m excited to see how the development of this one progresses.

I’m off to London now, so I’ll probably talk to you guys later this week. For now, enjoy the first few pages of the exclusive comic that you’ll find inside the DVD if you pick it up this week.

Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles