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5 Important Lessons ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ Taught Me
I’m 27 years old rewatching Avatar: The Last Airbender.
My girlfriend never watched it, and we’re bored, so I decided to put it on last week.
All I can say is, “WOW!”
We’re now through two seasons and about to finish the whole show.
What an incredible series for children and young kids to watch. The themes it covers are pretty deep, touching on politics, spirituality, racism, ageism, feminism, and nationalism — just to name a few.
I was surprised how elegantly they covered such complicated issues while making what is, for all intents and purposes, one of the greatest TV shows of all time.
I thought it would be cool to look back on the show as an older man and talk about some of the biggest lessons it taught me as a young kid. Here are a few.
1. Too Much Nationalism Is A Bad Thing
In one episode Aang gets trapped inside a Fire Nation school. Even though he could just leave at the end of the day and never come back, the writers decided that Aang was going to enjoy it.
That was excuse enough to continue showing how Fire Nation children were educated.