“Spirited Away”
Episode 4 of Avatar: The Last Airbender, “Spirited Away” blasts open with a quick confrontation with Fire Nation soldiers. Katara is becoming a much stronger Waterbender. Aang feels guilty about the firebenders’ continued destruction of the world. A nearby village complains of the forest’s ‘sickness’ and people going missing. Aang says this is a spirit-world problem, and promises to help.
Firelord Ozai recognizes Azula’s coy flattery as an attempt to assume the throne herself. The gang finds a shrine to the spirit of the forest. Aang meditates the three of them into the spirit world. Zuko discovers that everyone knows the Avatar has returned. Mercenary June and her giant, hunting ‘shirshu’ arrive. Iroh and Zuko hire June to find Aang.
The owl spirit of knowledge warns Aang that Sokka and Katara should not be in the spirit world. Then, the angry spirit of the forest attacks the gang. Katara relives the death of her mother. Sokka relives the day he became a Water Tribe warrior. He barely passed, and his father doubts his abilities as a leader. They are both confronted by a man with a horrifying mask.
Aang’s spiritual prowess allows him to resist being drawn back to his home. Then the creepy mask guy reveals himself as Koh, the Face Stealer, an awful, slithering monster. Aang runs away and then comes upon a hut. Gyatso is inside, waiting for him. Gyatso explains that Koh uses the fog of lost souls to trap people in their darkest memories. He’s taken Sokka, Katara, and the villagers to his layer to consume them.
Gyatso gives such powerful advice to Aang, it echoes and applies to Zuko and Azula as well. Aang exits the spirit world and heads off to rescue the souls of his friends.
The Episode Review
“Spirited Away” does its best to condense multiple episodes of expertly paced spiritual worldbuilding into one episode. While it winds up landing on heartfelt ground, it can’t help but feel wobbly in comparison to the original cartoon. Even with a massive budget and a great team of actors, it seems nothing can compare to ATLA’s original, brilliant dialogue and pacing.
One can never praise the original series too much. Living up to it is impossible to do, but it’s also impossible to avoid comparing. It’s obvious that the writers have tried their best to inject hints of all the abandoned elements from the cartoon. There’s offhanded-references made to many dropped plotlines. It’d be pointless to list them all, but it’s a nice consolation prize to hear about them. It makes it feel as though the Netflix showrunners respect what they’ve cut away.
The writing, specifically the dialogue, has struggled a bit to stay convincing. The performers do their best, but it’s not easy to speak about saving the entire world as a 12 year old and not sound a little silly. Given this truth, the slight clunkiness feels strangely appropriate. A small thing that’s becoming apparent is the difference between the gang’s clothing and all the smaller characters. It’s as if the main cast’s wardrobe is so expertly loyal to the originals, they stand out too much from sleuths of extras. It’s almost a good problem to have, but it borders on distracting.
A crash course through the spirit world will have to suffice because there’s still a lot of ground to cover before the end of the season. The visuals remain rather stunning, and the acting continues to make up for the lack of writing from Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko.
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