In the cartoon series Avatar: The Last Airbender and its sequel, The Legend of Korra, there is a lack of explicitly black characters. The series primarily draws inspiration from Asian cultures and countries, and the characters are predominantly depicted with Asian features [1].
What ethnicity are the people in Avatar: The Last Airbender?
The ethnicities associated with the four main characters are: Aang: Asian - East Asian or South Asian. Katara: Native American - Indigenous North American. Sokka: Native American - Indigenous North American.
The starring roles of the show (Aang, Katara, and Sokka) were coded as being of East Asian (Aang) and Inuit (Katara, and Sokka) descent, but were played by actors of European descent in the film.
Zuko is the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation and a skilled firebender, meaning he has the ability to create and control fire. He is the eldest child of Fire Lord Ozai and the older brother of Princess Azula.
The Water Tribes are tribes at the north and south poles who are loosely based on the Inuit people. The Earth Kingdom is a large and diverse nation reminiscent of ancient China that is highly decentralized. The Fire nation is based on Imperial Japan, and they have been at war with the other nations for a century.
Korra was a human female with brown skin, blue-cyan eyes, black hair, and a muscular physique. On the surface, Korra was fierce, independent, and pugnacious, but beneath her tough exterior, she possessed a strong sense of compassion and loyalty to family and friends, especially her adopted brother, Caran.
Get to know Gordon Cormier, the Filipino-Canadian actor who plays Aang in 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' Filipinos are now talking about Gordon Cormier, the Filipino-Canadian actor who plays Aang in the Netflix live adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Zoe Saldaña was born in New Jersey and raised in Queens, New York. She first appeared in film with Center Stage in 2000, a role which drew on her background in dancing as a child. She received two breakthrough roles in 2009- that of Neytiri in Avatar, and Nyota Uhura in JJ Abrams' Star Trek reboot film.
Perhaps the best known of these Dark Avatars was Unalaq, who fused with Raava's rival Vaatu in Korra's season two finale. The excess spiritual energy allowed Unalaq's waterbending to ascend to unparalleled heights that rivaled even Korra's mastery of all four elements.
The three leads were all played by white actors in the movie, though the original cartoon coded them as Tibetan and Inuit. Whenever Asian actors were afforded a moment of screen time, they were dark-skinned villains in the Fire Nation or unnamed East Asian background characters in the Earth Kingdom.
Humans (Na'vi name: sawtute meaning "sky people") are a sapient, bipedal, mammalian dominant species native to planet Earth, who by the 22nd century has become a technologically advanced species capable of interstellar travel and colonization.
The Dark Avatar, or UnaVaatu in its enlarged form, was the antithesis of the Avatar and was created from the fusion of Vaatu and Unalaq, forming a human embodiment of darkness and chaos.
Is Zuko white? No, the character Zuko, from the Nickelodean show Avatar the last Airbender (2005–2008) was never white. Zuko hailed from the fire bending nation, which was modeled to be a mixture of Chinese, Korean, And Japanese culture.
But according to the creators, Mai is the one who ends up marrying Zuko, and the name Izumi means fountain, which goes back to the fountain incident when Zuko and Mai were kids.
Each of these four nations were inspired by cultures from the real world: the Water Tribe by Indigenous Arctic cultures like the Inuits and Yupiks; the Earth Kingdom by monarchical China; the Fire Nation by Imperial Japan; and the Air Nomads by Tibetan Buddhist monks.
This created a powerful message considering the racial makeup of the character: as the Airbenders lifestyle was based on Tibetan traditions, many drew parallels of the massacre to the The Republic of China's 1949 occupation of Tibet.
And although Avatar was an American production, its creators forged a distinctly Asian world, with influences from monastic Tibet, Thai kingdoms, and Japanese villages, as well as Arctic indigenous communities. This unique approach was not lost on the TV writer Albert Kim when he watched the series with his daughter.
At the foundation of the series, the four elements themselves are a key component of the Buddhist religion. Fire, earth, water, and air are considered to be the four of five great elements or “Mahābhūta” that exist physically but also represent basic human functions.
