longer.blue

Lucky to be Born just completely obsessed with Zuko Alone. genuine fucking peak. the way it quietly strips away all the absurdity characteristic of ATLA to focus in on just one character, whose developing arc has up to this point been underexplored but vastly overdetermined is the first time that the show, already brilliant in many episodes, truly shows what it is capable of from a character study perspective. Zuko Alone isn't solely a story about the character we've begun to understand at this point in the narrative, within the larger context of that narrative (although it is built up to well and very consequential later), but rather, it's a story about the weight of memory, and how our choices now are shaped by the same forces that made us and we still cannot escape. the episode’s structure alternates between two plots, the present and the past. in the present, Zuko, recently separated from his caring uncle Iroh, enters an impoverished Earth Kingdom village. there he befriends a peasant family, heavy with loss from the war, and through this he learns that the village is being oppressed terribly by a group of Earth soldiers who have hung back from the front to exploit the already-poor villagers (notably, continuing Book 2’s theme of refusing a simple Earth Good/Fire Evil binary). the past shows the story of Zuko’s relationship with his sister, a major series antagonist Azula, through the lens of time period leading up to the ascension of their father Ozai into the crown of the Fire Lord, even though he is the younger son who was never destined to inherit. by the end of the “present” plot, Zuko has saved the poor family from the cruel soldiers, but in doing so he revealed his identity and was rejected by the villagers he had saved because of his continuing identity in spite of his present choices, not allowing him unambiguous closure. by the end of the “past” plot, Fire Lord Azulon has died and Ozai has ascended in his place, although the mechanism for this displacement of his elser brother Iroh’s birthright remains unclear. Hiding behind a curtain with Azula when they're assumed to have left, Zuko witnesses Ozai asking Azulon to revoke Iroh’s birthright. Azulon is enraged at the idea of betraying his firstborn, and says that Ozai must be punished. Zuko flees from the terrifying scene, but Azula remains, watching with a sadistic grin. Azula later informs Zuko with glee that after his departure, Azulon had ordered Ozai to kill his own son, so that he too may know the grief of losing a son like Iroh has recently experienced. the next day when Zuko wakes up, his loving mother who was his only friend in the world is missing and implied dead. Fire Lord Azulon has died also; it is claimed that his dying wish was for Ozai to succeed him, which he does. in ATLA, we never find out what was actually said after Zuko left, or what happened that night, because Prince Zuko himself does not know. again, like in the “present” timeline, the story is defined partially by its refusal of any meaningful closure for Zuko or the audience. very unusually for western 24-minute animation, there is no explicit narrative symmetry between the present and past portions of the episode; events do not recur or even greatly rhyme. their common thread is Zuko himself, the dynamics of abuse and mystery that shaped him and made him into the complicated, haunted person with a heart latent with genuine goodness that we have been slowly coming to know since the first season, now having to move through the world as an exile, trying to find meaning and purpose in a world that has repeatedly systematically refused it to him. their other shared thread is the above discussed absence of closure. some episodes ago, Zuko had said of his father Ozai, “He says Azula was born lucky. He says I was lucky to be born.” this is shown in full in the “past” plot of this episode; Azula is a genius, a ruthless prodigy whose sociopathic tendencies (particularly as directed at Zuko, although also everyone else she considers weaker than herself) endear her to her father and grandfather and traumatize her brother, who in the present is seen whispering to himself “Azula always lies, Azula always lies…” as a sort of mantra. Zuko, by comparison, is a normal young boy; he is reclusive, close with his gracious and kind mother, generally sweet and sympathetic despite already harboring trauma, unextraordinary at firebending. he is, in short, an embarrassment to his father and to the Fire Lord, a fact he carries with him into the present. in the present, he is attempting to hide his identity. in order to avoid both local ire for his connection to the Fire Nation and the ruthless pursuit of his sister to arrest or kill him, he enters the village positioning himself as a wanderer with no name. when he disassociates himself from his name, he is also attempting to disassociate himself from his history, consciously or unconsciously believing that if he can forget Ozai and Azula, he will be able to find a new identity and purpose apart from his relationship with them. this is doomed, however, as once he does reveal his strength and his true identity in the course of protecting the innocent Earth villagers, they immediately turn on him despite his protection. Zuko cannot escape his past so easily; if he is to be redeemed in finding that new destiny he so desires, he will eventually have to confront the external and internal demons of his past that continue to haunt him. we do not see this at the end of Zuko Alone, however; all we see is Zuko riding off into the wasteland, having found and lost human connection, still confused and haunted and alone once more. in telling this layered and dense story, Zuko Alone bends genre conventions. completely absent here is the light-hearted adventure story of Aang’s mission to master the four elements and end the war, instead telling this one tightly-designed story that takes itself and its stakes deadly seriously with few if any serious concessions to Nickelodeon comedy. the most comparable episode to this one is Book 1 Episode 12, The Storm, which uses paired flashbacks of the period of Aang’s life beginning with his revelation that he was the Avatar through the time he was frozen in the iceberg immediately (from his own perspective) before the show begins, with Zuko’s agni kai and banishment, to draw a symmetry between the two boys and begin establishing Zuko (who had been only an antagonist up to that point) as the co-protagonist with (and eventually as a part of) Team Avatar he would grow into being. there are critical differences between The Storm and Zuko Alone, however, as The Storm draws a comparison between two very different characters by narrative symmetry in the trajectory-setting moments of their past. Zuko Alone, on the other hand, is a deep examination of just one character, showing not by symmetry but by thematic and symbolic layering how he was formed by the childhood he still cannot escape, even in abandoning his search for Aang, his uncle, the warmth he had inherited from his uncle and from his mother, and even his own name. as a synthesis of Western and Ronin film conventions surrounding the lonely wanderer who becomes a reluctant hero, the episodes utilizes elements of the visual and directorial languages of both genres to tell a story that is not fully reducible to either. in the context of 2000s children’s media, it is fully exceptional, daring to tell a nuanced story of a fully imagined character, dealing with real stakes both in his present and his past that don't deflate into puns or slapstick. having recently cut his topknot (in another nod to samurai tropes, impressively given the demographic allowed to speak for itself visually without explicit explanation), Zuko has begun his journey of reconciliation of with his own identity, encountering in a fully embodied way the remainder between his present and his past, who he wants to be and the forces beyond his control that have shaped him. here, he does not begin to find anything resembling reconciliation or redemption, only rejection and hatred as thanks for his genuine moral heroism; but he finds in a way that the audience can deny and he will not be able to deny forever that even despite everything he has been through and continues to go through, he still went back to protect the innocent. the little boy who once, in an imperfect but better life, fed turtle-ducks with his kind mother is still in there somewhere, and only in facing his past will he prove that he can rise to be more than just “lucky to be born”.