I'll admit it. I'm a huge fan of "Game of Thrones." It's easily one of my favorite shows on TV right now. It has an incredibly complex story, equally complex characters, a great setting, lots of twists and turns, and it's just plain fun to watch. I'm also sad that we have to wait a year after each season finale for the premier of the next season to air.
I'll also admit that there's another show currently in between seasons that I'm dying to see when the new episodes premier later this year. A show that I believe has an equally engaging story, equally complex characters and setting, and is full of equally shocking twists. Is it another show on HBO? Is it on Showtime? No, actually. It's an animated show on Nickelodeon entitled "The Legend of Korra." Warning: spoilers ahead.
For those who haven't seen the show, it's a sequel to another series just as breathtaking called Avatar - the Last Airbender, which, in my opinion, is one of the best shows to ever be on television. The series is set roughly 80 years after the original series, in a progressive nation called the Republic, which is made up of descendants of members of the other four nations of the world, each corresponding to one of the four elements. Each nation has "benders," who are born with the ability to manipulate the elements to do things like fight, heal wounds, and generally make life easier. Bending is part of their culture and society, making each nation incredibly detailed and distinct from one another. The main character, Korra, is an "Avatar" - a continuous reincarnation of the only person in the world who can "bend" all four elements. The story involves her and her friends as they uncover the actions of an underground crime network of people who believe bending is evil and are attempting to cleanse the world of it through force, coercion, propaganda, and political conspiracy. Along the way, hearts are broken, people lose everything they hold dear, and people die on both sides. Doesn't exactly sound like Rocky and Bullwinkle or Looney Tunes, does it?
This show is just one of many that are supposedly geared towards children and young teens, but which contain more mature, complex themes. If you look at cartoons from the 90s and back, despite what the nostalgics say, they're not very engaging at all, and surely not "better" if you look at them from a literary standpoint. As a child of the late 80s and early 90s, looking back on the shows I used to love, a lot of them are things I would never watch again. They were highly serialized with no continuity, and the characters usually only had one trait that made them memorable, such as having a big appetite, a word they repeated over and over, or maybe the weapons they used in a G-rated fight. Still using Avatar as an example, one can see how much it's changed. Every episode either contributes directly to the story, or creates details that are used in later episodes. Each character has more than just one distinguishing feature that makes them interesting. Toph Bei Fong, a prominent character from the original series, is a prime example of this.
When she is first seen on the show, she seems just like a rebellious kid with a bad attitude, but as the show goes on, you realize there's more to her than that. Growing up, she was sheltered immensely by her rich parents because they saw her as frail and helpless due to her total blindness. When she realized that she had an extraordinary ability - the ability to "see" through vibrations, she kept it secret from them because they wouldn't understand. In order to survive the madness of being stuck at home for her entire life, she began to sneak out and earn fame as a mysterious martial artist simply known as "the Blind Bandit." When she finally revealed to her parents who she was, they lost their minds and told her she was never allowed out of the house again, and to be guarded for the rest of her life to make sure of that. After running away from home, she was often seen by the main characters as being impatient and rebellious.
My point is, were this released in the 80s or 90s, that back story probably would not have been there, and we'd have little to no reason to like this character. Increasingly more are we seeing characters in so-called "kids' shows" with complexity like this. It isn't just Avatar either. Other examples abound. Who can forget Adventure Time's Ice King, who lost his fiance, his friends, and even his memories, as he was cursed by the magical object that kept him alive? Or Reboot's Matrix, who went from being an innocent, wide-eyed child to a gloomy, rage-filled renegade after seeing his home destroyed and his friends locked in an endless war?
It's not just television either. Even books that are considered to be for kids are increasing in complexity, maturity, and even length. Before it was published, the first book in the Harry Potter series was continuously rejected for being too long. Now, it's commonplace for kids as young as 9 or 10 to read books in excess of 300 pages. The themes in the books are also getting darker. Fights are bloodier, main characters die, and characters aren't simply representations of morality anymore, as they were in books like the Chronicles of Narnia. They have flaws, and sometimes the line between good and evil is blurred to the point where one finds themselves criticizing the actions of the heroes and praising the actions of the villains from time to time. There are even some authors for children and young adults that I find to be much better than adult authors that write in the same genre. Horror, for example, isn't really something I feel is that scary anymore. If one reads Stephen King or Dean Koontz, for example, they feature very good characters, good settings, and an incredibly creepy rising action. The climax, however, is where they fall flat. All too often do these authors tone down their creepiness by introducing a climax that tends to be very tame that, in my opinion, talks down to the reader and leaves me not feeling scared, but feeling cheated because I wasn't scared. One of my favorite new authors is Neal Shusterman, an author for young adults whose horror stories disturb me to no end. One such masterpiece is his novel entitled "Dread Locks," which I will explain (and spoil) below:
It's essentially a modern day take on the Medusa myth, where a high school aged boy befriends a girl who turns out to be Medusa, still alive after thousands of years due to being not only immortal, but indestructible. Instead of snakes for hair, she has these strange dreadlocks that seem to move and sway on their own if you look closely enough. She constantly wears sunglasses, but if she takes them off to look at you, she doesn't just immediately turn you to stone. It's much more disturbing than that. After she looks at you, she changes something inside you to give you an impulse to constantly eat and drink things that are high in mineral content, like mud, sand, or even milk. Over time, the minerals slowly make you sluggish and grey in color, until about a month later, when you freeze up as a statue. The book details this transformation quite vividly. In the end, the main character is befriended by Medusa and turned into a gorgon. Wanting to stop her, and not wanting to live with the constant desire to turn people to stone, they get into a stare-down and both turn to stone. In the epilogue, the main character talks about how he's still aware of himself, and he mentions that they'll stay as statues, staring at each other until erosion finally kills them.
Hot dang, this is for kids?! This is the kind of thing that would have been banned 20 years ago. Heck, when I was a kid I read Goosebumps, which weren't really that scary. I read my fair share of Shusterman's novels when I was 22 and had trouble sleeping every now and then.
Before I close, here's a message for the adults, both of the young and old varieties, who think that reading a kids' book or watching a kids' movie or TV show is beneath them - maybe a few years ago, you'd be right, but in this day and age, kids' media is comparable in quality and entertainment value to adult media. Yes, there are still the horrible, one-dimensional books and cartoons, but if you know which ones to check out, you'll find yourself pleasantly surprised. Below, I will include a list of films, shows, and books that I consider to be more than worth getting invested in. Thanks for reading my first blog, and I hope my train of thought style didn't turn anyone off.
Books:
JK Rowling's Harry Potter Series
Neal Shusterman's Dark Fusion Trilogy
Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan Trilogy
Suzanne Collins' Gregor the Overlander series and Hunger Games Trilogy
John Flanagan's Ranger's Apprentice Series
Shows:
Avatar - the Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra
Adventure Time with Finn and Jake
Star Wars, the Clone Wars (not the one directed by Genndy Tartakovsky)
Regular Show
Batman, the Animated Series and Batman Beyond
Reboot (from the second season onward)
Tron Uprising
Movies:
Up
Spirited Away
Rise of the Guardians
Legend of the Guardians
Wreck-it Ralph
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