@@brunobisio2406 I just apply the Superman "world of cardboard" logic and say Appa never flies at top speed. If he decides he doesn't wanna go fast, what's the Gaang gonna do, tickle him? (Disclaimer: I haven't watched the show since I was half my age, so if I'm forgetting something, I blame that.)
I thought here is an explanation: Maps are wrong, and the characters are kids with little navigation skills. They didn't know how exactly maps are wrong and where to go, so travelled in zigzags and it took them weeks to find things. But after visiting all the places and having mental map they learned to just go straight, which takes a day.
@@chillyavian7718yeah, it means god from a machine to indicate an appearance of a divine being to help the main character and basically work in favor for the plot
@@mukaddastaj5223 Okay, interesting! There is so much more as of ye unexplored in the original ATLA show, don't you think?? People put on a pedestal, and that leaves all the dirt left untouched. Which is a shame if you ask me.
It seemed obvious to me that there was a difference between “travel leisurely” and “travel like your life depended on it.” In Book 1, the gaang took plenty of time to sightsee and rescue people or inspire rebellions. In Book 3, Sokka mentions food and potty breaks during their attempt to keep on track with the invasion schedule. I rather doubt anyone was taking such pauses during the Comet arc.
It hey where hustling all the time given Appa’s travel speed he can go from the south to north poll in 2 days max. Meaning they deliberately choose to to continuously risk their lives being hunted by the fire nation when they could zip to the North poll by episode 8. Apps speed is near the speed of sound he can cross the globe a in a day.
Aang didn't even need energy bending. He had Ozai trapped with earth bending, just put more rock around him and keep an eye on him until Sozin comet goes away and for Toph to arrive with some scrap metal from an airship to bend restraints from.
I remember an episode early in season 1 (I think it was Warriors of Kyoshi) where Iroh shows a map of the world with locations all over where the avatar had been sighted. The implication was that they can travel all over rather quickly on Appa. If we take out the one "still weeks away from the Northern Water Tribe" line, most of the other traveling by air can be done very quickly.
They had to fly around the active war zones and the whole fire nation. The coast of the earth kingdom was covered by fire nation colonies. Weeks away probably was due to the zigzagging they had to do. Or could have been hyperbole
Something else to note is that they had a lot fewer resources at the beginning, so a lot of stops were in order. In the ending they can afford to bring Appa and 2 weeks of food. And as for the fleet, I imagine the point of the attack wasn't to LITERALLY burn the entire earth kingdom to the ground.
@@KarolOfGutovo unironically you may have accidentally solved it. Who’s to say that the map we get of the ATLA planet has the continents drawn to relative scale rather than scaled to fit relevant geographical data? We see that Ba Sing Se has its walls on the map though I doubt they’d be visible from space. Maybe the northern water tribe is just a small island/ collection of islands in the middle of the giant northern arctic sea and it’s not only separated from the northernmost part of the earth kingdom by a strait lol
- Map projection. If you go further from the Equator, the map becomes more and more distorted and the lands look bigger than their real size. - In the first season, Aang wanted to see some places, so they had many stops. - They also wanted to avoid the firebenders, so they didn't fly in a straight line. - Sometimes they got lost in the first season when they were flying. Later, their navigation skills improved. - I think gliding is faster than flying on Appa.
Perhaps Aang just overestimated how long it would take to get to the North. If that is the case and Appa's is much faster, then it kind of checks, with much stretching in between.
Yep. Not everything a character says is necessaraly the truth. Every time Aang gets out of his body, he says "I'm in the spirit world". But the spirit world actually is another dimension, like in tlok. Getting out of his body wasn't really going to the spirit world
I think it's pretty obvious when Aang says "weeks away from the North Pole" he means that they're gonna keep stopping in every place he wants to visit before reaching the North Pole, if they were flying straight there it would have taken the rest of that week tops
You mean to say that this kid is all afraid of not having enough time to master all the elements before the fire nation destroys the world, but hes actually just going on a sightseeing tour that will multiply the time by like 4????
@@Snyper077 Well, that *is* exactly what they do, even in later seasons when schedules and strict timetables are brought up. Aang needed to ride a snake, Katara needed that scroll, Sokka needed validation. When urgency is required, so is Aang's culture, Katara's charity work, Sokka's inferiority complex and Toph's scams. They gaang takes more detours than a casual roadtrip.
@@Snyper077well, yeah. That’s like one of Aang’s greatest faults. He has a tendency to avoid conflict and to push negative thoughts away in favor of more fun, more cheery, more happy, albeit more naive thoughts. His greatest personal battle at the beginning of the show is his reluctance to own up to being the avatar and rejecting the responsibility that comes with it. Even at the end of the show, even with all the experience and wisdom and personal growth, he still would rather just put off the fire lord fight until after the comet. Just, straight up changed their plans to “oh well day of black sun fell through, we’ll just wait till after the comet so Aang can do it the right way.” What was their plan? It almost seems like they were implying Aang would need minimum a few months if not 1 more full year of training. Not only was he a noob at firebending but even Toph said his earthbending was lacking. I have no doubt that despite being stressed out about Roku’s comet deadline, his childish, gut instinct is to do fun happy vacation stuff instead. Yes, theres some cognitive dissonance going on I think when Aang is stressing about the travel time to North Pole being weeks.. despite having mini vacays planned. That’s his immaturity showing, that he fully prioritizes fun over responsibility so much so that it is just a fact to him that travel time to the north will be weeks. That’s probably how he’s used to traveling as a nomadic monk; just going with the flow and hopping around from place to place, not taking a straight shot to your destination with 0 distraction and minimum down time for sleep and bathroom breaks. In the finale though, everyone is officially in game mode. They are solely focused on defeating the firelord and know how to navigate every continent. Truthfully, I think the ATLA world is smaller than irl Earth, and I think people just underestimate how lackadaisically they were traveling in book 1.
I don't like this explanation, even if it's true. Because that makes the world feel extremely tiny. But it is actually plausible, just like how small the fire nation looks, during the invasion.
Loads of good answers here that I think are worth considering. Here is one I've not seen mentioned. In Season 1 & 2 they are traveling through an active warzone all the time. The gang are constantly having to navigate through an evolving front line. They regularly find themselves walking into Fire Nation territory and have to either retreat from or circumnavigate the Fire Nation forces. By Season 3 this is no longer the case. They get through the Fire Nation super quick as the war never reached there and no-one knows to even look for them. In the Earth Kingdom, the last remaining city Ba Sing Se has fallen and the remaining unified resistance is defeated on the Day of Black Sun. The war is over and the Fire Nation has won. Their military shifts focus from active combat to that of an occupying army. They need smaller concentrations of forces spread widely to keep the peace over a subjugated people. They do not need large concentrations of forces as there are no more big armies to fight. In fact by time Sozin's Comet has returned they would most likely have removed a significant portion of their forces out of the Earth Kingdom so they don't get destroyed by Ozai and so that the Fire Nation can finally defeat the Northern Water Tribe. It is a lot easier and faster to travel through a country when it is no longer an active warzone.
Appa speed at the end is basically the speed of sound minimum to cover the distance he did. Appa could have gotten them to the north poll in a single day, IE episode 8
It's not a great excuse but, you got to remember that season 1 wasn't just, let's go straight to the northpool. They gaang stopped a lot on there way over there. Sometimes more than a whole day. And the even stopped before they even had to. So although it doesn't explain it all. It does make the situation a little more realistic
I mean honestly, if you think about it, Aang may never have traveled all that much before being frozen in the iceberg. Also, by the end of the show maybe Appa was able to fly faster than in the beginning. Realistically then the gang may have been traveling slower in the first few seasons because they didn't know if they could travel any faster or for as long as they really could have been, example being maybe they all thought Appa needed frequent breaks to rest. Again, it could all be caulked up to them being kids that didn't really understand how to navigate accurately yet and that meant they traveled slower to not miss where they were going. Only to later master long distance travel and be able to move with much more certainty towards where they wanted to go.
The whole thing is not about it like it takes weekes to get from fire nation to north pole as katara said and he says that theyre traveling distances Thats probably 2 times bigger than between fire nation and northpole in at least 24 hours
@@Lime0682 Difference between a 747 air liner, and a Cessna 157. Both are flying craft, but travel at different speeds. On takes a day to go A-B, the other takes a week for the same A-B trip. My point still stands, going from the south pole to the north could have taken a few months because they didn't really know where they were going. In the later seasons the team have had plenty of experience traveling long distances and even the case of Aang going from the earth kingdom to the fire nation in 12 hours could be backed by the fact he was flying in a hurricane. Zipping along in winds up to 200mph.
Valid critique and I am glad this actually lived up to the "nobody talks about it" but I'd say in season 1, they were galivanting and sightseeing while in season 3, they were on a deadline. Also, the first time you take a journey is usually the longest. They probably figured they could just fly straight ahead without breaks and all.
This is a great video and something I had actually been really curious about before. The only point I would make is we see exactly where Aang takes off from at the start of season 3 to make it to the Crescent Island. It’s the same pier that the gaang stopped at in the Waterbending Scroll. Since we know that’s on the west coast of the Earth Kingdom it’s not a huge stretch to say Aang could make the trip overnight to the closest Fire Nation island. Especially with Yue helping him
I think most of it can be explained by: - The map is not to scale (extremly screwd by dispaying everything in 2d instead of on a globe, by Earthkingdom mapmakers, or just representetive, instead of excact) - A lot of stops to sightsee, shop and give Appa some rest (consider that Zuko and Iroh can keep up with them by tiny rusty ship in season 1 and are actually faster in Ba Sing Se by raft and on foot in season 2) - Appa is not a vehicle with a constant speed, he gets tired, distracted has to take breaks - Water and Air bending speeding up journeys when necessairy - Airflows and waterstreams exist, so it might be faster to travel east to west then south to north by glider/appa - Spirits exist and want to influence the characters so they might be able to spead them up, especially after they activly helped Yue and La - Ozai either doesn't want to burn the whole Earth Kingdom, just wants to show his power, or he's not actually a good warlord and overestimated his Nation, or he's lost it like Azula
@@rayanvij3457 I think all vehicles, including the air ships were 3d animated, so they could have put 500 on the screen without a problem. I guess it's more about them still beeing recognizable and the framing. Also if there were many more it wouldn’t have been possible for Toph, Soka and Suki to destroy them all.
@@raccoonja-ronja I was think that too destroying them all would not have been possible. I believe you are right that all the vehicles are 3D. Maybe Sokka and the gang do not need to destroy them all destroy as many as possible then when Aang ends the war order the teaming airships to stop?
"Guys am I missing something obvious here?" It's a problem they knew most people wouldn't care much about so didn't bother trying too hard to work the story around it. The fact that you haven't seen a single person talk about for over a decade proves it.
The reason atla is succesful is because fantasy worlds will always have inconsistencies, but they never deviate to point out every inconsistency. Its great focus on the writing.
I think the answer and the reason why no one talks about it, is very obvious: Sometimes you have to sacrifice certain rules established, in order to tell a story that would otherwise be impossible. If they had stuck with their timeline and travel distances, it would have either resulted in the plot dragging and having to fill in time. Either that or to not tell the story. Either ways, I think the authors made the right choice. The character development in those episodes was worth not paying attention to the distance that they needed to travel. This is also why people don't critize this part. Too busy enjoying those moments..
6:49, I don’t see why that’s a problem at all. It makes perfect sense to me that people will be more forgiving of plot holes in a good story than in a bad one.
I don't fully agree. You determine how good a show is partially by the immersion (of which in world logic is a big part). Why I think it is not a problem for atla is that honestly no one noticed. I am usually quite triggered by lack of logic or inconsistencies. But in avatar I never noticed these things. Maybe also because it is a cartoon. The faces the characters make are already so unrealistic that the travel disparaties just seem like part of cartoon gimmick.
I mean, raw distance might not be the only factor when traveling by sky bison. Headwinds, tailwinds, weather conditions, need to plan places for Appa to eat, avoiding active war zones that they don't yet have the skills to fight their way out of, etc would likely mean that they don't get to take a straight path.
I think you answered your own question, fantastic character development/ the culmination of Aang, Zuko and Sokkas’ arcs pretty much outweigh trivial issues like ETA. Nobody watched avatar because of its consistency of time but rather the growth of its’ characters.
Other shows develop chataters speed or travel method as well during the story, not only character and fighting skills. It just the author here forgot to develop Appa's speed but it is suddenly here.
I always just took it like at the beginning they took long roundabout paths because Ang was shown that path by his teacher to see all the fun attractions along the way. Plus they were inexperienced and needed to stop more often for supplies. But then as time passed they learned more direct routes and loaded up more efficiently on food, and maybe even less weight for their supplies allowing Appa to go faster. And maybe he strengthened his flying muscles? 😂
When Sokka says “I think we’re lost” in the first season while looking at the map with a bunch of travel lines on it, that showed that their “weeks” to get to the North Pole, was not a straight shot and explains why they took so long
Hmm, you forgot one important thing. The Earth Kingdom is like a self-praising empire. Most of the maps are made by their scholars. It could be possible that the Earth Kingdom just exaggerates its size on the map like real-world bigger countries do. That would explain a lot. 😀
@@CrashCubeZeroOne That's only when you're using the Mercator projection, or something similar; if you're using something like the Equirectangular projection, then the poles would look flattened.
I just chalk it up to them having almost no idea what they are doing at the start, if you remember book one, they seemed to be lost half the time, and the rest of the time they were looking for supplies and or goofing off “he’s obviously a master of evasion” = “you have no idea where we’re going, do you. (Aang) well, I know it’s near water…” That and for the ocean parts of the trip, Appa probably needed to rest on whatever islands they could find, as when they arrived at the northern water tribe, he was falling asleep mid flight. As for the abruptly faster travel times at the end, you could say that (1) they were more experienced with travel. (2) less obstacles like enemy armies. (3) they probably got much better maps, supplies, confidence, support. There are many things that can slow you down in a world at war. And they had just successfully attacked the fire nation capitol, which probably had the entire fire nation’s military completely reorganizing, thus opening more direct routes for the heroes to travel, plus the fire nation’s military was probably already overwhelmed with occupying Ba Sing Se
I think taking a look at the maps humanity draw of the earth in the 1400s-1700s (and beyond) sheds some light on an in universe explanation for this...
This rabbit hole goes far deeper. Remember, there was a strike among television writers that happened in the middle of book 3. On top of that is how the show was continually renewed for more episodes over the course of it's runtime. I.e., it was not written all at once. So this story, in my mind, extends to the production of the entire show overall. And I have been patiently waiting for someone to pick up on at least one thread of that story. Of course, this goes beyond the world of the show itself. Which is why I have been hesitant to mention it. Being that the creators are still going strong, I want to follow their story as it continues to unfold. And wait until later to examine the production of this show behind the scenes. I will say, I am convinced it's a fascinating story all the same! Thank you for sharing this video!!!
*You are right, Shows are held to different standards.* In "Game of Thrones" the same issue occurs, and people ripped it to pieces. but there was a difference: AtlA was a good show and the amount of story and development we got from the end was worth suspending your disbelief. GoT was not so good, and the idea of a guy running home at mach13 to send a crow to another continent for Dragonlady to make a decision and fly over quickly while the battle takes place. That was just another crazy plotline that didn't make sense and/or add anything worthwhile to the story. especially given how nothing intense was happening while this time skip happened. Like GOT was doing it in the middle of a battle. Avatar literally had a beach episode. Having The masters meet up with the team one last time and having them show how they saw their previous students be masters themself now, or Ihro and Zuko with the deserved ending to their story before the final. it was worth suspending your disbelief for a moment. That's why this problem isn't talked about, cause actually I'm sure I heard another YT video make a joke about it before. But the truth is, it doesn't matter all things considered.
I'm glad its not just me who noticed. They spend weeks to months traveling from one side of the world to the other, while they travelled to one side and back to the other in just a day.
Apparently uses air bending to fly and it’s safe to assume while everyone else was training appa likely also was improving. Aang is also able to use his air bending on his glider so an anger/frustration fueled flight can be just as fast although taxing as an appa flight
You have a valid point, it doesn't make a lot of sense to travel a whole continent in a day. In my head canon Sokka, Toph en Suki traveled near the north point of the map, which is shorter because the world of avatar is round. They traveled with a Eel hound, the fastest animal in the Avatar world. Katara and Zuko traveled from the sea strait to the capital of the fire nation at full speed. (poor Appa would have been exhausted)
Anyone else get the absurd headcanon that powerful earthbenders like Bumi and Toph, maybe even the giant moles, just casually bend continents like Kyoshi just to mess with the Gaang?
I can't believe you never brought up Zuko and Katara's bonding trip. Where they go from the Western air Temple, to the archipelago that includes whaletail island, to the fire nation, back to the Western air temple on Appa in like, three days.
Here is a simple explaination: instead of going straight they are going in zigzags considering all the random stops they keep making. Iroh and zuko address this in the 4th episode of season 1. Throughout most of the series traveling is treated as a journey while in the finale its treated as a race. Team avatar had no sence of urgency until they found out about ozais plans. Muktiple times has aang proven to be a free-spirited procrastinator. I dont think its a coincidence that the group can suddenly travel so quickly the moment he is removed from the equasion.
The scale issue of the airship fleet in the finally always bugged me, too. And also the fact that they are scorching a literally empty, desolate, dusty landscape. From what was established, I would have imagined something like the rumbling from attack on titan, or at least a rain of fire on several major cities of the earth kingdom or something. What we got in the show was not even a real threat to anyone. And yes, I am aware that they had to keep it family friendly, but I argue that they didn’t need to show people and cities actually getting incinerated, if they didn’t want to. The fleet could have started their flame throwers a few kilometres away from Omashu or Basingsei or another major city (because of the Bumi and White lotus storylines) and burn some acres and farms etc. but so that refugees and citizens in the cities would actually see and fear what was approaching them. This would have created a real sense of urgency for Sokka, Toph and Suki as well as Aang. Overall the burning the ground doesn’t really make sense with all the fire nation citizens and soldiers present on the ground…
I think one of the solutions would have been not to have Iroh at Ba Sing Se, but somewhere much closer to Ember Island, so they wouldn't have to travel all that way and back. Next to that they could have used a longer time period, such as a week, maybe two, instead of just 4 days.
Talking about time scale, someone had done the hard work of lining up the moon phases to our calendar. It isn't 100% but it's the best estimate theory I've come across.
I noticed this awhile ago. That's why, as much as the movie get crucified (including by me), M. Knight Shamalan's film going and saying he has like 1 or 2 years before the comet arrives instead of the end of the summer, makes it feel less rushed and having more time to correctly scale the world. Also as a side note, I like how Shamalan balanced the fire nations firebending in that movie, in that they need a pre-existing flame to bend fire, making it feel more like the other 3 needing their elements to be present to be able to bend. Only Iroh was able to 'produce fire' because of his teaching from the dragons, learning how to harness the inner fire of his spirit to fire bend.
I chalk in up to a combination of things. First and most important is its cooler if everything happens really fast from a story perspective which is the actual answer. Secondly the group actually knows where they are going now and traveling there becomes much easier. I'm pretty sure out of the group only Sokka and Suki have any actual navigational skills. When Sokka is being taught to use a sword Katara and Aang attempt and fail to figure out where they are on a map that shows this pretty well. Also while flying is faster its also probably way harder to keep your bearings on where you are. With what the group is working with Sokka probably only really knows exactly where to go by the stars like he's sailing a ship but once they've been there and have been flying for a while they all probably get better at it. And finally most of the time when we see anyone traveling basically anywhere at the start of the show they aren't rushing to get there and can afford to get distracted and lost. I doubt when they first starting flying places that they checked very often on if they were going in the right direction while just sitting around and talking.
I noticed that in the last season the world felt smaller because they traveled up and down the world very fast. I ignored for sake of personal enjoyment.
Does it ever say anywhere that Sozins comet only lasts for one day? I looked up Halleys comet just to check and got this response back: When Halley’s Comet is visible from Earth, it can typically be seen in the night sky for several weeks to a few months. The exact duration depends on various factors, including its position relative to the Earth and the Sun.
i was always frustrated about the inconsistency of this show's later half when it comes to travelling... but i've never brought it up so i'm glad someone clipped a yap session regarding this lmao
Fans can try to give a potential headcanon explanation but the truth is it’s just an error in the show. It doesn’t mean atlas bad, it just means it’s a show. You gotta be able to admit that even things you like can do wrong.
Well, it is a show, but its not like it is unexplainable, the kids didnt have experience travelling at the beggining, and aang wanted to visit a lot of places. And more important then everything, appa probably gained experience on flying during the year they traveled, so he probably got used and learned how to go faster
4:00 it's my understanding that the ship was outside of the earth kingdom already. In season 1 they had Aang's "schedule" where they made several stops. The map gets distorted around the poles due to the Cartesian representation. But I think the actual answer is that it's just not something they took very seriously.
My best guess as to why the travel time is so inconsistent is the pace at which they are traveling. The gaang Could’ve been traveling at a leisurely pace throughout the first season, then Appa really started booking it and flying “red eye” throughout the rest of the series.
Others have pointed out that travel time varies with your knowledge of the regions your traversing as well as with the consequences for lateness, but I'd like to also point out that AtLA's world could just have longer years and days than earth.
A few things: First of all, “weeks” without a specific number attached can mean anywhere from 2 weeks to a couple of months. That alone solves most of the problem. Second, as demonstrated in (iirc) the 4th episode of the series, the Gaang was traveling without much urgency to the northern water tribe (“he is clearly a master of evasive maneuvers,” “you have no idea where you’re going, do you”). They were traveling urgently to ba sing se and almost every other place that seems inconsistent with the quote in season 1. Third, it is likely the flat map we see is distorted, just like all flat maps. Fourth, it’s likely that Appa and the rest of them becoming stronger over the course of the show resulted in faster travel ability. Fifth, different travel methods like Jesus lizards and lion turtles may be faster than sky bison. Sixth, you’re taking one unspecific, possibly even inaccurate quote to concretely establish the distance and time for the entirety of all travel across the entire series. All these things added together make it a much smaller problem, arguably not a problem at all. It seems like you’re trying to be the one to find new details/problems about the show moreso than trying to make sure that all the different variables regarding those details are accounted for in the conversation, and whether it’s actually a “problem” that decreases the quality of the show. Seventh… you don’t need to yell, dude. It’s a kids’ show. The reason nobody talks about the supposed travel time inaccuracies is because they don’t matter to the story.
ALSO: 2D maps always either lose distance, direction, area, shape/angles due to the fact that you are mapping a 3D sphere on a 2D plane. The only thing that can be retained is direction + any of the other mentioned thing that can be displayed at the same time. The fidelity of all aspects mentioned is simply not possible. But there are maps that compromise on these so it turns out showing everything a little distorted but still close enough to the real world. Distances from the fire nation islands and the north pole might be greater irl, however, that would also suggest that the south and north pole, which should be the furthest points apart from each other geographically due to the names North and South and the snow coverage. But it still "just" took GAANG less time than expected. I agree with you on the doubtful fidelity of travel-distance-time. Just wanted to point out that the map displayed and used there by the GAANG might have big time distortions both for local and global navigation.
In terms of Serpents Pass looking way bigger the distance the map not being to scale is consistant with most maps IRL. The path to Ba Sing Se is a prominent location thus will be made bigger on common map.
i think the closest you can say is that "weeks away from the north pole" was at their current not exactly fast pace, sure following the solstice they'd pick up the pace but aang is still in see the world mode as well also I think he under estimated Appa's cruise speed dramatically remember Appa and and travel from the southern air temple to near enough the southern watertribe that katara aang andsokka could get back to said southern water tribe by appa swimming later that afternoon. the travel does get a little contrived in the finale though I will agree
Me and my friend circle have brought up all these points many times but usually we just drop it because it’ll simply never be worked through by devoting a ton of thought to it. You just gotta swallow this one
Theory 1 The gaang had horrible navigation skills and overestimated travel time Theory 2 Appa was slower in season one because he had recently gotten out of the iceberg
Probably appa and aang didnt use to travel by themselves before aang vanished, and during the show, aang and his friends learn the geography from the world, at the same time appa gets more and more used to fly, which means he learned how to go faster and got used to fly for a long time, instead of getting so tired as he used to in season 1 Also, we dont know how fast is the lizard that took team sokka to the airships, he could be like super fast
Finally someone else who has the same concerns over the travel times as I've always had! One way I had tried to reconcile this "serious" issue is that the map of the avatar world is just scaled weirdly. Like the Mercator projection but instead the west and east sides of it are scaled way up than in real life. So, that would mean that the avatar world is actually quite narrow on WE direction and pretty long NS. That would explain why traveling from S to N pole could take a month or two but traveling E to W can take only days. I still don't like it and would much prefer the show was more consistent with it's timing but alas :D
The funniest thing is - Ozai literally cannot fly from the shore of the Earth kingdom to Ba Sing Se in 1 day during the comet. They either had to get pretty close to the city and wait for the comet or run our of their superfire mid-purging
Well he does have soldiers in Ba sing se. If Iroh and the white lotus hadn't conducted a 5 man invasion on the the soldiers might have done something. And honestly I think Ozai'a plan was also just to really fucking demoralise the earth kingdom rather than realisticaly burn the continent to the ground.
Gah! At this rate I'll never write my own ATLA fic, because things like this will always bother me. On a related matter something I think many people overlook when they talk about ATLA timelines is that they think seasons apply to the whole world equally, they say the show starts in autumn but autumn for who? Most people don't seem to realize that when the northern hemisphere goes through autumn the southern one goes through spring and vice versa, the same thing happens with winter and summer, while on the equator there are not seasons; someone else in the comments also mentioned that something similar happes in regards to eclipses... Not that any of this detracts from the points you've made, I just think is something to consider, just because it meshes thematically with the avatar cicle air>water>eart>fire = autumn>winter>spring>summer, doesn't mean it's that simple, at least not if we're going for a world similar to our own. Your video was elucidating, this show was great, a great example of storytelling, I just wish it wasn't so hard to write stories in this setting where the world works semi realistically.
if I recall it correctly, despite how all the stories were done so flawlessly at the end, they still were lacking enough run-time that they were given for finale. so finale had to cut and compress a bit(I know it sounds crazy for a finale being 4 part episodes). just like how 'a week away' era of earlier seasons were being produced under lackadaisical publisher's eye, finale also were written slightly hastely compared to the mid-parts. maybe that also explains both cases' inconsistencies?
NO, I REFUSE TO SEE ANY FLAWS WITH THIS SHOW. EVEN THE BLATANT DEUS EX MACHINA WITH THE LION TURTLE OUT OF NOWHERE, THE TRAVEL INCONSiSTENCY, THE CLIFFHANGER REGARDING ZUKO'S MOTHER, ETC. Having said that: Imma now watch the video.
Achievement unlocked: Ba Sing Sa Spirit Portal. (You can now teleport to and from Ba Sing Sa from anywhere on the world map.) Korra: You're a liar! Chi Blocker: You should have been briefed about this!
This was a very interesting video, in that it opened my eyes to something that should have been so glaringly obvious. However, as interesting as it was, I just find that I am really biased towards certain inconsistencies than I am with others. Basically, speed of transportation in the lore of a story isn't one of my pet peeves, so I just don't really notice it unless I watch a video by an observant person like you that cares about that stuff. Personally, I find that I care more about power scaling (who can realistically beat who, what abilities should one possess, etc) and some logical progression in how a story is told. I've noticed, though, that there's actually levels to caring about this stuff. I, for example, care about it more than the average person in my environment, but thanks to the internet, I've discovered that I don't care about these things as much as some people. I hope this doesn't come off as a knock on people for being invested in their favourite pieces of media, though. It is always great to have discussions about these things, as that is what, to me, makes the art even greater.
This is actually a plus point of ATLA instead of being a negative one. Because I have seen many shows with many possible plothole almost nobody talks about. The plot holes which talked about is when writer fails to make the audience overlook the hole, ATLA managed to did this for 17 years almost I guess (if your video has been uploaded in the previous month)
I mean, I don't know if "no one" talks about it, it's been one of the things me and my friends have talked about the most, never online or in text though. But in my mind it's a pretty universal fact that time makes no sense at all in AtLA. They can cross some distances in weeks by air, Ang flies alone to places faster than it should be feasable, water travel is both super slow and extremely fast depending on what day it is (They invaded the fire nation! WITH BOATS! IN A DAY!). So I think the reason it's not talked about online so much is because we all just accept that it's nonsense :D
I've been seeing many people againist the argument by claiming they were taking stops at every location. And that's true. But the talk isn't about the places they stop at, instead about the time it takes them to get to those places. Throughout Season 1, it's emphasized how far away the Northern and Southern Tribes are. Like Katara says, "It's on the other side of the world." So it really seems like it's a far distance when it takes them a season to get there. Every time they stop somewhere, you get the sense they'd traveled a good distance. And when they reach the North Pole, you know they traveled an insane amount. If supposedly, they were able to fly on Appa from Ba Sing Se to the Fire Nation in ONE day (approximately 10 hours since the comet starts at night), then it makes the world more limited and way smaller than it seemed. Places that seemed to be far away are now a 3 minute flight in the show. You loose the sense of travel in season 1 since traveling "across the world" is no longer a big feat.
I always took the "burning the Earthkingdom to the ground" as "burning the part of the Earthkingdom to the ground that we haven't conquered yet", since it would make no sense to burn your own colonies. Since most of the northwest was firenation colonies and they had conquered Ba Sing Se, i'd guess that the plan was to burn only the southern part of the Earth Kingdom, which is a) smaller then the northern part and b) has the big desert in it, which they don't really need to burn, just the part around it. So while the area is still huge, is not quite as massive as the entirety of the Earth Kingdom as seen on the map.
For "taking weeks" I think they mean making multiple stops (food, water, bathroom, sleep) and accomodating for getting lost and or having to slow down in case of Fire Nation encounters Straight line, it probably doesn't take that long- especially if they navigate better at the end of the show Appa being up to it tho, is the bigger plot hole in my mind. For the burning of the Earth kingdom I look at it this way 1. Ozai is insane and overambitious 2. Forest fires might spread far enough to at least do more damage, probably not enough to burn the entire kingdom tho 3. They could target more settled areas but it doesn't seem to be the case at that moment 4. It could just be that they would set as much of it on fire as they can not *literally* all of it- might do enough damage to the nature, the wildlife and the towns/villages or just lower Earth Kingdom morale to a surrender Regardless, you're not dumb for this wracking your brain. But I can suspend my disbelief for it
Well… 1. Azula slipping into insanity blunted her ability to strategize and plan, which was the one area where she had Zuko’s beat. Notice how Azula runs physical circles around Zuko during that last fight but Zuko does not move. He is certain of his purpose and sure of himself. He has set his roots, and she cannot break them. Had the fight continued on, Zuko may well have won outright. 2. I would bet that Energybending was hinted at late in Season 2. Guru Pathik seemed to know when Aang had unlocked a chakra. How could he know that if he was not able to sense the energy flowing within Aang? Had Aang finished his training with Pathik he may have learned Energybending there. 3. Plot convenience.
That's the thing about good shows. If they are good enough, fans will ignore huge plot holes. But if the quality of the story and the show as a whole isn't great, then fans are gonna start picking apart the smaller things. Same with blockbuster movies with a lot of CGI. If the story is good, people don't care about the quality of the CGI but if the story isn't good, people will pick it and everything else apart.
Zuko’s honor is what enabled them to travel so fast, end of story
Meh,that checks
Lol
Fast travel only works after you have visited the location 😂
Fax
Dude never played pokemon 😂😅
@@tomassantoss Appa used Fly
Exactly‼, they've dropped pins📍
Skyrim logic lmao
Mike and Bryan have said that Appa travels at the speed of the plot.
So does that mean if they were to have a space ark appa can break the speed of the atmosphere
@@czms922If the plot demands it, yes
Maybe Appa was out of shape for being frozen an took time regain his speed, or maybe he went through puberty during season 2 and became a lot faster
@@brunobisio2406 I just apply the Superman "world of cardboard" logic and say Appa never flies at top speed. If he decides he doesn't wanna go fast, what's the Gaang gonna do, tickle him?
(Disclaimer: I haven't watched the show since I was half my age, so if I'm forgetting something, I blame that.)
@@czms922 wtf is the speed of the atmosphere?
I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought Ozais plan was stupid.
I thought here is an explanation:
Maps are wrong, and the characters are kids with little navigation skills. They didn't know how exactly maps are wrong and where to go, so travelled in zigzags and it took them weeks to find things. But after visiting all the places and having mental map they learned to just go straight, which takes a day.
So basically they unlocked fast travel
Is the term "Deus Machina" relevant to this explanation?? Or am I thinking of the something else???
@@callmeswivelhips8229 Deus Ex Machina effectively means that the rules of the story are broken to forward the plot.
@@chillyavian7718yeah, it means god from a machine to indicate an appearance of a divine being to help the main character and basically work in favor for the plot
@@mukaddastaj5223 Okay, interesting! There is so much more as of ye unexplored in the original ATLA show, don't you think?? People put on a pedestal, and that leaves all the dirt left untouched. Which is a shame if you ask me.
As the wise Varrick once said, “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story”
Came here to say this.
I miss varrick
Nice
Wise? Varrick? The guy who thought he could float? Sure.
@@alphathegreat9458 it’s an expression
It seemed obvious to me that there was a difference between “travel leisurely” and “travel like your life depended on it.”
In Book 1, the gaang took plenty of time to sightsee and rescue people or inspire rebellions. In Book 3, Sokka mentions food and potty breaks during their attempt to keep on track with the invasion schedule. I rather doubt anyone was taking such pauses during the Comet arc.
Good point. That explains and why we all gave a collective "Meh!" about this for 15 years!
Also you see on a map of zuko as he chases after the gang the route they took. It was pretty much a zig zag so probably 4x the optimal route
@@jonesman7124yeah they were kids who didn’t have any maps or good ones at least and were just ping ponging around landmarks until they figured it out
@@spencerrr9878 and they went Sightseeing a Lot but mostly (only?) in season 1
It hey where hustling all the time given Appa’s travel speed he can go from the south to north poll in 2 days max. Meaning they deliberately choose to to continuously risk their lives being hunted by the fire nation when they could zip to the North poll by episode 8. Apps speed is near the speed of sound he can cross the globe a in a day.
Aang didn't even need energy bending. He had Ozai trapped with earth bending, just put more rock around him and keep an eye on him until Sozin comet goes away and for Toph to arrive with some scrap metal from an airship to bend restraints from.
I remember an episode early in season 1 (I think it was Warriors of Kyoshi) where Iroh shows a map of the world with locations all over where the avatar had been sighted. The implication was that they can travel all over rather quickly on Appa. If we take out the one "still weeks away from the Northern Water Tribe" line, most of the other traveling by air can be done very quickly.
Northern water tribe-> .
Rest of the world: -> O
They had to fly around the active war zones and the whole fire nation. The coast of the earth kingdom was covered by fire nation colonies. Weeks away probably was due to the zigzagging they had to do. Or could have been hyperbole
The map he was looking at in that scene was just of the southernmost regions iirc
Something else to note is that they had a lot fewer resources at the beginning, so a lot of stops were in order. In the ending they can afford to bring Appa and 2 weeks of food.
And as for the fleet, I imagine the point of the attack wasn't to LITERALLY burn the entire earth kingdom to the ground.
@@KarolOfGutovo unironically you may have accidentally solved it. Who’s to say that the map we get of the ATLA planet has the continents drawn to relative scale rather than scaled to fit relevant geographical data? We see that Ba Sing Se has its walls on the map though I doubt they’d be visible from space. Maybe the northern water tribe is just a small island/ collection of islands in the middle of the giant northern arctic sea and it’s not only separated from the northernmost part of the earth kingdom by a strait lol
- Map projection. If you go further from the Equator, the map becomes more and more distorted and the lands look bigger than their real size.
- In the first season, Aang wanted to see some places, so they had many stops.
- They also wanted to avoid the firebenders, so they didn't fly in a straight line.
- Sometimes they got lost in the first season when they were flying. Later, their navigation skills improved.
- I think gliding is faster than flying on Appa.
Perhaps Aang just overestimated how long it would take to get to the North. If that is the case and Appa's is much faster, then it kind of checks, with much stretching in between.
Yep. Not everything a character says is necessaraly the truth.
Every time Aang gets out of his body, he says "I'm in the spirit world". But the spirit world actually is another dimension, like in tlok. Getting out of his body wasn't really going to the spirit world
the only time Aang really goes there is in the episode he meets Koh, the face stealer
Except that Zuko's ship is able to chase and keep up with Appa very frequently.
Once you've unlocked an area, you can fast travel
I think it's pretty obvious when Aang says "weeks away from the North Pole" he means that they're gonna keep stopping in every place he wants to visit before reaching the North Pole, if they were flying straight there it would have taken the rest of that week tops
You mean to say that this kid is all afraid of not having enough time to master all the elements before the fire nation destroys the world, but hes actually just going on a sightseeing tour that will multiply the time by like 4????
@@Snyper077 Well, that *is* exactly what they do, even in later seasons when schedules and strict timetables are brought up.
Aang needed to ride a snake, Katara needed that scroll, Sokka needed validation.
When urgency is required, so is Aang's culture, Katara's charity work, Sokka's inferiority complex and Toph's scams.
They gaang takes more detours than a casual roadtrip.
@@Snyper077well, yeah. That’s like one of Aang’s greatest faults. He has a tendency to avoid conflict and to push negative thoughts away in favor of more fun, more cheery, more happy, albeit more naive thoughts. His greatest personal battle at the beginning of the show is his reluctance to own up to being the avatar and rejecting the responsibility that comes with it. Even at the end of the show, even with all the experience and wisdom and personal growth, he still would rather just put off the fire lord fight until after the comet. Just, straight up changed their plans to “oh well day of black sun fell through, we’ll just wait till after the comet so Aang can do it the right way.” What was their plan? It almost seems like they were implying Aang would need minimum a few months if not 1 more full year of training. Not only was he a noob at firebending but even Toph said his earthbending was lacking.
I have no doubt that despite being stressed out about Roku’s comet deadline, his childish, gut instinct is to do fun happy vacation stuff instead. Yes, theres some cognitive dissonance going on I think when Aang is stressing about the travel time to North Pole being weeks.. despite having mini vacays planned. That’s his immaturity showing, that he fully prioritizes fun over responsibility so much so that it is just a fact to him that travel time to the north will be weeks. That’s probably how he’s used to traveling as a nomadic monk; just going with the flow and hopping around from place to place, not taking a straight shot to your destination with 0 distraction and minimum down time for sleep and bathroom breaks.
In the finale though, everyone is officially in game mode. They are solely focused on defeating the firelord and know how to navigate every continent.
Truthfully, I think the ATLA world is smaller than irl Earth, and I think people just underestimate how lackadaisically they were traveling in book 1.
I don't like this explanation, even if it's true. Because that makes the world feel extremely tiny. But it is actually plausible, just like how small the fire nation looks, during the invasion.
@@Snyper077thats......literally part of the plot kkkkkkkkkkkkk yes, yes thats exactly what he is gonna do
Loads of good answers here that I think are worth considering. Here is one I've not seen mentioned.
In Season 1 & 2 they are traveling through an active warzone all the time. The gang are constantly having to navigate through an evolving front line. They regularly find themselves walking into Fire Nation territory and have to either retreat from or circumnavigate the Fire Nation forces.
By Season 3 this is no longer the case. They get through the Fire Nation super quick as the war never reached there and no-one knows to even look for them. In the Earth Kingdom, the last remaining city Ba Sing Se has fallen and the remaining unified resistance is defeated on the Day of Black Sun. The war is over and the Fire Nation has won. Their military shifts focus from active combat to that of an occupying army. They need smaller concentrations of forces spread widely to keep the peace over a subjugated people. They do not need large concentrations of forces as there are no more big armies to fight. In fact by time Sozin's Comet has returned they would most likely have removed a significant portion of their forces out of the Earth Kingdom so they don't get destroyed by Ozai and so that the Fire Nation can finally defeat the Northern Water Tribe. It is a lot easier and faster to travel through a country when it is no longer an active warzone.
Appa speed at the end is basically the speed of sound minimum to cover the distance he did. Appa could have gotten them to the north poll in a single day, IE episode 8
It's not a great excuse but, you got to remember that season 1 wasn't just, let's go straight to the northpool. They gaang stopped a lot on there way over there. Sometimes more than a whole day. And the even stopped before they even had to. So although it doesn't explain it all. It does make the situation a little more realistic
I mean honestly, if you think about it, Aang may never have traveled all that much before being frozen in the iceberg. Also, by the end of the show maybe Appa was able to fly faster than in the beginning. Realistically then the gang may have been traveling slower in the first few seasons because they didn't know if they could travel any faster or for as long as they really could have been, example being maybe they all thought Appa needed frequent breaks to rest.
Again, it could all be caulked up to them being kids that didn't really understand how to navigate accurately yet and that meant they traveled slower to not miss where they were going. Only to later master long distance travel and be able to move with much more certainty towards where they wanted to go.
@@lordraven1991 that's actuality a very good argument there 👏🏼
The whole thing is not about it like it takes weekes to get from fire nation to north pole as katara said and he says that theyre traveling distances Thats probably 2 times bigger than between fire nation and northpole in at least 24 hours
@@Lime0682 Difference between a 747 air liner, and a Cessna 157. Both are flying craft, but travel at different speeds. On takes a day to go A-B, the other takes a week for the same A-B trip.
My point still stands, going from the south pole to the north could have taken a few months because they didn't really know where they were going. In the later seasons the team have had plenty of experience traveling long distances and even the case of Aang going from the earth kingdom to the fire nation in 12 hours could be backed by the fact he was flying in a hurricane. Zipping along in winds up to 200mph.
@@lordraven1991 appa travels with like 60km/h about the same as the top speed of fire nation battleships. No way the world is that small
im glad im not the only one who had issues with the timeline being so quick despite att the stuff that happens throughout the show
Valid critique and I am glad this actually lived up to the "nobody talks about it" but I'd say in season 1, they were galivanting and sightseeing while in season 3, they were on a deadline. Also, the first time you take a journey is usually the longest. They probably figured they could just fly straight ahead without breaks and all.
6:30 yeah it's the finale of a kids show
Its amazing how the shoes of a child have a huge fanbase omg!!
@@devronjacobdegracia9557 fair
This is a great video and something I had actually been really curious about before.
The only point I would make is we see exactly where Aang takes off from at the start of season 3 to make it to the Crescent Island. It’s the same pier that the gaang stopped at in the Waterbending Scroll.
Since we know that’s on the west coast of the Earth Kingdom it’s not a huge stretch to say Aang could make the trip overnight to the closest Fire Nation island. Especially with Yue helping him
remember, they went all day from the Earth Kingdom to Rokus Island in Season 1. that was also kinda fast... it wasn't even dark when they got there.
I think most of it can be explained by:
- The map is not to scale (extremly screwd by dispaying everything in 2d instead of on a globe, by Earthkingdom mapmakers, or just representetive, instead of excact)
- A lot of stops to sightsee, shop and give Appa some rest (consider that Zuko and Iroh can keep up with them by tiny rusty ship in season 1 and are actually faster in Ba Sing Se by raft and on foot in season 2)
- Appa is not a vehicle with a constant speed, he gets tired, distracted has to take breaks
- Water and Air bending speeding up journeys when necessairy
- Airflows and waterstreams exist, so it might be faster to travel east to west then south to north by glider/appa
- Spirits exist and want to influence the characters so they might be able to spead them up, especially after they activly helped Yue and La
- Ozai either doesn't want to burn the whole Earth Kingdom, just wants to show his power, or he's not actually a good warlord and overestimated his Nation, or he's lost it like Azula
Also it would have taken ages to animated that many war ships. But then they had a ton a boats when the Fire Nation attacked the Northen Water Tribe.
@@rayanvij3457 I think all vehicles, including the air ships were 3d animated, so they could have put 500 on the screen without a problem. I guess it's more about them still beeing recognizable and the framing.
Also if there were many more it wouldn’t have been possible for Toph, Soka and Suki to destroy them all.
@@raccoonja-ronja I was think that too destroying them all would not have been possible. I believe you are right that all the vehicles are 3D. Maybe Sokka and the gang do not need to destroy them all destroy as many as possible then when Aang ends the war order the teaming airships to stop?
"Guys am I missing something obvious here?"
It's a problem they knew most people wouldn't care much about so didn't bother trying too hard to work the story around it. The fact that you haven't seen a single person talk about for over a decade proves it.
The reason atla is succesful is because fantasy worlds will always have inconsistencies, but they never deviate to point out every inconsistency. Its great focus on the writing.
I think the answer and the reason why no one talks about it, is very obvious:
Sometimes you have to sacrifice certain rules established, in order to tell a story that would otherwise be impossible.
If they had stuck with their timeline and travel distances, it would have either resulted in the plot dragging and having to fill in time. Either that or to not tell the story.
Either ways, I think the authors made the right choice. The character development in those episodes was worth not paying attention to the distance that they needed to travel.
This is also why people don't critize this part. Too busy enjoying those moments..
Precisely
6:49, I don’t see why that’s a problem at all. It makes perfect sense to me that people will be more forgiving of plot holes in a good story than in a bad one.
I don't fully agree. You determine how good a show is partially by the immersion (of which in world logic is a big part). Why I think it is not a problem for atla is that honestly no one noticed. I am usually quite triggered by lack of logic or inconsistencies. But in avatar I never noticed these things. Maybe also because it is a cartoon. The faces the characters make are already so unrealistic that the travel disparaties just seem like part of cartoon gimmick.
I mean, raw distance might not be the only factor when traveling by sky bison. Headwinds, tailwinds, weather conditions, need to plan places for Appa to eat, avoiding active war zones that they don't yet have the skills to fight their way out of, etc would likely mean that they don't get to take a straight path.
You werent alone about this, but i never thought about it to this extent
I think you answered your own question, fantastic character development/ the culmination of Aang, Zuko and Sokkas’ arcs pretty much outweigh trivial issues like ETA. Nobody watched avatar because of its consistency of time but rather the growth of its’ characters.
yah. game of thrones didn't just have bad travel time at the end of the show. Characters made no sense based on there character development as well.
Emotion always trumps continuity in storytelling.
Other shows develop chataters speed or travel method as well during the story, not only character and fighting skills. It just the author here forgot to develop Appa's speed but it is suddenly here.
I always just took it like at the beginning they took long roundabout paths because Ang was shown that path by his teacher to see all the fun attractions along the way. Plus they were inexperienced and needed to stop more often for supplies. But then as time passed they learned more direct routes and loaded up more efficiently on food, and maybe even less weight for their supplies allowing Appa to go faster. And maybe he strengthened his flying muscles? 😂
that nier automata sound track in the background is just 🤌
When Sokka says “I think we’re lost” in the first season while looking at the map with a bunch of travel lines on it, that showed that their “weeks” to get to the North Pole, was not a straight shot and explains why they took so long
I did hear about this years ago though. I noticed it as a child and just ignored it
Appa just becomes a stronger & faster flyer.
glad you mentioned this. it gave GoT season 8 vibes
I think it’s the fact they had to keep stopping for food and supplies in season 1. Directly sailing or flying will take significantly less time
Hmm, you forgot one important thing. The Earth Kingdom is like a self-praising empire. Most of the maps are made by their scholars. It could be possible that the Earth Kingdom just exaggerates its size on the map like real-world bigger countries do. That would explain a lot. 😀
@@nikkialkema1032 it should be the other way around. Real life Russia and Canada are smaller than they appear on a flat map.
@@CrashCubeZeroOne That's only when you're using the Mercator projection, or something similar; if you're using something like the Equirectangular projection, then the poles would look flattened.
@@MattTOB618 True, both are valid
@@MattTOB618 and we know the projection is not Mercator's because both poles appear whole and uninterrupted in the map.
I just chalk it up to them having almost no idea what they are doing at the start, if you remember book one, they seemed to be lost half the time, and the rest of the time they were looking for supplies and or goofing off “he’s obviously a master of evasion” = “you have no idea where we’re going, do you. (Aang) well, I know it’s near water…”
That and for the ocean parts of the trip, Appa probably needed to rest on whatever islands they could find, as when they arrived at the northern water tribe, he was falling asleep mid flight.
As for the abruptly faster travel times at the end, you could say that
(1) they were more experienced with travel.
(2) less obstacles like enemy armies.
(3) they probably got much better maps, supplies, confidence, support.
There are many things that can slow you down in a world at war. And they had just successfully attacked the fire nation capitol, which probably had the entire fire nation’s military completely reorganizing, thus opening more direct routes for the heroes to travel, plus the fire nation’s military was probably already overwhelmed with occupying Ba Sing Se
I think taking a look at the maps humanity draw of the earth in the 1400s-1700s (and beyond) sheds some light on an in universe explanation for this...
i am glad that im not the only one. but this is quite common. not only in animated series either
In live action, its important to make travel seem consistant, in animation it doesnt matter as much
4:42 "They can afford to take their time". Tell that to Sokka's schedule xD
This rabbit hole goes far deeper. Remember, there was a strike among television writers that happened in the middle of book 3. On top of that is how the show was continually renewed for more episodes over the course of it's runtime. I.e., it was not written all at once. So this story, in my mind, extends to the production of the entire show overall. And I have been patiently waiting for someone to pick up on at least one thread of that story.
Of course, this goes beyond the world of the show itself. Which is why I have been hesitant to mention it. Being that the creators are still going strong, I want to follow their story as it continues to unfold. And wait until later to examine the production of this show behind the scenes.
I will say, I am convinced it's a fascinating story all the same! Thank you for sharing this video!!!
*You are right, Shows are held to different standards.*
In "Game of Thrones" the same issue occurs, and people ripped it to pieces. but there was a difference:
AtlA was a good show and the amount of story and development we got from the end was worth suspending your disbelief.
GoT was not so good, and the idea of a guy running home at mach13 to send a crow to another continent for Dragonlady to make a decision and fly over quickly while the battle takes place. That was just another crazy plotline that didn't make sense and/or add anything worthwhile to the story.
especially given how nothing intense was happening while this time skip happened.
Like GOT was doing it in the middle of a battle. Avatar literally had a beach episode.
Having The masters meet up with the team one last time and having them show how they saw their previous students be masters themself now, or Ihro and Zuko with the deserved ending to their story before the final. it was worth suspending your disbelief for a moment.
That's why this problem isn't talked about, cause actually I'm sure I heard another YT video make a joke about it before. But the truth is, it doesn't matter all things considered.
I always did feel like the world was super small while watching it.
I'm glad its not just me who noticed. They spend weeks to months traveling from one side of the world to the other, while they travelled to one side and back to the other in just a day.
Apparently uses air bending to fly and it’s safe to assume while everyone else was training appa likely also was improving. Aang is also able to use his air bending on his glider so an anger/frustration fueled flight can be just as fast although taxing as an appa flight
You have a valid point, it doesn't make a lot of sense to travel a whole continent in a day. In my head canon Sokka, Toph en Suki traveled near the north point of the map, which is shorter because the world of avatar is round. They traveled with a Eel hound, the fastest animal in the Avatar world.
Katara and Zuko traveled from the sea strait to the capital of the fire nation at full speed. (poor Appa would have been exhausted)
Loved the way he started to freak out in the end
Anyone else get the absurd headcanon that powerful earthbenders like Bumi and Toph, maybe even the giant moles, just casually bend continents like Kyoshi just to mess with the Gaang?
I can't believe you never brought up Zuko and Katara's bonding trip. Where they go from the Western air Temple, to the archipelago that includes whaletail island, to the fire nation, back to the Western air temple on Appa in like, three days.
Here is a simple explaination: instead of going straight they are going in zigzags considering all the random stops they keep making. Iroh and zuko address this in the 4th episode of season 1. Throughout most of the series traveling is treated as a journey while in the finale its treated as a race. Team avatar had no sence of urgency until they found out about ozais plans.
Muktiple times has aang proven to be a free-spirited procrastinator. I dont think its a coincidence that the group can suddenly travel so quickly the moment he is removed from the equasion.
The scale issue of the airship fleet in the finally always bugged me, too. And also the fact that they are scorching a literally empty, desolate, dusty landscape. From what was established, I would have imagined something like the rumbling from attack on titan, or at least a rain of fire on several major cities of the earth kingdom or something. What we got in the show was not even a real threat to anyone. And yes, I am aware that they had to keep it family friendly, but I argue that they didn’t need to show people and cities actually getting incinerated, if they didn’t want to. The fleet could have started their flame throwers a few kilometres away from Omashu or Basingsei or another major city (because of the Bumi and White lotus storylines) and burn some acres and farms etc. but so that refugees and citizens in the cities would actually see and fear what was approaching them. This would have created a real sense of urgency for Sokka, Toph and Suki as well as Aang. Overall the burning the ground doesn’t really make sense with all the fire nation citizens and soldiers present on the ground…
I think one of the solutions would have been not to have Iroh at Ba Sing Se, but somewhere much closer to Ember Island, so they wouldn't have to travel all that way and back. Next to that they could have used a longer time period, such as a week, maybe two, instead of just 4 days.
I didn't miss this plot hole in my adult time re-watches. I straight up ignored it LMAO
Aang could've got to the North Pole anytime he wanted, he was just buying time with Katara
Talking about time scale, someone had done the hard work of lining up the moon phases to our calendar. It isn't 100% but it's the best estimate theory I've come across.
I noticed this awhile ago. That's why, as much as the movie get crucified (including by me), M. Knight Shamalan's film going and saying he has like 1 or 2 years before the comet arrives instead of the end of the summer, makes it feel less rushed and having more time to correctly scale the world.
Also as a side note, I like how Shamalan balanced the fire nations firebending in that movie, in that they need a pre-existing flame to bend fire, making it feel more like the other 3 needing their elements to be present to be able to bend. Only Iroh was able to 'produce fire' because of his teaching from the dragons, learning how to harness the inner fire of his spirit to fire bend.
Random fire nation soldier (looks up as Appa flies over): My God they’ve gone to plaid!!
I chalk in up to a combination of things. First and most important is its cooler if everything happens really fast from a story perspective which is the actual answer.
Secondly the group actually knows where they are going now and traveling there becomes much easier. I'm pretty sure out of the group only Sokka and Suki have any actual navigational skills.
When Sokka is being taught to use a sword Katara and Aang attempt and fail to figure out where they are on a map that shows this pretty well.
Also while flying is faster its also probably way harder to keep your bearings on where you are. With what the group is working with Sokka probably only really knows exactly where to go by the stars like he's sailing a ship but once they've been there and have been flying for a while they all probably get better at it.
And finally most of the time when we see anyone traveling basically anywhere at the start of the show they aren't rushing to get there and can afford to get distracted and lost. I doubt when they first starting flying places that they checked very often on if they were going in the right direction while just sitting around and talking.
I noticed that in the last season the world felt smaller because they traveled up and down the world very fast. I ignored for sake of personal enjoyment.
Sometimes Appa flies 200 mph
Sometimes he flies 50 mph
Does it ever say anywhere that Sozins comet only lasts for one day? I looked up Halleys comet just to check and got this response back: When Halley’s Comet is visible from Earth, it can typically be seen in the night sky for several weeks to a few months. The exact duration depends on various factors, including its position relative to the Earth and the Sun.
i was always frustrated about the inconsistency of this show's later half when it comes to travelling... but i've never brought it up so i'm glad someone clipped a yap session regarding this lmao
Every series has a plot hole somewhere. Good series are just so enjoyable that you don't notice the plot holes.
Not forgetting how Zuko blatantly saying how slow appa is 😂😂😂😂😂😂
There is no travel time in Ba Sing Se, There is no travel time in Ba Sing Se
The plot is just so good that youre more worried about the actual characters than travel time.
Fans can try to give a potential headcanon explanation but the truth is it’s just an error in the show. It doesn’t mean atlas bad, it just means it’s a show. You gotta be able to admit that even things you like can do wrong.
Well, it is a show, but its not like it is unexplainable, the kids didnt have experience travelling at the beggining, and aang wanted to visit a lot of places. And more important then everything, appa probably gained experience on flying during the year they traveled, so he probably got used and learned how to go faster
4:00 it's my understanding that the ship was outside of the earth kingdom already. In season 1 they had Aang's "schedule" where they made several stops. The map gets distorted around the poles due to the Cartesian representation. But I think the actual answer is that it's just not something they took very seriously.
My best guess as to why the travel time is so inconsistent is the pace at which they are traveling. The gaang Could’ve been traveling at a leisurely pace throughout the first season, then Appa really started booking it and flying “red eye” throughout the rest of the series.
Others have pointed out that travel time varies with your knowledge of the regions your traversing as well as with the consequences for lateness, but I'd like to also point out that AtLA's world could just have longer years and days than earth.
Their world could be a rectangular prism.
FINALLY SOMEONE TALKED ABOUT THIS
A few things:
First of all, “weeks” without a specific number attached can mean anywhere from 2 weeks to a couple of months. That alone solves most of the problem.
Second, as demonstrated in (iirc) the 4th episode of the series, the Gaang was traveling without much urgency to the northern water tribe (“he is clearly a master of evasive maneuvers,” “you have no idea where you’re going, do you”). They were traveling urgently to ba sing se and almost every other place that seems inconsistent with the quote in season 1.
Third, it is likely the flat map we see is distorted, just like all flat maps.
Fourth, it’s likely that Appa and the rest of them becoming stronger over the course of the show resulted in faster travel ability.
Fifth, different travel methods like Jesus lizards and lion turtles may be faster than sky bison.
Sixth, you’re taking one unspecific, possibly even inaccurate quote to concretely establish the distance and time for the entirety of all travel across the entire series.
All these things added together make it a much smaller problem, arguably not a problem at all. It seems like you’re trying to be the one to find new details/problems about the show moreso than trying to make sure that all the different variables regarding those details are accounted for in the conversation, and whether it’s actually a “problem” that decreases the quality of the show.
Seventh… you don’t need to yell, dude. It’s a kids’ show. The reason nobody talks about the supposed travel time inaccuracies is because they don’t matter to the story.
ALSO: 2D maps always either lose distance, direction, area, shape/angles due to the fact that you are mapping a 3D sphere on a 2D plane. The only thing that can be retained is direction + any of the other mentioned thing that can be displayed at the same time. The fidelity of all aspects mentioned is simply not possible. But there are maps that compromise on these so it turns out showing everything a little distorted but still close enough to the real world.
Distances from the fire nation islands and the north pole might be greater irl, however, that would also suggest that the south and north pole, which should be the furthest points apart from each other geographically due to the names North and South and the snow coverage. But it still "just" took GAANG less time than expected. I agree with you on the doubtful fidelity of travel-distance-time. Just wanted to point out that the map displayed and used there by the GAANG might have big time distortions both for local and global navigation.
In terms of Serpents Pass looking way bigger the distance the map not being to scale is consistant with most maps IRL. The path to Ba Sing Se is a prominent location thus will be made bigger on common map.
i think the closest you can say is that "weeks away from the north pole" was at their current not exactly fast pace, sure following the solstice they'd pick up the pace but aang is still in see the world mode as well also I think he under estimated Appa's cruise speed dramatically remember Appa and and travel from the southern air temple to near enough the southern watertribe that katara aang andsokka could get back to said southern water tribe by appa swimming later that afternoon. the travel does get a little contrived in the finale though I will agree
Me and my friend circle have brought up all these points many times but usually we just drop it because it’ll simply never be worked through by devoting a ton of thought to it. You just gotta swallow this one
Theory 1
The gaang had horrible navigation skills and overestimated travel time
Theory 2
Appa was slower in season one because he had recently gotten out of the iceberg
They've been there before so they unlocked the fast travel points.
Overanalazing Avatar mentioned this about Eelhound traversing land and sea incredibly far, so heroes would be able to reach Air ships just in time
Probably appa and aang didnt use to travel by themselves before aang vanished, and during the show, aang and his friends learn the geography from the world, at the same time appa gets more and more used to fly, which means he learned how to go faster and got used to fly for a long time, instead of getting so tired as he used to in season 1
Also, we dont know how fast is the lizard that took team sokka to the airships, he could be like super fast
Finally someone else who has the same concerns over the travel times as I've always had!
One way I had tried to reconcile this "serious" issue is that the map of the avatar world is just scaled weirdly. Like the Mercator projection but instead the west and east sides of it are scaled way up than in real life. So, that would mean that the avatar world is actually quite narrow on WE direction and pretty long NS. That would explain why traveling from S to N pole could take a month or two but traveling E to W can take only days.
I still don't like it and would much prefer the show was more consistent with it's timing but alas :D
The funniest thing is - Ozai literally cannot fly from the shore of the Earth kingdom to Ba Sing Se in 1 day during the comet. They either had to get pretty close to the city and wait for the comet or run our of their superfire mid-purging
Well he does have soldiers in Ba sing se. If Iroh and the white lotus hadn't conducted a 5 man invasion on the the soldiers might have done something.
And honestly I think Ozai'a plan was also just to really fucking demoralise the earth kingdom rather than realisticaly burn the continent to the ground.
Gah! At this rate I'll never write my own ATLA fic, because things like this will always bother me.
On a related matter something I think many people overlook when they talk about ATLA timelines is that they think seasons apply to the whole world equally, they say the show starts in autumn but autumn for who? Most people don't seem to realize that when the northern hemisphere goes through autumn the southern one goes through spring and vice versa, the same thing happens with winter and summer, while on the equator there are not seasons; someone else in the comments also mentioned that something similar happes in regards to eclipses... Not that any of this detracts from the points you've made, I just think is something to consider, just because it meshes thematically with the avatar cicle air>water>eart>fire = autumn>winter>spring>summer, doesn't mean it's that simple, at least not if we're going for a world similar to our own.
Your video was elucidating, this show was great, a great example of storytelling, I just wish it wasn't so hard to write stories in this setting where the world works semi realistically.
if I recall it correctly, despite how all the stories were done so flawlessly at the end, they still were lacking enough run-time that they were given for finale. so finale had to cut and compress a bit(I know it sounds crazy for a finale being 4 part episodes). just like how 'a week away' era of earlier seasons were being produced under lackadaisical publisher's eye, finale also were written slightly hastely compared to the mid-parts. maybe that also explains both cases' inconsistencies?
seems like all the issues stem from "weeks to noth pole" if it could be explained then all other distances and timings make sense
When Ozai said He would burn down the Earth Kingdom he probably meant Major areas, As The earth kingdom is pretty much Barren Desert and Mountains
NO, I REFUSE TO SEE ANY FLAWS WITH THIS SHOW.
EVEN THE BLATANT DEUS EX MACHINA WITH THE LION TURTLE OUT OF NOWHERE, THE TRAVEL INCONSiSTENCY, THE CLIFFHANGER REGARDING ZUKO'S MOTHER, ETC.
Having said that: Imma now watch the video.
So you know how the Mercator projection distorts the map- it’s like that but worse and more random
Achievement unlocked: Ba Sing Sa Spirit Portal. (You can now teleport to and from Ba Sing Sa from anywhere on the world map.)
Korra: You're a liar!
Chi Blocker: You should have been briefed about this!
This was a very interesting video, in that it opened my eyes to something that should have been so glaringly obvious.
However, as interesting as it was, I just find that I am really biased towards certain inconsistencies than I am with others. Basically, speed of transportation in the lore of a story isn't one of my pet peeves, so I just don't really notice it unless I watch a video by an observant person like you that cares about that stuff. Personally, I find that I care more about power scaling (who can realistically beat who, what abilities should one possess, etc) and some logical progression in how a story is told.
I've noticed, though, that there's actually levels to caring about this stuff. I, for example, care about it more than the average person in my environment, but thanks to the internet, I've discovered that I don't care about these things as much as some people. I hope this doesn't come off as a knock on people for being invested in their favourite pieces of media, though. It is always great to have discussions about these things, as that is what, to me, makes the art even greater.
This is actually a plus point of ATLA instead of being a negative one. Because I have seen many shows with many possible plothole almost nobody talks about. The plot holes which talked about is when writer fails to make the audience overlook the hole, ATLA managed to did this for 17 years almost I guess (if your video has been uploaded in the previous month)
I mean, I don't know if "no one" talks about it, it's been one of the things me and my friends have talked about the most, never online or in text though. But in my mind it's a pretty universal fact that time makes no sense at all in AtLA. They can cross some distances in weeks by air, Ang flies alone to places faster than it should be feasable, water travel is both super slow and extremely fast depending on what day it is (They invaded the fire nation! WITH BOATS! IN A DAY!). So I think the reason it's not talked about online so much is because we all just accept that it's nonsense :D
I've been seeing many people againist the argument by claiming they were taking stops at every location. And that's true.
But the talk isn't about the places they stop at, instead about the time it takes them to get to those places. Throughout Season 1, it's emphasized how far away the Northern and Southern Tribes are. Like Katara says, "It's on the other side of the world." So it really seems like it's a far distance when it takes them a season to get there. Every time they stop somewhere, you get the sense they'd traveled a good distance. And when they reach the North Pole, you know they traveled an insane amount. If supposedly, they were able to fly on Appa from Ba Sing Se to the Fire Nation in ONE day (approximately 10 hours since the comet starts at night), then it makes the world more limited and way smaller than it seemed. Places that seemed to be far away are now a 3 minute flight in the show. You loose the sense of travel in season 1 since traveling "across the world" is no longer a big feat.
I always took the "burning the Earthkingdom to the ground" as "burning the part of the Earthkingdom to the ground that we haven't conquered yet", since it would make no sense to burn your own colonies. Since most of the northwest was firenation colonies and they had conquered Ba Sing Se, i'd guess that the plan was to burn only the southern part of the Earth Kingdom, which is a) smaller then the northern part and b) has the big desert in it, which they don't really need to burn, just the part around it. So while the area is still huge, is not quite as massive as the entirety of the Earth Kingdom as seen on the map.
When a show is toooo perfect the only problem you have is the travel time. (Considering this was a children’s cartoon)
For "taking weeks" I think they mean making multiple stops (food, water, bathroom, sleep) and accomodating for getting lost and or having to slow down in case of Fire Nation encounters
Straight line, it probably doesn't take that long- especially if they navigate better at the end of the show
Appa being up to it tho, is the bigger plot hole in my mind.
For the burning of the Earth kingdom I look at it this way
1. Ozai is insane and overambitious
2. Forest fires might spread far enough to at least do more damage, probably not enough to burn the entire kingdom tho
3. They could target more settled areas but it doesn't seem to be the case at that moment
4. It could just be that they would set as much of it on fire as they can not *literally* all of it- might do enough damage to the nature, the wildlife and the towns/villages or just lower Earth Kingdom morale to a surrender
Regardless, you're not dumb for this wracking your brain. But I can suspend my disbelief for it
Well…
1. Azula slipping into insanity blunted her ability to strategize and plan, which was the one area where she had Zuko’s beat. Notice how Azula runs physical circles around Zuko during that last fight but Zuko does not move. He is certain of his purpose and sure of himself. He has set his roots, and she cannot break them. Had the fight continued on, Zuko may well have won outright.
2. I would bet that Energybending was hinted at late in Season 2. Guru Pathik seemed to know when Aang had unlocked a chakra. How could he know that if he was not able to sense the energy flowing within Aang? Had Aang finished his training with Pathik he may have learned Energybending there.
3. Plot convenience.
Varys showed them how to teleport
That's the thing about good shows. If they are good enough, fans will ignore huge plot holes. But if the quality of the story and the show as a whole isn't great, then fans are gonna start picking apart the smaller things. Same with blockbuster movies with a lot of CGI. If the story is good, people don't care about the quality of the CGI but if the story isn't good, people will pick it and everything else apart.