[This post concerns Avatar: The Last Airbender (aka Avatar: The Legend of Aang), which aired from 2005 to 2008. The explanatory introduction to this series of posts is the first one.]
#12: The Avatar State
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMtt137f2HE
Who’s Kaiju is it? The answer to this one isn’t as simple as you might think. Is it Aang’s Kaiju? Certainly in the sense that he /is/ the Kaiju when he runs out of gum–
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OImKPh6N_Lw
–and you could certainly argue that he has unresolved emotional distress, especially in the episodes where he’s clearly in denial and therefore repressing those emotions. There are moments when it is very obviously his fear and anger the powers the Kaiju. But I think there’s a better touchstone character for those events: I think Aang, and therefore his Avatar State, are really responding to Katara.
Katara grew up in a world at war, her mother was abducted by the Fire Nation, her Father has gone off to uncertain fates to fight the Fire Nation, her tribe is dwindling, she is suffocating with a Divine gift that no one will teach her to use, and there is a very subtle scene in the opening of the first episode where her Water-Bending power manifests in a wild and destructive way because she looses her anger at her brother Sokka. It was in fact that very event that brought Aang out of the water, to the surface, and re-awakened him after a hundred years of cryogenic freezing.
So let me just recap that: Katara has pent up emotional distress, loses it with her brother, shatters an iceberg, and awakens a powerful spirit that has been asleep for a hundred years.
Yeah, I think this is her Kaiju, even if it does manifest itself as a carefree tween boy most of the time. And the carefree tween manifestation is not out of character for a Kaiju responding to Katara. Yes, she has pent up anger and fear, but she also has hope, and the Avatar responds as much to her hope as to anything else. He gives her release, but he also gives her hope.
Now, astute readers who are fans of the show would immediately point out the other half of this equation, and they would be right. There is one other figure sharing this monster with Katara, a figure of deep pain and fathomless pent up rage, a figure in dire need of the lesson to need without shame:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR0YzZaMB88
Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation, whose only hope of reconcilliation with his Father is to bring the Avatar back as a prisoner. The scar on his right eye was given to him by the one man in his life who he should have been able to trust for unconditional love, and he got that scar in a moment of “weakness” when he stood up for the lives of a company of trainee soldiers of his own nation who were about to be sacrificed on the battle-field as cannon-fodder. He’s confused, hurt, feeling alone, and driven by one goal: Get the Avatar. As a result, the Avatar has become in his mind a powerful and insurmountable spirit of the enemy, an unstoppable monster that will not yield to any but the purest focus of violent intent, which Zuko believes he can provide. And it is in that perverse way that his uncle Iroh comments about Zuko:
The Avatar gives him hope.
So at number 12 of 15, this is in fact the first fictional Kaiju we’ve seen that draws its energy not just from fear and anger, but also from other sources. We will see this again.
How it was beaten: Well, the Avatar was Katara’s Kaiju, so it probably won’t surprise anyone to hear that he had a crush on her, a romantic sub-plot that played itself out over the course of 64 episodes. But let’s look at it another way: #14 was Qeen Elsa, brought back to her Humanity by “an act of true love.” In the genre notes section of some later entries, I’ll mention King Kong, a beast killed by “beauty,” his love of a Human woman who could talk him down from his rage. Aang was no different. When he lost control of his anger and fear and went into the Avatar State, only one person could talk him down, and that was Katara.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb-QZV4qZzY
Societal agreement: The Avatar was a revered Deva-manifest of the spirit-world in this setting. His role in the balance of the world was known far and wide, and his power and authority were respected accordingly. He was both sacred cow and sacrifcial lamb, pope and public servant. No one truly wanted to anger him out of fear of the consequences (not just facing the Avatar-State).
The spark of the Divine: The cosmology of the world in which this story takes place is more akin to a combination of Hindu, Bhuddist, and Shinto than anything we have in the West. The lines are blurred between creator and creation, man and god, animal and angel. That said, the term “Avatar” has a meaning the falls somewhere between “messenger” and “manifestation” of the Divine. It is a position of very important choosing in any cosmology. The closest we have to this concept in the west is probably something like the title “Christ’s Viccar on Earth,” commonly applied to the pope, or “Chosen One,” or “Prophet.” So you know right away just from his title that, whatever the cosmology of this world, the Avatar occupies a place of high spiritual authority in it.
But one thing that is clear in the cosmology of this world is that the Divine manifests itself in balance and harmony, and that it is the Avatar’s duty to embody these principles. The Avatar must learn all four forms of elemental magic/martial arts this world offers, and must be a “bridge” between the spiritual world and the temporal. A more subtle balancing occurs between the past and the present, and if you watch closely the scenes where Aang enters the Avatar State, you see all four elements, spirit and body, and all his past lives manifest. As the Avatar he must embody all these elements–but in the Avatar State, he /unites/ them, compresses them into a single reactor core of his divine energy, creating a singularity of energy that restores local balance, usually in very traumatic impacts. The Avatar does /not/ like imbalance.
So, Aang, what would you say to my audience tonight if you could?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCeIkFrzOmo
Holistic Unconscious: 