Konietzko agrees that they weren't always perfect, but says that their main focus was on trying not to 'other' the cultures they were depicting. He also adds, "Sure, we made some missteps along the way, and now we're obviously even more aware and more conscious to do it right." So it was just natural to try to honor it as best we could." So it came out of a love and appreciation of it. "Part of the reason we created was admiration of Miyazaki's films and Asian culture. "We just naturally want to respect people and cultures," he explains.
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However, as Basco notes, while the creators may have made a few mistakes along the way, the show was well ahead of how it approached making art based on other cultures in a way that doesn't appropriate them, but celebrates them instead - which its legacy among fans continues to endure, even having made it one of the most-watched series on Netflix, days after its premiere.ĭiMartino says they were conscious of the fact that they were both white men working on a series heavily influenced by different Asian cultures.
"And 'How could we even get a little bit of this magic into an American show produced by an American studio?'"Īnd while both audiences and Hollywood itself are more cognizant about not just creating diverse and inclusive content, but also who gets to create it, in recent times, this wasn't always the case in the early 2000s when DiMartino and Konietzko were first working on the series. That's also not a monolithic thing."įor Konietzko, it was less about whether their series fits within the genre, and more about what American animation could learn from it in order to grow and improve. "I'm looking at Furi Kuri in 2000 or 2001 and going, 'Okay, we're 20, 30 years behind here. and I'd bet you get 20 different answers. "In some ways I know it would have looked better if I had just copied stuff, but I was trying to do our little crummy version."Īt co-host (and voice of Zuko himself) Dante Basco's assertion that the show could be considered "American anime," DiMartino states, "You could speak to 20 top directors in Japan. Not just copy it," explains DiMartino in Nickelodeon's new Avatar: Braving the Elements podcast. Well, creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko don't quite know either.
At some point or another, Avatar: The Last Airbender fans have had to ask themselves: is the show considered anime?
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