Aang
| Aang | |
|---|---|
| Voiced by | Zach Tyler Eisen |
| In-universe information | |
| Gender | Male |
| Position | Avatar, Airbending Master |
| Nationality | Air Nomads |
Aang is a fictional character voiced by Zach Tyler Eisen, the eponymous hero of the 2005 animated television series Avatar: The Last Airbender. The twelve-year-old Aang is an Airbender monk of the Air Nomads' Southern Air Temple, and the current incarnation of the Avatar, the spirit of the planet manifested in human form, who can control all four elements and whose job is to keep the Four Nations in harmony. With friends Katara and Sokka, and pets Momo and Appa, Aang journeys on a quest to master the elements, defeat the Fire Nation, and bring peace to the war-torn nations.
Aang is marked as an Airbender by his shaven head and blue tattoos striping along his head and limbs, terminating as arrowheads on his forehead, the backs of his hands, and the tops of his feet.
History
A Century Past
Raised by Airbender monks, Aang grew up in the idyllic surroundings of the Southern Air Temple. Aang was a carefree young boy, given to frequent travel and play and possessing an almost effortless mastery over his native element. Then his world irrevocably changed when the monks revealed that he was the Avatar, destined to master all four elements and bring peace to the world.
Usually, the Avatar is told of his/her true identity only after turning sixteen; however, Aang's caretakers feared that a war between the Four Nations was on the horizon, and that the Avatar would be needed to help maintain balance. Aang soon began to feel overwhelmed with the burden of his position. His peers ostracized him for his airbending skill, while his caretakers pressured him to mature into his responsibilities too quickly.
The only monk sympathetic to Aang's feelings was the elder Monk Gyatso, Aang's airbending mentor and guardian. When the burden weighed heavily on his favorite student, Gyatso worked to instill a sense of fun through jokes and games. He sincerely believed that Aang should be allowed to grow up as a normal boy. The other monks disagreed. Citing Gyatso's attachment to the boy as an interference, they decided to send Aang away to the Eastern Air Temple to focus on his training, oblivious to the fact that Aang had overheard their caucus.
Confused and frightened by what he'd learned, Aang fled from his home on his flying bison, Appa, towards the South Pole. While over the ocean, a sudden storm caused Appa to plunge deep into the sea. Channeling his Avatar Spirit, Aang reflexively used waterbending to freeze Appa and himself in an ice sphere, putting them in a state of suspended animation in the icy waters surrounding the South Pole.
Present Tense
In the present day, two teenage siblings from the Southern Water Tribe - Katara, a Waterbender, and her brother Sokka - discovered and freed Aang from his iceberg prison. Aang soon saw that in his absence, fears of war had became a reality. The very year he vanished, the then-leader of the Fire Nation, the ruthless Fire Lord Sozin, took advantage of both the Avatar's absence and the firebending-enhancing powers of a mystical comet to launch a war on the three other nations. To Aang's shock and disbelief, the Fire Nation's opening gambit had been a genocidal assault on the Air Nomads. The Air Temples were stormed and the monks and Air Nomads slaughtered in an effort to break the Avatar Cycle, leaving him as the last known Airbender in existence.
Aang has since realized that the future of the Four Nations rests in his hands. It is his duty to defeat the Fire Nation and restore peace and harmony. To achieve this goal, Aang and his newfound friends (and pets) set off on a quest to find and learn from Master Benders, while evading capture by the Fire Nation's Prince Zuko.
Future Deadline
Although it takes years of discipline and training to master any particular element, Aang must master them all and defeat current Fire Lord Ozai before summer's end, when the return of Sozin's Comet will grant the Firebenders the power needed to win the war. If these events come to pass, not even the Avatar will be able to restore balance to the world.
Personality
Aang is fun-loving, naive, and adventurous. He craves the stimulation of new people and places; in short, he's the consummate tourist. His frequent off-course detours frustrate both allies and pursuers alike. Yet Aang has always prided himself on a complex social network of friends extending over all four nations, and a little thing like war won't stand in his way. As well, he looks forward to playing with all the exotic fauna in each place he visits. Whether it's penguins, hog-monkeys or gigantic eels, no fit animal Aang sees goes unridden. But while Aang can be a showoff and a jokester, therein lies his fatal flaw of taking foolish risks. Relatively cavalier in the face of danger, Aang can get into terrible trouble. Luckily for him, his friends are there to help him out.
Aang feels a terrible guilt and burden in his duties as Avatar. Very much the reluctant hero, he wishes he'd been there to help his people a century ago, but he'd still rather live a child's carefree life. This initally caused him to conceal his true identity from friends, and still has a tendency to slack off in his studies of the Bending Arts, even though he naturally excels at it.
Avatar
Bending
As the Avatar incarnate, Aang possesses the ability to manipulate all four elements. He is already an airbending master, so incredibly skilled that he's able to invent new techniques, like his "Air Scooter," a propelled sphere of air currents he can ride. His waterbending is substantially less polished. Though he's able to master techniques with more ease than his young Waterbender friend Katara, his lack of focus allowed her to surpass him. Now he must learn from her, as their teacher Master Pakku deemed her a master. He has had no instruction in earthbending, but has received a rudimentary object lesson in breath control and firebending. When he was briefly instructed by the fugitive firebending master Jeong Jeong, he ignored warnings to restrain himself and accidentally burned Katara. Newly respectful of fire's destructive power, he hasn't used firebending since.
Spirit
Aang is host to the Avatar Spirit, a spirit continually reincarnated since time immemorial. In life-threatening situations or instances of extreme emotional stress, Aang involuntarily channels this spirit as a defense mechanism, entering the powerful Avatar State. His tattoos, eyes and mouth glow blue, and the spirit either uses bending as an immediate means of self-preservation, or lapses into a dangerous fit of elemental volatility until Aang is calmed down.
This spiritual state is also the manifestation of all the Avatar's previous incarnations, which allows Aang to tap into the sum total of their power. When in this state the Avatar is at his most powerful, but also his most vulnerable. If the Avatar dies while in the Avatar State, the previous incarnations of the Avatar will die along with him, and the cycle of reincarnation will be permanently broken.
This spirit's most immediate spiritual aspect is Avatar Roku, the previous Avatar incarnate. Born into the Fire Nation in life, Roku is a benign force in spirit, serving as Aang's advisor and protector. On the Winter Solstice, he informed Aang of the impending return of Sozin's Comet, and manifested to defeat a group of Firebenders holding his friends hostage. (When Roku manifests, his voice can be heard behind Aang's when he speaks.) He's guided Aang several times since, appearing to Jeong Jeong to persuade him to teach Aang, offering critical wisdom in the ways of the Spirit World during the siege of the North Pole, and most recently, revealing to Aang the nature of the Avatar State.
Medium
The Avatar also has the capacity to act as a medium, a bridge between mortal world and the Spirit World, the plane of existence where the universe's disembodied spirits dwell. Through inducing a deep meditative state, Aang can separate from his body and travel the physical world's astral plane in astral form, or, with the help of a gateway, travel completely to the Spirit World. Once in the Spirit World, Aang can travel freely and communicate with beings such as Avatar Roku or Koh the Face Stealer. This position as intermediary also allows him to channel other spirits in concert with his Avatar Spirit. He once acted as the Avatar of the Ocean Spirit to defeat the Fire Nation during the siege of the North Pole.
Family
Monk Gyatso
The closest person to a father-figure in Aang's days at the Southern Air Temple, Monk Gyatso was a caring and understanding teacher. He seems to have been the source of Aang's love for fun, games and jokes. When Aang returns to the temple after a century in suspended animation, he is devastated to find the corpse of his beloved mentor surrounded by the remains of Fire Nation soldiers. This prompts Aang to enter the Avatar State, causing a violent emotional episode of involuntary airbending and channeling of his Avatar Spirit, which only abates when his friend Katara promises that she and her brother will be his new surrogate family.
Avatar Roku
Avatar Roku, while not "family" per se, is a facet of Aang's self, the previous incarnation of the Avatar. He serves in much the same capacity as Monk Gyatso before him, guiding Aang through the difficult process of becoming a fully realized Avatar. Though a deep relationship has not yet been established, each knows the other instinctively, and both are pleased to communicate with one another when the opportunity arises.
Relationships
Katara
The first face Aang sees on waking from suspended animation, the young Waterbender Katara was his liberator from the iceberg. Aang developed a crush on the fourteen-year-old. This unrequited infatuation has gradually deepened as Aang has progressed from making amateurish gifts to eavesdropping on Katara's meeting with the fortuneteller Aunt Wu. (Her prediction that Katara will "marry a powerful bender" prompted a silent celebratory fit of glee.) Also, it is positively speculated, but never seen, that in the episode The Cave of Two Lovers, Aang kisses Katara.
Sokka
Aang, and Katara's older brother Sokka have had their rough patches. While Aang has long-since disproved the young warrior's initial suspicions that he was a Fire Navy spy, his occasional carelessness can raise Sokka's hackles. For his part, Aang often makes light of Sokka's serious demeanor. Along with Katara, he views Sokka's skeptical favoring of science over magic with some bewildered amusement, though he's grown impressed with Sokka's engineering skills.
Appa
Appa the flying bison is both Aang's dear pet and the group's primary means of travel. Appa is not only a skilled flyer, but also adept at swimming and seems fairly impervious to adverse weather. Aang loves his fellow survivor of a century of sleep, as they both may be the last of their kind. Aang possesses a flying bison whistle (inaudible to humans) to summon Appa from a distance, and commands him to fly with a cry of "Yip-yip!" Appa is a natural airbender, and legend has it that his species inspired the locals to develop their own airbending skills. The airbenders even tatoo themselves with the flying bison's arrow shaped markings. Appa seems to be able to communicate with animals of other species such as Momo, as is seen in the "Lover's cave" episode. Appa dislikes being underground, again as seen in the "Lover's cave" episode. Appa is very faithful and protective of Aang, and on various occasions has actively entered into battle to protect his little friend.
Momo
Momo, a winged lemur discovered wandering about the ruined Southern Air Temple, was quickly named and claimed as a pet by Aang. Aang is very fond of the creature, because he represents the small hope that other fragments of Air Nomadic culture, even other Air Nomads,could have survived somewhere in the world.
Prince Zuko
The Firebender Prince Zuko is ostensibly one of Aang's greatest enemies. His quest to capture Aang, thus ensuring the Fire Nation's victory, is a threat to Aang's work and the world at large. Yet each has worked in the other's service. Because Zuko's throne and right to return home from exile are forfeit if he does not find the Avatar, he must protect Aang from other potential threats. When Aang was captured by Zuko's rival, Admiral Zhao, Zuko posed as a blue-masked, dual-broadsword-wielding vigilante to free Aang from custody. In turn, Aang rescued Zuko from capture when he was knocked unconscious in their escape attempt. Afterward, reflecting on an old Fire Nation friend named Kuzon, Aang asked Zuko if they could ever be friends, only to receive a fireblast in reply. Aang also saved Zuko from freezing to death in the icy tundras of the North Pole. Aang and Zuko are opposites. (A to Z)
Admiral Zhao
Since the Firebender Admiral Zhao has an even bigger temper than Zuko, Aang knows just how to push his buttons. Exploiting Zhao's low impulse control, ego, and hatred of being humiliated by his youngers, Aang once mocked and egged Zhao on until he destroyed a convoy of his own ships.
King Bumi
So far, King Bumi, the Earthbender ruler of the Earth Kingdom city of Omashu, is the only known peer of Aang's still living. Aang fondly remembers how a young Bumi taught him to use Omashu's mail chutes as a giant roller coaster. Now a supercentenarian, Bumi maintains the eccentric and unconventional thinking that caused Aang to dub him, "a mad genius." In the second season premire it is revealed Bumi will teach Aang earth bending.
Meng
Meng is a young girl who had a crush on Aang in the episode The Fortuneteller. However, Aang did not really care for Meng, because he is busy lusting after Katara. Throughout the episode, Meng stalked Aang to a point at which she admitted her feelings to him. Meng was very jealous of Katara, seeing as Aang likes her. At the end of the episode when Aang, Katara, and Sokka leave, Meng calls out "floozy" in an upset or mad voice. It is speculated that she was most likely referring to Katara.
Koko
Koko was another young girl who had a crush on Aang in the episode The Warriors of Kyoshi. Koko and her little friends liked to chase Aang all over the island. In fact Koko and her friends made a Aang fan-club, and Koko called Aang "John Michael Albert Lee" most of the time. Aang didn't like Koko and thus called her "Mark Douglas Lee" Koko obviously wanted to engage in penetrative intercourse with Aang. They probably did, knowing how much of a P.I.M.P. Aang is. Which brings us to our next point, Ola Moum.
Ola Moum
Nicknamed " Element", Ola Moum is the first Avatar to master the four elements. Those of Awp, Colt, AK and Deagle. He owns heads.
Throughout the entire series, Aang has secretly been trying to find Ola Moum and beg him to become his student. Aang knows very deep down that he will not be able to defeat the Fire Nation without mastering all the elements; Air, Fire, Water, Earth, Awp, Colt, AK, and Deagle.
HeatoN
The largest Avatar known to man. He was recorded as being 8 feet tall and weighed 500 pounds...of ULTIMATE MUSCLE. He was known for adding the element of the BICEP.