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flonnebonneI always have lots of stuff I want to post about, but I never get around to it.
Thoughts on the Avatar Season 3 premier, aka an excuse to talk about Aang and Zuko
Season 3 premier = soooooo gooooooood. Lots of plot development (Avatar always moves the plot forward quickly) and lots of character development too. Katara's anger at her father seemed kind of childish at first, but her voice actor did such a superb job with the crying scene that I was moved to tears too.
Also, Aang and Zuko angsted in similar ways! I'm probably the last to notice that Zuko often functions as Aang's double, which the writers made very clear in this episode.
Aang: "I have to redeem myself. I must restore my honour."
cut to Zuko's face in closeup
That little scene made my jaded English-major soul tingle with joy. It made me think: Aang and Zuko are bearing similarly heavy burdens--their responsibilities to win the war, the legacies of their forefathers, the desire for love and respect--but all of the things Zuko (thinks he) wants are tarnished, twisted versions of what Aang wants. Yet Aang is not so dissimilar! He often steps dangerously close to crossing the line into Zuko-dom. In fact, I'd say he crosses that line in this episode. Haring off on his own, putting personal honour above his larger responsilibities, shunning the help of those who love him, Aangsting it up....it's all so very Zuko-like. But at the end of the episode, Aang has made his way back to the right path and Zuko is still teetering around, unsure. I really love how their choices compliment each other in this episode.
Aang may be the Avatar, but we are shown again and again that he is a normal boy at heart. He has a hard and complicated life, but he manages to overcome his fears and rise above himself. Zuko, on the other hand, keeps damning himself with his own doubts.
We could say that the difference between Aang and Zuko is that Aang is blessed and Zuko is cursed, Aang grew up with love and Zuko with merely ambition, Aang is saddled with a noble quest and Zuko a vile quest disguised as a noble one, Aang gets help from magical ghosts (two ghosts in this episode, I thought that was overkill) and Zuko gets nothing...except there are those who do reach out to Zuko (mainly his uncle) and again and again Zuko rejects them or picks the wrong "helping" hand (Azula!). He knows what he has to do, somewhere in that burnt up little heart of his.
Didn't Aang once say to Zuko, "If things were different, I think we could have been friends?" They keep meeting each other not just because of plot reasons or fate, but also because their is a mutual sympathy between them. It attracts and repulses them at the same time. Doubles! Yet very much their own characters.
Crossing distances, drawing connections between characters, nations, elements...I love this show. :) :) :)
The prefectural speech contest = zannen deshita
The speech contest was on September 19, aka International Talk Like a Pirate day, but sadly none of the kids talked like a pirate. That would have been cheating anyway.
My student, Yuka, didn't win a prize, but she did her best and I'm proud of her. She was recovering from a cold, but I don't think she would have won even if she were at her best. There were a lot of very good students there, including one girl who had done three speech contests, one for each year she'd been in junior high! The weird thing was, that girl didn't win a prize either, despite being very good. I didn't really agree with a lot of the judges' choices--and no, I'm not saying that because Yuka didn't win anything. Although I have to admit I was hoping she would get fifth or sixth.
The judges said they didn't like seeing the kids do too many gestures, and that they liked it when they talked about their daily lives (rather than, say, social issues). All well and good, except most of the kids have been told the opposite.
The judges' weirdest choice for a prize-winner: one kid who had rather bad pronunciation/intonation, who presumably got fourth place because she did very few gestures and wrote a speech about going to a rakugo performance. Zero social issues for the win, bleargh.
Every year the prefectural judges change (it's held at a different place every year), and every year they have different preferences. Heck, sometimes even the same judges seem to change their preferences, judging by what the district judges liked this year. I don't know what I'm going to tell my kids to do next year. I'm not exactly pissed, but I am frustrated.
On a more positive note, the speeches at the prefectural competition were much more enjoyable than the ones at the district level. There was one girl from Xaverio Junior High, a Catholic school that was girls-only up until this year, who gave a speech about the place of women in Japan. You go, girl! And there was one girl who wrote a funny speech about eating vegemite for the first time...she had excellent comic timing.
Girl: And then (dramatic pause) there was vegemite.
everyone laughs
The vegemite girl didn't win a prize (her pronunciation/intonation was sometimes good, sometimes not-so-good), but she was really quite a talented speech maker. And much more lively than the girl who won first place, who was good but really boring. She won last year too, apparently, using a very similar speech...but the judges are different this year, so they probably don't know that. She wrote about homestay in America, of course...it's always about homestay in America. Le sigh.
Thoughts on the Avatar Season 3 premier, aka an excuse to talk about Aang and Zuko
Season 3 premier = soooooo gooooooood. Lots of plot development (Avatar always moves the plot forward quickly) and lots of character development too. Katara's anger at her father seemed kind of childish at first, but her voice actor did such a superb job with the crying scene that I was moved to tears too.
Also, Aang and Zuko angsted in similar ways! I'm probably the last to notice that Zuko often functions as Aang's double, which the writers made very clear in this episode.
Aang: "I have to redeem myself. I must restore my honour."
cut to Zuko's face in closeup
That little scene made my jaded English-major soul tingle with joy. It made me think: Aang and Zuko are bearing similarly heavy burdens--their responsibilities to win the war, the legacies of their forefathers, the desire for love and respect--but all of the things Zuko (thinks he) wants are tarnished, twisted versions of what Aang wants. Yet Aang is not so dissimilar! He often steps dangerously close to crossing the line into Zuko-dom. In fact, I'd say he crosses that line in this episode. Haring off on his own, putting personal honour above his larger responsilibities, shunning the help of those who love him, Aangsting it up....it's all so very Zuko-like. But at the end of the episode, Aang has made his way back to the right path and Zuko is still teetering around, unsure. I really love how their choices compliment each other in this episode.
Aang may be the Avatar, but we are shown again and again that he is a normal boy at heart. He has a hard and complicated life, but he manages to overcome his fears and rise above himself. Zuko, on the other hand, keeps damning himself with his own doubts.
We could say that the difference between Aang and Zuko is that Aang is blessed and Zuko is cursed, Aang grew up with love and Zuko with merely ambition, Aang is saddled with a noble quest and Zuko a vile quest disguised as a noble one, Aang gets help from magical ghosts (two ghosts in this episode, I thought that was overkill) and Zuko gets nothing...except there are those who do reach out to Zuko (mainly his uncle) and again and again Zuko rejects them or picks the wrong "helping" hand (Azula!). He knows what he has to do, somewhere in that burnt up little heart of his.
Didn't Aang once say to Zuko, "If things were different, I think we could have been friends?" They keep meeting each other not just because of plot reasons or fate, but also because their is a mutual sympathy between them. It attracts and repulses them at the same time. Doubles! Yet very much their own characters.
Crossing distances, drawing connections between characters, nations, elements...I love this show. :) :) :)
The prefectural speech contest = zannen deshita
The speech contest was on September 19, aka International Talk Like a Pirate day, but sadly none of the kids talked like a pirate. That would have been cheating anyway.
My student, Yuka, didn't win a prize, but she did her best and I'm proud of her. She was recovering from a cold, but I don't think she would have won even if she were at her best. There were a lot of very good students there, including one girl who had done three speech contests, one for each year she'd been in junior high! The weird thing was, that girl didn't win a prize either, despite being very good. I didn't really agree with a lot of the judges' choices--and no, I'm not saying that because Yuka didn't win anything. Although I have to admit I was hoping she would get fifth or sixth.
The judges said they didn't like seeing the kids do too many gestures, and that they liked it when they talked about their daily lives (rather than, say, social issues). All well and good, except most of the kids have been told the opposite.
The judges' weirdest choice for a prize-winner: one kid who had rather bad pronunciation/intonation, who presumably got fourth place because she did very few gestures and wrote a speech about going to a rakugo performance. Zero social issues for the win, bleargh.
Every year the prefectural judges change (it's held at a different place every year), and every year they have different preferences. Heck, sometimes even the same judges seem to change their preferences, judging by what the district judges liked this year. I don't know what I'm going to tell my kids to do next year. I'm not exactly pissed, but I am frustrated.
On a more positive note, the speeches at the prefectural competition were much more enjoyable than the ones at the district level. There was one girl from Xaverio Junior High, a Catholic school that was girls-only up until this year, who gave a speech about the place of women in Japan. You go, girl! And there was one girl who wrote a funny speech about eating vegemite for the first time...she had excellent comic timing.
Girl: And then (dramatic pause) there was vegemite.
everyone laughs
The vegemite girl didn't win a prize (her pronunciation/intonation was sometimes good, sometimes not-so-good), but she was really quite a talented speech maker. And much more lively than the girl who won first place, who was good but really boring. She won last year too, apparently, using a very similar speech...but the judges are different this year, so they probably don't know that. She wrote about homestay in America, of course...it's always about homestay in America. Le sigh.
