Avatar: The Last AirbenderLooking closer at the animated series that follows Avatar Aang, the only person who can use all four bending arts: earthbending, waterbending, airbending, and firebending.
Vote up the most interesting posts about bloodbending.
One of the coolest things about the world of ATLA is that the rules of "magic" are always very clear. As with any good system of fantasy, it's the limitations of a certain ability that pushes a character to innovate, and bloodbending (much like Toph learning how to metalbend) is one of them. Here are just some of the coolest things fans of the series have obsessed over about the so-called forbidden art.
Hama didn't exactly want bloodbending to be as normalized and popular as say healing in the field of water bending. She taught Katara because Hama knew that her people suffered great loss during the war, especially waterbending, she thought there were no more left and that all hope was gone.
When she realized that she can help revive water bending knowledge in the southern tribe through Katara, the last waterbender in the south pole. She taught her everything. Even as big of a secret as water bending. Why? To ensure the survival of the southern water tribe's culture, traditions, and people against the fire nation through bloodbending. She's gotten the revenge department covered already. If she wants to make bloodbending mainstrean she can go north and teach everyone. But she didn't, and she never went to the South Pole because she thought it was hopeless before she met Katara. She wants to teach a southern water tribe waterbender, in which she found Katara.
She did her job as an elderly who posses knowledge and pass it down to the next generation of water benders in the south pole. Katara. She accepted her fate behind bars because she knew her life goal was accomplished.
It could be extremely helpful in many scenarios. For example, you could use it to stop someone from bleeding to death. Not surprised if Katara invented a way to incorporate bloodbending into healing techniques seeing as she’s the world’s greatest healer
See, I have been thinking about it for a while now. And I think it is more complex than that.
Unlike Toph and Zuko, Katara stands out in that all of her teachers were humans. Pakku, Hama and, less obvious, the healing teacher in the North Pole.
Toph learned from the very source of earth-bending itself with the badger moles (which she then refined into her own) while Zuko had a mixture of his uncle's teachings and the dragons revealing to him the secret of firebending.
What this means is that, while Toph's earth-bending is practically custom made and Zuko's Fire Bending stands in opposition to the Fire Nation's corrupted version, Katara's is the modern version of Water Bending. the version that had been refined and passed down through the ages to it's current incarnation and it, in turn, mirrors it's people.
Katara also gives a lot of weight to the cultural importance of Water-Bending. In the first episode, she makes a big deal about how Water Bending is not "just magic" and what it means to their people. The loss of Water-Bending in the South Pole also has a co-relation to how the war practically decimated the southern tribes. Meanwhile, in the North Pole, where Water-bending is thriving, it's a place rich in culture and beauty and were Water-Bending is practically part of every day life. In other words, Katara's desire to master Water-Bending is also related to her desire to recover her lost culture and save her heritage.
However, while I wouldn't say Katara has a romanticized version of Water-Bending, she is also naive to her own people's shortcomings, and part of her arc is challenging those shortcomings. In the North Pole, it was to stand her ground and fight misogyny. With Hama, Katara is forced to accept that Water Bending (which until that point was treated as a nobler form than the seemingly evil Fire Bending) is capable of being used for evil and that it is not something to be taken as purely good.
Katara learns both Northern Water Bending and Southern Water Bending. She learns everything that is her culture, she learns the good the bad, the suffering and the happiness of her people. And she also learns it's sins. And that sin is represented with Blood Bending.
Hama won, because Katara was forced to accept that Blood Bending is Water Bending. and because it is Water Bending, it is part of her and her people's heritage.
