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.
Updated September 23, 2021 5.7k votes 860 voters 35k views
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Vote up your favorite details about "Tales of Ba Sing Se."
Everybody hates filler episodes until they see this one. "Tales of Ba Sing Se" is beloved amongst fans for its careful structure and insight into all of the characters. And yet we're always learning new things about it; here are some details we hadn't noticed before. Vote up your favorites!
After rewatching Iroh's tale for the billionth time, I realized something, Iroh once tried to destroy this city. He was the only general who ever breached the walls and he almost conquered it. Not only that, but his son passed in the att*ck by the earth-benders defending the city.
But in this tale, we see Iroh helping the locals and living in the city in peace. He may have been responsible for the d*aths of those children's fathers, or one of their dads may have even slain Lu Ten. But he walks around the city he once tried to destroy, not as a conqueror, but as a peaceful average citizen, trying to make everyones day just a little better, even on the anniversary of his son's passing.
Then, at the end, when he lights the candles for Lu Ten, he was outside the inner-walls of the city. This could have been the exact spot his son passed, and the only time he had ever been there. But it is not a moment of anger or vengeance, but one of mourning and regret.
This realization really made this episode more meaningful to me, not only is his kindness and compassion admirable by itself, but once you realize the history he had with Ba Sing Se and the people of the city, you are able to appreciate what a good man he really is.
The way Zuko allows himself that one moment of affection with Jin after she kisses him and back away quickly, then he leans forward for that barest little peck. Immediately you can tell his brain is overrun by his reality and specifically how incongruous it is with Jin's. She does not truly know who he is, even if she likely suspects that he's a firebender. She's completely removed from this situation in a way I think they could've only achieved in Ba Sing Se, where the past 100 years doesn't exist as a pervasive and traumatizing force in the lives of these young adults. Jin is, for lack of a better term, safe. She's normal. The scope of Zuko's life and his pain is something he's still processing, so there's no way he's going to feel comfortable sharing that with someone new. More than that, being near Zuko puts people in danger, even in Ba Sing Se. Jet proved that fact. And really, since Zuko was 13, his life has been constant upheaval and chaos. There's no way he's going to trust this nice moment of stability when it comes along.
I think it’s important for people to know that Mako was the original voice actor of Uncle Iroh. He had esophageal cancer. Tales from Ba Sing Se was his last day of voice work for the show before he passed. The drawing of Iroh’s son here in this episode was based on Mako himself when he was young, and the song Leaves from the Vine was written about him because he had also been a soldier. He never got to see the episode air. In Legend of Korra, Mako was named after him. Greg Baldwin took over for him after he passed, but refuses to sing Leaves from the Vine because “that’s Mako’s song.”
tfw you’re a traitor who is exiled from the fire nation after a long life of unlearning imperialist ideology and your traumatized nephew who’s like 15 years old is with you and you’re just trying to give him the most stable life possible while creating an environment that will allow him to heal from severe physical and mental abuse but he’s also the crown prince in conflict with himself over his conflicting senses of duty and morality so you don’t really know how to help him live a normal life but then a girl comes into the tea shop you own that he works at and asks him out and you realize that this will be perfect to help him get a little bit of a normal experience plus she seems really sweet and hes blushing so you say yes for him and spend like 10 minutes doing his hair and then 3 hours later he comes back and slams his door and you’re worried that his first and only meaningful interaction with other normal kids his age may have gone really badly and made him feel rejected but then he opens the door back up to tell you he had a nice time and you realize he’s just angsty because hes like 15 so that’s alright
