SHORT COMMENT:
Info on the anime: [link]

It's a new show airing on Nickelodeon, (nick.com) for 1-2 months so far.

It is an anime inspired by Chinese/other asian tales and mythology. The studies overall is done much better than many many american half-adapted anime/cartoons. I call it anime out of respect for their quality and efford.



LONG COMMENT:
I was thrilled to see an american anime that ACTUALLY respect the Asian arts and our culture, that actually shows love and respect.

Many many movies have been made about martial arts and asian culture, there is good and bad on our side; but after it has hit big in America, I saw many anime/cartoons in America just stick a name from Chinese martial arts and just use it for title selling, the movements, the designs and concepts are nothing close to our culture. I find no appreciation in them.

For Avatar, I can appreciate it, and my family can appreciate it because these writers/designers/animators went far enough in their studies, that they actually came to respect it. They understood the asian wits, the arts, and the principle of martial arts training, and also the basic understanding of the problems in our culture. They got Sholin kungfu in it without telling you it's "Sholin," that impressed me.
Because most people... even asian artists might not know as much as these American artists who went into the fields to dig for old films, older tales, and I know one of the writers even went to learn martial arts to get an understanding of how it works.

The animation itself has outstanding and good standard cuts, because there is many groups working on different plots and esp, sometimes when it's good, the quality match the movie standard. When it's normal, it does appear to have some jaggling effect.
But overall the quality control is quite good. The film quality doesn't drop or rise too dramatically although I can tell a difference.

The Story Standardly it is for kids, so there is not much drama to the piece, but alot of fun and action. It's an entertaining adventure anime to watch. The story is still interesting to keep up with. For girls, I can say it's quite "cute"

Characters Although adapted from Asian tales, still merges with the naturally expressive quality of the American culture, which Asian anime often lacks. The characters are easy to relate to, they have human qualities to them, the balance of good and bad is ok.

Social Commentary the story does have some social commentary based on the asian culture's sexist problem, authority, empire power struggle and etc, but don't expect too much drama from it, most of the plots I find are not deep enough to be dramatic for adults, but they certainly make the points clear.

That's it for now, I hope to see more good fanart on this show... it's hard to even find reference pictures online.