cyphomandra

The Blue Spirit – Sokka and Katara are down with bad colds after the storm of the previous episode, so Aang sets out to find help from a nearby herbalist. The herbalist is unhelpful (ish) and Aang's travel there gets him noticed and, on his departure, captured by the famous and deadly Yuu Yan archers, now under the control of the just promoted Admiral Zhao. Aang is swiftly spirited away to a castle with a complex series of siege walls that reminds me of the occasional nightmare I have about trying to get outside and having every window/door etc open on a new enclosed area, and the highly efficient Admiral is already giving speeches to his troops about how now the Fire Nation's only obstacle has been removed, when a mysterious figure with a blue stylised mask finally completes its break-in, frees Aang, and starts trying to break him out.

I actually thought the blue spirit was going to turn out to be a brand new character (in my defence, I had a head cold as well, although this hardly explains my sudden forgetfulness of the laws of narrative causality) and so was even more sympathetic about Aang's offer of friendship to Zuko (although yes, I quite understand why he refuses) and yet another reminder of a person Aang has lost. I enjoyed the escape sequences (especially the use the boarding bamboo ladders as giant stilts until they set them on fire bit) and Zuko's threatening Aang's life as the only way to escape was nicely done. I do wonder whether Iroh knows what Zuko attempted.

The fortuneteller. A chance encounter leads Aang and the others to a village where Madame Wu, a fortune teller who is always right, guides pretty much everyone's decisions, to the extent that the village no longer indulges in its previous sensible if infrequent yearly custom of sending someone up to check the activity of the local volcano. I am sure you can hear the thuds of the plot from here, and I was left wondering whether these characters are going to come up again, because it's an odd story – is Madame Wu really that powerful? Why doesn't the village use her the way Katara does? Is this in fact some sort of brutally suppressive anti-free will dystopia in disguise, rather than a rather pleasant if unhelpful peaceful village?

I did like the different sorts of fortune telling, especially the scapulomancy. I am less taken by the obligatory girl-boy crush subplots but at least all the characters involved other than Sokka seem to have maintained at least a clutch at perspective. Redirecting the lava flow was also very neat, especially when Aang took over – and, I think, exhibited vast amounts of power/skill without entering his Avatar form for the first time. And the guy who goes up before Aang to get the panda lily and doesn't mention the overflowing lava is surprisingly not revealed as a Fire Nation spy.