Avatar: The Last Airbender

The Unanimity's method of "training" earth benders into lava benders was nothing more than throwing them into a volcano. Either they figured out lava bending asap, or they died horribly.

They all died horribly.

Yeah, the Unanimity Project was awful. They went through a lot of test subjects / victims trying to find the best living weapons with which to intimidate the world's governments.

Edited by M84 on Apr 28th 2024 at 10:51:20 PM

This takes sink or swim to the level of drown or become a fish.

Edited by Weirdguy149 on Apr 28th 2024 at 10:51:35 AM

They literally did that to create the first combustion benders.

They chained them to blocks and threw them into deep water. Either the fire benders figured out how to channel the pressure on them into explosive force to break free...or they drowned.

Most of them drowned.

Edited by M84 on Apr 28th 2024 at 10:54:39 PM

I think we should remember that bending techniques don't necessarily just get discovered once. Hama invented bloodbending on her own while in prison, unaware that there were secretly families of people naturally gifted at bloodbending. So it's possible that combustion bending or chi blocking were also discovered by someone unrelated to Unanimity either before or after.

Edited by TheMountainKing on Apr 28th 2024 at 3:20:10 PM

What makes the Unanimity Project's chi-blocking even worse was that it was based on stolen Air Nomad knowledge of acupuncture. The Unanimity Project took the medical knowledge of one of the most peaceful cultures of that world and turned it into a weapon.

If the chi-blockers by the time of the series were based on the Unanimity Project's legacy, then they are in a way a warped legacy of the Air Nomads.

And the project was just as brutal to the test subjects on this front. They forced them to practice chi-blocking on each other, with a lot of them being permanently damaged in the process. The ones too ravaged for any more experimentation...well, they were shipped off to be test subjects for the Unanimity Project's brainwashing research.

Edited by M84 on Apr 28th 2024 at 10:56:08 PM

Yeah, I was about to say, I don't like the idea that this one project invented combustion-bendng and chi-blocking and brainwashing all at once. I can totally buy they were researching all those things for their own nefarious ends, though — like finding old rumors or historical records of lava benders and chi-blockers and then trying to mass produce them.

Edited by Dracoblade on Apr 29th 2024 at 10:29:53 AM

It makes sense that they would be the first to try these things — they're pretty horrible shit.

They failed with lava bending, and the acupuncture stuff could imply that chi blocking was a historical air nomad art. We don't get a lot of detail on why the project started though, or how it got its start.

It was stolen Air nomad medical knowledge repurposed into a weapon. The Air Nomads themselves did not know chi blocking. The acupuncture info was the basis for it though. The project figured out how to block chi from that via a lot of horrible human experimentation.

The Unanimity Project was the shang cities’ attempt to create weapons powerful enough to let them break free of the governments’ control.

It is the equivalent of cyberpunk mega corps funding a weapons program giving them the power to escape all government regulation.

Edited by M84 on Apr 29th 2024 at 7:54:36 PM

Again, I should really just read the books, but… how’d that work out for them?

It wouldn’t surprise me if their human weapons turned on them. Could you imagine if they did get a lavabender? A lavabender who was pissed at them?

It did backfire. The shangs ended up becoming so dependent on the surviving combustion benders for leverage that the combustion benders realized they were the ones really in charge.

The whole thing collapsed anyway since one of the combustion benders also realized that he would have more leverage if he was the only combustion bender...

Edited by M84 on Apr 29th 2024 at 10:23:15 PM

Kinda weird they didn't get more mileage out of chi blockers but I guess they weren't flashy enough for their liking.

One character underestimating chi blocking may even have been what allowed the knowledge to spread. To elaborate, he let the only survivor of the chi blocking experiments escape because he thought hand-to-hand combat would not be a major gamechanger in the world. Tbf, she was a kid who had been through a lot of horrible shit already — the guy who let her go wanted her to have a chance to live a normal life.

Yes, the Unanimity Project also experimented on children as well as adults to figure this shit out.

Edited by M84 on Apr 30th 2024 at 8:17:02 PM

Honestly feels weird they went the superpower angle instead of the tech angle with that description. Sounds like the kind of group that'd be inventing guns in another verse.

Edited by alekos23 on Apr 30th 2024 at 1:43:18 PM

Doylistically, the tech angle would probably be too similar to the Equalists.

One of the example characters in the tabletop rpg book has a character that uses a fire lance which is a very primitive firearm.

Wasn't advanced technology a thing in the Fire Nation the the Last Airbender?

Yeah, and the shangs were... five hundred years before that? So somewhere in the neighborhood of the 1400's, compared to real life. Not really Industrial Revolution times.

Of course, part of the point of the shang system, which was pointed out repeatedly, was that they pretty much just got their jobs by being cruel assholes who screwed over everyone else, and thought that made them more worthy of power. "They feigned enterprise and risk-taking when all they were doing was drinking from a river no one else was allowed to approach."

It's definitely in-character for them to go "how many people do I have to torture to get a weapon?"

Edited by Discar on Apr 30th 2024 at 4:47:14 AM

Random question: was ATLA the first Western cartoon with one continuous story, rather than being 90-100% episodic? It hit me recently that I can't remember any others prior to it and its contemporary Code Lyoko.

I dunno about it being the first but yeah it didn't leave a lot of filler like other action shows did.

I am pretty sure most shows are partially like that so people don't have to watch from the beginning to jump into the series + it makes it easier to roll out episodes.

Edited by MacronNotes on May 19th 2024 at 12:29:41 PM

Not really. There's BattleTech: The Animated Series and Exo Squad. Both weren't episodic (though it's been a while since I seen both though could be wrong).

Edited by HallowHawk on May 19th 2024 at 10:05:05 AM

TY for the info! I just remembered the Beast duology of Transformers as well.

There's also the 90's X-Men and Spider-Man cartoons, as well as Gargoyles.

Most action shows have the goal be "fighting evil/saving people" which leaves a lot of room for extra adventures. But for Avatar, there was a specific time limit and there was always a sense of urgency so it wasn't episodic.

It had fewer as it went on but ATLA certainly had standalone episodes.

Edited by dcutter2 on May 19th 2024 at 7:01:08 PM