How did she become a "waterbending master", or at least skilled to the point where she was able to train Aang on techniques for months after they left the northern water tribe? She surpassed Aang by so much during Pakku's training that she could refine his waterbending for months afterwards?
Yea, yea people will say "it's because she worked really hard!" It still seems unrealistic and it kinda breaks my immersion when I get to that point of the show. Aang's other teachers also received training from bending masters/progenitors, but they had years of training prior.
Some people are more talented than others. Look how quickly she learned how to bloodbend.
Julian Jones
>It still seems unrealistic and it kinda breaks my immersion when I get to that point of the show How was Sokka such a strategic savant when he'd had no actual experience at war? Some people just hit the jackpot and Avatar was about prodigies. Katara always had the raw talent she just needed some good guidance. She was also insanely dedicated to it.
Aang mastered airbending early on and once he knew the formula for mastering an element the rest would be easier. Toph had to learn through survival and honed her skills continuously. Zuko saw his bending as a means to an end and so tried to force his own way, even willing to learn more reckless techniques just to have an upper hand. Katara...just really fucking wanted to learn waterbending, and focused on only that. Aang fucked around in the North Pole, Sokka had a waifu, and Katara had only bending.
Jordan Lopez
Is she the most talented bender ever? More talented than Toph for example?
Has any bender become a master at their element after a few weeks of training under another master?
Aang was an airbending avatar, and he didn't master airbending in such an incredibly short period of time.
Carter Mitchell
>Toph had to learn through survival
>upper class rich girl Toph >needing earthbending to survive Toph's skill level was bullshit. Her and Azula are the two most Mary Sue benders in the series.
Leo Sanchez
Agreed that even that's bullshit, but they still both make a ton more sense than Katara.
Jaxon Cook
She was a savant. That was the point - Aang's entire entourage were the very best of the best.
Austin Anderson
oh that settles that nvm
Lucas Howard
How did katara become really good at waterbending >it's because she worked really hard! >It still seems unrealistic No? That is how you become good at something user. You practice, train, work with what you got and eventually you will become better at something. Katara used waterbending and surprise surprise, she got better.
In the beginning she could train Aang because he had no idea on how to bend water while she could. It would be similar to.. let's say that I know 4 sentences of spanish and you know nothing. I can teach you those sentences and try to teach you the language while I am also learning it on the side by practicing.
Asher Baker
I can't tell if these responses are serious anymore
Blake Sullivan
You're not just salty because there are competent women in AtlA at all...
Robert Wright
Katara was more focused on practicing and proving herself while Aang just wanted to have fun.
Plus didn't Pakku give Katara some extra waterbending scrolls so she could learn more techniques?
Jacob Ramirez
Years later and this is still a go-to rebuttal for any criticism of Katara. Blows my mind considering how much people love Toph and Azula.
Ryan Baker
Gurl powah marketing and plot convenience. Simple as that.
I mean, they actually made magical healing something that would be BEYOND invaluable to any fucking empire of any size into a cheap throwaway gurl power talking point about how a girl wanting to heal is somehow bad or something.
Then they spend the rest of the fucking series playing up said healing abilities and going out of their way to play up her whole matronly personality, when it's quite obvious that she was just a massive bitch.
One look at where they took the series in Kara should tell you EXACTLY the thought process behind this move.
Jace Scott
People complain about bad writing in Korra, but this is not any better. She was a novice waterbender. Aang was clearly better. Then after a few weeks of training she's suddenly "Master Katara". Nope. Not gonna happen. It's the same shit all over again in season 3 when Iroh goes from fat to Arnold tier muscular in a matter of weeks.
Ayden Brooks
in the avatar universe, creativity and the capability of making your own forms is essentially what makes you a master
nearly every bender, not a relatively powerless nameless mook, had some form of unique bending, or at least a very specialized form of another bending everyone from team aang, and the white lotus, either was specialized, unique, or in some cases both, and thats why they were strong/masters the same applies to sokka and piandao
Owen Wilson
>but they still both make a ton more sense than Katara Nah, Katara wasn't even that bad compared to Toph and Azula.
She had a ton of natural talent, just needed a teacher to unlock it. She also had constant practice since she had to fight all the time and trained a lot as well. She was never a master, just good enough to teach Aang since Pakku couldn't go with them. She only surpassed Aang since Aang has always been lackadaisical towards training and Katara trained like crazy because she was jelly at Aang being better than her.
Toph >beats professional earthbending fighters in her first appearance >unique fighting style >unique bending power >invents new form of building >fights Bumi who literally has a hundred more years of wartime experience on her to a draw >all this skill gained by fucking around with some beasts of burden
Azula >unique color of fire >mastered dangerous subset of bending at a young age >bending rules don't apply >bends reality and plot to her will 75% of the time
The only reasonable thing about her is her having the best teachers royalty and money can buy and having a lot of talent.
Isaiah Powell
Toph and Azula both received training from bending masters of progenitors. There's absolutely no way you can criticize them as mary sues while excusing Katara's master-level bending with "she had some scrolls and practiced hard over the new few months that they were on their journey".
Jose Hill
No amount of hardwork will overcome someone who mastered everything she knew about water bending in seconds, pure natural talent, and being a demigod. Her even approaching being a master in that short of a time is plot convenient gurl power baiting. And I brought up gurl power because they litterally tied her personal growth to the wretched disgusting indeologies of the self destructive feminist movement/talking point that thirsty lesbians bring up to shame girls into bumping clams.
Kayden Roberts
Toph and Azula are mary sues. The only one that can be handwaived is probably Azula and that's becasue bitch is crazy and the fire devoured her soul or whatever. Her mary sue status doesn't hinge on her bullshit power, it hinges on everything else about her.
Toph? Everything about her is pure OC DONUT STEEL.
Ayden Gray
Agreed. The problem I have with your post is that you're saying they're more unbelievably strong than Katara which is absurd.
Angel Stewart
Toph's skill level makes perfect sense. She already had the fundamentals and she had tremendous motivation to hone her skill and the focus to do so. The fighting abilities came second to her finding a workaround for her handicap.
Sebastian Gomez
Katara is still somewhat overpowered, but people exaggerate how OP she is compared to those two.
>received training from bending masters of progenitors
Yeah, Azula did. Toph literally just hung out with badgermoles, which somehow gives her the fighting experience necessary to beat professional fighters.
Azula also can use lightning despite being totally fucking crazy, even though Iroh said lightning would kill you if you didn't have a clear head.
Toph invented metalbending.
Azula spontaneously learned lightning redirection despite being crazy, never having a teacher for it, and it being totally unintuitive for her rage-based firebending style.
>Agreed. The problem I have with your post is that you're saying they're more unbelievably strong than Katara which is absurd. Katara got stomped by Pakku. She's absurdly competent, but not a master.
Meanwhile Toph goes toe to toe with Bumi without breaking a sweat and Azula manages to land a hit on Iroh.
>No amount of hardwork will overcome someone who mastered everything she knew about water bending in seconds, pure natural talent, and being a demigod. Hard work is enough when that demigod slacks from training every second he gets. Aang is a pretty shitty student.
>fucks off from airbending training with Gyatso >doesn't listen and burns his forever girl for not paying attention to his firebending training >didn't really follow Pakku's rules >Toph is a shit teacher, so I don't blame him as much for his earthbending training
Really? A few years of observing badgermoles (with half of them being when Toph is barely old enough to walk and not shit her pants) is enough to match a bending master with decades of more experience to a draw?
Jonathan Cook
it was just bullshit to keep her on the team
Adam Johnson
>Azula also can use lightning despite being totally fucking crazy, even though Iroh said lightning would kill you if you didn't have a clear head.
Outside the Agni Kai she was calm and collected when using lightning. When she was going batshit she still had a singular purpose.
Colton Ortiz
She wasn't matched up against masters. She was matched against scrubs and average benders and her understanding outpaced theirs. She uses earthbending every minute of every day while most others use it only when they want something moved or to fight.
Brody Bailey
>She wasn't matched up against masters She fought Bumi.
>She uses earthbending every minute of every day while most others use it only when they want something moved or to fight. She uses it to see. That shouldn't somehow boost her fighting prowess. Playing soccer all the time doesn't make you good at kickboxing even though they both involve kicks.
Chase Evans
The series had a really fast time-scale. Aang masters everything Katara has to teach him within the span of a few weeks. These kids regularly accomplish what seems like it takes light years to master.
William Anderson
>That was the point - Aang's entire entourage were the very best of the best. This. ATLA is like some old, mythical story where destiny brings together the best of the fucking best. I also think there was something about how all the other waterbenders in the Southern Tribe being killed off meant that a lot of the Tribe's spirituality was channeled into Katara, making her insanely powerful, but that might have been word-of-God or a non-canon source or something.
Liam Morris
I think toph having the ability to sense attackers coming gave her a edge against most earthbenders. I mean the dai li fucked her with their flying hands in the first encounter. I feel the power progression in ATLA is way better than korras
Alexander Nguyen
you fucks cant help yourselvs can you
Anthony Cook
I felt Korra liked to Job, alot. and mako and bolin had their competency go from jobber to masters and Zaheer is freaking ultimate airbender within a few days.
Adam Richardson
Zaheer got flight, but he was getting his shit stomped in by Tenzin.
For all the complaints of Korra not telling us things instead of showing them, they did that airbending fight right.
Noah Harris
>Toph literally just hung out with badgermoles, which somehow gives her the fighting experience necessary to beat professional fighters.
Bruh, if you've ever played a sport or learnt any skill you'd know the most important thing to know is the fundamentals, which is what Bumi told Aang. He had to find someone who understood the core principles of earthbending; wait, listen. Toph mastered those because they became an essential part of her existence, it was her way of interacting with the world.
It isn't suprising that she was capable of becoming THAT amazing at earthbending when her entire life was basically a huge training session in waiting and listening. All she had to do was strike.
Jace Rogers
make a thread about katara brings up korra fuck off
Tyler Collins
yeah that was dumb
she wasn't even a prodigy, she was struggling a fuckton in the first few episodes and was pissed about how aang was better than her and then suddenly became a prodigy
that was weird too, he changed from some silly dude who hunted with a boomerang to a war strategist
zuko was justified cuz he's a prince so he'd probably at least have some training and experience with war, aang cuz he's the avatar, and toph sort of because she ran away and was literally raised by moles
Tyler Nelson
I'm glad other people feel this way. Something about Toph always rubbed me the wrong way.
Completely trivialized blindness that is actually better than having sight+rich family+invented a bending style just reeked of special snowflake to me.
She was never challenged the same way Zuko or Katara or Aang ever was.
She was a harbinger of what was to come in Korra.
Chase Rogers
true i did like that he was getting schooled and tenzin only was beat cause his cronies backed up zaheer. I also liked how zaheer only got flight after his waifu was killed cause he no longer had any attachments.
Liam Howard
It's a fucking cartoon. Why can she bend water?
Cooper Nelson
>he changed from some silly dude who hunted with a boomerang to a war strategist
He'd have had knowledge about that shit from his Dad, plus he was always shown to be a lot more analytical than his generally goofy DUDE MEAT LMAO exterior. I think his simplistic view of the situations they found themselves in helped too since he knew his limits and always tried to solve the issues in the simplest way possible, while the benders (the Earth kingdom inner circle was all benders, most of the fire nation generals too) tend to see the war as a bending contest
Lincoln Mitchell
Bending skill is like genetics its completely random so you never know who could be a monster.
Zachary Murphy
cause bitching about bender progression airbender when korra exists. I guess you really need to chalk it up to being savants, all of them. their so damn good cause they were born, destined to be like that. maybe being near the avatar their spirit energy just enhances their allies.
Bentley Diaz
to be fair aang is the avatar, so he has some kind of natural talent with bending since he is the reincarnation of a long line of masters
plus by the last season everyone tells him he isn't ready and hasn't mastered the elements, but he doesn't have any time left so he goes "fuck it"
Matthew Butler
I see you, Noatak
Eli Foster
go make another hugbox circle jerk thread and bitch about korra
Luke Fisher
I never talked about korra on Sup Forums, is it a pariah here? I don't think its as good but okay.
Gavin Rodriguez
korra haters have the same thread over and over saying the same shit
Camden Gutierrez
don't forget she also learns bloodbending and is easily able to go toe to toe with a legit waterbending master who has likely trained for years
Brandon Williams
Forgive me for using such an Sup Forums-related comparison, but the best explanation I can think of is that Katara had the Shounen trope of 'advanced learning'. It's a half-assed way to show protagonists developing their power by having them learn new techniques extremely quickly in relative to the 'old, wise master' types.
Alternatively, Katara was Bryke's personal, infallible Mary Sue who literally could do no wrong.
William Garcia
Shes a prodigy. She even discovered healing on accident
Dominic Reyes
Because in this world people can control the elements. That does not excuse shit.
Nathaniel Campbell
Don't ever say Azula was a mary sue.
Jackson Wood
If she's a prodigy, why did she suck so much in the beginning? She is 14. She lives around water, snow and ice. She had plenty of time to practice even though she didn't have anyone to teach her.
Colton Diaz
It's Scrapper, everybody abandon thread.
Chase Butler
>She didn't have anyone to teach her
You got your answer right there, as soon as she got someone to tell her how not to fuck up she improved
Henry Gutierrez
She had no one to encourage her and had other duties to attend to. She began improving because she had time to practice and for Aang to help her understand bending more
Kayden Watson
and being able to train with someone her level probably helped a ton. How does that saying go? Something like the best way to learn is by trying to teach each other?
Jaxon Myers
she was still able to surpass aang to the point where she could become his master and be certified as a master by another old, sagely dude
it's ridiculous no matter how you put it
Brayden Miller
She already knew waterbending and had been at maybe apprentice level for years. Aang barely knew the basics by the time they got to the norther water tribe.
Jose Taylor
How the fuck do you have ATLA in that resolution
Adrian Martin
Because it's a goddamn story and it'd be fucking boring if she were incredible on the spot. Christ.
Isaiah Bennett
I'd like to know this, too.
Anthony Hughes
...when the fuck does toph fight bumi? am I crazy?
Alexander Ortiz
Comics.
Camden Parker
Everyone in this show learns unrealistically quickly because the writers didn't plan their power progression very well and didn't have enough seasons to waste time showing them grinding to gain bending levels
Asher Peterson
You're a fucking idiot... holy shit. Rewatch the series and maybe you will be less stupid afterwards.
Leo Reed
You are the biggest retard in the world.
James Powell
>Toph? Everything about her is pure OC DONUT STEEL.
Toph was trained from birth by sacred animals and practiced earthbending literally every second of her waking life. If anything she is the only one besides Aang who has a good excuse for being demigod-tier.
Gavin Myers
Toph and Azula didn't learn unrealistically quickly. They were already grandmasters when they were introduced. This guy saying they're bigger Mary Sues than Katara is completely fucking insane.
Ryder Ward
>How did she become a "waterbending master", or at least skilled to the point where she was able to train Aang on techniques for months after they left the northern water tribe?
Because Katara genuinely enjoys water bending and spent a good amount of time figuring shit out on her own. She understood the basics before she even started formal training. It's the difference between someone who takes a class in something, and someone who lives and breathes the subject matter.
Anyone can go take a class in programming and walk out with an idea how that shit works, but if you had programmed little things before, and continued to program outside of class, you understand the implications of the techniques they teach you much better than the guy who's there just because.
Tyler Long
No that's Azula. That's why for plot's sake she had to undergo an emotional/mental breakdown for anyone to stand a chance at her.
Jack Hill
>Wtf, i hate Avatar now
In all seriousness, tho. This is some shitty writing
This is a fucking man who is blind and uses fucking echolocation to navigate around.. This is equivalent to what Toph did only with bending.
It makes perfect sense for her to master bending to a point where its just like using your hand. And metal bending was something she learned out of survival.
Lincoln Bennett
>Young girl in her prime can only manage to stalemate 100 year old expereince man.
user that says a fucking lot about Bumi's skills. Would you expect Ali (minus the illnesses) to be able to beat active boxers?
Juan Gomez
The simple answer is that none of them are. Katara was hinted at being pretty powerful from day one, when she accidentally got Aang out of the iceberg with her waterbending. She had no formal training and very little free time to actually train herself. Then once they begin their training she's actually given more time to use her waterbending in the real world and therefore is allowed to train more especially since she had to learn how to use it to fight, then she got really good just from reading and copying those water bending scrolls, and figured out that she could heal someone with her waterbending by accident. She did all of this without a formal teacher to help her learn the basics or correct any of her mistakes. Pakku even pointed out that she was a skilled water bender during their duel with the only reason why he didn't want to teach was because of her gender. Makes sense that a bit of formal training helped her to improve to the level of a master because she was already a prodigy.
Toph had formal training but it amounted to nothing more than breathing exercises, which were still useful, since it was a fundamental of earth bending. Plus she was essentially training every day because her using earthbending to see, and then fighting earth benders in the ring often. On top of learning from the badgermoles, she was a prodigy.
Azula was a prodigy who received formal training from when she was young. Sure she never learned from a progenitor of bending like the other two, but she was formally trained.
Josiah Stewart
I don't know if we know exactly how long they were there, one difference between Katara and Aang is simple:
Hunger. Katara was anxious for this opportunity, it meant an incredible deal to her and she would have thrown herself into it to insane levels. Pakkus comments on how remarkable a student she was.
And we know Aang was immensely lax toward it since he had the talent and memories of his past lives and experiences that enabled him to do well off the bat and he was content with it.
This right here is ignorance and a complete disregard for something established in the very first episode, Katara's interest in waterbending.
Kevin Young
>It still seems unrealistic and it kinda breaks my immersion when I get to that point of the show
You should pay attention, she had a MASTER bender to help her for many months before she met Pakku, Aang. They had been studying a waterbending scroll long before they met Pakku.
Owen Nguyen
Its this neural-network based program called waifu2x. It upscales images and videos and is mainly for anime or anime-style shows.
I havent had the chance to really play around with it but from what I hear the network could be trained on TLOK and used to upscale ATLA to high resolution.
Jack Hughes
A lot of pro basketball players have sons or fathers who are also really exceptional, like Steph Curry and Kobe Bryant, why can't Azula be naturally talented when she comes from a lineage of incredible benders?
Mason Perry
Yeah, that was the entire point of Azula's character. She had every advantage from birth and possessed the mentality to use them to their full extent. Her very existence was unfair and she reveled in it.
Jose Nelson
>Everyone in this show learns unrealistically Besides Aang, Toph, Azula, Iroh, and the outstanding majority of characters >unrealistically Also what is the realistic amount of time it would take to learn bending? How do you even determine how fast someone should or should not be able to learn something completely mystical and foreign to us? >the writers Literally developed the lore, shouldn't they be the ones who determine what is realistic or unrealistic in this fictional universe?
Brayden Martin
This. Roku and Sozin were Zuko and Azula's great grandfathers, it makes sense that they'd be more naturally gifted than other benders given their heritage.
Oh, and before anyone says
>Zuko >talented
The only reason Zuko struggled with his bending was because Ozai didn't care about training him, Azula was his prodigy. If they had both received the same training, Zuko would have been just as powerful.
Thomas Scott
Katara stands out because in "The Waterbending Scroll" it was shown that Aang had a lot more natural talent/power than her in waterbending, but then at the end of the book she totally surpasses him to the point where she can train him.
Charles Hernandez
But Aang wasn't a master waterbender at that point, in fact he wasn't even close all he had was potential to become an amazing waterbender. He was at Kataras level or slightly above.
Carson Long
No, he wouldn't. Zuko is a remarkable firebender, moreover he's more skilled than most of benders, but he's nowhere near such monsters as Azula, Toph and Aang.
Ian Garcia
Aang was a master airbender.
Zachary Garcia
Katara had passion for it, the end.
Charles Hernandez
>and he didn't master airbending in such an incredibly short period of time.
Uh, yes. He did.
He was their HIGHEST LEVEL POSSIBLE, which is why he was granted the tattoos. He did that at merely 12.
Evan Davis
Can water benders even breath under water? Can't they just cycle the oxygen to themselves?
Luis Harris
In theory that should be possible, but it would probably require the development of an extremely advanced waterbending technique to do.
Lincoln Watson
Theoretically, but they can just bend the water around them instead
Isaac Miller
The Bumi fight isn't canon, everything but metal bending points to Bumi being a far superior fighter.
Zachary Bell
Why do you call them monsters? Are you scared of achievement.
Tyler Rivera
Pretty sure it was her blindness that amplified her earthbending skills