Don't show face until third season

>don't show face until third season
>he just looks like an older Zuko

Why did they do this?

It’s an anime trope.
They wanted to...fuck I don’t know it’s retarded what do you want from me?

He should have had a scar on his face too. It certainly would have been a surprise to see that Zuko gave as good as he got

>he just looks like an older Zuko
not completely.
Also, they're father and son in a small gene pool.
Did you expect them to look wildly different?

Or it would’ve been some poetic shit about how his father did it to him and thus set an emotional standard or something.

>is Zuko's father
>looks like an older version of Zuko

To make up for the fact that Ozai was a pretty boring person compared to his children.

Stop excusing laziness.

>It didn't turn out to just be Ursa in a really bad disguise everyone went along with.
>Zuko didn't spend the season trying to figure out why his mom was Chicken Boo-ing it.

But we already knew Zuko didn't give as good as he got, he was begging for mercy immediately.

He wasn’t a character up until that point. He was meant to be a blot on Zuko’s psyche and that’s more effective if he’s portrayed as something other than human.

are you actually stupid? did you want him to be a black dude or some shit?

And once you introduce him as a character with a face, he becomes lame after that. He doesn't do anything cool with his firebending, nor does he have an interesting personality or any particular reason for why he does what he does.

Ozai not having a face in seasons 1 and 2 is an artistic choice because most appearances of him then we get through Zuko's memories

But if that were the case, shouldn't his big reveal have been saved for the finale? has a point, revealing Ozai's face immediately robs him of the mystique that's been built up around him due to our only seeing him in Zuko's memories and Aang's hallucinations. Shouldn't they have tried to preserve that mystique as long as possible?

He is only boring because he was kept in the background for nearly all of the series even after revealing his face. And because bryke didn't want to write him as anything other than as a monster that Aang had to defeat at the end of his quest.

Okay. Not every character needs to be fully fleshed out. Ozai had a role to play and he played it.

You've gotta have your head pretty far up your ass to get your shit kicked in by some kid and still believe in your gay little social darwinist fetish.

Why do you have to suck a kids show creators dick so much?

It would have made it clunky to have him in the present but not show his face. Besides the point wasn’t to make him a big scary baddie. Reveling his face coincided with Zuko coming to terms with his past and facing new problems in the present.

He didn't need to have several seasons of character arcs, but I'd expect the final boss of the show to be more fleshed out than "evil overlord who abuses his children".

What do you want? Just ask yourself that for a moment.

What good would it have done? It wouldn’t have served any of the major character arcs in any way.

You are a very stupid person.

How else would he have looked? He is his father.

I always thought that the reveal meant that Ozai was going to finally step out from the shadows and become the major antagonist of the third season like Zhao and Azula were for the previous ones, but he does nothing except be offscreen and sit in his throne until the fucking finale.

Zuko and Ozai's conversations in Day of Black Sun and in the comics prove that he could have had some good characterization and it would have been a better thing to do than waste Zuko's Fire Nation time in a fucking romance. Ozai didn't even get to have a single scene with Iroh.

>villain isn't attached to any of the character arcs
well damn...

>fleshing out the person responsible for Zuko and Azula being so messed up wouldn't have served Zuko and Azula's character arcs

To make Aang's anxiety over killing somebody have more weight to it. Because Ozai was so underwritten that he may as well have been some random monster for Aang to quash. Giving him moments where he's an actual person would have made Aang's personal conflict have more of a point to it. Beats "I can't kill Ozai because he used to be a baby!"

I think this is the entire key to the reason Ozai feels like a letdown. He's not a BAD villain, but Book 1 had Zhao and Book 2 had Azula, both of whom were fantastic. Ozai merely being "good" is, by comparison, a disappointment.

It also doesn't help that, in the endless comparisons of Avatar to Star Wars, Ozai doesn't hold a candle to the Emperor.

Would it? What more did you need to know?

So you think taking a character, aging them up a couple decades and calling it a whole new character can be called creative design? Do you have no standards?

Why Ozai is an asshole, for starters. Why he's such an asshole that even his dad, another Fire Lord responsible for countless atrocities, is horrified by his lack of standards.

what makes Ozai good to you and not merely forgettable?

No. Answer his question. What do you want? use your words.

How would that have changed or informed Zuko or Azula's characters?

Ozai was a shitty character, but one of the things I liked about him is that he looked just like an older, more stern Zuko. It served to show that they are eternally tied and that Zuko must choose to be good.

Why do you think Zhao was fantastic? He was decently written and very fun and entertaining, but nothing extraordinary. Still fitting for season 1 though, when stuff was more maniqueist.

I wanted to see Zuko realizing that his father's respect isn't what he really wanted and how he hates the way the Fire Nation is run rather than Zuko spelling it out for the audience after spending only a single scene with Ozai in his time in the Fire Nation.

He had a sexy voice and pretty hair

To show that their lot in life wasn't caused by some vengeful god, but a human. A human with his own flaws and reasons for why he is. But Ozai's lack of personality or motivation makes it hard to see it that way.

Why didn't Ozai just kill his son instead of sending him on a wild goose chase? He was fine with killing his own dad, so why not kill his son too?

I feel like your ideas would fundamentally undercut the experience of the character. He's a kid with a shitty dad; humanizing the dad doesn't progress the story he was on. That's a whole separate kind of story.

I don't want to humanize him, I want to flesh him out so the story that he is a huge part of and ends with his downfall feels more compelling.

come on op. its good bait, but now you're just being a retard

One of you very literally just said you wanted "to show that their lot in life [was caused] by a human." What you are both describing is humanizing him, giving him flaws, making him sympathetic.

I understand why you would want those things, but I don't think either of you understand how that would impact the other stories that were being told.

In the first episode Iroh says that Zuko's father and grandfather also spent time searching for the avatar.

Maybe Ozai thought that the exile in a shitty dinghy would make him a man that wouldn't be a complete embarassment for his bloodline, but then the Avatar did turn out to be alive and Zuko failed miserably in trying to capture him.

>It's bad because I dont like it
>it's bad cause it affects my design sensibilities and I see it as lazy
>it's bad cause I could've design a MUCH better OC Scary looking Ozai

I suppose you don't look like your "dad." Sorry your mother is a whore.
It wouldn't. Some people are just bad, your life or zuko's and azula's isn't about the person who hurt them or why they did it. It's about overcoming it, and moving on, which Zuko did.

Some people are bad people user. You're overcomplicating things. He's ambitious, confident, powerful, cruel and he rules the Fire Nation. There isn't any more you need to know.

Great lines, really sold the egomaniac thing, and he was completely unsalvageable which made him a great villain for Aang because there was no room for compromise.

Though Lionturtle/spirit bending ruined it.

And how would it negatively impact the story if Ozai was given more character?

Give it up man you take this show autistically seriously

There's a very big difference between a story about a kid who has a shitty home life and a story about a sympathetic man who's shit at being a father. Your suggestions migrate the emotional core of the story away from Zuko. The father doesn't need to be understandable, because his function in the story is his impact on the character of interest.

>/thread/

You don't think that Ozai deserved more characterization and screentime than tertiary characters like Mai, Ty Lee and Suki?

Are you an orphan
Do you not understand how families work

They didnt hide it for sake of the reveal, they hid it so he could be a symbol instead of a person, until they had to physically encounter him in which case he became a human.

Not him but
It would add nothing. "More character" doesn't change Ozai in anyway that is meaningful to the story, we see his impact even while he isn't there, through the trail of destruction his war has left, the lives ruined, the relics burned, the suffering, the children he created and just how broken they are. The entire show creates a picture of a man so cruel, so lacking of humanity that you know he can be nothing less than a monster, the first time you see him he's burning a child, his own son, he completely proves to be the monster you think he was, and you also see who Aang is, his innocence, his drive for peace and balance, forgiveness, love, compassion, when Aang realizes he has to kill Ozai you feel the weight of that decision and you have the same understanding that Aang knew but refused to acknowledge, that Ozai was a man who had to die, for the good of the world.

Then Ozai didn't die, and it's shit, but the point is still there.

No, he didn't. There was no need for it. Ozai wasn't a complex man, just a bad one, and there is nothing wrong with that.

We don't know how complex he could have been since the show never presented his side.

Yeah, I was going to say. The way you put it, the show makes a pretty powerful case that Ozai absolutely has to die, but then he doesn't. And you can't even blame Christian moral teaching, because Avatar's not a Christian story.

Yeah, the show never makes a case for why he shouldn't die except "because killing is bad, lol".

Evil is mundane

It seems pretty obvious it's a network decision mid production.

>the sudden inclusion of the lion turtle that is completely out of place
>his avatar state was blocked so he wouldn't be strong enough to harmlessly subdue ozai with rocks or something, gets unblocked for a shitty reason only explained in a side game

They were building up to it and stopped, seems like writers got blue balled by standards and practices.

I don't know. The network was pretty okay with Korra killing Unalaq, Tarrlok committing suicide, and Jet dying.

And, heck, if you want him to die without making Aang a killer, just have him lead to his own demise. Maybe he explodes from too much firebending power. Maybe he fucks up some lightningbending and blows up.

Because they're father and son, dumbass.
Also because a lot of the characters in this show don't look too different from one another.

Also Also I'm fairly certain you're that same cretin that keeps posting bait threads, such as that "Katara is a marry sue speshul snowflake" thread a week ago, and the "My BF just showed me this, why is Katara so OP" thread the day after immediately after that thread was deleted.

I think it was pretty cool actually.

What? yes it did. His side was 'genocide the earth kingdom and take over the world'

i legit thought it would have been better if Aang DID try spirit bending, but fucked up, and Ozai died a Disney hubris death by messing up fire/lightningbending in his rage.

Better ending:

Ozai uses the power of the sun or whatever to become Mega Ozai, a giant fire lizard of godzilla size. Aang enters Super Duper Avatar state and summons the four elemental robots, that combine to make the Super Squasher Avatar.

Aang prepares his ultimate attack, the Aang Beam, and yells "Hey Mega-Jerk, try re-directing THIS!" and Mega Ozai explodes in full 90's CG

Conveniently, the Fire Nation was completely destroyed by the battle. The series ends with Zuko going "Aw man, what am I gonna rule now!"

cue canned laughter, as the Gaang all join in and laugh at Zuko.

>ultimate canon

it's not like he's Zuko's father or anything

Nah, it was clearly something they really wanted so Aang could have a character arc, who at that point in the series felt like he had been kicked out from the main character spot by Zuko.

It's just that there was no satisfying way of showing the struggle of outright taking a life or not in a kids' show other than making Aang be in the right because we all know that Aang was never going to kill Ozai.

Accidental Disney death would have been an even cheaper way out than the out of nowhere turtle and would have shown that Aang was wrong.