Showing posts with label martial arts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label martial arts. Show all posts

Friday, March 30, 2012

Avatar


When I heard they made a new series based off Avatar I knew I had to check it out. I stopped following Toriko because there was a lot of humor but not enough story and action. By the way when I write about Avatar its not the big blue skinned people from the James Cameron film. I'm writing about Avatar: The Last Airbender.

This show was on years before J.C. stole the name and made it about aliens. The Last Airbender was a boy named Aang and he was the Avatar of his world. Benders were people who had the psychokinetic ability to control one of the four elements Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. An Avatar is a person who could control the flow of all four elements.  One was born every hundred years and when he or she died a new Avatar is born in their place.

The series lasted for three seasons from 2005 - 2008 and followed the story of Aang as he learned to master the four elements. While he learned these skills he had to avoid being captured and executed. Aang was the last Airbender because the rest of the Airbenders were wiped out by the king of the fire nation in an attempt to control the world. He had inside knowledge that the next Avatar would come from the Air nation and made a preemptive strike to remove the threat. 

The series was ridiculously popular because it was a mix of martial arts, psychokinetic beings, action and humorous adventure. There was a motion picture version released in 2010 directed by M. Night Shyamalan which received mixed reviews. Now after a four year hiatus there is a new story arc that takes place in the Avatar world. It's called The Legend of Korra and takes place 70 years after Aang has died. So far there are only two episodes but the show has added a nice twist the Avatar tale and worth checking out.  Below I posted clips from some of the original Avatar series and the new one.













Monday, July 19, 2010

AniManga: Dragon Ball Z

Dragon Ball Z was the first anime I saw when I went to Japan, this was back in 1993. I lived there for over a year and DBZ had already been running for almost four years when I started watching. DBZ started out as a manga (like most anime) and became a T.V. show around 1989. The series follows the adventures of Son Goku and his children from his childhood through adulthood as they train in martial arts and explore the world in search of the seven mystical objects known as the Dragon Balls, which can summon the mystical dragon Shinron who could grant 3 wishes. The wishes could be used for anything like bringing back the dead, to granting immortality. Due to their incredible power the dragon balls attracted a wide variety of villains, both alien and human which Goku and his group of warriors had to defeat.


The show was broken into three seperate series first was Dragon Ball which chronicled Goku's childhood. Then Dragon Ball Z the most popular which dealt with his adulthood and growing martial arts expertise, and finally Dragon Ball GT which dealt more with his children and descendant than Goku. He makes appearances throughout the show, but due to a curse he was reverted to the child form he had in Dragon Ball. Recently DBZ has been re-mastered and released as Dragon Ball Kai, which changes the original footage and story.

Since its release, Dragon Ball has become one of the most popular manga series of its time in both Japan and North America. It enjoys a high readership, with over 150 million volumes of the series, has 17 feature films and was ranking number 12 among the best anime series of all time in 2006. Below I posted a small clip of one of the best fights in the series Goku vs. the Galactic warrior Freeza. Peep the part where he bitch slaps the taste out of Freeza's mouth...if that doesn't get you hooked on the series then the fight with Goku vs. Perfect Cell will.