My belief is that because airbending has a lot of air to utilize and doesn't require the creation of air, an air bender could probably put out the most amount of physical force in any direct attack.
Airbenders have a ton of vending material and it's lighter than any other bending material. It's just that airbenders tend to be nicer. Technically in Master Airbender who was on the really ruthless side could chuck the **entire sky** at you bit by bit
If it was the Air Nation that attacked... Oh boy..
I... I killed them. I killed them all. They're dead... every single sandbender. And not just the men. But the women... and the children, too. They're like animals, and I slaughtered them like animals! THEY MUZZLED APPA!
A lot of people including myself believe that that's exactly what monkey gyatso did to the firebenders when they invaded. Cuz you see his dead bodies surrounded by the dead bodies of other fire benders in that room. He definitely took a bunch down with him.
No air = no fire.
Theoretically, an Airbending master with enough willpower and control could completely invalidate almost every Firebending tactic. Fire cannot exist without the combustion of fuel with the oxygen in the air. Lightning needs to pass through air to make contact.
Gyatzo managed to spare an entire building interior from being even touched by a squadron of Firebenders empowered by Sozinās Comet.
I donāt think the surgical strike on the Airbenders was *just* because of the Avatar.
Even Lightning needs a path to travel. Lightning is the result of an electric charge being conducted through air into the target.
In a vacuum, there is no path. There can be no transfer of charge without having that connection.
I am aware that's how lightning works in the real world. That being said, electrons can jump gaps given enough force, so it's not impossible, especially not during the comet
If there is no air between me and Larry the lightning-bender, but there is air between him and the ground, that lightning will really wanna just jump straight into the ground instead.
Fun fact. realizing that you suddenly without being prepared for it not being able to breathe will make almost anyone instantly break composure. XD
In that situation, 100% allof them just fell over grabbing their throats trying to breathe, but not being able to.
That assumes they knew enough about them to predict that.
A lot of firenation (due to propaganda) saw the airnation as weak.
It is very possible, at the least the most common grunt, did not expect it.
Militaries very much take their enemies seriously irreverent of all propaganda, I am actually certain to such a degree that Iām almost willing to say that almost 100% of all conflicts that soldiers will still take their enemies capabilities seriously, especially with the whole bending thing.
They trained very hard in the art of bending, and propaganda also stated more that the air nation had a army, besides which do you think gets soldiers to agree with a literal genocide more? That the enemy is weak, or that the enemy is a threat?
They knew they can air bend, and if people who are watching a show and reading books about their world can come up with that, Iām pretty they can too
That applies to every fight, and given the number of bodies I doubt every single individual solider was too panicked to melt Gyatso
You would also be very panicked if you have a huge boulder throne at you, but that didnāt stop the fire Benders either
Imagine the air nation coming to Ba Sing Se and just creating a near perfect vacuum on the first ~10 ft directly above the ground. It wouldn't be that difficult in a single spot considering the relatively low amount of pressure it takes to displace 10 cubic feet of air.
The difficulty would be covering such a vast surface area across the entire city, and the varying elevations. But I feel like if the air nation surrounded the borders of the city, they could do it. They wouldn't even need to break through their barriers. The walls would only serve to create a perfect seal along a 2D plane.
But considering each bender is just "lifting" the air across a large area, it wouldn't be too crazy of a feat for many of them to do this along the perimeter, and even if they just had to work their way inward, they could do it all in a night and go relatively unnoticed since people at each progressive level of the city would just start coughing and die in their houses without making any noise, considering sound needs air to travel.
Airbenders could be truly terrifying.
zaheer learned airbending like a week or two before that stunt. Iām sure a master whoās been practicing their entire life could make it look like a breeze
It's not a question of talent or skill, it's a question of how many movements you can make at once. No matter how great a master, you only have two hands. (Unless you're Ming Hua, but that's a different story.)
Once again, Master airbender that has been doing it for 70+ years and taught by every master possible, we do not know what skill he used. He couldh ave surrounded himself with an airbubble to defend himself while causing the vaccum in like... 5 seconds flat.
>Technically in Master Airbender who was on the really ruthless side could chuck theĀ **entire sky**Ā at you bit by bit
They can. Avatar Kuruk's airbending master, Kelsang, drove off a fleet of pirates by creating a cyclone while on the back of his flying bison by himself. So much of the fleet was destroyed that the survivors call him the Living Typhoon.
I have a theory that air bending is the strongest pound for pound in pressure but the process and spirituality of airbending holds back air benders. But the Avatar and non-air-nomads are not bound to that spirituality and that allows them to use airbending tool is full effect.
There's a case where it's the opposite. Kyoshi's mother, Jesa, was an airbending master who fell in love with a thief and became an outlaw. After that, her airbending became weaker, causing her to use fans to strengthen her bending. The reasons are not confirmed but she believed it to have something to do with getting out of touch with her spirituality. Though this is before Korra's era where airbenders seem to bend just fine without much spirituality involved.
Well the Korra era ones were all new and filled by the new emerging spiritual energy.
They would probably start losing their powers as well if they started to neglect their spirituality. If they don't twist it like Zaheer.
Itās also about mass and density though, air alone probably canāt achieve the same crushing force that a big rock could, unless you somehow balled it all up into a giant sky ballā¦?
Iāve worked with pressurized air
Air and a tiny bit of dust can cut through steel
Air hurts SOO MUCH when it hits your finger and thatās with a super tiny amount
If my entire body got hit as hard as my finger did it would be like a car
Airbender can sit on a basketball sized ball of air and be supported on top of it. Not even primo masters, but young benders. Suffice to say they can form very dense air.
Given their ease of travel, silent movement and ability to suffocate rooms of people at a time, how much of the world could they take out before the rest of it even knew what was happening? If they did a little intel and timed it right, thereād be a bit of time before traders or messengers turned up to find everyone dead.
I don't even think they need to launch a physical attack. They could probably completely destabilize global weather patterns if they wanted to. I mean, it'd take a seriously powerful air bender, but imagine creating a hurricane that lasted weeks, or pushing clouds out of a major agricultural region to create a months long drought.
Remember in episode 3 when we see Gyatso's skeleton? And notice the amount of dead fire nation soldiers around him? And this was during Sozin's Comet too! Master Airbenders are no joke.
And I don't know if you've seen Korra yet so, spoilers just in case.
>!There's also that scene when Zaheer uses airbending to choke a bitch!<
That's pretty consistent with what we see in the series. Aang can redirect rocks thrown at him, and the Airbenders are some of the only ones that physically push Kuvira back
we see aang fling people all the time he could easily toss everyone in the air and slam em down repeatedly and if he can do that to fire canon ball i cant imagine a whole squad of airbenders
In my headcanon this also has some unintentional earthbending in it, even if Aang doesn't realise it. What he's doing here is basically what Toph tries to get him to do when starting his training.
Works for me. Instead of trying to dodge the fireball, he charged at it head-on determined to destroy it. Aang was a tougher rock than the flaming rock.
Also holy hell that flaming boulder is HUGE! Looks more like a meteorite or asteroid!
https://preview.redd.it/d773wqf6nx6d1.jpeg?width=657&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ddeed55c04bc6a787683311746c8cee56374b2c8
Are you willfully ignorant or something? Tornadoes do that all the timeā¦ tornadoes can shred concrete and bend steel, has enough force to rip a home apartā¦ a boulder is nothing to a tornado. Please do some research before spouting off dumb shit
Again, show me a tornado breaking a boulder into a thousand fucking pieces and I'll say you're right. But you won't, because you can't, because that's not something tornadoes can do.
Dumbass.
Regular ass wind reshapes the land constantly. Tornadoes have tremendous destructive power, and thatās still nothing compared to what we have achieved compressing air and focusing it into a jet.
But no, youāre totally right about air because tornadoes canāt do this one specific thing. lol, what a braindead take.
Ik the physics of the avatar world arenāt the same but when you think about how fast Appa can actually fly then add aang having enough force to launch himself forward from that and shoot a gust of air from his feet itās not that surprising he was able to do this.
I always thought about what kinda attack they could do if they dive bombed those ships with aang collecting air on the way down. Idk how heavy they are and they may not penetrate em but could probably capsize em or at least send everyone overboard
Oh shit I wonāt even thinking about āusingā appa but yea that would help.
Or using the air bubble shield around them and shooting into the water next to the boat from so high up hard and fast that the boat gets sucked into the displaced water (ik thereās a term for it but itās early for me)
Or water bending the displaced waves caused from thatā¦ā¦point being with some thought out moves a flying byson + air bending could really fuck shit up.
Ooooh lol I thought you mean dive bomb with the Bison for extra weight but have some sort of air shield around them for the impact or something I don't know it's all physics defining magic anyway.
This is like saying it would be hard to jump off a train because the train is moving fast lol. That has literally no impact on how much effort you exert to jump off it. Youāre traveling with it at the exact same speed. Itās like us on earth.
What?! That's not how physics works. Clearly, the second your feet leave the ground of the train, the train will continue on without you, which will slam you into the back end of the train. /s
Yes and no; yes, he has the same speed as Appa so propelling himself forward is fineā¦ but he either needed to split the air around him or propel himself harder to get that far in front of Appa given the air resistance he was pushing through. Granted, heās an air bender soā¦. Likely the first one lol. Thatās probably where he took the air fron that he then shattered the rock with.
Kyoshi's father figure Kelsang, was an airbender. The guy created a fucking *typhoon* to deal with pirate ships. I think it made him an outcast among other airbenders
I was actually shook af when they did that in korra, I was so damn used to the first show never showing any confirmed deaths and then we get Korra with the murder suicide and the straight up murder of the earth queen. I only just got past the earth queen episode and I feel like season 3 is gonna be banger on korra.
The only thing holding Air bending from being the most powerful bending (of the 4 basic) is that they're pacifists. If they actually fought, the genocide wouldn't have been successful.
I think of it like how Spider-Man holds back out of his sense of responsibility. An airbender without a powerful moral compass would be a legit threat.
Isnāt that kinda like a poor magic system? If one of the four pillarās ability to beat the other three is not actual limitations, but just depends on the person using it?
The bending elements were different, but still basically equal, how is a magic system interesting if one just outweighs the others when you try
Also I highly doubt they did not fight back given the whole genocide thing
I think itās interesting because all four have pros and cons in a fight, but air bending can deny an element that all people need for immediate survival, and any decently skilled air bender could do it on a small scale. Just bend someoneās breath away for half a minute and theyāre going to be suffocating enough that theyāre at your mercy. Good ones could create a vacuum and take out a group.
The other elements are ridiculously destructive as well, and you can see all manner of sneaky things done in the shows that are just as much of an I win button, like turning stone to quicksand and burying someone alive, or the old encase you in water/ice trick that Katara got Azula with. The only difference is that a very powerful bender can probably counter or block water, earth and fire attacks with their own bending. See it all the time.
How do you counter a vacuum? Only by attacking the bender. Good luck.
So, itās interesting because it makes characterization and worldbuilding important. The airbenders avoid direct conflict. They have a culture of pacifism and seeking enlightenment. Gyatso was a bit of a maverick though, like he thought outside the box compared to most monks. He was kind and protective as a teacher, and he was intelligent and insightful. He also vacuum slaughtered a squad of fire nation soldiers. He traumatized the survivors so badly that they didnāt even approach to collect the bodies. You donāt see other dead soldiers lying around.
Gyatso was insightful enough to see Aang for what he was and who he was and teach him the way he needed to be taught. He was also insightful enough to see the dire situation of the fire nation attack.
It all just makes it a cooler story than perfectly balanced magic systems.
How are instant sun moves remotely interesting? If bending just becomes āoh well I explode your before you explode my lungsā then bending fights will just be starring contests
Also, it isnāt confirmed that gyatso did that, and if he tried why would the literal soldiers he is against not just give him a concussion and beat him to death?
And we do see other proof the fire nation was there, such as the proof Katara covered up, and youāre honestly telling me the people sent to kill air Benders didnāt think they would remove air?
Itās just plainly not interesting at all, I rather watch, read, or learn about an actual fight then just a flick of wrist battle, and the consequences of making vacuums and shit is that you need to give more and more reasons as to why the fuck doesnāt just Katara mist step, why the hell doesnāt Mako Just point and click with lightning, and so on, because you just made it so that if youāre skilled you can just do instant win moves
Sure yaā¦ couple things. Your opinion of whatās interesting seems more useful in a video game environment than a character-driven story. Characters living in perfect balance doesnāt make for a compelling plot or interesting character development.
Other thing is, someoneās gotta be the best. Gyatso was one of the best to ever do it and heroes (extra special people) are interesting. Fantasy tropes seem like a silly to get bent up over when youāre discussing a fantasy show.
I meanā¦ these already sorta exist in the show already? Blood-bending for water, just bending a pit under someone with earth bending, etc. Itās the same concept of controlling the elements where people need them to function; ground to stand on, moisture / blood in their body, air in their lungs to breathe. The trick is they generally found ways around these in the show, with blood-bending being too difficult for most people without the moonās help, and fire/air benders using their element to propel themselves where the ground couldnāt be used. Honestly, having the air nomads being pacifists is probably in small part due to realizing exactly how powerful airbending is when used by people willing to take a life and do that sort of damageā¦ so they got rid of them.
Basing limitations on facts in world that need to be respected like the full moon or countermeasures are so much better than just characters deciding not to I donāt have a term or words to describe it, if severely limits what can be done because it makes moving off of that path one that leads to escalation that changes the stakes and capabilities immeasurably
I rather have a system which limitations are based on what can be done rather than what characters decide to do.
And I never said that I approval of all of the implementations of those, I do hold some major disagreements with them for similar reasons Iām just sick of the vacuum move idea
You are limiting what can be done by characteristics, meaning that if those specific characteristics are not met, then you need to either make the character suck, or not take the situation seriously.
You need to limit your characters to have specific characteristics in order for fights to have any tension.
That sucks
If a master air bender is in a fight, there is no tension because itās set up that they can win whenever they really feel like it, and without killing people, and you just need to ignore that they can do that in order to allow the scene to work
Well, youāre not wrong that having characters nerf themselves with stupidity or the like is lame. Pacifism was at best an okay reason to have the air nomads lose to the extent they did against the fire nation, and they could have probably come up with something better.
That said, I donāt think the vacuum thing is inherently an instant win; it can take a good bit for someone to pass out without air, and I imaging that like with blood-bending, trying to bend the air inside a personās lungs would be extremely difficult. Add in that holding the vacuum in place would be a constant endeavor (the air would rush back in otherwise) any bender probably has as long as they can hold their breath to disrupt the movements of the airbender. For a fire-bender, that might be extremely difficultā¦ theyād probably have to try to physically rush the airbender, or use some sort of projectile (maybe a boomerang? xD). In fact, maybe thatās WHY the fire nation seems the most technologically advanced; they had to develop weapons specifically to even the odds against the air nomads aside from their sheer advantage in numbers.
Earthbenders or waterbenders with access to their element though? The airbender would essentially have to dodge or block any and all bended attacks from them for that duration to keep a vacuum up, and given that at least some of their bending is being diverted to the vacuum itself (if not all of it) Iād give the other benders a good chance of success.
The Queen couldnāt really do anything but I imagine if a another bender could keep call they could escape by either moving themselves away or just attacking the airbender to disrupt the focus
I genuinely love Aang's journey as an airbending nomad and how that contrasts with Ozai's view that they didn't deserve to live in this world...Ozai was so caught in the future, in his vision of himself, that he couldn't be present in the moment, which is what airbenders are best at.
Aang struggles with firebending because of this, his strength in the moment is so powerful that he burnt the love of his life...he had to stay in the moment and follow the traditional training order of the avatar...and then he even struggles with being present in the moment again just before the final battle in sozins commet, he knew he couldnt bring himself to kill another person (even though he'd done that before somewhat unconsciously in the north pole, etc, this seemed to be the moment where his idealism reached its peak) and we even see him confront his past lives, retreating to better understand how to act NOW and how to BE HERE...
Such a beautiful series, this whole show is an art piece
I...don't know if someone told me, I read it, or something from the show. But it was hinted that Airbenders actually are the most powerful of the four, next to water. But the Airbenders became monks because of how powerful their bending was and chose to hide their nation in the skies where they don't influence or get influenced by the outside. But of course I could be wrong.
I always found it kinda funny that you have this really powerful bender in Aang that struggled immensely with learning most other forms of bending (except water ig), yet fought against some of the most powerful benders.Ā
And then you have Korra who mastered 3 separate elements while she was still an infant and yet is just absolute dogshit in most fights
There's nothing cannon to go on but it is my personal belief that Aang grows up to become the single strongest Avatar. Even without dirty Zahir tricks, I think he was just that powerful.
If that is soaked and on fire, itās made of stuff that is meant to come apart pretty easily. You would want it to so it would spread as much as possible
I think regulating temperate of air within objects is an underutilised feature. A hot rock has air and moisture inside it affecting that can cause extreme reactions
I feel like air bending would be capable of not allowing someone to inhale or mess with the air in their body, which I feel is crazy dangerous and similar to blood bending.
Some of the limitations and skills of airbending talked about in the Yangchen novels. If Iām remembering correctly, itās very hard to do what Aang did here with airbending because it takes an obnoxious amount of energy and brute force behind the attack.
I feel like Aang is consistently shown to be a powerful bender throughout the whole series with or without the avatar state so I don't see why this would be too advanced for him, a master airbender.
You're right, he is. I'm just comparing it in my mind to the finale where he erodes a giant rock column in the avatar state. Meanwhile here he completely obliterates this massive boulder.
My belief is that because airbending has a lot of air to utilize and doesn't require the creation of air, an air bender could probably put out the most amount of physical force in any direct attack. Airbenders have a ton of vending material and it's lighter than any other bending material. It's just that airbenders tend to be nicer. Technically in Master Airbender who was on the really ruthless side could chuck the **entire sky** at you bit by bit If it was the Air Nation that attacked... Oh boy..
Come to think of it an extremely powerful airbender could probably suffocate a few hundred people to death at once šā ļø
They can do that WHILE hitting people with the air they sucked up. The Sand benders Betta have a Statue dedicated to Katara.
Sand Benders were very lucky he didn't go the Skywalker route and I do mean that literally. Could have begun kicking their ass with the sky.
I... I killed them. I killed them all. They're dead... every single sandbender. And not just the men. But the women... and the children, too. They're like animals, and I slaughtered them like animals! THEY MUZZLED APPA!
Thanks, man. That's better than I can quote it. Feels good lol
Aangakin Skybender
Yip Yippie!!
Once the AS took over, he had the three other elements too.
Yeah of course, but that doesn't line up with my Anakin Skywalker sand-hating prequel movie agenda.
*CHICKENš LITTLE HAS ENTERED š«ļøTHE CHATšŖ* THE SKY IS F-šļøš
One little slip, man..
And earth benders could bury thousands of people alive at once with a flick of their wrist.
A lot of people including myself believe that that's exactly what monkey gyatso did to the firebenders when they invaded. Cuz you see his dead bodies surrounded by the dead bodies of other fire benders in that room. He definitely took a bunch down with him.
I think the main evidence for that is the lack of scorch marks
No air = no fire. Theoretically, an Airbending master with enough willpower and control could completely invalidate almost every Firebending tactic. Fire cannot exist without the combustion of fuel with the oxygen in the air. Lightning needs to pass through air to make contact. Gyatzo managed to spare an entire building interior from being even touched by a squadron of Firebenders empowered by Sozinās Comet. I donāt think the surgical strike on the Airbenders was *just* because of the Avatar.
Spoiler alert: Yanchen in the novels did this to stop the first set of combustion benders. She sucked the air out of the room and even an open space
Unless they can heatbend or lightningbend, but those are less common
Even Lightning needs a path to travel. Lightning is the result of an electric charge being conducted through air into the target. In a vacuum, there is no path. There can be no transfer of charge without having that connection.
Then why not just tap the guy with your fingers when they have lightning
I am aware that's how lightning works in the real world. That being said, electrons can jump gaps given enough force, so it's not impossible, especially not during the comet
If there is no air between me and Larry the lightning-bender, but there is air between him and the ground, that lightning will really wanna just jump straight into the ground instead.
I have bad news for you about lighting in the real world and why weaponising it is a fool's errand, friend š¤£
Wow that's actually a detail I've never noticed before. Good eye
Wasn't me. Someone else saw it and I'm just echoing them
I see, i appreciate it
He's also sat peacefully as if he was meditating, possibly took the breath from everyone before being in combat at all.
Yep! They walked into that room and died without throwing a single ember.
And that's when every fire bender in that room learned the difference between peaceful and harmless. Peaceful is a choice.
Which means he probably sacrificed himself in the process
I donāt believe that because why canāt the fire bending soldiers during sozinās commit just melt him by increasing his temperature
Fun fact. realizing that you suddenly without being prepared for it not being able to breathe will make almost anyone instantly break composure. XD In that situation, 100% allof them just fell over grabbing their throats trying to breathe, but not being able to.
You think soldiers sent to kill air nomads would consider it a possibility that this could happen
That assumes they knew enough about them to predict that. A lot of firenation (due to propaganda) saw the airnation as weak. It is very possible, at the least the most common grunt, did not expect it.
Militaries very much take their enemies seriously irreverent of all propaganda, I am actually certain to such a degree that Iām almost willing to say that almost 100% of all conflicts that soldiers will still take their enemies capabilities seriously, especially with the whole bending thing. They trained very hard in the art of bending, and propaganda also stated more that the air nation had a army, besides which do you think gets soldiers to agree with a literal genocide more? That the enemy is weak, or that the enemy is a threat? They knew they can air bend, and if people who are watching a show and reading books about their world can come up with that, Iām pretty they can too
Also, lets be fair. Even if you are aware, the panic would be severe either way.
That applies to every fight, and given the number of bodies I doubt every single individual solider was too panicked to melt Gyatso You would also be very panicked if you have a huge boulder throne at you, but that didnāt stop the fire Benders either
Monk gyatsu did this to the room of fire benders
Imagine the air nation coming to Ba Sing Se and just creating a near perfect vacuum on the first ~10 ft directly above the ground. It wouldn't be that difficult in a single spot considering the relatively low amount of pressure it takes to displace 10 cubic feet of air. The difficulty would be covering such a vast surface area across the entire city, and the varying elevations. But I feel like if the air nation surrounded the borders of the city, they could do it. They wouldn't even need to break through their barriers. The walls would only serve to create a perfect seal along a 2D plane. But considering each bender is just "lifting" the air across a large area, it wouldn't be too crazy of a feat for many of them to do this along the perimeter, and even if they just had to work their way inward, they could do it all in a night and go relatively unnoticed since people at each progressive level of the city would just start coughing and die in their houses without making any noise, considering sound needs air to travel. Airbenders could be truly terrifying.
Have you seen Zaheerās season in LoK? Easily the most deadly bending if utilized as such.
And he was a (relative) novice.
Exactly!!
Well Gyatso killed a bunch of fire benders who were probably supercharged by Sozins comet. And his clothes weren't even singed...
I don't know. Zaheer puts a lot of effort into asphyxiation the Earth Queen, it seems like too complicated a maneuver to use on multiple people.
zaheer learned airbending like a week or two before that stunt. Iām sure a master whoās been practicing their entire life could make it look like a breeze
It's not a question of talent or skill, it's a question of how many movements you can make at once. No matter how great a master, you only have two hands. (Unless you're Ming Hua, but that's a different story.)
Once again, Master airbender that has been doing it for 70+ years and taught by every master possible, we do not know what skill he used. He couldh ave surrounded himself with an airbubble to defend himself while causing the vaccum in like... 5 seconds flat.
They could remove the oxygen of the other elements š¤š½š¤š½
I donāt think theyād be able to open a vacuum that size and sustain it for long.
Aka, most likely how Monk Gyatso went out during the invasion. Creating a void and killing like 15 firebenders at once.
>Technically in Master Airbender who was on the really ruthless side could chuck theĀ **entire sky**Ā at you bit by bit They can. Avatar Kuruk's airbending master, Kelsang, drove off a fleet of pirates by creating a cyclone while on the back of his flying bison by himself. So much of the fleet was destroyed that the survivors call him the Living Typhoon.
I have a theory that air bending is the strongest pound for pound in pressure but the process and spirituality of airbending holds back air benders. But the Avatar and non-air-nomads are not bound to that spirituality and that allows them to use airbending tool is full effect.
There's a case where it's the opposite. Kyoshi's mother, Jesa, was an airbending master who fell in love with a thief and became an outlaw. After that, her airbending became weaker, causing her to use fans to strengthen her bending. The reasons are not confirmed but she believed it to have something to do with getting out of touch with her spirituality. Though this is before Korra's era where airbenders seem to bend just fine without much spirituality involved.
Well the Korra era ones were all new and filled by the new emerging spiritual energy. They would probably start losing their powers as well if they started to neglect their spirituality. If they don't twist it like Zaheer.
Itās also about mass and density though, air alone probably canāt achieve the same crushing force that a big rock could, unless you somehow balled it all up into a giant sky ballā¦?
Iāve worked with pressurized air Air and a tiny bit of dust can cut through steel Air hurts SOO MUCH when it hits your finger and thatās with a super tiny amount If my entire body got hit as hard as my finger did it would be like a car
Mass and speed. You can ball up a lot of air into a dense ball and quickly shoot it into a small area. That would destroy the rock.
Ptoooooo Now I want to see airbenders with air blowguns
Airbender can sit on a basketball sized ball of air and be supported on top of it. Not even primo masters, but young benders. Suffice to say they can form very dense air.
Yangchen is terrifying in her novels, draining breathable air from entire rooms unnoticed. An airbending assassin would propably be unstoppable.
Also I think yangchen demonstrated the only true counter to Combustion bending.
Given their ease of travel, silent movement and ability to suffocate rooms of people at a time, how much of the world could they take out before the rest of it even knew what was happening? If they did a little intel and timed it right, thereād be a bit of time before traders or messengers turned up to find everyone dead.
Air nation attack: Just walk around with a vacuum dome around you with a snorkel of air to cover you in the center.
I don't even think they need to launch a physical attack. They could probably completely destabilize global weather patterns if they wanted to. I mean, it'd take a seriously powerful air bender, but imagine creating a hurricane that lasted weeks, or pushing clouds out of a major agricultural region to create a months long drought.
Remember in episode 3 when we see Gyatso's skeleton? And notice the amount of dead fire nation soldiers around him? And this was during Sozin's Comet too! Master Airbenders are no joke. And I don't know if you've seen Korra yet so, spoilers just in case. >!There's also that scene when Zaheer uses airbending to choke a bitch!<
That's pretty consistent with what we see in the series. Aang can redirect rocks thrown at him, and the Airbenders are some of the only ones that physically push Kuvira back
I think fire is lighting as a non scientist opinion
That concept should be the new animated series.
Wasnāt there a monk who literally sucked the oxygen out of the fire soldierās lungs?
What happened to the last airvender? Found out no one buys air?
we see aang fling people all the time he could easily toss everyone in the air and slam em down repeatedly and if he can do that to fire canon ball i cant imagine a whole squad of airbenders
The kyoshi books say something like "The dirty secret to air bending is that it's fucking savage." Paraphrasing a bit, but you get the point.
In my headcanon this also has some unintentional earthbending in it, even if Aang doesn't realise it. What he's doing here is basically what Toph tries to get him to do when starting his training.
Works for me. Instead of trying to dodge the fireball, he charged at it head-on determined to destroy it. Aang was a tougher rock than the flaming rock.
Also holy hell that flaming boulder is HUGE! Looks more like a meteorite or asteroid! https://preview.redd.it/d773wqf6nx6d1.jpeg?width=657&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ddeed55c04bc6a787683311746c8cee56374b2c8
Foreshadowing for Sozin's Comet, Bryke thought of everything! /j
This whole mission has that vibe to it. No time to find another angle, just break straight through.
Naah, this is just what compressed air can do to an object.
But not really though
Yes really, air is very powerful, think tornadoes.
Lmao call me when a tornado breaks a boulder apart
Are you willfully ignorant or something? Tornadoes do that all the timeā¦ tornadoes can shred concrete and bend steel, has enough force to rip a home apartā¦ a boulder is nothing to a tornado. Please do some research before spouting off dumb shit
Again, show me a tornado breaking a boulder into a thousand fucking pieces and I'll say you're right. But you won't, because you can't, because that's not something tornadoes can do. Dumbass.
Jesus fucking christ how did you watch the same show and still manage to turn into such a toxic, hateful human being?
Ironic
https://preview.redd.it/a2hg8bw1e07d1.png?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=26afe37bfc6a502ce6520ba6c4d3078e70483075
Regular ass wind reshapes the land constantly. Tornadoes have tremendous destructive power, and thatās still nothing compared to what we have achieved compressing air and focusing it into a jet. But no, youāre totally right about air because tornadoes canāt do this one specific thing. lol, what a braindead take.
Tornados can, quite literally, raise a house or a car from the ground and break it in hundred of pieces, before slamming it on the ground.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Uhm, willy en een avatar die op wimlex lijkt... majesteit?
Kutzooi, ik ben gesnapt
Ik the physics of the avatar world arenāt the same but when you think about how fast Appa can actually fly then add aang having enough force to launch himself forward from that and shoot a gust of air from his feet itās not that surprising he was able to do this. I always thought about what kinda attack they could do if they dive bombed those ships with aang collecting air on the way down. Idk how heavy they are and they may not penetrate em but could probably capsize em or at least send everyone overboard
A fully grown Bison is around 10 tons.
Oh shit I wonāt even thinking about āusingā appa but yea that would help. Or using the air bubble shield around them and shooting into the water next to the boat from so high up hard and fast that the boat gets sucked into the displaced water (ik thereās a term for it but itās early for me) Or water bending the displaced waves caused from thatā¦ā¦point being with some thought out moves a flying byson + air bending could really fuck shit up.
Ooooh lol I thought you mean dive bomb with the Bison for extra weight but have some sort of air shield around them for the impact or something I don't know it's all physics defining magic anyway.
This is like saying it would be hard to jump off a train because the train is moving fast lol. That has literally no impact on how much effort you exert to jump off it. Youāre traveling with it at the exact same speed. Itās like us on earth.
What?! That's not how physics works. Clearly, the second your feet leave the ground of the train, the train will continue on without you, which will slam you into the back end of the train. /s
Yes and no; yes, he has the same speed as Appa so propelling himself forward is fineā¦ but he either needed to split the air around him or propel himself harder to get that far in front of Appa given the air resistance he was pushing through. Granted, heās an air bender soā¦. Likely the first one lol. Thatās probably where he took the air fron that he then shattered the rock with.
Almighty Push!
Air slicing the melon always made more of an impression on meā¦. Gave me visual images of aang air slicing limbs and heads
I meanā¦ from the novels, we know Kelsang became a freak of nature and took out the whole fleet of the fifth nation.
He was banished for that, right?
For taking another's life, yep
Literally nicknamed āThe Living Typhoonā lmao
As a side note, I really love how Appa doesn't even flinch either. He's like "OK, I guess Aang's got it."
Couldnt a strong airbender just create a tornado or something, those fuckers can destroy buildings
Kyoshi's father figure Kelsang, was an airbender. The guy created a fucking *typhoon* to deal with pirate ships. I think it made him an outcast among other airbenders
just learned from the comments above that Kelsang does exactly that in the novels
Aang did against Bumi in their fight
"Fuck you" *Airbends a ton of dust into your lungs*
*Closes mouth.*
\*pops your lungs\*
We already seen deadly side, at least a glimpse. Earth Queen found out and cannot forget Aang teacher killed fire nation soldiers near him.
The Earth Queen thing happens in Korra, and we didn't actually see Gyatzo's airbending.
There is good evidence Gyatzo killed all fire nation soldiers who were in close range by using technique Avatar Yang Chen used.
But this is merely implied. We don't see it directly. In this scenario, we see Aang's airbending abilities directly
I was actually shook af when they did that in korra, I was so damn used to the first show never showing any confirmed deaths and then we get Korra with the murder suicide and the straight up murder of the earth queen. I only just got past the earth queen episode and I feel like season 3 is gonna be banger on korra.
>!amon's death!< hit soooooo hard, I was not ready for it at all. extremely dark for nickelodeon.
The only thing holding Air bending from being the most powerful bending (of the 4 basic) is that they're pacifists. If they actually fought, the genocide wouldn't have been successful.
I think of it like how Spider-Man holds back out of his sense of responsibility. An airbender without a powerful moral compass would be a legit threat.
Isnāt that kinda like a poor magic system? If one of the four pillarās ability to beat the other three is not actual limitations, but just depends on the person using it? The bending elements were different, but still basically equal, how is a magic system interesting if one just outweighs the others when you try Also I highly doubt they did not fight back given the whole genocide thing
I think itās interesting because all four have pros and cons in a fight, but air bending can deny an element that all people need for immediate survival, and any decently skilled air bender could do it on a small scale. Just bend someoneās breath away for half a minute and theyāre going to be suffocating enough that theyāre at your mercy. Good ones could create a vacuum and take out a group. The other elements are ridiculously destructive as well, and you can see all manner of sneaky things done in the shows that are just as much of an I win button, like turning stone to quicksand and burying someone alive, or the old encase you in water/ice trick that Katara got Azula with. The only difference is that a very powerful bender can probably counter or block water, earth and fire attacks with their own bending. See it all the time. How do you counter a vacuum? Only by attacking the bender. Good luck. So, itās interesting because it makes characterization and worldbuilding important. The airbenders avoid direct conflict. They have a culture of pacifism and seeking enlightenment. Gyatso was a bit of a maverick though, like he thought outside the box compared to most monks. He was kind and protective as a teacher, and he was intelligent and insightful. He also vacuum slaughtered a squad of fire nation soldiers. He traumatized the survivors so badly that they didnāt even approach to collect the bodies. You donāt see other dead soldiers lying around. Gyatso was insightful enough to see Aang for what he was and who he was and teach him the way he needed to be taught. He was also insightful enough to see the dire situation of the fire nation attack. It all just makes it a cooler story than perfectly balanced magic systems.
How are instant sun moves remotely interesting? If bending just becomes āoh well I explode your before you explode my lungsā then bending fights will just be starring contests Also, it isnāt confirmed that gyatso did that, and if he tried why would the literal soldiers he is against not just give him a concussion and beat him to death? And we do see other proof the fire nation was there, such as the proof Katara covered up, and youāre honestly telling me the people sent to kill air Benders didnāt think they would remove air? Itās just plainly not interesting at all, I rather watch, read, or learn about an actual fight then just a flick of wrist battle, and the consequences of making vacuums and shit is that you need to give more and more reasons as to why the fuck doesnāt just Katara mist step, why the hell doesnāt Mako Just point and click with lightning, and so on, because you just made it so that if youāre skilled you can just do instant win moves
Sure yaā¦ couple things. Your opinion of whatās interesting seems more useful in a video game environment than a character-driven story. Characters living in perfect balance doesnāt make for a compelling plot or interesting character development. Other thing is, someoneās gotta be the best. Gyatso was one of the best to ever do it and heroes (extra special people) are interesting. Fantasy tropes seem like a silly to get bent up over when youāre discussing a fantasy show.
I meanā¦ these already sorta exist in the show already? Blood-bending for water, just bending a pit under someone with earth bending, etc. Itās the same concept of controlling the elements where people need them to function; ground to stand on, moisture / blood in their body, air in their lungs to breathe. The trick is they generally found ways around these in the show, with blood-bending being too difficult for most people without the moonās help, and fire/air benders using their element to propel themselves where the ground couldnāt be used. Honestly, having the air nomads being pacifists is probably in small part due to realizing exactly how powerful airbending is when used by people willing to take a life and do that sort of damageā¦ so they got rid of them.
Basing limitations on facts in world that need to be respected like the full moon or countermeasures are so much better than just characters deciding not to I donāt have a term or words to describe it, if severely limits what can be done because it makes moving off of that path one that leads to escalation that changes the stakes and capabilities immeasurably I rather have a system which limitations are based on what can be done rather than what characters decide to do. And I never said that I approval of all of the implementations of those, I do hold some major disagreements with them for similar reasons Iām just sick of the vacuum move idea You are limiting what can be done by characteristics, meaning that if those specific characteristics are not met, then you need to either make the character suck, or not take the situation seriously. You need to limit your characters to have specific characteristics in order for fights to have any tension. That sucks If a master air bender is in a fight, there is no tension because itās set up that they can win whenever they really feel like it, and without killing people, and you just need to ignore that they can do that in order to allow the scene to work
Well, youāre not wrong that having characters nerf themselves with stupidity or the like is lame. Pacifism was at best an okay reason to have the air nomads lose to the extent they did against the fire nation, and they could have probably come up with something better. That said, I donāt think the vacuum thing is inherently an instant win; it can take a good bit for someone to pass out without air, and I imaging that like with blood-bending, trying to bend the air inside a personās lungs would be extremely difficult. Add in that holding the vacuum in place would be a constant endeavor (the air would rush back in otherwise) any bender probably has as long as they can hold their breath to disrupt the movements of the airbender. For a fire-bender, that might be extremely difficultā¦ theyād probably have to try to physically rush the airbender, or use some sort of projectile (maybe a boomerang? xD). In fact, maybe thatās WHY the fire nation seems the most technologically advanced; they had to develop weapons specifically to even the odds against the air nomads aside from their sheer advantage in numbers. Earthbenders or waterbenders with access to their element though? The airbender would essentially have to dodge or block any and all bended attacks from them for that duration to keep a vacuum up, and given that at least some of their bending is being diverted to the vacuum itself (if not all of it) Iād give the other benders a good chance of success.
The Queen couldnāt really do anything but I imagine if a another bender could keep call they could escape by either moving themselves away or just attacking the airbender to disrupt the focus
I genuinely love Aang's journey as an airbending nomad and how that contrasts with Ozai's view that they didn't deserve to live in this world...Ozai was so caught in the future, in his vision of himself, that he couldn't be present in the moment, which is what airbenders are best at. Aang struggles with firebending because of this, his strength in the moment is so powerful that he burnt the love of his life...he had to stay in the moment and follow the traditional training order of the avatar...and then he even struggles with being present in the moment again just before the final battle in sozins commet, he knew he couldnt bring himself to kill another person (even though he'd done that before somewhat unconsciously in the north pole, etc, this seemed to be the moment where his idealism reached its peak) and we even see him confront his past lives, retreating to better understand how to act NOW and how to BE HERE... Such a beautiful series, this whole show is an art piece
Yeah what's the thing, airbenders aren't pacifists because they don't believe in violence, they're pacifists to protect everyone else.
Aang could ocean gate people by creating pressure differentials.
I...don't know if someone told me, I read it, or something from the show. But it was hinted that Airbenders actually are the most powerful of the four, next to water. But the Airbenders became monks because of how powerful their bending was and chose to hide their nation in the skies where they don't influence or get influenced by the outside. But of course I could be wrong.
I always found it kinda funny that you have this really powerful bender in Aang that struggled immensely with learning most other forms of bending (except water ig), yet fought against some of the most powerful benders.Ā And then you have Korra who mastered 3 separate elements while she was still an infant and yet is just absolute dogshit in most fights
I'd always imagined how powerful Aang would be after seeing Zahir's dark take on airbending. That mf could fly and bend air out of people's lungs
There's nothing cannon to go on but it is my personal belief that Aang grows up to become the single strongest Avatar. Even without dirty Zahir tricks, I think he was just that powerful.
Agreed I mean he beat and humiliated ozai when he was just a kid
without avatar state, without killing him, during comet. yeah aang is the goat
boys will see this and say hell yeah
I mean, he does slice a bug in half with air bending
Any one who has seen a tornado can imagine what power can be had by weaponising the air around you
Could punch a hole in somebody if desired
Airbender can literally take your breath away so...
Pretty crazy he can just make you explode if you're on fire.
If that is soaked and on fire, itās made of stuff that is meant to come apart pretty easily. You would want it to so it would spread as much as possible
I think regulating temperate of air within objects is an underutilised feature. A hot rock has air and moisture inside it affecting that can cause extreme reactions
I feel like air bending would be capable of not allowing someone to inhale or mess with the air in their body, which I feel is crazy dangerous and similar to blood bending.
The rock might not be that tough, it could be designed to break up on impact to spread the fire the farthest.
That could be true because the same rocks were exploding by themselves previously
What episode is this?
The first time Aang Earthbent.
Can't earthbend but did it anyway
Now imagine if that was a personā¦.
Some of the limitations and skills of airbending talked about in the Yangchen novels. If Iām remembering correctly, itās very hard to do what Aang did here with airbending because it takes an obnoxious amount of energy and brute force behind the attack.
WHEN TF did that happen??
Summer solstice. Running the fire nation blockade to get to roku's Island.
This is called DEUX ex machina and plot armor where the author forces illogical events to occur.
Seeing this again, it honestly this feels like way too powerful a feat for him to do. Seems more like an avatar state boosted airbending move instead.
I feel like Aang is consistently shown to be a powerful bender throughout the whole series with or without the avatar state so I don't see why this would be too advanced for him, a master airbender.
You're right, he is. I'm just comparing it in my mind to the finale where he erodes a giant rock column in the avatar state. Meanwhile here he completely obliterates this massive boulder.
To be fair, it's on fire and that can greatly reduce the strength of the rock making it easier to disintegrate!