imitating parrots

What I enjoy most about Avatar is the intelligence of its execution. Simply put, they were obviously inspired by anime, but they took none of the shit elements of the medium. They analyzed and extracted the best parts, both visually and narrative-wise. As such, it’s beautifully animated with clean lines and shading, has gorgeous background art (the watercolours in this scene are wonderful) lovely music. Aside from the Asian influences, which are used more as world-building techniques, it accomplishes “anime style” without pretending to be Japanese. The character dialogues, pacing, and other means by which the narrative is executed are unmistakeably Western. Therefore, it comes across as homage and emulation of anime, without being cheap imitation.