The Avatar animated series (not to be confused with James Cameron's Avatar) takes place in a strange world where people live in harmony with nature and the four elements. In fact, the harmony is so complete that there are people gifted with the ability to manipulate these elements - they are called Benders. The world is divided into four peoples: The Water Tribes, The Fire Nation, The Earth Kingdom, and for a long time, the world was at peace, largely due to a figure known as The Avatar who could, with proper training, control all four elements and acted as a mediator between the four peoples. The Avatar itself is a spirit that gets reborn over and over again, but one-hundred years ago, the Avatar, an Airbender, disappeared and the Fire Nation took the opportunity to launch a full scale war on the rest of the world. Now, the Water Tribes are reduced to a pair of communities on the poles, the Earth Kingdom is actively fighting the Fire Nation and the Air Nomads have been wiped out.
As it turns out, there is one Airbender left alive. Two Water Tribe members, Katara and Sokka, end up stumbling upon a strange iceberg and when Katara loses control over her budding Waterbending abilities, the ice cracks open to reveal a 12 year-old Airbender named Aang who, as it turns out, is the long missing Avatar and has been encased in ice since before the great war. Unfortunately, Aang's true identity is only revealed when a Fire Nation patrol ship learns of his re-emergence and goes after him. This patrol ship isn't just any boat though. It is led by the outcast Prince Zuko and his Uncle Iroh.
Zuko is a impatient youth who was banished from his father's house and has been sent out on what many believe to be a fool's errand. Zuko is constantly searching for the Avatar in order to capture him and bring him back to The Fire Lord, and as fate would have it, Aang practically falls in his lap. When Aang, Katara and Sokka escape from Zuko's clutches on Aang's massive flying bison, Appa, a long cat-and-mouse game gets kicked off that lasts until the series finale, and this event also starts Aang's first challenge of learning a new elemental ability. With Katara and Sokka in tow, Aang starts traveling to the North Pole where a larger Water Tribe settlement exists, and hopefully both the Avatar and Katara can learn to better control their Waterbending abilities.
Most of this season is set up as we learn about the history of the Avatar, the different types of lands in the world and the different people that inhabit it. One of my favorite groups is the Warriors of Kyoshi, a band of Earth Bender ladies who follow in the footsteps of a previous Avatar incarnation. These warrior women make several appearances throughout the series and their episodes have always been high on my list. Another great episode has Aang returning to a city from before the war. Omashu is an Earth Nation city where Aang spent time playing with a friend named Bumi. Besides the wonderful revelation of Bumi's life, many of the running gags from the series start off in "The King of Omashu," most notably, the poor cabbage salesman whose stock gets destroyed every time he is on-screen.
While there are a lot of tongue-in-cheek episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Book 1: Water also contains quite a few serious episodes that do a lot to advance the overall plot as well as delve deeper into some of the characters. In a two part episode called "Winter Solstice," Aang learns of his ability to delve into the Spirit World as a small village gets attacked by a strange creature, but he also gets a much bigger revelation when his previous incarnation, Avatar Roku, also makes an appearance. It seems Roku has come forth in order to give Aang a vision about a comet that could grant any Firebenders a massive power boost, and as it turns out, Sozin's Comet is scheduled to swing near the planet in less than a year. The consequences of this are, of course, that the Fire Nation can make a big push and finish it's take over during that event, and Aang doesn't have as much time to master the other three elements as he thought.
There were a couple of ways to pick up these episodes for home-viewing. At first, 4-episode volumes were released and you could buy them one at a time, but later a season-pack came out that not only included all of the volumes for that season, but also a bonus disc with several added special features. So what's all in Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Complete Book 1: Collector's Edition? Well, for one thing, everything that came in the regular Complete Book 1 boxed set since this release is quite literally a re-packaging of that. What comes in the box is the Season 1 box, an added bonus disc containing a really good documentary and a preview of an Avatar art book. So not only do you get the various behind-the-scenes featurettes on the sound and animation studios, and the ones on the Kung Fu used in the show and the voice actors, but you also get a lengthy documentary that basically covers the entire production life of The Last Airbender. This added disc will talk about everything from the show's pitch and the frantic development of its pilot, to the hunt for martial arts experts, all the way to the work done on the series finale and retrospective interviews from the animators and other crew members.
The other addition, "Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Art of the Animated Series," is a book that shows concept art, both painted and sketched, of the show's main characters and locations, as well as brief blurbs about their creation. While a nice extra, it feels more like an advertisement to buy the full book than anything else.
So now the tough question, should you buy Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Complete Book 1 Collector's Edition? Well, if you already have the individual episodes in the volume releases and you don't care about the added features of the Complete Book 1 collection, then I doubt the few additional extras in this release will convince you to re-buy the series, much less if you have the original Complete Book 1 set since the added benefit is even less. That being said, if you are in a store and trying to decide between the Collector's Edition and the normal one, then yes, The Complete Book 1 Collector's Edition is the one to grab. Of course, in my opinion, things would be different if this were a Blu-ray release and the transfer looked really good. If that were the case, then I would encourage even the fan that has the dozens of volume discs to start buying the high-definition version, but alas, that is not the case here.
