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00:00Avatar The Last Airbender, The Rift, Issue 1.
00:05It starts at Yudel, where it's explained that Zuko is not here because he's with Ursa on her visit to the capital city.
00:12Arrow says he misses his tea shop, and the people of the city are told that the new government they elected is here to see them.
00:20I guess they so instantly came to the idea of democracy with no fanfare because of the guy that was lecturing about ancient governments.
00:29Aang says the remaining colonies are all trying to set up the same system of being both kingdoms.
00:35Aang thinks he sees someone at the banquet and eventually flies over everyone and goes to catch up with someone in a cloak.
00:43Only to see an astral projected version of a past avatar who confusingly doesn't look like a ghost.
00:50And he can't hear what she's saying for some reason.
00:53Eventually, Toph explains she has so many new students she had to make earth tents outside the school to house them.
01:01And she doesn't have money to expand the building.
01:04She should say the territory surrounding them is owned by other people, so she'd have to buy it up to be allowed to expand it with earthbending.
01:13Sokka says she could get the money by charging tuition.
01:17And she says she doesn't want it to be a business because she's a good person at heart.
01:22Katara finds Aang outside trying to contact an avatar, but it can't get through to her for no apparent reason.
01:28Because it's not that part of the story yet.
01:31I'd take it seriously if I could remember this happening in the show.
01:34I don't understand why Katara and Aang aren't giving me the same sweet feeling as Bunny and Antoine.
01:40Just like them, they're always calling each other by terms of endearment, and they're affectionate in the same way as Sokka and Suki, who I prefer as a couple.
01:49And I'm hoping it's not just because of the fact that Aang still looks like he's 12.
01:54He tells the acolytes they're going on a field trip to celebrate an avatar's festival.
01:59Aang assumes that the avatar Yangchen was reminding him of that festival so it wouldn't be lost to history.
02:06When I doubt he'd have forgotten it.
02:08Because he decided to train these people, so he would've gotten to it eventually.
02:13He says they're gonna bow to the statue four times.
02:17That sounds boring and needlessly repetitive.
02:20And it's not exactly humble of the person the statue loves to want that even once.
02:24The fun part would be playing music and eating boring food.
02:28You know, it doesn't have to be boring food just because they're vegetarians.
02:32He also plans to fly kites, and doesn't have string for the others to fly them.
02:38Realistically, there's also an annoying bird on the island.
02:41And the statue isn't of Yangchen or anyone Aang knows.
02:44Because he didn't get a chance to find that out because he was flying kites with the kids.
02:48Sock a lampshade's bowing to someone if you don't know who she is.
02:52And Aang saying that you should follow tradition reminds Toph of why she hated her childhood and her awful excuses for parents.
02:59Who never gave her any different reason than that for giving her orders.
03:04And suppressing who she was.
03:06She wasn't even allowed to play with the other kids even though she was lonely.
03:11And somehow she was given the same excuse when there's going to be a tradition.
03:15This is just something exclusive to her for being blind.
03:19Somehow Toph doesn't simply explain how she's feeling to her friends.
03:24And instead refuses to participate in the festival because she does not like her to bow to anyone.
03:30And she calls the festival unimportant because it being ignored wasn't the end of the world.
03:36Aang gets annoyed but knows his impressionable fans are watching.
03:40So he forces himself to stay cheerful instead of being a bad influence.
03:45It's too bad the story had Aang tell us what celebrating the festival would be like.
03:50Because it was all a waste of space considering that we do get to see them all do that.
03:55The symbols annoyed Toph until she destroyed him.
03:59And she doesn't see the point of the celebration.
04:02And finally says that she wanted to be done with these kinds of old rituals when she left her town.
04:08Nobody forced her to come along though.
04:10So she should have known better than to come here.
04:14They see a town where the meadow used to be.
04:17Sokka likes the smell of food and wants to leave.
04:20Katara recognizes someone and hugs her.
04:23Aang hallucinates Yangchen again.
04:25And earthbending gets used to fling them over a fence where they find out the sacred grounds were polluted.
04:31One of the guards doesn't care that he's the avatar and they try to attack the heroes.
04:36And the guards end up kept from causing trouble by earthbending their hands.
04:41Aang flies to have the guards run into each other.
04:45Someone's impressed by what he saw happen to his guards and his name's Satoru.
04:50And he's honored to meet Aang.
04:53He eventually says he's a refinery engineer who's a temporary boss until his uncle comes back.
04:58And says the guards should have checked with him before attacking them.
05:02Even though dealing with trespassers is their jobs.
05:06And for all they knew, Aang was just another one of the acolytes.
05:09So the hero didn't give it away.
05:12He says this is the best day of his life as Aang points out that saving the world was a team effort.
05:18And he's honored to meet Toph because she's a metalbender.
05:21So he wants to give her a tour of the refinery.
05:24News travels far and fast for some people and not others.
05:28I like that Toph insists on him having to say her first name instead.
05:32Aang tries to tell Satoru something and it's obvious what he was going to say based on the last few words.
05:39But somehow he keeps talking about stuff that's obvious and pointless.
05:44He must not actually care about the past of this place.
05:48And that makes sense because Air Nomads have been everywhere.
05:51I mean why wouldn't they be? They're Nomads.
05:54Katara uses water to seal Sokka's meat.
05:57Satoru says that here it doesn't matter where you're from.
06:00And shows all types of benders working in the factory.
06:04Then it reveals that in a different room he's replaced all the bending with machines.
06:09Somehow Aang asks why he'd go through all that trouble.
06:13Satoru has to get told that with machines even non-benders can do some things.
06:18In just days of training.
06:20While it somehow takes years for people to get good at bending.
06:24I like seeing Sokka get excited over machines.
06:27The forklift breaks.
06:29Satoru doesn't blame Sokka because he built it.
06:32And Toph examines it with her seismic sense and says even her students can.
06:37I'm guessing Satoru would want to pay her students to visit and help out with the machines every now and then.
06:42She just wants him to sponsor a new school building for her.
06:46Toph says she'd love to be in a partnership with him.
06:49And they'd hear her friends' comments about it.
06:52I have to wonder if this was written to establish that Satoru is the father of her kids later on.
06:58Or if this was just meaningless.
07:00Because this is the only guy I remember showing interest in.
07:04And gets given a vision of a monster destroying the factory.
07:08If it's because of the pollution.
07:10Why would it have taken longer than the first time the grounds were polluted?
07:15And it's so arbitrary what places are considered to be sacred grounds by the spirits.
07:19Because if they mean any place where the spirits used to be at in huge groups.
07:23Then that would apply to everywhere.
07:25Why are some places more populated by them?
07:29Why aren't spirits rampaging literally every time there's pollution anywhere?
07:34So some of them aren't so bad about pollution.
07:37Aang finally tells Satoru what he wants.
07:40And Toph would normally be the only smart one here with her pragmatic answer.
07:44Frustratingly, the writer forces him to not explain what he saw in his vision.
07:49When saying that might have gotten Toph and Satoru to take him seriously.
07:53Not shut down a factory that employs people of course.
07:56But at least not make fun of him.
07:58And get him to do research on how to get rid of the evil spirit preemptively.
08:02In response to the pollution, Satoru insists that it's not the refinery's fault.
08:06Because somehow he believes his uncle that it's a natural thing.
08:10Toph somehow thinks she needs to be in physical contact with Satoru.
08:14To know for a fact that he doesn't think he's lying.
08:17Otherwise, she's not sure.
08:20Even though she's a master at her seismic sense.
08:22I guess she's just jumping at an excuse to make physical contact with him.
08:27Because in the show, she put her hand on a wall.
08:32And that was good enough for detecting if Jet was lying.
08:35Sokka instantly sides with Toph.
08:38Even though like with Jet, he could just be mistaken.
08:41After predictable bickering, there's an earthquake that they get blamed for.
08:45Aang wants to help clean up.
08:48And they find out one of the machines is freaking out.
08:50So the heroes fight back the boulders spewing out to help people escape.
08:54And someone's trapped.
08:56Eventually, Toph protects Aang and he helps someone escape.
09:00He thanks them and they escape.
09:02I assume we're going to find out why the machines are freaking out.
09:05When Satoru is supposed to be a genius.
09:08It can easily be assumed that one of the benders sabotaged it.
09:12Because it's a job stealing machine.
09:14Eventually, the story gets annoying.
09:16Because the security group from the factory's old boss is antagonistic to the heroes.
09:22Someone complains about the destruction of a machine.
09:25When Satoru told them earlier that it could have just been unplugged.
09:29Sadly, the story ends with Toph reuniting with her father.
09:32Even though he's going to be unlikable with her.
09:35And that's all I remember about this arc in retrospect.
09:39And there's no reason he couldn't have only shown up in the third issue.
09:43He doesn't do anything and wasn't in the first one for the most part.
09:48Avatar The Last Airbender The Ripped Issue 2
09:52Toph's father says he doesn't have a daughter and gets called out on it.
09:56That's the kind of reason I dreaded going back to this arc.
10:00Satoru's uncle says that if the scared employees want to keep their jobs.
10:04They'll go back to work before they get fired.
10:07Because he can replace them all in an hour.
10:09It's smart of him.
10:10But I'm just wishing he had a lot less screen time.
10:14His only character is being unlikable.
10:16So there's no entertainment there.
10:18I get it in one panel.
10:20Somehow, Toph still wants to talk to her horrible dad.
10:24And Aang wants to start a fight with these thugs.
10:28And I like that his fans find it exciting that they have to break so many rules.
10:32Eventually, Aang warns his fans to take off to protect themselves.
10:36And a new member of the Rough Rhinos is especially mad at Aang.
10:40Because he had to join them.
10:42Because Ozai was overthrown and he used to be a soldier.
10:45Aang earthbends his fist and tells him he should find another group to join.
10:49Without explaining how or why the group is bad news.
10:53There's another cartoonishly evil bodyguard who's happy with threatening a little girl with a weapon.
11:00Who gets caught by Aang and somehow says he'll feel guilty when he clearly isn't capable of that.
11:06And it's not framed like he's joking.
11:10Toph tells Aang to stop trying to teach her to be like one of his fans.
11:14And I have to assume Sokka accidentally missed this thug's head.
11:18Because he should have known better than to hit his armor.
11:21Eventually, Sokka takes Katara away from these snubs.
11:25And Sokka gets the idea to trick them into riding the rhinos into the fence.
11:29Which gives Katara access to the river.
11:32I know these guys are doing their jobs.
11:34But it's so confusing that there's such gleeful cartoon villains about it against minors.
11:40I doubt these guards would have a license to kill.
11:43And that's pretty messed up for the world if they do.
11:46Some people get threatened and saved by the forklift operated by one of their friends.
11:51Who somehow thought he was allowed to try to kill someone.
11:54They get chained up and one of their enemies says,
11:57Never have a conversation when you're in the middle of a fight.
12:00Because this is a better written comic than the crappy ones from now.
12:04Then he gets stopped by a chain Toph metal bent.
12:08She complains that they should have let Jingbo use the forklift on him to chase him to the ocean.
12:13Eventually, Aang's told they want to finish the celebration.
12:16And Aang agrees that he should do that for them first before talking.
12:20Eventually, the factory gets damaged by Toph.
12:23And they have to hope she'll fix that damage.
12:26She's told Bird to go to talk to her dad.
12:29And I'm just wondering why the hell she wants to talk to him again.
12:32Especially since in the last issue she said that she had to run away from her past just to live.
12:37And here she is running towards it.
12:39I hate idiot plots.
12:41Why would she want to reconnect with a father like that?
12:44Aang and his fans plan on celebrating in a restaurant because it's the spot they're supposed to celebrate at.
12:50But the cabbage salesman from the show is running the place.
12:54And is scared of bad things happening to his cabbages again since he's a jinx.
12:58He gets asked if he'd mind if they ate outside food here.
13:02He could have explained why they want to do that.
13:05Since he's a restaurant owner, he refuses.
13:08But at least he's reasonable enough to say that they can still eat the outside food as long as they order at least one dish.
13:14I think if it was being realistic, he would have kicked them out.
13:17So I'm glad it wasn't.
13:19I have to assume the reason Aang ordered the house special instead of the cheapest dish is that he was too scared of annoying him.
13:26And I'm glad Toph called Satoru out on acting like a coward in front of his uncle.
13:33So Toph stupidly goes to visit someone who disowned her.
13:36But I can understand why you'd write Toph reconnecting with her parents.
13:40But not why you would drag it out to an agonizing degree.
13:44And if she doesn't get to see her mother either, it's not doing its full job.
13:49Her mom might have been the same way anyway, so this just saves us dialogue.
13:54There's a whole page where Sokka subtly gloats about the fact that his trapped enemies are at his mercy near a bomb of theirs.
14:01Sokka tries to put out the match with his finger, and realistically can't do it or even blow it out.
14:07So he throws it, and the explosion reveals the secret passageway for the heroes to check out.
14:13Eventually Aang starts saying a blessing before his meal with them, and that conveniently gets him to have a conversation with Yangchen in the spirit world.
14:21That's because he was doing an Air Nomad tradition thing, but he was already doing that the whole arc.
14:27Why did he have to be in this particular little spot? Why would it be better than the rest?
14:32Yangchen says that she couldn't be heard because Aang broke off his contact with Roku, and she is before him.
14:40I never anticipated that Aang would be unable to contact her because he broke off his relationship with Roku because she's not him.
14:47He didn't destroy all of the other Avatar artifacts.
14:51So it's just convoluted.
14:53And the fact that he can contact her at all is even more convoluted.
14:58The writer writing himself into a corner because he can't just, God forbid, have Aang figure out on his own this and solve the problem himself.
15:07The fact that he kept seeing Yangchen before this didn't add anything to the story of Substance. It just lengthened it.
15:15When he could've remembered to celebrate the festival on his own, it'd make just as much sense.
15:19Toph had this predictable, unlikable scene with her father.
15:23She says he's got no right to talk to her like that.
15:26You'd think he'd know all of the cool stuff she's done since then and respect it because it was mandatory for Ozai being taken down.
15:33But he doesn't even mention that because she's not who he wanted her to be.
15:37And apparently, Ozai destroying the world is worth that.
15:42It turns out Sokka was wearing his belt on his head to keep both hands free even though it means he has nothing to hold his pants up, which means he won't be able to run without losing them.
15:52Go figure, there's an underground mine. What's with the surprise?
15:56They say the pollution soars.
15:58I hate not getting to see the impact when Sokka hits one of the guards, who as usual goes on an attack-first-and-ask-questions-later policy.
16:07Katara warns Sokka that the fragile supports could get destroyed by the collateral damage and they're right under the town.
16:14And I understand why I didn't remember this from the last time I read this either.
16:18It's just not intuitive that the supports would be fragile.
16:22That they won't reinforce them.
16:24Sokka tells the employees they should leave for their own good and that the thugs are frozen in place anyways.
16:30He's told that they're here for a job out of desperation because Sokka's tribe is poorer than ever.
16:36They plan to stay until their boss tells them to leave.
16:39So Sokka plans on talking to their boss.
16:42Aang explains again why he severed his connection with Roku and admits that Toph had a point because him agreeing with her is why he did that.
16:49Yang Chen says that if he separates himself from his past lives, he'll repeat their mistakes.
16:55She explains that she made a mistake in the past in this same city.
16:59The king invited her there and she wasn't grateful to her protective father figure for tagging along unnecessarily.
17:05So I guess she hates his personality.
17:08She mastered every element last week and this is still only her first mission.
17:13So the world was peaceful back then.
17:15In the sense that I didn't need the avatar.
17:18She heard some fortune tellers worry that someone interested in the new things tried to reason with the spirits.
17:24That usually doesn't go well in the show, so I tend to hate them.
17:27It thinks it's being deep having the spirits be mad about environmental destruction primarily.
17:33But if they still act like monsters, they might as well be.
17:36And it'll think of them the same way.
17:38Toph's father doesn't have anything to say about the obviously great things she did.
17:43And the scene is pointless, needlessly depressing padding.
17:47I really don't see why the writer thought he had to not have Toph's father acknowledge that she was necessary.
17:53Sokka eventually tells her father the iron mine under the town might collapse.
17:58And he wasn't even aware of this and gets told to follow him.
18:01Meanwhile, the flashback shows that the city was ruined.
18:04And the avatar tells the spirit to tell him why he's upset.
18:07Which he could have done right away.
18:09He says he had a girlfriend and some humans moved to this place.
18:13And his girlfriend entertained their requests and watched over them.
18:16But this guy hated them because he heard that the humans were fighting with the spirits.
18:21But as I know from The Legend of Korra, the spirits were the majority in the past.
18:25And did nothing but bully the humans just for being humans every time they saw them.
18:30So who cares? He should know the spirits started it.
18:34So because he acted like a jerk, she told him to leave.
18:38He was rampaging because he felt her last breath.
18:41So this could have easily not happened.
18:44I haven't been mentioning the names of these spirits because they don't have personalities really.
18:49One's the nice one and one's the jerk.
18:51That's all they deserve to be called.
18:53In the present, Toph's father is opposed to this mining operation
18:57because he knew it was too dangerous to get rid of the iron ore here.
19:00The bad guy wanted to do it anyways because he doesn't care if people get hurt because he's greedy.
19:06Toph feels the earth's shifting all around them.
19:09And her father's smart enough to tell his employees to leave because he believes her.
19:13One of the thugs catches up with Sokka saying he isn't going anywhere
19:17and throws a weapon at one of the support beams by accident.
19:21Which isn't exactly a memorable way of having this conflict happen.
19:26Yangchen says that when she saw the evil spirit attacking a human settlement,
19:31she went into the Avatar state and told him to lay down his armor and listen to her.
19:36And he did, which he could have done earlier.
19:39They came to an agreement.
19:41So why in the world did he listen to her if he was the type to rampage at all?
19:46He would have hit her way.
19:48So the establishing of the Yangchen Festival is her agreement with him.
19:52He asks her what the terms of their agreement are,
19:55even though I thought it was obvious the terms were to celebrate the festival in the manner he already did
19:59and to not pollute the sacred grounds.
20:02He must have been able to see the future.
20:04Because otherwise, how would he even know that pollution was a thing that could exist
20:09so that he couldn't make it so that no pollution ever is a part of his agreement?
20:15Yang's woken up by an earthquake causing him to run out with them
20:18and see Sokka with the injured employees.
20:21Thankfully, Jingbo has bandages and a splint in his backpack
20:24because apparently this is standard Iraq-like procedure.
20:28Or not, because he's the only one with a backpack.
20:31Aang earthbends and hears Katara, who says if he earthbends, the mine would collapse.
20:37And this place is full of iron ore.
20:39So Toph's metalbending is all that's protecting everyone here.
20:43It's too bad Toph talked to her father on this issue.
20:46Because this is the kind of thing that made me look down on the Ark in retrospect,
20:50even though the majority of it is great.
20:52But in a way where I take it for granted.
20:55This issue is by Gene Yang, and the first issue of this Ark is good,
20:59even if it feels like a waste of time for the most part
21:02until Aang and his friends discover the factory polluting sacred grounds.
21:06Aang should have explained in his thoughts that he didn't simply warn people
21:09that he saw a spirit destroy the factory
21:11because he knows they're just gonna send him to try to kill the spirit
21:14when that's beyond even the Avatar's abilities.
21:17Spirits are invincible just being convenient to the plot.
21:21And I don't think the Avatar is very good luck with reasoning with spirits.
21:26Practically all that happened was dialogue.
21:29And Aang and his friends aren't exactly reasonable here.
21:33Because in this period of history, they can't have factories that don't pollute.
21:38And they have to invent those factories so that they can eventually invent factories that don't pollute.
21:44So they shouldn't be standing in the way of progress.
21:48They didn't know that it was sacred grounds,
21:50and it's completely arbitrary what even qualifies as sacred grounds in the first place.
21:55Everywhere should be sacred grounds by the same logic.
21:59Everywhere has had spirits in it before.
22:03In this story by Gene Yang,
22:05there's miners in a place that's too dangerous to mine at this point,
22:09and eventually a thrown weapon accidentally causes the mine to start collapsing
22:14and only Toph is holding it up.
22:16Which is a creative excuse for the mine collapse, but it's completely forgettable.
22:20She didn't need to go to her father to end up here.
22:23Toph could've stayed with Sokka the whole time.
22:26It made the story badder instead of defining the entire arc with this one miserable and predictable scene.
22:32The scene is so predictable with what's said, and completely irrelevant to the plot,
22:37that you're better off going with your common sense and skipping everything these two say to each other in this issue.
22:42It's not like someone who knows she hated her childhood and ran away from her past is to run back towards it.
22:48The comic arcs keep having their major problem be padded.
22:52I don't know why Toph's father couldn't have been written to explain that he does know Toph was necessary,
22:58and it's just that that doesn't keep him from being annoyed with her.
23:02He could still congratulate her on being necessary for the Avatar.