lol, Naruto and Bleach? I get Death Note, but Bleach?

And Avatar has been worked on since 1999 as stated by it's creators.

But to tell the truth, both Naruto and Avatar kinda suck. I mean, there's nothing amazing about any of these series, they're just kids cartoons

*sigh* Once again, I have to save the day. And I don't get even get a corny intro tagline like "Up in the sky...". Da well. Anyways, before tackling all the shots at bending and giving my personal explanation(next post), let me just say what pulls me, a 20 year old black male from the south, into a show like this. I won't even mention Aang, Zuko, or any main character's name after this point to give a lil showing of how deep Avatar's rabbit hole goes:

Avatar brings strong writing into a fantasy adventure story that can get rather drab. Instead of just having Sozin start the war after killing the Avatar somehow, they had them grow up friends, but differences in philosophies and mindsets drives them apart. Until both men are in the twilight of their life and the other kills the only man that is holding back his ambitions. After thousands of years of story telling, there's nothing new under the sun, so being fresh is all about how you put your own twist on the classic friends become enemies plot. Avatar did that. And this is only a background story.

A storyline more to the forefront but still smaller is Jet's arc. A boy with a warped sense of justice and duty. His family and home were ripped away from him as a child and was forced to raise himself. He grew up hating the Fire Nation and wanted nothing more than to make them pay, even if it meant killing non threatening FN civilians. He eventually sees the err in his ways and tries to reform. Heading to Ba Sing Se for "a new beginning" and all that, but it quickly turns sour as his old ways resurface, eventually leading to his arrest and subsequent brainwashing(yup, Avatar has brainwashing) by a third party character named, Long Feng who had his own goals in mind. Jet makes a final noble act in defying Long Feng's control on his mind, but in the end is killed by him.

Long Feng is a character only appearing in roughly 4 episodes, but he had one of the largest impacts on the overall plot of any minor character. "The man behind the man" was controlling the Earth King along with his Dai Li agents. His tentacles if you will single handedly prevented the Earth Kingdom from doing any real fighting back against the war and made the Earth King into nothing more than a figurehead. He manipulated Jet to keep a certain main character from breaking up his little "utopia" in Ba Sing Se and would even stoop so far as to make a deal with the Fire Nation to keep everything peaches and cream. However, in the end everything came crashing down as his agents betrayed him and Ba Sing Se fell to the Fire Nation.

Let's see, I've written quite the lil overview of what, 2 characters a few plotlines, and a bit of background on the current plot, none of which directly mentioning any main character's name. I'm not challenging ANYONE to match this with their own, but all I'm saying is there's alot there for those who care about this sort of thing in Avatar. Next, I'll get on bending and how that's expertly done in the show and even try to offer an explaination based on how info on bending is given in the show.