C. She/Her. ABC. Pisces/ISFJ. MLS(ASCP). M-Pop. Bookworm. Writer. Fangirl. Medical miracle. Currently trying to survive adulthood. Multi-fandom blog, with snippets about my life.
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A small collection of background character noses. So no one can tell you the nose changes are due to the art style. // Pequeña recopilación de narices de personajes de fondo. Para que no les digan que el cambio de narices es por el estilo artistico
Dema, you've drawn a lot of Zuko. I can't 'see' Zuko in the images I've seen from the upcoming movie. Other than the scar, he looks like a new character to me.
Can you explain what are some of the main visual elements of a Zuko? I'm wondering if the bangs are making his face shape look different, or if I'm being thrown off by the insane muscles.
I...might have gone a bit overload.
Extra Zukos + character design comparison between ATLA Zuko and Movie Zuko + long ramble about the danger of beauty conventions under the cut!
So, a little rant to complement...whatever this is.
I genuinely think that, out of all members of the Gaang, Zuko's the one who resembles himself the most in the new movie. Aside from the Ozai-bulk (which, yes, it does serve to distract you from everything else—except for his lack of lightning scar whereisthelightningscar); Movie Zuko looks like an adult Zuko would.
Compare his new design to, I don't know, Katara's (which I'm SO salty about), and you'll quickly notice which character is more identifiable as themselves.
(I'm adding my reference board for Zuko + a comparison between ATLA Katara and Movie Katara. You know. For evidence.)
See what I'm talking about? The sheer difference is asinine, but the explanation behind the change in design is both fairly simple and insultingly predictable:
Attractiveness.
Or, rather, what is believed to be found attractive by certain audiences.
Listen, I'm not saying anything new. Certainly nothing that a thousand other people haven't already explained far better than my uneducated self ever could. But it goes like this: the new art style draws a lot from westernized anime, not only in the animation itself (which is awestriking), but also in the character design. But that influence carries its own vices.
In other words: the new Avatar movie, gorgeous as it is, has been infected with Same Face Syndrome.
Why? Because, in anime-inspired art styles, the less identifiable facial features your MC has, the more attractive they seem. Wide noses, thick lips, or small eyes are a big no-no, especially if you're the female deuteragonist in a coming-of-age story written for male audiences. Or any kind of audiences, really—it has less to do with open misogyny than it does with artistic conventions.
Make an experiment. Remove all openly identifiable characteristics from each Gaang member (I'm talking hair, scars, skin tone, etc) and compare them to one another. Would you be able to differentiate Aang from Sokka? Toph from Katara?
The erasure of distinct facial features comes from a place of "beauty equals perfection", and what is perfection if not the lack of flaws? What is a wide nose or full cheeks if not a flaw?
Now, I don't mean to come across as snippy or judgemental—these are just my observations on what this kind of art style entails given its characteristics, and the effect it has on the facial design of characters so widely known and loved. Especially characters with identifiable ethnicities.
The new style affects characters like Katara, Sokka, and Aang more than it does others in the series because some of their features simply don't fit with what's considered attractive here. That's the reason they look so alien and out of place—because what made their design so organic has been watered down or erased to fit a beautiful mold.
So, you may ask, what's the deal with Zuko?
Why has no one complained about his design (other than the missing lightning scar)? Why does he resemble himself the most? Why—characterization problems aside—does he still feel like Zuko?
The answer is...pretty simple, actually. A bit dumb, if you will.
The new over-beautification of the Gaang doesn't affect Zuko as much because he was already designed to be conventionally attractive.
Yes, I said it. And I'll say it again.
Zuko, Azula, Ozai, Ursa—they were all, canonically, gorgeous people. The Royal Family was intentionally designed to fit traditional East Asian beauty conventions. The long faces, the delicate, narrow features... It's a perfect, immaculate beauty, dutifully in line with the perfect, immaculate image royalty is meant to project.
So.
So.
All of this to say that:
A) most of the misgivings we have with the Gaang's adult designs can be blamed on the new art style/direction.
B) ethnic erasure for the sake of abiding by westernized beauty conventions is not alright. Nor does it work, so just. Stop it.
C) having distinctive features is awesome, actually. Plastic-perfect "attractiveness" can go check the #BanTheSameFaceSyndrome tag and learn a thing or two.
And ultimately:
D) Zuko has always been, canonically, the poster boy for Conventional Beauty. So we have permission to draw him as gorgeous as we damn well please.
Now this is badly edited, but I did what I could, but the noses for the new ATLA movie have been bothering me immensely. All the noses look so bleh. I know the art style in general is very different from the series, but the noses are just SOOOOO different. I feel like this would have made a ton more sense and makes the character animation feel more in line with the original series. Had to see what it would look like for Aang and Katara at least.
Just finished watching the new ATLA movie with @emmabirb8!!
Will probably be reblogging quite a bit, so if you need to blacklist, my tag is "ATLA Movie 2026" and the movie's title, "Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender"
The whole SDCC panel is up on YouTube, and finally I could hear Bryan explain their reasoning for creating a new written language, instead of using Chinese Hanzi as they had before. And tbh I am satisfied with the explanation (you can check yourself, I've linked directly to the point where they talk about it).
Basically, Bryan explained:
the decision to make a new written language was made from discussions with their cultural consultants at Avatar Studio.
they loved using traditional Chinese and working with their calligraphers, but wanted to do something more now that they had more resources.
they decided it didn't really make sense to rely on written Chinese, considering all of the different cultures Avatar is pulling from.
Bryan "locked himself in his office for 3 months" to create this language.
Bryan didn't like how a lot of fantasy languages look like they're just "English/the Roman alphabet in cosplay".
that's why they specifically designed the Avatarian language with Hangul (Korean written language, which Bryan had previously studied) as the main inspiration.
it's called "Avatarian" and is a phonetic language creating "syllable blocks", similar to Hangul.
it uses simplified "four element" symbols as their base, based on established Avatar iconography.
My take on this:
I was suspecting that their reasoning for decentralizing Chinese was not "laziness" or a lack of budget, but rather to be more inclusive of the different cultures Avatar is pulling from. ATLA itself uses a variety of cultures as inspirations, but it really felt like the show centered itself on Chinese culture specifically, which if you consider, there's a bunch of valid reasons to step away from.
I personally like that they used a mix of Hangul and Avatar's own iconography, especially given that the previously depicted written language was using Hanzi. Hangul itself is a written language created in a country that previously had only used Hanzi (well, Hanja) - in order to promote literacy and because it represented the Korean language more accurately. There's still ways you can imagine "Avatarian" existing alongside Hanzi, and possibly other written languages, within the world of Avatar.
Consider, for example, how the Fire Nation is primarily Chinese in inspirations, but also during ATLA, a colonizing power. You could easily imagine how they might have been promoting their own written language during the war, and after it ended, there was a movement for a more "inclusive" written language. Similarly, in modern Korea, they almost exclusively use Hangul, but Hanja still exists in the background, such as people have official Hanja spellings of their names and so on.
I understand people initially felt disappointed, as the use of authentic written Chinese was something the series had always been applauded for "doing right" (and I, too, was confused). However, I think the jump to assume it is merely done out of laziness or from a lack of sensitivity was a bit too fast. Frankly, if you consider it, centralizing Chinese culture and writing is actually not that respectful or inclusive to the other cultures Avatar takes inspiration from.
It also locks Avatar in this pretty poor spot of being an American fantasy cartoon series masquerading as a shoddy Chinese rip-off world, which muddles Chiense cultures with a truck-load of other cultures anyway. Like a Chinese rip-off fantasy world is not even truly what Avatar really is, and here's a discussion of why this aspect might not even be that compelling to Asian audiences. To put it shortly: Asian-made media and more specifically sourced Asian-inspired series can do a much better job of being "authentically Chinese/Asian" than Avatar will ever even hope to be. Avatar isn't likely to compete with the vast amount of Asian media depicting those cultures much more accurately, so it might overall do better of selling itself as more unique, mixed-cultural fantasy world, which isn't trying to overly rely on a shallow "Chinese aesthetic".
Furthermore, within ATLA/Avatar's own lore, it basically centralizes the two biggest nations in the Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom, which are the two "most Chinese" nations. It completely overlooks the - already tending to be treated as - lesser nations, primarily the Watertribes, which takes very little Chinese-based inspiration.
GIven the vast diversity of cultures Avatar takes inspiration from, and the variety of cultures within the world-building across more than 10.000 years, it is not difficult to conceptualize the people of Avatar could have used different ways of writing. So it is not that much of a problem to create a new fantasy language, which let's remember, is still ultimately Asian inspired.
I don't care about Avatarian, but the way some of you are calling it "anti-Asian" or "not connected to real culture" is showing your ass
Replacing Chinese characters with a system of your own devising, which has consonant and vowel symbols combined into syllable blocks, is one of the proudest cultural accomplishments of Korea!
like, i don't know if that they definitely *were* inspired by Hangul, but it would make sense, it's pretty famous in conlanging circles
I think it's less likely that they were inspired by Pahawh Hmong but that's another neat historical example of making up your own script so I wanted to link it too :P
If you watch the panel, Bryan says directly he was inspired by Hangul and they chose to make a new writing system after discussions with their cultural consultants, that using Chinese didn't fit so well given how diverse their cultural inspirations range.
Dude... I have been holding this in for months. The rage the indignation at this development. Because I brought merch back in January 2026 and noticed the element symbols were off—I thought I'd brought unlicensed merch and be ripped off.
And then when the movie got leaked I had an anonymous concerned atla fan rant to me about the removal of the Chinese writing system in the film. And I suspected I wasn't ripped off and the merch was licensed... Just with the new Avatarian element symbols instead.
But I was still hoping perhaps that the text was place holder in the leaked version. but I was foolish to hope.
They had an actual calligraphy specialist and a whole anthropology department that helped create this series. If this was some misguided attempt at avoiding cultural appropriation, they actually made it WORSE by erasing years of actively respecting the cultures they were inspired from.
atla just so happened to write one of the most insane and complex brother sister relationships in all of television, and yet for some reason everyone focused on zuko and azula instead, even though they are basically just normal siblings, and as such not even that interesting ..
katara and sokka are what happens when you are your brother’s mother and your brother also tries to be your father. you love them, you hate them, you’re half of them, you can’t stand them, you look after them, they keep you safe.
azula and zuko are both just gifted kid burnouts with a dad that only loves the winner.
#yeah when they're not trying to kill each other azula and Zuko are p normal. #katara and sokka on the other hand spent the majority of their childhood trying to raise each other #and were also the ONLY kids in their age group that they ever interacted with. #they are so. they're so. #''i don't remember what my mom looks like I just picture katara'' WHEN HE HAS HIS MOTHER'S FACE. kills me. (@professorsparklepants)
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