Aang

Aang, also known Avatar Aang, is the main protagonist of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

**Aang** was a male Air Nomad born in 12 BG and the Avatar during the Hundred Year War, succeeding Avatar Roku.

As the Avatar of his time, he was the only person capable of using all four bending arts: Air Bending, Water Bending, Earth Bending, and Fire Bending.

He was also one of a select few Avatars and one of the first in many cycles to learn the ancient art of energybending and the first Avatar known to have actively used the technique.

Shortly before the beginning of the Hundred Year War, Aang was frozen in an iceberg for a hundred years; he later emerged, still biologically twelve years old, into a world engulfed by war.

During his absence, the Fire Nation had waged war upon the other nations and managed to completely wipe out the pacifistic Air Nomads.

It fell to Aang, the Avatar and the last airbender, to end the War by mastering the other three elements and defeating Fire Lord Ozai.

He remained a kind and goofy kid at heart throughout his year-long struggle, despite the overwhelming loss of his people and the heavy burdens he was forced to bear.

After his victory over the Phoenix King, Aang began a romantic relationship with his close friend, Katara.

He is one of the Champion's many allies and one of the most powerful.

## Appearance

Aang is a bald twelve year old boy wearing Air Bender Monk Clothes with blue arrow tattoos on his body.

## Personality

Aang was fun-loving, somewhat naive, and adventurous with a sense of humor.

He possessed deep respect for life and freedom, refused to eat meat, and was often reluctant to fight in his younger years.

He craved the stimulation of new people and places.

His frequent off-course detours frustrated both allies and pursuers alike.

He typically wished to forget his duties as the Avatar and would long for the normality that others possessed.

Yet Aang had always prided himself on a complex social network of friends extending over all four nations, and war did not stand in his way.

In addition, he looked forward to playing with all the exotic fauna in each place he visited.

Whether it was otter penguins, hopping llamas, hog monkeys, or giant koi fish, no fit animal Aang saw went un-ridden.

Within this carefree exterior, however, Aang hid a great deal of guilt and a heavy mental burden in his duties as Avatar.

As the reluctant hero, he wished he had been there to help his people a century earlier.

This initially caused him to conceal his true identity from friends, and he still had a tendency to slack off in his studies of the bending arts, even though he naturally excelled at them. He also tended to become distressed when he saw the destruction caused by the Hundred Year War, believing that as the Avatar, it was his job to prevent such events from happening.

Eventually, Aang decided to stop dwelling on the past; however, on several occasions, his desire to end the War caused him to take desperate action such as attempting to induce the Avatar State or facing Fire Lord Ozai before he had fully mastered the elements.

Being the last airbender and having no living peers, with the exception of the aged King Bumi and Guru Pathik, Aang developed strong bonds with his friends, particularly Katara, explained by Guru Pathik as a reincarnation of his love for his people.

His desire to protect them, however, led to violent emotional outbursts when they were threatened, and he even resorted to deceiving and hurting others to keep the group together, such as when he heard that Katara and Sokka might leave the group to visit their father; he hid the map to their father's whereabouts and lied about ever having it in the first place.

Aang preferred not to use his bending skill in battle due to his peaceful nature.

He preferred to solve problems non-violently. Even when forced into combat, Aang typically held back, fighting defensively and trying to subdue opponents without seriously hurting them, even if they were not human.

This attitude was apparently common among all airbenders, who were all vegetarians and taught that all living things are precious.

The only exception to Aang's pacifism was when his friends were threatened, in which case, he could become angry and attack his opponents, sometimes even entering the Avatar State.

Events in the Earth Kingdom, however, began to take a toll on his carefree personality.

Aang's attitude changed dramatically when Appa was captured.

He became visibly enraged and hostile, particularly toward Toph, who had kept Appa company while they were gone.

Despite attempts by Katara to calm Aang down, his anger continued to grow until finally, he flew off to search for Appa alone.

Eventually, Aang returned to the group, but he was still visibly upset.

He violated the principles of airbending when Momo was snatched by a buzzard wasp.

He gave chase and rescued Momo but unnecessarily struck it down with powerful airbending.

After Aang returned with Momo, the group was confronted by the sandbenders who had taken Appa.

When one of the sandbenders, Ghashiun, revealed that they had sold the bison, Aang lashed out and destroyed all their sand-sailers in a matter of moments using his airbending.

He turned his sights on the sandbenders and entered the Avatar State upon hearing that Ghashiun had muzzled Appa.

Aang's rage was only stopped when Katara grabbed hold of him and held him in an embrace until he finally calmed down and returned to his normal state.

Shortly after these events, Aang forsook all hope, choosing not to care at all in order to refrain from lashing out in anger and be hurt.

The birth of the baby Hope lifted his spirits once again.

After failing in Ba Sing Se, Aang began to feel angry and upset with himself.

He felt an urge to redeem himself and refused to let the others fight and be injured in the invasion due to "his mistake".

Driven by a desire for redemption, he fled the ship on which the team was traveling, but the spirits of Yue and Roku allowed Aang to see that his mistakes were not his fault and encouraged him to let others help him.

He returned to his lighter attitude soon after.

Four days before the invasion, Aang began to have nightmares about fighting against the Fire Lord. He started to unravel and chose to avoid experiencing them by not sleeping.

This caused him to mentally fall apart even more, and he suffered intense hallucinations, blanking off into realistic daydreams.

On the night before the invasion, his friends finally coaxed him to sleep, during which he defeated the Fire Lord in his dreams and regained his sense of fortitude.

During the invasion, Aang became extremely upset upon not being able to find Fire Lord Ozai, believing that he had lost his only chance to defeat him and end the war.

Aang expressed his determination to face Ozai anyway, even though at this time the eclipse had passed, and Ozai was now capable of firebending once more.

He was dissuaded, however, by Toph and Sokka, who advised him to retreat and attack at a more advantageous time.

After the invasion, Aang was unwilling to face the reality of having to learn firebending, wanting instead to have some fun at the Western Air Temple; however, with the arrival of Zuko, he once again began training in earnest.

Although he had planned to wait until after the comet to face Ozai, upon learning of the Fire Lord's plan to burn through the Earth Kingdom, he decided to engage him anyway, even though he was not fully trained.

He became extremely conflicted, however, upon learning that he would have no other choice than to take Ozai's life.

Aang did show a somewhat flawed and stubborn side to his personality during the Harmony Restoration Movement.

Like Roku, Aang was adamant about the idea that four separate nations would bring peace.

This contradicted with Yu Dao, where citizens of two nations were able to live in harmony, make huge achievements, and have biracial families.

However, Aang saw this as only another disaster that would lead to another war and persisted in moving the Fire Nation colonials back to the Fire Nation, even if it meant separating them from their families.

However, when Aang saw how intertwined the people from the Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom had become and how his relationship with Katara was the same, he came to terms with the fact that his beliefs were outdated and realized that the world had changed significantly in the past hundred years.

This prompted him to defend and support Yu Dao, found the Air Acolytes, and ultimately sever his spiritual connection with his dear friend, guide, and past life, Avatar Roku, who still completely refused and chastised Aang's choices.

Later on, he and Zuko decided to form the United Republic of Nations as a compromise.

## Bending, Skills & Abilities

As a reincarnation of the entity known as the Avatar, Aang possessed the power to bend all four elements, making him the most powerful bender of his time.

Though Avatar Roku said mastering the elements could take many years, Aang was able to learn all four with considerable skill in less then a year, though technically, he did not completely master all four as stated by Zuko and Toph.

As a result of his unconventional training, Aang never demonstrated most of the special subsets of the bending arts.

However, he did display the abilities of lightning redirection and seismic sense, making him the first Avatar known to have learned these abilities.

Most Avatars were not told of their status until they were sixteen years of age, but Aang had become a fully realized Avatar while he was still only biologically twelve years old.

Thus, he became the youngest known Avatar to do so.

As he was chronologically 112 years old, Aang also has the distinction of taking the longest to achieve this status.