The cast of Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender, compared to their animated predecessors

Jet

• Original voice actor: Crawford Wilson

• Live-action actor: Sebastian Amoruso

Jet is a dashing rogue the Aang Gang meets early in their journey, a rebel fighting against the tyrannical Fire Nation -- which is good -- but who uses methods that risk hurting innocent civilians, which is bad.

As usual, I'm impressed by the hair. It's hard to translate anime hair to live-action in a way that doesn't look silly, but this does the job; it's not as garishly spiky, but it's big, brown and unkempt in a rakish, unstudied way, like a sexy mop top.

Admiral Zhao

• Original voice actor: Jason Isaacs

• Live-action actor: Ken Leung

Finally, let's look at Admiral Zhao, a Fire Nation military man who is chasing Zuko to find the Avatar.

Jason Isaacs, who's most famous for playing Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies, was one of the bigger names in the original Last Airbender cast. I'm sure Ken Leung will do a great job stepping into his shoes, aided by a typically excellent animation-to-live-action transition.

The cabbage merchant

• Original voice actor: James Sie

• Live-action actor: James Sie

One last hit before we go: James Sie voiced the cabbage merchant -- a hapless street vendor ever frustrated by the antics of Aang and his friends -- in the original show and will play him in the live-action version. To my knowledge, he's the only cast member from the animated show reprising his role in the Netflix series. It'll be a walk-on role, but fans will surely appreciate it.

Netflix nails the look of Avatar: The Last Airbender

To sum up, it seems like the live-action Avatar show is doing a great job of translating the look of the animated series without being so slavishly devoted to the source material that it looks absurd, a trap that some anime-to-live-action adaptations can fall into. For an example of that, you can look at Netflix's own live-action version of Fullmetal Alchemist, which retains the original designs without accounting for the fact that the show is no longer a cartoon and they can't get away with the same sort of exaggeration and stylization in the design.

This new Last Airbender show looks a lot more like Netflix's One Piece, an anime adaptation that likewise walked the line between honoring the source material while finding its own identity. Netflix has been making these live-action versions of animated shows for a while now, and it looks like they're finally getting the hang of it.

That doesn't mean that the Netflix show will be good. That will depend on more than just the look. Are the characters as vivid and likable as we remember? Does the story feel as weighy? Is the humor funny, and can the actors pay homage to the original performances while still bringing something new to the roles? We'll find out the answers to those questions when the first season of Avatar: The Last Airbender drops on Netflix on February 22, 2024.

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