Was Katara a Mary Sue?

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MrBeastMan

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This popped into my mind a little while ago, was Katara of Avatar, the female lead and love interest of main character Aang a Mary Sue? My thoughts on this was there were times where she came dangerously close to being one, but the writers probably realized this and kept managing to pull her out just in time.

Take for example at the beginning of the series, Katara's waterbending skills are wild and unpredictable because she hasn't had a master to teach her and it's shown that Aang is able to easily do waterbending moves that she struggled to master for what seems like a few years at least. Of course, that all changes when they finally do a get a master and Katara is all of a sudden a master while Aang is well... pretty much just playing around and not taking it seriously.

Now, Pakku explains this by saying that Katara has a lot of passion for waterbending which is how she was able to master it so quickly, but... I don't care how passionate you are, nobody can become so unbelieveably good in just a few days (how much time passed between those three episodes? A week maybe...) Now I understand that they probably needed Katara to become a master to teach Aang waterbending so that he wouldn't become all-powerful too quickly but it was still a little jarring.

However, the ultimate case for me that bugs me is probably during the finale when it's... Katara who hands Azula her ultimate defeat inside of Zuko who was at least in my opinion the second main character of the show next to only Aang.

Now the thing is Zuko and Azula's stories really parallel one another (not to mention the fact that they are siblings) and frankly I thought Zuko and Azula's conflict was more interesting than Aang and Ozai's. Zuko's starts off as an angry, impatient, arrogant who never thinks his plans through (anti-) villain who is shown to not be regarded as exceptionally powerful by just about everyone but he gradually becomes kinder, less careless, and his arrogance is all but gone and his skills have improved significantly becomes an enlightened Fire Lord, turns to the right side and is finally at peace with himself.

This is in contrast with Azula who starts off as a calculating, ruthless, vindicative, manipultive mastermind and a prodigy at firebending who becomes well.. a completely insane psychopath and is now stuck in a mental instituition. So Zuko and Azula's battle is being fought, it's an Agni Kai, a one-on-one duel...

Now here's the thing with Katara.... she's always about helping others even if they don't need nor want it or have their own battles to fight.. (okay yeah, I'm not thinking straight with that comment, I'm pretty sure you know what I'm talking about though) Zuko has pretty much almost always had help when fighting Azula, I was looking forward to seeing him fight on his own and finally truly defeat her.

Instead Katara for some reason or another leaps up in the way, gives Azula a target when Zuko was about to end their battle... (Why?! You know if I could I would create a video that takes the Nostalgia Critic's line to Mowgli about not running from Shere Kahn where he's saying something along the lines of "You idiot! Get out of there!" Azula fires the lightning you see Katara's reactions, NC turns his head, and the next shot is a tombstone that says: "Here lies a dumb girl". Hehehehehe.... ....but I'm rambling back to the topic at hand)

Anyway so Zuko takes the lightning for Katara and is left incapacitated thus Katara has to take over for him and ultimately it's her who defeats Azula... now I realize that with the way they set it up, Katara would've had otherwise absolutely nothing to do, but still Azula was Zuko's battle, not Katara's. I'll quote myself from another forum here:

"...this is where my biggest problem lies. The thing is here... it seems like they are saying here: "This is KATARA'S victory. Oh sure, Zuko WOULD have won all by himself if Azula hadn't violeted Agni Kai rules, but.... hey that's how it goes." To be honest, after the final shot of Azula crying, I was like: "Wait.... that's it? No, no, that can't be how this fight ends! Go back! What? That's it... aww, come on!"

Now on some level, I can understand why they had this happen... I mean, if Zuko defeated Azula all by himself...what was there for Katara to do? Nothing really... considering they said Azula banished EVERYONE. So perhaps she shouldn't have banished everyone... what about the Dai Lee? Couldn't Katara have held the Dai Lee at bay while Zuko fought Azula? Why did they have Zuko AND Katara go to fight Azula... Iroh says that Zuko can't handle her alone, but as evidence from Southern Raiders, he probably could by now. So... what was the reason for this? Katara defeated Azula because she was the "good" girl while Azula was the "evil" one, as if trying to give them a bit of a rivalry. To give the... sane Zutarians something? (If that's the case, I'd be a little more upset since I know I'm in the miniority here, but I honestly didn't care who Katara ended up with, I'd rather they'd focused on more important dangling plots than giving Zutara the middle finger or whatever) Couldn't they have had Zuko and Katara fight Azula as a team? "

So yeah the thing is Katara never really had much of any kind of rivalry or interaction with Azula prior to this. Oh, they were enemies to be sure, but nowhere near to the extent of Zuko and Azula. So really I'm not sure why they went with this angle....

But anyway, I'm done. What do you guys think?
 
Are we talking about her as a whole, or just if she is the perfect fighter?

Now if it's the latter, then no, because she still had to struggle whereas a Mary Sue would fight effortlessly.

If it's the former, then no because she had problems with forgiving others for their crimes/sins. To go further, she allowed for the death of her mom to give her a tainted version of every Fire Nation citizen rather than judging the man in question on his own merits. And while she did have a legitamite gripe with Zuko in The Western Air Temple, it's safe to say that he was a convenient scapegoat for her mom's murderer.

As for why Katara was chosen as the one to help Zuko? I see a couple reasons:

1. She's the only one who could heal him.
2. They came to blows in both the finale chapters of Book 1 and 2, thus it only makes sense to show them helping one another to show how far they've changed since then.
 
Yeah. She was a Mary Sue. And a big reason why I drifted away from the show near the end....

Why: She became a near-perfect fighter way too quickly. Untrained to second best in the world in a couple months. She accumulated power-ups at random, including a pointless and very over-the-top powerup near the end, which never went anywhere important.

But mostly, she was the writers' favorite, and no one else ever called her on her character flaws. Compare: Sokka had some flaws, namely a touch of chauvanism. He was called on this, browbeaten, mocked, and ultimately humiliated for it. When Katara's flaws surface....nothing. When she accused Sokka of not loving thier Mom the way she did...nothing! A tantrum like that should have been smacked down, and smacked down hard. And if it had come from Sokka, it would have. But it came from Katara, so she was left alone to learn her lesson in her own sweet time. (And if the object of her wrath hadn't been so pathetic--say, if he had been that Rhino-Rider instead--she might not have learned it at all)

So yeah, she was a Mary Sue. Too good a fighter too often, and too perfect a character to be corrected.
 
Katara's character in the beginning, while stereotypical for female characters in an action show aimed at boys, was alright. She had a realistic balance between her usefulness and her strength. She maybe got in one good slap with a water whip to a random pirate in an episode, but Aang ended up doing the majority of the work for the first season when it came to fighting.

The second season and beyond changed that when suddenly she becomes a master after a few days of training and can now effortlessly hold her own against Zuko, Azula, and probably even Aang himself barring him going Avatar State. while she may not be a completely Mary Sue (like said, she'd have to be that strong/powerful/gifted from the start), her character definitely took a nose-dive during the second season compared to the first. She shifted from being "the chick" to "the feminist", and basically became one of those overpowered "girls can do anything boys can" types of characters.

In terms of Mary Sue-ish-ness, Toph definately fits the Mary Sue label a lot more than Katara does, but at the same time at least she started out broken rather than suddenly turning that way mid-show, so I can tolerate her a bit more. With Toph, you at least had some consistancy with her character, but seeing Katara nosedive like that was fairly underwhelming to me. The fact Toph was largely ignored in the third season is sort of the opposite of what happened to Katara, who ended up getting shoved into the veiwers faces more and more as time went on, ironically enough.

And yes, I have to agree with Crash that if Sokka did half the stuff she did (complaining, sabotaging their journey in Painted Lady, and other similar stuff) he would have gotten chewed out by the group for it where as Katara got away with a lot of stuff. Then again, that's probably because she was billed as the "positive, assertive, girl role model" character and giving them faults or questioning their actions would be seen as "sexist".
 
Yeah, I think that of the first 10 episodes of Season 3, Katara was the focus of... oh... I think maybe 3. Although I think they realized what was happening with her so that's why she had a smaller role in DOBS.
 
When Toph first joined the Gaang, she definitely pointed out Katara's flaws, they had a HUGE argument over it, leading to Toph temporarily leaving. But who else would name her flaws? Aang would'nt, obviously Toph already has, and Sokka isn't that kinda a guy to hurt his sister, while Katara's personality is more... bossy- kinda...

I do agree that she became overpowered...
 
I definitely agree with you. Katara felt fine in the first season to me, but she became really powerful too quickly at some point during season two. It didn't bother me too much until season three, mainly with that episode about the Southern Raiders. While the bloodbending was pretty cool and dark, I do agree that it was an overpower move that never went anywhere important.

It's interesting that Katara got away with stuff like what she did in the Painted Lady episode, yet she complained about what Aang and Toph did to delay their trip during season three, despite the fact that they were doing the same thing pracitically. For some reason, I didn't mind how bossy she was in season two, but I became a bit more annoyed with Katara during season three because of that behavior.
 
That rather long introductionary post can be answered with a short and simple answer.

No. :p To expand, I will admit that there were times she bordered on becoming one, but she never fully did.

As for the Azula thing: Zuko didn't defeat her for the same reason he didn't join the gang in the Season 2 finale...the writers of Avatar like to go against audience expectations. Whether that's for better or for worse is up to you to decide.



Er, how so? I always thought it was clear that Toph spent much of her childhood working hard to achieve the level of strength she has.
 
Going against audience expectations or not, Zuko defeating Azula would've felt like the most natural way for it to go down due to their established history and rivalry, Katara defeating Azula came out of flippin' nowhere.
 
The problem with that is she is a child; the youngest one in the group to be specific. If she were an adult then that excuse would have some merit. With Toph, though, she's beating legions of adult soldiers effortlessly at "such a young age" (one of the original requirements for Mary Sue). Coupled with the fact she has one of those "disabilities" that actually benefits her and puts her above everyone else with unique powers (radar, lie detector, metalbending, other plot-device powers), which is also another original requirement, the only requirement she doesn't posses is having all the guy characters swoon over her. I think the most apparent moment is in the season 2 finale when she gets put in a metal box and rather than giving her limitations to her powers and showing that despite her strength she's still 'just human', they invent a new metalbending power for her (which not even masters like Bumi have been shown to do) for her to escape and save the day. Unlike Aang, though, she doesn't have the 'avatar magic' to fall back on as an excuse.

Actually, what I would have liked to seen is either Zuko redirect lightning back at her to beat her (since Iroh taught him it and it would bring it around full circle) or to have her end up killing herself. They mentioned you needed a calm mind to bend lightning and such, and Azula was crazy in the finale, so I was expecting her to maybe try to lightning bend and end up blowing her arm off or something because she wasn't in a stable state of mind (I guess they forgot about that requirement). Though Katara beating her didn't come out of nowhere, they did it to tease the Zutara shippers (something they really went overboard on for the third season)
 
I love how people seem so convinced that the way to make the story work better is to ignore the rules of narrative to indulge fanwankery. Just because Zuko was a more interesting character doesn't make him the right character to win that battle. He lost that battle by stopping Azula from hurting someone else--he fulfilled his character arc by doing exactly that. That was the act that really, finally reclaimed his honor.

But so many of you want to take that away from him so he can beat up his sister, or so Katara didn't get to. It was better for Zuko's character development to lose that one gracefully.

Which was accomplished when he beat her by being everything she wasn't. He won on the strength of his friends and allies, not from personal might. Lack of which was exactly the reason Azula had her little freak out in the first place. He may not have won their brawl, but he utterly destroyed her on an allegorical level.
 
It never crossed my mind that Katara was "too powerful." I definitely sighed with relief when she didn't beat Pakku in The Waterbending Master. Yay for subverted expectations. Her learning bloodbending so quickly was a minor flaw in my opinion because she clearly doesn't want to use it anymore. Although I wanted her to realize her error of using it again in The Sourthern Raiders. Her self-righteous personality in the third season bothered me.



Very nice. The last agnai kai wasn't quite as good as I hoped, but I like this type of thinking. I share this opinion.



I really don't think so. There are numerous reasons for the writers to choose Katara as the one to defeat Azula. WrenchNinja's explanation is a good one.
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I think the fact that Katara has recognizable character flaws that people don't like is the leading indicator that she's not a Mary Sue. Mary Sues are perfect in every way and always right, and we don't like them because they're wildly unrealistic, fantasy fulfillment characters instead of people. We don't like Mary Sue's because they're insufferable know-it-alls who will can never have a response to anything other than, "I told you so." Katara is not a perfect person by any stretch -- she's bossy, she's tremendously stubborn, and her plans and good intentions will go awry. Besides, it seems that most of the arguments for claiming that she is a Mary Sue (she's too powerful, she gets away with murder) could just as easily be applied to Aang.



Which Aang and Toph incidents are you referring to? I don't remember her raising much of a stink during "The Headband" over Aang holding them up for a stint in school and a dance party -- I thought that was mostly Sokka complaining about how it was going to mess up his schedule. As for Toph's shenanigans in "The Runaway," her issue was that Toph was delaying their travels for purely selfish reasons, even after their immediate need for cash and supplies was relieved. She also only started complaining when they started attracting too much attention to themselves.

Katara's stalling in "The Painted Lady" was altruistic. It certainly didn't directly benefit Aang & Co, which is why she didn't get chewed out for it by the group. I'm also not convinced that they'd chew out Sokka for doing similar things -- they take an extended detour in "Sokka's Master" essentially because he feels mopey when they could have just said, "Too bad, deal with it." I also can't believe that they really chewed him out for stealing Zuko and their war balloon to go rescue his dad and Suki after "The Boiling Rock." OK, maybe Toph did for not bringing back any meat :).
 
Eh, I don't see being young and talented with a certain ability a Mary Sue trait unless it's her only trait. Before he was destined as an Avatar, Aang became the youngest Airbender to master his art. Does that make him a Gary Stu?

Toph has proven time and time again that she is, indeed, an experienced Earthbender. Her blindness may have provided her a significant advantage, but a Mary Sue with a god-gifted ability is defined as one who would be unstoppable. Toph is not such and has proven to have weakness (Airbending for example as she cannot see what isn't on ground). You have to realize that many, many fictional depictions of main characters gain powers that others may not have, whether they're kids or adults.

Toph is also burdened with her own character flaws which keeps her from strict Mary Sue territories. She is a rude, crass, blunt, show offish, and an oftentimes messy young girl who takes crap from no one and has trouble socializing with the others. It would be Mary Sue if this was never called on. If the characters accepted her inappropriate behavior with no clause, then she would quality as a Mary Sue AKA JerkAss Sue. But they do, or more specifically Katara does. Aang and Sokka are too laid back to say much of her attitude problem (but that doesn't mean they haven't snapped back or put in a sarcastic word). And because of it, they got into bitter arguments which not only shows off a side of Katara's flaw, but Toph as well. She didn't take the mature road and instead received just as much anger. She is, as you put it, a child.

Metal is refined Earth. With elements being bended in unique and different ways all the time in Avatar, I thought this was brilliant.

I won't deny it. That bloodbending - however interesting as it was - felt tacked on and hoisted for use in a latter episode for a good twenty seconds. But that episode proved a vital point to Katara's flaw: she's a girl who holds an easy grudge and from it, her behavior takes a drastic turn, changing her from a sweet mature, motherly figure to one of pity revenge and anger. I won't repeat much of what the others said, but count me in as someone who does not see Katara as a Mary Sue.

This is exactly how I feel with Sam Manson from Danny Phantom where she became more and more of a Canon Sue; neither of her friends ever let on about her bossy behavior, and the growing/maturing Danny was reduced to an idiot whenever Sam had to make a point across/or just to make her correct his mistakes because she's never wrong.

Also, TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Vocabulary I am so, so sorry. :p
 
I also would like to point out that besides Iroh, Katara's been shown the only one close to handling Azula in a regular, one on one fight before the finale. See "The Crossroads Of Destiny" where if Zuko hadn't interfered Azula would of been beat by Katara. She's proven the only one of the main group or in general of actually being able to take down Azula so it does sort of make sense how she was able to defeat him here. Besides it's been stated that due to Azula's fragged mental state Zuko would of beaten her easily enough anyway is he hadn't made the save for Katara (though really with the time given in that slow mo shot you think he would of been able to have moved enough to reflect it not just get hit by it). Also in case you haven't noticed there are a few things called EDITTING RESTRICTIONS that became obvious in the ending of the battles between Azula and Ozai. I'm pretty sure another reason why they were chained up and depowered were also because that's all standards would allow to happen. And reallly I can't think of a Zuko win that wouldn't of involved Azula getting a lot more battered then she did when Katara beat her.

I wonder if people would think of Katara as a mary sue if everyone else on the team (well Sokka anyway) had gone through the power ups she had in such quickly a time with the only thinking behind it being hard work and discipline paying off really well after a week. Aang's different because Avatars are expected to become really powerful (and as shown in "The Avatar And The Firelord" his power even at the end of the show wasn't near Roku's power at his peak), Toph because she had trained all her live (To Marn Hierogryph: It's been established that the first earth benders were the blind badgermoles and that being in tune with how they work makes you that much better a bender. Thus how Toph was able to not only be so good at a young age but also how she was able to learn metalbending: by being more in tune with the earth then even Bumi was. I don't think it's mary sueish if you can explain the power behind it) and all the other master benders on the show have been shown as putting so much years and pratice behind they're craft it's hard to classify them as Mary sueish at all. In truth I always had a theory that a reason Katara was so strong was because she was suppose to be the next Avatar after Aang. I mean Water was next in the cycle after air right? And obviously the Avatar Cycle can go on until they get back up to airbenders (since there aren't any unless Aang and Katara get busy pretty quickly heh heh). So maybe she just has this excess of power because of that. I don't know but in truth I was really worried that Katara would fall in the catergory of useless back in early season one that I was glad she became a powerful compotent fighter and was more annoyed at Sokka being the one left behind then on her becoming so strong so quickly.
 
I suppose you could say that really Azula cheated when she fired the lightning at Katara... (I still want to know just WHY she was standing there, it's a one-on-one duel you idiot!) ...because as stated before, Agni Kais are one-on-one.
 
A flawless character that canon is warped around and centered on. The term came from a Star Trek parody fanfic in which such a character named Mary Sue was present, I believe, and it's stuck ever since (Really, if you want to trace back the negative aspects of fandoms, it seems to always lead back to Star Trek. :sweat: )



Exactly, that's another point to it. Zuko has been a selfish punk for most of the series. Sure, you felt sorry for his issues, but the fact was that he was dead-set on solving them for himself at the expense of anyone else's problems (like, say, his uncle...or the entire world.) In season 2, Zuko's worldview was changed, and after spending the first half of season 3 living the selfish dream he previously wanted, it shattered completely. Zuko had developed into a more selfless person and what better way to really show it than by having him sacrifice his victory to save somebody else's life? It makes sense to me at least.
 
But she has unique abilities no one else on the show has (such as radar, being a lie detector, and so forth). As for being a 'young master', the concept is an overused staple of kids fiction in modern times, and Avatar abuses it a lot more than other shows do. It seems like most of the main characters you meet ends up being a "mastered their craft at a young age" archetype (Aang, Katara, Toph, Zuko, Azula, Ty Lee, and so forth) that puts all the adults on the show to shame (except really old people, but all those middle-aged soldiers and characters are woefully underpowered). It might not make them Mary Sues, but it's definately weak writing. Toph is only mentioned because she has exclusive powers no one else does, which is one of the traits of being a Mary Sue.

I said she was closer to it than Katara was, not that she fully is one. No, they both have a litle bit of differences from the definition of a Mary Sue to escape being called one, but they share a lot of traits with the definition. If nothing else, I would say they're poorly written characters.

I'm aware of the explanation for it and I can suspend disbelief for that aspect, my problem stemmed from the fact it came out of nowhere and was just a plot device just for her to beat her captors and help save the day. She had no reason or justification for escaping the metal box, so rather than finally meeting her limit and having her lose, the writers just invent a new power for her to add to her list and go about on her business.

"The term "Mary Sue" is taken from a character created by Paula Smith in 1973 for her parody story "A Trekkie's Tale," published in her fanzine Menagerie #2. The character in question was Lieutenant Mary Sue ("the youngest Lieutenant in the fleet — only fifteen and a half years old"). Smith's story poked fun at what she considered to be unrealistic and adolescent wish-fantasy characters appearing in Star Trek fan fiction of the period. Such characters were, in general, original (non-canon) and female adolescents who had romantic liaisons with established canon adult characters, or in some cases were the younger relatives or proteges of those characters. They also possessed unrealistic, unlikely, and often exotic skills and traits above and beyond those that would have been expected of any character in that particular series or of a conventional author surrogate. Later, the "Mary Sue" concept was expanded to include any author surrogate or overly idealized character who plays a major role in a plot, in original fiction as well as fan fiction."
 
Earthbenders being unable to bend metal has been mentioned several times throughout Season Two. That (alongside Toph's unique abilities) is a very subtle foreshadowing of the metalbending she does possess. Consider her the first to learn, but potentially not the last. In time, more Earthbenders could gain such a skill.

Radar, lie detector, these all lie within her ability to sense the ground. Her blindness and her ability to hear and use the Earth with it provided her with such abilities. It certainly didn't come out of nowhere. It may have been plot devices introduced when convenient, but it definitely came from somewhere.
 
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