Katara
Encyclopedia : K : KA : KAT : Katara
| character | |
| Katara | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | Southern Water Tribe |
| Gender | Female |
| Hair color | Brown |
| Eye color | Blue |
| Age | 14 |
| Position | Waterbending master |
| First appearance | The Boy in the Iceberg |
| Voiced by | Mae Whitman |
Katara is a fictional character and heroine voiced by Mae Whitman on the American animated television series . The fourteen-year-old Katara is a Waterbender from the South Pole's Southern Water Tribe, who, along with her older brother, Sokka, discovers Aang, the long-lost Avatar, and accompanies him on his quest to defeat the Fire Nation and bring peace to the war-torn nations.
History
Katara grew up as the mature, motherly figure of her family and tribe. While Katara was still a young child, her mother was killed in a Fire Nation raid. Because of this, Katara adopted the responsibilities left by her deceased mother. Though her interests lay in developing her waterbending skills, she resigned herself to cooking and cleaning duties while her brother Sokka trained to become a warrior.
At the age of twelve, Katara saw the departure of her father, Hakoda, and the other tribesmen to the Earth Kingdom to participate in the war effort against the Fire Nation. This left her, alongside her brother and grandmother, , to look after the tribe.
The events of the series begin here where, during a spearfishing expedition, Katara and Sokka find Aang trapped in suspended animation within an iceberg. The siblings free him and discover that Aang is the Avatar, whose destiny revolves around mastering the four elements of earth, fire, air, and water. With a common goal of mastering waterbending, Katara, along with her brother, joins Aang in hopes of visiting the Northern Water Tribe to find a waterbending master willing to teach them.
Personality
Mature and kind though bossy, Katara is dedicated to her friends, family, and duties. Resentful of the traditionally passive gender roles her tribe ascribes her, Katara's fondest dream was to become a waterbending master and fight to save her tribe. Dedicated and passionate to her goal, she taught herself an array of novice moves before receiving any formal instruction. Katara's sense of justice is so strong that she will rush headlong into dangerous situations to aid those she feels have been wronged or if there is any injustice. Once, Katara rallied a group of imprisoned Earthbenders to overpower their captors. Although she is devoted to and can be very patient with friends and family, Katara has a rather short temper and posseses a ferocious amount of power, especially when angered. On rare occasions when Katara becomes truly angry, her outbursts are accompanied by involuntary waterbending strong enough to shatter icebergs.Waterbending
Learning as you go
To Katara, waterbending is a unique skill that she dearly wanted to master. With no other Waterbenders to instruct her, Katara initially taught herself. Able to do feats ranging from maneuvering a fish-filled water globule to freezing water at will, she displayed much potential. However, she lacked a fine sense of control, unable to aim some of her larger attacks. After meeting Aang, she and Sokka set off on a journey to their sister tribe in the north, on a quest to find a waterbending master to instruct them.
Katara continued to dilligently practice waterbending while journeying with Aang and Sokka, acquiring new skills. Passing through a port town, Katara stole a waterbending scroll from pirates. Following the scroll's forms, Katara and Aang learned the "water whip," a maneuver that lashes a target with a whip-shaped formation of water. Later, while trying to help an Earth Kingdom village, she learned to bend underground water, as she and Aang pulled water up through geysers and into a river.
After Aang accidentally burned her hands while learning firebending, Katara learned she has a rare waterbending talent: the vitakinetic ability to heal wounds, using water as the catalyst.
Hard lessons in the North
When they finally arrived at the North Pole, Katara and Aang met , a waterbending master. She hoped to learn waterbending from him, but Pakku rebuffed her, explaining that tribal custom forbade women from learning waterbending to fight. Instead, women with the gift were trained formally as Healers.While Aang learned from Pakku, Katara was sent to the healing huts for Yugoda's healing lessons. After her lesson, she learned that her grandmother, Kanna, had been good friends with Yugoda as a young girl. However, she had fled to the Southern Tribe to escape an arranged marriage to a young Waterbender.
Filled with newfound contempt for Northern customs, Katara schemed to learn from Aang at night. Pakku quickly discovered them and barred Aang from furthur instruction until Katara apologized. Rather than submit to Pakku's sour chauvinism, Katara challenged Pakku to a fight. She acquitted herself remarkably, but Pakku still wouldn't consent to teach her, and finally defeated her.
When he picked up Katara's heirloom choker from the ground, he recognized its pendant as the betrothal necklace he'd carved sixty years ago for his young fiancée, Kanna. Realizing that his stubborn adherance to custom had cost him a wife, Pakku consented to teach Aang and Katara. When Katara rose to mastery faster than any of his students, Pakku tasked her with instructing the slower-learning Aang, and deemed her a master Waterbender.
Scroll Power
At the beginning of Book 2, the group is given by a box of waterbending scrolls and an amulet full of water (with special properties) from the spirit oasis.Master Pakku deemed Katara a master Waterbender so she could officially teach Aang, despite the fact that they are relatively at the same level of knowledge if not skill. In "Return to Omashu," blocks the flow of chi in Katara, preventing her from waterbending (for a short time). In the same episode Katara was able to temporarily beat , by freezing her arm.
In , Katara showed a great deal of skill and power against the creature. It is unknown if Katara can manipulate the water in plants like some members of the Swamp Tribe can; even though it is waterbending, it seems to be a highly specalized form, as only one member of the Swamp Tribe actually does this "plantbending".
Katara saves the waterbending scrolls in "Avatar Day" from a large Fire Nation man and soon after at a town is able to put out fires on the parade floats with little amount of water. She uses the water from her water skin at numerous times to cut through certain objects such as leather straps or wooden beams.
She was able to beat two earthbending students, with little effort at all and pin them between two walls with ice in "The Blind Bandit," (though neither were prepared for this attack). In "" she shared her fear of having her waterbending taken away for the short time in "Return to Omashu" and she and Aang are shown washing . She fared well against in a short confrontation by dodging her attacks, but was able to beat her by pinning her arms to a tree with darts, and was only saved by Appa. When Azula was trying to hurt Aang, she was prevented from doing so because her hand was grabbed by a water whip like move from Katara. Katara offered to heal Iroh after his (almost fatal) injury with her healing powers, but unfortunately Zuko was far too enraged and horrified to even listen, and he forcefully demanded that she and the group leave.
Family
Mother
A last memento and gift from her dead mother, who was killed in a Fire Nation attack, Katara always wears a navy blue necklace with a blue stone pendant, bearing the waterbending symbol. Carved by Pakku as a betrothal necklace for Katara's grandmother, it was handed down to Katara's mother (possibly a wedding present), then passed to Katara. It appears that Katara was very close to her mother, as in she has a vision of her lost mother and breaks down crying when the mirage disappears.Hakoda
Katara also dearly misses her father, not having seen him in the two years since he went off to war. Though she does not idolize him as her brother does, she once seriously considered leaving Aang behind in order to meet him at a military rendezvous point, briefly acting on this desire during an argument with him. However, her loyalty to Aang and his quest won out.Gran-Gran Kanna
Katara initially seems to have little in common with her paternal grandmother Kanna, (affectionately known as "Gran-Gran"), who told Katara the stories of Avatar lore she holds so dear. Initially jaded and pessimistic in the face of Katara's hopes for herself and Aang, she later blesses Katara and Sokka's departure. If Yugoda's claims of a "spitting image" resemblance and a similar rebelliousness are to be believed, perhaps Kanna is more like Katara than she knows.Sokka
Katara loves to tease her older brother Sokka, and they frequently trade jabs and argue, he being the more quick-witted, but also the more prideful of the pair. She also resents his (now somewhat tempered) sexist streak and tendency to belittle her waterbending as bothersome "magic". In spite of their bickering, they still care for each other, and Sokka feels an instinctual obligation to protect his sister. Sokka serves for most of the comic relief of the series as when Appa sneezes on him or he is outsmarted by various people.Relationships
Aang
In regards to Aang, Katara has a great deal of faith in the young Avatar's ability to save the world, and cares for him as a close friend. She is, for the most part, genuinely oblivious to the twelve-year-old's deep and abiding crush on her. A fortune told by is that Katara will "marry a powerful bender," which Katara takes to heart. It is possible that Aang and Katara kiss during the events of "The Cave of Two Lovers," but the show leaves this ambiguous.Katara is Aang's only teacher so far to use positive reinforcement as a teaching method. Aang responds well to this method, most likely due to free spirited nature of Airbenders.
As of the events in "The Desert," Katara remains the only person able to calm Aang down from the Avatar State.
Prince Zuko
As Aang's close friend and staunch defender, Katara is, by association, an enemy of Prince Zuko. At the end of "," the only trace of the Avatar and his companions that Zuko finds on an Earthbender prison rig that they helped to liberate is Katara's tribal necklace, lost in the commotion. In "The Waterbending Scroll," after capturing Katara with the assistance of a band of pirates, Zuko attempts to use the necklace as a bribe to get Katara to betray Aang's whereabouts, but she refuses. Then in "Bato of the Water Tribe" Zuko employs the bounty hunter, Jun, and her shirshu, a tracking beast with a hypersensitive olfactory system, and uses the necklace to track Katara, thus tracking Aang by proxy. However, when he does find Aang, Aang reclaims the necklace and returns it to Katara. In "Siege of the North," after Zuko has made his way into the Spirit Oasis of the Northern Water Tribe, Katara is the only thing standing between Zuko and abducting Aang, who is in a meditative state as he tries to contact the Spirit World. Due to having previously found and been trained by Pakku, a waterbending master, and having a power boost during the full moon because of waterbending's lunar sympathy, Katara is more than a match for Zuko and initially subdues him. However, once the sun comes up, lessening her power and (assuming a solar sympathy for firebenders) increasing his, he takes her by surprise, knocks her out, and escapes with Aang. Her waterbending skills enable her to defeat Zuko a second time when she later attempts to free the Avatar. Finally, in "" Katara, along with Toph and Aang, attacks Azula in unison with Zuko. Once Azula has disappeared, Katara tries to tell Zuko that she could assist the injured Iroh with her healing abilities, but runs off with her companions when Zuko violently demands that they leave him and Iroh alone.Master Pakku
The greatest Waterbender of the Northern Water Tribe, Master Pakku denies Katara waterbending training on the basis that she is female. Enraged, Katara battles the waterbending master in an effort to prove her worth. Although Katara fights well, Pakku defeats her. In the battle, her mother's necklace falls off and is later retrieved by Pakku. Upon inspection, Pakku realizes that it is the necklace he carved as a gift for his fiancée decades before, Katara's grandmother, Gran-Gran. However, she ran away before they could get married. After realizing that the sexist attitudes of his culture caused him to lose his bride, Master Pakku has a change of heart and agrees to teach Katara waterbending. At the end of Book 1, Pakku deems her a Waterbending Master. Before they take off, he gives Katara water from the spirit oasis and one last hug.Haru
Haru is an Earthbender who appeared in the episode "." The two developed a strong friendship with one another, and Katara helped to free Haru, his father, and other prisoners from a Fire Nation prison ship.Jet
Jet is a rebel against the Fire Nation who Katara had an immediate crush on. He, learning of this, used her to unknowingly assist him in a plot to flood a Fire Nation-occupied village. This ruthless plot would kill the innocent civilians living there. Needless to say, when Katara found out about his plan to flood the village, she was horrified. After a confrontation alongside Aang, Katara froze Jet to a tree and left him there.Toph
Katara has shown great sympathy for Toph over her restricted life under her parents. Like Aang and Sokka, Katara gladly welcomes Toph when she joins their group. The two have been recently at odds with each other after Toph refused to help set up their campsites. However, at the end of the episode "The Chase," they have reached better terms with one another.
| Information |
| | | | Water Tribe | Earth Kingdom | Fire Nation | Air Nomads |
| Characters |
| Aang | Katara | Sokka | Toph | Zuko | Iroh | Azula | Waterbender | Earthbender | Firebender | Airbender |
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