Avatar Aang (安昂 ān áng?) is a fictional character and the protagonist of Nickelodeon's animated television seriesAvatar: The Last Airbender (created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko), voiced by Zach Tyler Eisen.
Aang is the last surviving Airbender, a monk of the Air Nomads' Southern Air Temple. He is an incarnation of the "Avatar", the spirit of light and peace manifested in human form. As the Avatar, Aang controls all four elements and is tasked with keeping the Four Nations at peace. At 12 years old, Aang is the series' reluctant hero, spending a centuryin suspended animation before joining new friends Katara and Sokka on a quest to master the elements and save their world from the imperialist Fire Nation.
Aang's character has appeared in other media, such as trading cards,[1][2] video games,[3][4] T-shirts,[5] and web comics.[6] Aang has also been portrayed by Noah Ringer in the feature film The Last Airbender,[7] and voiced by D.B. Sweeney in the sequel animated series The Legend of Korra.
Aang's character was developed from a drawing by Bryan Konietzko, depicting a bald man with an arrowlike design on his head, which the artist developed into a picture of a child with a flying bison.[8] Meanwhile, Michael Dante DiMartino was interested in a documentary about explorers trapped in the South Pole, which he later combined with Konietzko's drawing.
The plot they described corresponds with the first and second episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender, where the "water people" (Katara and Sokka) rescue the "air guy" (Aang) while "trapped in a snowy wasteland" (the Southern Water Tribe) with "some fire people [that] are pressing down on them" (Fire Nation Troops and Zuko).[8][9][10] Waffle intended Aang to be trapped in an iceberg for one thousand years, later to wake inside a futuristic world, wherein he would have a robot named Momo and a dozen bison & newts Waffle lost interest in this theme, and changed it to one hundred years of suspended animation. The robotic Momo became a flying lemur, and the herd of bison was reduced to one.[8]
Airbending, the martial art Aang primarily uses in the show, is based on an "internal" Chinese martial art called Baguazhang. This fighting style focuses on circular movements, and does not have many finishing moves; traits meant to represent the unpredictability of air and the peaceful character of Airbenders.[11]
In the episode "Gordon's tales of treasure planet", Aang’s name was written as 安昂 (ān áng) in Chinese.