Chen Taijiquan in Avatar: The Last Airbender?

[Maou]

I have no idea if any of you guys here have ever watched the Nickelodeon cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender (Mistaken by some others as an Anime because of the art style. ),but I do know that some of the bending maneuvers in it is based on Traditional Martial Arts,including Tai Chi:

In general however,I'm aware that there's sadly a lot of "fluff" (to put it lightly) taught in the Tai Chi community. For all I know,all the moves shown here could be based on fluff. But as I have no training yet in anything other than a little bit of combat sports,I'm not really in the position to be able to tell how valid certain traditional Martial arts forms are,but I imagine you guys can. How much of what is shown in that video (or Avatar as a whole,if you happen to have watched it in its entirety) familiar to your training?

 

[Robin Wu]

Water Bending in Avatar isn't based on Chen Taijiquan.

Water Bending in Avatar is based on Yang Taijiquan. Even just one look at the Waterbending Scroll, it's obvious that it's Yang Style's Single Whip.

As for how much of Avatar's Waterbending is familiar to my training...

1. I am very good at bending water inside my body to leak outside of my body. I would have a shell of water around me, and nobody would want to touch me.
2. I suppose I can flick my sweat onto my opponent to gross them out.
3. I like to bend water down my throat.

Personally, I don't think water is a good representative element for Chen Taijiquan. If I had to pick an element from the show, I would pick Lava Bending because that's a mixture of Fire Bending (Shaolin) and Earth Bending (Hung Gar).

And Chen Taijiquan has roots in Shaolin. The emphasis on sturdiness of the legs, Zhen Jiao (foot stomping), and closed-fist methods work well for Earth Bending. And lava is viscous fluid - molten rock - a mixture of "soft" and "hard". Practicing Chen Taijiquan makes me want to die in a pot of lava.

Overall, I don't find a lot of similarities between the movements from the show and Chen Taijiquan.

 

[angryclown]

Personally, I don't think water is a good representative element for Chen Taijiquan. If I had to pick an element from the show, I would pick Lava Bending because that's a mixture of Fire Bending (Shaolin) and Earth Bending (Hung Gar).

And Chen Taijiquan has roots in Shaolin. The emphasis on sturdiness of the legs, Zhen Jiao (foot stomping), and closed-fist methods work well for Earth Bending. And lava is viscous fluid - molten rock - a mixture of "soft" and "hard". Practicing Chen Taijiquan makes me want to die in a pot of lava.

Overall, I don't find a lot of similarities between the movements from the show and Chen Taijiquan.

I would go with magma over lava (magma is underground, lava is after it's surfaced), because magma is under a lot of pressure, and the concept and feeling of pressure is central to my understanding of taiji.
#nerdlife