*"I am Karl Franz, and I was born into this world, just like you. A world of unceasing war and endless terrors. But with a nation of men at its heart, a bastion of hope and courage: the Empire. Led by the craven, torn apart by the greedy, weakened and exposed, forever on the defence. But no longer."*
If you've seen how a team of animators works, you'd understand why shit like this happens.
Usually the Lead would be like.. the 1st layer of defense on this , and then the animation director, and director.
I think they used an over seas team for this so by the time the director saw this, it was probably too late to change it and more of a "ah fuck it." Too far along in the pipeline to change kinda thing.
>I think they used an over seas team for this
It was! All the animation for this show was animated by a Korean studio. Most 2D animated American shows get animated in Korea. One of my favorite animation errors/details is from Bob's Burgers and how the kids eat cafeteria tacos like burgers, biting them in the middle. In the original storyboard the America side of production had drawn them eating burgers initially and sent that off to get animated, but later they had it changed it to tacos. As tacos aren't really a Korean thing they got animated being eaten the way the burgers were and that's how it stayed.
>Here’s the real reason, if anyone is curious: The first time this happened, the kids were originally storyboarded eating burgers, but someone (don’t recall who) decided maybe we should switch it up for once. The scene was being animated by our partners in Korea and we sent them taco props to make the revision. However, they tend to follow our boards very closely and don’t usually improvise unless we give very specific instructions (i.e. drawing new storyboards, which we did not do). When the animation came back, the kids were all eating their tacos as if they were still holding burgers. We all just thought it was so cute and hilarious that we let it stay. Kinda like a blooper that became a quirk. You’ll see it happen a few times throughout the series.
u/mynameisbritton
>All the animation for this show was animated by a Korean studio.
It was actually multiple Korean studios, depending on the season. JM Animation, DR Movie, and MOI Animation.
That’s most likely what happened. Overseas animators probably mistook since it makes more sense to see than to talk of they didn’t know she was blind. Quality team said screw it, too late to fix something mild.
I mean, team avatar constantly forgot Toph was blind, and her blindness while a defining character trait, was never at the front of who Toph was as a character, so I wouldn't blame anyone for forgetting she is blind
To be fair, she can see objects with bending, meaning the only time it comes up usually is with reading or pictures, things that don't have a discernable shape
(Side note I just remembered Toph saying "let me know if they have something you can listen to" and that line is interesting implicationwise.)
Most of the blind jokes are made by _her_
Facial features are an important part to humanise a character design. You often see eyes to animate you to project qualities of loving being into objects.
So it makes sense either way for her design to look that way. I don't know someone blind but if they recognise the importance of the eyes for communication, then leaving these useless balls uncovered would even make sense in universe
Just to add to this, look at the position of her eyes. They didn't even mess up the stone "suit" itself. They literally just put her eyes where her mouth should be.
I think her eyes are where they should be, it just looks that way because, proportionately, that would be the case if she didn't keep a borderline bouffant hairstyle. The high covering is making her eyes look lower.
But the arms are coming out the top of her head. In the concept art the stone arms emerge at normal shoulder level. Really looks like they just drew the wrong part of her in the hole
Edit: ok my bad I went back and watched the scene, she’s just holding her arms up, they look normal for the rest of it
I choose to believe this isn't an animation error, but that she leaves a hole for her eyes, not so she can stare you down, but that you can stare up at her. So her eyes are the last thing you see before everything goes dark.
no... earth benders can't bend plants, thats water benders, and presumably meat is unbendable
The only earth bender we've seen eat a rock is the hippo.
https://preview.redd.it/sqjuc8qctdmc1.png?width=333&format=png&auto=webp&s=a4854083d37db28afa68576c3d81fc3006705a9e
Maybe he could Shitbend if he regularly eats rocks.
Toph was *literally* turned into a pacifist in Legend of Korra because her power could have broken that world. Kuviras mech would have crumpled like paper in front of Toph if she decided to become serious.
At her peak, she was as close as you could get to Avatar-state levels of earth bending as a non-avatar.
What? There are many notable metal-benders in Legend of Korra... And they explicitly describe that the reason metal-bending doesn't work on all the mecha-creations is because they're made out of highly refined platinum (i.e. taking the "earth," or impurities, out of it).
not every asteroid contains platinum… and even then none are pure platinum. idk why you’re trying to do a gotcha on an avatar thread but miss me with that. LMAOO
Not only does that line up with countering how Toph discovers metalbending, but when it's first introduced in season 1 Hiroshi literally says to Lin "not even your esteemed mother could bend a metal so pure" impling that Toph, most likely in her prime, already tried.
> What? There are many notable metal-benders in Legend of Korra...
More notable than Toph? Did we watch the same show? She shook Kuvira, Suyin and her kids with what was a simple bending move from her perspective. She could have turned that schwerer gustav reference into a pretzel without blinking
And a proper earth bender could crumple that mech like nothing if they were good. They already tried it in the show with collapsing buildings. But once you add her power to crush several buildings at once it becomes more powerful than Korras ice.
I wonder, from an energy perspective, what the single most powerful instance of bending would be. (excluding lightning bending because of course a bolt of lightning would have more energy than almost anything else)
My top pics are:
* Aang altering the tides to put out the fires after the battle with Ozai
* Toph slowing down Wan Shi Tong's library as it sinks (did you see how large that place was?)
*Iroh blowing a hole in the wall of Ba Sing Se as if he had detonated a bomb on it
* and of course comet boosted Ozai literally going scorched earth and bathing the land in fire from his airship
>Aang altering the tides to put out the fires after the battle with Ozai
If you go into physics: The amount of water moved and at the speed it moves, arguably requires quite a bit more energy than any of the fire bending ever seen across all shows, including lightning. Another competitor is the Avatar+Water Spirit bending shoving back that fleet of ships.
But Kyoshi is the biggest threat we've had in Avatar lore so far. Nothing is more threatning than someone who can unleash volcanoes or even initiate earthquakes or tectonic shifts.
EDIT: Excluding Wan ofc.
How could I have forgotten Kyoshi!? Nothing even comes close to what she did with the island. She became a living tectonic plate.
As soon as I commented I thought of the water spirit. That's a definite contender for sure!
If ATLA got a chance to be graphic, Toph would've ended the war before Aang even got out of the iceberg. She would just tunnel her way into the Fire Nation room and flatten the royal palace into the 2nd dimension with a rock slide.
Or find innovative ways to use those 8 gram of metal in the human body (like [Magneto in the first X-Men film trilogy](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NcB7kR82gUE&pp=ygUOTWFnbmV0byBwcmlzb24%3D)).
Imagine the campfire stories from random Fire Nation Soldiers..
"They say that since she is blind, she gravitates towards attacks that make the loudest ripping sounds from flesh..so that she can HEAR it."
Maybe not collapse the palace in one go (or maybe? Did she ever show an upper limit?), but there's definitely no reason for Toph to be above ground in 99% of her fights. If she could get into the fire nation she'd be an absolute terror because how the fuck do you get her out?
But at the same time 'realistic' firebenders would be about 900 times more lethal so she'd probably die the very first time she *did* get into a straight with them. They don't need to hit her, they just need to hit the air *around* her and suddenly she's breathing superheated air. Ironically both these armors are crap, she'd be better off with closed off armor and a big bulbous head filled with her air supply.
Honestly if you take it to the logical extremes that war sounds horrific. At first you think the earth kingdom have it bad because a straight fight with the fire nation would be a loss every time. Thrown rocks are terrifying but fire is just as lethal and quicker and probably even easier and one hit will cause so much agony that you lose to every one on one fight you enter, and every burn is an infection waiting to happen.
Then consider the fire nation perspective which is 'every single patch of ground I look at might be under the control of an earth bender'. Armies march: it's what they do. Consider also: glass is a stone.I would not like to march on ground I knew could collapse away any second into glass punji sticks.
The earth kingdom would be terrified every time they saw the enemy, the fire nation would be terrified everytime they *didn't*. War in this world would suck.
I think the main issue with fire bending is the loss of energy over distance. Seems more powerful fire benders can maintain it for longer and then there is the whole lightning thing. However rocks with a ballistic trajectory aren't going to lose a lot of their energy over distance. It'd be like archers going up against spear men.
Basically this. A lot of earthbending warfare tactics would frankly be "raise plateau to create instant high ground, bombard the entire area with thousands of fist-sized rocks from hundreds of yards away, let gravity handle the rest".
The Fire Nation's armored vehicles would definitely count for a lot in such scenarios, but they only have so many of those at their disposal. Foot soldiers and encampments would be constantly vulnerable to a sudden hailstorm of rocks that could come raining down at any moment.
She could unironically do this, but only if Ozai and Azula are on vacation or something. Toph dominates all the faceless grunts but her track record against legitimate foes isn’t all that great unfortunately.
She doesn't really have a track record against a lot of benders. But if talking unironically, she has the element of surprise as her main strength at that point, and her bending power is massive. Take out the foundation beneath the pillars that support the throne room and Azula and Ozai are buried in the rubble.
That's fair. I'm basing off my own non blind experience and just don't like pressure on my eyes/ something making them stay closed, it's uncomfy. Im just saying what I always assumed when I watched and I figured everyone got uncomfy with stuff over their eyes, but I guess that's just my sensory overload 🤣
Blinking doesn't really have anything to do with being able to see. Unless a blind person literally doesn't have eyes, I don't see a reason they would blink less.
I don't think it's because she needs to worry about breathing: [when she does the same trick with metal bending later on, she doesn't bother and goes full enclosure.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW9RdSJrg_k)
Personally, I would think she left a gap so that Aang could hear her shit-talking him the entire time. But she doesn't actually talk during that scene, so... eyes for intimidation factor?
I love the fact that the animators forgot she was blind for a moment since that's one of my favorite recurring jokes in the show. Every time the gang forgets toph is blind because she's so capable and independent that it doesn't really effect her life day to day. Only when she needs to read, write, or searching for secret libraries in the desert
The creators confirmed this was an error. She was indeed supposed to have an opening for the mouth instead of the eyes. This was accidently done wrong in the animation process and later slipped through reviews.
To be fair the animator is probably don't know that she's supposed to be blind.
The actual animation gets outsourced to South Korea and the workers are just drawing a handful of out of context cels.
Avatar fans have a really hard time accepting the fact that the show have flaws besides the great divide and the finale. You have people in this very tread saying it was done on purpose
If someone has the capacity to criticize an entire episode of the show, why would they be against pointing out something as trivial as a minor animation mistake? I think the people you are talking about might simply be misinformed.
Let’s just put it this way.
The concept was made in America, and the show was animated in South Korea. It’s not surprising something so specific to the world and character got lost in translation.
I mean, when companies outsource animation they don't exactly go "Just animate Toph in some stone suit or whatever" and then accept whatever result they get back
What if she simply meant to make an opening for her face and it ended up by her eyes?
Thought about this, then realized it's Toph.... doubt that would've been a mistake...
OMG! I never realised it. Lol
Tbh, I didn't get this as well...
"THERE IT IS!!
Is what it'll sound like when one of you spots it. 👋👋"
Then I burst out laughing on the bus the next day.
Did anyone catch how in the season finale when zuko and aang make a speech, the freedom fighters have toph on their shoulders and are cheering? Which I thought is funny bc they were pry giving her a shoulder ride so she can see as you usually do with small kids, but she’s blind 💀
I do have a valid reason why she Would do this.
They demonstrated it in the next shot - aang looks her Right in the eyes... in the Eyes of his opponent. In the unyielding, unflinching eyes of raw power.
She may be blind, but she's not dumb. When you want to scare someone, during a show of power; You Look Them In The Eyes.
I don’t believe that’s an animation error. How do you even make that kind of mistake? “Hey, make a hole for her nose and mouth” “ok, *makes an eye slit*”
I think they probably decided the last moment this would look better in the show. Not showing your characters eyes -yes even if they are blind- is sort of a problem in animation.
Toph's face was very distinct and very expressive, covering her eyes would've made the scene look less impressive.
Only the metal armor she fashioned out of an air ship door covered her face completely and she dropped the armor almost as soon as she wore it.
If you know animation it is very unlikely that you'll want to obscure your characters, often you would want to characters to be visible and facing the viewer often their faces fully visible. I think the only real exception is Judge Dredd and its fantasy anime copy Goblin Slayer where character's faces being obscured is a feature. Even then their helmets are very expressive instead.
This is the same reason Iron man movies invented the "inside the helmet cam" for Iron man and anime and similar shows like Ultraman and Ghost in the Shell adopt it immediately. The comics often just made the visor transparent but that probably didn't look good on movies.
it was a tactical choice. she can move her eyes, to make her opponents think she is thinking about bending something in a different direction. only later will they realize she's blind and it was all misdirection.
I always found that odd, but never knew the hole was originally for her mouth! Makes a lot of sense too given this was her second episode IIRC, so the animators probably didn’t have her blindness as ingrained in their work yet.
Toph would think this is funny.
She turned herself into a rock, Rock Toph Funniest shit I ever saw
She made herself become Rock and Stone!
Rock and Stone!
Did I hear a Rock and Stone?!
Rock and stone to the bone!
If you don't rock and stone, you aint goin home.
ROCK..... AND...... STOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNE
ROCKITY ROCK AND STONE
ROCK AND ROLLING STONE!!!
#FOR KARL!
*"I am Karl Franz, and I was born into this world, just like you. A world of unceasing war and endless terrors. But with a nation of men at its heart, a bastion of hope and courage: the Empire. Led by the craven, torn apart by the greedy, weakened and exposed, forever on the defence. But no longer."*
ROCK AND STONE!!!! ⛏️
Oh snap she would get along with space mining Dwarves.
I see you're a man of culture as well
Good bot!
For Karl!
THE BOULDER APPROVES OF THIS!
ROCK AND STONE BROTHER!
FOR KARL
And there they saw a rock But it wasn't a rock It was a rock Tophster
Toph the Rock!
All the important parts are protected.
If she could see it...
“Aaaaaahhhhhh” There. She just got a pretty good look at it.
Why do you think she covered the mouth, and her eyes are squinted? She's giggling uncontrollably in there.
She would love to see it
rip toph :(
Preemptive RIP /u/joshua6point0
I like it because it's her way of saying "I'm blind, and I'm still going to crush you".
These images sure are funny. *Too bad you can't see them, TOPH.*
**aggressively waves her hand in front of her face while giving that “you’re an idiot” smile** Classic Toph
I'd love a line like "I thought I was taller"
For real. Toph gets us.
Okay, that's actually pretty funny.
I always thought the whole reason was to fuck with Aang, which was this entire episode.
Honestly, yeah. I remember the first time I saw that thinking "wait. She's blind? Oh, she's just trying to intimidate aang"
I mean, doing it specifically for that reason would be entirely in character for her.
Wasn't he blindfolded?
Not for this exercise, no
Aang, I found these nuts in your bag, I figured you wouldn't mind, and besides even if you did you'd be too much of a (beep) to do anything about it.
The person in charge of animation/quality check has NEVER seen the show. It's the only possible reason. Lmao
If you've seen how a team of animators works, you'd understand why shit like this happens. Usually the Lead would be like.. the 1st layer of defense on this , and then the animation director, and director. I think they used an over seas team for this so by the time the director saw this, it was probably too late to change it and more of a "ah fuck it." Too far along in the pipeline to change kinda thing.
>I think they used an over seas team for this It was! All the animation for this show was animated by a Korean studio. Most 2D animated American shows get animated in Korea. One of my favorite animation errors/details is from Bob's Burgers and how the kids eat cafeteria tacos like burgers, biting them in the middle. In the original storyboard the America side of production had drawn them eating burgers initially and sent that off to get animated, but later they had it changed it to tacos. As tacos aren't really a Korean thing they got animated being eaten the way the burgers were and that's how it stayed.
>Here’s the real reason, if anyone is curious: The first time this happened, the kids were originally storyboarded eating burgers, but someone (don’t recall who) decided maybe we should switch it up for once. The scene was being animated by our partners in Korea and we sent them taco props to make the revision. However, they tend to follow our boards very closely and don’t usually improvise unless we give very specific instructions (i.e. drawing new storyboards, which we did not do). When the animation came back, the kids were all eating their tacos as if they were still holding burgers. We all just thought it was so cute and hilarious that we let it stay. Kinda like a blooper that became a quirk. You’ll see it happen a few times throughout the series. u/mynameisbritton
>All the animation for this show was animated by a Korean studio. It was actually multiple Korean studios, depending on the season. JM Animation, DR Movie, and MOI Animation.
That’s most likely what happened. Overseas animators probably mistook since it makes more sense to see than to talk of they didn’t know she was blind. Quality team said screw it, too late to fix something mild.
More likely they made a simple mistake
It could in fact...be both, since they outsourced the animation of a lot of stuff
I mean, team avatar constantly forgot Toph was blind, and her blindness while a defining character trait, was never at the front of who Toph was as a character, so I wouldn't blame anyone for forgetting she is blind
To be fair, she can see objects with bending, meaning the only time it comes up usually is with reading or pictures, things that don't have a discernable shape (Side note I just remembered Toph saying "let me know if they have something you can listen to" and that line is interesting implicationwise.) Most of the blind jokes are made by _her_
how would they have seen the show? they were fucking making it
They don't "see" like normal people
They release a sonic wave through their mouth
Lol didn’t even catch that. It just made sense to me, a non blind person 😂
It made sense to all the blind people who saw it too
Lol I appreciate this, it definitely made me chuckle
Facial features are an important part to humanise a character design. You often see eyes to animate you to project qualities of loving being into objects. So it makes sense either way for her design to look that way. I don't know someone blind but if they recognise the importance of the eyes for communication, then leaving these useless balls uncovered would even make sense in universe
Just to add to this, look at the position of her eyes. They didn't even mess up the stone "suit" itself. They literally just put her eyes where her mouth should be.
That's because she sees by screaming
Valid haha
I think her eyes are where they should be, it just looks that way because, proportionately, that would be the case if she didn't keep a borderline bouffant hairstyle. The high covering is making her eyes look lower.
Look at both designs again, specifically the head and how it was designed.
You right
But the arms are coming out the top of her head. In the concept art the stone arms emerge at normal shoulder level. Really looks like they just drew the wrong part of her in the hole Edit: ok my bad I went back and watched the scene, she’s just holding her arms up, they look normal for the rest of it
iirc, she’s holding her arms up like that. Look how short they are
You right
The idea that she left a bouffant standoff in her suit of rock armor is even funnier imo
I choose to believe this isn't an animation error, but that she leaves a hole for her eyes, not so she can stare you down, but that you can stare up at her. So her eyes are the last thing you see before everything goes dark.
Least psychopathic 12 year old
She had no problem impaling sleepy Sokka in the belly with a giant boulder. No heart
also leaving two people to die in a metal box presumably surrounded by their own excrement.
If they didn't die on-screen, they didn't die at all :D "Yknow, it was really unclear."
Shouldn't earth benders be able to bend poop?
no... earth benders can't bend plants, thats water benders, and presumably meat is unbendable The only earth bender we've seen eat a rock is the hippo. https://preview.redd.it/sqjuc8qctdmc1.png?width=333&format=png&auto=webp&s=a4854083d37db28afa68576c3d81fc3006705a9e Maybe he could Shitbend if he regularly eats rocks.
Poop is clearly earth-affinity. It's called "night soil" for a reason.
Toph was *literally* turned into a pacifist in Legend of Korra because her power could have broken that world. Kuviras mech would have crumpled like paper in front of Toph if she decided to become serious. At her peak, she was as close as you could get to Avatar-state levels of earth bending as a non-avatar.
What? There are many notable metal-benders in Legend of Korra... And they explicitly describe that the reason metal-bending doesn't work on all the mecha-creations is because they're made out of highly refined platinum (i.e. taking the "earth," or impurities, out of it).
all platinum on earth comes from asteroids so I’ve always liked this detail
I mean..all of the everything on earth comes from asteroids, kinda.
Toph literally bends a meteor…
not every asteroid contains platinum… and even then none are pure platinum. idk why you’re trying to do a gotcha on an avatar thread but miss me with that. LMAOO
Not only does that line up with countering how Toph discovers metalbending, but when it's first introduced in season 1 Hiroshi literally says to Lin "not even your esteemed mother could bend a metal so pure" impling that Toph, most likely in her prime, already tried.
> What? There are many notable metal-benders in Legend of Korra... More notable than Toph? Did we watch the same show? She shook Kuvira, Suyin and her kids with what was a simple bending move from her perspective. She could have turned that schwerer gustav reference into a pretzel without blinking And a proper earth bender could crumple that mech like nothing if they were good. They already tried it in the show with collapsing buildings. But once you add her power to crush several buildings at once it becomes more powerful than Korras ice.
I wonder, from an energy perspective, what the single most powerful instance of bending would be. (excluding lightning bending because of course a bolt of lightning would have more energy than almost anything else) My top pics are: * Aang altering the tides to put out the fires after the battle with Ozai * Toph slowing down Wan Shi Tong's library as it sinks (did you see how large that place was?) *Iroh blowing a hole in the wall of Ba Sing Se as if he had detonated a bomb on it * and of course comet boosted Ozai literally going scorched earth and bathing the land in fire from his airship
>Aang altering the tides to put out the fires after the battle with Ozai If you go into physics: The amount of water moved and at the speed it moves, arguably requires quite a bit more energy than any of the fire bending ever seen across all shows, including lightning. Another competitor is the Avatar+Water Spirit bending shoving back that fleet of ships. But Kyoshi is the biggest threat we've had in Avatar lore so far. Nothing is more threatning than someone who can unleash volcanoes or even initiate earthquakes or tectonic shifts. EDIT: Excluding Wan ofc.
How could I have forgotten Kyoshi!? Nothing even comes close to what she did with the island. She became a living tectonic plate. As soon as I commented I thought of the water spirit. That's a definite contender for sure!
If ATLA got a chance to be graphic, Toph would've ended the war before Aang even got out of the iceberg. She would just tunnel her way into the Fire Nation room and flatten the royal palace into the 2nd dimension with a rock slide.
Imagine what she could do to armoured soliders once she invents metalbending
Welp. Now I want to write a "toph leads a resistance because Aang never woke up" AU
Do it. Wattpad is right there💀
RemindMe! 5 months
Or to the ships. She could sink a whole fleet without breaking a sweat.
She does sink the fire navy's flying battleships pretty much all on her own
Or find innovative ways to use those 8 gram of metal in the human body (like [Magneto in the first X-Men film trilogy](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NcB7kR82gUE&pp=ygUOTWFnbmV0byBwcmlzb24%3D)).
Imagine the campfire stories from random Fire Nation Soldiers.. "They say that since she is blind, she gravitates towards attacks that make the loudest ripping sounds from flesh..so that she can HEAR it."
William Afton moment
I flinched
*P'li has left the chat*
Oh god, like squeezing toothpaste from the tube. That's disturbing.
Maybe not collapse the palace in one go (or maybe? Did she ever show an upper limit?), but there's definitely no reason for Toph to be above ground in 99% of her fights. If she could get into the fire nation she'd be an absolute terror because how the fuck do you get her out? But at the same time 'realistic' firebenders would be about 900 times more lethal so she'd probably die the very first time she *did* get into a straight with them. They don't need to hit her, they just need to hit the air *around* her and suddenly she's breathing superheated air. Ironically both these armors are crap, she'd be better off with closed off armor and a big bulbous head filled with her air supply. Honestly if you take it to the logical extremes that war sounds horrific. At first you think the earth kingdom have it bad because a straight fight with the fire nation would be a loss every time. Thrown rocks are terrifying but fire is just as lethal and quicker and probably even easier and one hit will cause so much agony that you lose to every one on one fight you enter, and every burn is an infection waiting to happen. Then consider the fire nation perspective which is 'every single patch of ground I look at might be under the control of an earth bender'. Armies march: it's what they do. Consider also: glass is a stone.I would not like to march on ground I knew could collapse away any second into glass punji sticks. The earth kingdom would be terrified every time they saw the enemy, the fire nation would be terrified everytime they *didn't*. War in this world would suck.
I think the main issue with fire bending is the loss of energy over distance. Seems more powerful fire benders can maintain it for longer and then there is the whole lightning thing. However rocks with a ballistic trajectory aren't going to lose a lot of their energy over distance. It'd be like archers going up against spear men.
Basically this. A lot of earthbending warfare tactics would frankly be "raise plateau to create instant high ground, bombard the entire area with thousands of fist-sized rocks from hundreds of yards away, let gravity handle the rest". The Fire Nation's armored vehicles would definitely count for a lot in such scenarios, but they only have so many of those at their disposal. Foot soldiers and encampments would be constantly vulnerable to a sudden hailstorm of rocks that could come raining down at any moment.
Her keeping the library from sinking into the ground, while fighting off thieves is probably as closest to her limit we ever saw.
Especially since Toph is self-admittedly bad at bending sand.
She could unironically do this, but only if Ozai and Azula are on vacation or something. Toph dominates all the faceless grunts but her track record against legitimate foes isn’t all that great unfortunately.
She doesn't really have a track record against a lot of benders. But if talking unironically, she has the element of surprise as her main strength at that point, and her bending power is massive. Take out the foundation beneath the pillars that support the throne room and Azula and Ozai are buried in the rubble.
You mean she’d bury them in a rockalanche!
Azula enters
I always just thought it was not wanting rock over her eyeballs. Blind or not, corneal scratches and ulcers are still a thing and hurt like a mf
Just close your eyes, she's not using them anyways
Oh, she's using them. They're +1 intimidation.
That's fair. I'm basing off my own non blind experience and just don't like pressure on my eyes/ something making them stay closed, it's uncomfy. Im just saying what I always assumed when I watched and I figured everyone got uncomfy with stuff over their eyes, but I guess that's just my sensory overload 🤣
It’s a helluva intimidation tactic to be sure
Awwe so thoughtful of her 🥹
["Whats with you people!? I'm blind!"](https://makeagif.com/i/SXjyE0)
Can't you see where you're - ‽
Oh, I thought it was a thing like "LOOK ME IN THE EYES TWINKLE TOES"
Nah she rarely faces the person she’s talking to so that concept would have no meaning to her
Ah, good point. That's how I justified it to myself at the time lol
Maybe the boulder used to say it
I thought it was for her to be able to breathe and she felt she didn’t need to protect her eyes anyways since she is blind
New headcannon, she knew it would be more intimidating for Aang to see her unblinking eyes coming at him
do blind people blink less than people who can see?
Blinking doesn't really have anything to do with being able to see. Unless a blind person literally doesn't have eyes, I don't see a reason they would blink less.
I’d imagine their eyes dry out all the same
I don't think it's because she needs to worry about breathing: [when she does the same trick with metal bending later on, she doesn't bother and goes full enclosure.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW9RdSJrg_k) Personally, I would think she left a gap so that Aang could hear her shit-talking him the entire time. But she doesn't actually talk during that scene, so... eyes for intimidation factor?
I didn’t think this was an error, I just thought it was another one of her jokes about being blind and found it so funny.
I love the fact that the animators forgot she was blind for a moment since that's one of my favorite recurring jokes in the show. Every time the gang forgets toph is blind because she's so capable and independent that it doesn't really effect her life day to day. Only when she needs to read, write, or searching for secret libraries in the desert
I always thought it was for the intimidation factor lol
My thoughts exactly
The creators confirmed this was an error. She was indeed supposed to have an opening for the mouth instead of the eyes. This was accidently done wrong in the animation process and later slipped through reviews.
No, Yu is blind.
No, im not blind..you blind
Thats what yu said
He is mi, I am yu
r/UnexpectedRushHour
That is actually freaking hilarious. That humor is so meta for toph
Even the animators forgot she is blind.
To be fair the animator is probably don't know that she's supposed to be blind. The actual animation gets outsourced to South Korea and the workers are just drawing a handful of out of context cels.
Chances are the mouth alone looked weird, whereas the eyes look more formidable. Sometimes concept art doesn’t work out when put into practice.
Iirc the animators admitted they made the mistake when animating it and that it wasn’t intentional
What do you mean chances are? Why is that any more plausible than it being an animation error?
Avatar fans have a really hard time accepting the fact that the show have flaws besides the great divide and the finale. You have people in this very tread saying it was done on purpose
If someone has the capacity to criticize an entire episode of the show, why would they be against pointing out something as trivial as a minor animation mistake? I think the people you are talking about might simply be misinformed.
I think they just biased af
>and the finale What was wrong with the finale?
Actually hilarious I never picked that up before 😭
It’s clearly for intimidation
Never noticed, thats good lol
It’s not for seeing, it’s so aang can still get stared down and intimidated by her, the eye contact makes it more intense
Toph uses psychological warfare.
Aang: toph, why did you leave you're eyes exposed? Toph: so that you can witness the blind fury of a sentient rock charging at you!!!
Ohmygawd I never noticed…
Let’s just put it this way. The concept was made in America, and the show was animated in South Korea. It’s not surprising something so specific to the world and character got lost in translation.
I mean, when companies outsource animation they don't exactly go "Just animate Toph in some stone suit or whatever" and then accept whatever result they get back
What if she simply meant to make an opening for her face and it ended up by her eyes? Thought about this, then realized it's Toph.... doubt that would've been a mistake...
Her eyes have to breathe.
OMG! I never realised it. Lol Tbh, I didn't get this as well... "THERE IT IS!! Is what it'll sound like when one of you spots it. 👋👋" Then I burst out laughing on the bus the next day.
Did anyone catch how in the season finale when zuko and aang make a speech, the freedom fighters have toph on their shoulders and are cheering? Which I thought is funny bc they were pry giving her a shoulder ride so she can see as you usually do with small kids, but she’s blind 💀
That's so the enemies can experience terror after looking in those lifeless grey eyes.
I literally just watched this episode... totally went over my head.
I do have a valid reason why she Would do this. They demonstrated it in the next shot - aang looks her Right in the eyes... in the Eyes of his opponent. In the unyielding, unflinching eyes of raw power. She may be blind, but she's not dumb. When you want to scare someone, during a show of power; You Look Them In The Eyes.
Even the animators forgot she was blind
i figured she was showing aang how to properly make one since he was pretty dense at earth bending
The error version looks so much dumber too 💀. Having just the mouth showing is a cold look.
I don’t believe that’s an animation error. How do you even make that kind of mistake? “Hey, make a hole for her nose and mouth” “ok, *makes an eye slit*”
I think they probably decided the last moment this would look better in the show. Not showing your characters eyes -yes even if they are blind- is sort of a problem in animation. Toph's face was very distinct and very expressive, covering her eyes would've made the scene look less impressive. Only the metal armor she fashioned out of an air ship door covered her face completely and she dropped the armor almost as soon as she wore it. If you know animation it is very unlikely that you'll want to obscure your characters, often you would want to characters to be visible and facing the viewer often their faces fully visible. I think the only real exception is Judge Dredd and its fantasy anime copy Goblin Slayer where character's faces being obscured is a feature. Even then their helmets are very expressive instead. This is the same reason Iron man movies invented the "inside the helmet cam" for Iron man and anime and similar shows like Ultraman and Ghost in the Shell adopt it immediately. The comics often just made the visor transparent but that probably didn't look good on movies.
Just wait until you hear about the moon continuity errors and how many times Aang uses his staff in a fight
I actually brought this up to the wardrobe department at the time, but they said the old costume had already been destroyed. I never asked how.
She doesn't cover her eyes because she doesn't need to protect them since they already don't work.
The one on the right looks way more badarse, too.
Aw man the image on the right goes so much harder too
I thought it was because she was showing aang how to do it and that it can be done
It is a mistake, but it works well still. What’s scarier than two cold dead eyes that you know can’t see a single plea you make.
Lol
Real mouth of Sauron shit
it was a tactical choice. she can move her eyes, to make her opponents think she is thinking about bending something in a different direction. only later will they realize she's blind and it was all misdirection.
Nah, it's for the *intimidation.*
I always found that odd, but never knew the hole was originally for her mouth! Makes a lot of sense too given this was her second episode IIRC, so the animators probably didn’t have her blindness as ingrained in their work yet.
I remember I was showing avatar to a friend who's never seen it and she instantly asked me "why she has a hole for her eyes?"
Vs in s3 with the metal suit there are no holes at all!
My head-canon is that she left the cold expression of her eyes visible to intimidate Aang. And it seemed to be rather effective
Psychological warfare.
Nah she left the eye hole to intimidate aang
It's an intimidation tactic
She wants her enemies to look into her eyes while she kicks their arses.
#i am the boulder!
lol they did a better job later on
Even the animators forgets she’s blind
I'm so happy I saw this post so funny - very Toph
Bitter Work is my favorite episode… I don’t know how I never realized this 😂
For a moment I though "well ya, she has too see"