Avatar: the Last Airbender is among the latest conversions from animation to live action on the major streaming services (in this case, Netflix). It’s not the first attempt to make this jump with ATLA, and let’s just leave the M. Night Shyamalan version aside with a simple “this one is better.”

Any time a beloved piece of media is adapted to a new form, you have two camps of naysayers. One will question the necessity of the adaptation. The second will nitpick it into oblivion for not being a frame-for-frame remake with a cast who look like cartoon characters.

The first camp often voices legitimate complaints. You’re rarely getting a new story. You’re even more rarely getting a better one. The ideal candidate for a remake is one with a core of beloved memories that has problematic elements that make it hard to share with a new generation.

Misogyny and homophobia run rampant in older sci-fi and fantasy. Go back a little farther, and racist elements seem pretty galling.

But ATLA was never really a problematic show. It taught great lessons. It still holds up. On those grounds, this series didn’t need to exist.

The other camp, however, can go swimming with octosharks.

This time around, Avatar starts its tale a little early. We see Aang as an initiate before we ever meet him as The Avatar, and that’s just a warning shot that this remake won’t tell the story the same way.

Some storylines are compressed. Others expanded. There’s less time spent getting to know the Northern Water Tribe and a lot more screen time for Daniel Day Kim’s Fire Lord Ozai and Ken Leung’s Commander Zhao. Azula (Elizabeth Yu) and her entourage also enter the story much earlier and play an expanded role in the first season.

For a cartoon that often delved heavily into the goofy and balanced it with grim realities of war, the live action series needed to stick to more realistic tone. Bumi gets toned down. Azula is more conniving than melodramatic. Aang is mostly a mix of fun-loving and insecure, with a lot of his clowning trimmed out.

If the latter point saddens you, I can’t change that. If it stops you from checking out the series, I’d say you’re missing out.

The effects are better in this TV adaptation than that movie we’re not talking about. They drew together a great cast, not just because of name actors playing key roles but also just matching the characters to their animated models both in terms of appearance and personality.

There are some lore changes. There are some character changes. This is a new version of the same journey. And it’s a lot of fun.

Hop onto your exquisitely 3D rendered sky bison and take a ride with the live-action Gaang.

Yip, yip!