[Music] is wood bending a thing you bet it is with toff's invention of metal bending the now more mainstream use of lighting generation in republic city flight kiyoshi's glass bending and lava bending coming back in vogue wood bending might just be the next bending ability to be revealed but how exactly would it work in this video i'll examine wood bending through water bending but also position it as its own element i'll talk about wood bending fighting techniques common uses and avatar state level powers if you think you have what it takes to master wood bending
stick around to find out yep yep while wood bending hasn't exactly been made canon yet a little creativity hasn't hurt anybody right before i get to what could be categorized as pure wood benders let's see how other elemental benders could bend wood there's a lot of theory out there about earthbenders being the one group of people who could woodbend if it was possible but as your wood bending sensei i am here to tell you that it is not the case yeah sorry earthbenders you can't have it all oh yeah good point why doesn't it make
sense for earthbenders to woodbend well for the simple fact that there is no earth whatsoever in trees granted they are rooted in the ground and feed themselves from minerals but in the end there's just none of it left inside the tree or at least not enough of it to be controlled by an earthbender let's assume for a moment that i adopt this logic and that i agree with all these earth vendor theories about wood bending that would mean that earthbenders could bend people's bone structure and i just don't want to go there we got enough
of hama and mon and their creepy bloodbending going on no need for more horror bending about these two dark characters i'm pretty sure they could find a way to wood bend or sort of through the use of water bending although earthbender's bending wood is an interesting but flawed idea the most obvious contender of all four elements is water bending if you remember correctly during the last airbender era while kotaro was learning the now illegal blood-bending technique with the old waterbender hama she also witnessed what could be called plant bending the elder waterbender hama wanted katara
to think outside the box when it comes to water bending telling her she could find the element in places she would not have thought about before water is pretty much everywhere at some point during this unofficial training hama was standing in a beautiful red flower field and drain the water out of the flowers in order to slice a rock standing by that creepy blood bender is clearly not invited to my wedding while this makes for a very effective attack in itself it's also a technique that has some degree of unintended destruction in its wake these
poor flowers never saw it coming on top of flowers being sucked dry hama used water bending to force water out of nearby trees to shield herself when dueling with katara during a full moon let's just say grandma nightmare was not too pleased with her apprentice the third water tribe the foggy swamp tribe has developed a very unique style of water bending making use of the swamp's plants in a variety of inventive ways the one that most stands out for the purpose of this video is the bending of vines by manipulating the water inside the swamps
vines a waterbender can create a giant swamp mecca wearing a wooden mask and controls its movement from inside now taking that into account could waterbenders actually bend wood of course they could but it would be quite limited and hard to attain since they would need a huge amount of water to liquefy it on the other hand it could be quite a useful technique to supply toilet paper for the many citizens of republic city now that i've successfully proven that water is wet let's get to the fun part the amazing wood bending fighting techniques and equipment
how would a wood bender fight and with what exactly just like metal bending wood bending would first of all require that the vendor is near trees or maybe a table just imagine all your ikea furniture assembly problems gone in a flash i imagine wood benders as close combat fighters creating weapons shields and armors out of wood they find nearby just like ryu from the rpg video game suikoden their weapon of choice would be the versatile dual tonfa the tonfa also known as tea baton for close friends is more of a melee weapon and is used
in okinawan martial arts a woodbender could easily carve two of those from nearby trees furniture or that poor cabbage merchant's card in a matter of seconds the woodbender would use them either to attack or to defend themselves against enemies or a bunch of falling cabbages while the weapon can be used as an extension of the bender's arms if placed together in front of the fighter it can make for a really effective shield and even be fused together and back through wood bending just like in that scene from evil dead that i'm trying really really hard
to forget woodbenders would be able to control roots and grab their opponents from below this would make them masters in terms of trapping while weapons and items carved out from wood bending would look rather unrefined compared to the craftsmanship of a metal bender they would no less be effective ones that is unless a firebender shows up then it's pretty much game over although the element of fire would be their biggest weakness woodbenders would be on par with waterbenders and airbenders and somewhat superior to earthbenders for all the good earth kingdom citizens listening again i mean
no harm but roots would only keep you down to earth now let's talk fashion for a minute how would they be color-coded most water benders wear blue airbenders wear yellow and red firebenders mostly red and earthbenders are really into green i kinda picture them wearing something close to the white birch trees palette i'm talking whites blacks and grays that could make for a perfect camouflage in white birch forest where of course they would live their homeland would be somewhere on the earth kingdom's territory in one of those remote islands in the far east region just
north of the east air temple and here's a little bonus theory what if that island might just secretly be a wood turtle lion you thought they were extinct did you total hogwash according to the avatar universe legends there once were dozens of lion turtles roaming the world during avatar wands time humans used to build towns on their backs and borrow the spirit's respective elements when going out hunting for example firebending was given to one when joining a group on the condition that he gave the power back after he obviously didn't and went on catching elements
to become the very best but no one ever was it's not pokemon one go home balwan only visited a total of four lion turtles nothing proves that there weren't other elemental turtles like agent moulder would say the truth is out there out where my guess is the spirit world if some of them have survived the great lion turtle purge they must have escaped to the spirit world before juan closed the portal and became the bridge between the two worlds if the pokemon franchise can keep inventing new pokemon then why wouldn't us avatar and legend of
korra fans have more elements i demand justice at once as you most probably know by now the tv show is highly influenced by east asian cultures while the four elements earth water air and fire come from western thought and more precisely from ancient greece while the greek started with four elements aristotle overthinking as he did thought there was a missing piece it wasn't very feng shui and lacked something to balance everything out one faithful morning as he was putting on his robe he thought real hard and came up with a fifth element the fifth element
while not officially part of the four is also featured in the avatar series what is called the ether takes the form of anything that has to do with the soul like spirit bending or energy bending it is the light spirit rava the one connecting all elements together now if we turn to chinese philosophy we can find a different set of elements referred to as wu xing just like its western counterpart the wu xing also known as the five elements or five movements also include earth water and fire however instead of having air listed as an
item it includes two different elements which are metal and wood as toff has explained metal bending in the avatar universe is possible through bending the earth particles inside impure metals now that you've mastered the basics of wood bending what do you think the bending type would look like in the hands of the avatar the next inheritance of rava could surely do wonders with wood bending while in the avatar stayed they would be able to control whole forests using roots to trap their targets and carve epic weapons out of trees in a scenario where the fire
nation gets too greedy again a giant crossbow resembling game of thrones scorpions could be made against the firelord's dragons i know i know i said wood bending would be pretty useless against firebending but imagine the size of that thing for a second not to mention that future avatars after korra will probably use metal bending like she does which could make for an amazing weapon out of both metal and wood like with any other element the avatar state would help the avatar extend the reach of their powers and bring them closer to the spiritual side of
things how would spirit and wood connect you ask through the creatures living in the forest the animals just like a young snow white on a sunday morning the avatar could connect with various animals like birds or deer dogs like koda's quirk and my hero academia the avatar would be able to become an animal whisperer this mix between wood bending and spirit bending or energy bending would allow the avatar to either control the animals or see through their eyes i'm telling you squirrels make the best spies don't believe me just ask squirrel girl just to keep
the conversation going a bit more i want to talk about republic city that city was the most surprising thing that we had to see on screen when legend of korra premiered and it's still a city full of unanswered questions what i find most interesting about it is how they managed to use different bending styles to run the city while there are others the first that comes to mind is firebenders powering the city using what once was a rare skill lightning generation so i'm gonna leave you with a bit of homework i want you to think
about how wood bending would benefit republic city and you can't use toilet paper that one is mine and congratulations you're now an official graduate of cbr's wood bending academy what other wood vending techniques do you think i missed do you believe metal could eventually become its own pure element like in wushing let your imagination run wild in the comments below and as always thanks a lot for watching
