Imagine yourself on a journey. After years of hardship, you finally make it to the end of your journey.
Only to find nothing but confusion and regret.
Now this is something that today's character went through personally.
He committed his life to what he thought was his purpose, only to find out it was all for nothing.
And that character is the crown prince of the Fire Nation, Zuko.
Hey what's going on guys, my name is Nate and you're listening to the Otaku Liberation.
A show where we help you break the chains that are holding you back in your life by connecting some biblical principles with themes from your favorite anime.
And without further ado, let's get right on into it.
And the verse I'm going to cover for today's episode is Proverbs chapter 19 verse 21.
And it says, many plans are in a person's heart, but the law of secre will prevail.
Essentially saying that we may have our own plans for our future and our destiny, but ultimately, God's going to have the final say.
And this kind of, and I guess the way this correlates with Zuko is he had this own idea of what his destiny and what his purpose in life was.
He thought the entire time it was just to hunt down the Avatar for his father just so he can regain his honor.
But by the end of the series, that's not the case at all.
And just seeing his journey, his transformation from episode one all the way up to the final episode is something to admire.
It was my opinion. I love these type of characters who start off as the villain or the antagonist and through actual plot development,
not just, you know, Naruto talking to Jutsu and all of a sudden I'm good now, but actual you see the progression from them being completely evil to, you know, not really good, but not bad either to, okay, they're one of the good guys, right?
And the classic example, of course, is Vegeta from Dragon Ball, but Zuko fits this mold pretty well, too.
And for me, those are my favorite type of characters because it humanizes them and it shows the struggles that we all can kind of go through.
Now, Zuko's personal role can be kind of be broken down into three type of points, the first of which was his search for identity and purpose.
So, like I said, in the beginning of the series, Zuko's whole purpose was to capture the Avatar just to regain his honor.
And this mindset was a result of his scarring and banishment at the hand of his father.
So for those of you who don't know about Avatar, Zuko spoke out of turn in his father's war meeting and the result of that was that they had to fight, they had to fight each other.
And Zuko misunderstood that at the beginning, thinking he was going to fight the general that he spoke out against.
But when he turned around to face his opponent, he saw that it was his father Zuko immediately just pled for his forgiveness because he didn't want to fight his dad.
But his father, being the cold hearted person that he is, decided to teach him a permanent lesson on his face.
And he scarred him in front of everybody and banished him for speaking out of line and not owning up to his actions.
So that's kind of where this whole journey begins.
He and Zuko are only like 16 or something like this at this point in time.
And it's crazy.
But during his search, Zuko was very angry with himself and the world around him and he was driven solely by his desire to restore his honor.
I mean, he, have you ever heard of RBF? It was Zuko. And if you don't know what that means, then good for you. Good.
But Zuko, he believes that in order to be strong and successful, one must fight and struggle every step of the way.
I mean, there's no such thing as having a good day or having or having a break.
He believed that in order to be successful, you had to struggle.
And this is a twisted way of thinking.
But only on one hand, we all know that in order to be successful, in order to achieve the things you want to achieve, there is going to be some struggle that comes with it.
But it's not every step. It's not everything that you do. It has to be hard and difficult.
And Zuko did not really, really understand that.
And that way of thinking played him throughout the entire series. He was always twisted and tormented.
And really, he was creating his own struggles nine times out of ten.
And this was mostly because he was searching for something that no one else could give him. Right.
No one else could give you your honor. And that was the misconception that he had.
And that misconception eventually caused him to have sort of an identity crisis.
So fast forward to when they're in Ba Sing Se, right. They're essentially refugees because they are wanted by the Fire Nation.
Zuko had the choice to either free Appa, which is Aang's flying bison, or to capture it and use it as leverage to capture Aang himself.
But instead, Zuko chose to free him. So when he freed Appa, Zuko came down with a fever, one that his uncle explained as a metamorphosis of sorts.
Basically, Zuko's actions conflicted with how he really felt.
And he needed to make a choice whether he was going to fully embrace the, I guess, the new man that he was becoming or continue down this pretty much dark path that he was already on.
And until he rectified that within himself, he was always going to be tormented.
And this kind of reflects how a lot of us can be in today's time, in all honesty.
I think we all have this ideal that we're striving for that may go against who we really are.
Maybe we're doing it to conform to other people's notions, other people's thoughts and dreams for us,
whether that be your parents, your mentors, your peers, or just the society as a whole.
And there could be no ill will, no malice behind it.
But ultimately, those are their dreams and purposes, but not your own.
So I think it comes to a point where all of us have to really sit down and think about it.
OK, am I doing these things because I want to because it's what I want to do is I feel like it's my purpose or am I doing it just because everyone else is telling me to?
And I mean, it's the answer won't come as easily as you want it to, or at least it didn't for me.
But it's something that we should all be kind of aware of because we don't know who we are or more accurately, we don't know who God called us to be.
And we can spend our entire lives searching for something that's already inside of us, just like Zuko.
So it's important to look inward and not outward.
And again, that starts with asking God, OK, what am I here for? Who do you who am I supposed to be? Who do I need to be?
I mean, he'll answer, maybe not as clearly as we would like it to be sometimes, but he always will.
And you'll you'll feel it. You'll you'll know. So so the next part of Zuko's whole journey is his exile and self discovery.
So the funny is just funny.
Just think about this. Zuko's whole journey was spent trying to find himself and find his honor and things like that.
But it was actually after his exile that he began to really find himself.
And he found that he so so in bossing, say, Zuko made the choice to essentially betray his uncle, Aang and their group and everybody by aligning himself with his sister Azula
and trying to capture Aang or kill him, which ultimately was what happens.
So in doing that, he essentially attained everything that he set out for. He was able to regain his honor and his father's love, in a sense.
And he should be he should be happier. He should be the happiest he's ever been.
But he wasn't. He wasn't fulfilled.
He began to have doubts in his own actions, which were again betraying Iroh and Aang at bossing, say.
And he wondered if this is really what he wanted. Did he really want to be back in his father's house and presence?
Or or is there something more to life than just that?
And the way I think about it is it's not so much what he wanted is how he got it.
Right. Because, again, he spent his whole time searching for for something that no one else could give him.
Something that was already inside of him, which was his honor and really how he viewed himself.
He thought that by capturing Aang or maybe even killing him, that he would win his father's approval and affection.
But when it comes to stuff like that, honestly, especially when it comes to your parents, if they truly love you, you know, it's not something you earn.
It's something that's freely given, again, just like how God does for us.
And that that's it. That's that's the whole relationship.
They love you unconditionally because you are their children.
Now, it doesn't mean that, you know, they can condone everything that you do and, you know, they won't you won't butt heads from time to time.
But as a parent, you're supposed to love your kids regardless.
Right. And as a child, you're supposed to honor and love your parents regardless.
And then again, you know, everyone's situations may be different and things like that.
But if it's not your blood parents and whoever you view as your parent, right, it's the same thing.
And for Zuko's twisted relationship with his father, it tore him up his entire life.
And I love it how it was him essentially being by himself that he really began to look into these things.
Because, again, for the majority of his exile, he had Iroh with him by his side to counsel him and give him advice and things like that.
Essentially being more of a father to Zuko than his own father was.
But it wasn't until Zuko was completely alone, you know, after he betrayed Iroh and Iroh was thrown in prison.
And he realized that his sister was still the cunning snake that she always was, that he was by himself.
So now he really had to think about his actions and what he wanted to get out of life.
And it's just it's funny to think about it, because oftentimes God will allow us to go our own way and try to live life according to our plans,
just to ultimately just prove that his way is better.
Right. I mean, this always ends with us wondering where we went wrong or how did we end up here?
And like like Zuko, we just need to take a step back and evaluate our actions and decisions and figure out what our real purpose is,
figure out what do we really want to get out of life.
Because, again, this whole this whole season has been about understanding your purpose and finding a purpose and how to live up to your purpose.
But Zuko's episode in particular and his whole character is essentially what happens when you strive for a purpose that was never your own to begin with.
And it just shows how how far how far off we can we can really get and and how easily it is to get distracted and thrown off your proper course.
But thankfully, Zuko realized that no one can give him his honor back but himself and ultimately that his true calling was actually to help Aang defeat the Fire Lord and bring peace to the world.
So just think about that as a whole 180. He he went from essentially serving the Fire Lord to capture the Avatar.
To helping the Avatar defeat the Fire Lord, which is crazy. And even and even beyond that, him and Aang became lifelong best friends after that.
After the war and with them joining, joining together to bring peace into the into the world after the Hundred Years War, they grew a genuine friendship.
They were they were they were best friends. And I think that's that's awesome. Right. When you when we fully embrace our purpose and what we were meant to what we were meant to be, who we were meant to be, excuse me, and what we were meant to do, then countless lives can be changed.
Not just your own, but just so many people.
I'm just thinking just think for this example right now, Zuko never realized his purpose in helping Aang defeat his defeat his father, essentially.
How many lives would have changed? Because Zuko was Aang's firebending teacher. Zuko went to go face Azula.
Right. I mean, he had help from Katara as well, but he went to take down Azula, who was another threat in this whole thing.
And essentially, if he if he wasn't there, we don't know how things would have gone.
Aang would have never learned firebending, even though he had never he didn't master about it at the end of the series, but he just he wouldn't have learned it, learned it at all.
And we know that could have been the deciding factor in the fight.
Ultimately, luckily, luckily, we don't have to we don't have to find out.
Right. Because he did teach Aang and Aang did beat the Fire Lord and they brought peace.
So basically the whole thing, whole point of this episode is just that, you know, God's purpose for our lives is always bigger than just ourselves.
He calls us to transform the world in a way that only we can.
So I'm going to leave you with this question. What do you think God is calling you to do?
And don't just ask yourself, ask him. You know, don't don't talk to yourself because you might, you know, you might answer yourself.
And that's going to be weird. Talk to him.
But hey, if you like what you heard today, you want to take a deeper look into today's episode, head on over to the otaku liberation.net where you'll find a blog article that covers today's episode.
And you'll also find a link to our YouTube channel where I cover I cover bonus topics outside of the podcast.
And join me next week for the season finale where I cover who is without a doubt the most liked character in Avatar and possibly one of the most like characters ever.
And that's everyone's uncle, Iroh. And I would remember, guys, you are the main character of your story.
And that story doesn't end until he says so. All right. Be blessed.