Bending the Numbers: A Statistical Look at Avatar: The Last Airbender

Avatar: The Last Airbender is a classic. It is beloved by many who have watched it and there’s even the YouTube channel Overanalyzing Avatar that analyzes every episode of Avatar. Therefore I thought it only logical to spend hours looking through a transcript I found to create all kinds of statistics.

Namecalling

Aang

Katara says Aang’s name most often, as is only logical from her close bond with him and her being there from the start. Second is Sokka for most likely the same reasons both Katara and Sokka have mentioned Aang’s name at least 100 times. But the third one that has mentioned Aang’s name the most is what is described in the transcription as ‘Crowd’ but this character just says ‘Aang!’ 14 times in Sozin’s Comet Part 1. Also Toph calls Aang Twinkle Toes 11 times.

Katara

Again, it seems like Katara and Aang have the most conversations and they mention eachother’s names often. Which makes sense given their closeness and relationship. Sokka mentions Katara second-most. I feel like this is obvious as Sokka, Aang and Katara are both in every episode and they are there from the very first one.

Sokka

This one makes sense too because they all belong to the original crew.

Zuko

It makes sense that Iroh says Zuko most often. As Iroh is of course his uncle and constant companion to Zuko. Then we have the main three as those who say his name the most often and after that there’s Azula who mentions Zuko a lot in a condescending tone. If you count it, Azula also says Zuzu 6 times.

Toph

Again most of the references are the main three characters. Toph also mentions her own name a few times, 5 in total.

Appa

Aang says Appa the most as expected then there are Sokka and Katara which also makes sense. Toph says Appa very little, only four times:

Episode	Words	Context
The Library	No! Stop sinking! No! I’m sorry, Appa.	Appa gets stolen
The Desert	I recognize the son’s voice. He’s the one that stole Appa.	-
Appa’s Lost Days	I’m sorry, Appa.	Appa returning
The Western Air Temple	Appa does seem to like him.	Commenting on Appa liking Zuko

Momo

Yet again, the main trio says Momo the most and Toph says Momo’s name exactly once on ‘Sozin’s Comet, Part 1: The Phoenix King’ when Team Avatar is confused about where Aang went and Toph notices that Momo is gone too.

Self references

Surprisingly, or unsurprisingly, Sokka mentions his own name the most often. He mostly references himself because he introduces himself. Aang’s self referencing is also caused by his introductions. The Boulder is here as well, because why wouldn’t he be even though he is in only two episodes from the 19 sentences he says, in 7 of them he refers to himself in third person.

Words

Total words

This makes sense because, again the main trio has the most words spoken. Followed by Zuko, Toph and Iroh are pretty close Zhao is able to break the top ten even though he was only in book 1 and with that he also beats out Suki. Jet also beat Suki while being in less episodes. It makes sense because the episodes that contain Jet focus on him a lot and Zhao has a lot more dialogue in his episodes than Suki as well.

Avatar

This makes sense because, you know Zuko says stuff like “I need to capture the Avatar to regain my honor”, which is also the next graph. Aang also mentions the word a lot because he is the Avatar. The rest seems pretty random, Katara and Sokka make sense as well. Zhao said it more than Iroh which I think shows how Iroh only uses the word Avatar when talking to others, disliking it because he himself doesn’t want to “mystify/dehumanize” Aang. Maybe that’s just me overthinking it though.

Honor

Wow! What a surprise! Zuko said Honor the most. Followed by Iroh which makes sense as he spent the most time with Zuko. A few people also said it a few times, Azula when she was mocking Zuko for example, but apart from a few special moments it’s nothing that interesting.

Tea

Surprisingly, Iroh is the greatest enjoyer, or at least speaker, of tea. Followed, not very closely by his nephew. Most likely the times Zuko references tea are to refuse tea from Iroh.

Cabbages

There’s also this character that appears sometimes although I can’t seem to remember seeing them. They cry out about cabbages 7 times, not finishing the last one. Also all the episodes they appear in are in book 2.

Episode	Words
The King of Omashu	No! My cabbages!
The King of Omashu	My cabbages! You’re gonna pay for this!
The King of Omashu	Off with their heads! One for each head of cabbage!
The King of Omashu	My cabbages!
The Waterbending Scroll	My cabbages! This place is worse than Omashu!
The Serpent’s Pass	Ahhh! My cabbages!
The Tales of Ba Sing Se	My cabba- Oh, forget it.

Relations

Graph of relations between characters

This is a graph of all characters who have lines in the show, blue is introduced in book 1, green for book 2 and red for book 3. Each connection represents an episode the two characters shared. Notably, Appa and Momo are red because their only lines are in book 3 in the episode Nightmares and Daydreams. Apart from that the main cast makes sense. Most of the main people are in the most episodes. There are some more characters which you can look at if you want but I don’t think there is a lot of interesting things.