As far as air bending goes, they can fly and I would trade in anything to have that power.  Even though they do use gliders, Aang can still leap dozens of feet in the air and even control his movements midair so they still have some limited form of flight.

EDIT: I forgot about the hover ball scooter things they can create.  They pretty much have limited flight without the gliders.

Yeah and according to some site or something (I don't remember), Aang can lessen air resistance to run fast or something. Air bending sounds pretty fun!

And yeah that fire-bending fire trick was cool, and they used it an awful lot in the last few episodes.

Well, it WAS during Sozin's Comet, so maybe the outright flying was a result of the power surge?

Except fire benders have flight too.

Not necessarily.  Azula used her fire in Boiling Rock like ignition to propel herself forward and Ozai was flying around thanks to enhanced powers of the comet.  They never did that shit in any other episode and they've never shown fire benders capable of releasing a steady stream of continuous fire and Iroh explained that it was all about breath control so I'm assuming if they run out of breath they lose control (like every time combustion man attacked he took a deep breath but when Sokka hit him in the head both times he lost concentration and couldn't take a breath causing him to blow himself up).

lol science in a kids show.  let's just say nanomachines did it.

hmmm what i meant was that each bending element has a sort of Sub bending that can only be done by the most skilled, like blood bending for water, lightning for fire and Metal for earth. It seams that the sub bending is more limited in what it can do but its more powerfull.
Blood bending can only be used to controll some ones movements, but you can cripple someone's ability to fight or make them fight themselves. Lightning is a far more powerfull, accurate and faster projectile but that's all it is. Metal bending can do the same as earth bending but for metal but its limited to ONLY metal so its usage is limited to places that have it.
So in essence my question was what do you think AIR bending's sub bending is if you counted others such as lightning as a sub bending? (If air bending had a sub, but don't forget it could be the most powerfull of them all since air is everywhere thus it has no sub bending becuase of it).

I think air bending is versatile in of itself that it doesn't really need a sub.

So in essence my question was what do you think AIR bending's sub bending is if you counted others such as lightning as a sub bending? (If air bending had a sub, but don't forget it could be the most powerfull of them all since air is everywhere thus it has no sub bending becuase of it).

On 4chan we'd laugh at all the fanfics regarding the various benders but there was one in particular that had the previous air avatar create a vacuum so if there was a sub genre of air bending removing air would seem most plausible if the creators were like "lets crank things up a notch yes?"

Yeah, that'd be my guess too.

I think it'd be cool to see some people lightning bend without fire-bending, too! Seeing as dragons were the original fire-benders, and they presumably didn't bend lightning, I think if there were a group of people that treated lightning as its own element, that would be an interesting thing.

Air Benders sub bending thing would be the ability to use air to "Bend" anything anyway. Oh you can earth bend that boulder off the cliff? I'll blow a shit ton of air at it and do the same thing. You made a big tidal wave using water bending? I'll use air and do the same thing.

man did anyone else think DRAGON BALL Z when they saw this?


a-awesome...

this series was very enjoyable to watch. i first got into it because of the animation, but found out for myself later on that the world in which this anime series takes place in is pretty unique too. you've got all this elemental bending shit going on and all these interesting characters and places and i guess it all just comes together nicely. certainly there were hilariously bad episodes like that beach drama one but they don't detract the series overall.

my favorite character ended up being toph because she is amazing whereas everyone else is weak and/or pussy. mary sue characters are the best. i hated how kitara and aang sometimes treated toph like shit ;'(

I just got around to finishing this, and it's definitely among my favourite animated series now.