Toph Beifong is known for her strong, unchanging and rock-like personality,
and at age twelve, remarkably, she was already one of the most
powerful earth benders in the world.
I never knew, your daughter's amazing!
How exactly is she so powerful?
Let's analyze Toph's many skills and break down how our earth bending
informed her personal development throughout the series.
We'll do this by focusing on three categories.
Raw power, adaptability and growth.
You know, the real me.
So let's start by examining the strength and raw power of Toph Beifong.
When we first met Toph, it was immediately clear
that she could hold her own, able to take down dangerous
opponents from the Earth rumble, even when grossly outnumbered.
[screaming]
But it wasn't until she joined the gang
on their journey that we saw what she was really capable of.
Not only was she able to hold her own
against even the most esteemed earth benders,
but throughout her travels she displayed an absolute mastery
of classic earth bending techniques such as rock walls, earth skating,
rock armor, earth tunneling, and so much more.
When it comes to staple earth bending techniques,
there is no question that Toph was an earth bending master
from the start of her journey,
Even Ba Sing Se's highly trained Dai Li agents
didn't stand a chance against Toph,
thanks in part to her raw earth bending power.
But that's not the only aspect of Toph's skill set that makes her so formidable.
Let's move on to our second category, adaptability.
Earth benders across the world are known for their strong,
rigid and unyielding style of fighting.
Even Toph herself teaches Ang that to succeed as an earth bender,
you have to be rock-like.
Rock-like!
But what sets Toph apart from the other earth benders,
what truly gives her an advantage over opponents like the Boulder
or the Dai Li may actually stem from her blindness.
What many could perceive is a weakness in Toph is actually a major strength.
Let's break it down.
Her inability to see since birth has forced her to adapt
the way she lives in her everyday life.
For example, since she can't see with her eyes,
she learned to harness earth bending to sense the vibrations in the ground,
allowing her to assess her surroundings and effectively see with her feet.
It's a technique which allows her to better adjust
to her blindness in our everyday life.
But it's also proven to be a very useful technique
in battle against other benders, allowing her to sense
and anticipate her opponent's every move.
The ability is so useful, in fact,
that she even taught the Avatar to use it,
and he in turn used it to feed Fire Lord Ozai himself.
But as useful as the ability is, it's a technique that most earth benders
likely don't have or even know exists because they never needed to learn it,
giving Toph a valuable advantage over traditional earth benders.
Thanks to her need to adapt, Toph also learned that she could use
her seismic sensibility so accurately that she could even sense subtle changes
in a person's breath, hurt beat and general behavior
and effectively become a human lie detector.
He's not lying.
-How can you tell? -I can feel his breathing and heartbeat.
When people lie, there's a physical reaction.
He's telling the truth.
Yet another infinitely useful technique born purely out of her need to adapt.
Since the fundamentals of most earth bending techniques
are to be unchanging and rock-like, it's not very likely
that many earth benders would be open to new ways
of approaching a technique like this. Even Toph herself once condemned
Ang for thinking like an airbender.
That's the problem.
You've got to stop thinking like an airbender.
There's no different angle, no clever solution,
no trickity trick that's going to move that rock.
You've got to face it head on.
She may not even realize it, but even though her very identity
is rooted firmly in earth bender principles,
she also has plenty of airbender-like tendencies
that keep her on her toes and give her the ability to evolve,
setting her apart from her fellow earth benders.
Which brings us to our third topic: growth.
When Toph first joined Team Avatar, it was clear that she was a strong,
rock-like and slightly abrasive earth bending master.
And by the final episode, she was seemingly still
that strong, rock-like, and abrasive master.
But that doesn't mean that she didn't have any growth.
It just means that we have to look a little deeper
because Toph's growth is subtle but still significant.
The most noticeable effects of her growth come from her bending abilities.
She first encounters a style of earth bending
that she doesn't have a firm handle on.
In the episode "The Library", when the gang comes across
the sand benders, having spent her entire life rooted firmly to
and reliant on the solid ground, Toph wasn't equipped to deal with the loose
and granular sand of the desert like the sand benders were.
But the sand benders were in a sense cut from the same cloth is Toph herself.
Their abilities were born out of necessity.
The sand benders were forced to approach the problem
of living in a desert from a different angle
than a traditional earth bender would.
As a result, they adapted out of necessity
to a completely unorthodox style of earth bending.
Even though Toph didn't have the need to learn sand bending,
she was already familiar with adapting her earth bending,
so she was able to hone her sand bending
despite its unique nature.
This in itself demonstrates Toph's character growth.
When she first joined the crew, she shut herself off,
claiming to be a loner who didn't need friends,
but when her traditional earth bending failed to protect Appa...
No! I'm sorry, Appa.
She was willing to learn a whole new skill.
Could that have been to prevent something like that
from ever happening again?
To make sure she was always capable of protecting the friends
that she claimed she didn't need?
But sand bending pales in comparison to the most obvious example
of Toph's growth...
Metal bending.
Not only did she quickly learn and master the skill of metal bending,
but she was the first person to even discover that it was possible.
Have I ever mentioned how sweet it is that you invented metal bending?
You could stand to mention it more.
On the surface, yes, it's a significant addition to her arsenal,
rounding out our earth bending abilities and fulfilling your physical growth.
I am so glad we added you to the group!
But it too also speaks to her personal and character growth.
When she started training Ang, she held firmly to her ideals
of remaining unchanging and rock-like,
disregarding all the adapting she's already had to do in her own life.
But when Master Yu and Jin Fu forced her to confront an unyielding metal box,
they also unwittingly forced her to think outside the box
and confront the unyielding perception of earth bending and its applications.
And after spending her life using earth bending an unorthodox ways,
training an airbender with an affinity for finding workarounds to problems,
and encountering entire cultures of people who use their bending
differently due to their terrain, Toph finally had to directly embrace
the idea of being open to alternate ways of thinking.
It was only then that Toph was able to think about the medal in a way
no other earth bender in history had.
Woo! Toph, you rule!
Her open minded approach to earth bending became
an invaluable tool for Toph,
even bringing about the very discovery of metal bending.
It reflects an idea that seemed throughout the series.
We're shown the unique strength of each nation's ideology.
We're also shown that true strength
is born out of an openness to each the culture.
Ang learns to embrace the philosophies of the four elements.
Zuko learns advanced fire bending skills using water bender techniques.
And Iroh shows us that much of his wisdom
comes from a deep understanding of each nation's culture.
It is important to draw wisdom from many different places.
If you take it from only one place, it becomes rigid and stale.
Understanding others, the other elements
and the other nations will help you become whole.
So Toph's character growth, while subtle, is vastly significant
because it truly embodies that theme.
She's able to represent the culture of the earth benders,
but she also applied airbending philosophies to her approach.
She learned to adapt from cultures different from her own
and even learned to challenge the very notion of what's possible.
In the end, it's that open-mindedness that allowed top who evolved past
the perceived limitations of Earth benders.
She encouraged progress not only in herself but for the world as a whole.