>>148913712
>TLA: taking from eastern martial arts traditions and its emphasis on its own understanding of anatomy and elements, where they are fundamental expressions of movements and biology
>XS: same thing, basically
>Bionicle: weird mishmash of tribal cliches, especially polynesian, focusing on the idea of "natural" forces and thus "elements" corresponding to those
>WITCH: dunno, wasn't ever a little girl, but probably the usual "natural" forces
The thing is there was a rise in a new kind of toyetic team set up, with bright colors and specific powers and personalities tied together. "Fire person," "Water person," etc. were already readily understood stereotypes in the global zeitgeist, and made for easy avenues to create kids media. Especially with super powers.

It certainly was not Pokemon in particular. It's one of those things that's the bastard of a thousand fathers with no clear lineage because it was such a broad, common enough set of ideas that it was constantly a hot bed of morphing expressions and cliches. You never had to "explain" this to anyone, only the particular implementation you wanted to go for. It probably owed more to Power Rangers if you had to blame someone.

It doesn't help that "Western" elements and "Eastern" elements were actually way more distinct than even just the commonly known "China has five and none of them are air." Western elements were, literally, elements as we use the term today: the physical building blocks of matter. Eastern thought was focused on "elements" as process, phases. There were five cause each was tied to one of the classical Planets and their literal movement in the heavens. You are not "made" of some amount of fire, you have too much fire "activity" and need to balance it out by doing something else. Everything moved through phases, so on and so forth.

Both applied the thought to medicine, though my impression the Eastern concept was way, way more robust and encompassing with it.

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What was with the increase of elemental power motifs in the 2000's?Only western example I knew of prior to it is Captain Planet unless…

What was with the increase of elemental power motifs in the 2000's?
Only western example I knew of prior to it is Captain Planet unless…