Come now. The Equalists, all non-benders save Amon, rounded up pretty much every bender in town using just footwork and cattle prods.
True, but the movement grew to the extent it did because everyone in Republic City felt bullied by Benders. The Equalists were using an evolution of Tai Li’s chi-blocking techniques and modern weapons, but we’d already seen that those weren’t necessary to take down a Bender. Even if they were, a generation later the techniques should have been more common, anyway.
While it’s true that, with sufficient martial arts training, a non-Bender can be as dangerous an opponent as a Bender, a person shouldn’t have to spend years in intensive martial arts training to be treated with respect. And, really, a system of government that’s essentially centered on one’s ability to kick someone in the teeth is no way to run a modern state. Look at Hiroshi Sato, the Avatar-verse’s version of Henry Ford. His drive and intelligence have fundamentally reinvented civilization, yet he’s permanently locked out of any sort of political power simply because he’s not a Bender. Sure, he can build himself a steam-powered battle mecha and toss Benders around like ragdolls, but can he vote?
Excellent post , Miller. I hadn’t thought about the city government much. According to this, the governing council consists of 5 members, one representative from each of the nations, with the northern and southern water tribes each sending a member. The head of the council is the head of state of the United Republic. The council runs the city and the world, and commands the military.
They’re not necessarily all benders (at one point Sokka was a member), and it’s not clear if they are elected. But I can see where this situation would be ripe for revolt in Republic City, franchise or no, with so much power kept in so few hands, and the city not having a government separate from the world state. Viva revolution!
I’m bumoping this before I make a larger response tommorow.
The short version is that I didn’t like Korra much at all. I think it’s a show with more potential than success,and that while there are some extremely good things about it, it’s almost universally secondary or tertiary issues. The heart of the show is completely missing, and the creators substituted characters designs for actual characters, well-done fight scenes for meaningful content.
Nailed it. I’m sure tomorrow’s will nail with cites.
Let me start this overly-long whinefest by saying that there’s a huge difference between saying that you liked something and saying it was good. Or for that matter, saying you didn’t like something and then saying it was bad. You can like something which isn’t good and dislike something which is. There’s no shame in that.
I like the Star Wars prequels, at least in a “put my feet up and watch things asplode” sense, and still recognize they aren’t very good. I voluntary watch Hudson Hawk. At the same time, I didn’t much enjoy the last third of Citizen Kane, and I just can’t sit through some of Stanley Kubrick’s good stuff, let alone his bad stuff.
Liking something which isn’t exactly high quality, or vice-versa, isn’t inherently bad. I say this because I don’t like Korra and think it’s still bad. But I don’t want people to believe I’m saying they’re just wrong to enjoy it. I think they’re wrong to say it’s a good show, which is not the same thing.
Continuing on that point, let me note that art and entertainment are the points where people really get those two confused. While we may not understand, say, why somebody likes their house with a different layout that we expect, or enjoys different levels of spiciness in their food, we don’t usually take it as a sign that they’re bad/stupid/a no-class loser for it. Well, some foodies do the latter. But being able to accept that we can differ on taste matters: my dear young, beautiful, sweet, generous, saintly mom would hate going to a restaurant which served fantastic food… if it was spiced so heavily she couldn’t eat it. it might be the best food in the world and really healthy to boot, but she simply couldn’t enjoy it. Nothing wrong with that.
Same thing here. If you enjoyed the series, that’s A-OK by me. just don’t expect me to defend your views about its quality. It may be entertaining crap, but it’s still crap.
What defines this show to me is the wasted effort and wasted potential involved. It had a great chance to be great, yet just sorta ran out of steam in the last 10% of the creation process. Everything is set up for this to be a really good show, and yet it wasn’t.
And let me emphasize that I didn’t come into the show expecting or wanting to dislike it. They had every advantage because I actively hoped I would like it. I was sure this would be good. And yet, by the end of the first episode, I could only think, “It’s… alright.” And far short of improving, it went slowly downhill from there. Not that it didn’t have the odd uptick, but still downhill overall.
And they had a lot of chances. There were so manmy good ideas here that it honestly boggles my mind. The sheer quantity of missed opportunities - any one of which could have had multiple plotlines - is something which amazes me as a (bad) writer. I wish I had that kind of talented setup; I pray I don’t have that kind of execution.
(1) Korra is Boring
Korra is an awful character and I can’t quiteunderstand what they thought they were doing. (Actually, yes I do understand, but we’ll get to that.) She’s a self-indulgent brat who never considers the consequences of anything. From the first moment we see her she’s revelling in her own awesomeness while causing havoc all over her own home. Yet she never once really does much worth doing, then or until fairly late in the show.
And y’know, while I didn’t like that, it could have worked out. OK, Korra is brash and naive, so how does she grow up? What does she start to learn? What will she fail at which spurs her growth? How does her struggle to succeed define her character?
And the answer is: it doesn’t. She never learns anything; it’s just magically handed to her when the plot requires it. She doesn’t struggle or work for any of it, whereas evidently previous Avatars actually had to study. Instead, she blows off practice and then automatically levels up whenever needed. And if something doesn’t come immediately to her, she gets enraged and destroys things.
For example, after her complete failure to learn airbending moves, she doesn’t even try to practice. Instead, she gets into a situation where she needs them very badly. Then, suddenly and for no apparent reason, she just knows how to do it perfectly.
This completely drops the entire idea of dramatic tension, or even the ordinary drama or everyday work and learning. Once this starts happenening - and it keeps happening - there’s no reason to really worry about what’s going to happen. They tipped their hand that Korra is a borderline Mary Sue character; if she’s ever in danger of failing, the writers simply hand her victory without any real work on her part.
Here’s another example: Amon takes away her Bending. Holy crap! This is huge! This is going to be a major change to her character! This could drive an entire season’s plot! This could have major impacts on how she sees herself, how other see her, and even how the world see the Avatar! Wait, no, everything’s magically fixed and there are no consequences. The entire sequence is instantaneously robbed of all importance, and it retroactively renders Amon worthless. He now presents no threat whatsoever and it turns out he never did. So the entire season was just fakery - hell, Tarlock’s Butler of all people was more dangerous. Sato would have made a better mastermind; he was arguably the bigger force and certainly turns out to have been a bigger threat.
This isn’t to imply that there’s inherently a failure of the idea. It could have been well used. It’s the implementation that’s a complete failure. I have no problem with the “Avatar as a brash young adventurer” and in fact that’s basically Aang’s character. But Aang also wasn’t overtly childish, and when he made mistakes acknowledged them and tried to move on. Although he was incredibly gifted with Bending, he also did’t get everything for free. Likewise, even though Aang had vastly more need than Korra, Roku only tells him things that he needed to know now; in general, the previous Avatars only came up when he specifically tried called them or somehow attracted their attention. They didn’t get in the way of Aang’s journey or development - which was clearly deliberate. In fact, one of the major themes of the first series was that things had to happen in their own time. Even the Avatar’s development couldn’t be rushed no matter how much it was needed.
While I suggested Korra comes close to a Mary Sue, they did at least avoid the trope though they edged very, very close. But the fundamental issue is that Korra’s conflict is all internal, and I don’t much care about her internal life. hell, I don’t even care about her external life. She’s not interesting enough for me to invest in, and her problems are so grossly mundane and tedious that I feel vaguely sick jsut considering them. Possibly if I were a self-indulgent pre-teen girl I’d care more, but to me she’s just incredible obnoxious, but compeltely lacking in emotional depth or intrigue.
(2) Korra is Pathetic
This applies in both the perjorative and the traditional sense - but it shouldn’t. As the Avatar, handed lots of training and access to the rich, powerful, and important, Korra isn’t really filled with Pathos. As stated above, there’s honestly not a lot of emotional drama there except what she indulges herself in. Frankly, it’s incredibly tedious to see someone’s pity party… and she seems to throw one for herself once an episode. Yet we’re constantly invited to sympathize with her complete lack of maturity.
Well, why? She has every advantage in life, and in fact doesn’t even think about basic issues like money. She has enough superpowers to join The Avengers, magical protection, and a public soapbox for whatever she wants to do.
But this feeds into the next point:
Korra is basically a puppet for whatever willful figure wants to push her. Told not to do something, she won’t stand up and say, “Yes, I am.” And she won’t consider that she might be wrong. She’s always right in what she wants no matter what, but…
She just gets a hangdog look and either goes behind said individual’s back shamefully or wheedles and mopes her way into what she wants. And frankly, she’s a dim bulb at the best of times and simply ignores anything people tell her, even when it should be readily apparent to anyone with a functioning brain.
For example, the airbending family creates a big mess of spinning doors. They explicitly tell her how to navigate it. They then demonstrate. She flings herself into them with all the subtlety normally evinced by an enraged rhinocerous. This is played for laughs, but it’s not funny - it’s incredibly moronic. It’s not funny when someone deliberately and repeatedly does what you explicitly told them not to and to which any reasonable person would blatantly see, resulting in physical injury. It may be amusing in a “laugh at the idiot” way, but it’s grim humor at best.
We also repeatedly see her fall into traps that an average child of five would consider too obvious. She’s got enough swagger that a 70’s Italian porn star would tell her to tone down the macho (and grow a thick 'stache), but has nothing except brute force to back it up. She never comes up with any particularly good, or efven halfway intelligent, plans, excercises any leadership, helps other people in a quantifiable way apart from hitting things, and so on. In fact, she’s pretty much an abject failure as an Avatar in every possible way. Yes, the Avatar is powerful, but we’ve already seen that beating the snot out of people is more or less the last thing the Avatar’s supposed to do. But that’s the beginning and end of Korra.
Almost the one time she did manage to think for herself was in defending her behavior during the bending match that Tenzin shows up for, and even then managed to look really sad-sack while doing it. It’s simply tiresome for a chaarcter like this to act like a whipped dog; she shouldn’t need to have her self-will built up. It’s like having an Iron Man movie where Pepper has to constantly massage Tony’s ego, not because he’s too arrogant but because he’s too ashamed of himself to go out and fight the bad guys. Oi.
(3) The villains Suck
The villains have fantastic concepts. They completely fail because of poor execution.
First, Tarlock was the most emotionally resonant villain despite being something of an also-ran, a mere sleight of hand trick. more or less everybody assumed thatn either he was Amon, or that he was being made into the “blatant bad guy” just so they could hide Amon’s true identity. He’s dangerous, but his real power is subtle manipulation and naked ambition. Holy crap - here we have the underpinnings of fascism; it’s a fascinating look at how one can create tyranny, and how even the official power structure can undermine its own legitimacy while still getting more power. I like that: he doesn’t have to view himself as evil or even “villainous”" to be a very nasty bad guy.
And then we learn his backstory, and I couldn’t care less anymore. Suddenly he’s no longer so self-absorbed he doesn’t know or care what he’s doing to others as long as he gains power. Now he has Daddy Issues and Evil Magic. Tarlock was a great character as he was, when he was clearly ambitious but not clearly evil. He’s cheapened and made a lot less interesting, and his final action in the show is so hamfistedly out-of-character I thought it was a joke when I heard about it (but had not yet watched it).
This leads us naturally to Amon.
Well, what can you say; he’s another interesting concept which just fails, but for different reasons. Here the backstory makes some sense, but there’s nothing to hang it on to. Amon isn’t a charatcer - he’s a mask. The mask is literally the character and we really need to know nothing about, nor do we need to care. He’s the Archvillain, but he’s not really human. He has one motivation, and nothing else about him exists.
The bad aspect of Amon is that he simply has no weight - there’s no connection with the rest of the cast aside from a last-minute dun-Dun-DUN! moment with Tarlock. Nearly everyone assumed the mask was to protect his identity; he was surely character introduced in the first few episodes that we cared about. Was he was he truly evil? Did he have some even greater evil plan? Was he playing both sides and hence needed the mask? Was he
Except he wasn’t. He’s just some guy. Amon barely connects to anyone in the story, and has no fundamental thematic conflict; even his dramatic conflict with Korra was completely meaningless. As mentioned, he presented no threat to Korra and his plans probably couldn’t work anyway. Had he never been involved, you could have the same story just pitching Sato as the major villain. And you’d have lost virtually nothing.
Another problem here is that while the backstory works for him, it just comes out of nowhere. They vaguely set up on small part of his history previously, but it’s almost irrelevant to the overall series. I mean, this series (almost literally) ends with the the dramatic reveal of what is swiftly made irrelevant. The villains true (but pointless) identity with the villain’s complete defeat soon after. Wow, I’m so glad we learned that - made the complete anticlimax two seconds later even less interesting.
Likewise, I honestly face-palmed when Amon showed up simply to cackle evilly and demonstrated how inferior Korra was (she called him out publicly in episode 3), and then executed his evil scheme by… leaving her alone. (This was followed by her falling weeping into Tenzin’s arms; see the “Pathetic” bit above). We later learn that he supposedly didn’t want to mess with the Avatar because of a public opinion backlash. Well, I guess… but I’d be thinking that a broken, no-bending Avatar would be a huge bonus to his recruitment, not the spur that brings him down. I won’t harp on it, but I didn’t really see it. And by the same token, he may as well not have shown up to intimidate her, because it didn’t accomplish anything and didn’t expect it to. In short, it only makes sense if you assume going in that Amon is a stereotypical villain and does stereotypical villain-type things, or that he read the script.
If Amon had some real dramatic purpose, he’d have been fantastic. If he was left as a complete mystery - a a villain who leaves no easy answers - that could also have been really well done, though it wouldn’t fit with either the old or new series method. As it was, it just plain sucks.
And finally, we have Sato.
I like Sato - the concept is great yet again. But again, they had to reduce everything down to some simple and pathetic backstory motivation that we don’t need to know, and which cheapens his character.
“Some member of group ‘X’ killed my beloved Mom/Dad/sister/brother/wife/child/gerbil” is one of the oldest and lamest motivations in fiction. It’s way too simplistic, even in a children’s show, and Korra has (failed) pretensions to being more than that. Sato presumably knows and has met dozens or hundreds of Benders*. Everything from the city administration to power plants to the SWAT team to street thugs are Benders. They occupy all walks of life. Sato seems to have no problem with Bolin or mako until he sudenly reveals that “Mwahaha, I am so evil n’ stuff and really hated you all along! Mwahaha!”… for such a fanatic as he supposedly was. And then he’s building warbots and an entire Air Force just to deal with them? He not only signs up with, but bankrolls Amon’s entire operation?
Heck, how this even get going? Either I missed something or there’s no explanation of how they met or why Sato would take such an insane risk. And in return he gets… ummm… what? A vague ideological benefit of, err… killing Benders? I guess?
This could have worked so much better had Sato’s motivation been ongoing discrimination. I could see man whose boundless intellect and capacity for hard work was stymied by Benders acting selfishly, shortsightedly, or out of fear that he might outdo them. Unlike Tarlock, he would be more ideological than ambitious, and likewise Sato wouldn’t be wrong in his principles even if he went way too far in his actions. Unlike Amon, Sato would would grounded - limited. Amon wants to erase Bending but Sato might just want to free his city of what he views as ignorance and backwards thinking.
As a side note, how in the name of the Earth-bloody-Kingdom did Sato build an entire air force of WW1-ish fighters in secret? Nobody knew about this? Zeppelins seem to be the best anyone else has, but Sato has his own military force of elite airfighters build, trained, and deployed entirely in secret? I’m not saying it wouldn’t happen, but… yeah I’d want a little more in the way of build-up, foreshadowing, or explanation.
In short, the concepts were awesome but the writers undermined themselves. I wanted to like these villains, and kept trying to pull some scraps together into a working whole. The themes are there, but they just fall completely flat.
*I want a Korra/Futurama crossover now. Amon and Bender Bending Rodrrrrriguez become roommates and hilarity ensues.
(4) Korra’s friends are incredibly dull (except Asami) This is basically “Mako and Bolin Suck”. They’re just tedious characters with no weight.
Bolin is utterly useless; like they tried to re-create Sokka and forgot that Sokka was awesome start to finish. He wasn’t perfect, but he was still competent and threw himself wholeheartedly into everything. He may not always come out smelling like a rose, but Sokka always, always put everything into everything he did. He was a great characters in the dramatic sense: whatever Sokka did had big impacts or at least felt larger than life. Heck, even when he was rooting for The Boulder in “The Blind Bandit”, it was over-the-top and classic Sokka. Yet at no point did his drama-ticity stop him from being either a regular guy or a capable and cunning warrior. (As a note, Sokka was Sokka because his voice actor immediately began doing funny little side-takes; these were so good they ended up defining Sokka from the word go.)
Bolin is not Sokka. He’s not even worthy of of cleaning Sokka’s boots. He’s just there. Things happen to him but he never particularly does anything. Even when he gets caught up in amazing events, he doesn’t do anything. He’s just got very bad or very luck and has little reaction to it. Nor does anything ever spur development in his character. I can’t bring myself to care abut him even enough to harp on him.
Mako was more or less fem-bait: a Bishounen-type character to appeal to the young girls. Frankly, he seems like a character rejected from a particularly hacktastic Twilight fanfic for failing to be emo. Like Bolin, he has no weight, and is largely irrelevant to the plot. He shows up here and there, makes sure things get moved forward in the arbitrary manner neccessary, and then sulks off to brood in as emo a manner as he can manage… which is not much because he’s got no emotional depth. Yes, he’s got a fairly tough job, but it’s mostly tough in the physical sense. He may not be a famous champion team leader yet, but neither Bolin nor Mako are exactly ordinary schlubs here, nor do they have particularly extraordinary problems. They’re extraordinary people with ordinary problems. This might be fine if it were a character piece focusing explcitily on that, but it isn’t and no time is put into developing them in such a manner. Come to think of it, this is basically the problem behind Korar herself.
I honestly tried to sit down and think about what I knew of both brothers as characters, but could not write a single thing down. I knew a few things about them. But not much and nothing which gave me any idea as to what they were like as individuals. Apart from some vague familial loyalty and even vaguer romantic intentions they’re blank slates. To be blunt, one or both could die and its effects on the overall plot would be minimal. By contrast, ever single one of Aang’s friends not only had notable characteristics, at least some kind of arc story, and even a few episodes devoted almsot solely to them. Even tertiary characters like Appa and Suki played major parts not only in the overall series, but in the same episodes they were introduced. (I.e., don’t claim that Mako and Bolin just had no time to develop; they did, and even if they hadn’t it’s no excuse.)
We’ll get to Asami later, becuase she’s kinda-sorta a tertiary character who gets upgraded, and is in any case part of the “Awesome Characters” section. She is, however, hilarious awesome and arguably more interestng than Korra, Mako, and Bolin put together. It’s as if they took the awesome parts of Suki and Azul and spliced them together into insane-ninja-mecha girl. She’s some kind of weird experiment in hilarious badass, a hybrid grown by merging River Tam with Rainbow Dash. Or as I like to call her, Riverbow Damn.
(5) The Death of Drama
A consequence of all of this is that the series just lacks any reason for me to care. I was (no joke) more interested in Republic City, the conceptual backdrop for this adventure, than I was in the main cast. How I can care about Kora, when she’s unpleasant and never seems to grow or even react intelligably? Why should I care about the Pro-Bending time-waster when I don’t care about the character doing it?
(6) Meelo
Holy balls Meelo is disgusting. His character design just does not work. He’s too cartoonish even to fit in with the original series, and in contrast to the rest of Korra I think he’s he’s actually some kind of Cthuhloid monstrosity rising to devour the world for himself. Good God.
I don’t know why, but his character made me feely vaguely ill whenever he appeared on-screen. I’m not even exaggerating - by the second episode I literally began to feel a strange sense of intestinal discomfort and a desire to vomit upon seeing him.
Anyone else? No? Just me?
Weird.
(7) The Action
This is possibly the most personal issue so I certainly couldn’t hold it against anyone who disagrees, and I do understand the opposing argument. But at the same time, I did not like the action scenes in this show.
Every character moves the same. Certainly in the previous series, they spend a lot of effort making the movements of each bending style both distinct, but thematically fitting. Waterbending was fluid (no joke) and purposeful, but not necessarily slow. The icebending alone was surprisingly jagged and sharp, but not totally unlike waterbending. Earthbending manuevers weren’t exactly graceful, but very focused and deliberate. Firebending looked feirce and powerful, and airbending looked wild and free. Each element also attacked and defended in ways that made sense. Fire attacks were pin-point blasts and radiating arcs; air defense was rapid and wide-ranging movement. Even bloodbending looked twisted and ugly, to match the emotions you needed to use it. And it wasn’t even just the bending: Mai, Ty Lee, Sokka and Suki all had their own combat forms.
I understand why they worked to get away from this in the new show. They undoubtedly wanted to show that Republic City had its own style, as the centerpeice of all the nations, a meeting ground where they all could and did coexist. It even makes a certain amount of sense with what they did: a staccato beat of sudden movements and rapid shifts in direction, a very good metaphor for the city itself.
At the same time, getting away from that was a mistake. There are two reasons for this. First, it cut down the distinctions between characters; you could pretty much replace any two people in a given battle with any other characters in the show, and it would really matter much as far as the animation went. Not much difference between an airbender and Amon’s chi-blocker lackeys.
Second, it emphasized the dull “Bending as a Sport” theme. Korra at one point claims she needs to go to Pro-Bending to “lean modern Bending”. Which might makes sense it it looked remotely good for anything. We already know it takes multiple hits to even stagger somebody in the arena, so the fights outside of it also felt lifeless and weak, with no real threat to them. It may have been necessary just to make the Chi-Blocker mooks look less worthless, as they would have been pasted by Toph as an 8-year old, let alone someone like Azula. There’s not enough dodging in the world to handle someone who will flood the room with raw, uncut imported Columbian pain and then mock you for squealing about it.
I would have been very happy had they deliberately separated the two, and showed that sports are not going to cut it when fighting for your life. And when they did go balls-out with the Bending it was fun. I’m still amused by the Chi-Blocker academy being flooded by Tarlock and Korra. I’m not sure if the humiliation was worse than the injury, but either way? Hilarious. Those occaisions were fewer and farther between, however.
Now, note that these aren’t the only issues. But there are a lot of problems and logical inconsistencies. I’ve been at this long enough and complained about enough. The major thematic issues along present all the mess above. Trying to deal with the actual stupidities would be a much, much more tedious task.
Now, all that said and stated for good, it wouldn’t be honest to lay into this series without taking a look at the good aspects. And there were really great aspects to it. As this is already way too long I won’t go into too great a detail, but it’s enjoyable.
(A) Republic City
ASk almost anyone who does like this series and almost the first thing they bring up is the City itself. The creators took a significant risk in limiting the show to a single location, but this works very well. Republic City is nearly a character unto itself. You do get an amazing sense of the city high and low, along with why it’s worth defending. As far as it goes, the location is 100% amazing, and truly a worthwhile setting. Not only is it interesting, but it stands up to scrutiny and has enough depth to keep the audience interest.
And well, that’s it. I could go into the details, but there’s not much to say more. Republic City rocks, and it’s almost the single best reason to watch the series. One of the most interesting settings I’ve ever seen.
(B) Tertiary characters
Here I’m thinking specifically of Tenzin, Lin, and Asami. The line between Secondary and tertiary is a bit hazy here, but to explain: Secondary are Korra’s direct friends; Tertiary are major background figures. Tenzin and Asami cross back and forth a couple times depending on the episode involved, but both are extremely interesting characters.
Note that neither is a terribly complex character and that works. Asami’s nuts; she more or randomly waltzes into the series after smacking Bolin with her vehicle and then seems to think “why the feck not?” Apart from that, she’s actually an ordinary person if a very well-off one and provides a certain amount of grounding. Tenzin is trying to be a leader while dealing with his children and general family life*. And he tries to be patient with Korra but damn if she’s not making it hard on him. She’s also obviously a complication he does not need.
But all of them are well done and each one evinces characteristics sorely lacking in the rest of the show. Tenzin tries to keep his temper in check, but it’s obvious he gets strained and quite reasonably comes close to popping his cork here and there. His relationships with others are realiostic, and it’s no surprise that he’s the narrator for the intro: he’s clearly the level-headed guy, caught between his mildly insane family and the very insane council.
Asami builds some interesting relationships with real (if quiet) drama and almost manages the amazing feat of making Mako and Bolin interesting. There’s some weird and actually kind of creepy subtext that both Mako and Bolin are basically using her when convenient but view Asami as a sort of “backup girlfriend” for when Korra isn’t available or loses her Bending. And I actually like this. I may not be an attractive trait, but it’s understandable why Asami would be interested in the pair, and why she would be overshadowed in their eyes by the Avatar. Sadly, it goes nowhere by the end of the season.** She’s made of awesome, though, and in one episode (The Aftermath) alone she has ten times the depth that Korra. does in the entire show. Asami learns some very unpleasant facts, makes a hard choice, and endures agonizing loss. And she doesn’t have to say anything to get it across.
I don’t want to go into the whole mess of characters, but I do like a lot of them and they’re quite well done as a whole. I would say most of the side characters work very well. In any event, I hoped to see other characters such as Iroh more than I did. They’re fun and interesting people and look like better fun than Korra herself. We should have The Legend of Iroh and Asami instead of The Legend of Korra, who, well, hasn’t done anything legendary. Or even all that noteworthy.
*Tenzin is a busy, busy man, with his little horde of children. Geez, Tenzin, give your wife some time off, man! Then again, his wife looks like the type who wouldn’t let him.
**Also, Asami is awesome, but her character design looks almost ethereal in contrast to the other characters. She’s almost too realistic to fit in with the rest.
(C) Korra being hilarious
While I don’t like Korra as a whole, one thing I do like is her naive-walking-face-first-into-stupidity. It’s funny, but it’s actually somewhat realistic. Korra’s none too bright, and it’s quite reasnable to watch her faceroll her way through half the conversations she starts. I find it perfectly OK, as well as funny, to see her get verbally pwned by random rabble-rousers. But these are also some of the series’s bestmoments and the only reason why she’s not a true Mary Sue.
It’s not just that she gets taken down: Korra is genuinely funny but also acting in a believable manner, trying to be cool as a teenager without really knowing how to act in an unfamiliar situation. Other people also react reasonably with confusion, annoyance, and even mockery For example, it’s hilarious to see how Korra melts Lin Beifong’s brain with a single misplaced guesture in the very first episode. And this points out major aspects of both Korra and Lin at the same time.
This might seem to contradict with what I said earlier about Korra being stupid, but there’s a difference with having a prioblem with Korra acting silly, confused, or out of place than with her acting like a complete imbecile. I like human characters being human and making human mistakes. It’s when they slip into making cartoon mistakes I have a problem for. And here the animation really works against the show. They wanted to make it look and feel much more real. They succeeded. But along with that goes much less tolerance for the wackiness.
Other humor I liked: “I am currently wetting my pants.” ; “My Cabbage Corp!”. Weirdness which is appropriate to the situation, in short.
So, in short, I’m vomited up enough verbiage for today. You make of it what you will, but fundamentally I was saddened more than anything else. The series is just a tedious waste of my time, constantly raising my hopes only to dash them minutes later. I suppose you may hold out hope that Season 2 will do better, but I don’t. This show is the ultimate victory of style over substance; that’s a ratio which is unlikely to change anytime soon.
Perhaps the weirdest thing about the show, to me anyway, is the nature of the Avatar. IIRC, only Lin Bei Fong ever really notes the difference between Korra and Aang, and more than that, nobody really treats Korra as the Avatar. Which, she frankly isn’t. She’s more like Ah-Wannabe-the-Tar. But more than that, I kepty wondering why the Avatar seems to have a separate mind and personality for every incarnation, as well as separate talents and opinions. At some point, I have to ask, “How is Korra even a reincarnation of Aang?” If she fails at basically everything an Avatar is supposed to do - and every victory she has in this show seems to be a combination of complete blind luck and having it handed to her - what the hell is she? What makes her a worthwhile person? What makes her the Avatar instead of, say, Asami? Apart from having Moar Suprpwrs!!!111oneONE, what makes her something other than a wandering, penniless jackass mooching off her betters?
What IS the titular Legend of Korra? What does she do which makes her story worth watching? What makes her a Legend among Avatars, exept being so useless that the rest of them snicker at her utter Failshitude? Where does she even come up to the basic standard of competence, let alone greatness?
No, it’s not just you. <shudder>
Great posts overall.
Thirded. I’m not nearly as down on the series, but Meelo was a particular low point.
Bear in mind that Benders do the same. Most of the original series was Aang looking for training with the various elements. Just being a Bender doesn’t give you power, you have to find a master and get trained, then practice - it’s pretty much like any other martial art. If a bunch of people were bullying everyone with Jeet Kun Do, does everyone throw in the towel?
When I was watching the show, it occurred to me that Tenzin’s kids were intentional references to TLA characters. One of them way Mai, one of them was Ty Lee, and Meelo? Meelo was a little Boomy.
I still hate him as much as you and he’s weird, but he makes more sense if you look at him from that perspective.
This looks like the most recent Korra thread. Just wanted to say I loved the origin story in the latest episode.
Actually, this one has been seeing traffic lately, and there’s been a little discussion about the Book 2 episode you mentioned.