Avatar: The Last Airbender was something uniquely special when it hit Nickelodeon some 5 years ago. The kid cartoon about a young boy’s quest to restore balance to the world enchanted viewers of all ages, with its great mixture of adventure, friendship, and action. It was a Western take on Anime that still stands above most shows.
3 books, (one crap movie) and a spin-off comic later, and we get the sequel series The Legend of Korra, which ended its season this weekend. It was intentionally meant to be a mini-series, but positive response has spurned at least a second book, though the end date still sits at only 26 episodes.
Anyway, I thought I’d take a look at how the show fared, and what mighty shoes it had to fill.
Legend of Korra, even as a followup series, is a breath of fresh air. The landscape of cartoons right now is filled with, honestly, very immature shows, so as this series began I'd been watching the whole time, quietly, with a big silly grin on my face. Once you get used to the fact that this is sort of a clean slate for the Avatar universe we all know and love, after about 5 minutes its like coming home from college and snuggling back in your old bed. The flow of the show and action production values haven't missed a beat; From chi-blocker fights, to simply the funnel of water that shoots out and catches Korra when she dives into the sea, the animation is even MORE gorgeous if that's possible.
Now as a pilot, I think “Welcome to Republic City” does about as much as "The Boy in the Iceberg" did, with not much of a singular plot or even storyline setups, but a lot of character intros and world-building. The tonal change takes some slight getting used to; it's not really that different from the original show, but because the characters are older, some of the child-like gags for them might seem awkward.
The big question mark coming in was the 70 year jump, but you immediately get it once the episode gets going; It gives us a chance to keep some lineage of some of our favorite characters and their legacies, without being too much of a distant memory.
Korra's fiery spirit instantly endeared me to her, and I'm thankful she's spunky without being obnoxious. I love her arrogance at her skill and being the avatar- and that she's been kicking ass since she was a tot! That, along with only having to learn Airbending almost exclusively throughout the series makes a neat reversal for the show to set it apart from its predecessor.
Her best moment for me was “Out of the Past” which delved into a mystery/subplot involving our generation 1 heroes. As much as I liked seeing our old friends in that flashback, my favorite aspect of the episode still involved Korra. Not to be outdone by all the story exposition and plot, This was just great for her character. Most episodes have ended with her failure. She's been doubting herself, can't communicate with her past life, and has done a lot of crying. But here, I just so loved how she was able to keep it together and eventually display inventive quick-thinking, to free herself from Tarrlock’s cage. Its moments like these that give Korra the potential to be a better show than its predecessor in the long run.
The first part of the season dedicated its time to a new sport called Pro-bending, and I couldn’t be more impressed with how fully realized it was as a completely original creation. You can tell the creators worked hard to give us something that will continually be exciting to watch, while having a solid set of rules. There's hints of all sorts of sports in there, including boxing, hockey, dodgeball, and even tennis. Not even Harry Potter’s Quidditch sport can compare. Here we learn how tie-breakers and even cheating can factor into the matches.
But what was neat about pro bending was it wasn’t just a tangent. The sport serves as a mechanism to show how conflicting this modern world and old traditions were going to be (A Leaf in the Wind) it was the strand that taught the gang about team work (The Spirit of Competition) and was the showcase for Amon’s first major public attack (…And the Winner Is)
The only thing sad about pro-bending is that we might not see it again. I would love to see kids doing it street-ball style in the ghettos of Republic City!
A defining aspect of the first series was the central group of characters that helped Aang on his journey. Love for Katara and Sokka is hard to top (maybe it’s those big blue eyes?) and here is where The Legend of Korra might get the most criticism. Team Avatar 2.0’s core friends consist of Fire-ferret brothers Mako and Bolin, and later Asami, with Master Tenzin and Police Chief Lin BeiFong as extended allies.
Mako is instantly a divisive character. He’s brought in as the love interest almost immediately, and the show spends a fair amount of time, even an complete episode, focusing on romance within the group. This is understandable since they are teens and hormonal, and all that, but it does have a slight stench of ‘shipper pandering, and I always felt the stories were better when we didn’t get into all that stuff.
Funnily enough, in his debut, Bolin seemed even cockier than Mako, but the character quickly shifted into the comic relief of the group. He does his job well, keeping spirits up and being overly enthusiastic, at times. But some of the best laughs ended up coming from the animals or Tenzin’s kids- particularly the rambunctious Meelo.
While the Equalist uprising was the main story focus of the show, the closest thing Legend of Korra had to a subplot, probably had to do with the beautiful Asami and her wealthy dad Hiroshi. Not much time was devoted to the rift between father and daughter, but we got enough information in “The Aftermath” to carry the subplot through towards a teary finale for the young non-bender.
I was actually surprised that Tenzin didn’t have more “teacherly” moments with his student Korra, but he wasn’t hurting for presence. Being a member of the city council, he was very involved in all the series ongoings, and later down the line, he 'repped for Air-Benders in a mad awesome way! Speaking of mad awesome, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the sleeper star of this series: Lin BeiFong.
Lin practically steals this show from Korra with unbelievable feats of metal-bending learned from her mother (and my favorite Avatar character) Toph. Lin starts off really mean, but once she starts helping out, her badass-ness (?)doesn’t quit. From metal claws to seismic sense, eventually you will see her TEAR DOWN AN AIRSHIP single-handedly, (Turning the Tides) and when she loses her bending, it’s actually a more devastating moment than when Korra loses hers.
And speaking of losing bending, this was a brilliant device for conflict this season. All thanks to this wonderful new mysterious villain, Amon. He had better motivation than just being bad for bad's sake like Fire Lord Ozai was. His ominous rally got things rolling (The Revelation) and even though we knew he had to be lying about his origins, the questions surrounding Amon made for great watercooler discussion, and overall buzz for this show. “Is his face really burned? Do you think he can bend? Why can he do what only an Avatar can do?” I mean, people were podcasting, and blogging theories all over- as if this were LOST.
Not to be outdone was another side of the same coin, Councilman Tarrlock, who looked to also be making a play for control of the city, but in a much more indirect way. His influence was really highlighted in “The Voice in the Night” Where he used the public and media to manipulate Korra into joining his task force. It went even further in “When Extremes Meet” where he began to oppress innocent people, and lock away Korra’s friends. It is also in this episode that he provided the single best one-on-one fight of the season.
Tarrlock, and Amon are eventually revealed to be brothers, and blood-benders at that. This was a great reveal, and their flashback told in “Skeletons in the Closet” was the single best story told all season. I’m not sure that I am completely satisfied with the ‘bloodbending without a full moon’ explanation, though. Basically there isn’t one- they are simply born with the ability, which is a “they can because they can” type of excuse that I never really like. It essentially makes these blood-benders more powerful than any other element, and throws the entire balance of the elements off.
But Blood-bending, simply as a concept, is one of the most interesting things the Avatar world has given us- there's something so inherently terrifying about this ability, that whenever it factors into the story, I'm on the edge of my seat. Funny how much mileage they got from something introduced in basically a throw away episode from Book 3. Coupled with Hiroshi’s mechs and machinery, the bad guys of Legend of Korra were more than formidable, and I would argue, more interesting than our main heroes.
Overall, with the city setting and her great responsibilities, Legend of Korra felt very much like a great superhero story. I know a lot of people miss the worldly adventures and visiting towns, but Republic City is providing so much fresh material for the Avatar universe that it’s ridiculous. I love that we are looking at socialism and industrialism here. I loved that Korra got to deal with the public and media, while juggling her duties, her training, her pro-bending obligations, and an uprising that's much bigger than simply the villain who terrifies her.
There’s a bit of a mixed issue with the season finale “Endgame”. While it was cool to finally see her in the Avatar state, some felt it was ‘too easy’ getting there. Here when Korra is at her lowest point, Aang shows up and gives her those powers back. It’s the deus ex machina, yes, but I ask: is there anything more appropriate than the the God-like Avatar? It’s perfect use of the device in my opinion. Would I have liked to see her struggle more with gaining those elements back- or if she gains them back at all? Maybe. I really wish this show didn't already have an end date. Or at least had as much room to breath as TLA did. I can't help watching it, thinking about how limited their time is, and all the things I want to see. But considering the creators didn’t know they’d be doing another season, I will cut them some slack. For the sake of wrapping up this serialized saga, I think they did more than a good job.