Last night, I finally finished The Legend of Korra on Netflix. It took me a while to get through four seasons of it (season 2 was a drag, but I’ll touch on that below), but I finished this race. I never got to watch the show as it aired on Nickelodeon since we didn’t have cable at the time. Yeah, I could’ve found a way to watch it online, but I wasn’t really into getting a lot of streaming services at the time.
For those not in the know, The Legend of Korra was the sequel to Avatar: The Last Airbender. I talked about Avatar here years ago, and my opinion on it hasn’t changed: it’s perfect. There aren’t many American animated series that I can say that about. Can I say the same about Korra? Well, this is 5 PROS/5 CONS, so that’s a no. I do think it was a pretty fun show, though. I know the show was kinda divisive with some fans of the franchise. Avatar: The Last Airbender is a perfect show, so trying to create that again would be tough.
So, it’s been 70 years since the events of Avatar, and the
world has developed well thanks to Aang’s and Zuko’s efforts. A young
water-bender named Korra ends up becoming the new Avatar for this cycle, and
she’s sent to Republic City to train with Tenzin (a son of Aang) to learn
Air-bending. While in the city, she makes friends with two brothers (Mako and
Bolin) and the daughter of an inventor (Asami). For the first season, she ended
up going against a non-bender supremacist movement led by a man known as Amon.
We find out that he had a similar ability to Aang’s in taking away bending.
For the second season, Team Avatar and the world end up
dealing with the Spirit World. Unalaq, leader of the Water Tribe and Korra’s
uncle, tries to recruit Korra in doing something with the Spirit World’s
portals… I kinda drifted off here since Season 2’s a wreck, but know that their
actions resulted in the spirits being able to cross over into the physical
realm. Season 3 deals with the fallout of that and the re-emergence of an
anarchist group known as the Red Lotus. Their mission is to kill the Avatar and
bring some anarchy in the world to bring balance. They don’t do that
(obviously), but their actions are felt with Korra and the world with Season 4.
There, the new leader of the Earth Kingdom (Kuvira) tries to overplay her “Make
the Earth Kingdom Great Again” card, and it’s up to a frazzled Korra to take
her on.
PROS
1. Furthered the Avatar Universe and Lore – We got to see what the actions of the original Avatar team influenced the world in LOK. Republic City is just one of the things that was ushered in by Aang and Zuko. We also got to see Bending grow in certain ways. We even get to see what became of some of our heroes from Avatar like Katara, Zuko, and Toph. Sokka was left out of this group, and while that kinda sucks, it does make me wonder whatever happened to him. We even find out what happened to Iroh.
We also get new things added to the lore. Toph’s metal
bending is pretty much normalized in the show with the city’s Police force. We
also see some other bending abilities grow. We even get the return of an almost
extinct but familiar bending ability. We get the origin of the first Avatar,
Wan. We also get more of the Spiritual realm where Aang would sometimes visit
in Avatar. That Face Stealing dude didn’t show up, but that annoying owl does.
2. Good, fun characters – While the show isn’t perfect, it
did have some good characters. The new Team Avatar (Korra, Mako, Bolin, Asami,
and Tenzin) were okay on the whole. While there were some things I wasn’t a fan
of (a lot of the relationship subplots and some lack of development), this was
a good team. While they are kinda reminiscent of the original team, they aren’t
exact carbon copies. Of this group, I’d actually say that my favorites from the
team were Tenzin and Asami. They were cool and gave me the least problems
during the series. My least favorite was probably Mako, though. I just never
saw the appeal.
We also got a crapton of side characters during the run of
the show. Some of my favorites were Lin (one of Toph’s daughters), Opal (Lin’s
niece), and a couple of others. One character that made me come around at the
end was Varrick, who was more of a comedic relief than Bolin was. While Team
Avatar had their development, these characters and others had some nice
development over the four years.
3. Awesome Fight Scenes – If there’s one thing I can say
that this show does better than ATLA, it would be the fight scenes and action.
The fights are pretty kinetic and intense. We get to see bending done in ways
that were only hinted at on ATLA. Choosing a favorite fight would be tough
since a lot of the action just gels so well together. The first season
introduced a new bending sport that was actually pretty cool to see in action.
4. Interesting villains – Each season had a different
villain, and while they weren’t all perfect, they were pretty interesting. In a
way, they all had some good points to them. Amon was trying to stand up for
non-benders who felt powerless in society ruled by benders. Unalaq (probably
the worst of the bunch in terms of writing) supposedly cared for the
environment and the spiritual side of things. Kuvira wanted to make the Earth
Kingdom powerful again after the death of its own tyrant. The Red Lotus (led by
Zaheer) wanted to restore some sort of balance in the world.
They all started out pretty well, but I will say that they did kinda peter out towards the end. The only good thing I can say about Unalaq (bonded with the evil spirit Vaatu) was that he turned into a kaiju at the end of Season 2 (yeah, that kinda happened). Of the four seasons, I’d have to say that Zaheer and his group of nerduwells (?) were the best of the bunch. Unlike the others, their ideals were interesting and you actually got to see them deal with the ramifications of their actions.
5. More complex stories – The stories we got for Korra were
also pretty interesting. Korra’s time as the Avatar was much different from
Aang’s in that she is doing her best to deal with the world’s problems. She’s
essentially dealing with a major threat to the balance of the world each season.
Sometimes, the threat can’t be punched out… even though that’s what usually happens
in the end. This is an action show, after all. Sometimes, she has to use other
means to help the world, and that’s something we really hadn’t seen on screen.
CONS
That being said, the last half of the season did wrap up in
a fine way. We ended up getting the true origin of the Avatar, and that was a
cool two-parter. Wan, the first Avatar was pretty cool, and the animation used
for the past was pretty striking. The last part of the season was pretty fun
with Vantu, the evil spirit, combining with Unalaq to become a Dark Avatar. It
might not sound all that great, but having a giant spirit version of Korra
fighting Klaatu in Republic City was fun.
2. The Handling of some Relationships – One of the biggest problems
I heard about the series before I saw it was the handling of certain
relationships especially in the early seasons. We had a lot of triangles going
between the characters, and they weren’t handled well. It felt like a lot the conflict brought up in
the relationships was pretty forced especially with Korra and Mako. It also
didn’t help that the Korra/Mako pairing ultimately went bad since Korra… was
kinda horrible to Mako. I don’t like Mako all that much, but when he’s actually
being the logical one in the relationship, that’s not good for Korra.
Then, the Korra/Mako/Asami triangle (which wasn’t that good in season 1) unfortunately returns in Season 2. Luckily, the show did get better with relationships in the later seasons. Bolin/Opal, Varrick/Zhu Li, and Korra/Asami were good pairings. Yes, you read that last one right. I heard about what happens at the end years ago. The creators wanted to do more, but the network vetoed that, so that’s why those two at the end kinda seems out of left field. You could’ve seen it either way at the time.
3. Korra took a while to grow on me – Korra was no Aang, and
that was a good thing. Her journey was different, and I like that. I will say
that it took a long while for me to really gel with her though. You get to see
her come into her own as the Avatar over the series. She does some good things,
and we see her fall here and there. I didn’t like how she was regressed at
times though. That was one issue with each season being standalone. Season 4
does have her at her best.
4. The writing and development could be a bit poor at times
– While I liked the show, the character development could be a bit poor with
certain characters. It was definitely poor with folk like Mako and Bolin. It’s
kinda grating because they’re main characters. For all he does on the show,
Bolin basically remains the funny hapless romantic. As for Mako, he stays
pretty dull. Korra went through this as well, but it wasn’t as bad with her.
Some plots could also move kinda quick at times. I think this had to do with
the fact that the creators had to wrap everything up in each season. Still,
things don’t seem as developed here when compared to ATLA.
……………………………….
In the end, The Legend of Korra was a good show with some
noticeable flaws. It did get better over its four seasons, though. It may have
been even better if the network let the show thrive instead of hindering it.
That’s not the fault of the creators though. The creators did what they could
do, and while everything didn’t work, they definitely had more good than bad.
As for my favorite season, I think Season 3 sits at top. Seasons 1 and 4 would
be a bit interchangeable while Season 2 sits right at the bottom. Well, That’s
all I got for the franchise for now. If that live action series ever gets off
the ground, I may cover it. For now, Peace, God Bless, and be careful out
there.
No comments:
Post a Comment