Animated Atrocities #141: The Legend of Korra Book 1

are you ready for this I'm not sure you can do this later if you want to well thanks to you that's not really an option life is less than an improv anyway let's get this one over with so The Legend of Korra when I said I was going to review season 1 for this animated atrocity a lot of people were confused it's not like I'm the only one on the face of the earth not like the first season but this show is definitely more well liked than anything else I've reviewed thus far actually I don't know if that's entirely true and it's hard to be comparison like that the people who like say Totally Spies probably think of it as a simple entertainment or a guilty pleasure even when it comes to the Legend of Korra I've heard opinions range from thinking that Korra is just okay to of being one of the greatest cartoons of all time this show really I mean it looks fantastic but there was just so many awkward storytelling moments and so many little things that just builds up and up into bigger and bigger problems some people who thought that this was gonna be like a a joke review and I was kidding around but no I seriously do not like The Legend of Korra at least the first two seasons I am always honest with my opinions if nothing else even during April Fool's I don't make reviews in sarcasm what you hear from me in these reviews is pretty much my opinion and I hope you can at least believe me on that front I have to be at lunch there were times when the show kind of pissed me off I want to make my story clear I got to the show late I watched it for the first time ever a few months ago and I watched it almost immediately after finishing Avatar The Last Airbender I had just marathon that show not for the first time obviously but I didn't in preparation to finally tackle Korra one of the most acclaimed shows of this decade and at the time I was really into fantasy and studying world-building to help me with my own fantasy series that I still work on here and there it's probably why I picked this random time to watch through the avatar series once again and ever since then I've been debating like really really debating of whether I wanted to do this or not but enough people seem curious to my overall opinion the first episode was fairly but hey getting back into things can often be sloppy however by episode love triangle I was ready to quit for the first time I know that's actually called episode 5 the spirit of competition but it's episode love triangle and it's always going to be episode love triangle to me but people take commits me to keep going stating that the series gets better so I put up with my issues on the series and God's episode 12 and episode 12 pissed me off if context wasn't important I probably just be reviewing that one episode but because Legend of Korra is one continuous story I need to tackle the entire series as if it's a movie and to be fair it has a lot of continuous problems that don't just happen in one or two episodes for what it's worth I have watched through the entire Legend of Korra series twice and I watched through season one three times and yes the series does get better not as good as the original avatar but much better than the first two seasons something like I can actually say that I like now I dislike both season one and season two of the show but contrary to most people my least favorite season is season one why well season one has a distracting lack of Eric Julie Julie Julie Julie Julie do the thing do the thing do the thing dude do the thing I'm not kidding that that is pretty much why I like season two more Varrick is just the best no qualifiers at all he is just the best I do slightly joke but he is the reason I was able to get through season two at all if it wasn't for him I would have stopped watching entirely especially since the villain of season two is more or less a clone of a minor villain in season one I don't want to say that I had the wrong mindset going to the show and argument I feel that might come up as the show had something that many other shows didn't have expectations I go into something like the nut shack for instance it's like what what were you expecting however when it came to Korra what was I expected well I was expecting something like avatar it's not a reboot it's not a remake it's not a spin-off it is a sequel it is supposed to be a direct continuation or the first and I had no reason to expect anything but something of similar quality that I got in the first I won't say that Korra is a victim of high expectations but a lot of my complaints will be from the point of view of a disappointed avatar fan I'm just gonna be upfront and honest about that but even if I never watched the original avatar series I think it's safe to say that I would not like this show I am a writer first and foremost and there is so much of the show that I didn't like as a writer there were just so many characters that I didn't like a constantly aggravating love triangle and some of the worst uses of deus ex machina that I had ever seen and frequents I mean frequent storytelling and world building blunders when I say world building blunders I don't mean that it's different from the first I mean the terms that this doesn't logically make sense in the world that you've created a lot of people don't like the 1920s aesthetic but I didn't mind it too much I could see it easily working and there are only two times when it really got distracting though number one is these radio style introductions I'm going to be blunt I hated these vehemently and they were constantly a pain to deal with even in season three and four especially in season three and four is working with the enemy Asami turns against him and following another I get what they were trying to do create the impression of a world gripped by radio and showcase the aesthetics of the world the problem like much of korra is that there is no logical follow through with the choices that they've made this is the most consistent problem with the show for the past 50 years in the real world this kind of serialized radio talk has been literally mocked and parodied and has never been used seriously there is no way to take it dramatically seriously on any level when I hear an introduction to a core episode it makes me feel like I'm watching some cowboy cartoon from the 1950s or a superhero show from the 1960s something incredibly corny and done for no other reason than to entertain small children when last we left mr. incredible and Frozone had just discovered the startling disappearance of the West River Bridge the disappearance of the West River Bridge is startling what dastardly demon could have done such a dirty deed this is one wild scene Big Daddy every time in episode left me off with a dramatic ending these radio introductions would just plunge the whole thing right into the realm of ridiculous sure it fits with the 1920s but in every other way it doesn't fit with the show the other problem the 1920s aesthetic for me is when they had a flashback to decades ago and the story of the most infamous gangster the city had ever had even though gangsters is a 1920s thing sure it uses a horse thing and buggy to get away but it doesn't create a connection between the relatively few technologies in the original and the more modern tech scene in kora but these are small potatoes it's very hard without going into a full lecture on rural building to explain why much of this doesn't work so I'm going to give you a micro example to help showcase a macro problem of the series on its own you could probably get away with this but it's mixed with several other things like it the plate Armour that the City Police Force uses from a world building and a writing standpoint this is stupid from every angle this is stupid they probably included it because hey it looks cool and it's something different which is something that you learn to grow out of very very soon when you learn how to world builds but they probably said the police officers are metal bender so it makes sense but when you get down to it when you think of it with the scrutiny expected from the Avatar franchise this doesn't make sense in any way that you look at it okay metal bending is more common now we'll put that to the side for now but it's safe to say that you have a significant chance of now running into an opponent with the metal bending ability it would be an absolute shame that that person wanted to I don't know toss the police officer around like a rag doll or better yet send the metal armor inward crushing the police officer lightning bending is now common enough for people to turn it into a reliable job at a power plant both metal bending and lightning mending are now more common and doesn't plate armor conduct electricity on top of that plate armor is specifically bad at one thing going against people with flamethrowers despite what spyro the dragon says if metal is continually exposed to flame the skin on the other side is going to get burned or if the fire is especially hot the skin will fuse to the metal avatar exists in a world where a sizable portion of the population is born with built-in flamethrowers the metal armor simply doesn't work as armour any way you slice it to put this in perspective it would be like a fantasy world using gold as currency and then figuring out that mages have the ability to just pull gold out of thin air that makes what is considered money no longer valuable and it completely goes against the original idea of the very concept it looks cool is not a significant reason to keep something in a fantasy world I understand that this may sound unbelievably anal but you have to understand that avatar the last airbender and by extension korra isn't like most other cartoons it's fantasy and on top of that Lord of the Rings style fantasy knots Dungeons and Dragons style fantasy and the specific sub-genre of fantasy when you make something like this you're trying to build a very consistent internal world everything plays into everything else this isn't like spongebob or a teddy where you can establish something in one episode and have it never come back when you establish something in Avatar The Last Airbender or Korra it's there it is a part of the world and it needs to relate to everything else the illusion here is exceedingly fragile yes it is very difficult to pull off but when you succeed you create something amazing it is why many people are drawn to fantasy in the first place they want worlds that can be thoroughly invested into The Legend of Korra's world is built a lot like a haphazard stack of blocks whenever they thought something was cool they'd add it not caring how it would affect the tower as they climbed up in a fantasy show like this everything needs to build into everything else in the original series because earthbending says people are able to use earthbending create massive trains and transportation systems moving mail and baskets all around cities let me put it like this the original established the concept of the Agni Kai which is basically when a firebender slighted another they would challenge each other to a duel using firebending attacks now wouldn't it have been like really really cool to have airbenders duel each other in a smart fashion well regardless if it would look it wouldn't fit into the world that was established because the air nomads had a culture of peace and non-aggression it wouldn't make sense with what has been established you can't just write this as you go you need to have the end of episode 12 plan before you even start on episode 1 and then just making [ __ ] up on the spot is a constant problem throughout the series metal prisons were frequently used in the original because into the middle of book 2 metalbending didn't even exist why are prisons still using metal in Korah sure not everyone can do it but in the original metal was often used because the villains could be 100% certain that no one would ever be able to get through them then again I suppose this could work if every single metal bender in Republic City was forced by law to be a police officer and then brainwashed bossing say style to be completely obedient but as far as I could tell that didn't happen and it's basically them assuming that gee golly gosh we could never run into a metalbender or a firebender or a lightning bender that wanted to hurt the police these are small details don't you think you're nitpicking just a little no this may sound like a bit of a double standard but yes if we were talking about most other cartoons this would be insanely nitpicky avatar is different it is a very rare genre in Western animation high fantasy avatar is a franchise that rewards the keen eye let me put it this way with Avatar The Last Airbender more that you pay attention to the more that you notice the better it becomes of course they make a mistake here and there like not explaining what happened to jets but most often that is the case this is a good thing it is what truly great media does on the first watch through you might notice the story in the characters in the second while sure you'll notice more obscure details that end up coming back later on the third watch stir though you see every nuance and every emotion poured into each frame of the character interactions and the subtle inflections in the voice the more that I watched The Legend of Korra it seemed like the less that I got out of it actually that's not entirely true the more things that pissed me off I got out of it but if you don't want to talk about little details fine and there are larger world building blunders I have to say this these are very very rookie mistakes that I could not believe they actually made let's talk about pro-bending Crowe bending is nothing more than in continual drain on the series and a waste of time I feel like the only reason this is in here is because they wanted to make Quran not stereotypical in a very stereotypical way she's a tomboy and every single tomboy ever needs to play sports a lot of people say that Pro bending is essentially Quidditch I disagree there is one major difference between Pro bending and Quidditch I actually know how Quidditch is played at no point does the show explain the rules even the main rules of pro bending at first it seems like the goal will see the opponent's knocked over the back edge but apparently know you can win rounds by doing something I don't know sometimes the round ends in a draw and I have no idea why and by the time the championship rolls around it really does feel like they're pulling fouls out of their ass and literally making up the rules as they go yes in a sports film like Remember the Titans or angels in the outfield they don't explain how the sport is played this is because they can assume that you know how the sport is played in the real world before going on as it's probably why you're interested in the movie in the first place this is also why many people of a hard time liking sports video games or movies because they don't explain however you can't get away with that in something like Avatar because you can't know how Pro bending works because it's not a real sport it doesn't exist in the real world and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone or Philosopher's Stone for those of you who use the metric system both the book and the movie they dedicate some time to explain the basic rules on how to play if Harry catches the snitch he wins and he can even get beat up and thrown into a wall and they're still not pulling fouls out of their ass if korra does i have no idea she wins maybe and if she does random actions like walking over a line or throwing things at someone's head despite them trying to get points by throwing things at each other that then she gets fouls I guess no joke I've looked up wiki as' and supplementary materials and I still don't know the basics of the game besides don't get flung off the back but apparently you don't have to throw the opponent's off the back to win the game I'm spending so much time on Pro bending because season 1 spends so much time on Pro bending it takes up a good chunk of the first half of the season and during any pro bending match because you don't know how it's played there is no tension this is a thousand times more true for the championship game where the cheating is so blatant that even the announcer is admitting it illegal headshots open your eyes Rep well folks it's a controversial call but the wolf-bats notch out nasty knockout to win the match and even if Cora and her team loses there's going to be no effect because everyone is going to have a problem with this in Universe the actual end result of it doesn't matter yeah I guess I know who I want to win because Cora's the main character and they do make the arrivals [ __ ] but I don't know how she's supposed to be doing this and it's just nothing I could make a whole supplementary video about everything on the sport that confuses me for instance going over the line basically gives you a foul but earlier in that episode maka wins his first match by going over the line and pushing everyone back I'm sure that there's a reason and the writers knew that reason but goddamn if they could tell the audience what that reason is but this is all okay because the winner doesn't matter every single second that we spend on pro-bending doesn't matter the final game ends up being completely irregular opts out of this story and Aman comes in and ends the championship so all that time we spent with the fire ferrets getting funding and practicing and meeting the rival team ends up completely pointless like from a narrative sense it is literally wasted time Korra meets maka and Bolin before it starts and Amon tensed and we already knew that he was gonna do some fucked-up damage [ __ ] to the town either of these things anyway we don't actually have to see a single game of pro bending played to know about within the story I mean there is a point where Hitoshi sponsors the team because Asami hit maka with her motorcycle since giving a bunch of money as Satoshi's first act on screen and his introduction you know that he's gonna be a bad guy I'm not even kidding maybe this is just a writer thing but him giving money as the first thing that he did was exactly how I knew that he was going to be a bad guy it's a tactic from the perennial classic mystery series scooby-doo Anna Toshi is a scooby-doo villain that this is seriously level 1 have the guy that you want people to not know as the bad guy do something really obscenely nice as his very first act in any other media 9 times he's probably the bad guy any other one out of ten times he's the red herring going back to the Quidditch thing Harry Potter did this a lot which is probably why I'm cold to the whole thing but let's talk about this money thing because it's another thing where there is no logical follow through Bowen and mokou are pro benders however pro bending doesn't give them enough money to fund Pro bending but they have no other job on the side at the start anyway and apparently they have plenty of time since Korra has time to practice her airbending what it ends up feeling like is that they're avoiding any sense of getting a job to spend their time and money they don't have on nothing more than a hobby I mean if they were pro athletes and actually making a living off of this then it would make sense but and he had no it doesn't sure they're able to live in an apartment owned by the arena manager but it really feels like it's not their best option and they could just look for another apartment and get out of this hole Sharad as I said Korra is a series that punished me the more that I paid attention the more that I want to know the more pissed off it made me every time that I watched Korra I noticed more and more things wrong the biggest hallmark of this is in the first episode after an admittedly nice prologue we immediately set off with this line and my experience there's really only two reasons that you'd write that line either you have way too much confidence in what's to follow or you have absolutely none at all it's become a common mean by both fans and detractors of the episode this is because in classic avatar fashion there's a lot of subtlety in this one line especially if you're fresh off of the original you see in the original show they literally said that it took years for the Avatar to master all of the elements and described as a prodigy and someone with the pressure of an ending world and an oppressive regime took months to learn all four than at the age of twelve Korra knows three out of four of the elements like the back of her hands with no issue at four years old if you look even deeper there's the subtlety of what the elements are Cora can bend fire in fact she bends so much fire that it might be her signature elements and the original year you're gonna hear this a lot so you might want to get used to it but in the original it said that the element the Avatar would have the most trouble with was the element off to them Aang was an airbender so he had trouble learning earth it's opposite in the cycle the opposite of water is fire why is Korra having such an easy time with fire I mean I know why because Aang was good at air from the start and we want to do the exact opposite of Avatar the original series goes all over the world so in this series we're going to stay in one place no matter how interesting or uninteresting that location is you have to remember that this is the first impression of the show and first impressions are important the very first impression of Legend of Korra is that the sequel series is going to disregard what was established in the first one but not only that it's going to be abrasive about it specifically to be different than the original regardless if or not that would make it a worse product overall forget the first series Cora's the avatar and you got a deal with it of course if you want to play with words and get super technical they did say that it wasn't strictly the order of the elements that would make it difficult for the Avatar to learn their opposite it was their personality they determine this alright sure let's play that game core should have difficulty bending water not air general Iroh the original general Iroh went over each of the elements in their defining attributes and spoilers the guy kind of knew what he was talking about according to him water was the element of change and air was the element of freedom if there's something that korra had an exceedingly hard time doing it was changed her main arc in conflict was fearing the change brought by amon and the possibility of losing her bending freedom was also something fairly important to her but she was born as a waterbender wouldn't that be interesting though a little girl growing up in the Water Tribe appear start waterbending McCory is unable to and as said she get teased forcing her to start showing off more and more without bending but the teasing doesn't relent then one day Korra gets so angry that she ends up bending fire it's then told to her that she's the avatar and at last she finally feels special she puts a lot of stock into this and it becomes some personal issues that she has to deal with as the series goes on to tell you the truth looking back I see so many more possibilities with Korra having troubled waterbending instead of airbending sometimes the most interesting possibilities are not always the most obvious one sure Aang's started with airbending and they were probably afraid that they couldn't make airbending more interesting but using the choices that they did they took a lot of interest out of the series the journey is more important destination I care more about Aang because we see him grow as a person and grow more powerful as things goes on it's harder to get invested in Cora's art because she already starts out powerful this kind of works if you're going for like a Shakespearean tragedy kind of thing which they almost went through and we'll get to that much much later but no in the end it comes as Cora knows everything but airbending because a new airbending and nothing else so this is how the first episode starts and then the flying bison comes in last time I checked a PO was the last flying bison so I guess that flying bison procreate asexually and then Katara references Zuko's mother and a story for another time way it's so good gran-gran I've been reading all about your old adventures I've been dying to ask you what happened to Zuko's mom well Jinora it's an incredible tale on its own I could let that slide but these three things happen in the first five minutes of the first episode and they paint a very insulting picture and strung together it's like [ __ ] you we're changing everything established about bending and you got to deal with it [ __ ] you flying bison are alive continuity who gives a [ __ ] about that it's just a sequel you want to hear about zookas mother the only thing that we left hanging in the original well [ __ ] you by our graphic novel you don't get to hear about it here I know that it wasn't intentional here but did they proofread this at all well you need to have studied the original series to get like Cora's masterful bending at the age of 4 as a problem watching just one episode any episode of the original can give you the picture that Apple was the last sky bison it was often treated as a rare and exotic animal this is why at one point he got kidnapped to be absolutely fair though there is an explanation for this later on in season two in the stupidest way possible the Fire Lord was keeping some hidden away from the world it's a good thing Zuko never mentioned them or Azula or Iroh and see getting into the Fire Lord and never them to be useful for the war effort it's not like we got to spend an entire episode with the fire nations army trying to steal the secrets of flying warships yes that explanation didn't really help things in the end at all the worst parts of when the show gets good is when they try to explain away the problems of season one and two in a manner of yeah we were stupid back then just don't worry about it well it's a nice effort it doesn't change what we actually had it doesn't help the explanations are often [ __ ] yeah we kept Cora locked away from the world but that was for her safety what means no one piece of media any piece of media we're keeping the chosen one hero locked away from the world has ever had any positive results ever you can't because it doesn't happen much of Korra's training has her kept away in an isolated place from most of human civilization to the point where she doesn't know what money is and halfway through Episode one it's very clear that Cora doesn't know how to people well so no one has bothered to teach the Avatar any oratorical skills I mean that's understandable she's just supposed to be a diplomat a spiritual leader a celebrity a politician a hero a role model but not talking to people that's not in the job description at all she just has to shoot [ __ ] with fire and wind and everything will be okay it's strange when the writing has the exact same flaws as Cora herself believing that being the avatar is nothing more than fighting then Cora gets into a fight and I really want to point this out it's minor but I love what the first fight in the series goes corridos dressed like a waterbender the first thing that they do is water Bend adder then after they lean know that she's a waterbender they fire bend at her and only then do they earth bend it's like what is this the tutorial fight for the video game attention to detail it's kind of important actually no I take that back they do pay attention to detail and some of the worst areas possible during this fight Cora vandalizes innocent people stores and breaks up public roads then she runs from the police during this chase she plows one of the officers into a block of ice that she created and she smiles about it this is more or less the introduction to our hero he when Aang and his group were fighting some of the worst people imaginable as far as I could tell they didn't smile about it but now Korra commits a crime and then she resists arrest and then she smiles is she assaults a police officer and in the end she gets away with it Tenzin takes the fall for her and agrees to pay for it with what I can only assume to be tax payer money and then Korra is apparently fully justified in blowing up at Tenzin in the next episode for being too harsh and serious on her I love Korres line at the end of episode one I saw a lot of the city today and it's totally out of whack yeah like you needing money to buy stuff and it being illegal to fish in the park and cops trying to arrest you after you vandalized shops and roads and it's peaceful protests and honestly the city is a lot cleaner and then any city of Republic City size has any right to be I suppose that brings us to the bender non-bender conflict this is season ones biggest failing I could go on for ages about this but I can sum it up in three words show don't tell and this is one of the worst examples that I've seen in a high fantasy show from a franchise as a claim as avatar I never thought that I'd see this bungled up this badly from the start we don't see any actual evidence of bender suppressing non-benders except I guess the gangsters but they're criminals and the police come to arrest them in the end anyway besides this we see absolutely no examples of bender suppressing non-benders we should see non-benders being denied service at stores being denied education x' kids getting teased by other kids police looking the other way yeah all this is harsh and it might be uncomfortable to write and watch but that's kind of the point of tackling the subject matter in the end it kind of feels like the non-benders are writing about social problems that they don't have when they do gets the equalist rally the amount of people in attendance seems to have come out of nowhere if there are this many people that have problem within benders there should be some more issues above on the surface or on the other hand if a man was making a big stink out of nothing and there really was no prejudice which is what the narrative is showing me then there's no way that this many people would be in attendance why this many people from the start would have an issue with benders and quite honestly not only is this rioting lazy this writing is cowardly you picked writing a story about prejudice okay do it show it to me it can't be done on a Kitchel [ __ ] Zootopia did it only six years later well the movie has its problems it's basically season one Accord unmask Lee better once again Cora has interesting ideas the idea benders and non-benders having trouble coexisting is an interesting concept and something that really feels like it would be in the world to the Avatar it feels like the proper conflict for this franchise but the only time this really comes for is after a maan makes things worse and worse for non vendors do you honestly expect me to think that his entire congregation is okay with making things worse and worse for non vendors because of his direct actions no the only time that any was followers turn on him is when he's revealed to be a bender and I would say tarrlok uses him as a scapegoat to actually start creating oppressive laws once again I feel that I have to bring up tone remember this is a show that has a much different tone than most mainstream Western cartoons it has different expectations because of that where you would be able to get away with much of the stuff that avatar simply cannot I'm going to be honest the only reason that anyone gives any kind of [ __ ] about Amon is his voice he has the perfect voice for a villain in such a way that I kind of feel sorry for the voice actor my quest for equality began many years go after I take your bending away you will be nothing thank you all for joining me on this historic occasion when I was a boy a firebender struck down my entire family and left me scarred that tragic event began my quest to equalize the world I mean could you just imagine this guy trying to order pizza but take away the voice and the intimidating figure and the shots and some of the random blinds that are kind of stereotypical he's basically V from b4 and etta or literally any other social reform villain he had potential like I keep saying there were ideas here I can imagine that after firebenders nearly destroy the world there would be a lot of tensions towards the idea of bending I can imagine him capitalizing on a social divide to his credit the cinematic angles the inflections in this voice they do make him very intimidating that is until we learn who he really is the guy leading the rebellion against benders is a bender himself you know I can't believe I'm bringing this up but Pixar has some rules for storytelling and animation and one of the rules is discard the first thing you think of because it's the obvious option and your audience is going to pick up that first Aman's belief is pretty much fake do you know what we call a twist that creates a product worse than it would have been if the character or story was exactly we thought they were we call that a Shyamalan movie what a twist but Aman's not just a bender though here's a blood bender pseudo spear bender okay let's talk about the power creep or as it's also known Dragon Ball Z syndrome Vegeta what did you say his power level is it's over 9000 remember this infamous clip that number was really high at the time but by the end of the series the power levels got too literally over 1 million so going back there talking about a power level of 9000 [ __ ] weakling this is probably going to be one of the harder points for me to explain metalbending lightning bending and blood bending all got more powerful in the modern era you see with lighting bending to use it you needed to be a level-10 badass completely devoid of emotions while you were doing it it was dangerous and elusive only reserved for three people in the entire series even the Fire Lord couldn't do it now it's so common that power plant workers can do it even ignoring the how this doesn't make lightening vending cooler or more powerful it makes it less intimidating it makes it weaker and it makes it less impressive and now it becomes counterintuitive you don't make these characters more powerful by giving them lightning bending it's just a power that everybody has why should I care why should I think they are more powerful this is power creep and it's probably going to be the thing from Korra that most effects a sequel series the worst example this is probably metal bending even ignoring the other world building problems metal bending gave characters a special advantage so if you want any tension you pull platinum X out of your ass these robots have pure metal so you can't bend it it's almost like metal bending isn't common in this room anymore but there are other weapons that can be used against it at some point it's like you have little kids saying I win times infinity well I win times infinity plus one and then you're serious ends with the giant kaiju mech made a platinum more platinum than exists on the planets with a gun that shoots atom bombs on its arm in a series that we're supposed to take relatively seriously the power crepe is probably the most continual problem with the series even beyond the first two seasons it's also the problem that has the most chances of damaging a future Avatar series when it gets to something like the end of season 4 how do you top that you know without getting totally [ __ ] ridiculous the other villains are Tarlac which is your evil stereotypical bureaucrat and to Toshi I will say this once again a Toshi is a scooby-doo villain the sweet innocent a homeless guy who who is so nice he gives out money to anyone who asks for it turns out to be the super bad guy oh [ __ ] also for the inventor of the car he is a [ __ ] in Episode seven he is getting away with basically framing someone else forget aspiring with a revolution how does Korra and the gang catch on to him he himself plants an anonymous tip that lures Korra and her friends to his secret Factory if he never did this he would have gotten away with everything and a man might have one he would have been totally in the clear and I don't think we ever actually got a reason to why he does this I guess except to kill Korra but I'm pretty sure a mom wanted to do that I'm not too keen on really any of the characters ignoring Cora's outbursts in the first episode she seems to be a character you really like or really don't a lot of people say that she's a Mary Sue but I don't totally go along with that she gets a lot closer to that than a character should reasonably get to be sure being badass of three elements from the start getting away with assaulting police officers and destroying ancient artifacts having the justification to blow up at an authority figure after said incidents having two boys fawning over her being able to do whatever she wants in love and being completely justified no matter who it hurts learning metalbending instantly however she does have her moments of weakness and her fear that really do save her especially number four I did really feel for her fears of losing her bending abilities to her mom and it's clear that she puts her personal value into being the avatar and having said powers which yes is a character flaw however the rest of the characters are I'm gonna be generous and say a mixed bag let's start with meelo he is the worst the absolute worst there is no qualifiers he is just the worst straight out of the Hunchback of Notre Dame gargoyles school of character annoyance he is one of my least favorite characters of all time and once he is in he managed to beat out DW who had 17 seasons to work up her position I am not joking he drains every scene that he's in with his grading voice these stupid facial expressions and constant toilet humor one of the worst moments in the entire series is when he's using an airbending fart attack [Music] oh I'm sorry he does this twice who can blame them they just didn't want to redo what the original avatar did the original avatar focused on having some kind of dignity and if they did the opposite of that they could really stand out one of the things that led to season sorting for being better was that they aged meelo up into something more tolerable the other two airbending kids fall into the background in season one which is good considering their competition then we have general Iroh who is a general and not an admirable despite leading a navy having the same name as another character so in Korra we have this character called general Iroh and he has Zuko's voice even though Zuko is still alive in kora and has someone else's voice and this character is named exactly the same as another character who appears later in the same series that's not confusing at all you want to talk about redundant though I don't think he did one thing of actual plot relevance he comes in with the Navy but they get sunk he sends out a message to tell the reinforcements to stay away but it gets intercepted so they come anyway he comes up with a plan but it only fails and gets him in the others captured in the exact same way that it would have if it was made by someone without any military expertise at all then he ends up in a battle where he takes on an Air Force but Cora would have beat Amon with or without him all it really does send the plane into a monster on the Statue of Liberty which they probably would have taken off anyway after the battle was over and then for the rest of the series he basically stands on a boat and gets orders not to do [ __ ] I watched through the entire series twice remember and that's all I remember about this guy he stays on a boat gets asked to help and then gets orders not to help Bowens alright force acolytes is definitely the highlight of season 1 but it doesn't get his strongest material and see it works as Varrick as an actor his lines often come across as corny and just whoa he's stupid then there's Asami I know that a lot of people like her too but season 1 is not her best foresters if she's meant to show the power of non-benders like she can only really fight when she's wearing a glove that essentially gives her bending abilities of course she is not wearing this in episode 8 when tarrlok uses waterbending to grab her by the wrists even though she probably should in the and grabbing her by the wrists make sure entirely helpless I guess the show really did want to invoke the nineteen twenties because that's the last time that this was dramatically acceptable a badass female being rendered helpless by someone grabbing her shoulder or a wrist it's such a stupid outdated cliche and a relic of the past when female characters were expected to be nothing other than damsels in distress hey Asami remember those self-defense classes that you talked about I thought that they might have taught you how to get it out of a hold especially one where he's only grabbing your wrists but no we need to sacrifice the plot for the sake of the plot and finally maka this design is not good I'm just gonna be honest he looks like a background character with your main character or someone should be able to point out who they are from a crowd which is a screenshot but he looks like literally everyone else in Republic City if you showed someone who had never seen the series a picture or a random clip where no one was just talking he was just on screen they probably wouldn't tell it he was supposed to be a main character but Lyn at least has his bright green eyes I know that Mach o is supposed to be a citizen to Republic City and he definitely looks the part but it's distracted personality-wise I guess he's supposed to be the shy reserved tough type guy but hey alright you can't talk about macho and Asami without talking about the stupid love triangle the love triangle of socks it sucks I have no idea who in the right lung thought this would be a good idea why it's included into this the series is brushed as it is and this just takes up so much time not only that but the love triangle makes everyone involved look like a piece of [ __ ] maka flip flops back and forth and Asami feels forced and romantic tension seriously knuckle flips back and forth at the drop of a hat seriously he has a set plan and wants to go with Asami but the second that someone else shows interest in Korra he decides to go with her korra annoyingly gets in between the relationship of maka and Asami and knowingly breaks Bolin's heart in the process and during all of this Marco says that he doesn't want Bolin getting heart and then he goes out of his way to do the thing that would hurt his younger brother the most even Pema giving advice about this sounds like she broke Tenzin up with his former girlfriend for her own selfish desires that's not exactly what happens but that's what it sounds like she's talking about not helping is that following her advice to the tea is what caused all of this pain and they spent so much time on this cut out the pro-bending and the love triangle and guess what's you've got time to fully establish the bending non-bender conflicts the characters coral struggled to become the avatar a Mons rise to power and that [ __ ] ending seriously the love triangle eats up all of episode 5 and then it never seems to [ __ ] stop well until episode 12 and episode 12 specifically the ending of episode 12 killed off any goodwill that this series might have otherwise built up with me deus ex machina doesn't even begin to describe it I'm going to assume that you've at least heard what happened and yes or August to Grenada spoilers throughout the story Amon is leading a rebellion against spending because he has the power to take bending away and it seems like he is one he's captured Tenzin and the other airbending kids and is threatening to take it away and from the show of people however a cordis Ides to fight him and in a moment of the most uncanny animation will ever see Amon takes her bending away except law no she could still airbend Amon just didn't take away course bending because reasons I don't care what's been said on commentaries or off the record whatever if you need supplementary materials to follow along with the actual plots I'm sorry but it's a bad story after the fact anyone can explain and justify away anything in story there is no reason the chorus should have the ability to airbend Amon has never had any difficulty taking away anyone's powers he was just about to equalize a family of airbenders in front of a stage show of people Amon just removed korra's bending ability but I guess he ignored her airbending may be among the Chessmaster genius manipulative bastard which is so stupid that you didn't realize the avatar could Bend air this also has to deus ex machina is in one moment after episode - Korra struggled airbending is dropped entirely like it's barely even mentioned because they want to spend so much goddamn time on a pro bending tournament that went nowhere and the love triangle it went around in circles after episode two of Korra doesn't seem to be training an airbending at all we don't see her struggle and fail or have hope or sports that she's finally getting it it's just she can randomly airbend while not knowing how to at the end because reasons actually no not because reasons because there are no reasons in fact it was established that to airbend you need to put aside worldly concerns and at this moment Cora is concerned about more things than she has ever been in the past on top of this we have a bunch of other cliches thrown into the mix Aman has the entire city nice grass he has as much power as he could possibly want or need he has the world's armies defeated and super technology that no one has ever heard of before and even ignoring that he has enough physical skill to best anyone and everyone in combat so at the last second he decides to ignore all of this and blood bin Cora for no other damn reason except to get himself revealed as a blood bender you could argue that he was getting cocky for the aforementioned reasons but it's just such a cliche and it doesn't do any favors for his character he went through the effort to paint up his face for the scar but he didn't go through the effort to make sure that it wasn't water-soluble I mean tattoos in this world do exist and Aman never had a reason to not be marked up at any point in the future and then he ends up revealing to everyone that he's a waterbender for no reason sure waterbender could have helped him Eve ain't drowning however there was no reason for him to make this over the top water tornado in front of everyone he gonna just propelled himself to the surface and swam on top of the water how but I haven't even gotten to the worst part oh this is small potatoes except what happens next amana's revealed to be a bender so all of the anti-bending sentiment he creating capitalized on it just goes poof it's gone forever you know these people incredibly angry at benders have just been lied to by another one of those bending scum they've been manipulated and this bender helps spark laws that oppressed non-benders even further but knob because Amon is a bender we're gonna forget all that it's all good no problems here I want to start by talking about what surrounds this between the amon deus ex machina and the aang do sex magne we have one of the best moments in the entire avatar series I'm not joking it's a quiet somber time much of it is without dialogue Amon escapes with his brother tarrlok and tries to bring him on more to it in life but Sarlacc wracked with guilt and knowing that either them could do nothing because more damage to the world drops an electric Donna light into the motor boats engine killing them both we just saw a murder-suicide in a nickel in cartoon [Music] it will be just like the good old days after this we cut to Cora though she's one she's distraught she has put so much stock into our bending abilities and now they're gone this is her worst nightmare realized being avatar and being able to bend as what made her Cora and while she can still airbend she's still not very good at it she's a mere novice and now she feels like she's nothing special she goes off on her own cheerfully looks over the edge of a cliff and our lowest moment she feels that she doesn't even have the ability to end it at this point this moment is amazing detached from what comes before to end what comes after it this moment alone would have made everything every pointless stupid annoying thing worth it to me if they more or less didn't take everything back season two could have opened up with something meaningful like horror struggling to cope with the loss and ability that she thought that she could never live without there are so many themes and stories you could tell yeah that's strange taking away some of her abilities actually gives her more story potential who'd have thought it's just one of the basic rules of drama even beyond Cora the city has been turned upside down benders and non-benders are hostile to each other so many people have lost their lives that they're required for not only basic living but to do their jobs hell the town's power grid might not be down but now one final middle finger before it's all over you might be able to explain away Cora suddenly airbending or a monster real but no leaps of logic or endless explanation can make any showing up and erasing everything in the last five minutes sound like a good idea when we hit our lowest point we are open to the greatest change [Music] [Music] if you think you can tell me I am curious give me one reason that the ending of the season one being written this way is a good thing and I mean that from a narrative or dramatic standpoint it's obviously a good thing in universe how does this in any way make season one better the excuse I'm most often hear is it it's like this because Nickelodeon was being Nickelodeon all of the crater's and told them that it was gonna be a miniseries and then in one season and then four seasons with all due respect that doesn't make sense I mean I'm sure Nickelodeon did that but this is written like they originally planned for more seasons but then were forced down to one and arbitrarily needed to end it on a happy note cutting our future plot lines and possibilities not the other way around seriously nothing here is broken in the right way to lead to more possibilities everything wrong about this ending everything feels like they were just trying to cut things short one thing that I am tired of is these seasons flaws being excused because of executive meddling yes executive meddling definitely did happen it [ __ ] and it's a legitimate reason to why many of the flaws cropped up but an explanation of why something is bad is not an excuse to why something is bad and if you don't believe me do you know what else was made worse because of unnecessary studio interference the live-action movie I'm not saying that it would have been good without studio interference and I'm not saying that Korra is as bad as the live-action movie far from it but a lot of the problems with the live-action movie were caused by behind the scenes issues like for instance the Ray spending why did they cast a white girl to play Katara because that was someone the studio wanted to play her have to have the rest of the village and her family look like her now after they filmed beginning the studio was like oh [ __ ] this is actually gonna be expensive and they mismanaged the budget living the film without money to complete some scenes which is why the bending looks awful in the movie do any of these facts make The Last Airbender any better as a movie they might help you forgive the production or look at it in another light but it doesn't change what the movie is what happens the Legend of Korra behind the scenes was unjust and unfortunate but they don't make season one or season two any better as a result look I don't need something to be perfect to enjoy it although this review might not help that impression the original avatar Last Airbender is when my favorite shows of all time but it's not perfect and yes I am just as critical of that show as I am on this one average our last airbender mostly doesn't have these problems although it does have some of them avatar last airbender it's not perfect even ignoring episodes like bottle of the Water Tribe there are things like the spirit bending which was always a [ __ ] cop out and the originals ending do you know my problem with the originals ending when Aang was fighting the Fire Lord this line selfless duty calls you to sacrifice your own spiritual needs and do whatever it takes that line there with me it's up there with the Cora's I'm the Avatar you method deal with it line spear penning was actually narrative Lee established and that's not a way it's a cop-out it was established that Aang would have to kill the Fire Lord and he would have to get over himself but in the end and doesn't he chickens out the narrative what was just told to me was that he selfishly put his own spiritual needs ahead of the needs of the world when the time finally came down to it and in the end what could have been a clever taking the third option became a cowardly cop-out and even with this in mind the four-part manali sozin's comet is one of my favorite things ever greatness isn't in absence of flaws but in how much an audience is willing to deal with the flaws and take them in stride the peaks and the original are much more noticeable in the Hollies and Iroh forgiving Zuko just like that it forgives everything melon Lord forgives everything but when it comes down to it I cared more about Sokka losing his boomerang and I cared for a second about the Romans [ __ ] and Legend of Korra the story of a mine the pro-bending that went in nowhere the rival team Tenzin's children the writing blunders just didn't give these things the strength that they needed people being able to tolerate the first season kind of mystifies me how do you deal with all this stuff I know in the comments I'm going to get is sure you don't like it but it's a really bad enough to qualify as an animated atrocity first of all at this point animated shows Tia is more or less just a brand name secondly when it comes down to it the main is that I don't think that the first season has given me anything positive sure it has pretty animation except when it wants to become stilton and uncanny but while a good story can save bad animation good animation cannot save a bad story and to me Korra fails and its hearts it constantly meanders around not really knowing what it's doing it spends time on so much irrelevant [ __ ] that ends up not mattering we spend so much time I'm Pro bending it turns out to the final match result does it matter as a rival sports team drops out of the plots and the final match was rigged anyway so meeting these guys training up for the final match what does it matter in the end chorus furor on losing her bending abilities she just gets it back instantly why did we focus so much time on her fearing we spent so much time on a love triangle and we focus on this instead of a plot line and world that actually matters why do people get so much out of anything that happened before the beginnings and if you are new to Korra I recommend that you start at the beginning it's almost like a self realization than anything before then was pretty much [ __ ] because in that episode Korra is suffering from amnesia and they basically re-establish everything that had happened before it does feel like a soft reboot there is a certain tragedy to not liking something and that goes for anything I negative review not just this it's not exactly a pleasant feeling to dislike something as thoroughly as I've disliked the first season of The Legend of Korra for me to get any enjoyment out of the things that I review I need to go this fight my way and spend months making an hour-long review but the more things they do end up liking the more enjoyable your media viewing experience actually is in the long run you're able to enjoy something that I can't and that's something that I'm never going to have it doesn't mean that you're lesser or your opinions are worth less you may be just seeing something that I'm not or you just don't care about the points that I brought up they're not as important to you as the good things that may or may not be there that's fine remember that this is a show that I so wanted to like I wanted to like it and every possible opportunity but at the end I just couldn't I'm still fan the Avatar franchise and I am eagerly anticipating whatever comes from the series in the future whatever a third book series will be like and that's all I have to say in the matter after all of this I think any of the Kish [Music]

Channel: TheMysteriousMrEnter

Views: 564,589

Rating: 4.5153046 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: J1ekVcFsa2A

Length: 52min 58sec (3178 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 15 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/DarkSaiyanKnight]

As well as this is made , does any else find it grading to have another "hey let's point out legend of Korra's flaws" I'm just so tired of it you know! If wanna do something new try Avatar the last Airbender I'm just so tired of seeing something I just love being constantly picked at.

[u/IAmChrisAMA]

The review is very solid. Makes some very true points but other points however are still not. The review probably should have been the entire series rather than just Book One but continuity is very important to a series like this. Things get explained later and many shows use this including the original TLA series.

[u/MrManicMarty]

I did enjoy Book One, but these kind of critical reviews are something I love. Just analyzing why something fails, even if it's something I enjoy (and especially if it's something I enjoy) is just really fun and fascinating and useful.

[u/TKHydro]

I watched it. Had some agreements notably the non bender prejudice and the love triangle.

That said I still love Legend of Korra.

[u/GoogMastr]

I enjoyed E;Rs Season 1 Review more. Probably because I share my sense of humor with him. But this was also well made.