Korra's 2nd Season is Awful A video Essay

[Music] this apple represents avatar last admitter as you can tell it's flawless good skin no dents completely organic and the best part tastes delicious now you know you can't go wrong from the skin to its core it is an amazing apple now what if i told you i'd get you an apple from the same farm scratch that i can get you an apple from the same tree from the same vine from picked by the same farmer and shipped to you in the same truck would you eat that apple i don't like apples bam this raffle represents the legend of korra it looks just as good as the original right in fact i'd say its skin looks even better see there's just one problem though it's got a couple bruises in it do you want to eat this apple no i don't like apples eat the apple now would you say that apple is good well why it was the same as the other apple it just had a few bruises in it yeah i mean those bruises were pretty annoying to get through don't you say it's a good apple because i had a lot of bruises on it oh good quality the texture the skin that tastes all of it was good i mean all i remember with the bruises and that my friends alleged cora and an apple a good show but the flaws stick out way more than it strengths and this was just season one now let's check out season two [Music] now to get everyone on the same page i will now with minimal snark and tangents summarize the events of season two this will spoil things and that is your only spoiler warning for a show that aired eight years ago alright let's begin this season takes place six months after season one ended cory can now use all four elements but hasn't put it together that air blasts don't equal mastery she can also use the avatar state for unexplained reasons most likely because it got nerfed between series and now it's just a generic power up taking a family vacation to her hometown for the holidays she meets back up with her parents and her uncle who is the chief of the northern water tribe his name is unlock and he's the worst with two default settings confused rambling about how he owns the south think queen of england and canada and preaching endlessly about the spirits which we find out this season have been reduced to generic pokemon a spirit attacks but unlock uses water therapy to subdue it he also reveals that core's 14 years of house arrest wasn't ang's idea but tenzins and her dad's no one feels like revealing that the reason why this happened was because there's a shadow conspiracy out to kidnap the avatar zekora out of development and father figures is now only listening to her creepy religious uncle core is also dating mako at this time and it's painful as mako continues to be generic while core is run to be incredibly and short-tempered with everyone around her to make her mid-season tradition more pronounced but this move only succeeded in alienating her supporters and galvanizing her haters next they take a field trip to the center of the south pole to unlock a spirit portal that will let people physically walk into the spirit world reducing the spirit realm to wonderland and trading mystery fur oversaturation core gets the portal open finds out her dad was exiled for war crimes and flooding a forest that caused spirits to attack also unolak has brought an entire fleet to invade the south pole in the name of peace brain dead cora is letting all this happen as the south pole starts to look a lot like 50s algeria believing that her sketchy uncle will sort things out she is completely blind to what's going on even rescuing her uncle from some freedom fighters cora's parents get jailed for association and despite her mom gain clemency thanks to her uncle everyone else gets life imprisonment during all this so sami has her subplot about saving her company for the 100th time but this is only excuse to bring in varric a rich entrepreneur who gets some of the best laughs in the show himbo bolin lacking any motivation or agency gets into an abusive relationship with eska unlocks daughter and mize clone seeing her family get oppressed makes koro finally turn against her uncle who's gone full generic super villain mayor carr failed to start a war because the president doesn't want to get involved with any of this mess mako lacking any skills outside of being people up and being extremely self-important has naturally joined the cops spills the beans about coarse play plan to team up with zuko's 37 yes 37 year old grandson airo who's about to betray his country who uses fleet to help the avatar cor and mako finally break up and become seafood waking up in a fire nation commune whose only medical treatment is pit therapy where we turn back the clock on all the previous avatars to meet the first avatar one who's just aladdin with worse hair this leads into the backstory that no one wanted and after watching it really didn't want in ancient times humanity lived on the lion turtles who would give people bending whenever they left the turtle to hunt for food despite this small subsistence lifestyle the community is flourished into advanced city-states one after stealing fire in a prometheus reference gets caught and cast out into the spirit lands where he meets up with a group of spirits led by a painfully unfunny thundercats character stinky the name is juan stinky is more accurate a few years go by and when one is wandering the world he finds two spears fighting deciding to split them apart only for it to turn out that the spirit he's just freed is the embodiment of darkness and chaos later he and the light spirit robba team up as one learns all the elements but is only able to use one at a time his spirit and human friends kill each other and this isn't because humans were enroaching on the spirit's land but because vaatu corrupted them and pushed them to do bad things he's what's personal accountability rava and juan fused to beat batu sealing him in a tree during something called harmonic convergence a pointless ticking clock right up there with hades freeing the titans now awake cora rushes to meet up with tenzin who has been reconnecting with his siblings while also building a relationship with his kids back in the boredom city where mako is investigating a bombing on his own because lynn trusts the advice of obviously crooked cops he's also back to you with asami because the love triangle was everyone's favorite part of season one bolin has become a movie star in varric's films not because it adds anything to the story the writers just don't know what to do with bowling so they keep throwing them into wacky situations mako in a waste of time b-plot figures out varick is the bomber and has bought a sami's company so they both can be war profiteers together mako gets set up volun stops there from kidnapping the president cora reappears and then everyone pretends none of this ever happened especially mako who's now back together with korra because she has amnesia and forgot they broke up why is this a thing it's a love triangle it always appears where it's never needed or wanted cora gets a spirit tour from genora who apparently is super attuned to spirits outshining her dad the field trip goes awry which nora gets kidnapped after meena cameo while cora meets up with the original iro who's inexplicably in this season after a quick pep talk cora opens the other spirit portal because what's the world to the life of one child now we're all set up for the big final battle they head down south by wasting more time by having mako not tell core that they're technically not together anymore fighting the northern forces they lose unlock reveals his grand plan a dark avatar so now dark avatar is our thing and it's as stupid as it sounds boomy frees everyone because he's good at playing the flute vatu gets freed fusing with una lock and fight skorra he wins thanks to tentacles and destroys korr's past lives plus rava transforming into a giant spirit monster a giant spirit monster he goes soul godzilla and starts his reign of terror by knocking over the statue of liberty back in the spirit world a very vulnerable korra realizes she messed up and her arc about getting in touch with her spiritual side has ended thanks to one speech from tenzin korra has learned nothing about spirituality besides having a coma dream and meditating one time but she can bend the energy within herself which is a phrase so vague the writers are able to interpret it into her making a giant spirit form to fight unlock with laser beams korra almost loses but then genora comes down from heaven to be jesus and save the day using a tea cup that was referenced barely once and never brought up again revealing a bit of rava is inside vatu cora is the avatar again and uses unlock's own spirit water bs to destroy him later korra decided to keep the spirit portals open not because anyone wanted this to happen but she needs to be different from juan and the riders needed this to happen so airbenders can come back in season 3. cora gives a speech and we end on a shot of spirits flying around in a scene that is supposed to evoke wonder but as we found out earlier if one of these things pass through people then they mutate into horrifying monsters man coming off of season 1 they really what the hell was that [Music] when the first storytellers were creating myths and legends they took inspiration from their surroundings mix and matching characteristics from creatures that their audience would know this was the approach that the original avatar adhered to when they designed the spirits centipedes with human faces giant animals all things that while surreal would still believably exist in their world and then when legend of korra came out they gave us studio ghibli leftovers these designs are not bad but they missed the point of the original entirely the artist wanted to give the spirits a looser less well-defined form making them appear as if they were made of energy excluding an alien presence completely detached from the world and while i'm sure this motif appeals to some people this degree of separation goes against everything that we've learned about the avatar world balance is an idea that was constantly brought up in the original spiritual era as much a part of the human world as humans were with the avatar being responsible with maintaining the balance between them the avatar is not a border cop it is not their job to keep these two worlds separate it's helping the two sides coexist where the true challenge of being the avatar lies the original show carried this topic with a great sense of mysticism and respect they were alien yet familiar separate from our world yet also an integral part of it in korra though it tries its hardest to make it seem like maybe these worlds should be separate the designs of the spirits and core are the epitome of this misunderstanding a failure to understand their own world and story the designs of the spirits were an intentional choice and for the first time ever it wasn't about the merchandise no they had to keep the design simple so it'd be easier to turn them evil this is probably the real reason that the spirits look the way they do season 2 is all about the spirits and what's better than normal spirits dark spirits they aren't evil they've been corrupted by spirit satan see they aren't at fault they're harmless and just want to be left alone it's this thing making them all crazed with a darker paladin monochrome look no i can't take these things seriously the concept of dark spirits was something that was hinted at in the original avatar series we saw through examples like haybai and the ocean spirit that went aggravated spirits would fight back taking on monstrous new forms that better reflect their rage but here's the thing when it was done in avatar they were not corrupted by an outside force it was a reflection of their mental state when this is presented in korra it's corruption this isn't how they're supposed to be at all and has to be forced on them while in the original from subtext this was something all spirits naturally did and i much more appreciate the older looks because they felt like a more natural extension of the spirits and to keep the use of metaphors let's take a look at the human face we as humans have access so many different facial expressions some can be so different you'd be surprised they belong to the same person spirits in avatar were the perfect manifestation of this idea hey bye after losing their forest was so twisted by anger for losing their home that their body changed shape becoming something monstrous but even then it still retains that glimpse of who they were before but if it was done in korra they would just change color and this is why the spirit designs are so much more loosely designed when compared to the more grounded ones in avatar it's just so much easier to create a standard look for both evil and normal spirits this was all done for the sake of shorthand if we see a spear like hey bye in the original we don't know if that's the spirit's default state or it's in rage form but by making all the spirits look the same and making the stark spirits so on the nose the audience can immediately distinguish between the two the shorthand though came at the expense of the spirits themselves stripping them of that mystique that was just built into them when i first saw ko the face dealer i was terrified his presence commanded fear yet kind of also had this strange beauty to it ko was one of the oldest of the spirits and i believed that as everything about him hearkened back to some primordial being i can imagine ancient hunters would scare children with images like this around the campfire he was mysterious but also real designs in cora reference anime while cute and cuddly in their own way they don't evoke any emotion from me and from the first moment they were shown i knew that the artist had made the wrong choice now whether or not what we experienced was an according to hoyle miracle is insignificant but what is significant is i felt the touch of god god got involved but why for conspiring to assassinate me [Music] each season of korra has a specific theme or idea season one was equality three freedom and season two was spirituality but unlike equality or freedom spirituality is a much more nebulous concept is being spiritual recognizing that there's a higher power a belief in god or is it smaller than that an understanding that there is something just beyond our physical forms according to dr maya spencer spirituality involves of recognition of a feeling or sense or belief that there is something greater than myself something more to being human than sensory experiences and the greater whole of which we are part is cosmic or divine in nature what is spirituality in avatar or more specifically what is spirituality to korra cora starts the season with no respect for tradition or the spiritual side of being the avatar succeeding with innate talent and drive alone while season one would have you believe she started down a path to rebuilding herself and starting to understand the spiritual side of being the avatar this isn't what happened she's reckless and impulsive obsessed with being a great avatar with no idea of how to do so core thinks of things in very simple terms she sees a bad guy she punches him she sees a problem she fixes it never asking the question of why or if there's a peaceful alternative season two is about core learning to become more attuned to the spirits to the world and to herself at this the season fails utterly the problem with this show is that it has a serious case of right message wrong genre it's an action adventure show where avatar had the run time to slow down and explore these questions cora doesn't this leaves her spiritual journey to be less of a character study and more fortune cookie advice being thrown at her by old men cora is never given time to breathe and meditate on anything this results in every spiritual milestone being broken down into side quests that cora needs to complete before moving on to the final boss entering the spirit world genora helped her through that contacting the other avatars coma and monks did that bending the energy within herself she does that but jumps a shark in the process this story could have worked but not with this writing and pacing it's frustrating to watch as avatar handled this aspect so well then to see the same team fail again it's disappointing but still not as disappointing as what the team did to cora though let's talk about my girl cora now there's a very vocal part of the fandom that hates cora they just don't gel with her personality her brashness and cockiness just aren't mixed in enough with her heroic traits they say which is fine people have opinions and arguing on the internet is a waste of time but i really like cora to me her journey from being that arrogant prep kid to the more world wary survivor we see at the end is one of the show's biggest achievements i was always engaged with cora's story and thought she was a solid successor to aang the writers were able to thread the needle for cora showing that she's not just a brash punk but she has a great sense of vulnerability and love to her then they made her a in season two of course you take his side i guess you should do what you think is right oh thanks that's a big help then what are we waiting for we'll never finish training with him in charge this is outrageous it's unfair how can you be on the council and not be a master fun fact the legend of korra was originally only going to be a mini-series that's right season one and done the writers i'm sure had an idea where they could go after but nothing concrete and you feel that divide in the narrative where the final three seasons all flow naturally one into the other with the events of each season being a direct consequence of the one before it season one has all to do with season two other than it setups the characters season two feels like a second season one rather than a second season this affects the story in the worst way possible as all the events of this season are tethered to setting up future storylines and dynamics rather than dealing with the main story but by far the biggest casualty of this shift in gears was cora herself having honored gone significant growth in the last season being humiliated and humbled while growing into semi-functional adults in season 2 she starts as her worst self with none of that prior growth gone is the person who had grown to respect tenzin and appreciate her friends to someone who vindictively turns on everyone who disagrees with her falling in with the first yes man that starts telling her everything she wants to hear while she often had a reason to be angry with the people around her makko did in fact do his job and rat her out to the president and tenzin did in fact decide to keep her on house arrest for the first 14 years of her life character interactions are always contrived with people acting as the plot needs them to rather than the plot changing based on the characters negative character progression is a thing and could have made for an interesting arc but this regression for korra is dropped as soon as it's convenient for the plot korra gets a two episode origin story snaps back to a character who somewhat feels like they went through the events of season one cora is functioning two different characters in the first and second halves of the season so i don't buy the idea that there was ever an arc that she needed to learn from or grow it was all for the plot which is awful but you know what it's okay at least we got the love triangle back right anyone don't judge me for everyone that hasn't watched the fudge of course season 1 there is one point that nearly everyone can agree on which was that the harem plot line about everyone trying to get into mako or korra's panties was a waste of time but then it ended mako left a song for korra who shot down bolin because she has a thing for bad boys the expectation then was that we would see and korra be a couple and see how their relationship would develop that was something that avatar had never really done khantara and and got together but we never saw them be in a relationship it was an exciting prospect to see how they would handle this and how did it work out you betrayed me and my family poorly now i am not a makhora stan to me they've always felt like a pity zootara but that didn't mean i wanted to see their relationship implode the way it did from mako and core's first conversation together they're arguing from the start the writers are trying so hard to show us why they shouldn't be together then when mako betrays cora she responds by trashing his office causing them to break up as you do is it sad kind of but it is the natural conclusion for the relationship they had but what happens next is where the real problems start because a few days after they break up mako is back together with a sami pretty much because they're just both lonely i had originally thought this relationship rants course but okay they're right the first time let's see how they build up and korra's back with amnesia mako isn't explaining that they aren't together so now we have a love triangle all over again i think the writers have a fundamental misunderstanding of love triangles because in a love triangle we have to want at least one pair of the characters to end up together chorus maga we have already seen as a couple mako and asami are dating just so the story has an excuse to have them in the same scene this is why the love channel especially fails in season two because they bring back the worst aspect of season one then make it worse by stripping all the chemistry out of the characters while holding it together with plot convenient amnesia when core and mako break up again i'm not sad in the slightest my only reaction when i watch this the first time was thank god it baffles me why they brought this stupid plot point back but after sitting on it and really thinking about it i believe i have the answer the reason for all of our misery and it's two words amiable x's look here's the problem they were never going to break up this team avatar you can't have cora and mako be these bitter exes who are angry at each other and barely want to talk so what's their other option they had to end the relationship amicably rather than having anyone own up to their wrongdoing the story uses amnesia to get coromago through the angry x's phase so they can then have its tragic oh it's sad that things didn't work out meanwhile asami is stuck in the wing not doing anything till the plot calls on her again i did not need mako and kora to break up i wanted their story and relationship to feel like it mattered that their choices meant something but when it ended in season two all these relationships everything just fell apart with no character wanting to touch this mess if the story ended with core and mako still being mad at each other i would have respected that ending because it would have created such great opportunities for growth instead they cleared the board to bring back to a status quo they thought everyone would be comfortable with no growth no change just more of the same old but speaking of growth let's talk about a character who doesn't get any for the non-gamers out there dlc stands for downloadable content it's an add-on to your main game that adds new characters and story that at the end of the day has zero effect on the actual events for example take sebastian vale from dragon age 2. he's your typical choirboy prince whose closest connection is this nun who proceeds to get blown up at the end of the elfina game make her no his entire life is shattered and absolutely no one reacts to this he gets ignored by the rest of the characters who continue on with their pre-scripted lines this is a sami in season two her plotline of saving her company only to have it nearly be stolen by varric contributes nothing it has no point outside of giving mako and bolin something to do you can cut all of her scenes and nothing would be lost while the new team avatar's dynamics are bad for a number of reasons asami consistently gets the short end of the stick being relegated to only having three contributions having money driving things or being an object to cause conflict between korra and mako this is frustrating because it didn't have to be this way hell suki came in the last third of season 3 but she was treated with more respect than asami was while sami does get some cool choreography to show off her fighting skills she never feels like she establishes her own place in the greater cast but is instead perpetually kept on the sidelines asami is the one character we are constantly being told has a lot of things going on in her life but we aren't shown any of it asami was supposed to be that character that embodied traditional femininity also showing that those weren't limiting factors after season one though she's basically sookie with more screen time and even more out of focus however she can take solace that she isn't the only member of team avatar the writers gave up on maybe opal is bowling material thanks yeah so he's an idiot i know what you love your thinking bullet is the best he's super funny and yes i agree with both those statements but that's kind of all he is bolin is incredibly likable and that's the reason why he gets as much screen time as he does but bolin being funny is kind of the problem all of his scenes have this shoehorned comedy element to them he can never play a scene straight take his reaction to cora kissing his brother he cries sad poor bolin but then it turns into this comedic ugly cry complete with prima donna clenched arms this is his first big emotional moment and it gets treated as a joke bolden never grows as a person he doesn't even seem to have any goals or motivations outside of being a nice guy now this wouldn't be a problem in another show with a lighter tone but it is here avatar's greatest strength was that it treated characters like real people complicated beings with many facets to who they were bolan is great i love his voice actor he's always entertaining when he's around but his life is a perpetual side quest with all the story lines feeling like the creators wrote the joke first then wrote the plot to get him there oh let's have bowen be a movie star and then i don't know have him stop an assassination attempt oh bolden is in an abusive relationship and then oh we played for comedy and he's immediately dumped at the end of the season i want boland to get his moment so badly the guy is just getting crushed at being too good at one thing and no one wants to take him out of that comfort zone now bolin's situation is enematic of the larger problem with the legend of korra which is its inability to write subplots bear with me as i describe the mechanics of storytelling but i promise it has a point stories are typically broken up into a and b plots the a plot will be the primary focus of your story meaning it will usually be about the lead and have the most number of scenes the b plot is generally a parallel storyline headed by more secondary characters every story has an a plot but not every story needs a b plot the easiest way to understand a versus b plots is to watch american dad which has this formula down to a science so for example in one american ad episode stan and his cia buddies are on the run in thailand this is the main focus of the story it's where most of the time gets invested but occasionally they need to cut away to something else so we move to the b plot where the rest of the family is having a slow-mo race there is zero stakes and exists solely for comedy the apot will usually end in some cathartic moment of learning for the characters while a b plot will usually at best and not a joke cora's a massive subplot problem is that it is incapable of telling a story where the a plot isn't centered around korra and on those few rare occasions tenzin unless the character is with korra odds are they are in the b plot where they accomplish very little and don't develop now this doesn't have to be a problem characters can be relegated to b plots and still have some of the best development in the show the problem with korra is that it chooses to make its beat plots not about the characters instead using them to get to a plot point that we brought up later in the show but this has the effect of making almost all of them feel like anime filler the worst example of this in court is actually in season three embossing say where makko and bolin rediscover their family and we get exactly one super sweet moment of them with their grand grand and then it's almost but then absolutely nothing changes about the characters the only difference is that mako gives up his scarf which is his last connection to his family this could have been the start of a meaningful transition for his character but then it comes to nothing as while the family members reveals a rumor about where the airbenders they're looking for are and this is almost all the subplots in cora to a t season two's entire middle section is a b plot with mako trying to discover who bombed the embassy and bolin becoming famous these stories don't have to add to the main plot but they should at least develop the characters which just doesn't happen mako is the same brooding with nice hair bolin could have grown from this experience where we see him use his acting abilities to trick ezna into letting them go by confessing to her but this is again treated as a joke by revealing that his feelings were genuine it's like the story wants these characters to be irrelevant and i don't understand why it wastes its supporting cast this much and this show has tenzin so they can do it but choose not to i swear to god i will stop being so polite get the out of my sight before i demolish you i can still see you mini-me if you haven't figured out already i am not a fan of this new team avatar i set it in my season one video and i'll briefly restate it here the original team avatar felt like a family with bonds that you knew would last forever you wanted to be a part of this group to joke around with sako or have fun with toff but you don't get that in korra at best they feel like teammates they'll probably still hang out but most likely they'll end up just being facebook friends the ultimate tragedy of this team is that they are constantly being separated and they're never given a chance to grow or develop a stronger dynamic it was easy in avatar because for most of the time we only have the main four characters but in korra we have a much larger cast when it came time to pick characters develop and more attention was always given to other supporting characters and the number one culprit of this is tenzin i think the writers like tenzin too much i say this as a massive fan of tenzin but looking back on the story tenzin probably has the second most amount of development in the show which is great but he gets it at the expense of bolin and the other two i'm not exaggerating in the premiere tanzan gets a subplot about getting bullied by his siblings and being cora's mentor episode 3 tenzin gets a subplot about his siblings resenting him for being aang's favorite which we'll come back to episode 4 is about him and iki with some baby sky bison 5 is him with his nightmare of a son he's not in 6 7 or 8 which are wan's backstory episode 9 is about him eating humble pie about never going to the spirit world 10 is about him finding out his daughter is gone 11 he's in the background 13 was about him and his siblings walking around the spear world he self-actualizes then 14 he's the one to give cora a pep talk in her darkest hour eng-sun gets a lot of time devoted to him and it's some of the best character work in the legend of korra but as much as it pains me to say it i think he got too much of the spotlight the fascination with tenzin and siblings is easy to understand tenzin is the closest connection we have to the original avatar series he is proof that the world has changed from where we last left the ang gang behind the writers knew this the writers knew how much he would mean to the audience so they put extra care into making him as real and fleshed out as possible but the end of the day he's not the main character tenzin is the best member of the sporting cast not just because he's great but because there's no competition with everyone else in the cast just getting scraps and for all the attention the show gives tenzin i think there's one sticking point where i have to call bs see boomi and kaya his siblings both of whom are great reveal that tenzin was aang's favorite and he wasn't even subtle about it aang was super busy so he couldn't spend as much time as he would have liked with his family so when he went on vacation he'd only take tenzin yep the nicest most wholesome boy in the world would tell his other kids to stay home with their mother and only take tenzin to go koi surfing yeah no not buying that for a second i would believe that aang spent extra time with tenzim to teach him about the heir of nomads if that's what boomi was complaining about i would believe it but if you're telling me aang was out just having fun with his kid at the expense of the others or that katara would just let this happen no i don't see it human the flaws are not i don't believe it hey buddy how you feeling look man you have finished reviewing the show i don't wanna hey come on how bad can it be we will become the new avatar a dark avatar the worst avatar villain period unlock is a special kind of villain he is both cartoonishly evil yet also demands to be taken seriously he lounges ominously in the shadows while talking about how he's the good guy he represents the need for spirituality in the world yet his actual goal is to become a god but we are being over the head that his first goal was the real one and needed to be taken seriously he's a bat bag of nothing who somehow succeeds at being full of unlock is oza yet somehow most the cast doesn't realize he's evil from moment one the first five episodes of season two are so busy telegraphing that he's evil they forget to make him pretend to be good it's a chore to get through these episodes without screaming at your tv for everyone to see the obvious he invades the southern water tribe and cora supports him based on his whopping zero charisma there's naivete but this is just stupid the show goes out of its way to make it hard to root for korra now villains don't have to be outstanding some of them just have to be serviceable unlock is neither of these things and worse he's obvious michelle honestly thought that having him give one speech about the decadence of the south pole would convince us that he has some great noble goal only for his grand plan to be ushering in 10 000 years of darkness are you kidding me with this cartoon and they have the audacity to say two seasons later that he was right nearly every plot point unlock is a part of is ruined and of course all of them are topics that should be able to be deeply explored but here they can barely even scratch the surface [Music] this is the basis for every christmas movie not starring santa it's common because it's true in the south pole a holiday that was once a religious festival meant to give thanks to spirits and draw the two closer together has been replaced by consumerism and crappy fair games the original meaning the celebration gets lost as the culture evolves and changes creating a conflict is it better to preserve the older traditions or have the new holiday take on its own special meaning not the same as the original but important in its own way in a world like avatar where spirits do exist losing the original intent of the holiday could actually be problematic humans are now forgetting that they share the world with the spirits and a symbol of understanding has become a holiday dedicated to self-satisfaction a good setup a good conflict but all warlock can do with it is to browbeat everyone around him with how much better he is than everyone else no spirits are ever seen to be negatively affected by the shift in humans with those affected only being evil because of vatu who's about to be freed thanks to plants aligning bs it could have been way more impactful if they made the humanity's lack of spirituality and respect for the spirits the cause of vatu's prison weakening creating a conflict where unlock is in the right and humanity needs to change perhaps even adding in local spirits having suffered due to the south's urbanization unable to manifest in the real world just like the pain lady but nope none of this happens it's just unlock being a spirit obsessed a-hole who orchestrate a spirit attack to trick cora all everything about this plot point is wasted potential and it only gets worse from here did you know that the water tribes were reunited before course started no is it very unclear even when the story starts you bet it is so for everyone who watched your original this was the basic political setup for the water tribe you had the northern water tribe which was the older more structured of the two then you had the southern water tribe which has been shattered by the fire nation but still exists operating in smaller villages while other nations like the fire nation rule over all firebenders they were the exception not the rule the water tribes functionally had little to do with one another and there's nothing to lead us to believe that the north ever ruled over the south in any formal capacity so at the start of season two unlock is just walking around being grumpy how no one is respecting him despite being their chief increasing a knowledge gap between the audience and the show now a huge geopolitical shift can absolutely happen in 60 something years we weren't around to see and this may seem like a minor nitpick but it actually is way more relevant to the show than you would think because the show doesn't set up the fact that the north isn't even in just a formal sense the ruler of both tribes it makes interlocks proclamations about being their cheap seems whiny and out of touch like sure you may technically rule both but there's no evidence to show the north has any real authority here making the two episodes where he brings in the troops and says he's doing all this for peace and uni completely nonsensical with everyone staying at home saying this is invading it creates a dissonance between what is happening in the show versus what we the audience perceive the southern water tribe has a debate about what to do with everyone being rightfully mad there is no reason for us the viewers to not immediately go hell yeah toss these people out of your house if they had succinctly established that the north was in charge this overly evil act while still being evil would have a sliver of justification while also adding more context for the drama that's going on and most importantly make core's refusal to help just a little bit less infuriating now onto the civil war the civil war plot line could have been interesting but it wasn't not even a little bit the civil war takes up about half the plot of season 2 then is immediately forgotten once they reveal vatu the question is why why would the show spend so much time building up this war only for it to not be effective at all well the answer to that question is actually quite simple it's not the point when it's first introduced the problem is not what is the south going to do it's about corey's faith and unolock and her daddy issues after leaving the south pole everyone talks about the civil war but despite being the main driving force of the story once in a public city it becomes about riko not supporting the south and a bombing that turned out to be varric trying to be a war profiteer every episode we aren't in the south the plot becomes more concerned with its own thing than the reason it started in the first place by the time the story returns to the south the war is already over and satan needs to be defeated the civil war is a mechanism to get the rest of the plot going and is always treated as such with the exact expectation of being tossed aside once the bigger plot rears its ugly kite-shaped face speaking of which oh god ah enjoying those mcnuggets yeah they're pretty good i mean the burgers suck but at least i have the mcnuggets to cut forward too yeah just don't think about it well what do you mean don't think about it don't think about it dude what are you talking dude not think about what the origin story for the avatar cycle was a breath of fresh air after six episodes of frustration and bad plot beats the audience is fully willing to give themselves over to the seemingly good but actually quite toxic backstory that is beginnings like all good poisons on the surface it's not vomit inducing avatar 1 is the likable narrative dilune that makes these two episodes palatable i have no issue with juan as a character other than that in beginnings he is just aggressively aladdin being voiced by can do no wrong steven yun certainly helped that said the extremely negative light that cora has been shown in all season left me pieing for any agreeable avatar so when i say beginnings is bad i don't include juan in that statement his personal journey from street rat to bridge between the worlds is a very organic transition growing up as a poor kid in a heavily stratified society he learned what the worst of humanity could be like without letting that cloud his vision of the good in people he was a rowdy teenager who had sometimes give in to his darker desires but could pull himself back from going too far then when he meets the spirits after some initial hesitancy he learned to think of them as a second family learning that spirits are not the monsters he was raised to believe making his desire to meditate conflicts between them a very pwn story about love overcoming fear and chaos this is the best part of these two episodes and if it were just a story about him as an avatar i would have no problem with it except he's not an avatar he's the first avatar and the origin story for the avatar is in a word terrible there is no tale about light versus dark or spirits crammed into humans the avatar world has always stressed the idea of balance not just in people but in the world itself push and pull water and fire the scales of the universe naturally worked to bring itself into a state of harmony the avatar was a manifestation of this quest for balance a specially gifted person whose duty it was to ensure that the world doesn't fall too far to any one side humans and spirits are presented as similar but fundamentally different beings so in order to keep these opposing sides in harmony a fulcrum was created to bridge the worlds this was the basic assumption of the entire avatar universe it wasn't just a plot point or an element but the very nature of the world distilled into a single being when and where the avatar started didn't matter they had always been there rava and batu are spirits that are supposed to embody light and darkness locked in internal conflict till juan splits them apart and has to fuse with robba to restore balance to the world or else a dominant vatu will plunge the world into 10 000 years of darkness okay now let's pick apart the cluster of symbolism and metaphors that make up these two the idea of having two opposing deities constantly being at odds with one another is a very common motif in early religions it is present in ancient egypt with the story of the sun god ra battling the world devouring serpent apep every night the zoroastrianism where the idea of duality is ingrained in the religion the very heavens are divided between the god of evil angra mayura and the god of good and creation ahura mazda these provide the inspiration for many fantasy copycats in media rav and vatu also represent order and chaos their struggle is meant to cause changes in the world depending on who was winning the fight their struggle and design is a direct reference to yin and yang and this is where the story completely misses the mark and forgot everything that they already told us what is appealing visually to make these characters be the embodiment of yin and yang the story doesn't know what it's talking about here's a link to john blemi's ted talk on the subject yin yang while they do represent light and dark it is a massive generalization to make this their defining characteristic because they represent so much more they represent the highs and the lows mountains and valleys south and north fire and water two extremes dancing around one another bringing themselves into balance for they are complementary forces unable to exist without the other because without light there can be no shadows the presentation of rava and vatu's struggle is the antithesis for everything that they pretend to represent rava is treated as the ultimate symbol of balance her supremacy over vatu brings balance to the world where he can only destroy and create chaos yin is held back by young not its complement harmony is not achieved by balancing these two opposing forces but by beating and locking one away this isn't balance it's not yin and yang it's good versus evil and at this it relates more to zoroastrianism than anything else in drawing from many different sources is a good thing but when you build a world composed of eastern taoist beliefs to then make the crux of the universe based on a pair of gods that could not be more antithetical to everything the world's built on is folly the origin story mister understands everything about the world it misunderstands the real world beliefs that it claims to profess it borrows iconography without meaning even one of the most basic tenets of yin and yang that within each side a little bit of the other remains this shows how these forces are not absolute and the climate of the story presents this idea only on a surface level by having a little bit of rabba reside within vatu and had to be ripped out for her to return a symbolism so obvious that anyone could get it and see what they were copying vatu and rava were a mistake from their designs to their role in the story but what beginnings does to the avatar is even worse the avatar is the bridge between the worlds they were the universe's answer to the imbalance between spirits and humans at least that's what we thought korra reveals that all this was a lie okay have you ever considered the arrogance of the word nature nature is defined as the phenomena of the physical world collectively including plants animals the landscape and other features and products of the earth as opposed to humans or human creations meaning the humans are separate from the natural world there's something so infinitely special about us that we exist above the rest of the world dividing it between what we have and haven't changed yet this is arrogance to believe that we are separate from the world and that we don't affect or are affected by the same forces even though we are born raised and die under the same sky we hold ourselves to a different plane of existence than everything else that is the avatar now the avatar is arrogance man's arrogance the belief that we can best solve the world's problems the idea that the world is imperiled and saved thanks to the choices of one man now humans spirits and nature all bend to this one person true balance in the avatar world was a conflict between rava and batu natural cycles between dark and light but then juan came and imprisoned evil separating the worlds so that mankind could reign no longer would they have to truly coexist with spirits this isn't harmony that's conquest beginnings damages the avatar world breaks it on a fundamental level rather than sharing the world both sides are separate from one another until korra makes his decision to keep the portals open this choice is meaningless however as needing physical portals to access the spirit world is ridiculous these spirits are supposed to be all around us in the forests in the oceans spirituality was the recognition of this greater truth but beginnings made this a lie humanity was cut off from the spirit world as the gates had to be physically opened for true spiritual understanding to embrace the world we had to see it to believe it spirituality became reality so that korah could be the hero which is all the avatar is now a human hero with a bit of god living inside them an idea so absurdly western that it makes the new york knockoff seem subtle none of this had to happen a balance could have been struck between the show the creators were making and the one that they made neither show is perfect but while the last airbender celebrated its strengths korra rebels in its failings and the worst part about this is we're only halfway through the season this is everything that the season has been building to all the bad backstory the retcons all so that we can have this the dark avatar a phrase that should only exist in fan fiction but is now a part of the show the idea of having a dark blank is a very common idea in media popularized in no small part thanks to comic books and shows like power rangers it's just too much of a money-making home run to not use it you like this character well what if they were bad you like this hero well what if they didn't have all those morals or ethical dilemmas it's as transparent as it is cliche but it can be used to great dramatic effect but it comes in two very different flavors the more effective use of this trope is seen in shows like naruto where the dark version of our hero is a manifestation of the hero's suppressed rage and negative emotions when faced by this evil doppelganger fighting proves to be impossible it's only by accepting him as a part of himself does the rage fade from his heart and he is able to truly move on from his negative self the other use of this trope is just straight copy and paste where we see a version of our heroes but evil sometimes they'll be twisted reflection of the character's worst traits or in other characters they're just a different person in a black version of the costume this is the version we got in cora dark avatar unlock is probably the stupidest thing to come out of my mouth since middle school people have tried to defend this decision by pointing out how it reflects yin and yang but having already gone over how badly the show misrepresents that topic i feel like i don't have to explain it again though i will mention that if they really wanted to do this right it would have had to do this topic with kuvira who is a dark reflection of cora and her personality but instead let's just focus on the fact that the dark avatar isn't even a full avatar by the standards of the show the defining characteristics of the avatar is their ability to use all four elements unlock can't do that you can only use water learning how to master the elements is symbolic for the avatar to experience the four nations learning about their beliefs and philosophy gaining wisdom as well as power what does the dark avatar have to make up for this energy beams and tentacles a character say this line and together we will become the new avatar a dark avatar and play it completely straight like it's supposed to be the most intimidating thing in the world this plot belongs in a power rangers film not the legend of korra people tripped over themselves to praise korra for being darker and more nuanced but then they have moments like this where i keep expecting the villains to twirl their mustache and then this show two seasons later will go on to say unlock had a point he doesn't have a point everything he's ever said is generic bad guy lines with a religious angle he's not trying to free the spirits he's releasing ten thousand years of darkness this is a legend of korra it's jackie chan adventures una lock and the dark avatar is that one bad idea you throw out as a joke only for everyone to go along with it i just can't believe that it made it into the show but little did i know they had an even dumber one hey do you like chocolate yeah do you like chocolate bars okay where you going with this oh um i was just gonna go in this whole field metaphor about how chocolate is good but too much of it or just in the wrong places it just does not work so you're talking about like how there's too many anime tropes in season two of court oh yeah exactly the kaiju fight let them fight there has been one long debate in the cartoon slash anime community over whether to consider avatar the last airbender an anime or a western cartoon while it wasn't made in japan it has more in common with anime than it did many western cartoons at the time not to mention its heavy use of japanese and asian cultures in general but while this debate will never be settled and i could personally care less korra desperately tries to be anime how else do you explain the inclusion of mecca's kaiju laser shooting cringe comedy and freaking harems none of these things are bad on their own in their own series they can be quite enjoyable but when they get crammed in all at once we start to have a problem nowhere is this more apparent than the finale of season 2 where unlock turns into a statue of liberty chucking kaiju equipped with giant laser beams he then has to fight korra again who is using energy bending to become a giant woman who also has laser beams now to me this doesn't fit i don't like republic city or the advanced technology but i think the show does a good enough job advancing the world to make it feel like a continuation of the original but giant kaiju battles i'm drawing the line this doesn't feel like avatar this doesn't even feel like korra this is ready player one levels of one upsmanship where the story tries so hard to be bigger and cooler than everything that came before and it breaks the stratosphere of unbelievability and no one is sure where they're going anymore and while this may work in a show like gurren lagann where ridiculous is built into the fiber of the show korra was always pushing to be more grounded with a hard magic system giving us a strong idea of what could and couldn't be possible this dissonance leaves you feeling more confused than anything else while there is some president first giant spirit kaiju just because you might be able to explain it doesn't mean you should many of the more outlandish parts of korra have their origins in the last airbender the fire nation had tanks that could climb up mountains and mile long drills the show was fantasy but it would also dabble in steampunk just dabble though cora broke that seal open and dumped in the whole bottle so now not only is the show taking place in the 1920s but it also has a mecha tanks power armor robot hummingbirds and giant robots with laser cannons some of this technology is within the range of what we've seen before but all of it is too much and pushes the show into this janky steampunk territory when the show drops these elements for more fantasy based storytelling there is a reason that fan reaction tends to be more positive but what about the kaiju battle bizarrely knows some people have already started commenting that aang did the same thing when he merged with the koi fish well it was perfectly fine then and it all comes down to presentation the moment eng entered the avatar states it was presented as a special event even within all his other uses he's not just channeling the power of the previous avatars but he's also challenging the power of the ocean spirit he's using their wrath at the death of the moon spirit to push back the fire nation the scene is treated as a moment of divine wrath and accompanies for admiral zhao whose disregard for the spirits is put in direct contrast for aang's respect proving that the fire nation was wrong and that the spirits are not a force to be trifled with making the scene even more powerful is how as a season finale this is the moment aang steps up to be the avatar he's not only keeping the peace but maintaining the spiritual balance of the planet compare this to legend of korra where there is no reason for any of this to be happening there's no thematic reason for unlocked to transform into this spirit giant or to destroy national landmarks when vatu beat rava it causes him to grow bigger so when he destroys rava him growing to gigantic size might be what they were trying to go for but he's not a spirit anymore he's part human while spirits can change the physical form of those they pass through the avatar is special in that it's supposed to be the balanced merger of the two retaining a human shape but with the powers of the spirit making this scene come out of nowhere then as if to one-up itself they have cora energy bend herself to create another giant who can go fight the dark avatar at this point though she is completely human and by the show's own logic everyone else in the room could be able to do the same thing as her while this might boil down to personal taste i stand by this being the worst climax in avatar people can bend the elements they can shoot lightning and even cause explosions with their mind but there is just something about two 60-foot spirit giants throwing laser beams at each other that just takes me out of it this show jumped the shark and it killed all the excitement that i had for season three there's a lot of stuff that i do appreciate about season 2 from its animation the fight scenes yes even varric who does get grading afterwards there are things to like before we go there are still a few more other points i want to bring up and i'm just going to go through all them in a quick lightning round i adore varric but outside of his comedy he's wasted as a villain cora losing her connection to other avatars is something i don't personally like but i think it works for the story this is supposed to be the fresh start for the world and a reset for the avatar state and it's a good way of showing that there is no going back and when raba dies it's shocking in the darkest hour that comes after it being one the best in korra the reveal that unalok tricked cora's dad into attacking the spirit forest was really lame it showed off how evil unlock is but also takes the responsibility off of ton rock for his actions flaws make for interesting characters and we shouldn't be so quick to scrub our heroes of blame you can have a past and still be a good guy i especially found the judge knowing about unlock setting up his brother from years back to be completely out nowhere there's no reason he should know about this coors mom has a gravely smoker voice i found this hilarious eznadiska are highlights of any scene they're in but we really only need eska who is kind of just a bit too much of mai in azula and while she's not an original character audrey plaza kills the voice acting also eska's relationship with bolin is abusive and it's played for comedy this would be really uncomfortable if the genders were switched but i ugly lapped through all of these scenes oh yes i am so glad you understand nothing that is except marriage you will wed at sunset you may express your joy through tears tenzin's conversation with his dad is amazing and i wish we got a quick snip of him speaking to each of his kids boomi and kai are great i wish makon asami had this level of wit and personality the scene where boomi talks to a statue of his dad is heartbreaking and solidified my love for boomi giving him more depth in one scene than bolan gets in three seasons ira being in the show made me tear up but i have no idea what he's doing here let him rest and be with his son his part of the story should have been filled by aang but rumor has it the writers dislike the spirit mentor thing but don't call me on that one i tried to find the source of that comment but i couldn't find it again the zhao cameo is great the spirit world is too much like alice in wonderland it looks beautiful but it's also generic wong xitang has another great cameo and i love the gruesomeness that the professor from the original just died down there this season decided to promote genora to be the important one of her siblings and i think she's only okay she really picks up more in the season three but here she just comes off as more of the mcguffin child leaving the spirit portals open was dumb it worked dramatically but by all accounts no one really wanted this not the spirits not the humans also i don't like how the show treats the avatar state it went from god mode to super saiyan it gets more unimpressive the more it's used the old explanation about how it was the combined experience of all the previous avatars was way better than the new one where it's just the light spirit power up i also found frustrating how this season cora just knows how to use the avatar state it's great for displaying how disrespectful she treats a spiritual side of bending but i call bs that she can just control it when every other piece of median avatar talks about how difficult it is to master core is a prodigy at the physical side of bending but mastering the avatar state was always more of a spiritual matter always loved the character designs and the animation its use of color and soundtrack are honestly way better than almost everything in the last airbender season 1 had its bruises but it set up the cast in the new status quo wonderfully but season 2 has always felt like a reset not a sequel it's so concerned with setting up the next two seasons that it does every character a disservice no one goes unfucked by this season and no one suffers this more than cora i have always liked her and i disagree with most of the complaints that get thrown at her but not in season 2 where even i have trouble rooting for her this season wanted to be so many things i truly believe if season 2 was cut out from the show cora would have been looked back on a lot more fondly but it's hard to look back on something fondly when the things it did right are way less memorable than the things it did wrong still good you know i have said a lot of things about the legend of korra but i feel like before i leave off i need to say this last one the legend of korra is a great show i didn't make this video so i can say all of cory's trash but season two it's bad it has always been bad and i think we all can recognize that and while i do think a lot of people take this as oh my god he totally hates cora we need to go rail into the comments go ahead i don't really care core was a show that i felt consistently made missteps it had great elements and not always great execution something that would have great execution but then some of the wrong elements it all comes down to personal opinion i will always love core i always love avatar but not season two season two is immediate skip for me and even the joys of having to watch season three are not worth having to power sit through season two but tell me what you guys think dude am i crazy for disliking season two as much as i do or is it really the antichrist let me know down below and hey thank you all for watching

Channel: Sarcastic Chorus

Views: 313,860

Keywords: Korra, Avatar, Legendofkorra

Id: 9CUxzNLpkMo

Length: 64min 3sec (3843 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 21 2020