The Legend of Korra is Garbage and Here's Why

[Music] avatar the last airbender is one of those TV shows the shows everyone saw as a kid and loved and then rediscovered as an adult and loved even more it's one of the few children's shows that ages well with its audience where it has just enough deeper themes that said second viewing makes you appreciate all the little things that did to keep your parents engaged while you forced them to sit through it as a kid so you could watch the evil lady get beaten by the other lady this enduring quality spawned among other things a feature film directed by M night Shyamalan that committed the two biggest mistakes that any film adaptation could make trying to condense a 10 hour multi-threaded story down to just a two hour film and making in live-action something that had no business being in live-action honestly did nobody stop and think that maybe the show was animated for a reason and so perhaps if we're making a film out of it we should just make an actual film with a new story and not do it in live-action because that would be stupid it's like a precursor to Warcraft [Music] what have you done sometimes the hand of fate must be forced the mistakes of the film were obvious to anyone if Nickelodeon wanted to make more avatar they would have had to move on to a new story and keep the blended animation style that made it unique in the first place and that's exactly what they did by making The Legend of Korra this show is terrible it spends most of its time playing remember this to the previous show and never really develops an identity on its own like the film it keeps trying to fix things that weren't broken to begin with and is more concerned with trying to position itself as the grown-up alternative to the original series and what we end up with is a prime example of how not to do a sequel series it doesn't just fail on its own merits it ends up making the last airbender seem like a freak accident that we got to experience by sheer luck so join me as we dive into every possible detail of why The Legend of Korra fails because I had to rewatch the series to write this damn thing and if I had to suffer so do you [Music] in an attempt to present fairness because people like to pretend that I'm always negative for no reason I'm gonna start by listing out all the things I liked about Korah I'm not against the series trying to court a more mature audience than its predecessor especially since most of the people who grew up watching avatar were likely already in their late teens when Korra came out there's a difference between a show trying to aim higher than its predecessor out of a genuine desire to do something new and to show getting stuck up its own ass because the creators are one of those insufferable pieces of trash you think cartoons being at their best when they're aimed at children is some sort of negative stigma that we need to fight against and despite all its problems that its attempt at a more mature take on the source material brings Korra is very clearly pitching its tenth in the former category I over all like the more in-depth looked into the application of bending and how its many different uses I shall thoroughly explored even though I'm gonna complain about it later the ability to power an electrical grid with lightning as a sort of blue-collar job for fire benders is a wonderful touch to the series attempt to modernize the technology and showcase how much has changed in the sixty years since the hundred year war even in spite of a rampant Americanizing of everything else I honestly think the modernize day stetic would have been better served by incorporating more bending and less generic steampunk 1920's murica I love how metalbending has expanded on with the many different applications for a single sheet of metal Kuvera exploiting the metal shoulder guards on most of our soldiers to mimic Darth Vader's choking gimmick showcases a level of attention to detail at least as far as the visuals go that you don't often see in animated shows if the Legend of Korra consisted entirely of moments like this it would've been the best show ever made you remember how in the last airbender Hama talked Katara just how much the ability to bend could be pushed to given just a little resourceful miss The Legend of Korra took that idea right up to 11 with every single school of bending finding new and unique ways to exert control over the elements making use of small details to affect things in such a massive way is a far smarter and more creative approach to combat design than just hit it with a bigger laser beam even though that's exactly what the show ends up doing most of the time bending was always perfectly suited for combat pragmatism even The Last Airbender where big pillars of fire were always considerably less impressive than the small ways a bender could [ __ ] you up also legend of korra gave rise to the single cool spending technique ever holy [ __ ] are you seeing this that's [ __ ] lava everyone was obsessed about who's I here suffocated the earth Queen [ __ ] that this guy's bending [ __ ] lava I like this line from kuvira and don't pretend that people put you where you are I know what happens to cities who don't want to hand over control to you then you know what's coming for xiaofu in fact unlike every line from Cuvier even though i'm gonna complain about her later she's the only character in this series who looks as tired of all the main characters [ __ ] as I was by this point and pretty much hands everybody's asked to them on a silver platter while they're busy spouting platitudes and doesn't bother [ __ ] around I really like Tenzin he's a far more interesting character than Korra herself of having to live with the responsibility of rebuilding the air nomads after his father's death along with having to teach airbending to Korra who's somehow more bratty than the 10 year old egg his sense of responsibility to his heritage really comes to fruition in the third season where he fights the entire Red Lotus and the camera just pans away as they're beating the [ __ ] out of him like it's too painful to watch such a lovable character get hurt which is more dignity than korra herself gets not two episodes later and speaking of season 3 after Zaire is finally defeated by all the characters who aren't complete failures at everything he starts yelling about how chaos is the natural order of things and other revolution has already begun and a bunch of other anarchist libertarian [ __ ] and bullying literally puts a sock in it that's [ __ ] amazing it's the only genuinely funny moment Bolin gets in the entire series and I love it also I love this guy and speaking of season 2 I really like the Civil War storyline before the writers abandoned it to chase as much fan thinking [ __ ] as they possibly can and thinking of vaatu is a compelling idea and explaining the Avatar cycle in this season it's stuck with it's complicated and messy Civil War storyline I would not be making this video because that story was just that good when the writers were focused on it and really shows what kind of show Korra could have been if anyone on the production team was paying attention to what was working and what wasn't and I think that's it yeah that's it a few scenes half a season some benders and we're good so all till I Legend of Korra is a horrible show that makes me want to do all the violence on the drywall in my living room [Music] both the last airbender and the legend of korra have massive overarching storylines but where the two fundamentally differ is in how they deliver those stories the last airbender went with the traditional Saturday morning cartoon format of each episode having its own story contained within the overarching story this episodic format being structured by a very long-term goal proved advantageous as because the story was literally taking place during a war it was possible to be constantly diverting from the main plot without losing track of it every episode was simultaneously building up the world and the characters while also making meaningful contributions to the ultimate end goal of defeating the Fire Lord humor me for a minute how many filler episodes does The Last Airbender have one just one the tales of bossing say a series of several character vignettes that exist to create the illusion of time passing between set pieces all I want is a full feeling in my stomach I'm starving nope that one isn't filler you're literally watching a Fire Nation propaganda film in that one you couldn't possibly get any more relevant to a literal culture war than that the broad idea of a world at war was the best possible framing device for an episodic series this meant that the last airbender got all the benefits of a serialized show with none of the downsides or rather without the downside the absence of a conclusion one of the big reasons serialized shows rarely leave the same mark that episodic shows do is because each episode only exists to set up the next one this sacrifice is one of the most critical elements of any good story the ending a good story is only truly satisfying once it's ended and in a serialized show that usually doesn't come until the season finale so for the rest of the year you're just being strung along by a creator on the promise that eventually one day something interesting happened that won't just be a tease for future episodes these are problems that most people don't see as by the time they come across a series it's already over and been put up on Netflix for another extremely unhealthy round of binge watching The Legend of Korra is one such show stretching out a single plotline for an entire season and not only does this mean that there isn't a single episode aside during the finales that has a conclusion you can feel satisfied about it also means that the creators have made it extremely difficult to do the ones that made the last airbender so adored in the first place when you look at some of the most beloved episodes of The Last Airbender you'll find that the most remembered episodes are the ones that deviate massively from the main story Zuko alone the puppet master the southern Raiders the entire search for Appa is practically a side story the last airbender has three seasons that take place over the course of a few months it's a pretty short-lived series but it always feels like it's longer than that because every character gets their own storylines and character arcs and they all get enough time to be fleshed out in their own condensed stories going back over the footage for this video I was actually surprised just how much story they crammed into so few episodes most people's favorite episode is the tales of Ba Sing se which isn't just one diversion it's five diversions one of which is completely heartbreaking a lot of this looks like filler but it all pays off by the final episode where each part of the group is doing something different Aang is fighting the Fire Lord Sokka Toph and Suki are taking out the airship Zuko and Katara are fighting Azula and we're constantly swapping between all of them and each one is exciting because all these characters have gotten enough screen time apiece even as Ulla gets a lot of characterization by contrast none of the supporting characters in the new gang really stand out or do anything memorable they're not allowed to because the serialized nature of The Legend of Korra doesn't allow for those necessary diversions to happen the only members of the supporting cast who get anything close to characterization are Tenzin and Lin beifong and they're not around anywhere near as much as they should be meanwhile the three main supporting cast Bolin mokou and Asami all get practically nothing to work with the most we ever get is some backstory regarding their family and even then ma ko and Bolin's are pretty copy-pasted from Batman they get maybe a few scenes of their own but nothing is flavorful and character establishing as azula's disastrous attempt to flirt careful you could puncture the hull of an empire class fire nation battleship leaving thousands to drown at sea because it's so sharp hey there sweet sugar cakes how do you like in this party together you and I will be the strongest couple in the entire world ah I got a go yeah that's right avatar had an entire episode dedicated to its four antagonists just being normal kids and hanging a lampshade on just how ill-suited they are to life in an envelope I wore it's actually rather sad when you think about it particularly for a Zula she's only 14 but she's so battle-hardened and accustomed to warfare that she quite literally cannot function in a peaceful setting that's the effect that ozai's warmongering has had on his daughter nobody in chorus circle of friends or enemies gets anything close to this in four seasons and that's because the plot isn't allowed to divert like this each seasons plot takes place over maybe a few weeks and never get so much as a moment to breathe more than that this means the show can't shake off a bad idea nearly as easily the last airbender had it's duds it had stories that didn't go anywhere it had ideas that wound up not being as interesting as the creators thought they were but they were always able to shake themselves off and come back next week a serialized show means you can't make those mistakes every season you need a brilliant story that hits every single ball right out of the park because you can't just come back next week with a new one and try again you've got to commit to this shitty idea the problem is Korra has a terrible story and misses more often than it hits which we'll get into later so even getting through one episode as a complete slog because each episode is six and a half hours long broken up by fifth grade level philosophy and extremely lazy antagonist writer the fire Lord wasn't much as far as villains go he was a pretty generic fascist he didn't need to be anything else because the story was about preparing for the fight against him the Fire Lord was a means to an end as the best villains often are his characterization was irrelevant it didn't matter what his motivations were he was already characterized by letting the viewers see the destruction he'd been wreaking Fire Lord Ozai steeper motivations are so irrelevant that they don't even show you his face until the last season and only a few episodes before the finale you get to see his baby pictures and guess what it has zero effect on your result that he has to go down because those pictures of a happy and innocent little boy don't erase the monster he would grow into it would have only a bad thing if the writer started to undercut this by attempting to shoehorn in some kind of moral gray area or getting bogged down in ham-fisted philosophy while at the same time writing irredeemable scumbags as villains which is something they ended up doing every villain in The Legend of Korra except for one is a spiteful greedy bastard who occasionally minced their words with the philosophy of the day Amon is a spiteful manchild exacting a purge of benders because of his abusive daddy but positions himself as the bringer of social equality also known as communism to people who don't know what communism is uno Locke is a craven madman trying to become the law so edgy dark avatar but pads all this with a lot of [ __ ] about faith and spirituality and give yourself unto Jesus a year is the only one who is actually motivated by his stated ideology but his ideology is anarchism which is the worst political ideology imaginable because it only exists to create a power vacuum for the two second worst political ideologies imaginable he doesn't need an ulterior motive because the motive he has is already so stupid that it defies rationality while the other two villains accidentally effect positive change by falling into it ass-backwards zygors anarchy does exactly what a hen turkey always does create a power vacuum for authoritarianism fire lord ozai motivations were simple conquest and imperialism and that took three entire seasons to complete that story from start to finish these new villains have to cram their stories into a single season and not even a full season either each one is only about 12 episodes long and the new themes are infinitely more complex than conquest but each one has a sixth of the time the fire Lord and the gang were given so not only is the story written in such a way that it doesn't get to have any necessary and plot important breathing room it also has to condense all its themes down so much that it's almost inevitable that they're going to [ __ ] something up unfortunately this is the current model for television these days they're not designed to be enjoyed in bite-sized chunks they're designed to be binge watched on streaming services Netflix even goes as far as to release entire seasons at once and take a while guess what happens that's right people chew through the content in a few days because they have no self-restraint and suddenly they're starved for content until next year it's like the problem with Stephen bombs cranked up to the worst possible scale now the Netflix model does alleviate the constant to be continued cycle that plagues really shows but the new problems it creates is considerably worse I'm something of a traditionalist in this regard and I think that going full serialization was the television industry's biggest mistake The Last Airbender was the perfect marriage between serialized storytelling and episodic three act structure by using a war as a framing device that every episodic story was able to contribute to while still being its own contained plot remember how I mentioned that the ember island players recap the series by portraying it as Fire Nation propaganda The Legend of Korra attempts a similar recap but just has ma KO bolin and a handful of other characters simply recap the story with Varrick going as far as to emulate old 1920's style films but they don't do this in the world itself this is just how the flashbacks are framed the big reason the ember island players worked so well was because you were seeing the story being told from the fire nation's perspective and how much they were lying even better you got to see everyone's reaction to the play with everyone hating it except Toph who's loving every damn second of what's on stage if the southern Raiders tales of Ba Sing se and Zuko alone didn't exist this would be the best episode of the entire series by virtue of how much it contributes just before the finale turning it into this is abysmal they had a goofy recap in the original series so now we have to have it here so into the toilet we go the sad part is that Varrick retells his version as a 1920s film but he's actually making films so why didn't he just do that retelling the entire story in his own very key way and showing everyone maybe throw shade at the last airbender movie while you're at it that sounds like it would have been on the table if Korra hadn't sacrificed those silly ideas on the altar of serialization so the closest thing we get to this is Bolin playing a waterbender in verax propaganda films in the second season if you pay attention you can spot all kinds of opportunities for the story to divert and rich in both the world and the characters but because we're lashed to the main plot at all times we never get to explore these ideas in detail imagine an entire episode around Tenzin teaching meelo to trained lemurs or korra training with Toph rather than clips of these thrown sporadically between the clips of the main plot that's what you sacrifice when you go the route of serialization as we have to keep yanking back to the main plot because we've made our bed in this mess and now we have to sleep in it if there was ever a lesson to learn from this mistake it should be don't fix what wasn't broken to begin with [Music] never let it be said that I'm a cynic because I really did try to like Cora she was already starting the series with a good first impression she's a brawler she's got a lot of energy as a protagonist at least in the first few episodes she's a natural waterbender which is the best bender and I'll fight you on that and you could cut a steak on her abs like damn she's buff you are very muscular for a woman um thanks you too The Legend of Korra was one of the few places you could get a female protagonist that's ripped as [ __ ] at least until overwatch came out and I met Lizzie when I learned that the new avatar looked like this and behaved like this I was totally on board but as Steven universe fans are well aware by now an interesting premise doesn't necessarily mean that the writers are going to follow through and here's how instead of having to learn the different styles of bending chorus starts the series of the mastery of water earth and firebending and not just through starting the series later in life she's introduced at the age of five bending all three of these elements and she's revealed as the avatar at a very early age compared to the 16 that is known to be standard in the lore the only element she has yet to master is air this storytelling decision is often defended by fans by saying that exploring the other elements would be redundant after having spent three seasons with hang learning them however that common defense of this story decision ignored the fact that Aang and his friends were doing other things while he was learning each element even when he was learning waterbending I'm met a firebending master and learned just how dangerous firebending can be when controlled poorly so much so that he carried a crippling fear of firebending until the final season Aengus journey to learn waterbending brought them to the siege of the Northern Water Tribe his mastery of earthbending was accompanied by the search for Appa and the siege of Ba Sing se the actual mastery of bending was a garnish to the more important stories that all tied to the hundred year war which was the reason they were doing all this in the first place describing the last airbender story is angler ting the three elements he has yet to master is to ignore 90% of what actually happens in the series the bending itself wasn't the story you could have very easily worked similar bending lessons into the stories of each season considering those four this time instead of three you want have even needed her to start out mastering waterbending there are so many ways you could revisited the iconic bending lessons and maybe elaborated on them considering how much bending has evolved and changed in the 60 years between Fire Lord Ozai defeat and now that's not to say that starting in the middle of chorus training is an inherently idea but here's the million-dollar question why did she need to be bending them at such a young age her parents know she's the avatar once she starts bending all the elements which is kind of cute and already raises a lot of interesting questions of how you handle raising a child who can bend multiple elements the benders of each nation seem to know very little about the nuances of bending outside their own forms so Water Tribe parents trying to help a little Korra keep control of her firebending is itself a really good idea but all that is hamstrung by the fact that we immediately skip ahead to incur as a young adult being trained by masters as they're brought to the Southern Water Tribe so why did this scene at the start need to exist at all the riders already had a reasonable and workable excuse for why Korra is already proficient in three of the four styles of bending when we open on her training exercises I've heard people complain that Korra already being able to adequately Bend at such a young age makes her a Mary Sue and while those kind of complaints are usually [ __ ] it's granted more credibility by the fact that a better answer for this question is immediately presented so why didn't the writers just go with vash that's a minor petty niggle regarding the storytelling but things like this are not isolated incidents the same people who thought this was the best way to open on the new avatar made the rest of her character arc as well characters are always remarking on how strong and powerful she is the fact that she's the avatar is treated with odd respect and yet there's no faith in Korra as a character because she's constantly being set up to fail when we open on Korra in the very first episode she's training in a combat arena with firebenders in the Fire Nation seemingly doing little more than sparring we later learned that Cora's never left the Southern Water Tribe Kotaro remarks how strong she is while the White Lotus beside remarks that she lacks restraint because of [ __ ] course she does she's had teachers brought in to do little more than teach her how to apply bending in combat she's sparring with the guards in an enclosed area every avatar before her was said to have gone out on a journey across the world to find masters to teach them each element not a Council of teachers dictating their education but to find specific bending masters and form a bond with them but more than that the idea that the avatar is traveling the world to seek out masters on their own heavily implies that they're constantly interacting with the world they're supposed to be protecting learning firsthand the duties of being the avatar and gaining the restraint and spiritual perspective they're supposed to have it's not just an experience of learning to master all the different kinds of bending it's experiencing the world and problems and coming out of that journey a far wiser and more mature person Cora by contrast is treated like a child and educated like one even when she's a fully grown adult the White Lotus criticizes her for ignoring the spiritual side of bending even though that's entirely their fault Cora herself even acknowledges that she struggles with it and wants to start to her airbending training because that's 90% spirituality the White Lotus insist she doesn't respect bending and then proceeded to not teach her how to respect bending in a hasty effort to skip past the other elements and get right into airbending the writers have whether by design or sheer stupidity created a character that is doomed to fail at every possible opportunity more to the point Cora never once has to combat this character issue one of the big conflicts of the first season involves Korra being unable to airbend due to its innate spiritual connection and the fact that it hasn't evolved like the three other forms because Aang's son was the only airbending master in the world after his death and he spat on the idea of modern bending being all martial arts and nothing else but Cora never grasps airbending this way when Amon takes her bending from her she suddenly summons the ability to airbend when Mako's threatened leaving her with a sudden mastery of airbending and none of the other elements so now she can airbend but little else you think this would be a chance for korra to truly respect bending as an art form now that it's been taken from her putting her in a humbling situation as a counterpart to yacon who lost his bending and grew bitter and hateful as a result but before the viewer can truly grasp the gravity of the situation or if any time to develop any sympathy for korra situation at all and gives korra back her firebending earthbending and waterbending on-top of giving her energy bending to reverse her mom's damage in Republic City and you know what just for good measure let's give her the Avatar state as well because why not why bother having korra actually have to learn the gravity of the Avatar state like Aang did in fact the very first thing we see her do at the Avatar state is you that to win a race against children why bother having korra actually have to learn anything let's just give her all the Avatar tools and wipe away the last bit of the Avatar journey because apparently that would be just a rehash of the last airbender except not really in fact Korra even gets handed the [ __ ] mastery demonstration as well each avatar upon mastering the four elements pulls off an impressive demonstration of their mastery and over the course of the last airbender we get to see Avatar Roku and Avatar Aang perform this display [Music] these aren't just big moments of badass shamanism they're tied to each avatar mastering the four elements and the Avatar state but Korra just gets it not even pulling it off herself just seemingly on autopilot everything the other avatars had to earn through hard work and training Korra is just given on a silver platter Korra doesn't even have to suffer through the consequences of her own actions or the actions of the people around her events that would normally warrant a massive shift in Cora's character are often abandoned entirely we just mentioned Korra being given her bending back but this happens in every season afterward in season two Louie Locke rips the avatar spirit out of her and destroys it effectively making her the last avatar but thanks to an unstable plot point from earlier she immediately recovers the avatar spirit and everything goes right back to normal except she can't talk to Aang or any other past avatar anymore in season three the Red Lotus poisons her with Mercury and beats her so badly that she ends the season in a wheelchair which might make you think the core has to deal with being disabled for a while in fact they lampshade it in the very final episode of the season but season four starts three years later and she's up and walking and her recovery happened off screen Korra doesn't even learn anything fighting these people in both season two in season three as she's losing badly she's saved by Jinora going up in new busy budget and the evil is defeated this is a fundamental problem with Korra the setup with the White Lotus teaching her bending in a way that completely destroys the avatars journey isn't an interesting story idea it could have been and at the very start of the second season it almost looks like they're going that way when unlock makes it clear to Korra that she wasn't supposed to be sheltered like this but nothing comes from it other than Korra being mad at Tenzin for a while and forcing open a way for her to be manipulated by the seasons villain it's clear that the writers were so determined to not have an avatar journey that they just gave Korra all the avatar powers without having to bother going through any of the actual work to get them what compounds all this is that were given a very brief look at the kind of avatar Korra could have been if the writers had any interest in letting her be one in the first episode of the third season many non-benders spontaneously develop airbending one of them is so scared by these new powers that he climbs up a bridge and almost kills the police who chase after him Korra darts up to his level and they just talk [Music] [Music] don't panic I'm just here to talk please I don't know what I'm doing and I don't want to hurt anyone tell me about it rough day huh I'm having kind of a rough day myself you mind if I sit down here look I know you're scared you've gone through a big change and it's kind of my fault but you're not alone there are other airbenders and they want to help you actually they're really excited to meet you I don't want to be an airbender please you're the avatar make it stop I'm sorry I can't but I promise you things will get better if you just give it a chance let me take you over to air temple Island and we can talk this through okay dah this is Tenzin he's going to help you it is absolutely my pleasure to meet you DAW I've never met a new Airbender before well at least not one whose diaper I didn't have to change actually I just fell off a bridge so I could use a fresh diaper right about now this is the only time that the show feels like a sequel to The Last Airbender you have a heartfelt conversation about having to deal with change and that change can be scary for a lot of people but there's others who want to help and then we end on a dad joke this is the best scene in the entire show it's touching and it leaves an impact that far outweighs the chest lasers and airbending suffocation that the rest of the show so heavily relies on it's the first and only time that Korra is in any way a compelling avatar or that you could actually feel like she's grown at all would it have really been so horrible to have korra go through a similar journey to aang but with new characters and setups remember Aengus journey wasn't just about learning the elements there was a war on top of it necessitating that he mastered the elements faster than any avatar ever had before in the legend of korra there is no journey so the story has a stand up entirely on its villains three of which are horribly mangled with contradictory philosophy on par with pokemon black and white and the fourth of which is just Fire Lord Ozai with less intimidation factor on top of all that later seasons pull the Steven universe gambit of using trauma in place of actual character development after being poisoned by Zaheer Korra spends most of the fourth season wandering around the earth Kingdom after having lost her avatar mojo well okay I guess that makes sense Dean beaten that badly we'll certainly leave this kind of effect on someone but the problem is that she's the avatar and it's been three [ __ ] years the [ __ ] avatar who faces near-death experiences on a constant basis and even had her own goddamn soul ripped out of her body and slapped around like a wet paper towel has been wandering around in a catatonic state for three years after this one fight which wasn't even the worst fight she's ever been in she reacts as I hear with the kind of fear and paranoia similar to a war veteran buts a year isn't the worst villain she's fought and didn't even give her the most traumatic experience she's ever had the fact that Corus rug doth far worse than this means that the attempt to pull the trauma card on this one person reads completely Hollow and smacks of desperation in response to an increasingly critical eye being turned toward Korra as a character part is that the character whose response to Zaire is the most compelling is also the character who's the least interesting in the show bowl in response to zai ears and are kissed rampage by pendulum swinging in the opposite direction and supporting an authoritarian dictator with an almost zealous conviction because anything is better than the chaos I year has brought over the earth Kingdom but the show doesn't dwell on it they seemingly right off Bolin's alesia's to kuvira as a result of him being stupid given by how certain everyone is that kuvira is evil we'll get into season 4 in a little bit but this small fact being overlooked speaks volumes about the difference in priorities when it comes to character design the show wants me to feel pity for Korra because she's struggling through PTSD but I've seen Korra shrug off far worse than this and so I don't feel any pity for her this is also the hardest part of Korra's character to criticize in any meaningful way because writers pull the trauma as character design card specifically because most people will fall for it most people will see this as a compelling story concept rather than the lazy tug on the heartstrings it truly is korra is introduced as a brash and impulsive avatar with no respect for the spiritual side of bending and little understanding of her role as the avatar and she ends the series as that exact same person but what makes that different from similar characters like Toth is that the show pretends that they've evolved her character at all and then has the gall to expect you to believe it [Music] in the last airbender bending was more than just combat it was art there was a lot of effort put into the styles of each form of bending and all of its sub forms as well the four elements all drew from real world martial arts meaning that every different kind of bender moves differently you don't just identify benders by the element they wield you identify them by their actual martial arts style this isn't just design flavor this is a plot point during season two I wrote each is Zuko about how he discovered a firebending technique to redirect lightning by studying the waterbenders and teaches the value of incorporating the spiritual aspects of different bending styles into one's own and then later in the crossroads of destiny Zuko does that a new way to bend fire is learned by studying waterbenders and it's conveyed entirely through the way the bender actually moves conjuring fire like a wave the reason earth bending is so difficult for Aang to learn is because he's had it ingrained to him that being light on his feet and agile is the best tactic an earthbending relies on you being rooted and immovable he has to change the way he approaches an encounter in order to master earthbending that's the plot of an entire episode it's not just a matter of martial arts either it's also about being resourceful Toph is the first person to discover metal bending because our seismic sense is so attuned that she can feel the impurities in her metal cage and she's the only one to think I wonder if I can bend that it's not a matter of Toph being special or just suddenly happening upon this ability like Bolin does with his lava bending she was just the one who had the tools at hand to figure out they were there and the rest was just a matter of getting them to move and it comes back to white off as the greatest earthbender in the world because she pays attention to the details that other people wouldn't think to look for The Legend of Korra takes all this detail rolls it up into a ball and then throws it in the fire so that they can wank off shitty 1920s technology some more first of all in 90% of the show bending four has been watered down to little more than generic punches and kicks this is sort of written off with Korra remarking on modern styles of fighting and Tenzin being dismissive of them but we all know the actual reason the animation is so focused on making things look pretty with little regard to how they're supposed to move so making a character is over designed as Korra or half the anime rejects we encounter in the first season action is simply outside the scope of the animation budget even down to the lip-syncing which is little more than open and closed mouths except in certain instances where characters are deliberately enunciated for comic effect despite each individual frame looking much nicer in the last airbender the actual quality the animation has degraded considerably and the same studio worked on that Voltron cartoon where the same thing happened the quality the art has gone up while the actual animation is plummeted because making it actually move is just too difficult just take a look at how over design Korra is from the hair ties to the waist skirt and the ties coming off with that additional flap underneath her clothes baggy and loose hanging and all that free moving detail is completely asinine for anything to animate especially if you're working with traditional 2d animation which is as user friendly as Microsoft front-page and is the reason it's been discontinued by most Animation Studios in favor of flash or CGI incidentally this was a joke in The Last Airbender what do you think [Applause] [Music] what's a wind sword is where I get a sword handled and then I just swing this around and Bend air out like a blade [Music] yeah nice I'll just stick to what I got something the creators made fun of is now something they're doing with a straight face and that's just sad in fact once season four came around and Nickelodeon slashed the teams budget they responded by flat-out removing most of this detail from korra's model and she wasn't the only one either Asami had most of her defining details altered as well so that the animators could actually move her without causing an economic recession but it's more than just a need for everything to be prettier to the point that it's too hard to move let's take the Avatar state for instance the Avatar state was a simple idea when the avatar or someone the avatar loves is in serious peril they can summon the combined might of every previous avatar into a desperate bid to get out of danger in the last airbender the Avatar state is an event precisely because an had to get the [ __ ] kicked out of in order for it to even trigger so not only was it rare it was extremely powerful it didn't carry the risk that being killed in the Avatar State means no more avatar but good luck doing that in the Legend of Korra Korra can trigger the Avatar state at will which means the Avatar state can't be as powerful as it used to be otherwise she's completely unkillable so Korra goes into the Avatar state constantly but she doesn't really get a whole lot of benefit from it does she she gets the [ __ ] kicked out of her in the Avatar State almost every time she uses it and in most cases going into the Avatar state only ever puts her on the same level as whoever she's fighting the Avatar State means nothing it has to mean nothing because if it didn't then no conflict would ever have any tension at all in the last airbender they recognized this and purposefully made it so that in order to trigger the Avatar state at will Anglet event to give up everything he cared about and he didn't want to do that instead of doing anything that clever or character establishing the writers opted for the princess celestia approach where Korra can use the Avatar state all the time but it's about as effective as slapping someone with a wet paper towel the very idea of bending was watered down so much that they up and turned it into a professional sport now I could talk for hours about how so much time is wasted on pro bending and how it overrides so much of the interesting ideas of bending to the point that it accidentally serves as the only example of inequality in Republic City that a mon is yammering on about but somebody already beat me to that subject and I can't figure out a way to write out this thesis in a way that doesn't come off as explicit plagiarism in Avatar bending made the world move everything even whole cultures was built around bending in some way in korra that world design is abandoned we see very little of the water earth and fire nations and now the majority of the story takes place in a very steampunk esque city that is just screaming new york circa 1920 and that's the problem the nation's in Avatar have always drawn on elements of Asian cultures but they also merge that idea seamlessly with each nations element by taking most the story out of the different nations and to the United Republic the impact that bending has on the culture that surrounds it is gone to be replaced by a hybrid of real world cities from the most criminal from the worst age of the 20th century I don't know what it is about the 1920s that keeps making people think it's a good idea to set animated works there but after years of steampunk wannabe knockoff siphoning imagery from that time period the entire concept becomes unnecessarily trite and the hilarious part is that Republic City is the only place this [ __ ] happens you see many glimpses of the Water Tribes in the earth Kingdom they're still very much steeped in their cultural architecture and design worse off is that the United Republic is radiating Americana from every orifice to the point of being bolted onto the earth Kingdom like a lingering infection for [ __ ] sake there's a giant statue of Aang on an island in the harbor that screams Statue of Liberty the entire design of her public city is reminiscent of New York the origins of the avatar are dripping with Christian overtones about God and Satan and give yourself unto Jesus capitalism is creeping further and further into the world like a viral plague and every theme in the series can be boiled down to democracy is great everything else sucks because I said so that is except in the first season where we have to maintain the status quo except for the part where the United Republic's leader isn't called a president yet it's almost as if somebody looked at the rich eastern coating of the Avatar universe and thought not enough murica and started bolting stars and stripes onto everything they could see but the biggest act of vandalism on the world design is the airbenders the air nomads were on the brink of extinction even at the start of Legend of Korra after Aang's death Tenzin and his children were the only remaining airbenders this is a scar left on the world by the hundred year war a scar that will take hundreds of years to heal and will persist as a constant reminder of the horrors of Fire Lord Sozen azulon and Ozai just kidding starting in season three [ __ ] spirit magic makes airbenders pop up everywhere because [ __ ] long-lasting effects on the world [ __ ] the scars caused by war [ __ ] the very concept of things taking time to heal one Episode airbenders everywhere go and [ __ ] yourself it's like the [ __ ] with Korra but take you to a grander scale to undo one of the most noteworthy crimes in the entire [ __ ] history of the world of Avatar I don't even know why this was done I can only assume that the reason was that we wanted to see the air nomads return to their former glory but doing that in a way that didn't completely spit all over the symbolism of the previous series was apparently not good enough we had to do it in one episode with [ __ ] spirit magic let's just have more airbenders because that would be cool without actually thinking about the impact that has and if you thought the culture of airbending being on its last legs and having to slowly rise back to prominence would have been actually interesting you get to eat [ __ ] because we wanted more airbenders and also we wanted an evil Airbender who I'm so edgy and also we're gonna hang a lampshade on the fact that we're scrubbing away the entire culture of the air nomads to just be airbending and nothing else it's actually alarming just how much of the cultural origins of the world of Avatar gets scrubbed by the creeping Americanization of the entire world which is ironic because the themes of The Last Airbender explicitly condemned to this kind of imperialism the United Republic was created from occupied earth Kingdom territory to the point where two different villains remark on it with plans to take it back and this is viewed as a bad thing it's a good thing this was the Korea inspired earth Kingdom rather than the Water Tribe or more people would have caught on to the implications more to the point it's unique culture is credited as being the result of both immigration and technological revolution just like America how about that [ __ ] it's strange that The Legend of Korra goes to so much effort to scrub away the thing that made avatar unique Eastern culture that's not Japan being the basis for the entire world design and thoroughly explore the differences between those cultures with the avatar of each cycle continuing to sport the garb of their native homeland and now we have to watch all of that gets scrubbed away in favor of Western architecture Western technology Western politics Western neoliberal capitalist propaganda the first seasons bad guys are essentially the bastardized poorly understood version of communism that Americans have been so thoroughly terrified of for decades dressed up with a fresh coat of Occupy Wall Street paint they really were married to this idea oh by the way speaking of marriage romance was always the black sheep of Avatar but with most of the characters being around 12 to 14 it was never really all that present outside of a few episodes in the series finale with the new cast being around their early 20s things get messy talking about the issues with romance is a lot harder than anything else in this script because it's the one thing that even the most die-hard fans agree was handled extremely poorly let's start with the obvious one the love triangle so bullies got the hots for core because she can crush a watermelon with her thighs only [ __ ] got bats Rocco because it's generic and brooding with the Batman story and that's what the do men writing the show think women like only my co-star stating Asami the generically pretty business woman who manages to go 3/4 the series without a personality but then Cora kisses ma Cohen G which breaks Bolin's heart but it's ok he gets over it only Asami finds out later and suddenly becomes super jealous it starts wondering why Makos worried about Korra when Korra was captured by him on seriously saw me what the [ __ ] kind of timey do you have you insufferable little [ __ ] and then the zombie spends the next few episodes being really passive-aggressive toward Mike oh and I guess they break up because at the end card Marco get together and I'm season finale an uncomfortable amount of the first season is spent dwelling on this love diamond but because the writers have all the tact and social graces of Justin Bieber and the Holocaust Museum all the actual material takes place at the most inopportune times Asami starts to get suspicious that ma ko has feelings for korra because he's being extremely worried about her well-being while they're searching for her after she was supposedly captured by the Equalists who planned to take her bending away and without the avatar they're all [ __ ] the writers picked the worst possible time to start developing more of this romantic subplot worse off as the season progresses the characters involved in these subplots become less and less interesting in season 2 maka breaks up with Korra and gets back together with Asami but then walks back on it when Korra loses her memory this made ma Co hated among the viewer base but what I'm wondering here's why Asami or Bolin never spoke up about it they both knew and they were both in a position to do something about it but instead Bolin briefly teases ma co about the whole thing while asami remains suspiciously quiet this whole scene is treated like a big story changing deal when we've just stopped to reiterate how unenjoyable this subplot and the characters involved are also in season 2 bolin gets into an abrupt relationship with alocs daughter but i used the word relationship extremely loosely Eska just decides that bolin belongs to her not answering when Bolin asks if she means as a boyfriend or a slave and then proceeds to drag him around for half the season abusing him at every possible opportunity and hog-tying him into marriage and will do öhlins brother or his friends do about it they [ __ ] laugh you could say that's expected considering the [ __ ] that goes on between mokou korra and asami but the show treats us like a big joke as well escalating law to bolin being chased across continents by a murderous woman he leaves at the altar because of course he leaves Eska at the altar she's [ __ ] nuts and if Bolin stays with her he's going to die and then toward the end they just write the whole thing off as if we didn't just spend part of the Seas and laughing at Bolin's obvious distress and anxiety the sad part is that this could have been the most interesting thing in the entire series if the writers had taken it even remotely seriously and not just assume that abusive relationships are funny when the abuser is a woman and I know that's why they thought it was funny because it's the same reason Korra can't seem to fight her way out of a paper bag and keeps needing makohe Bolin and Tenzin to save her oops can you tell one of the creators used to work on Family Guy actually that's not a fair comparison because at least when family guided in an episode about domestic abuse they had the decency to kill the obviously abusive piece of [ __ ] worse even is that ESCA returns in season 4 to spout rhetoric about how being a girlfriend to being a boss of the same thing this feels like all those stand-up comedy routines about how marriage is a sacrifice of one's freedom but without the sarcasm or the realization that it's still not funny even with the sarcasm thankfully during season 3 they kept the romance to the same level they had it on The Last Airbender and even in season 4 they the common sense to keep most of the relationships is already having been established taking the three-year time difference to open these pairings in medius rests but they just couldn't help themselves and at the very end of the season they matched up Korra Saamy the two of them walk into the spirit world together seemingly having become a couple and I say seemingly because the writers had to confirm it in a public statement because it was apparently that ambiguous apparently this time they had a statement to make about it claiming that it was an important leap for representation and the like but that all rings hollow because it happened the very last possible minute of the very last season presumably to avoid any potential backlash from potentially hurting their bottom line its yelling bisexual avatar really quickly before slamming the door behind you and sprinting down the road it's saying oh we're here for our LGBT friends and family but not if it means potentially causing a rift before it won't matter anymore I suppose I should consider this a blessing considering the horrifying [ __ ] show we've had to experience so far but ever since Steven universe has been finding ways to hide all their gay relationships behind fusion and death I'm sick and [ __ ] tired of creators claiming to be big supporters of LGBT people but taking every measure possible to minimize their presence in their works to avoid potentially pissing off the Tories if this show was as supportive as it claims to be they'd have gone all in and opened an episode one with them as adults and already married worse than that the entire show's approach to romance is born purely out of obligation because the last airbender had romance and so we have to have it here as well so many characters have so little chemistry that fan art [ __ ] fan art can capture more emotion and chemistry in a single wordless frame then the writers can manage in four years supposedly all this is built on in the turf wars comic I wouldn't know because I can't honestly think of a good reason of why I would pay to experience more Legend of Korra content I already had to rewatch the series in its entirety for this video and that was torturous enough I certainly don't want to experience it in comic book form and I certainly don't want to experience that on the off chance that this one tertiary element of the story might be done better key word being might the fact of the matter is that the romance was the worst elements of even The Last Airbender and the writers had the common sense to keep it to a minimal presence in the series there was one episode and then brief moments and a few others before closing with a shot that everyone wanted to see by the end the best written relationship was between Sokka and Sookie and you barely saw a whole lot of content for it this is because their relationship after the Serpent's past was mostly contained to occasional couple banter because banter is where Sokka is the strongest Aurra makes the big mistake of not only having love triangles but also pretending that those triangles are just as engaging as the main story rather than being a fun little side story and that inflation of a side story's prominence makes it's bigger problems all the more glaring the last airbender would have only suffered if half of every season was devoted to building on the romance and if Sokka was roped into an unhealthy submissive relationship with you eh seriously what the hell writers that was all kinds of [ __ ] up [Music] we're gonna talk about what makes the other seasons a hot mess but season two is the only season that the majority of Korra's fanbase is extremely critical of which is to be expected most fan bases are generally uncritical of material if said material remains consistent with itself it's only when you place a good story and a terrible story right next to each other that they start to realize the difference so long as the material isn't constantly shifting between two different versions of itself most casual viewers will just accept that everything was intentional and not bother expending the energy to really analyze and digest what they've actually seen the season opens with the chieftain of the Northern Water Tribe offering to teach Korra about the spirits from remarking on the fact that she's been sheltered from the Avatar journey throughout her entire life from there oona Locke starts talking about the unification of the Water Tribes and a civil war breaks out between the north and the south and Korra learns that her father was banished from the north for burning down a spirit forest and angering the spirits Korra tries desperately to remain neutral until her father is imprisoned for inciting rebellion and she learns that unlock plotted all of this including her father being banished years ago and the spiritual unrest going on in the Water Tribes was his fault the entire time Korra ceases to be neutral and retreats to Republic City to find help which connects to multiple different storylines after the new president of Republic City refuses to send the United forces Asami agrees to sell weapons and mecha-tanks to the south to save her company but she's sabotage by Varrick who wants to push future industries into a position to have to sell to him because he wants their assets to profit off the civil war Varrick also starts pushing propaganda films to push Republic City into supporting open war starring Bolin and inciting terror attacks on Republic City to blame the north holy-shit civil war that builds on material introduced in the last airbender war propaganda and a war profiteer all connected with each other and we're only halfway through the season by this point the amount of detail and complicated storytelling on display is amazing and it's the first time that the show really grabs you by the nuts and never lets go as even minor fights between main characters start carrying a lot of tension because you've seen what kind of domino effect it can have on the rest of the story you even get old-school plot divergences with Tenzin going on vacation with his family who are still the best characters in the show this is the kind of writing that the entire series needed so much more of a densely packed an interconnected story that takes full advantage of the fact that the series is running on a continuous narrative and can keep throwing curveballs at you with new developments and playing off material we established a few episodes ago to guide said curveballs right into your groin well that all sounds great you might be saying so what's the problem well we still have another half of the season to go that's what after departing to seek help from the Fire Lord Cora is ambushed by a dark spirit and washes up on the shores of the fire sages where we're treated to the real reason the dark spirits are running rampant and Duloc is hungry for power and the origin of the avatar the avatar is the result of a light spirit permanently fusing with a human in a constant state of reincarnation to endlessly do battle with a dark spirit who wants to burn all mortal life in the world every 10,000 years and Oona Locke wants to release the dark spirit and everything he's been doing has just been a means to an end because what this story about the chaotic interplay between the four elements built off Eastern mythology needed was God and Satan objectively good and evil light versus dark proselytizing that's the kind of nuanced attitude we need in this show anyway as tension for vaatu starts to ramp up the civil war falls by the wayside we get maybe one battle between the northern and southern water tribe and we wrap up that bit with Varrick trying to escalate the war for the sake of profits and then all our focus is put toward the conflict between raava and vaatu immediately season two commits the cardinal sin of character based storytelling it starts treating its lore as this big important thing that needs to be fleshed out I've talked about this before but there's a severe dissonance between the values of good storytelling that makes something memorable and interesting and what hardcore fans think makes a story memorable and interesting and detailed lore is very much in the latter category all this crap about the avatar spirit and avatar Wan and harmonic convergence and vaatu being in prison for another 10,000 years so he doesn't blanket the world in darkness is all needless [ __ ] worse even this unnecessary exposition dump does three things to ruin the story one it undermines the civil war civil wars are great conflicts because there's no objectively good or evil side in them if you write them properly you can have each side be as well in tension or petty as you like and force the viewer to engage with the story and pick a side you remember Captain America's Civil War where the two sides are fighting over whether the Avenger should have complete autonomy or submit to the United Nations you know how you can tell that was a very well-written film because it's possible for viewers to be teamcap or teamironman each side makes enough good points that had enough valuable ground that it was possible to break the base and breaking the base is what civil war stories are supposed to do if you don't have fans arguing about which side was truly in the right you [ __ ] up season 2 of Korra starts doing this with Oona Locke talking about how he wants to bring back the Water Tribe spirituality that was lost in the last few centuries we see Inklings of that throughout the world The Legend of Korra takes place in a much less spiritual time with even the very spiritual Tenzin struggling to enter the spirit world we can see how brash and bullheaded tonraq is the only way una loc was even able to trick him into being banished was because he knew his brother had zero respect for the spirits and would trash that forest that was still his own fault he should have known better we could have had the kind of nuanced and thought-provoking story the writers clearly wanted to make but they just couldn't restrain themselves - it explains the magic don't explain the magic just don't [ __ ] do that we all saw this right it's an alright movie that's extremely overrated but this scene is really dumb and unnecessary honestly were there a lot of people out there at the end of Avatar begging to know the origins of the Avatar cycle and where the lion turtles came from actually there probably was and the writers listened to them and now season two is the most hated season among the fanbase because the [ __ ] course it is fans always say they want the magic to be explained and they want all this lore and backstory for everything but fans don't have a [ __ ] clue what they want especially when they totally misunderstand the values of the things they consume that they think explain the Avatar cycle was something that needed to happen three it turns the story into a [ __ ] fanfic if there were a list of things you should never do in writing a story about the avatar the words dark avatar would be right at the top of that list bold-faced underlined circled with red ink with arrows pointing to it reading don't [ __ ] through this coincidentally right underneath it would be Dragon Ball Z hadouken lasers season 2 of Legend of Korra does both of these things and some people may find these Triton lazy methods of increasing tension and pretending a fight scene is more intense than it really is this was the point where most of Korus fanbase were immediately turned right the [ __ ] off from the season coincidentally it also points to just how fanfic in nature the writing is fanfics emulate Dragon Ball Z and their stories because it's the only way they understand to increase tension while properly introduced works increased tension by working on the relationships between all the characters involved but all that work that has been built up over the season was abandoned the moment Korra discovers una Locke lied to her and joins the kill una Locke party this feeds into the larger season wide problem of all the good will of the story being abandoned the moment raava and vaatu were introduced because it turns a messy Civil War into a battle against God and Satan and Korra was never written with that idea in mind it was written from a Knights of the Old Republic to perspective where things are messy and you learned that the reason the SIF continued to exist despite being constantly wiped out is because people are always becoming disillusioned with the Republic and the Jedi but where Korra differs from kotor 2 is that it keeps contriving reasons for its antagonists to still have to die because killing a villain is the only way we know how to make things feel climactic so we leave season 2 with Locke trying to destroy the world after releasing vaatu but Korra concluding that maybe he was right and opening the spirit portals anyway concluding that avatar Wan made a mistake closing them despite having a very good reason for closing them in the first place the reason I compare this to fanfiction is because this tangled mess of contradictory ideas themes and execution is something you expect from fanfiction precisely because the people who write it are often novices and these mistakes are to be expected and eventually be ironed out but professionals working on a large company's payroll have no business making these mistakes more to the point season 2 is not isolated the same people who thought this was a good way to write a story made the rest of the show - it just happens to be the most egregious example of its problems compounded by how good the season starts off they even bring up the same issues with Cora's upbringing and training and how she's suffered from such a sheltered life and held back from the avatars journey but they abandoned it with everything else once it's time to start shoving in the lore and explaining the magic what makes season 2 stand out to even the most casual viewer is that you get that limps of what chorus storytelling could have been like it's the only time you get to see how the series could have been great and that makes the bad writing stand out so much more from everything else [Music] well this show relies so heavily on its villains to drive the plot I might as well move on to the most infamous of the bunch the Red Lotus sire as introduced as one of the non-benders gifted with airbending as a result of Korra doing the hijra jute with the spirit portals unlike the other new airbenders we see the zai ear demonstrates an innate mastery with airbending the moment he's able to apply it we see snippets of zaire freeing a number of other extremely powerful benders but for the first quarter of the season were focused on Korra and the gangs oohing around the earth Kingdom looking for other airbenders this brings them to Ba Sing se where it becomes clear to everyone that the earth Queen has become an exceedingly powerful tyrant more concerned with preserving her own opulence than actually governing her people and is even kidnapped the airbenders in Ba Sing se too conscripted to her army at the same time we also learned that Zaheer and his three buddies had tried to kidnap Korra when she was just a little Babu and this is apparently supposed to serve as a justification for the White Lotus training her within the compound her entire life then the season waffles for several episodes as we deal with su Yin and Lin who we'll get to later the new generation of airbenders and then we finally get back to the plot when the Red Lotus plus to kidnap Korra a second time from xiaofu this leads to what is probably the best actual fight scene in the entire series as the main characters are pitched against absurdly powerful benders they're forced to fight a lot smarter using metal bending to create cover exploiting Bolin's honed accuracy to stun that one combustion vendor ropings eye ear staff and later slicing his glider using firebending to evaporate water tendrils and taking advantage of tiny openings to completely destroy their plans it's one of the most brilliantly written fight scenes in the entire series it's right up there with Toph fighting in the earthbending rings later every guard is questioned regarding how the Red Lotus even infiltrated xiaofu using a truth seer to determine who's lying and it's glaringly obvious that the truth seer himself is the one responsible and the show linkers on it just long enough for you to wonder if the writers are really gonna pretend that this is some kind of great secret thankfully they don't anyway they eventually track as I ear down to the spirit world where he explains to Korra that he's part of a society who wants to rid the world of governments in the name of true freedom that's right season three's big bad and resident philosophy is anarchism out of all the terrible philosophical ideas ever concocted they up for the very [ __ ] worst the bottom of the [ __ ] barrel what's funny is that this is the only time The Legend of Korra ever actually demonstrates the failings of the philosophy it's trying to cover while the goals that Amon and unlock pretend to have eventually become achieved by ear flat-out admits that Locke becoming a dark avatar oh yeah I forgot to mention when Locke was working for the Red Lotus way back when was not part of their plan and later in season four as a year admits that he'd never expected kuvira to achieve as much power as she had this is because anarchism is a power vacuum a period of anarchy will always result in new infrastructure taking its place whether it be city-states authoritarianism or communism something will always fill that void this is a reality that many real-world anarchists don't think about because most anarchists are idiot teenagers or libertarians whose entire thought processes look the root of all the government because government they're bad and never think about the long-term effects of that decision and this is going to be extremely important in just a moment the Red Lotus traveled to Ba Sing se and after failing to negotiate the avatars capture with the earth Queen zaire attacks and maybe I forgot to mention something to you I don't believe in Queens you think freedom is something that you can give would take on a whim but to your people freedom is just as essential as air and without it there is no life it was only darkness for a lot of people this was some kind of crowning moment of badass was a year burn Maggard airbending murder for me I have to sit here while this grown-ass man child repeats the mistakes of the Iraq war by plunging the earth Kingdom into chaos as the people start rampaging across the nation looting places and evolving to fallout style Raiders and bandits one thing I find absolutely [ __ ] hilarious is that Zaire declares that no longer will they be oppressed by tyrants but in the very next season they start being oppressed by a brand new tyrants because of course they were this is how anarchism always turns out anyway after [ __ ] over the earth Kingdom in the name of short-sighted idealisms I here threatens kora that he's going to wipe out the new air nation after failing to track him in the spirit world Korra seeks wisdom from fire lord zuko and if I'm being perfectly honest this is one of my favorite scenes in the entire series this scene and another we'll get to in just a moment are two of the most heartbreaking moments in the series and just like the first half of season two really show what korra could have been if the writers gave even half of a [ __ ] Zuko tells Korra about how rebuilding and protecting the air nation was Aang's dream and that while he would have sacrificed anything to protect it Korra needed to remember that the avatar belonged to all nations what's wonderful is that this mirrors a scene from The Last Airbender when aang is getting wisdom from his past lives on whether he should kill the Fire Lord he's becoming more frustrated that nobody's telling him that his beliefs are just so in the last ditch effort at a confirmation bias he contacts the last air Nomad avatar avatar yang Chen chide Zhang for his selfishness and tells him that the avatar must do what is best for the world regardless of his own personal beliefs Zuko tells Korra that giving herself up may be effective in the short term but that unlike as a year she needs to consider the long-term consequences of her actions but what really seals it is the look Zuko gives Korra upon learning that she spoke with Iroh in the spirit world you can tell that Zuko is only just learning that his uncle is in the spirit world and could possibly see him again it's a reminder of just how good the character work in The Last Airbender was anyways a year arrives at the air temple and holds the airbenders hostage after telling Tenzin of his plans Tenzin immediately attacks a year and tells the airbenders to evacuate while he kya and Bumi fend the Red Lotus and here's where that second heart-wrenching moment occurs [Music] [Music] give up it's over as long as I'm breathing [Music] Tencent has been one of the best characters in the series up to this point you see him struggling to teach and increasingly unwilling to learn Cora you see him raising his children see the rebirth of the air nation he gets more valuable characterization than any of the actual main characters in the series seeing him so thoroughly brutalized is horrible so horrible that the camera pans away so that you don't have to see the worst of it this is especially troubling because the series has an almost fetishistic love of brutalizing Cora and showing you every gory detail I felt genuine chills as the camera panned by the air temple wall because so far Tenzin has been the only character I actually liked and that made seeing him get beaten all the more horrifying and like the scene with Zuko shows you what kind of show this could have been if the writers have put in this much effort everywhere Korra arrives at the air temple and turns herself in as the rest of the crew plots a flanking strategy this leads into yet another very long battle and so soon after the last one the bending fights are starting to grow very tiresome long story short the firebender dies a grisly death Bolin discovers he can lava Bend we're all supposed to apparently be shocked as a year demonstrates this legendary bending technique despite us seeing this technique used by the sky bison in every episode since the last airbender and we get a conspicuous naming of one particular metal client soldier that won't become important later we promise it turns out that Zaire intends to poison Korra into entering the Avatar state in order to kill her permanently and then launches into a speech about freedom that sounds like it was ripped directly out of a Metal Gear cutscene in fact considering that Metal Gear Rising came out a year and a half before this particular episode aired I wouldn't be surprised that they did just written most of zai ears [ __ ] from Senator Armstrong as a year starts administering the poison and we get a nice close-up shot of cor arriving in extreme agony hallucinating and red Jesus our soul in Christ I've avoided talking about it up until now but I think this is the opportune time this show has a really unhealthy fascination with brutalizing Korah and showing you every detail of her squealing in agony while other characters are given the opportunity to take their beatings with dignity Korah does not get anywhere close to that kind of dignity and the writers seemed keen to show you every possible moment of her torture and every possible opportunity I don't like to assume extremely horrible things about people unless they give me adequate reason to but I can come up with no other reason for why this happens so frequently and in such gory detail to Cora and only to Cora other than the writers are getting off on it so after the writers are done cleaning up Cora finally enters the Avatar state and rips herself free and starts chasing Zaire across the mountainside for about a minute before falling over again sigh ear starts to suffocate Cora and then Jinora huge budget and then sigh ears finally defeated after soo Yeon saves Cora's I ear starts yelling desperately about how chaos is the natural order and Bolin treats in the way you should treat all anarchists by shoving something in his idiot mouth so he finally shuts the [ __ ] up [ __ ] me was this whole ordeal horrible my guess is that the writers seriously couldn't think about how to raise the stakes any higher after pulling the Satan card and the only reason they even chose anarchism as their philosophy of the day was because its inherent destructive nature made for a lot of massive set pieces it makes sense considering that Zaheer is such an overwhelmingly powerful Airbender after only having airbending for a few weeks and why the bending fights are so common and dragged on for so long that the sounds of fire and air start to bleed together why the air nation suddenly experiences a boom of new airbenders by combustion bending makes a return to pepper episodes with literal bass plugins that's actually what it feels like it feels like Michael Bay explosions the series the character moments are so barren and empty compared to every other season which is saying a lot and it doesn't have the saving grace that season two had have been actually interesting plot during the first half there's a lot of pretend philosophy more so than season one and two because the villain doesn't turn out to be a liar partway through he's just really that stupid but it's more than just the jingling keys nature of how the villains are portrayed all sorts of interesting story ideas appear and vanish like clockwork we're in sure used to Lin sister suyin who shirks Authority and commits crime in her youth and spends most of her life consequence-free this attitude carries over into her adult life where she puts her utmost faith in people with some of the most horrid records and talks about establishment government like it's some kind of poison there's one scene where she's provoked into a rant about how outdated the concept of a queen is after hearing about who Tings [ __ ] and I suppose it's lucky the fire Lord wasn't around to hear that but after this brief stint of anti royal sentiment she's right there in the next season eating for Prince Wu to retake the throat of the earth Kingdom reintroduced tamaco and Bolin's family and get a few scenes where ma co almost manages to pretend he's a person before abandoning that idea completely it's almost like ticking off a checklist a story ideas that they had to make a passing nod to we get an entire arc with the airbending students and tens in teaching them to live like air nomads and it almost feels like this is going somewhere but it seemingly gets dropped after a minor event with Jinora and Kai and right back to these four idiots the season even ends like this core has been beaten and poisoned so badly that she's in a wheelchair and if you think we might finally get to see Korra experience real tangible change to herself for the first time the next season opens three years later and core is already mobile again the closest thing the Corps has to deal with is lingering post-traumatic stress disorder and poison in her body but she manages to remove the poison after some training with Toph but there's still her PTSD right well no Korra does deal with the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder for two-thirds of the fourth season but it like everything else gets magic out of her in the meditation scene [Music] Korra spends most of season four unable to do her avatar duties because she's being constantly haunted by his eight years attempt to kill her this is actually a big deal as much as Cora's endured far worse actually being affected by something for the first time in her life is at least an improvement but instead of working through that trauma and dealing with it Korra manages to almost completely erase it by meditating into the spirit world and talking to raava I'm not entirely certain how this is supposed to help her but this is The Legend of Korra so randomly shrugging off life-changing events is to be expected at this point but the key problem here is that Korra can't enter the spirit world it needs someone to guide her there so who does she get as a spirit guide Tenzin Chaya Jinora nope that's right core is being led into the spirit world by the very person who put her in this position in the first place and being told to trust him which is like trying to sue the Vietnam War veteran by showing him your firecracker collection and say ear peppers this with all sorts of crap about her core is just deflecting and blaming him for her own problems and jesus-fucking-christ I could just hear the writer standing behind the camera going who are direct metaphor for someone's abuser is helping Korra get over the metaphorical abuse we're so edgy and considering how the rest of the series reeks of someone being insecure at how much the last airbender was a children's show at heart I'm wondering how many of these awful decisions like this were made with that same mindset this for me is the defining moments of The Legend of Korra it's the most telling portion about the priorities in writing in the most straightforward expression of all of its problems a compelling character idea is erased and the implications of that erasure are less valuable than the idea being erased all done in the name of having the villain kind of have a pints because that sounds smart to somebody who's incapable of thinking about this for longer than half a second The Legend of Korra is the show where the creators try really hard to convince you that they're very grown-up and smart and it's the show where they succeed in convincing you that they are neither of those things [Music] the thing that hamstrings quorum more than anything else that I've already talked about is its themes The Legend of Korra really wanted to be a smart show for older audiences and get out of the animation age ghetto that for reasons that continued to elude me we apparently don't want to be in anymore but while their intentions may be good having to tackle more messy subject matter reveals just how little the writers understand of these issues they're talking about and how little they pay attention to how their own writing affects that in the very first episode Korra and by extension the viewer is introduced to a protest about benders oppressing non vendors this fundamental issue forms the basis of the entire seasons conflict with the main villain being the leader of the so-called Equalists who want to strip vendors of their power after being oppressed by them for so long there's just one teeny tiny little niggling massive gaping black hole of a problem aside from a single dust-up between Korra and the triads gang the viewer is never shown any instance of benders actually mistreating non vendors even that fight with the triads shows up after you're introduced to the Equalists and that gang literally does not show its face again until its leader show up later to have their bending taken from them by Amon but if you think they were going the approach of having the Equalists actually be the aggressors you'd be wrong because other characters including Tenzin and other members of the council that controls Republic City talk about the inequality as if it's been an issue for a very long time in the first few scenes Tenzin mentions that Republic City has been getting steadily more unstable and that Amon has been a problem for quite a while we're told multiple times that Republic City has a classism problem however we're never shown it the closest thing to it later on is tarrlok trying to form a special task force to root out the Equalists essentially becoming a secondary antagonist of the season but even then tarrlok's actions are a response to the problem of the Equalists he's doing his job as far as the viewers concerned there's a brief moment where tarrlok starts trying to impose curfews on all non-benders but it lasts for about one episode before tarrlok is removed from the plot entirely but the writers have done is created an allegory for the civil rights movement but forgot to create an allegory for the centuries of bigotry and Jim Crow that preceded it funnily enough the last airbender actually had this element Toph is constantly chiding Sokka for not being a bender and does it so casually that you could be forgiven for thinking that non-benders actually are looked upon and it comes up later on when Sokka looks for a teacher in sword fighting you'd be more capable of assisting in combat soccer looks down on himself for being a non-bender despite being an invaluable asset to the team from day one the fact that he still can't bend affects him on a fundamental level this is the kind of material that the Legend of Korra needed so much more of the introduction to The Legend of Korra describes the united republic as a place where benders and non-benders from all over the world can live together in peace and harmony so there's a shitload of context that non-benders might be looked down on by benders but they never once actually show it to you this fundamental lack of any explicit context places the Equalists in a very strange position as far as antagonist ghosts remember all the other information surrounding the characters is expecting the viewer to believe that non-bender oppression is a real and serious issue and that the Equalists were pushed into their position but because none of this important world building is actually presented directly to the viewer it instead plays out like the straw man version of social justice that internet conservatives like to pretend exists Amon himself is a waterbender and his rhetoric about equality is a lie he wants to purge the world of bending because his daddy was abusive he even fakes a story about being deformed by a firebender why does Amon even have to lie if the problem he pretends to care about supposedly does exist one could say that this was the point that the writers genuinely held these beliefs and that the entire first season was a criticism of social justice and yes I've heard people say that particularly the people who are dumb enough to think Amon as a communist but remember that not only this Republic city's government changed to better accommodate non-benders in the end but that Amon himself is deliberately designed to resemble v-a terrorists who actively fought against an unjustifiably fascist government that you actually get to see before you're introduced to him so the more likely explanation is that the writers were just too lazy to bother with any of that pesky world-building that would have put context to the Equalists there's a lot of telling but absolutely zero showing you're given a villain who lies about his own motivations talks endlessly at about a problem you never actually get to see even though its existence is confirmed by more trustworthy individuals and at the end you're expected to conclude that he might have had a point and was just going about it the wrong way the specific and consistent issue with The Legend of Korra is that the first three of its villains are supposed to be well-intentioned extremists in some way but all of them lie and all the problems they claim to fight against either refused to show their face are entirely of their own doing or is actually an improvement over what they were trying to create in the world that sounds intentional but considering that their actions end up also having positive effects on the world puts that assumption into question after Amon is dealt with Republic City shows a shifting government to better accommodate non-benders after a lock in that stupid dark avatar vanquished humanity ends up having to share the earth with the spirits anyway and it's often said that the world is better off for it as I ear doesn't have a positive effect on the world his Anarchy does what anarchy always does and creates a power vacuum for a tyrant and it turns out to be the heir to the throne who decides to implement a democratic system not out of any genuine belief in freedom and voting but because he doesn't believe he's capable of running a nation all three of these antagonists seem to stumble into positive solutions to real problems completely by accident what's the lessons supposed to be here what did Amon want equality for all oona Locke he brought back the spirits and Zaheer believed in freedom I guess the problem was those guys were totally out of balance and they took their ideologies too long wait that's the lesson the viewers supposed to take from this are you sure about that because all these problems were completely unresolved in getting progressively worse until these three stepped in to jumpstart a progressive shift The Legend of Korra wants to position itself as anti extremists that's what the show thinks it is in practice however The Legend of Korra is heavily advocating in favor of extremism because that's the only thing that seems to ever get anything done it wasn't until someone started making a [ __ ] ton of noise and causing trouble that Republic City was forced to change it wasn't until someone forced the spirit portals open that humanity became more in touch with the spirits at all it wasn't until someone killed the earth Queen that the earth Queen stopped being a total [ __ ] worst off this scene with Toph commits the mortal sin of storytelling and tries to retcon the motivations of the three villains to scrub away all their real motivations the writers back themselves so far into a corner that the only way they could push this extremism bad narrative was to lie and hope nobody smart enough to remember the previous seasons this weird hodgepodge of contradictory motivations and accidental progress proved to be so confusing by the final season the writers pretty much gave up on the idea of covering more mature subject matter and season fours villain is just a generic dictator but apparently the writers thought that was too subtle so we have to talk about reeducation camps and manufacturing weapons of mass destruction and just in case you still didn't get that she might be evil let's work in the Darth Vader force joke just so you really know she's evil all we're missing is a pathological hatred of foreigners and rhetoric about making the earth Kingdom great again and will officially have Nazis in Avatar kuvira is the only antagonist that doesn't affect any kind of positive change on the world even indirectly she's also the most enjoyable she's got a simple goal unite the scattered Earth Kingdom into a strong Empire and while she's willing to use force she tends to prefer negotiation wherever possible there are more actual conversations with kuvira than there are any of the real antagonists you were supposed to take seriously you remember the problem with am on and how the supposed oppression against non-benders has talked about a lot but never shown that happens again with kuvira but in Reverse where a lot of the main characters especially opal are constantly talking about all the cliche dictator things she's doing but because the most you ever see are a few shots of kuvira looking slightly sinister crushing a royal medal and be completely done with this one governor [ __ ] it all rings hollow because kuvira has such a vastly different approach in her design compared to the previous antagonist I honestly thought that for a while the writers were preparing a bait-and-switch kuvira was initially tasked with reuniting the earth Kingdom after it had fallen into disarray but at first they'd asked soo-eun to do the job and she refused because she's not interested in imposing her ideals on an entire nation which is the dumbest [ __ ] reason in the world to not quell civil unrest she says that marching into Ba Sing se with an army is pretty much asking for trouble but I'm pretty sure she'd be able to approach reuniting a country that's falling apart and a far more delicate manner than this the sad part is that su yen was last seen ranting about how outdated the concept of a monarchy is and this is her opportunity to propose something more inclusive for the people but she doesn't take it for seemingly no reason soohyun's explanation is so absolute so black and white so devoid of any nuance that I could not possibly imagine that it had been written with sincerity I could only assume that it was written just so it could be thrown back in her face she does this again kuvira announces that she's overthrowing the monarchy now faced with actual reasoning that kuvira might be letting the power go to her head Seohyun has the opportunity to tell kuvira that this is exactly what she was afraid of and that kuvira's bitterness toward the monarchy and fatigue from cleaning up their messes was leading to her rash decisions but can't actually come up with anything to say to her beyond the platitude of what makes you think you're so different a worthless non criticism that infests YouTube comments is the best line we can think of to come out of a supposed world leader in the first episode when kuvira is trying to negotiate unity with a governor he starts yammering on about how great his state is when it's being beset by bandits at every possible opportunity and they're all barely holding together and the situation becomes so dire that his refusal is probably going to do his people cuvee responds by giving him the most appropriate look imaginable after hearing all of it all the ridiculous nonsense the meaningless platitudes all the moaning and whining and crying and belly aching from the main characters throughout the entire season I was thoroughly expecting the writers to pull the rug out from underneath everyone and have kuvira actually build a functioning nation and just ask why why is the avatar so [ __ ] incompetent that she's getting her ass kicked at every turn to the point that a complete lunatic was able to destabilize the earth Kingdom a lunatic that by his own admission didn't expect such anarchy to create a power vacuum despite the fact that it's common knowledge that anarchy always creates a power vacuum why did the most trusted world leader and most respected figure in the world think it wasn't possible to reunite a broken country without being seen as Hitler why did everyone who wanted the earth Kingdom to be reunited suddenly start bitching and moaning when it was actually being done while the avatar was on the lam fighting boxing matches and playing in the mud with Toph but if you were like me and were thinking that maybe the writers were about to address all the problems with the show thus far you get to eat [ __ ] because instead what we actually got was metalbending Ozai getting into a giant robot to try and take Republic City after echoing the earth Queens sentiments about the United Republic being earth Kingdom territory and the reason you didn't see her doing any of the horrible [ __ ] people claim she was doing was for the same reason you didn't see non-benders being oppressed [ __ ] laziness because it sounds like a dictator and that's all we need apparently it's exactly the kind of ending you'd [ __ ] expect from the rest of the Legend of Korra and get that somehow still feels disappointing and suddenly we realize why su Yin had a sudden attack of stupidity earlier because the writers created is a story idea so stupid within their own fiction that all of a sudden the hyper progressive woman who would normally jump at the opportunity to espouse the virtues of democracy has to develop a sense of doomed paranoia all this comes down to one massive problem the writers are trying to cover heavy and complicated subject matter that they're not equipped to cover for an audience that isn't equipped to absorb them it's actually pretty common for fans of Legend of Korra to compare a Mons equalist movement with communism or Marxism something that would completely baffle you if you have any knowledge whatsoever about communism or Marxism but because Amon says equality a lot that triggers the communism senses and the permanently uneducated and the criminally witless or worse still how the show is very strongly pushing the idea that democracy is the best option but never once decides to showcase the actual virtues of democracy itself it's just it's good because we say so and all the other options suck because they're not democracy which is an ironically fundamentalist view of the concept it's often said that the legend of korra is aimed for older teenagers and i believe it because it showcases a teenager's understanding of the socio-political issues it tries in vain to cover the way it talks about freedom and equality and order and chaos is the kind of nonsensical rhetoric i'd expect to hear out of myself at 14 it's a worthless spit in the face to anyone who expects their intelligence to be respected and for a series that loves to position itself as the mature alternative to the last airbender the way it presents all of its themes is extremely childish extremism is bad except it's the only thing that actually works your life will be affected by change except not really the key to overcoming trauma is to put yourself in a vulnerable position with a person who [ __ ] you up domestic abuse is funny the scars of genocide can be healed by praying really hard democracy is great and everything else is an evil virus of Satan no we won't explain why [ __ ] you [Music] [Applause] [Music] the big reason The Last Airbender stuck so well with people is because it's a story about characters it's not a story about themes the villains are a generic evil empire centered around the most destructive of the four elements the Fire Nation has a constant presence throughout the world showing you specifically why they're a threat the heroes are a ragtag team of kids fighting a giant all-consuming evil it's the first Star Wars but with monks it's a very simple straightforward story the closest thing to a complicated moral question that ever comes up is whether or not Aang is going to kill the Fire Lord a question that ends up not having to be answered because the writers backed out of it at the last second the appeal came from things like sokka's sarcasm tops attitude I wrote talking about the nature of the elements and the nature of individual characters specific decisions not abstract nebulous concepts like freedom it's a simple story with a simple conflict it had to be because it was aimed at children so most of the internal struggles came from things that resonated with children like absent parents abusive families the pressure of sudden responsibility all things that resonate with a lot of kids all dressed up in Star Wars meets Mulan cosplay but at its core being very simple to digest and with valuable lessons the villains of The Last Airbender are not complex they didn't need to be the complexity came from the main characters it didn't matter if Ozai Azula Ty Lee weren't particularly complex the characters that needed to be compelling were and Katara Toph Zuko and Sokka the Fire Lord didn't need to spout half-assed philosophy he needed to be powerful and dangerous because his purpose was to be the culmination of Aang's character arc and he served that purpose excellently The Last Airbender is not a very mature show it's silly it has simple themes and extremely simple antagonists it's a show where you could totally call a villain sparky-sparky boom man and not bat an eye there are a lot of really insecure people who get very angry at the idea that animated shows are only for children but the reality is that animated shows and movies are often at their best when they're made with kids in mind there simply isn't a theme worth exploring that actively requires the trappings of a mature movie Harry Potter is beloved by children but that's a book series that's literally about the rise and fall of an autocrat with a villain who is defined by the idea that anything less than complete purity of blood will lead to the destruction of wizard Connie Pixar movies are pretty [ __ ] deep and actually pretty smart when you stop and think about them you're not gonna get more value out of an r-rated animated movie a movie doesn't get an R rating for smart themes and the exploration of the horrors of humanity it's gonna get an R rating because there's boobs and penises and lots of swearing and blood that's not a disparaging observation that's just the reality of how the MPAA who decides it's ratings the reason its alt animation soft and fails is because it's never made by people who wanted to make a good story they're made by people who are really insecure about animation being for children and when you start from that foundation nothing you make will ever be good avatar was a very smart show because it wasn't focused on being anything more than what it was it just had to work with the tools it had we get a really funny episode with Azula trying and failing to adapt to civilian life and that implicitly tells us just how much damage her father's done to her or Zuko journeying alone through the earth Kingdom and seeing the effects that his father's war has had on people and how quickly they turned on him upon discovering who he was because we weren't getting wrapped up in poorly thought-out philosophy we got to see something truly amazing the effects that war has on people this seemingly shallow set up that many fans nowadays try to pretend is less interesting the Legend of Korra opens up a lot of opportunities as the characters journey across the world meet new people struggling with war and get into a lot of smaller adventures along the way the writers had no way of knowing which moments would resonate the most with people and that could potentially be why they resonated with so many the fact is when it came time to make a sequel the writers were more concerned about recapturing that magic rather than just telling an interesting story which is why the new cast of characters is just the old cast of characters but grown up and more generically pretty why all the Reese kins of Ozai try to build on Fire Lord Sozen manifest destiny [ __ ] because the writers mistakenly thought that was the part about the Fire Nation that was interesting I'm sure a lot of people would blame Nickelodeon for executive meddling how the creators didn't have time to build on all their interesting ideas and that's why they fell flat but the sad thing is that the creators did have the time they just didn't bother remember that Civil War storyline they had an entire second half of the season to build on that but the creator's clearly felt it was more important to explain the origins of the avatar and introduce the God and Satan analogies they made the choice to fill the third season with explosions and bending fights over any real story they made the choice to spend more time on pro-bending than on establishing the actual conflict of the first season they made the choice to clone the previous gang without any thought to truly developing any of them you see the opportunities they had to make something truly great in the moments with Tenzin and his family or Lin beifong and wonder why they weren't the supporting characters instead of not Zuko not Sokka and not Suki no the problems of korra are not Nickelodeon's fault it's entirely on Bryan and Mike themselves if they didn't have enough time it's because they wasted all their time on all this [ __ ] and the only way I could see them being organized any worse is if they made a show exclusive to Netflix to close out despite all my bitching and complaining over the course of this video The Legend of Korra does have one notable achievement it is the worst thing thats HL Gabriel has ever been involved in and that's gotta be worth some kind of metal you could say what you like but this is what really motivated me to go through the torment I've subjected you all to over the last hour it's a small scene from the first season and it's only about ten seconds long [Music] when I think about this scene I think about the very obvious fact that somebody wrote in the script Korra's face juts out like pee-wee's big adventure while the background explodes and lightning strikes and flashes repeatedly before zooming back to reality and this somehow went from the first draft through multiple revisions the table read the final draft the storyboards the animation and then to the final editing room with absolutely nobody asking why you remember how I said The Legend of Korra is working its hardest to repeat well-known bits from the last airbender well The Last Airbender was well known for its silly and goofy faces because that's the kind of show it is because the writers are so desperate to recapture every scrap of magic they can they went as far as they could to create as many mean faces as possible and this is one of those attempts taken to its impossible' extreme out of curiosity I went and searched Korra face on Google Images and not only was this not the first result but the first result was an extremely better and less desperate version of Korra making a surprised oh [ __ ] face not 20 seconds later because the writers are more successful when they stop trying to lick the scraps the previous series has left behind some people will say that Korra wasn't well received because it wasn't the last airbender but I firmly believe that Korra wasn't as well-received because it tries too hard to be the last airbender most of the side characters are children or grandchildren of the old characters the new gang is the hot topic II versions of the old gang the new villains are the old villains with ten times more over political themes all the old stuff but even more or if I could snip some more lines from H bomber guy slight variations on this frame the one thing Legend of Korra didn't copy from The Last Airbender is the one thing that made the last airbender special it was different it did things that no other show has ever done The Legend of Korra is cliche after cliche after cliche good night [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Lily Orchard

Views: 5,805,610

Rating: 4.0155025 out of 5

Keywords: Lily, Peet, The Legend of Korra, Avatar the Last Airbender, The Last Airbender

Id: QhS4a11jZOg

Length: 94min 7sec (5647 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 19 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Waleed320COOL]

I tried to talk to her whenever she loses she deletes all comments

[u/SnoemanKing]

This video is so bad it's ridiculous. I don't think I could be more biased if I tried tbh lol.

[u/SealarksandDaffodils]

As much as I hate lily orchard and the so called "analysis" I'm just gonna clear up that lily is a she

[u/liv-needjam]

If you guys thought that was bad, you should see what she did to steven universe... But the worst part is, she doesn’t know what the hell she is talking about! Taoism is a completely different religion than Christianity and the part that’s mentioned isn’t supposed to symbolize god or gods!... gosh, I could go on all day about what was inaccurate about her statements...so just know half of that bs was lies! LIES!!

[u/Blue-Moon-89]

It's best to ignore people like her. Hateful people (I'm serious on this one. Apparently she encourages violence towards anyone that she deems a bully) who spread nothing but hatred because they can are not and should never be worth your time.

[u/draganov11]

This is guy who calls Darth Vader's force choke a gimmick. The thing that males him cool and people remember him because of it. What a complete moron.

[u/1morgondag1]

While that is pretty dishonest, I'm not sure it's against any YT rule.

[u/fecrescencio22]

Explaining the magic, kills the magic