The OVERLOOKED Reason Why Book 2 Fails Where Avatar THRIVED - Legend of Korra & The Last Airbender
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 1 июн 2024
- Today the Mystery Shack, we return to the world of Avatar to talk about what I believe to be the often overlooked reason why book 2 of the Legend of Korra falls flat for large parts of the audience (it's not the lasers, but it's also the lasers). Join me in a look at the Lord of the Rings, Elden Ring, Game of Thrones, and even The Walking Dead to examine where Korra went wrong.
Social Media :
---------------------------------------------------------------
Patreon : / korotosmysteryshack
Second Channel : @KorotoTV
/ korototv
Twitch : / korotosmysteryshack
Twitter : / korotoms
Starforge PCs (Affiliate link) : starforgesystems.pxf.io/B0nnd0
---------------------------------------------------------------
Further reading & links:
lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page
www.thegamer.com/what-did-geo...
eldenring.fandom.com/wiki/Eld...
www.thecollector.com/lovecraf...
www.adriasnews.com/2012/10/geo...
LEMMiNO - Cipher
• LEMMiNO - Cipher (BGM)
CC BY-SA 4.0
LEMMiNO - Firecracker
• LEMMiNO - Firecracker ...
CC BY-SA 4.0
LEMMiNO - Siberian
• LEMMiNO - Siberian (BGM)
CC BY-SA 4.0
LEMMiNO - Nocturnal
• LEMMiNO - Nocturnal (BGM)
CC BY-SA 4.0
----------------------------------------------------------------
Timecodes
---------------------------------------------------------------
00:00 - Introduction
00:47 - Spirits in the Avatarverse
02:36 - Fantasy: Expression of Human Conflict & Uncertainty
03:55 - Higher Forces in Fantasy: Tolkien
06:22 - Ambigious Forces & Historical Landmarks: Elden Ring
07:40 - Horror & The Unknown: AsoIaF & The Walking Dead
10:18 - Avatar Kyoshi & Yun
12:15 - 'The Dark Avatar'
17:27 - Avatar Wan - First Avatar & Origins of Bending
22:39 - Dispelling the Wonder and Magic
24:17 - Closing Thoughts
24:48 - Outro
#avatar #avatarthelastairbender #legendofkorra 
Кино
I told my friend something related to this a few days ago:
The second they added a portal to the spirit world the show doomed itself. It used to be a "place" you can only reach through meditation, it was extremely ambiguous, barely real, and now it turned into a different map in a rpg
A portal could be okay but it need a condition like only a avatar could open it but need four other person of each element that is a master and only like once every 100 years. And it is only open for a day
@@nightwolfnordberg9476yeah more rules fix everything
The other thing about the ravaa/vaatu struggle is that it totally misunderstands the idea of yinyang. It kind of whitewashes it into a western good vs evil dynamic. But yin isn’t evil. Yin is peace while yang is energy, yin is cool while yang is warm. Too much yin is anarchy, too much yang is authoritarianism. Both are good when in balance, both are bad when not.
Ravaa and Vaatu couldve worked if they were both part of the avatar spirit (maybe it still wouldn’tve been good exactly, but it wouldn’t be problematic for the setting and themes at least). Sealing Vaatu away shouldve been the end of the world if he really was meant to represent yin
Given that the whole point of the Avatar is to maintain balance, this is a huge theme to fumble.
I think the problem with TLOK was that it confused "balance" for literal balance. When people talk about balance as in "balance must be restored", balance is synonymous for harmony: in stories where Evil has created imbalance, the takeaway isn't "good and evil are equal or directly opposed to one another", it's that Evil has uprooted the existing harmony of Good, so Evil must be vanquished. Evil creates unjust suffering, and that suffering must be expunged. @@WolforNuva
Can you explain how too much yin is "anarchy"? I can't seem to understand it when you define yin as peace/cool.
@@user-sn8gu9tx4c Plenty of Star Wars fans also get this wrong with the Jedi.
Also, and I could be wrong here, but isn't the whole thing with yin and yang that within all yang is a reflection of yin, and within all yin a reflection of yang, ad infinitum?
I think it's a growing problem in modern media looking at older stories; they want to explore what was made mysterious, shed light on the unknown. Some stories are better left with dark, shadowy places.
That just means that the original thing wasn’t interesting.
@@pn2294no it doesn't 🙃
@@KVirtueofficial proudly ignorant
@@pn2294 yes u are 🙃
@@pn2294 nothing is as interesting as our own imagination. A good story doesn't need to explain everything, rather it knows how to use the unknown to enhance itself. You don't need to know the intrinsics of The Ring to be afraid of Sauron.
Korra’s arc was about learning to solve things through talking and ideas rather than just punching bad guys. Season two is basically solved by punching the big bad guy with a laser beam while being saved by jinora-Jesus. It just doesn’t work thematically.
I don't think Korra EVER actually followed through on that as a concept: every bad guy is defeated by Korra and friends through being punched in the face, and not even Kuvira is absent from this because she only gets talked down to (and she only surrenders because the plot demands it) AFTER getting into a big fight with Korra.
I don't think that's all Korra's arc was about. It was about discovering herself spiritually and emotionally. Book 1 is about Korra learning what it means to be the avatar, that it's not just physical but also spiritual. Book 2, on the other hand, is about Korra learning what it means to be Korra. She discovers who she is when she's not the avatar, she learns the strength of her very own spirit and that was the point of the finale: to show that Korra's greatest strength isn't that she is the avatar, it's her own unyielding spirit as Tenzin says. And they decided to do that by having Korra's spirit literally become a weapon of mass destruction. It lacks subtlety for sure but it does make its point.
I do like the point the lesson of book 2 for Korra. It was cool that she learned that she's still someone without the avatar spirit, but we should've seen her struggle with that more throughout the season.
I also like how its kind of a meta-message to all the Korra haters in a way: the unyielding, stubborn nature of Korra's spirit becomes a strength rather than an obstacle when used correctly.
But yeah, overall book 2 just tried to do too much at once and it gets messy.
started as an interesting season about the water tribe civil war and then boom jk its actually about fighting satan
@@kingdomheartscomments8742 "I also like how its kind of a meta-message to all the Korra haters in a way: the unyielding, stubborn nature of Korra's spirit becomes a strength rather than an obstacle when used correctly."
nice point, it's just that korra is a massive fuckup and has ensured the doom of the world of avatar by keeping the spirit gates open, and also killing Vaatu instead of sealing him away. the entire show is her cleaning up her own messes, with inconsistent development. I don't care that she's unyielding, she's just dumb and too stubborn to understand the consequences of the actions she makes.
and yes, I'm an enjoyer of E;R.
@@silverprimus321boi9 greetings fellow e;r enjoyer
Season 2 could've actually been some good lore.
Instead of Vatuu being the embodiment of all evil in the world, just make him a powerful spirit that feeds off negative energy, and wants to sow discourse so he has more energy to feed on.
He's such a big threat that only the Avatar could defeat him, but by the time he broke free of his prison, Korra would've just started her Avatar journey at 16ish. So the Universe itself intervened and jump started Korra's Avatar journey by giving her access to the elements at an early age.
And since this strayed so far from the normal Avatar Journey, this caused obvious consequences and made Korra very arrogant. Which then caused her to ignore the peaceful and spiritual side she needed.
Cause and effect. Choices and consequences. That's what season 2 could've been.
could have also done order and chaos, though as it is would have preferred the political drama type story... and yet it went from a nuanced political drama including the twist where the quirky comic relief was actually the criminal basically trying to drive up profits was genius. Feel like the story was great... if you take out the spirit stuff that stole the show
@@megarotom1590 I suppose that's also true.
I also think Vaatu and Raava being a story of "good vs evil" very much clashes with the entire point of Korra and her story; ATLA was already a nuanced story, but the villains were clear. In Korra though? It's more complicated then that. That's by design; instead of retreading a story of a big bad that the Aang needs to fully accept being the Avatar to defeat, Korra already knows she's the avatar, and must instead grapple with the fact it includes things she didn't expect or wasn't good at. Aang already could talk and connect his way out of situations; Korra could not. So their stories were opposite of each other. So this basic story of good and evil doesn't fit thematically with Korra as a show.
That doesn’t really make sense since the series had always been about combating evil
@@pn2294 Not necessarily. There are antagonists sure but, like was said in the video, they are a backdrop to tell smaller narratives and explore more nuanced themes; even Last Airbender did this. The story was never JUST about fighting bad guys.
@@Rusty_Spy it’s combating evil even if the people themselves aren’t literally made of evil
I don’t see the difference
No it wasn't? It wasn't as simple as that, at all. All of the villains in Korra have a point, and Korra grows and learns that there's more to life than beating up the big bad and expecting it to be a black and white story.@@pn2294
@@pn2294 I always understood TLA as a Story about ballance. Wasn't the point (especially of the sun warrior and Jeong Jeong episodes) to show, that fire and by extension the fire nation is not evil. The concepts associated with fire, like ambition, are traits the Avatar has to make his own to become whole, but they can be dangerous if not ballanced with other forces like self controll.
I mean you are kinda right.The Fatherlord clearly does evil things and has to be stopped, but he isn't a spirit, that is evil by nature. He is a human that made bad decisions. That's one of the points why Aang can't just kill him.
The idea of a person able to take away bending was compelling, especially since they weren’t an AVATAR. It made for a cool villain and Amon should’ve been the main villain through the series. ATLA is so good because it has an overarching story that goes over 3 seasons. In TLOK, each season is its own clusterfuck.
Sadly a fault of nickelodeon never telling the team they would have more seasons, I do wonder what the avatar writing team would change with a four seasons rewrite
I like the variety of villains in tlok. Zaheer kicks ass, it's really just unalaq that is lame imo
Nah. Amon was only really carried by his gimmick. He wasn’t really that interesting.
@@aalllllllexxZaheer wasn’t really interesting either
@@pn2294 yes he was. You clearly just don't like anything and want to hate tlok considering both amon and zaheer were compelling villains
Great video, really summarizes a lot of my own feelings about Korra’s second season. I’d argue, however, that we didn’t need a “first” avatar. I personally thought the avatar cycle never had a beginning, and this thought increased the mysticism of the world. Aang looking up in the air temple and seeing a never ending cycle who’s start was lost to time or never even existed, possibly like wheel of time or without explanation, showed that he was a part of something truly beyond human understanding.
Wan’s story introduced western ideals of light and dark, but also demystified the avatar cycle with a human approach of temporality.
My take was always that if there had to be a "first" avatar, that it really should be a Bodhisattva thing- that the Avatar was an enlightened soul who transcended the limitations of one life to guide others. This could have lead to some secret insight into the nature of bending that explains why the air nomad acolytes weren't able to become airbenders under Aang's and Tenzin's guidance, but that Korra could reveal for them.
Now, what that fundamental understanding of bending needed to be to be satisfying I'm not sure. It's a really tough problem, but if you're going to take on the "first" avatar, it sort of comes with the territory.
Korra fell into the trap of explaining things that were far better left unexplained.
You're totally right with the point of the story being nothing else but a clash of good and evil anymore, that that was the problem. In atla, the spirits had their own principles, ways they worked, completely detached from any human sense of good or evil. And then Korra made them be either good or evil. Things that humans use to categorize the world. That was my issue with it. I could have enjoyed the story way more, if it was revealed that Rava wants order above all else, to the point of being authoritarian and conservative at times. If the final battle had been reframed as needing to _reign in_ chaos, but not _destroy_ it outright. That Vatu was necessary, chaos was necessary, just as Rava and order are necessary. The point could have been that the answer is moderation, a healthy balance between chaos and order. Enough chaos for progress to take place, but enough order for society not to collapse entirely.
The beauty of Avatar's spirits is that they're amoral: while capable of doing good things, they're mostly following their own nature, which can be helpful (the Painted Lady) or harmful to others (Koh). They're akin to animals in that sense - spiritually "pure" in that way. They can nurture or kill, but not with the human understanding/comprehension of morals.
But...that's exactly what...the show does
It doesn't paint spirits as good or bad, same as in ATLA, at first we think Hei Bai is evil but after what he is we understand him
Same for Wa Shi Tong, he is kind of a dick, but we can understand why
Koh is kind of a dick because he apparently enjoys it
The point is that spirits are just as fallible as humans or pretty much every other creature, some are more open to communicate and others may take more time to open up
An extra thing is that spirits are vulnerable to being manipulated by bending, in both sides, either to pacify or corrupt them, but that doesn't have anything to do with their own personality, no show ever calls spirits evil (dark is different since it is a spirit being manipulated), even in Wan's time it is shown to he fear born from ignorance
And what you describe of the final Battle is literally what happens, just in reverse, Korra thinks Vaatu destroyed Raava but it is reminded of Raavas own words that due to their own nature neither can destroy the other as each contains a part of the other inside, which is how Raava is revived from inside Vaatu, and no, Korra didn't destroy Vaatu in the end, for the same reason, he will eventually regain form, but it will take thousands of years to fully reform
@@VGInterviewsNobody in this thread understands shit about chinese philosophy
Wasn't the original idea of the Avatar supposed to be the spirit of Earth incarnating as different people? I seriously don't understand why they changed that concept in Korra. Being an avatar of a spirit of the world itself makes the avatar a perfect figure to represent both the humans and spirits, a being with an idea of balance but also a desire for a perspective that can try to understand humanity as well. The spirit is born as a human again and again to follow humanity from a perspective that gets to truly experience the different generations, see how they grow and change, see their troubles and choose if to intervene and when. But because the spirit itself is not of human origin, it comes with this conflict, a debate about how much humanity should be tolerated, if they should be emphasised with or to be seen as a threat towards the balance of the world. By being an entity of nature itself the idea of good and evil, light and dark is already innate. The acceptance of forgiviness of humanity's actions would be an endlessly repeating topic for the avatar as the spirit debates with itself about whether to let it grow or to see it as an infestation that should be removed. This way there is no "dark avatar", but also no "good avatar" either as the avatar is a culmination of both.
But nah, guess the avatar spirit is a weird carpet of goodness. That sure is... eugh.
For me having Raava+Wan as the origin of the Avatar fell short. Like, it makes sense in a way, since the original series often described the avatar as the bridge between the human world and the spirit world - but I always had the sense the avatar's existence was deeply cosmic, not just human+powerful spirit. Like you say, perhaps that's the kind of deep mystery you can't portray in a story.
it was, I think, Tim from "hello future me", who said Raava should not be "the spirit of good", but "the spirit of lawfully stale and rigid" and vatu's "chaos and unorderded" would balance **her** out.
Haven't seen that video from him, but yes, this is a perfect way to put it imo, especially the 'rigid' part which would create SO much story potential.
They turned mysterious spirits into household pets
Book 2 of TLOK damaged the worldbuilding of ATLA on two major levels:
>The Avatar Spirit
The problem with Raava and Vaatu is that the Avatar Spirit, as originally conceived, was not meant to be rooted in the idea of a Spirit of Order being in charge of balance, but rather, the Avatar Spirit was the spirit of the planet itself reincarnating into a human vessel in order to keep the peace and harmony between spirits and mankind. Proof for this exists in the earlier edition of ATLA's artbook.
At first glance, there doesn't seem to be much of a difference between the two ideas, but that couldn't be further from the truth. As originally imagined, the Avatar Spirit is meant to be the incarnation of the planet (much like how Agni reps the sun, and the fish Tui and La rep the ocean and and moon): on a deeper level, the Avatar Spirit as defined by ATLA falls in line with the archetype of the World Spirit, a mythological concept embodying the world on a physical and cosmic level. The World Spirit isn't meant to be framed as a "good" entity to be in conflict against a "bad" entity, it's just meant to... exist. Think of the World Spirit like a giant moving body. It isn't moral or immoral, if anything it's amoral, above human perception of morality.
While the concept of the Avatar as the spirit of the planet was scrapped and DID NOT make it into ATLA officially, it still fits the existing mythos and worldbuilding of the series and the Avatar's role as the peacekeeper between both spirits and man, and ties into the themes of connection and unity found in the story. It also explains the mystery of the Avatar Spirit in a way that satisfies things and feels right. Of course the Avatar knows all four elements: the animals (spirits!) taught humans how to bend (and if the Lion Turtles are any proof, could give bending to humans), and as the embodiment of the planet, it would be logical for it to know all four. And of course the Avatar reps for both mankind and spirits, because both groups live on the planet.
By making Raava the Avatar Spirit, it undermines the Avatar's agency and undermines the themes of ATLA: rather than the Avatar acting as a peacekeeper to preserve harmony between spirits and man and acting as a representative of both, the human half of the Avatar is now just an overglorified vessel for a big kite spirit of generic and moral Order to keep in check a giant evil kite spirit of generic evil and Chaos. And unlike Moorcock's impressive cycle of Order vs Chaos (where neither side can be allowed to win as both sides kinda suck) where the Eternal Champion exists to create harmony in their reincarnation and ideally keep both sides at bay, the Avatar is instead acting on Raava's behalf and there's no nuance to it.
It's not even something Abrahamic or Zoroastrian as other people have tried to defend it, because the concept of "good god vs evil god" specifically found with Raava and Vaatu's writing is framed in the Western context of the Christian folklore and literature scene of Satan vs God where Satan is (or has the potential to be) just as mighty and powerful as God. While similar concepts do exist in Eastern culture, Raava vs Vaatu is so obviously in-line with even other American fictional concepts. Compare them to Makuta vs Mata Nui, Unicron vs Primus, or Darkseid vs Allfather.
>The Spirit World
TLOK really messed up the Spirit World just as badly as it damaged the Avatar. See, the issue with the Spirit World in TLOK is that it contradicts the nature and purpose of the setting as it existed in ATLA. In ATLA, the Spirit World was a realm that existed directly ON TOP of the material physical realm (like a blanket over a bed), and only people spiritual enough could see this (or being granted vision or entry by spirits). If Iroh being able to see Aang ride a dragon in broad daylight wasn't existing proof of this, there's more evidence for this in other episodes, such as the freaky swamp hallucinations the Gaang experience, or the fact that all of the spirits are implied to take regular animal forms when interacting on the physical plane: Hei Bai is a panda, Koh is a centipede, Wan Shi Tong is an owl, and of course, the Baboon Spirit found meditating near Koh.
While not ALL spirits are animals (the Painted Lady, Yue, and the Avatar itself), there's this precedent that the bulk of spirits are spirits taking the form of real animals (for example, the Catgator and the Catgator Spirit). It serves as an allusion to Shinto belief in Kami, which is made apparent by ATLA's massive influence by Japanese anime. Kami are the embodiment of nature in Japanese folklore and myth, and exist alongside natural phenomena, animals, and humans. They are the essence of existence itself and aspects of nature. They DO NOT exist in some "other world", nor are they framed between a conflict between good and evil. While some Kami can be evil, some can be good. They are usually docile and tend to exist to help others unless provoked into anger. However, there are some exceptions to this as some Kami exist to make trouble for others. Kami tend to be more amoral than they are moral or immoral by human standards of decency. Some Kami were even humans once.
Kami and spirits reflect how Japan perceived the natural world through a Japanese lens, and ATLA translates this pretty well. Animals are "pure" in that sense, so spirits could be pure as well in terms of spiritualness.
www.learnreligions.com/what-are-kami-in-shinto-95933
TLOK proceeded to take all this nuance and toss it in the trash: not only are spirits capable of being swayed towards Chaos (and become malicious and destructive) by shit like Vaatu (which ruins the nuance of spirits being analogous to animals/Kami), but the Spirit World itself was retconned to being completely separate from the material world through Wan's backstory, and in such a complicated way at first. TLOK shows that there WAS no difference between the realms at all, only for the Raava vs Vaatu crap to end up with the spirits getting kicked out into a different realm entirely which then became the Spirit Realm. And worse, it shows that spirits existing directly alongside people made for a miserable existence. So not only are the spirituality angle and the nature angle wrecked, but the impression we're left with is that spirits are awful and shouldn't be allowed near people at all, especially with the establishment of spirits being able to be corrupted towards Chaos or even regular spirits harassing and harming people, let alone things like Koh existing (or awful people being able to become spirits like Hundun).
And then Korra opens up the portals. Great.
>side note: even the designs of the spirits change in TLOK from being firmly based on animals, to resembling weird or cartoonish fantasy creatures and monsters hardly resembling real animals found in the world of ATLA: changes in color, depth, personality only add to this, etc.
i think korra has good ideas but they always stray too far. it fells like someone needed to tell them "no"
i personally only watched the first season when it first aired and started the third season cause everyone said it was good so i finished the series without watching season 2.
i wouldve liked the backstory to be more vague like we know humans didnt always exist and we didnt just exist suddenly one day whereas the avatar backstory basically is exactly that.
before i just imagined someone sitting in a library gandalf style researching for years and discovering that a person who can bend all elements exists and it all starting from there.
Season 2 is very skippable imo, sadly.
I actually don't mind the dark avatar conceptually but they needed to do two things: double down on the true ying-yang that is at the center of the mythology they took inspiration from. So instead of evil, Vaatu represents chaos, change and progress. And two: Make the Dark Avatar someone we actually care about.
Its not that we don't want to find out the specifics of how the spirits work, it is that Korra butchered how the magic system works and there are too many contradictions with the original that it is just unwatchable.
Well the whole thing was that there might not be any specifics, that each spirit is its own kind of entity with its own motives, but Korra made it into ”there is good light spirits and bad dark spirits”
@@Nuudson007 I never got the impression that the existence of the good and evil spirits precludes the existence of non-partisan spirits. I think the point is to show how spirits are like people in some ways, there's good and evil in all, and it's up to the individual to manage the balance.
I am honestly a Korra hater, just didn’t like it. However, the beginning of book 2 was the only thing from Korra that actually got me HYPED. The civil war plot sounded awesome, there was legitimate tension, and a very hatable villain. I actually found myself being pumped to see what happened. Then that all screeched to a halt with the Avatar Wan flashback and it went from the best season to the worst by the end of the season.
(I wrote this upon seeing the upload, to have my take written down, will edit an update when I finish video)
I'm the same, i loved the civil war setup. It was super interesting to ponder the role of the avatar in a situation that can't be solved by simply throwing fire. But it all got abandoned for the worst stretch of the franchise and that killed all the love I had for the show.
@@Mugiduckseems like they backed out of the 'grey morality' setup that they had going tbh. It's sadwhat it could've been
I enjoyed season 1 of LOK. The ending seemed kind of out of place but it was fine for me. But season 2 really beat out the lovei had for the show, and I barely cared for s3 and 4.
My favorite scene from Season 2 was when Korra goes back to the Republic President and demands he go to war on her whim and he is like, "No. That's insane." It made me feel the writers would improve upon her character - but then my impression was the show was trying to make him seem unreasonable. And no growth would happen.
@@sibinsamthomas4719I feel the same. s3 finally had a villain that wasn't cackling mad and had a lot of high points, but by then I didn't care about almost any character and they set up their formula.
I think the problem goes even further than boiling down complex concepts to a basic "where there's light, there's darkness" because the show says so but proves otherwise by imprisoning darkness so light can bring balance on itself. That's the opposite to balance. They dared retcon the very own fundamental theme of the franchise and then they retconned the very concepts they introduced within the same season. The retcon of the retcon. They turned the Avatar into a god that's always righteous by default, messed with the central message of Avatar by misunderstanding yin and yang and making it contradicting and ruined the spirits by stripping them of their own motivations and personality, on top of the mystery. I like to think Korra isn't canon and I agree the Kyoshi novels made everything better. Kyoshi is just the better Korra.
I think the idea of a 'light' and 'dark' spirit can work in Avatar, as long as they represent order and chaos, instead of good and evil. It allows a lot more nuance (sometimes, you need a bit of choas, especially when order can be corrupted).
But thats what ther represent.
Great video. I agree, Book 2 is definitely the weakest. It just revealed too much and I really didn’t like cutting off Korra from the past avatars. Book 3 though magnificent and Zaheer is my favorite Avatar Villian tied with Azula. Peace ✌🏻
One of my favorite examples of things being explained and the mystique is gone is the web series Marble Hornets. The creators said they HAVE an origin for the monster in it, so the questions do have answers, it's just they never intend to reveal what they are. It's a horror series, the unknown is the scary part. But knowing that there are answers, that it's not just mindless "we just thought it'd be cool" lets it still have that scary factor. The monster has motives, it has rules, we just don't know what they are. But it's clear that they're there.
I really like the IDEA of Vaatu and Raava, but for weird reason, I would like to see then delving into a world where Raava won but it wasn't as perfect as it was implied, that complete order just leads to apati and we wold see how doing anything for order can lead to very dark places
If they wanted to bring in the origin of the Avatar I think they should have gone with the original concept of the Avatar being the spirit of the world in physical form. Which is why the Avatar is the one that is ment to keep balance.
How I'd like to see Avatar Wan handled by the new live action show is have him be referenced in the very vaguest of terms as a near mythological figure. Nobody will ever doubt that he existed, but some of the references to him will intentionally contradict some of the other references. Flashbacks to the Fire Nation pre Sozin could mention that political doctrine held that Wan established a kingdom in what is now the Fire Nation and that his bloodline ruled over every version civilization there right up to the Fire Lords.
If they stick to the timeline that is mentioned in ATLA and Korra, I honestly don't want Avatar Wan mentioned anywhere. Wan lived 10,000 years ago! He may have started something, or set something in motion, which could have been carried until "today", but he should not at all be remembered. Also worth of note: Wan was kind of seen as a loser where he came from. Low born, "stealing" the power of the fire to take it into the village without permission, getting him banished to the spirit wilds.
The reason he became the avatar is not because he was special, it's because he happened upon 2 spirits fighting, took a side, found out he fucked up, and tried to remedy that.
@@TheSpoegefugl And that right there is why I prefer to pretend that addition just didn’t happen.
the killing of the avatar in book 2 is the biggest sin for me
To me it's the fact Korra returned back the bending to all those Amon took away from. I don't remember if Tenzin and his family weren't able to bend, but Lin and some of her officers shouldn't have been given their bending back. It defeats the whole purpose of bending removal if they get it back in the next/ few episodes. Korra being given bending back by Aang makes more sense and is needed, but like, have some repercussions after "defeating" a big "baddie"
@@Eh......... Tenzin and his family never lost their bending, Korra intervened, before Amon could take their bending away.
Lin is the only person we know, Korra gave her bending back, though it would be plausible, that she returned them to more people.
Saying this, I agree, that Korra getting the other elements back in the same episode, where she lost them was a mistake. However, it was a mistake of Book I, not Book II. Book II just had to deal with it.
@@tirex3673Jesus loves you
@@Eh.........that doesn’t feel like a mistake to me
Why wouldn’t she undo that travesty?
Because you're annoying and don't appreciate nuances, I'll explain it to you in simple stupid person terms, though everyone got Amon's ability wrong::
First off, Amon never truly took away one's bending. All he did was block the qi channels that allowed people do bend and do their elemental shenanigans. All Korra did was undo those blocks with the Avatar state.
Second off, you, specifically, don't appreciate nuances and how Amon and Zaheer represent two very real ideologies and issues that are affecting our world today, which would also prove to make a great over-arcing story for a show as Fantastical and Lore Rich and Deep as The world of ATLA. When it comes to stories, you usually do want an over-arcing villain that influences and puts blocks in the path of the protagonist because that makes growth. Seasonal villains is fun and all until you get to something like TLOK and ATLA. They're not stories meant for seasonal shenanigans.
You disagreeing, also, with all the other options that could have been done and, quite frankly, should have been done, means you also don't know what good story telling is. I suggest reading books. A lot of them. With no pictures. @@pn2294
My biggest issue with Season 2 was the scaling and resolution. Even without the Avatar power, Unalaq was a step ahead of Korra at every turn. Gaining the power made him an almost unbeatable enemy, and then taking Korra's power away pretty much meant only a hail mary would save the story. And you can argue the solution was clever, since it was an already established thing that had been done in the past, but it felt so violently unsatisfying to me.
Season 1 had a great concept with the anti-bending movement, but absolutely failed to make anything of it. Season 3 was good just because it was simple and straightforward, which after S2 was all they needed. And S4 also had a fairly dumb premise but had some decent fight scenes.
I feel like another overlooked thing about season 2 is how good it actually starts off. The mystery, an actually interesting political plot, Good family drama, and how korra acts after Amon almost killed her. And this is coming from someone who likes aspects of the show but not the show.
Then half way through it just drops all of that for God Vs. The Devil
The worst part was severing the link to the previous avatars
"The origins of the fist Avatar demystifies." The first Avatar's midi-chlorian count was off the chats X3
Besides the whole evil vs good thing, that completely undermines atla and the asian inspired thematic,
What I especially hate is what they did to spirits. They used to be actual personalities. Characters, just as conscious as humans if not more. And while they do still exists, a lot of spirits are just zombies now. The whole idea of "dark spirits" is aggravating. How can you murder such a beautifully written world?
For example Hei Bai wasn't an empty vessel filled with evil and programmed to destroy. He was the protector of the forest. He has his own life with actual rules and stuff.
Aang didn't "heal" him with some golden lines, he communicated with him and solved the conflict in a rational and conscious way.
In contrast, the "dark spirits" in Korra are just mindless robots attacking whatever they see, they are not real. They are treated like infected animals which can be cured. Not only that, but the "curing" through water bending is extremely underwhelming. Some golden lines and a nice "good night" is enough to reverse the effect of Vaatu??
TLOK was an unfortunate disappointment...
Korra's beam is stronger because she is mashing the B button harder than Unalaq.
The only correct answer 🗿
I like legend of Korra but I prefer not to think of it as canon to the wider avatar verse. I've always viewed the avatar spirit as a combination of the knowledge and consciousness of all the past avatars, and Korra, in losing her connection to them, makes her no longer the avatar in my eyes.
What I hated most about "Korra" was that it utterly abandoned Eastern philosophy for a bland, typically Zoroastrian/Abrahamic "good versus evil" dynamic. The idea that the Avatar was someone in tune with nature and the spirits since beginningless time was one of the greatest appeals for me, and it paralleled how Buddhists believe that there have been Buddhas stretching back incomprehensibly into eternity.
And then we find out in "Korra" that the Avatar came about because once upon a time there was a good spirit and a bad spirit... They clumsily tried to force it back into a "yang and yin" conception by alluding to the fact that one will always be present within the other, but that still imposes a "good-and-evil," monotheistic conception onto the principal of yang and yin, which has nothing to do with "good and evil." I think they tried to make it a "chaos and order" or "death and life" thing, but one is still obviously portrayed as evil and to be overcome or kept in check rather than accepted as a good part of the whole.
I'm not kidding when I say that that storyline ruined "Avatar" for me. I haven't watched any of the new media since.
No don't bring Zoroastrianism into this. Evil is not equal to Good in Zoro-ism nor does it exist because of "God".
@@IcyCrystalStar It's not equal in ANY system. That's my point.
I love your Avatar content man! Gr8 video and I hope you're keeping well ❤
To me, season 2 of Korra and the overexplanation of the avatar was the midiclorians of this universe.
Before there was a generally accepted theory among fans that the avatar was just the spirit of the world that chose to reincarnate among humans to create and protect balance, much like the moon and ocean spirits chose to live at the north pole as koi fish for some reason.
I find that theory much more compelling and its still my personal headcanon.
One thing about Avatar that's bugging me is the Avatar state. It's being asserted multiple times that if an Avatar dies in the Avatar state, there will be no reincarnation. How do they know that? They could reasonably assume it, but unless it happened, how would they know for sure? With what we learn about the spirit kites, it doesn't follow logically from how the Avatar works.
Yeah there should have been many Avatars in the past and all but one had been killed over the years. That would have filled the plot hole and been a better origin story.
Korra was sabotaged by Nickelodeon by only asking for one season to begin with. It handicapped the kind of story they could have told by telling them they had to wrap it up in one season.
That's not actually true: Brian and Mike (the showrunners) actually pitched TLOK to Nick with the understanding of it as a miniseries: Nick responded to it positively and extended it to a full season during production, and was so receptive to it that four whole seasons were on the table during production of Book One.
And before you say "what about the lengths of TLOK being short", that was a creative choice by Bryke, one originally meant for ATLA. We could have gotten longer seasons but it was Brian and Mike's choice.
When Book Two was being made, Brian and Mike had still not been given the official greenlight for the next two books to be made, so that's why Book Two ends as if it was the final season. just like how Book One ends (because Nick hadn't officially made future production concrete yet). However, Books 3 and 4 were actually greenlit during Book 2's production, to the point Brian and Mike even talked about working on all three at once.
This narrative of Nick sabotaging Brian and Mike isn't really founded on anything: the only thing they're guilty of is pulling TLOK off the air, but even that was justified considering that TLOK was incredibly expensive to produce, and wasn't even pulling in the ratings to justify it being on air (even Spongebob reruns were doing better than it).
The only part of the Lion Turtle Lore being used as the origin of bending that makes it fall flat for me despite how sensible and interesting it is, is that it does not line up all the way. Specifically in how different groups of people have different distributions of benders in their population. While the Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation, and Water Tribe have a mixed population of Benders and Non-Benders, the Air Nomads as far as we know were a pure Bender Population. Most people simply assumed that this was because the Air Nomads were always naturally the most connected to their element and bending as a whole, living among the Flying Bison and in the most windy high altitude places in the world. There is clearly something more extraneous to bending, something intangible and unexplainable to how people are born with bending or are not. It's never treated as a genetic factor, it can't be trained for or given (at least not by anyone) and with everything we know it does not make sense for it to be a gift from an ancient spirit race. There could be an argument made that the reason the Air Nomads are a 100% bending population while staying in line with the Lion Turtle Lore is that the had to have bending to leave the Lion Turtle so when it came time for the Lion Turtles to leave they were all given Air Bending and it stayed that way. But that doesn't feel like it holds water considering that anyone leaving the Lion Turtle Cities was supposed to be granted bending when they left, and it doesn't make sense that Air Bending would be an exception to chance itself. It raises an impossible question by giving an inconsistent answer to something that didn't need to be answered.
I was cool with the raava and stuff. I just think Wan should've also taken in vatu to truly show real balance in the avatar. And then unulak take vatu and have an avatar v avatar fight. Idk I think it is a good idea but not executed very well
I think for having Korra winning. Is due to unulak not knowing how to use every element.
Dude now you just made me want to read the entirety of Lord of the rings... I had no idea about gandalf
It’s the Silmarillion you need for that.
You'd be surprised to know how LONG and detailed the lore is lmao.
Spoiler: Gandalf belongs to a group of angelic beings called Maiar. Gandalf, the Balrog in Moria, Sauron, Saruman, Radagast the Brown --all of them are Maiar. But of course we know that one of them is the most powerful and is the only Lord of the Rings (Sauron). Also, there's some time in Middle Earth history where the big bad guy Sauron only served as a lieutenant of the biggest bad guy Melkor/Morgoth. And the Balrogs are Maiar that Melkor/Morgoth corrupted. So basically, Sauron and that remaining Balrog in Moria were former allies through their boss Morgoth. And Smaug the Golden dragon, in the Hobbit, is a product of Morgoth's creation of dragons. The first dragon can't breathe fire but can mind control you and basically destroy your life(ex: Turin Turambar, one of the unluckiest guy that Tolkien wrote).
DO IT.
As someone who enjoys Korra more than The Last Airbender, I can completely understand why book 2 would put many people off. The pacing was awful and Unalaq was a terrible villains because he had no real motivation for being bad. Amon, Zaheer and Kuvira had decent stories and motivations.
Oh, Aubrey plaza being one of the voice actors definitely didn’t make it more durable for me though. Hearing her dead pan delivery was always amusing.
The whole "good vs. evil" with the two spirits defeats the very nature of the spirits established in The Last Airbender... Spirits are not mortal beings, there is no good or evil. They simply are. There's no such thing as an evil spirit or a good spirit.
Never thought I’d hear elden ring lore in a korra video. I love it.
Is it really a Koroto video if it doesn't have the most random tangent known to man? 🗿
I gotta disagree a little on this one. The reveal of exactly how the avatar powers work and how they got started vs the viewer just never getting to know that information, isn't (imo) fundamentally where Kora falls flat. Its biggest misteps are 1) throws away the martial arts to ONLY focus on big dumb laser battles (this was already mentioned in the video, but it really is a much bigger deal). 2) The explanations of the magic system were dumb and they were executed badly and far too soon. Like 3-4 seasons too soon. There are infinite ways the magic system /could/ have worked. This one was just VERY poorly executed. And 3) the magic system was so easily broken by stupidly op power ups that everything either the villain or kora did felt un-earned. 4) Dumb plot twists that felt like Shyamalan wrote them, ie: permanently cutting off the avatar from their previous lives. That's not a plot twist anyone asked for and it just sucked to see. The final battle also being basically just another lazy "god vs satan" metaphor with an avatar paint job.
Again, I dont think its so much of a "this should NEVER have been explained" issue as much as it is a "this was explained FAR TOO SOON and in such a haphazard, unsatisfying way that it completely undercuts the story and accomplishments of the characters. This /might/ have felt earned if there were several seasons in between where tiny bits of the lore could have been dropped to us little by little before the kaiju battle. But nope. :(
Kora s2 felt like if all of Attack on Titan's lore through the end of s4 was dropped on us right after the sealing of the hole in Trost. Can you even imagine how different the story would have been if they reached the basement at the end of s1 AND learned all about the paths? This is peek example of why lore dumping too early on in a story is bad. You gotta let the characters have TIME to figure out the mystery to make it feel satisfying.
I love your video. I agree that more often than not is preferable to not have everything dissected and explained step by step. I believe that keeping mysteries, dark corners, falsehoods, and so on can really help when it comes to world building. It is even more important when it comes to things like magic systems, other worlds and spiritual stuff. The free form lack of explanation approach can give a lot of freedom when it comes to using those things. Both for the creator and for the consumers. And that is the one mixed thing here if you do not really set up the rules and explain things in all of the angles you think they should've been explained you need to accept that a random person interpretation of your non explanation is a good as your own.
Love season 2 on its own, reminds me of Urotsukidoji in the sense of worlds colliding. Damn though, even when animated well the copy paste enemies, expo dumps and as you said, good vs evil instead of ballance dont hold up. They're battling for spiritual leadership but its flat. I want a dark avatar, not a bad guy or lucifer
i know you were probably just playing a bit. but my interpretation of the laser beams during Aang and Ozai's battle of wills is that Ozai's will is initially much stronger than Aang's hence it over taking him. but Aang and all the past avatars before him realize "if we loose who will be left to restore balance" this gives Aang a second wind. and then with the past avatars pitching in he is able to completely overtake Ozai completely.
TLDR: Aang said "no u"
Some good ideas here. Personally I love learning the lore of stories and asking the questions of why and how. Wan's episodes are some of my favourites from Korra, despite the second season not being great. I’d love to see a whole series about Wan and his journey. Of course things could have been handled slightly different in season 2,I agree with that. But to really dive in and develop the idea of the avatar, and the world that they walk in, I think it is necessary to have some backstory and not have it be mysterious. We need to see that they’re still only human, and have flaws, to really appreciate and relate to them as characters. I don’t think it should have been dumbed down to the point where the story then becomes bland, because that way the show would just be about one person fist fighting another. Fleshing out the characters more and the origins make it way more fascinating. It would be like saying: "well we didn’t need to know how and why the 100 year war started, we just needed to know there is a war happening". I don’t think that the spirit world is bland, just that the fight at the end of the season was bland. I don’t mind the idea that Raava is part of the avatar. It’s really the part where they get all big and shoot beams at each other that I’m not a fan of.
Just a quick correction, Father Glowworm is not Koh’s subordinate, in fact, Father Glowworm is FAR FAR OLDER than Koh: he literally called him an Upstart
Having all the mystery/intrigue in a piece of lore be overly explained is like a magic revealing how their tricks work. Completely ruins the fun of it
Bingo...
Except the lion turtle made a statement in the last airbender
"In the era before the avatar, we bend not the elements but the energy within ourselves "
That statement is directly contradicted in Korra
Another reason that I hate season 2 is because it ruins the water tribe civil war. That plot point had so much potential, but it got tossed to the side in favour of waterbending the “bad” spirits to make them “good”.
Another reason I dislike season 2 is it took away the mystery of the origins of bending. I personally preferred the idea that people learned how to bend by becoming spiritually in tune with the respective element, and this connection has a chance (but not a guarantee) to be passed down to one’s children. In The Fortune-Teller for example, we see two brothers, one who can bend and one who cannot. Another good example of this is Bolin’s ability to lavabend; it is possible that because he is an earthbender, but also has a parent that could firebend, he gained the unique ability to control and manipulate lava, a fire-related form of earth (which is the opposite of how waterbenders create ice). Another example of using a better of understanding of other elements to influence the element you control is how Iroh was able to invent lightning redirection by studying waterbending.
2:07 "In stealing Uumi's face he punished Kuruk for what he believed to be arrogance." Does that not mean that Koh has a moral compass, due to him recognizing that arrogance requires punishment.
Best breakdown I’ve seen yet!
Every time there is a mysterious power that pushed things along in the story, it's best to keep it mysterious. As we have seen when The Force from Star Wars was explained and the origins of the Avatar, no one wanted to know how it all came to be or what it actually is; the mystery is what keeps it alive.
I used to imagine that it was the combination of all the past avatars in one person that made avatar a strong & wise person. And that the avatar could be persuaded to be good or evil regardless of Raava or vaatu.
Plus, when introducing a Supreme dark force, it's very important that we see the catastrophic effects of it at an early stage. We as viewers should only be connecting the dots. For example, they could've said Azula thought she was a monster when in actual case it was Vaatu. Or suzins comet was sent by vaatu to destroy the Avatar, . Otherwise as for Vaatu; if it wasn't for season 2, he literally did nothing to show that he was ever evil, or that he had some control in any evil doings.
Everything I learn about Fujimoto is against my will.
“There is not light without dark”
I dislike Raava vs Vattu bc it had SUCH POTENTIAL I like the idea actually. But a cool take on this I saw was that Raava is order and Vattu is chaos. The idea was that Raava wanted only order which is bad, leading to dystopian society to an extent without free will. People need a bit of chaos to live life to the fullest. The day snowing is a bit of chaos which can lead to a fun snow day! But ofc too much chaos is bad, thing spiraling out of order. A fun snow day continues, the wind shifting to bring a warm front which turns to a tsunami or kills the harvest.
Also the spirits being corrupted so easy is just odd to me, it feels like they don’t have free will. I feel like there should of been more around this to explain it better. Maybe spirits need something to anchor them to remain themselves. Like Wan Shi Tong with his library
Idk book 2 just kinda ruined the entire series for me
One odd point that I think is worth making is that a 'First Avatar' isn't actually required by the concept of the Avatar lineage.
While it fits the way we tend to think about time as linear, plenty of Easten traditions have conceptualised time as either cyclic or illusiary with ideas of beginning and ends being basically meaningless (it doesn't make sense in many types of Buddhism for example to ask about the 'beginning of the universe' because that's not a thing that exists, the universe simply is. In contrast, in Hinduism time loops back around on itself just like an individual life does through reincarnation, until the cycle is broken).
Given how heavily influenced Avatar is by Eastern Philosophy, it would have been totally coherent to cast the Avatar as a cycle without a start. This isn't a major point on its own, but I think combined with things like the world building on Republic City or some of the discussions of politics in Korra, it maybe highlights that the creators didn't have the background knowledge to elaborate some of their philosophical themes in the depth they were trying to (at least not while also dealing with the constant clusterf*** that was Nickleodeon's treatment of Korra) and appealed back to ideas pulled from American liberalism and chosen one narratives to fill the void (which can work but is always going to be a pretty unsatisfactory disconnect given how otherwise dense Avatar's worldbuilding is).
@Koroto I'm curious why, out of all your comparisons to other stories, Attack on Titan doesn't appear in this video. I love your AoT videos. I was just surprised AoT didn't come up as a comparison to ATLA, as there are some interesting similarities in plot and theme between the two series. I think Isayama nailed the origin of the Titans and the Founder Ymir's story, and made it essential to the plot.
Indeed! I put a pic of the source of all living things but didn't want to get into it that much because it'd be super spoilery by default. With GoT I can dance around characters and such, whereas even mentioning a higher power in AoT is pretty heavy spoilers.
Ah gotcha. Thank you for your hard work @Koroto !
I liked Book 2 and I understand the thought of leaving things ambiguous but I do like that Ravaa did help explain how the Avatar was so spiritual, why no Avatar was ever corrupted (Roku could have sided with Spain and taken over the world), and how the Avatar is reincarnated
IDK why but one of the things I really don't like is the air bender spirit projection thing in book 3. like just become a spirit why don't you. makes perfect sense after all, you can control the air. it just doesn't make any sense to me, and is such a jump from other sub forms of bending. also Lava bending was cooler when only the avatar could do it
Ehh, I get that, but it's not really unlike what we saw in ATLA. Aang was pulled out of his body during the solstice and Iroh could even see into the spirit world in that same episode, so spirit projection has always been a thing in some capacity. Giving it to the most spiritual benders (i.e. air nomads) makes sense imo. I do wish it wasn't utilized so "freely" if that makes sense, but it's not really a huge change.
As for lava bending, I do kind of like the fantasy of it being a mixture of earth and fire bending that allows for lava bending, but considering metal bending - I think lava bending being an extension of pure earth bending just makes more sense. Basically the same answer again - I agree with you that it felt cooler when it was just an avatar thing, but I get why they chose to give it to earthbenders in general. 😅
@@Koroto i appreciate the thorough response! You're right though, after all, this isn't some show breaking thing, more of a pet peeve of mine. I think if they didn't use it so much like you said I wouldn't have a problem with it. But as it was it just felt kind of..off.
As for the Lava bending it was less bothersome for me like you I just thought it was cooler before. But we did get a lot of cool fights from it at least
Any chance of getting an AoT reaction video after the last episode? I am intrigued to hear your thoughts.
finally someone expressed the same i felt after watching Korra. one more thing i would add that also disappointed me a little is not only the Avatar figure is no longer a kinda mystery yet to be fully grasped by the viewer, but also it's not that big of a deal anymore, not the fundamental force and key element of the universe, since one's own spirit/soul is simply enough to stand against the Evil manifestation itself (since Korra dealt fine with defeating Unavaatu solely by her own spirit strength). and the Avatar spirit that was once something you would be mesmerized about and scared of at the same time, now seems to be just another spiritual issue you could disregard, even think of as weak and insignificant (let's carry it in a pot until it recovers while i take down the evil itself with my stomach lasers), like it leaves the viewer no choice but think that maybe we don't even need an Avatar that much as we thought we needed..
i think you cant really talk about korra without talking about how troubled its production was
The problem with book 2 is that the show runners where under the impression they were only making book 1. So they had to rush to make book two and didn’t have a fully fleshed out plan.
After such a coupling and interesting villain in the first book, that they then killed to tie up loose ends they found themselves in a tight corner. they had good ideas and characters for book two, but they didn’t have the time they needed to really explore flesh out or think the plot through.
Book 2 is a mess from start to finish, and really feels like it was rushed. Book 3 and 4 on the other hand feel much more consistent and tight.
The fact that book 2 took so long to come out at the time literally was agonising. I don’t know why there was a big gap invetween books 1 and 2 of the legend of Korra.
Ther only had green lit 1 season
Then sudenly had to writes book 2 to 4. Ergo this Show wasnt planed out and book 2 was rushed
My personal edit
Rava: Order, Vaatu: Choas
First avatar stuff happens as we see. But vaatu is not perfectly trapped; His influence can still minorly affect the world.
For millennia, Rava keeps the world in order, leading to little change, long dynasties, and systemic inequality. This continues until an avatar flees their post and removes
Rava's influence from the world.
This leads to a time where vaatus slight influence dominates, leaded to war and choas, but also relatively massive technological progress, along with the weakening of vaatus bondage (100 year war).
Last Airbender stays exactly as it is (obviously).
Korra then leans much more into savir, exploring if maybe the avatar is the bad guy.
This could conclude with 1. kora sealing both rava and vaatu away (maybe along with herself as a sacrifice) ending the avatar cycle. 2. Kora fusing with rava as well, redefining what the avatar is, or 3, choosing to let a choas avatar begin to exist as a continuation of the rava/vaatu order/choas conflict bringing balance to the world.
(Sorry for any misspellings)
this is the issue I have with Star Wars sometimes too. People go for the idea that Darth Vader is something that literally possesses Anakin Skywalker and forces him to do evil, while Anakin is the lightside. But that completely removes the character conflict for Anakin. he's no longer responsible for the evil he does if Vader is some type of demon.
in reality, Vader IS Anakin, but is Anakin disassociating the "weakness" from himself. he cant comprehend that he could have lost Padme, so he creates this alternate personality to help himself cope.
The first half of season 2 was excellent. I loved how Korra was put into a position where she had to choose between her obligations. It was a story that had both global stakes but was also extremely personally significant to Korra.
Then Wan, the worst Avatar, hoodwinks the entire plot into this shitty lightkite vs. darkkite conflict and suddenly the formerly nuanced maybe-villain fighting for his people's independence is the Antichrist who wants to bring about a thousand years of discord because reasons.
Wang: We have to co-exist with spirits
Spirits: Thanks fam, humans were living on turtle-lions, preventing them to be devoured by us.
I've spent a long time wondering why I could never make it past this arc in Korra, and this video is pretty good at explaining this. I didn't need to know the origin of the Avatar; I was content thinking of it as something mysterious, ancient, and possibly even unexplainable. Maybe that expectation of a grand answer was what killed the immersion for me, but I also think this wouldn't have been a problem if it was hinted at or answered in the original series. Having Korra jump headfirst into this unprompted (in my mind, at least) really flattened the lore and diminished the possibility for more depth in the Avatar's story. That's not to say I dislike Korra as a series, just that it lost me. I have heard great things about the following arcs, though.
I don't like korra at all, but it just confuses me even further why they needed to boil down the conflicts of people this much when there were already explanations as to why bending exists. Humans developed bending from the animals that had learned the way of the earth, bending was a way of life and being in tune with the earth was something that came naturally to animals because they live on instinct, living within the circle of life without the need to question it and it's elements, it was all about being born with the aptitude to manipulate your chi to influence said element and that was all it took, lion turtles just giving bending to people when they didn't even bend the elements only the energy, a.k.a chi, in other beings, that wouldn't automatically just give them powers when bending is martial art that needs to be understood, trained and studied. So at best what they bestowed on the people was the aptitude or I guess the evolutionary capability to bend, meaning they made it possible but it shouldn't make them fighters with it at all. The creators doubled down on this idea when in interviews they said that the avatar is the incarnation or representative of the earth chosen to maintain balance of said world so that people don't end up destroying it and themselves in the process. On top of that, Aang not being able to just bend everything at the start also supports that, it's an avatar journey for a reason, it's based on understanding, there was nothing with just a push of his hand like it's magic, and not to say that there wasn't accidental bending but the accidents that occured were with characters who had at least an idea of what they were supposed to be doing. So for the spirits to effectively be these aliens that exist in the formerly merged world and have 2 beings constantly fighting for this extremely 1-dimensional idea of good and bad just further makes spirits and Avatar as a whole much more artificial and boring as a world. Everything good in the world is cause by the avatar spirit and everything bad is vaatu, that's it. Incredibly lame. Definitely one of the biggest reasons I dislike Korra as a whole. As a side note: I find just giving Aang energy bending without any form of foreshadowing beyond a throwaway line and no type training or study just as bad so that gets my ire just as much as everyone else in korra just doing it out of nowhere.
While Airbender is the obv better overall series I can’t help but love many moments in Korra as well. I hope the live action can capture some of the magic those shows were able to create
Not really “better” tbh just different. TLA covers more kid topics where Korra covered more adult themes like the PTSD arc.
If asked which I enjoy more, I’d say Korra. Book 2 is bloody awful but the characterization in Zaheer in Book 3 made it up to me. Then his little cameo in book 4 was awesome.
@@cwcpants140what was so great about Zaheer?
@@pn2294 It's a villain you can understand
@@LuisSierra42 I understood he was boring and monologued a lot
People only liked him because they thought he was an evil version of Aang
@@pn2294 He has a lot of philosophical depth and he often quotes a philosopher he admires who happened to be an airbender, which is a bonus world building detail. If some people found him boring, I would think those people are not able to understand his philosophy. He also pushes Korra to the very limit which is precisely what a great villain should do
I enjoyed season one of Korra but I completely dropped it mid way through season two and even though I've heard season 3 is great I just haveb't gone back.
I dropped after season 1 but came back when I learned that S2 explained the story of the first avatar. I did not like S2 as a whole but S3 is all you could ever want from this show and S4 is pretty great as well
I like the idea that people can still learn how to bend by observing nature, but are not prepared to do so because of their culture. People from agricultural societies tend to think in exploitative ways and so when looking at nature they tend to think of the ways they can best exploit it for resources. Nomadic people tend to live alongside nature and give spiritual significance to mountain ranges, some animal species, large bodies of water, and even nature. If I were to write a genesis for Avatar I would describe each nation as different nomadic tribes that became agricultural/settler cultures. In settling down and diluting their cultures with modern philosophies and legends they stop living along side nature and instead live against it. Viewing themselves as separate to nature blinds them to their connection to the spirit world and so they believe they can no longer learn to bend.
I remember watching book 2 of Korra back when it was airing then. It was a pain in the butt season to watch or even rewatch. Because fundamentally, Book 2 of Korra is a retread of Book 1 of ATLA.
As we already had the yin-yang concept done before Raava and Vaatu existed. We had the fish, Tui and La. Push and Pull, Moon and Sun, Masculine and Feminine. Nothing new is being said with Raava and Vaatu.
In fact it opens up the question of why the Avatar, who is supposed to be the keeper of balance, is fundamentally imbalanced on a spiritual level if they only possess one but not the other. As to go back to the yin-yang imagery, the avatar is about peace and yet also change. That the status quo will be disrupted if it means balance is maintained.
THAT'S what it is. It dumbs down the spiritual underpinnings of the world its set in. I feel like they could have depicted the spirit world with the kind of awe and respect owed to the story if they had disembodied the spirits. Had they been forces that applied influence in the story rather than being human sized kites, the implication that these forces were too large and powerful to comprehend all at once would have remained, and the awe we held of these ancient spiritual underpinnings would have remained with it.
The story of Wan should either not exist at all or, like you said, something to piece together, but IMO with the twist of contradictory information. Wan's story is 10,000 years in the past. What do _we_ know of 10,000 years ago in _our_ past? I don't mean geology and stuff, but one story of one person, be it a farmer or a king? We have zero. We have myth at best that is hard to put a date on except for “probably based on something that happened probably more than whatever-thousand years ago”. There could be several texts found in Wan Shi Tong's library that contradict each other and none can be falsified. We could have a situation like the one with Jesus of Nazareth, where it's quite likely to the point of certainty that he was a real historical figure, but the written accounts aren't anywhere close to contemporary. We don't know how independent they are; they may have used each other as source and even if not, may have used the same faulty source, creating the mere appearance of independence.
An infinite regress or the Avatar “developing” vaguely over time, possibly from multiple semi-Avatars would be alternatives that have no clear first Avatar.
My issue is that they had these ideas they wanted to explore, but no idea how to incorporate them in to the world at large so as to logically make it all flow. Going to piss some people off but its an apt comparison: it's the same problem Demon Slayer has. Demon Slayer had a lot of ideas it wanted to use to flesh out the world, but those details couldn't be meaningfully incorporated because it revealed something about the world that really doesn't add anything of substance. Why do people with black swords die early (and then why doesn't a character with said black sword not die early)? Why doesn't everyone who fights demons carry wisteria flowers with them if its known to weaken demons (especially since wisteria flowers are shown in abundance and not hard to grow)? Why are there like 11 different ranks when 3 literal nobodies easily rise up through all of them? Why does the Corp even exist if they don't typically fight together in pairs to be more effective.
In Korra, we're told that everything needs to be in balance. OK, if Raava wins, then "good" generally prevails but if Vaatu wins, Raava gets destroyed? And Vaatu will just naturally come back from Raava is Raava wins? Did Korra destroy Vaatu permanently at the end?
World building is cool. But give things a logical reason if you must include them, otherwise leave it up to the audience to speculate.
I don't really agree with the point that keeping things hidden behind the courtain is necessary... The more I study about filmmaking for example, the more I appreciate it, both on screen and behind the screen. It can be very fulfilling. My gripe with the origin of the avatar is 100% that Rava(?) is a simply positive force, while the spirits (and consequently the avatar - the bridge between spirits and the our world - should remain vaguely neutral
Also what made me hate book 2 of Korra was the fact that the design of spirits in korra is cartoonish and pokemon unlike those in ATLA despite intending korra to be for a mature audience.
One of the reason the season was a let down is that they abandon the much more interesting civil war plot
13:40 That's something I wondered/expected when watching for the first time but, nope :(
Pretty much character assassination mixed with lazy love triangles and kaiju fights from eva
Book two had a good first half.
Politics, debate, the question of what is right or wrong or if the ends justified the means.
A lot of good stuff... And then goes spiraling towards the ground when you had Kora flashback to the first avatar.
Because it introduced the Good and Evil spirit... When Order and Chaos were supposed to be neutral forces as one could have argued the Earth Kingdom and the first half of this season had an evil 'order' as they did maintain order... Just not in moral ways.
The magic spirit kites just sort of ruined it all.
They can have complex and simple villains, rises of stakes and falls...
And if they wanted to give Kora a challenge after unlocking avatar mode just address it with a simple fix.
The Avatar mode power is linked to the spiritual side and understanding.
That's the excuse most people used for why the Last Avatar entered the mode and upgraded from bender to natural disaster if not worse... And Kora upgraded from bender to glowing eyes and minor power boost.
Kora has the physical side down, but jot the spiritual side.
The politics weren’t the big draw of the season; it was the spirits
Part of me thought about bringing back the Dark Avatar, but giving them more depth to the character and not making them evil.
“We just watch a vaativida” was so real
7:30 Technically speaking, it need not have an origin. It could be an infinite regression.
I agree with you on The Walking Dead comparison but there's ANOTHER reason why the question of a cure is a really stupid thing to put into a zombie story: You can't un-apocalypse the world. You can't bring back to sentience zombies that have been out and rotting for years (and even if you could, that would be a fate worse than death!). The most a vaccine get you in the The Walking Dead is a bite is no longer a death sentence and you no longer have to shoot your loved ones in the head when they die. Which is nice, sure, but it hardly changes a thing.
"Never explain the magic" is a very basic rule of writing and world building that a lot of writers in their hubris or perhaps even trying to cater to fans forget about. You will never come up with a satisfying answer even if you do truly understand your own systems (which the writing team for season 2 clearly didn't) because you are taking away the magic and mystery from your audience.
Also I don't really feel like many people actually cared about where bending came from or the avatar for that matter? Because of how well the system was built in the original series it felt very natural and like it just belonged there, which just raises the question, who did they do this for?
I honestly cant agree with the praise of season 3. I was waiting for the motivation for the red lotus the entire season, and it was just... Destroy governments "because". No consideration for making societies work after you burn them to the ground, no explanation for why people loving completely on their own is "natural", apparently.
Honestly, the red lotus had such an utter failure of a motivation that i have a hard time taking anarchist villains seriously at all, which is a shame because there are a lot of villains im sure i would have found compelling if i wasnt completely unable to get invested
They should have called Raava the spirit of balance or harmony and vaatu the spirit of chaos
Wait. I thought everyone could shoot laser beams from their chest! Just me? Oh…
Guys, yall forget something really important! The legend of Korra takes place in an alternate universe. Just look at how the gravity effects ppl in the different AU's. ATLA has ppl jumping 5 meters easy, and they go absolutely flying when hit, where as ppl in TLOK hit the ground super heavy and can't jump for shit without bending. This means the planets are simply different sizes. I mean, there were no African nor European ppl in ATLA, yet here they are in TLOK. Spirits are still cool in ATLA, I promise.
I will forever and always be upset at harmonic convergence. There was no need for it, and it was a weird and stupid plot convenience and contrivance.
I think Analyzing Avatar put it best, the original series had methodically planned martial arts battles, but legend of Korra has harder hitting fights, people get pounded in LoK like they really look like their getting hit. And not just the occasional fire nation goon but everyone.
Imagine you’re the next avatar and the ONLY past life you have to look back on is Korra’s. Holy shit the world is doomed
One thing I find interesting is that each season of avatar is called a book and that the show is an adaptation of events in the avatar universe. While we take all of these events as absolute because its fiction in the avatar universe it's historical record and can have some wrong information. Explaining some of the more basic inconsistency and possibly fixing some of the major issue season 2 of Korra did to the avatar universe as being only slightly accurate. The real problems I have with season 2 of Korra is the spirit world and the list of people who enter the spirit is small and when the book of spirits is written all the details about what happened might not all be there and the story is just made up to appease the masses.
I always thought of Avatar as an adaptation of a story and that some of the small inconsistencies aren't that big of a deal. The only reason I would make the change for the events in the spirit world to be except as truth but not actually known of what happened is because the spirit world in season 2 alone changes the original show for the worse and effectively ends the chance that there's a 3rd show which is unnecessary but welcome. plus it would be cool if there was a conspiracy show/book/movie set in the avatar universe dealing with the lies and the unknown about the spirit world and the lore behind it.