Legend of Korra is Avatar: The Last Airbender's equivalent of the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy

Yeah. I know I haven't blogged for ages, but this is pretty much what came to mind. Took my own time to say it, and all. The Legend of Korra is as bad as the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy.

I know about the hatred and complaining and the divisions between those who saw the Prequel Trilogy as just as good as the Original Trilogy and the fans (mostly the original, die-hard fans) who saw the Prequel Trilogy as a gross degradation of the OT, and Han shot first, and so on, and so on. That's not to mention the rather disturbing aspects of the mythic Star Wars franchise that the Prequel Triology confirmed (and I'm taking this from David Brin here) -

1. Elitism and feudalism taken to its extreme. The denizens of the galaxy are forced to choose between one elite and another with little say in their lives.

2. The presence of "Holy Royalty" like Anakin Skywalker (whose virgin birth makes absolutely no sense at all) and who have midichlorians, while others don't. The force in the Original Trilogy was even described as being like Yoga, as something anybody could learn to use.

3. A rather worse portrayal of women. Princess Leia ruled the roost in Episode IV but was conspicuously absent for the climactic battle in which Luke blew up the Death Star. Her role in V and VI is significantly diminished and she's no longer as tough or as capable as she used to be, and she has been fetishized like all hell in VI. Padme Amidala in the prequels is a nightmare for feminists, with one analysis comparing her unfavourably to Bella Swan - Bella Swan!!! If Padme is worse than Bella, well...that's the end of it...

So how does Korra compare, at the end of two seasons?

1. Destruction of an existing mythology - the whole bit about Lion Turtles giving people their bending powers was utterly, absolutely pointless and useless, and the part about Raava giving Wan his powers made the line "The glow is the past Avatars channeling their energy through you" from the original show meaningless too.

2. "Holy Royalty" and "bending magic" - the bending arts are no longer martial arts that must be studied and learned, and for which a spiritual connection can be developed over the ages. They're now magic granted by the Lion Turtles, which makes the entire point of the bending arts thoroughly, absolutely useless. People need to be magically granted their bending powers, rather than learning them through physical and spiritual development (The Lion Turtle who taught Aang energybending is an exception, because there's nothing that says that Ozai can't slowly redevelop his spiritual connection if he tried, unless he was in some way permanently damaged). The Lion Turtle story also kills the story of Oma and Shu from "The Cave of Two Lovers". These retcons solve nothing.

3. Why does Korra suddenly decide that bringing the human and spirit worlds in contact is a good thing? The spirits that caused the humans so much trouble in Wan's time were normal, light spirits, not the corrupted dark spirits of Vaatu (although those were even worse). Korra has no idea whether the spirits are as good as she thinks they are - and even with a much stronger spirit of light with her, what guarantee does she have that the spirits won't start causing trouble for humans again? No explanation.

4. The villains have gone down the drain. Amon landed up being creepy, awesome and sad at the same time, but so much potential to explore his motivations, his actions, or the actions of his chi-blocker followers was completely missed out. And he had a perfectly good reason to be fighting. Unalaq is far, far worse. There's nothing about him that's human, or funny, or even remotely redeeming. He's boring, flat, predictable and downright stupid. Unlike Ozai, who was given a chance to redeem himself at the end of the story and who seems to have had an abusive parent in Fire Lord Azulon, Unalaq has no such excuse. He's a villain who exists just because the story needs a villain, and doesn't serve as anything other than a stupid, one-dimensional plot device, no better than Newt Gunray.

5. Plot, pacing and secondary characters have all gone down the drain. Bolin is a crude  caricature, Asami suffers terribly in the second season, Mako I won't even bother to complain about because his behavior towards the women in his life is pathetic, and Lin Beifong is wrecked in the second season. President Raiko, likewise, exists solely as a plot device meant to prevent Korra from attacking the Northern Water Tribe. He's perfectly right - where's the evidence that Unalaq has planned to turn into an evil Dark Avatar with an army of evil spirits? Making Korra correct just because she's the Avatar and she's the living incarnate of the spirt of light is utterly lazy, stupid, miserable writing. Aang wasn't "right" because he was the Avatar, and the way Chin the Conqueror was seen as a hero and Kyoshi a villain for indirectly killing him showed that an Avatar need no be seen as a hero, or even as a good human being. Legend of Korra changes that with rotten protagonist-centered morality.

I could go on and on, but I think I've brought out my main gripes. Right now, Seasons 3 and 4 are likely to be an exercise in slaughter like none other before.

The wrecking continues - The Guide

Vaatu would be pleased! The writers have done a magnificent job of destroying the beautiful universe they created and they've dumbed down characters aplenty. They've pretty much written their own show into a corner. Without further ado -

1. Unalaq is now in cahoots with Vaatu. First Unalaq came along and everything about his appearance screamed "villain", and now Vaatu turns up and everything about his appearance screams "evil" and Unalaq, who's supposed to be "spiritual" trusts him? For power? Jeez. Unalaq is stupid. Amon and Ozai were vastly better villains than this idiot.

2. The Bolin - Mako - Asami - Varrick nonsense trundles on, and Lin Beifong has been demoted to an extra. Go figure. No redemption here. I actually enjoyed watching the rest, but not this!

3. The whole "destiny" business with Jinora just seemed messy, but her spirit connection is the one thing that I don't find troublesome. Tenzin and his siblings seem to be the thing to look forward to - well, at least not Tenzin, he has some poorly written lines that ruin the fun. Bumi is, as always, a laugh riot.

Right now I'm watching it to see how far low this show is going to go. I won't be surprised if Unalaq and Vaatu merge and start shooting purple death rays or something.

Wrecking Avatar's mythology - Beginnings Part 1 and 2

Another angry post - Season 2 has been nothing short of a disappointment for me. Even Beginnings, showing how the first Avatar came into existence, qualifies.

1. The origins of the humans and their elemental powers (Lion Turtles granting it to them) contradicts whatever is seen in the original series, or known about them otherwise. In fact, it practically spits on an established piece of Avatar mythology. The Airbenders learnt from Sky Bison, the Waterbenders watched the push and pull of the Moon on the Ocean, the Firebenders learnt from Dragons, the Earthbenders learnt from Badgermoles. They didn't get their powers from Lion Turtles.

2. The entire Rava versus Vatu battle is again a mess - while Light and Dark are always there in Chinese mythology, this conflict seems heavily biased towards a Zoroastrian version of things - that Rava is light and Vatu is dark, that one is good and the other unambiguously bad. Although they make a statement to the effect that one will have to emerge from the other, it is pretty ridiculous that humans have to live in peace when Rava is around and suffer from chaos when Vatu is around. The truth is that disorder and order need not be evil and good respectively. This key piece of mythology is messed up.

3. What is with the lion turtle cities!?! Where did these behemoths decide to go?

4. At least we got to see what was behind Wan's statue - it was Rava behind him and merging with him. It also explains why the Dark Spirits share Rava's markings - Rava and Vatu are different colors but have identical markings, so the Dark Spirits (corrupted by Vatu) share Rava's markings.

5. Has Unalaq been cheated by Vatu? Sure seems so.

The show's mythology is suffering from an overdose of the good versus bad syndrome, and the screwover of the previous mythology as established on the show only makes things worse.

So much for posting here. This show has gone to the dogs.

Episode 6 - The Sting - A trainwreck full of idiots

This is going downhill fast. Rather than bothering to review the damned episode, I'm going to list everything that went WRONG with what would otherwise have been a fantastic episode.

1. The entire Hollywoodization of Bolin. It was absolutely ridiculous and did diddly-squat for his character. It makes him look more and more and more like an idiot. While the movies (or 'movers' as they're called in -universe) were funny and the makeup on the Unalaq actor made him look like the Fire Lord Ozai actor from "The Ember Island Players" but that's just about the only good thing I have to say about the entire setup. Everything else about it is just DUMB, and it ruins Bolin's character horribly.

2. Mako himself has gone from being competent to being even worse of a dumbass than before, barging in on an interrogation. He might as well have shown Chief Beifong the remote control outside. Lin Beifong is made unreasonable to make Mako look reasonable - which is doing her character no justice at all. That the writers for this episode are not as good as Konietzko and DiMartino shows and shows BADLY.

3. Korra waking up on an island in the fire nation and greeted by three fire nation individuals - fire sages, perhaps, judging from their costumes - and finding out that she can airbend but has amnesia is a real cop-out. I suspect that the writers realized that they had dug themselves into a corner with Korra's character and needed to 'reset' her, and did so using the hackneyed, cliched, banal, trite plot device called amnesia. Pathetic.

4. What was Mako doing, heading over to the gangsters? And why did the Triple Threat Triads agree to help a beat cop who had made himself a reputation busting triads? It's understandable that someone paid the gangsters to keep them busy, but the entire scheme makes both parties - Mako/Asami and the gangsters - look like idiots.

5. Varrick is delightfully, thoroughly amoral, and he's probably one of the straightest portrayals of a late 19th/early 20th century eccentric millionare/robber baron I have seen. He's the only smart character in the middle of a horribly dumb cast, and judging from the reactions to his movie, he's likely to get his way and have that war he wants - and make a fortune out of it.

6. Unalaq was plainly holding the idiot ball in The Civil Wars Part II when he told Korra that he didn't need her anyway. It was moronic and made no sense - and now, judging from the way he, Eska and Desna are acting, the Dark Spirit problem is real and the only person who could have done anything about it has been eaten by a monster Dark Spirit herself. The writers did a fantastic job creating this mess out of nowhere.

7. How long has Korra vanished? Has anyone factored in travel time for Eska and Desna to go all the way from the South Pole towards Republic City (which is pretty far up north)? Wouldn't anyone with any sense notice that Korra was missing for days, and wonder what was going on? Wouldn't Raiko have noticed?

8. Last but hardly the least - the relationship bullshit has taken over the entire show. Asami and Mako kiss each other and start to make up or so it looks like, complete with cheesy dialogue (wasn't Mako the guy who cheated on her blatantly last season? So yeah...) and then Bolin kissing Ginger on the lips without asking, even when she very clearly didn't like him (I don't blame Ginger, either. If I were a girl and someone leered like that at me, I would be pretty darn disgusted). The Gin-lin relationship is like Eska-lin but without being blatantly violent and abusive. Bolin's behavior towards Ginger is just plain WRONG and to play it for laughs, like they played Eska's brutal behavior towards Bolin, shows that these writers have no sense of reality when it comes to relationships.

I'm curious to see the next, two-part epiosde because Avatar Wan is likely to be handled a lot better than the seriously derailed, dumb and lousy characters we have seen so far.

Identity of statue confirmed - Avatar Wan

Via  the excellent ATLA Annotated -

Image 1 - Poster and four Spirit colors

Image 2 - Avatars Wan and Korra and Spirit Totem

From the two images, it's evident that the strangely androgynous statue is indeed Avatar Wan as so many people thought (and not a Dark Spirit like I speculated). Something of Wan's chinbeard can be seen in the image in close-up, although I admit that's one weird-looking Avatar statue, armless and with flattened hair.

What I find especially interesting is his note that the four spirits seen are parts of the Avatar spirit. Are the Dark Spirits after Korra because she is the one who is spiritually unbalanced? Are they manifestations of her power and connections to the spirit world?

Anyway, given that she's been eaten, we'll find out soon...

Legend of Korra Book 2 Episode 5 The Peacekeepers Review

Since I have vastly more important and intellectual things to return to, I think I'll stay brief with this particular review.

1. The entire Lemur training business. Tenzin realizes that teaching Meelo to discipline Lemurs and establish his authority over them has a dark side to it. Even though the entire bit is played for laughs, including the line "I think I've created a monster", there's something strangely poignant to this part. Something seems to be coming up in the writing.

2. Korra is acting more and more like Asuka Langley Soryu in her impulsiveness and nastiness. Understood - she believes her family is in grave danger (She doesn't know that they're not - Unalaq plainly states that his brother is not a threat and is to be ignored and Senna was cleared of all charges at the trial) and she has gone from her attempts at neutrality to full-on supporting the Southern Water Tribe. The difficulty of having an Avatar born as a Chieftain's daughter, I know. But her immaturity is starting to grate on me. It grated on other reviewers long before it grated on me, and now her lack of character development and restraint is starting to show. Mako's line "What is it with you and sides?" is spot-on.

Now that I look at the entire Lemur training and the behavior of those conditioned to respect the Avatar unconditionally (pun intended) - General Iroh, in particular, who respects the Avatar and doesn't even think through the consequences of sending the United Republic fleet into a direct battle with the Northern Water tribe - it really seems like the "I created a monster" line fits the Avatar herself, subtly. While Meelo trains Lemurs, Korra is attempting - rather lousily - to train people to obey her, and using her position and her temper to push people into obeying her. She isn't thinking about whether or not she really wants people to be the way they are, or to have interests or missions of their own.

3. President Raiko, thankfully, is handled in a far, far more positive way than I suspected he would be. He would indeed be right to keep the peace in Republic City and he has perfectly good reasons to stay out of the entire battle. So far, he has shown no overt signs of being evil and seems to be doing his job as well as he can. He's not the pleasant sort of person - judging from the way he pushed Lin Beifong to show results - but he is certainly not a "bad guy". He's a man doing his job.

4. Mako is a far better character as a detective than as Korra's boyfriend. That breakup was coming - and I hope it lasts as long as possible because this sort of "relationship" business is a major annoyance. His detective work really looks to be the way forward. Looking forward to see what comes of this. It seems like there's more to the entire situation than meets the eye - which is a very good thing, far better than the disappointing brother vs brother showdown that the past two episodes indicated. (As an aside, they went back to showing mature stuff - another terrorist attack similar to the one Amon used in Episode 6 of Book One. Not what one would expect on a 'kids show'!)

5. Unalaq has been redeemed - he no longer seems to be as straight a villain as he was made out to be. Deska at least is levelheaded - Esna is totally bonkers and shows it.

6. I'm convinced by the ending that the Dark Spirits are after the Avatar. Why else would that one go all the way to Republic City, lurk in her path, and then swallow her? Or was it following the twins over? Its appearance was certainly not expected. Something isn't right up north.

7. Varrick is as hilarious as ever and he's turning out to be a far better character than I thought. The fact that he's so totally amoral makes him even better. He's a wannabe war profiteer and movie-maker, one who plans on using propaganda to fan the flames and cause as much of a mess as possible for profit...but for someone whose actions would otherwise fall into cliched villainy, he is incredibly funny. The thought of movies as propaganda (with Bolin starring in them, no less) is actually pretty frightening once you think about the implications.

8. Bolin is having tiny bits of brilliance in what would otherwise be a really stupid character. They badly need to give him greater depth instead of using him as a full-on comic relief. They did that with Sokka, hopefully they'll do something similar with Bolin.

9. That Dark Spirit swallowed her and didn't calm down - maybe the Dark Spirits want to bring Korra over to the other side? Maybe she'll go into the Avatar state and talk to her past lives while she's inside that thing? Anyway, the next episode's title, "The Sting", suggests a Sting operation, so that leaves me thinking it's going to be a Mako-centric episode that'll have him investigating the truth behind the bombing.

Legend of Korra Book 2 new episode titles and speculation [SPOILERS]

To add to the post below speculating on today's episode, the names of Episodes 9 to 12 are, in order, these-

• Episode #9: The Guide
• Episode #10: A New Spiritual Age
• Episode #11: Night of a Thousand Stars
• Episode #12: Harmonic Convergence  

The Guide, I suppose, refers to one of three characters - Jinora, Wan Shi Tong, or that Phoenix-like creature Korra is seen riding in one of the trailers. Good bets would be on Jinora since she looks like she's entering the Spirit World with Korra, but I wouldn't discount the other two just yet. 

A New Spiritual Age somehow reminds me of Light Yagami's "God of a New World" ramblings - anyway, the New Spiritual Age is not likely to turn out too well, given that it's Unalaq's idea and Unalaq isn't an especially good guy. 


Night of a Thousand Stars reminds me of Isaac Asimov's Nightfall - in which an occulation causes a planet in a system of multiple suns to finally see the fall of the night. The title somehow suggests that either the sun and moon have been removed from the equation, or "star-spirits" are at work. Beats me what they're aiming for here. 


Harmonic Convergence sounds like whatever Unalaq was planning - unlocking the north and south Spirit Portals, but what might turn up from this harmonic convergence? This gives me a bad feeling. When the A.T. Fields of the Mass Production Evangelions resonated with that of Lilith in End of Evangelion, everything went further down the road to hell. If there's a "harmonic convergence" of that sort, it's not going to be the good kind. 


The two-part final's titles have been kept a secret for now, but it leaves me wondering just what they have in mind here.