Legend of Korra

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I didn't like the ending, Amon's past, story and motivations were presented in a very hamfisted way. They needed more foreshadowing. The season just didn't feel complete.

Agreed. But at least we know that it was due to budgetary constraints, and perhaps uncertainty of subsequent seasons.. and not due to shoddy writing (mostly). If they pace it better or extend the next season more, I think it will be fine.

Hi guys. Started watching pilot. Liked Avatar as it had mostly excellent voice work, good writing and excellent animation, especially when it came to fights. Downside was crying emo Zuko who for some reason didn't die in the first episode. What a shame. Well, waterbender chicks bro was pretty annoying too.

But this, so far: VO is kind of crap. Fight animations aren't as natural as in Avatar. Lip syncing seems to not match animation as well as in Avatar either, and the art is a little more jaggedy and with a little too much detail in places. Also, flyingbisonthing was a cooler pet than giantdogthing.

Am I nitpicking or something?

EDIT: really, really hating this soft focus cgi art style with blurred POV thrown in.

I didn't particularly care for the 3d aspects you pointed out, but overall I thought it looked fine, if not great. Anyway, I would say I enjoyed the season, but the ending was not very good. My summary of thought:

I was quite surprised how good the Last Airbender turned out, so my expectations for this were moderately high. I disliked it of course.

Since the original was a fundamentally medieval society (with blimps) this should've taken place in the far future, but for some reason they wanted to shoehorn in as many pointless references to the previous series as they could. Which means that everyone has to be someones offspring. The plot with the shadowy conspirators and the evil government vs the good benders felt like it lifted from the god damned Star Wars prequels. The final twist was such an anticlimax, the way everything was neatly tied up was lame. The humor was all cringe worthy ("I'm the Avatar, deal with it!!!"), the characters insufferable. The greatest benders (Ang's son and Toph's daughter, naturally) get their asses kicked in Every Single episode! Overall there was this loud and annoying quality to it that most cartoon have.

So I'm gonna pass on the next season.

Apart from the lack of guns, the first avatar was 19th century. Think about it, there were blimps, early stage tanks, engines, iron motorised ships, giant drills, and submarines. An 80 year time skip to... slightly more advanced technology isn't unfeasible. It's enough time for it to disseminate.

Not disagreeing that this was hamfisted, but if you watch the scene again it looks like she's considering suicide. Runs away from everyone to the edge of a cliff, sticks her head out and cries, then turns away.

Finally found some Codexers I can look down my nose at .

Go back to reading Twilight once you're done.

Kinda weird how much Korra, a three element bender teenager is sucking against non-bender fighters, considering how Aang, with just air-bending kicked everyones asses, at a younger age.

EDIT: also, brewing romance sub-plot. Yeah, real strong female lead that instantly falls for the stereotypical brooding egotistical guy. Mako's bro at one point is the only one who tries to get moniez for the tournament, and Mako cries about how he got himself in trouble. Hello?

Also, Avatar state coming? And nerfed to fuck no doubt?

Ok I was about to give up on this stupid pro-bending shit, but then shit got serious around ep 6. But now in ep 8 I'm having Phantom Menace deja vu. Fucking cheesy.

Yeah, I saw that post, but I think her wanting to commit suicide there is dumb. I mean, it makes sense from the, she needs to be at her lowest point angle, but she's still got 1 bending element, all her friends and family are alive, they defeated the bad guy, etc. So the "suicide" doesn't feel warranted.

Ok I just finished the season. It does pick up after ep 6-7 or so and luckily my fears of Phantom Menace like retardation were wrong. Also at one point I thought it would be consisting of these clowns patrolling the city all fucking season. I miss the old series plots where things never got resolved this quickly, and actually having humor. So far the only funny lines have been courtesy of Meelo. Grats on that one creators.

Not going to agree with hinted suicide, um no, she just cried and everything turns out peachy. It got a little grimdork, but compared to the old series, that had half a season of people in jail, or whatever, this is nooothing.

Where's the fucking exploration from the original? Swamp benders, sand benders, all that shit. Where's fucking Toph, the only cool character in the entire series.

^ Again, the writers didn't know if Nick would order more seasons. As far as they did know, they only had 13 (14?) episodes to finish the plot.

BUT Nick just ordered not only 1 more season... but THREE. That's right, there'll be 3 more books: http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/07/11/legend-of-korra-second-season/

Edit: From checking around the net, it was around March that Nick decided to order 14 more episodes (for the second season). Still not sure of exact date, but I'm pretty (intuitively) sure the date was late enough that the development for the first season was close to being finalized.

I admit it's possible they could have changed the ending while drawing halfway through the season... But I have no idea about cartoon production.

Yeaahhh there will be 3 more books, the second one with 14 episodes (!) and the third and fourth with 13 episodes each!!

Unsurprising, Korra was a very impressive and well-made cartoon series, both visually and story-wise. The authors seem to genuinely care about their creation and add subtle details which most viewers probably do not even notice, but fans do. The fusion of Western and East Asian cultures, as well as the Western and Eastern styles of animation, make for a very tasteful and entertaining coming of age story.

Nothing weird about that, technology marched on, and the non-benders were given neat devices that disable their opponents more effectively than bending does.

Um, the devices don't do that, they use chi strikes.

Aang had no trouble escaping in the first few episodes despite being tied up and otherwise incapacitated. He held his own against 50+ military personnel a little later. With just airbending.
Meanwhile Korra sucks at bending despite having been trained in 3 elements since age 5 by the best teachers available and only wins because the bad guys screw up. I think the writers are too busy trying to inject needless suspense and drama and are just writing the plots around that instead of finding a natural flow for it. Maybe that will change now since they're given a bit more freedom. We'll see.

Don't discount the skill of the chi-blocker fighters. They are specially trained in Al-Qaeda-like boot camps to kick bender ass. Remember Ty Lee from the original series?

OTOH you may be right, I have a shitty memory.

Also hope the freedom will be good. Hopefully the short seasons still result in good pacing since the writers know that they have 3 seasons to work with... And hoping that shorter seasons simply means Last Airbender-quality seasons with less filler episodes.

Also

"Oh sorry, spoilers for last season of Korra." - credit to Friend

I am curious as to who is/are going to be the antagonist(s) in the other 3 seasons,by the end of the first season Korra is a fully powered avatar controlling all 4 elements,energybending and having at will control of the Avatar state.She is basically a demigod who can level an entire city if she goes all out,who is powerful enough to be a chalenge,that face-stealing demon from the original series perhaps?

Electric gloves and electric staves, hello? Not to mention full-on mechs. Chi blocking was far from the only method at their disposal, otherwise they could never have taken out the metalbending police and blown up the arena.

With Aang it was always benders vs. benders. And Airbending is something of a trump card, because it has been extinct for over a century, which means combatants are not trained to anticipate and resist it. This applies to Amon as well, Tenzin and Korra kicked his ass, if not fatally. Really, what are you going to do against a horrendous gust of wind blowing you from your feet and smashing you into a wall/out the window?

She doesn't. And in her only real battle with Amon, she didn't have three elements at her disposal. She had only one - firebending. There was no water or earth in the steel corridors behind the arena, so from confronting Amon on the stage to getting debended she used nothing but firebending.

The whole point is moot though because of Noatak's bloodbending. Fighting him only makes sense from afar, because if he gets close enough to you, it's muscle twitching time. And there are only two moves against bloodbending. Stronger bloodbending (which no one would have taught her) and the avatar state (which she couldn't enter because of her ingrained arrogance). The previous time she ran into Amon, she was lucky/smart enough to throw a snow cover and run as fast from him as possible, otherwise she would have been debended right then and there. And the only time before that they didn't fight at all, she was ambushed and chi blocked, and he let her go. Watch the series, aha?

Curse the authors for making non-benders into a new and unique threat. Of course, if they had chosen a different approach, it would have been "curse the authors for giving all the glory to magic people and leaving muggles in obscurity".

Oh, and "needless' suspense? Yeah, it's not needless in an action adventure series. It can either be done right, or done wrong, but it's never needless. Turning the common folk into an efficient and powerful force was a good choice on the authors' part, it showed that superpowers fall second to the sheer strength of devotion to one's ideals. Enemies that have a strategy, set ambushes to avoid needless battles, exploit their opponents' weakness, use public discontent to their advantage, and have new and unprecedented technology that gives them an edge over superpowers. It's the rise of fascism in the world of the Avatar, as opposed to the Good Magic vs Evil Magic routine.

I wonder what the new villains are going to do that will rival Amon's coup and sudden capture of the entire city, and what their new natures will be. The second book is called "Spirit", so maybe the new threat will come directly from the Spirit world. Non-human enemies leave plenty of room for novelty. Would be quite elegant to go from a militaristic empire of firebenders, to an underground fascistic movement of non-benders, to some sort of spirit-based attack.

I'm thinking there will be only 1 villain, the arc spread over the three seasons. Actually I'm hoping, lol.

I am not watching this for several reasons but I will make you remember the second Book of Last Airbender was Earth, not that I am not saying what you said could not happen since my impression of this is that its going to be milked without a care.

Bah, cranky pointless Codexers with their template pointless complaints. Giving the show almost as many episodes as the original doesn't count as milking it. It's called giving a successful well-made adventure series as many episodes as it deserves, and hopefully they'll go for a long three-book story arc with a single villain, like Mangoose suggested. Oh, and "never watched but condemn anyways" is a damn foolish approach.

I literally couldn't figure out what Drakron said until now. I think Drakron means that the second book of ATLA was Earth, but the Earth nation wasn't the enemy. So Spirit may just be Korra's "journey" or "learning," maybe meeting some Spirti creatures like K'oh, but if following ATLA standards, there will not be a main villain from the Spirit realm in this book. And whichever the last book is named may be the main villain.

And then I think Drakron's saying that you still might be right in that they milk and try to throw in Spirit enemies in one book and then XXX enemies in another.

But I don't see the point in the milking anything. As in, what would the advantage be in having a new villain every book? If anything, the first season showed that was a bad idea because there was simply not enough episodes to develop everything. And I see no financial reward either way. Is Drakron supposing that they are just going to be lazy? Korra wasn't lazy. It was definitely not paced well, but they could only fill the episodes that they had allotted.

The only complaint seems to be that Pro-Bending was a waste of a few episodes, which I disagreed with at first (bc it is kewl and reminds me of how modern day trained boxers will probably kick the shit out of McDojo students that never trained in their life), but now I completely agree, because of little time they had to finish off the season.

There's always room to make mistakes, but I don't think they've made significant ones that make me severely doubt the next few seasons. They just better have learned that there is simply no room for filler with 12-14 episode seasons. I think we'll have to wait until the first few episodes will probably let you know if you want to watch or not.

Or if we run into a filler episode.

And, dammit, why are you incomprehensible today/tonight, Drakron? You know what? Since I spent the effort to translate Drakron writing to undomesticated snowman, I think Drakron should spend some time watching the first episode of Dr. Horrible. Kthxbai