So, The Last Airbender is good. Korra is also good, in a lot of ways. Animation? Brilliant. Choreography? Yes. Anything beyond a surface deep reading of its representation as politics? Well....
Its so weird, how did they go from AtLA, to this show where every good guy is either a cop or a CEO or literal royalty and every single villain is some caricature of a leftist? In the last season, theres a king whos demonstrably dumb, vain, and in no way should be in charge but hes just still played as the good guy and anyone who doesn't want him to be king is evil???
The Avatar, protector of the people, seeker of balance, coming in just to restore the status quo leaders every single time. Its the definition of liberal politics. Just made this thread to bitch, but lets all complain about how many times the heroes in these stories blindly return everything to how it was because "any change = bad"
LoK also took a massive dump on the sense of adventure ATLA had, I was never a fan of 90% of the show taking place in the same modernized city
Yeah, I think the Avatar world is unfortunately tiny. The whole thing is 3 countries, because the Air nation just has a few temples. The whole consists of the population of New York.
It is tiny, but at least with ATLA they visit different villages/cultures and like learn from them and expand their worldview; LoK doesn't bother with this. One of the things I love about ATLA is watching its characters expand their worldview, learning and growing from others, and adding new bending techniques into their own, etc
It wouldve been cool if their was a civ in the spirit world or something
A village and a massive city.
I also got the impression that village Sokka and Katara were from wasn’t the ONLY southern water tribe village. That really woundnt be a sustainable population.
Also the Earth Kingdom is supposed to be like China in that it is technically one Kingdom but contains a lot of fractured semi-autonomous nations and tribes in it with their own culture so you can get a lot a diversity in there. I mean they did, there was swamp and desert tribes and towns with weird crazy legal systems dreamt up by local leaders.
They lowkey ruined Toph. She literally had a speech where she said Amon and Zaheer took "equality and freedom too far" and that's why they were bad. Also she went from blind bandit "let's break some rules" to queen of the cops.
I think LoK is a great example of lib brain, and in that sense is a really interesting think to examine. For liberals you can take freedom and equality too far
Oh yeah, I was annoyed. Toph invents the police?? The blind bandit who hates the rules invented metal bending super cops????
Ah, but you see, Amon it turns out is just a water bender. Because anyone who wants the world to be better would just vote for a better world in our perfect society where that works, anyone who actually organizes beyond that is a no good trickster. Or something.
I mean, people grow up and sell out. Not everyone sticks to the ideas they held when they were ten.
LOK is the most liberal show ever I mean apparently the main setting is a westernized industrial country with a cosmopolitan populace like apparently new york just sprung up from a state full of refugees and unconvicted war criminals/colonizers
then they learn nationalism is alright actually and all the villians are people who dislike the status quo
The Avatar, protector of the people, seeker of balance, coming in just to restore the status quo leaders every single time. Its the definition of liberal politics.
Why do you think it's so popular with the American audience? This is the exact reason it has been so incredibly successful in the US while less so in other territories.
Not really arguing with you, but its not that popular. I'm pretty sure both avatar shows were pretty shafted when they aired, I remember having to go to Nick's website to watch Korra back in the day.
from what i understand is that nick invested a ton of money into Korra so that it would be like 2-3 times as big (like what AAA video-game companies do) but it didnt, so nick claim that korra was a financial failure so that it got a tax discount with the IRS
Oh sure. But it is now and that's occurred in part because of ideological alignment. It's not popular in the slightest here in the UK other than "meh" and there's a reason for that despite sharing a language, it doesn't align with most British people the same way.
another thing is that LoK has to make its villians do 100% evil things so people know they are evil, The equalists have to be bending racists and nothing else, Unalaq its like an avatar fanfic villian when he becomes the dark avatar and he was always evil, Zaheer is the best and they have to make him a 14 year old edgy anarchist so people dont sympathize when he kills a literal tyrant, and finaly Kuvira has to be the avatar version of literal hitler so people dont like her and in the books they end up redeeming her!.
i agree with this video and the other 3 in the series that goes in depth about Legend of Korra not knowing what political ideologies are
Zaheer is the coolest, and i like Amon even if the equalist were trash
Zaheer was cool, but they gave him one line that invalidated his whole ideology. His anarchism is worse than ancap, it's "everyone look out for themselves."
The thing with Kuvira have several parts:
- They protrayed an obvious Hitler like "oh just some good intended person that got power crazy"
- The reasons why Kuvira got to power were a good critique, but she went full Hitler.
- They give a redemption arc to fucking Hitler.
- THE FUCKING GIANT ROBOT
.
[ Nice thing Korra had to talk to Zaheer to learn how to beat Kuvira, almost like liberals don't know how to fight fascist but only enable them].
i think they only did the giant robot, because in season 2 they had the dark avatar colossus vs giant spirit korra, an actual siege of republic city would have been way better
Kuvira always struck me as an obvious Chiang Kai-shek analogue, with some Napoleon.
except when she throws minorities into concentration camp because they arent earthbender people
This video series on the politics of LOK was good.
Long story short, this video is Amon = communism from a bougeoise perspective, and every other video is whatever hamfisted political reference in the show from the perspective of the bougeoise.
For real though, I'd have preferred if they just ditched the childish political lib-shit and just made it into 4 seasons of Pro-Bending tournaments. Or try to understand how the ideologies they're portraying actually work.
But honestly pro-bending was so good, I think I finally understood the appeal of sports animes.
pro bending was sick, the way they used mixed martial arts for it as a base? Looks cool. In season 1, after Amon attacks the pro benders and Korra goes after him as an avatar and not a pro bender, her whole fighting style changes. Suddenly the moves are all classic asian martial arts, and its very cool. Its not like the show has zero redeeming elements, and even the bad guys could be better with some more thought. The existence of benders does suck for non benders, some people can just shoot a boulder, or a fireball at your head. That would cause societal issues! Its like the x man problem, or true blood: metaphors of oppressed minorities don't work as well if the oppressed minority actually can kill a ton of people in their immediate surroundings.
My favourite bit was seeing this whole industrial city, with rich assholes making people work hard jobs for shit pay and....no unions anywhere. Apparentely everyone is just fine with eating shit and licking boot all day.
Also fucking Nickelodeon removing the Korrasami kiss from the end the goddamn cowards. Oh but don't worry they'll rainbow their logo come Pride-month again.
In a post made in 2014 on his personal Tumblr account, creator Bryan Konietzko explained the plan was always to have Asami and Korra fall in love. Still, they also were aware of the unwritten rules about showing same-sex relationships in shows for kids, and thus, only alluded to the character’s feelings for each other. When the time came to animate the ending of The Legend of Korra, they got confirmation from Nickelodeon that there was a limit to how much they could portray. Apparently, at that time, two women kissing would cross the line. Konietzko admits that the scene where they hold hands falls short of a victory for queer representation but might inch things forward.
If I remember correctly it's because the heroes from TLA took over the world, so now the current order must be characterized as good lest you take away from what was accomplished by them.
sokka by the end of avatar was a good leader and also did found the city too so that i can see toph THE BLIND BANDIT as a police chief seems so fucking out of place
The writers are libs, and you can tell how sympathetic they are to fascism in season 4
Wait, which part was fascism? I don't remember the show all that well...
she wanted to create living space for the earth kingdom for one
Also her rhetoric was scapegoating the problem, except the scapegoats were actually creating the problem. Bad look writers
Zaheer killing the earth queen was the coolest moment in the series
I mean the show did end with him going all Puyi and deciding to give up his Royal title and become a regular citizen. It’d be funny if in a future Avatar show they revealed him became a gardener, that’d be a good reference only us lefty history nerds would get.
Wild how much he got away with, he framed a main character and sent them to jail.
LoK season 1 was the first time I cheered for the bad guy ever watching a cartoon.
check r/leftistATLA or something like that
Eh, I mean Amon is right that it’s really a social injustice that like half the population of this world is naturally disadvantaged by not being born with literal super powers. However idk if literally ripping away the super powers of those born with against there will is really the best way to address that inequality.
Plus I don’t think the show did enough to establish that there’s a true “bender supremacy”, thought both shows we see very unfortunate benders and very fortunate non-benders. The Royal dynasty of the Earth Kingdom is made of non-benders so it’s apparently not THAT much of a social disadvantage. Plus I don’t think they did a good enough job of explaining how bending is bestowed upon people. Is it genetic? Clearly there are families with both bender and non-bender members (Sokka and Katara) but are their families that are totally non-bender? Wouldn’t most benders having close non-bender family members be an incentive against benders grossly disadvantaging their own kin?
Idk the world building around that conflict wasn’t the best fleshed out.
There's also the question of benders who never develop their bending.
One thing I liked about Star Wars growing up was that there might be people who were strong in the Force, but there was also a sense that the Force was something you could cultivate by intense spiritual practice. With the right training and instruction anyone could become a force user, or even a Jedi. Some people might have a natural advantage, but it wasn't genetic.
Turns out I was just reading that in the material and they pretty much made it all genetic determinism ooooops.
Yeah, that’s another thing I didn’t like in Korra. Metal and lighting bending were supposed to be high level skills and hardly anyone could do. In Korra you got a city powered by dudes lighting bending in a power plant, and where the whole police force are metal benders.
Maybe if they were clever they could have done a like, some commentary on how industrialization meant there was better communication technology and institutionalized bending school, so now instead of having to seek out a bending master by traveling the wilderness, anyone with money and free time could learn high level bending. Maybe that would have been too complex for a kids show.
I mean if metal bending wasn’t that crazy difficult you’d think... what’s his face? Earth bender dude in Korra, wouldn’t have struggle with it so much.
I could’ve sworn that your interpretation was canon at some point, but of course SW had to keep coming back to the tiny group of important bloodlines and making the universe smaller and less interesting
Wasn't it implied in ATLA that all the air nomads were airbenders became they were really spiritual or something?
Yeah that was never really address. Thing is you can’t live as an air nomad without air bending. I mean you could but you’d have a high risk of falling to your death all the time.
The whole electric gloves things hinted at a better idea. Don’t bring down benders, use means of modern technology to elevate non-benders.
Also in terms of class, there’s poor benders and rich non benders (one in LoK is financing Amon’s Equalist movement), so perhaps class solidarity between working class people of the four nations is possible.
Idk punishing people for something innate to them that gives them an (seemingly in the Avatar world, only slight) advantage seems cruel and unjust.
Korra was supposed to be a one parter right? Then it got expanded or something.
Maybe?? Honestly who can tell, that production seemed like a bit of a mess
I wished they just focused on saheer, that was cool. I loved the idea of the avatar not being the 'good guy'
Disney fucked them on production every chance they got. They stopped airing season 3 mid season and put it all online. For the fourth season, they cut them the budget of one episode so they had to make a filler ep.
Yup. It was supposed to be only the first season, which is why it got messy after that.
the thing that makes me frustrated is that like there are some real good things in there but it is as a whole just such a mess like for example zaheer is a great villain but like i think that he would be a better foil to aang or tenzin like because of his whole air nomad nerd stuff like i feel that the scene where tenzin is just dominating zaheer which is like pretty much a reverse of the trope of zaheer dominating everyone with air bending because tenzin is a master and probably one of the few persons with proper training against a air bender and that confront is probably a more interesting fight than korra vs zaheer like because i feel both are made to be subversions on Aang like korra is bad at air bending and the spiritual stuff and zaheer has aang same spiritual and philosophical but they disagree on the moral of killing zaheer thinks that if the reason is just it is fine and aang did not kill the firelord even though there was a justified and moral reason to do so.
Also Aang is not against change like his interpretation of balance is diferent so he could probably find a more interesting common ground with zaheer because like aang wants to change stuff the world is in a bad place and korra seems to want things to be the same so people don't complain and the world just refuses to not change
The animation, fighting, character design, all incredible. A lot of it is good, and thats why the stuff they don't nail is so jarring. Zaheer is a very cool, interesting villain, our first bad airbender, theres honestly a lot to like (and hes Henry Rollins! How cool is that?), but you're right on all accounts.
like the animation early is kinda not great but they do pick up after the wan part and there was production hell on this which is kinda why it has so many weird stuff like they did for at least a time during the production think that they were going to do only one season and then only two seasons which is probably why both of these seem to be just closed like amon does not affect anything in any way and mr gundam from season 2 does not do shit the world convergence is a choice that korra makes it would have happened by then anyway while zaheer killing the queen is directly causes kuvira whole deal it feels like more conected
idk I thought the animation was the one thing that Korra consistently kicked ATLA's ass with
The second season, Book Two: Spirits, premiered on September 13, 2013 and concluded on November 22, 2013. It consists of fourteen episodes. Animation work was done by the South Korean animation studio Studio Mir as well as the Japanese animation studio Pierrot.[43] Studio Mir was expected to solely work on Book 2, but executive director Jae-myung Yoo decided that Studio Mir would animate The Boondocks instead because the animation process was less rigorous. Pierrot was eventually called in to fill the void and animate Book 2. According to Jae-myung Yoo, Studio Mir was later contacted and re-asked to animate Book 2. Yoo feared that, if Book 2 failed, Studio Mir and Korean animators would have their reputations tarnished for Pierrot's failures. Consequently, Studio Mir accepted the offer and worked alongside Pierrot.[44]
like it is fine but it gets better after book 2 like korra production was a mess nickledeon is not a good company who knew
I agree with your - somewhat poorly structured - point to a large extent. However, I would like to point out two things:
1.: Aang was not fully justified in killing Ozai.
All right, hear me out, before you call me a lib. Killing Ozai would have been justified in any scenario in which there is no other method of rendering Ozai powerless and therefore eliminating the threat he posed. Because, however, Aang attained the means of doing just that, he would have no longer been justified in killing him without at least making an attempt to even neutralise hin through less drastic means. Us Communists have to remember to exhaust all means before resorting to deadly violence. (Also, justice is a subjective concept and if Aang could not justify killing Ozai under any circumstance, he couldn’t ever be.)
2.: Zaheer is portrayed as entirely correct in his standpoints.
Zaheer is fully correct in his analysis of power and structural abuse as well as potential of freedom within the world of Avatar. His methods are portrayed as unjustified (which they, to a certain degree, are) but his competence as a charismatic leader and his selflessness and determination are on full display. Especially the latter is portrayed through him not holding a grudge when imprisoned and actually being a valuable ally to Korra. It is, however, very much correct to point out that him toppling the earth-government without i) a mandate of the people ii) an organised force that can fully realise the revolution should he individually fail iii) him failing subsequently would create a power vacuum with dire consequences. What I found most objectionable was the display of him as a powerhungry lunatic after being stopped and literally grounded. The sock in mouth scene was fucking horrid and completely out of character.
i am not complaining about zaheer i think he is probably the best thing on the third season i just don't think he is a good foil to korra and like i can see your point on ozai and i personally don't mind that aang did not kill him but i think that there was a absolute justified reason to do so like it makes sense that aang as the last air nomad does not want to break one of the most basic fundamentals of their philosophy so i don't blame him for not killing him but like even roku who could not bring himself to do it sees that he should have like it does not matter because aang found a way to remove his power deus ex lion turtle so he does not have to answer the question
