I'm doing a post-vid Q&A over on my Instagram right now, so some follow and submit your questions about this, writing, worldbuilding, me, or anything else! instagram.com/tim_hickson_hfm/ Cheers to my GODLIKE patrons ( www.patreon.com/hellofutureme ) Stay nerdy! ~ Tim
my big problem is how....EASY all 4 elements came to wan, i woulda done it so that the first firebending avatar could ONLY firebend... and then the next airbender avatar would teach the avatar spirit airbending, then water, and finally earth, that way its earned, and shows that it would normally take a lifetime to really master each element. and it is the power of the legacy of the avatar spirit that makes them able to wield all four.
since you are focused into good stories and good character arks. What are your top 10 most liked stories to read to watch and to learn from? i want to learn writing so I can design great OCs and plot for them as an artist but i always end up finding out how little I know about writing. Any tips were to learn and study from the best? I don't know if you are reading comments so I will take my chance
I think my biggest issue with season 2 was that they just spontaneously removed Korra's connection to the past avatars and than just didn't explore the destruction of identity, history and culture and what that meant for the avatar, which imo would have been very in line with the themes of season 3
What's even worse is that now the next avatar will only have Korra to go to for avatar advice. I like Korra but she is not a teacher. There should have been a way for her to reconnect with her past lives. If they did it one by one it would have been a great way to tell stories about avatars we haven't seen anything about.
Except they did do that. The loss of the past lives paved the way for character development for Korra, such as letting Korra rely more on her own experience rather than just taking the Avatar for granted.
@@ThexKiidxSausage The only reason people want the past lives back is because they're sentimental. And what makes you think Korra won't be able to give good advises to the next Avatar? She has done a great job as the Avatar and learned a lot. Even Roku, who was objectively a terrible Avatar, was very helpful to Aang.
If Wan had fused with both to end their conflict, it also wold have created a narrative symmetry with Aang's resolution of the Hundred Year war by stripping Ozai of his firebending. It would have represented a third option to taking sides, and taught Korra a lesson about how the Avatar's role is to restore the balance not by crushing and suppressing evildoers, but by changing the game instead.
This resolution could've also possibly played into Korra's personality, considering she's way more chaotic than you'd think the embodiment of peace and light to be like.
Absolutely agree, they could have even partially solved this by having Korra fuse with both spirits. Sure it wouldn't have been as god as your suggestion. But it would have shown that the avatars can grow, that new avatars can improve on and do better than their predecessors. Making better choices and bringing the world forward by the help of previous avatars and so on, I know she lost connection with the previous avatars, but still.
@@agilagilsen8714 Actually, I like your idea a bit better. It could have made for better development for Korra if they decided to portray her as believing that Raava's side of order is the only necessary and "good" side in all of this, with her eventually coming to terms with the natural duality of things and deciding to work as an agent of both sides, as necessities in the world. Personally, this all sounds like it could've made for a more interesting avatar series, where the major focus was an Korra discovering what the Avatar really was, and learning that the conceptcan evolve over time, even with the White Lotus trying to push her into becoming Aang 2.0. I feel like that's kinda whatthe series was going for, tbh, but they failed to make Korra likeable, instead making her more immature and reckless than 12 year old Aang and lacking in respect for the legacy set by her previous lives
the spirits in ATLA seemed a product of their universe, and they were terrifying at times and genuinely awe inspiring. the spirits in LoK feel like ghibli background characters and are more whimsical in a childlike way than in a fantastical way.
yee, the more i saw of the spirits in lok the less intrested i got tbh. I wanted to like them, and i don't hate them, but it just felt like something's missing.
also, in ATLA, spirits appear very scarcely and their appearance alway provokes some sort of reflection and change in the main cast. In Korra they kind of become trivial
to be fair to this day i can see no positiv thing in letting this fucking portal open and opening the other one. does this girl even have a brain or know how to use it.
@@567secret But that's the point, Bumi knew when to hold back and when to act, Korra frequently causes problems with her recklessness and doesn't ever really seem to get past that.
The most relevant critique I have of LoK is that it brings up interesting concepts like war profiteering, anarchy, fascism, etc. but then doesn't answer any of the questions it raises in regards to the world, fictional or not. They answer mysteries with less compelling information and don't answer mysteries that have more compelling answers.
I agree, the main thing that makes me upset about the whole show is that I think about the potential it had but failed to make true time after time no matter how many chances I gave it.
Especially with the Equalist movement. Every character starts talking about this disparity between Benders and non-Benders that could’ve made for a pretty interesting allegory, except we’re never given any real examples or evidence of it (SPOILER) It gets worse with kuvira imo. At first it seems like we’re getting a nuanced, morally grey exploration on the effects and philosophy of this new empire, but then she becomes fantasy Hitler and builds a giant robot to destroy the city
@@19peter96 'wot if good thing but taken too far?!' is an important message that many people never seem to comprehend. So as long as their good, I hope for more stories like them.
The owl in the library changes his physical state into a contorted evil version of itself like hay-by (dont know how to spell it) and trys to destroy them based on his morality that his knowledge should not be used for gain either good or bad. He isnt "good" or "evil", i always liked that.
Wasn't the owl's perspective that his knowledge shouldn't be used for the purpose of gaining an advantage in a conflict, rather than that it shouldn't be used for gain in general? It's still a bit blue-and-orange, because he was holding to that principle when the Avatar probably had the moral high ground and giving Aang that information could be seen as rectifying the balance upset by the Fire Nation abusing his knowledge, but I think it is an important distinction.
Agreed, he really isn't evil, he's just following his moral code. The owl or Wan Shi Tong is probably a really old spirit. To him The 100-year War is probably just another human war, even if he does know about The Air Nomad Genocide. So for him to tell the humans that they can’t use his knowledge for war, even if he does think they are on the right side makes sense because he is tired of people using knowledge to win wars instead of making new medicine or adopting ancient cultures. You have to think about it from his point of view. He opened a library to store all of the information in the world that he could find and share with everyone, but then everyone used that information to spread plagues, find new geopolitical vantage points, and even harm his own fellow spirits to dampen the power of any other benders just as General Zhao did. And when he would ask them why they would do it the humans would just say “I’m on the good side.” What’s worse is that he probably believed the first few and even helped them, turning him into some sort of war criminal. And maybe the worst part is that the so-called good guys who would use it to save the world would become drunk with power and turn into the very enemies he helped stop. He decides no more and buries his library deep in the sand with only a tower peeking out in the hopes there might still be some humans left trusting. Then General Zhao comes along and burns information against the Fire Nation after learning about the a weakness of the water benders to help in the war even though he probably told the owl “I’m just here for the knowledge." Let's not forget that General Zhao was targeting the moon and the ocean spirits, who were spirits just like him. Or that in doing so he was dooming the ENTIRE WORLD. So he was hurting everyone, and Wan Shi Tongs magnificent and beautiful library would be responsible for not just another war but the actual apocalypse. Not exactly the legacy he that he wants. However Wan Shi Tong still keeps the library open, and one day a group of kids and one actual scholar come. They promise to only be interested in normal information but they use his naive nature to exploit his library just like so many others before them. To a spirit, human wars are probably irrelevant, they happen over and over that it would probably be pointless to stop them. So it doesn’t matter to the owl if someone is the good guy or not because sooner or later the next bad guy is going to come and it might even be the so-called good guy that was in his library. I totally get what he was thinking and honestly I didn’t like Sokka or the rest of the gang for lying to his face and stealing the information without any moral thought as to whether or not he could betray Wan Shi Tong's trust. Not to mention that The Eclipse information was useless, Azula learned about it and prepared countermeasures that actually stripped them of even more resources. So in the end they had to use the original plan of learning all four elements. As for rectifying the balance, no offense to anyone else but I can imagine a previous earth bender asking Wan Shi Tong for a book on water bending style and then after that a water bender asks for a earth bending style claiming "it's your fault that I lost to that earth bender because you gave him that water bending style book, Wan Shi Tong, you better give me a book on earth bending so I can beat him and his son, you owe me." And then even after that another Earth Bender asks for a water bending style book with the same excuse as the water bender. At that point he's confused as to why the two can't just make up and stop fighting. See, it never ends, he'd rather just go back to the spirit world and avoid getting involved in any petty human squabbles.
@@Draxynnic I feel like its a case of understanding that the world was imbalanced via the chaos caused by an entire race of people being genocided as well as one nations power overexceeding the others ya dig? In this case I feel lile owl homie was like, "Well if peanut ears is asking for it, then maybe Karen will go back to normal and stop demanding the kids"
@@franciscoancergomez3949 I don't think them lying to Wan Shi Tong is a bad thing plot wise. I absolutly get wherre the owl is coming from. However, i get where the gaang is coming from aswell. They don't have the privilege to be impartial in the current conflict, they're desperate. It makes sense for them to do anything in their power to get their hands on that information, even if it means lying to, and possibly ruining a relationship with a spirit. Thats one of the things i like about the spirits tho, how impartial and removed from human conflict they are. They're neutral characters following their own moral code. I like how that breeds the conflict between humans and spirits. Its not a matter of one side is unresonable, both side have very good points, they just have different perspective that are at odds with each other. ..... idk how to end this comment lol, i just found the conflict and moral stanses in the library episode to be facinating. I enjoyed reading your comment and wanted to add something to the discussion ig (also pardon my grammar, im not a native speaker).
@@ThomasBomb45 they treated one as simply evil, and that is just piss poor writing. yune was a goddess of war and chaos, but also justified her existence with freedom and transformation. having a foil of 2 entities simply being big bad murder god while the other is super duper good god is bad writing (generally).
@@comyuse9103 I 100% agree that they were written poorly and don't embody yin and yang. I'm just saying that we could have had multiple yin and yang type of spirit pairs. They just wrote this one pooorly
I'm not gonna lie, that line about imagining right at the end of the season someone finally airbending after a long span of cultural rebuilding gave me chills and now I'm upset I won't get to see it.
same!! the episodes he describes would be so much better than the ones canon, and i wish it would've been like that from the beginning. it's not like the canon episodes compared to his imagined ones are bad or horrible, it's just... disappointing.
Yeah it would have been great (I actually started tearing up/sort of crying). I also think it would have been cool if a similar thing had been done with Korra at the end of season 1 where instead of being given back her bending powers she has to re-learn them like the original benders did (from the badgermoles etc), including airbending, which I don't think she ever "mastered" in terms of the spirituality etc? Idk I haven't seen the show in a while. Or have her keep balance without her bending and knowing what it's like not to bend.
Problem is that Raava should actually represents "light and order" rather than "light and peace"; because the opposite of chaos is order, which, isn't always positive. Both Raava and Vauttu should be shined on a neutral tone of light, like the Greek gods, rivals each other but both essential to the universe. I say the ideas of Yin and Yang is hijacked and largely Christianized in the story, how disappointing! The journey of the first avatar should be focusing on putting Raava and Vautta back together.
@@TechBlade9000 right lol😂. Especially considering the villain being an militarist dictator who literally OBSESSED with order. Also I have a HUGE problem with Vauttu being destroyed at season 2 finale. They should be bounded back together and bind with the avatar's soul, so that the avatar finally whole, presenting true balance between order and chaos. Which would work better in season 3 and Tpoh's speech that the villains are "out of balance"
@@naturalinstinct4950 This whole season and the rest of the show could've been better and connect better to the ATLA if they flipped the idea. Instead of Korra and all avatars housing Raava, they house both Vaatu and Raava. Unalaq gains knowledge from the Spirit Library to remove them and split the spirits that create balance. Vaatu becomes the spirit of chaos and freedom, inhabits Zaheer. Raava becomes the spirit of order and control, inhabits Kuvira. Korra remains the fulcrum that can balance them and bring them back together, plus the past avatars collectively become their own spirit of balance. Hindsight is 20/20 though
@@javiercox2928 your idea of the avatar holding both Raava and Vauttu its great but remember a human soul cannot permanently bond with either of the spirits without touching the spirit portal during Harmonic Convergence. also if Korra has her avatar spirits completely ripped out of her, where does she even acquire the power to fight off Zaheer and Kuvira if they are respectively fused with Vauttu and Raava? she can't just turn into the huge blue cosmic Korra spirit projection thing whenever she wants, its only limited to the Harmonic Convergence. what about Korra consumes Vauttu in the season 2 finale, in that why she has both of them bonded with her soul, perfectly balanced
I think without season 2 Korra wouldn't get nearly as much hate as it does now. It'd probably be considered ok. Amazing music, good animation and action, some interesting ideas, and a serviceable follow up to avatar. The characters would still be lack luster and plot points being a mixed bag but ultimately we'd say it was a little boring but fine. But no season 2 was such an awful shit show that 75% of people's complaints/ hatred were because of or a result of this season. Spirit portals, bender's origins, Carpet spirits, Aang as a dead beat dad, energy bending are lasers, butchering Yin and Yang, letting spirits into the real world even though spirits could already come and go as they pleased. Hopefully Legend of Genji will be better.
i won't lie, when you first said "blue and orange morality," i hadn't heard of the term, and i thought you were just making a joke referencing the colors of aang and ozai's spirits in the finale of atla
It's interesting to think: the AtLA explanation has a more eastern writing trope of great power through focus and hard work, while in the Korra explanation it goes off the western writing trope of having the great power granted from an outside force. Adding in the stark contrast of the morality of the Spirit realm between the two series and it feels like two very different look at core philosophical takes on the hero story.
I really like hard work better than natural power. I loved ATLA because even if Aang was a "chosen one", it was more about potential, and the actual power came from hard work
I feel like that was every season of legend of Korra. Each season had a great sometimes complex set up but then ends in a simple and mostly unsatisfactory way.
@@azulaeatingmochime2353 maybe not 3 but season one never showed non benders getting oppressed like amon was preaching and season 4 rushed kuvira's ending by giving her an half ass ending that was, oh she's just like korra except she never got the attention she needed. Like since when was that your motivation?
@@grasstastesbad4605 There was the triad shaking down shops in the beginning of the season. And the non-bending curfew later in the season. Also, just the fact that there were no non-benders on the council is an issue. I agree that it could have used a bit more, especially early on. But it wasn't absent.
@@cadekachelmeier7251 The triads were going against everyone The curfew only happened as a reaction to the Equalists There was no non benders at the time but Sokka had been head of the council during Aang's time(and I"m assuming at least the early years of Korra's since he was still alive then)
Season two is the only straight up bad season though. Season 1 is flawed but tells a compelling story, and season 3 and 4 are almost as good as the seasons in Avatar.
28:20 The way they handled the reconstitution of the Air Nomads and the return of airbenders annoyed me so much, because I felt they had *already* set up how it might happen in the original series. Namely, the inventor's community that had taken up residence in one of the Air Temples. I expected to see them, as you suggest, learning airbending from the sky bison or some other means growing out of their connection with the element of air that Aang himself remarked that they had. I expected to see that after a few generations, that connection had grown stronger and more profound, leading to the emergence of new airbenders.
@@alfreddozier832 but I thought the whole point of the avatar was that he had to restore balance, not the universe? Even taken as some "will of the universe", it has to act through an intermediary
@@peterparker8462 yes, but by opening the spirit portals, Korra did create balance in the world/universe, allowing airbenders to come back. It wasn't necessarily "the universe," but Korra establishing balance to it through the portals that allowed this to happen...
As a fellow fan of Korra, I am glad that I’m not the only person who found that the avatar’s origins took more away from the overall universe/story than in added. Those episodes, in my opinion, stripped away much of the mysticism, vividness, and complexity that the avatar and the spirit world previously had. Destroying the collective consciousness of all the avatars predating Korra is another huge grievance I have. As you pointed out, the accumulated wisdom/knowledge/experience across all the avatar’s lifetimes is, in large part, what makes the avatar so powerful and compelling. To take that aspect away does a disservice to both The Last Airbender and any future stories that might yet be told. While on the topic of the avatar’s origins , I always presumed that the avatar was born alongside the manifestation of the physical world as a sort of spirit made mortal. That, or a spiritually enlightened human was granted a great gift after resolving a major conflict between the two worlds. This person was then tasked with maintaining that harmony for all time. The origin story-which should have been vague or remained a mystery-that the creators went with felt contrived, honestly. It feels like it was made solely to justify the overall story of Korra’s last two seasons. It just doesn’t quite jive for me.
I thought the Avatar was the reincarnation of the Spirit if the Earth and humans, animals, spirits and the Avatar existed all at the same time. The Gods who created them were the Lion Turtles.
Couldn't agree more. I don't know what these writers were thinking but they were way over their heads in season 2. Answering questions that really did not need to be answered. And making "consequences" like opening the portals and destroying the avatar lineage without really feeling like they meant anything.
@@eightRedHerrings I suppose but couldn't she just ask Raava? And wasn't the point of the past lives to offer possible solutions to a problem not solve them? Just my thoughts
@@eightRedHerrings I mean, not really? Korra turns on the Avatar state quite a few times during season 2 before losing the connection to the past Avatars and still gets her butt kicked (mostly against the spirits but also Unalaq). The Avatar state is used in the TLOK more like a short power up than how it worked in The Last Airbender (like when she uses it to win the airbender race), which was something really weird. Also Korra only communicated with Aang like once before she loses the connection, so it barely makes a difference to her in practical terms. She is probably more upset at the fact that she lost the connection than the knowledge/councel she lost, and the Avatar state doens't seem to be any less powerful without the connection. Like at the end of Season 3 she went in full power Avatar state against Zaheer and was still immensely more powerful than him, only failing to beating him because of the poison.
Yes, thank you for your comment! The destruction of the the connection to the past avatars got justified by what Tim explained; as the Avatars not being a culmination of human wisdom but merely a vessel for some higher power we could never understand.
*28:19* *This was my favorite part of the video. Truly, they could've showed the disciplined people becoming Air Benders. I wanted to see more of the "horrors of genocide", the world suffered through, in the last 100 years. It would have then been so much better than the world pressing the "refresh" button and everything coming back to how it was. This totally takes the value of the genocide and all that Aang suffered through.*
This would only work for air nomads though. And air nomads were the less disciplined, the disciplined people were earth. It would make no sense for the other elements since bending is hereditary unlike personality.
Yup. Imagine a small village of a few hundred people (perhaps including a descendant of the SECRET TUNNEL guy) gathering a bunch of air bender scrolls in a attempt to keep the art alive, learning about their history from old scrolls and legends passed down like Robin Hood or Hansel and Gretel. They get some things right, some wrong, it's not all clear cut. Imagine the new air nomads are like when Katara was first learning water bending, they're ALL novices. They struggle to fit into the new world order of republic city, they struggle to process the trauma of the air Nomad genocide. I could picture Zaheer being a "radicalised" air bender who struggles to make peace with the past and instead seeks revenge. The story could also be quite interesting if they showed that Aang didn't punish the fire nation, and they continued to prosper as if nothing happened, similar to how the British brutalised India, but really escaped without any consequences. Surely, the viewers could then sympathise with Zaheer.
@@Ashitaka255 My biggest problem with having this secret society of air benders suddenly showing off is that, how is that aang never found them We are supposed to believe that aang searched everywhere he could to see if he could find, something, everything left about the air nómads and it's actually show in the series that he kinda did, there are some non air nómads, non benders, that are trying to keep the culture alive living the same way the air nómads lived (just without air powers) and that aang allowed them to live in the air temples so that at least a part of their culture could keep going, it stands to reason that if there were some secret airbenders hiding somewhere in the 70 years between legend of aang and legend of korra aand would have found them even if just by chance Personaly i think that even if that was the direction the show took people would still not like it because exactly of that "how is that aang spended 70 years searching for some renmants of the air nómads and he didn't found anything and suddenly korra just stumbles into them, OMG this series is shit and it makes aang look like an idiot" or something like that
@@carso1500 in the comics series they literally had the perfect group for this which aang helped mature from a fandom to non-bending cultural inheritors.
You know, Beginnings would have made soooo much more sense if Wan had absorbed Raava AND Vaatu, becoming the incarnation of balance, containing both the spirit of Order and Chaos and thus, the spirit of the World.
I think LOK had a lot of good pieces but ultimately didn’t really get a good conclusion. I did enjoy Wan’s story but it was placed wierdly and the Raava-Vaatu duality wasn’t compelling. The thing is, the series has had a lot of Yin-Yang concept before so why didn’t they do well for Raava and Vaatu. Vaatu is the spirit of Chaos and we’ve seen that Chaos can be good. I’d say the Air Nomads live a Chaotic life with no actual place of residence. Chaos is inherently linked to high levels of freedom and autonomy. Raava is the spirit of Order and we’ve seen from Ba Sing Se that too much order can lead to restricted freedom and misery. The writers should’ve done this duality instead of the Good/Evil duality that’s less compelling.
Blame Nickelodeon for that, under-funding a series people praised and making the creators of LoK live in fear of cancellation. Also, Yin-Yang is just Good-Evil with more steps.
@@1005rhys that is not what made tlok a shitshow lmfao 😂😂😂 what made atla great was its editors and cowriters, which tlok didnt have so no nickelodeon wasnt at fault, it was bryke
not only that, but there is no balance at all, Vaatu is way stronger than Raava when they don´t connect, and is completely useless to the world, if Raava simply Kill Vaatu each time he reborn the world would be much better.
@Kuya Leinad YES!! Thank you! I’m so tired of “Chaos bad Order good” when we clearly see that both of them can produce _both_ good&evil! Book 1 Aang was a perfect example of the carefree/free-spirited “chaos”, but his propensity to evade rather than stand firm caused him to run away from his responsibilities when they needed him most. Meanwhile, the highly ordered Earth Kingdom (both under the Dai Li, and later under Kuvira) showed exactly how “order” could cause equally severe suffering under those it affects.
I have the same issue with "balance" as u pointed out, in star wars where the balance of the force is supposed to be balance but the focus is always on jedi good, sith bad, thats not balancing of the force
at the end of Return of the Jedi, Luke is kind of left somewhere in the middle. He went against the jedi masters and against the sith lords. He found good in one of the most evil men in the galaxy (who destroyed both the sith and the original jedi) and was left alone to whatever the future brought him. The jedi mistakenly thought that Anakin would destroy the sith and bring forth an age of the Jedi. The sequels made him an exact follow up to the original jedi (some might call "light" or "good" side)and left any sort of balancing to Rey as she is now the chosen one instead of Anakin and balance now means good.
Actually, I like the comparison to Star Wars because although Vaatu is pretty much the Dark Side given a shape and a personality, Star Wars was smart enough to a) never imply that the Dark Side was anything but an evil, corrupting force that could only bring imbalance and misery. b) never use the Dark Side in any sort of yin/yang imagery implying an equally important role than the Force. Balance can be achieved in the Force, but not in the Dark Side. That's why the Jedi can be flawed and sometimes out of balance, but the Sith tend to be very bad people, always power hungry, often sadistic and cruel.
No, Balance in Star wars is something different, but rarely properly explained. The conception Lucas had for the force was NOT a Ying-Yang style Light and Dark where you have these two separate but equal forces(heh) that are both natural and necessary. The phrase 'The Light' is *never* used in the movies until the sequel trilogy. There is only The Force and it has its Dark Side. I'm not even sure you should really think of the Dark Side as a separate thing - the point is that The Dark Side IS Imbalance. It is being angry, or fearful, or out of control. To be balanced in the Force doesn't mean having light and dark together and equal. The 'light' side of the Force IS balance. There is a point nicely made in Clone Wars that the Dark Side exists in everyone, even Yoda, and that meeting it with force (heh...again) only feeds it. Because the Dark Side is your own darker nature - all thsoe impulses that you know are wrong but you feel anyway, that occasional flash of anger at a loved one, the urge to punch a wall when you're upset, or even just your own selfish desires etc etc. To be balanced in the Force means acknowledged and recognizing those impulses but not allowing them to rule you. It isn't Order vs Chaos, or Serenity vs Passion, it actually IS a good(or arguably neutral) vs evil. But people keep thinking Grey Jedi should be a thing, when the logical extrapolation of *that* view is 'right, what is my quota for puppy murdering today' Its actually the opposite thing for TLOK, where it SHOULD have been a ying yang balance but they fucked up and made it good vs evil, in Star Wars its supposed to be good vs evil but people keep fucking up and making it ying yang balance
Except that version of "balance" is the only actually coherent one. If "balance" is between good and evil, why would you ever want balance? In order for "balance" to be a *good* thing, "imbalance" has to be a *bad* thing. Therefore balance = good and imbalance = evil. The idea of balance between good and evil is nonsense. And let's be honest, could you really imagine Aang going "well, the worlds too good now, too much peace, better add some more evil to bring balance." No. Don't be absurd.
I've heard people say that when you try to explain everything in a fictional universe, it feels smaller. I think that's partially what's happening here.
Explaining the magic is fine because if you don't then you leave open questions like why some characters can use the magic and why some don't. Or why some can't use it beyond the writer just not wanting them to.
Honestly, I think you just perfectly summed up the problem with the explanation of the Force in the Star Wars prequels. It doesn’t really need an overly detailed explanation, we just need a quick explanation of how it works.
@@TF2Fan101 The comics explained the force. Not the prequels. The prequels just explained how characters could use the force and why some characters couldn't. Why can't droids the force? Star wars nerds lose their shit at the thought of any droids using the force yet they accept every other thing in the series using it.
buster Because Droids aren’t living things and are simply manufactured. They’re not organic or living or even completely synthetic, just a bunch of parts put together with a neural drive. If droids could be Maude to use the force, then the clone wars would have been over with in a week, with droids demolishing everyone.
I have a love/hate relationship with the beginnings. What I love: - we learn why there can’t be a evil avatar (bc the avatar is raava, the spirit of light & order) - why bending is genetic (bc the power was given to a few & never handed back) - how the original energy benders (turtles) & human bending are linked (the turtles are the source & they gave aang the ultimate ability that was reserved for them only) - my head canon: the humans received the energy to bend but perfected their abilities from their ancestors through original benders (dragons, bysons etc.) - the original source of bending couldn’t be „learning“ it through the original benders because then there would be the question why bending is genetic & cannot just ne learned like the ancestors did - i genuinely like how the avatar is rather accident than anything - why the avatar is reborn (because raava wanders) What I hate - spirits getting much less mystical, why are they annoying fucking kids all of the sudden? - vaatu being the bad guy when atla taught us that true harmony is balance - raava being more of a moral preacher rather than keeper of balance (because sometimes to maintain balance morally grey actions need to be taken, like killing someone who brings imbalance to the world- heck that’s literally what kyoshi did)
I would have loved if Korea took both spirits, claiming that for balance, you need both light and darkness. Creating a true mixture rather than the violent flip-flopping that came before. Vatuus knowledge would also be able to compensate for the broken links and maybe even partially restore them.
But bending isn’t 100% genetic is it? Because a bender can be born from non-benders and benders can have a non-bender child. In TLA there’s even twins where one can bed and the other can’t
"we learn why there can’t be a evil avatar (bc the avatar is raava, the spirit of light & order)" Yes, and Vaatu is the spirit of chaos and destruction, so there can be an evil Avatar. Korra's uncle literally becomes one lmfao
Yes, Acolytes not benders. All the benders (as far as we know) were killed during the war, but Aang founded the Air Acolytes as a means of preserving the culture. They're basically just hardcore air nation fans.
@@jenniferernst4141 funnily enough he seems to have gotten inspiration from that time in the comics he met a bunch of people absolutely dedicated to studying air nomad culture, but since they couldn't actually talk to any air nomads they were doing everything in a very wrong and disrespectful way. Guess he just figured he'd get ahead of the game and take it into his own hands
Yes and honestly I feel like Aang (or even Korra, as they both know how to grant bending) should have granted them bending to bring back the airbenders rather than the harmonic convergence nonsense. It would have made so much more SENSE in every possible way.
@@satinsleeves honestly I don't think the Avatar precisely should play god and give who they want bending or remove it. In ATLA it was used as a last ressource, as an alternative to death. In general giving it just because you think it is better, and not the only choice is a bit disrespectful. Airbenders learnt from sky bisons, and bending is about spirit and philosophy too. If there was enough dedication and luck, the air nomads would have gone back on their own, slowly healing the wounds of the past and saving the culture, piece by piece, not just suddenly receiving bending with no training and going to basic courses on how to monk. Toph's parents were not earthbenders, she had the hability somehow, maybe spirit, maybe luck, maybe philosophy. She trained thanks to badgermoles and became powerful. I believe airbending should have been restored by people passionate about the culture, that connected with the philosophy, and that had the spirit, that something Aang mentioned with the refugees in the temple that learnt how to glide.
I always knew something was "off" with this narrative, but couldn't quite put my finger on it. I now consider my finger pointed! Thank you for this vid!
Honestly, I just didn't like it because it removed a lot of the mystery of what the Avatar was. I was content with not knowing, especially when my imagination filled in the gaps with something that made this feel pretty underwhelming.
@@stoheha yeah me too I like the concept of avatar being a mystery force of nature kind of thing.... Avatar wan stuff just makes avatar lost it's mystery and turned out that avatar wasn't naturally born, but more like artificially born
I felt confused she loses her memory. Like I was missing or misunderstanding something. Turned out they just abandoned the actual story halfway through. And Im still mad they haphazardly threw Airbenders in and acted like they were in any way culturally representative of the Air Nomads.
@@menkirdennis6686 I was a huge fan of the melding of early swing/second line jazz and traditional Chinese instruments. The only major piece of media I've heard that in since LoK was in Crazy Rich Asians
"Problem that maybe can't be solved by someone having the biggest Nuke" Damn Tim always has this deep and meaningful quote out on each of his essay, truly word full of wisdom.
I just hate how the legend of korra severed the avatar's connection to past lives. Like is Korra the new "Avatar Wan" since the world is entering a new age?
@@ianr.navahuber2195 That wouldn't make any sense. If Raava can form new connections with spirits then might as well add Iroh to the list. Raava died the link was broken, it's high time we accept it. You can't sign in to a new PC and expect it to have all your saved passwords.
@@BhBc8f8 lol people can “accept” whatever they want from fiction or speculate about better narrative pathways. It’s fiction after all not a real world circumstance. It’s not that serious
I think this is my exact problem with Korra: the universe doesn't feel bigger after Beginnings. It feels SMALLER. And while having the Air Nation back is nice, it doesn't feel EARNED. I ALWAYS felt that SOMETHING else should've happened to bring them back, but could never figure out what. But you summed it up perfectly. I also never liked that in season 2, they just kept resetting Korra to make mistake, learn from mistake, then make mistake again. she just rushed into shiz with no real thought of the potential consequences even after learning to think things through. With Aang, he CONSTANTLY and CONSISTENTLY grew and changed and LEARNED from his errors. It's what makes him in my opinion, a better Avatar-he made mistakes, but he learned from them, and grew upon them. I think Korra herself is an OK Avatar, but she's not a match for the Airbender.
@@HighPhoenix1754 How does that make any sense when she was clearly consistent with her growth? She started off as an impulsive hothead who didn't know the first thing about spirituality, to an ambitious spiritual acolyte, to a patient hero to a spiritually enlightened Avatar.
"I need a drink... A drink of milk, because I don't solve my problems with alcohol." Literally a year later: * crying on a TWO AND A HALF HOUR RANT with a bottle of Bombay gin on hand about how TERRIBLE The Last Airbender movie was *
There was an online Avatar game that was similar to the set up to beginnings in Korra and I think they did a better job with it. Basically after Azula shoots Aang while he's in the Avatar state, his spirit is damaged and therefore must reconnect with the four former avatars before him. Each one telks Aang a bit about their past along with something to reflect on, like how Kyoshi created the dai lee and why. When Aang meets the air bender Yang chen, he asks why the Avatar isn't an all powerful spirit that never dies. Yang Chen explains it's important that the Avatar is human so they can experience the joys and struggles of humanity so they can understand it better and will compel them to protect it no matter what. That line always stuck with me as I found it, compelling.
@@stanleystewart8444 Found it! It was called Escape from the Spirit World. Technically they're cut scenes from the game. Ince completeing the level you were able to download them. I remember because I played it myself. Shame I couldn't figure out how to download the cut scenes though
You really need to get funded to write your own animated series or comic/manga or something because I was with you the whole 34 minutes and 06 seconds.
I think talking about telling stories and actually telling them are two very different things. That's why he made "On Writing", which is a blueprint, instead of a work that uses those same ideas
I wish that these episodes were framed as an alternative mythology from a certain group of people instead of the legitimate history that really actually happened. It’s really cool to have lots of mythology and folk lore and incredibly not cool to have facts just laid out unambiguously. None of this matters, though, cuz I only watch those episodes for Jason Marsden’s voice
I would add to that: Doing that or maybe laying out the already known methods that humans learned bending myths/half truths. Something like "By the time those so called 'ancient' scrolls of yours were written the Dragon Turtles had already faded into myth and legend. Humanity looked to the creatures they lived with, creatures that lived far longer than them, and simply connected the dots. They wrote what they *thought* was the origin of bending." Something along those lines, instead of making it look like the writers just forgot what was already set in cannon.
Ohhh, the writers should have watched the canyon episode again and then make like 4 different versions of the origin story, leaving the viewer with the choice to piece together their headcanon.
remem95 I mean that’s what religions are; they’re just different cultures explaining worldly things through supernatural beings/events! I think Avatar does a great job of showing the different ways that the various groups express their spirituality but having diversity in the mythologies would have been really cool! I think even the good vs. evil thing wouldn’t have been that bad if it were about a specific religion as opposed to historical events...
I rarely get to say this, but old MK lore actually pulled this off better with the Realms of Order and Chaos. The realm of chaos is utterly nuts, with anyone and everyone acting to their own whims, regardless of the consequences to themselves or others. The Realm of Order is an entire realm built of pure Authoritarian thinking, where even the slightest deviation from the rules and laws is punished harshly and severely. Its made very clear that neither place is a particularly nice place to live for anyone who doesn't also fall on the same extreme end of the spectrum as those Realms embody
The first half of season 2 feels like the beginning of an entirely different season than what it ended up like there was a lost season that attached itself to season 2 last second
TBF the beginnings two parter only portrays, like what, the last 20 years of the era before the avatar? Considering just how long the era before the Avatar might have been, I don't take particular issue with that in and on itself.
You just made me realize the pun behind Wan's name.. I thought you said "The first avatar, avatar one". The idea of how the air nomads cultures could have been learning from sky bison as a way to help restore their culture, until one of them finally airbends, really gave me goosebumps!
I would be so happy if, after the ATLA remake, we get a LoK remake that fixes some of these issues. I love the characters, the world, and so much about LoK but it could have been so much better.
Here's my headcanon: The version of Wan's story which we see in Beginnings isn't a literal or definitive depiction of those events, but rather a version of them which is comprehendible to Korra at that point in her development. Between both series we see that each Avatar's understanding of the world, their place within in, and their own abilities, stems from both a synthesis of, and interpretation of, the collective experiences of their current and previous lives. We've also seen that the most recent previous Avatars are the easiest to call forth (Aang for Korra, Roku for Aang, etc.) which implies that lives from further back are harder to access. Therefore, Wan's life is now so distant that it can only be called up in bits and pieces, and in a more abstract way. If Aang had seen the story of Wan (which he may well have at some point) it would have looked very differently, and reflected his more nuanced understanding of morality and the balance between the physical and spiritual. Korra however is a very concrete, black-and-white kind of person, at least at this point, and so that shades her experience of Wan's life. It also reframes the spiritual matters which have thus far gone over her head as something simple and straightforward; something she can grapple with. The idea of stories being told in multiple ways, and there being elements of truth in each, is something that ATLA dealt with more than once, and applied here it retains the ambiguity of the Avatar's nature and the nature of the spirit world despite what we see in Beginnings. Of course, this headcanon makes it extremely hard to explain the final giant spirit fight at the end of the season. All I can suggest for that is that the way in which Raava and Vaatu are manifested is dependent upon the understanding(s) of those who call them forth. Korra and Unalaq both have very black-and-white views on morality, and so that is how Raava and Vaatu, manifestations of the essential duality of existence, become simply spirits of good and evil in this instance. There could even be something in this about how didactic worldviews inevitably breed violent conflict, tying it back to the civil war story, although that's even more of a stretch than the rest of this rant. This interpretation of Beginnings certainly doesn't resolve all of season two's other issues, and was also clearly not the intent of the showrunners, but it is in line with a lot of the themes from ATLA.
I would love if the creators built on this, like the next avatar also has a confrontation with vaatu or something and then they also see wan's story but in a different light
That sounds Very accurate considering she was talking to a spiritual being, to show the actual littoral /literal events to her being may have ultimately been damaging in the long run
That is an interesting interpretation. If they hadn't thrown in the bit about Unalaq having set Tonraq up, therefore making him less "someone who cares deeply about the spirits" and more "ambitious hypocrite", then they could have made Unalaq genuinely believe that Vaatu was the good spirit that represented a greater presence of spirits in the world. Would fit better with the later claim that he was a Red Lotus member, too (although I'd admit I'm sceptical of everything Zaheer said in that exchange - Zaheer had pretty much proved by the end of the series that he'd use any lie to get one over on his opponents, so I suspect that Zaheer was just saying whatever he thought would keep Korra in the spirit world long enough for his allies to grab her).
I agree with other commenters that people who hate lok normally hate beginnings too, people who enjoyed the spiritual lessons of atla not just the powers and abilities. You hit the nail on the head for the other stuff though imo. For me, the morally grey situations were awesome, I remember thinking how terrible it would be to be a non bender in a universe like this, they start that on season 1, gave me high hopes, then make the leader of the movement an evil bloodbender, and forget this very real conflict entirely. This is consistently done. Easy endings. And black and white morality entirely forgetting the meaning behind yin and Yang and how the avatar is balance. Not light alone. That the avatar needs human wisdom from multiple generations, thats how the avatar has wisdom above us mere mortals, because in a way the avatar is just a collection of many many mortals.
I loved just how much Aang struggled to let go of his pacifist nature. He had literal nightmares about Ozai. He consulted the past Avatars but still couldn't let himself become a killer. You could interpret it as moral courage or weakness, but at least could understand that it was real. It's also an incredible portrayal of contientious objectors. They don't all just do it avoid the draft, some really do believe their pacifist message.
Amon still would have been an interesting villain, if his ability didn't break the pre-established rules (full-moon bloodbending) or was actually explained within the show. Hiding his bending and actually identifying with people who had suffered at the hands of benders (like he had), being ashamed of his heritage & abilities and only using them to take away bending. He could've really cared about his followers & been really insecure about them finding out, 'cause he didn't want them to hate him. Maybe he'd rather Matyr himself then let that happen?
@@TheMageOfVoid they do explain, the only reason regular water benders need the moon to blood bend wasnt because the moon somehow has something special that allows them to blood bend but because the full moon gives some kind of buff to their abilities that makes them a little more powerful and as such allows them to use blood bending (kinda like how zozins comet allows firebenders to fly just by how powerful their bending becomes), Amon just came from a family or waterbenders that were powerful enough to bloodbend without needing the full moon buff, they are exceptions and the story makes it clear to say that they arent normal for their capabilities to bloodbend outside of the full moon (which imo, doesnt contradicts anything) I can agree about the second bit, it would be interesting to see some renmants of Amons movement post season 1, some people that even when they learned that their leader was a liar and using them just for personal power still believed in the anti bender movement and were causing trouble, maybe not have them as the main antagonista ñ but definetly as a threat that is still present i think it would have been an interesting move
I do agree, and am often left wondering how this transpires. Clearly the writers had great ideas in each season of blurring the line of right and wrong only to revert back. I wonder if it was conflict between the studio and the writers, but nevertheless it disappoints me.
I love this comment. I also hated that they completely abandoned a genuinely compelling plotline with regard to the non bender revolution. Also the idea that the leader would not have immediately become a martyr and the movement, which was shown to be gaining momentum fast, wouldn’t have swelled even more in the wake of his death baffled me. I was confident that’s what his death was foreshadowing, was *for*.
I feel like Beginnings also shows the problem that I have with Korra as a whole. For instance, in season 1, Korra has no ability to airbend because she solves her problems with brute force and is unable to connect with the world spiritually. Airbending is all about using finese and cleverness instead of violence and brute force. This was great. This lead room and motivation for character development within Kora, and served as kind of a contrast to Aang's problem throughout his series. However, her problem witth air bending was solved through brute force. She really tried to attack, to bend, and magically air bending started working for her again. She still sued brute froce and was impulusive throughout the series, and the meaning of airbending presented to us with season one was completely undermined. And she acted the exact same way in season 4, showing that she didn't grow at all through the series and instead was just having the same problem repeatedly. This was quiyte unsatisfying to watch for me.
Avatar: The Last Airbender - Written by Aaron Ehasz (head writer) The Legend of Korra - Written by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko No wonder the first one is so much better. Aaron Ehasz and his wife were the ones who came up with the world and how everything works.
I've always heard this and been conflicted. Mike and Bryan have been very clear about their role in creating this world and so I'm hesitant to give them any less credit than they are due. However, I think it might be fair to say that Aaron and his wife as WRITERS, that being their primary craft, played a critical role in making the ideas behind this world work with actual mechanics (vis a vis lore, power systems, soft magic, etc.) I am a pretty big defender of LOK, I think a lot of the hate is overblown even though there are issues. However, this video does illuminate why LOK didn't 'land' in the same way ATLA did with fans. Everything in LOK starts out with a good idea, but falls flat on the execution. Season 3 is the only exception to that for me, and I'll die on that hill.
This is a pretty good video. I’ve always felt that there was something “off” about Season 2 especially with how the spirits and the spirit world is portrayed compared to the first series but never quite understood what it was or how to articulate it. Thanks for the amount of time and effort you put into explaining this!
Way back when this episode aired, I had the same exact thoughts, mostly about the destruction of the morality system of the show, and just the overall "dumbification" of a story that I highly cherished. Thank you for elaborating on these thoughts. Brilliant analysis! Also, heartbreaking, considering it's now canon. :(
Holy SHIT you're right!!! "Push" and "Pull" work so much better as embodiments of Yin and Yang, and have nothing to do with the tired "Cosmic Good vs Cosmic Evil" schtick. Replacing Raava and Vaatu with Tua and Lai and having both endow Wan with the Avatar State fixes EVERYTHING
@@badluckrabbit yeah you are right now that i think about it. And i liked the "beginnings" episode but i felt it could be different. it even has a nice excuse for nostalgia pandering by bringing yue (the new moon spirit) bakc into the fold. also, yeah, i was so done with the "oh the cosmic good spirit looks so stereotypically good while the suppsoedly evil devil spirit looks so stereotypically evil" thing. outside of Avatar, I would love for once that in one pice of media, the villain was the "deity / god of light" (and humans helping it thinking "light is good, dark is bad") and the good guy is the "deity of darkness". the closest i have seen something like this was in YuGiOh GX, and even then, they still needed to feature a villain representing "evil darkness" as final boss
I do enjoy how well you articulated and explained the faults and merits with Beginnings. You were able to explain it in a way I could not describe. The Avatar was someone trying to find a balance of their actions. My tribe and culture we learn many lessons from our non-human siblings / relatives. For example Wolf taught us how to hunt and work in groups. When they talk about learning from the original benders, I literally took that as them learning from Bison, Dragon, Badger-Mole, Moon and Water. I guess this would be a discussion best for Discord or another platform. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and teaching me something. I am grateful.
Is it weird that when I was a kid, I always assumed the whole Avatar thing had been a gift to a human from a Spirit? Like, the Spirit gave them the ability to reincarnate and bend all the elements to defend humans from the anger of Spirits and to unite the two worlds? It was just how I imagined it- A Spirit, using its own free will, wanted to unite the worlds and help humanity. IDK. It was just little me's headcanon. Is that crazy? Probably.
I kind of thought that the Avatar was a unique "anomaly" that happened in the world. That all of the spiritual energy sort of pooled into this one being and it cycled through the different tribes because that was a way of maintaining balance. That the avatar was a "result" of the fact that they learned all of these different powers. Kind of like the universe forcing balance into a very unbalanced equation, the avatar was a way to "solve" the equation and restore balance. So when the avatar died, there was disruption in the balance so a new avatar had to be born, that energy had to go somewhere.
@@olandir And I think it's cool that everyone had different ideas about how the Avatar came to be. For me, at least, I think it's better to leave some things unknown, or at least not fleshed out in detail, because it's fun for the viewers to use their imaginations.
So kinda like Prometheus bestowing humanity fire as a means to have power and do with it as they wish? Kinda like the snake in Christian mythology that gives Adam and Eve the power of knowledge and free will which causes them to be banished from God’s eden as they now possess both the potential of good and evil. Sounds neat in that sense too.
I don't think that's a blanket rule, there are examples where explaining magic does work (Mistborn comes to mind). I think it should be, "never explain the magic when it doesn't need explaining" We already understood everything we needed to about Bending we didn't have to know about Wan merging with Kite-God and fighting Kite-Satan.
@@judeconnor-macintyre9874 I guess it also served as the origin of the Avatar, but even then I don't think that ever needed explaining. I always assumed the Avatar was the spirit of nature and the planet itself made into a physical manifestation to ensure the world always stays in balance, and existed ever since humans have been able to threaten the balance of the world. Not a giant, glowing, magic talking carpet that had a thing for some pathetic, asshole thief and merged with him into some cosmic abomination. The Lion Turtle also mentions in the Avatar finale that "Before the Avatar we bent not the elements, but the energy within ourselves." Which alludes to the fact that there was a time in human history *before* they used any kind of elemental bending, yet in an episode literally titled "Beginnings" we see that immediately being contradicted. Would've liked to have seen that pre-elemental bending society, but I guess that's either been retconned out of existence now or retconned so that the Lion Turtle was talking about an even more ancient-er time waaay before Wan. Either way it's all pretty fucking lame and completely unnecessary, which perfectly describes Korra in a nutshell, honestly.
Not a strict rule, look at Hunter x Hunter, where the magic is explained in detail, but it makes the world 100x better. I guess never explain the magic unless you have a damn good explanation.
24:36 You know I think a lot of the problems with Korra is that it raises interesting political and sociological issues but always cops out at the end. Season one raises interesting debates about the bender/non-bender conflict, but focuses so much on the whole pro bending thing that that theme is not allowed to develop further and in the end the antagonist turns out be a hypocrite anyway. Season 2 is obvious. In season 4, my actual favourite season, Kuvira tries to unite the earth kingdom and even though she is taking harsh measures to do so, clearly has* a positive effect on the kingdom. That raises questions about how much interference is required in scenarios like this and what measures should you take to fix a broken nation. All of this is discarded when Kuvira starts doing obviously evil things like building a big ass mecha and trying to take over Republic city. Movies like Zootopia and Black Panther actually deal with these things much better than Korra even though these movies still may be flawed in some ways. Zootopia is essentially the first season of Korra (replace the predator/non-predator conflict with the bender/non-bender conflict) but is allowed to actually develop the themes to its logical conclusion. Black Panther does not cop out at the end by having the antagonist turn out to be a hypocrite. Killmonger is 100% right and in the end the main characters acknowledge this and promise to change Wakanda by opening it up to the rest of the world instead of keeping it isolated.
Yeah I was sooo disillusioned by the liberal propaganda. And by liberal I mean anti-left. It basically took a bunch of cool leftist theories and practice and then said they were all bad because they made all their leaders ridiculously evil. It was a cheap way to discredit the actual ideas that could have been fleshed out more.
@@sierra750 I am so glad to see someone else talk about this. Zaheer and Amon are both basically right. Zaheer especially is an weird to be potrayed as evil, because we KNOW from the last series that the villages, towns and provinces are basically fine without a central authority, there problem isn't a lack of governance but an imperialist invanding force. Disposing of the Earth Kingdom is the correct thing to do, it only ever makes its citizens lives worse (see "Zuko Alone" or the Queens tax collectors) I'm not willing to defend Kuvira for even a minute though, the woman is facist.
@@belegl.7721 If you think that Amon is right by bringing equality through force, I'm sorry but you are insane. Even without being a hypocrite he is completely wrong, as he basically strips people away from things that they consider part of their core identity by force. It is a terrible thing to do. Zaheer is much more complex, but it shows that extremist ideas, even when they look good in paper, always have unforeseen consequences. The same can be said about Kuvira. Unalaq was the villain that I mostly sympathized with at first, until they brought up the whole Vaatu thing.
@@Lacertos I think the point is that the Equalists have legitimate grievances in Season One - nonbenders ARE treated as second-class citizens and ARE at the mercy of the more powerful benders. Arguably, teaching chi-blocking and developing technology that lessens the advantages of bending are even healthy responses to this. Even Amon removing the bending from people like the crime lord who use their bending to oppress others seems at least a fairly light shade of grey. I mean, Aang the highly pacifistic Avatar did the same thing. Maybe it's not his "right" to do so, but if the correct authorities haven't found a way to stop him, it's hard to blame him for taking action. There are pieces of a really interesting story about an oppressed class of people taking violent action against a society that won't protect them or respect them, how the situation becomes ever more political and polarized, and keeps constantly escalating each time either side uses force instead of peaceful resolution tactics. Equalist crimes are responded to with basic rights of non-benders being taken away which leads to what are essentially large scale terror attacks. LoK had the chance to (like Black Panther) create a story where the villain is right about something important but wrong in their methods, and this sparks lasting change. Instead, by focusing on the family drama and cover-up lies of the leaders on both sides of the conflict, LoK has Korra defeat Amon and end the Equalists as an organization without actually dealing with their ideology at all. Amon and Tarlok kill themselves and we never hear another word about non-bender rights. It's kinda-sorta implied by the fact that no one talks about it at ALL that things are better now, but if they are, then how? Did being under non-bender military occupation somehow make all the benders nicer to non-benders? Were there laws passed protecting non-bender rights? Were Amon's actions enough to break the grip of organized crime targeting non-benders on Republic City? Just like Season 2, Season One sets up a complex, morally grey idealogical conflict, and then late in the season introduces a backstory-related plot that allows the story to be reframed in more black-and-white terms and the villain to be defeated without addressing his original motivations.
@@StarryEyed0590 I understand all that, but I'm addressing Amon as a character, not the background that his actions take place. You said that Amon took out the bending of the crime lord. It is debatable if justice by its own hands is justice at all, but even if it is, Amon didn't want to take away the bending only of criminals, he used his powers on innocent people as well, that is simply not justifiable. If he wasn't a dangerous extremist and instead as more Robin Hood or Punisher type of character (that targeted only shit people) maybe he wouldn't be a villain, but it is pointless to discuss this, as the whole season arc would have to be completely different, with different questions asked.
13:26 I think you unintentionally hit the nail on the head as to what the problem was when you said, "The way *Mike and Bryan* wrote spiritual energy". Odds are that they didn't write it; Aaron Ehasz, the lead writer for ATLA, did. Who was missing from Legend of Korra? Aaron Ehasz.
@Mullerornis Again, I'm not saying, "Aaron Ehasz for the win"; I'm saying that ATLA was a team effort, and that LOK was the result of a vital part of the team being missing. The Dragon Prince has its issues, but it is a lot better than LOK, especially in character writing.
As someone who watches many 3-5 hour takedowns of things, gotta say, it’s great for learning about writing type stuff just as much as positively oriented things, and usually covers very different topics to the positive angle. They’re both good times
I absolutely love the avatar universe but I’d be lying if I said the beginnings episodes didn’t disappoint me, I couldn’t explain why it felt like it didn’t fit but this video explains it very well
The heart of the Avatar isn’t their powers, it’s their wisdom and humanity, several human lifetimes that converge on one person who will struggle with the world and themselves. They’re not capital A “Avatars” of all the elements and the spirit world, they’re avatars of humanity, a fragile and conflict-ridden race. Aang struggled to learn the elements but struggled even harder against the world, its people, and ultimately himself. The world of Avatar was written to grow and support these subtleties, to tell a story with a deeper meaning beneath the setpieces and drama. The world wasn’t built just for massive action scenes to occur and not all conflicts were meant to be resolved so easily *by the writers* . The reason why morally dubious conflicts with no clear cut good and evil sides are so engaging is because we’re human. We know they aren’t. Agh, Avatar used to be such a good series.
This was an excellent analysis of Season 2 and really explained why I always felt that it (Specifically the second half) felt, Weak. The KorraKaiju fight felt out of place, spectacle overwhelming the rest of the show. I think part of what they wanted to do with this season as well was depower Korra a bit. Season 1 left her with the Avatar state and the writers wanted to take that away. By cutting her off from the other Avatars it does so. So I think that would need to still be done. Maybe, IDK, I''m not a writer. You're idea about rebuilding the air nomads really works, That's such a good idea about people having to work for it. (In the comics) Aang already had Air Nomad Disciples post 100 year war and we see them in Season 1 of korra. You had a group of people that had, for decades been living, behaving and basically being air nomads minus the bending. But it didn't work for them? because what? they didn't have the right midichlorians? They didn't have the blood of kings, they weren't skywalkers. Keep in mind I say that season 2 of korra is weakest of the franchise. but it is by no means (IMO) a bad bit of Television. And Beginnings is great. but only when put in a vacuum
It could have been an interesting story arc if she had to spend the rest of the series reconnecting with the past Avatars. That way it wouldn't have lost Aang and the others for all time, but also given her something to do while building her power back up. I commented this elsewhere, but why didn't Aang give the Air Acolytes Airbending? We know from S2 that it's how you can bestow bending on a non-bender, and that Aang had become proficient with it as an adult. Makes no sense for someone so concerned with rebuilding his culture. Just so much missed opportunity with this series. And while I still think that, overall, I like the series... it's really soured for me over the years. Just so many writing issues and improper handling of many of the lore and legacy characters. While The Last Airbender is still one of my all-time favorite series, and has actually improved in my estimation over the years, The Legend of Korra has become rather forgettable. I usually tell people to avoid it and just stick with the original series.
@@AzureKnight2 I still very much like Korra, It has a lot of good points. More weak points than ATLA, sure. But it's still excellent in my opinion. really it's only this part, the end of season 2 that I felt a bit meh about. Half a bad season out of 7, that's a pretty good standard.
I knew it, a mauler ref. well, my fellow, he is your answer: "The dark side of the force is a pathway to many abilities, some considered to be unnatural"
When you talking about how to improved the episode, how the revival of Air Nomad should have happened, how the Water Tribe Civil War should have ended, I swear you could be a writer for this series. On a different note, i always thought it will be interesting to explore the Foggyswamp Water Tribe and added to the mystery of how much they connected to both the moon and that big tree.
Your content is fantastic. This explains a lot of the gut reactions I had Korra. I remember really enjoying the civil war section, but on a rewatch I was pissed by how blatantly evil Unalaq was--the interesting tensions just evaporated.
when I watched TLOK for the first time a month or two ago, I remember feeling like something was missing after finishing book 2. I didn't viscerally loathe anything about the show like a lot of ATLA fans seem to do, but this video made me realize exactly why I felt dissatisfied with book 2. The stuff about yin and yang did bother me when I first watched the show, because I know that they are supposed to represent balance between equal and opposite forces, not "good" and "evil", plus ATLA had already set up this idea with Tui and La, the moon and ocean spirits. To have the whole season be about "defeating" the "evil" of vaatu was lazy and predictable, and felt dissatisfying. I would have LOVED to see book 2 play out like you said at the end, where it sets up the revival of the air nomads in that group of fire benders, and has Korra fuse with Vaatu so she can truly restore balance. Even if they kept 90% of the final battle the same and just changed the narrative around rava and vaatu to be more "order and chaos" than "good and evil" (to better set up the main conflict of season 3!!), they could've had Korra pull Rava AND vaatu out of unalaq and bring them into herself, providing a visual callback to when it was done to her, and reinforcing the idea of the avatar's role as someone who is supposed to maintiain BALANCE, not just "fight evil".
Your analysis was once again beautiful. However, while I agree with the vast majority of it, I'm compelled to point out a correction and add my own thoughts. The correction being that they did actually retcon the lore of TLAB. The avatar was originally supposed to be the spirit of the world made incarnate in human form, which is what gave them the authority and duty to balance things. The avatar spirit was the avatar themselves, and each prior avatar was the same spirit; not some carrier pigeon of power flitting between hosts. That retcon alone cascades into pretty much every other problem. And even though the other parts of the lore could technically be considered not retconned (like who bending was learned from), it is a massive directional shift away from the rather solid impression it gave. So while that might not be a retcon in letter, it wholly is in spirit. It jars the internal consistency to the point of cataclysm, and for me taints the whole experience. That aside though, my thoughts are that they didn't just make the world less compelling; they simplified it to the point of dumbing it down and slowly picked away at all the connections it has to the original show. Bending goes from being both a physical and spiritual art to being a generic tool with no real depth. Ancient techniques that required lifetimes of work and mastery suddenly become common place (lightning and metal bending being the two most blatant examples). Bending powers have hardly any feeling of being earned anymore, and they're no longer all that special. Korra's connection to all the past avatars is stripped away and replaced for no reason, and yet it simultaneously has no effect on her abilities. The deep personal connection that the reincarnation cycle has, both to the audience and to the character, is just gone; replaced by some disembodied voice that is impossible to relate to and was mysteriously non-existent for previous avatars (except Wan, apparently). Bye, Aang; bye, Roku; bye, Kyoshi; it was nice getting to know you just to have you unceremoniously tossed into the aether alongside all the setup that went into fleshing you and your relationships out in TLAB. And all that was sacrificed for... absolutely no payoff/benefit. Turns out the experience of past avatars wasn't even contributing. All just Raava backseat bending. And that's just a couple of the connections they devalued between TLAB and Korra. Narratively speaking though, like you pointed out in season 2 where they subvert all the moral questions of the avatar's place in the world, they do the same thing in a bunch of other places. Every point they have an opportunity to address an adult theme in the primary story arch, they undercut the narrative and throw in some simple answer. It starts with Amon just being a blood bender, delegitimizing his entire revolution, and the moral questions with it. Not to mention not having to deal with any actual ramifications from him taking away people's bending. And while season 2 is certainly the worst offender of this subversion, it's a consistent issue with the show. This all in the context that Korra was supposed to be the more "adult" of the two Avatar series? TLAB did a way better job answering moral questions, and it did it without feeling the need to try spell out the plot devices. TLAB recognized even its younger audience's abilities to understand abstract and complex issues, much less the adult audience. Korra gives its audience zero credit. I'd rant about my issues with the characters themselves too, but I probably should've never allowed myself to start ranting in the first place and should stop now before I write another ten paragraphs. I can only imagine how far I'd go if I still drank Mt. Dew. It just sucks because TLAB is more than just my favorite show; it ranks up there with Tolkien for me for how much it inspires me to write and imagine. While I can enjoy watching Korra to an extent if I don't think about what it changed from TLAB, the more I do think about it, the more it feels like it ruins a work of art that is very dear to me. So that's my thoughts. Thanks for another great vid, Tim. Looking forward to the next one.
I read through all that, and I agree. I really dislike how the show had every opportunity to tackle complex issues, and it squandered each of them. I especially agree about Amon. Before he was revealed to be a bloodbender, he was easily the best part of the show. LOK had failed to really show that there was a societal inequality issue between benders and non-benders, but I could buy Amon's existence as someone who believes that there is and intends to bring an end to it. It helped that Amon was a cunning and downright terrifying antagonist, and that he was counterbalanced by Tarrlock: a bloodbending villain at the very top of society who was the product of his crime-lord father's vengeance. Then they revealed that Amon's a bloodbender and made beating him way too easy. All they had to do was knock off his mask and expose his fake scar to a bit of water, and suddenly his whole revolution dies? Seriously? There are many other problems with the reveal that Amon was actually a bloodbender, but that's how it ruined season 1 thematically.
I did not think about how the past experience of the avatars didn't mean anything and it was just Raava powering it all. It would have been interesting how Korra dealt with being weaker and having a useless avatar state but as you said, it never mattered cuz Raava. Raava is honestly the worst char in the series.
@@Niop_Tres I agree that its natural more people know about these top tiers bending. However lightning and metal bending were reduced to common everyday things which they are not. Even if you compare it to real life with people with excellent art skills or singers. Those are highgly sought after and valued. Lightning benders should be top of the food chain as its so powerful and deadly and the same goes for metal bending. Mako never uses it almost even thought he could have likely killed every enemy with it. I imagine you ill say its because hes not evil but what about any other fire bender? We saw a lot of them in the show. Even when he used in the factory as a tool, it was a low waging job that didn't pay shit. Your telling me lightning bending, something so dangerous and rare as Iroh said, would equal to a shitty job in a factory? No and no. Anyway point is these incredible fighting skills were reduced to nothing special. Amazing martial skills are still hard to achieve and majority of people can't do them.. Nothing will change that. It should matter all the more in a world where guns haven't existed yet like in Korra.
@@Niop_Tres I understand the viewpoint that it's just a natural progression of the Avatar world (it was my initial perspective as well), but I feel that when scrunitized it loses credence. In real life it usually takes much longer and much more rigorous training to actually reach mastery levels of martial arts as opposed to arts like drawing and painting. Self-teaching is much less efficient (and usually much less effective) with martial arts than other arts. You can't look up video tutorials of martial arts techniques and assimilate them like you can with other arts, what with its physical nature. It almost exclusively requires a need to be physically present with a teacher (or learned the hard way by actually fighting), which means the information is bottle-necked by the available practitioners. You can't just break down the difficulties of learning it by disseminating the information about it, the same way you can't with real martial arts. Because of the means by which you have to learn it, it's not the kind of thing that can evolve to be learned faster. Sure, more people might have access to the knowledge about it (and even that would take quite some time to happen), but they still need to invest significant time and energy into learning them regardless, much less mastering them. It's not like technology where it advances in exponents. The idea that the information exploded as quickly as it did in Korra with the level of technology they had doesn't line up. There were so few individuals who could have provided the information to begin with, and in Korra they had only recently attained radio communication. Even with all of the vast armies of the fire nation during TLAB, only a handful could even begin to learn lightning bending (we only know of 3 who were capable). Iroh, probably the best firebender of the age, made a particular point on how almost nobody can do it by its very nature. Then you have Toph, who was only able to figure out metalbending because of her blind-sense, which is something more or less unique to her. The idea you can propagate a skill that required the loss of an entire sense to obtain as easily as they do in Korra breaks both the learning curve and some serious barriers of character progression. Aang didn't even learn it. Yet in the short time since Toph discovered metalbending (only about 65-70 years) every cop in Republic City, a sizeable portion of Kuvira's army, and pretty much everyone we see in Zaofu (which had been around for 30 years at the absolute most) are now all incredibly proficient metalbenders, to the point they've produced a city out of massive and intricately designed metal structures, as well as booming industry and transport systems, and all without the need for Toph's unique circumstances to develop the necessary senses. That is quite a lot of people who suddenly have fine detailed mastery over things that were previously very obscure/incredibly difficult, and had only one person to teach them for about half of that 65-70 years span. Bending wasn't so much of an "elites" thing as it was an "earned" thing through practice and hard work (with the exceptions of the main characters as prodigies, which is acceptable for narrative reason, and even they had issues with learning some things). You didn't have to be elite to know it, and the elites didn't learn it any easier (they just had easier access to the knowledge); everyone had to invest a ton of their time to advance in it. But in Korra, bending loses the reverence it had because now every average Joe can do all the special abilities that were established as being very difficult/rare/unique. In real life, other arts never transitioned out of being art into something that's not art. Art is still revered as something evocative, where bending completely loses that aspect. It becomes tantamount to using a wrench or tossing a ball. Also in relation to art in our own world, if the Pareto distribution is to be trusted, you only have about 20% of people who actually participate in a field become substantial in that field, and only a fraction of those could be worthy of being called "masters" of their field. Much like real life, I imagine that even if you had a fair amount of people capable of performing such bending on a relatively competent level, many of them would never be encountered/discovered, just like with artists in real life (and we have the internet to help us). As far as popular music goes, you only have a couple of writers shared between the vast majority of pop artists. Popular music has more to do with image and marketing than actual talent a lot of the time. Most big popular artists are just flashes in the pan. The vast majority of actors don't make the cut either; we only see a select few of the many who have tried. Even out of the ones that stick around, many aren't household names. Some aren't even good at acting; just ridiculous enough in some way to keep an audience, or have a loud cult following. Same could be said for many writers. But even with all those considered, they are still a tiny, tiny fraction of the population. I'd wager that the world of Avatar has a much smaller population than the real world (based on comparable time periods), which would make it an even more select few who would be capable of such things. All those things considered, I don't feel the evolution of bending presented by Korra is very natural or reverent of what bending was shown to be in TLAB. It no longer feels worth venerating like it once was. More to your last statement than the rest of the topic: While I could create my own version of Korra for myself, it doesn't change that Korra's official existence tarnished TLAB's legacy for me, and prevents anything Avatar from ever being officially released again without that taint. What I wish to imagine happened won't retcon the mistakes of Korra from the Avatar universe, or any future Avatar content that is officially released. Rather or not I make my own headcanon, fanfiction, etc., does not remedy those grievances, and I can't look forward to seeing more of the thing I most want to see. (Apologies for the long-winded reply. The topic is nuanced and I'm bad at being succinct lol)
@@xLeechcraftx I sincerely thing you all overestimate how difficult it actually is to pick up bending with the right tutoring. I mean Toph despite being a child is not only the most powerful earth bender ever with Bummy as the only real concurrence for the title but also managed to push Aang into very advanced techniques in under a year all on her own. It took over a decade to invent Blood bending and yet Katara just picks it up in a few moments. And Aang after meeting the last 2 dragons makes ridicules fast progress on his fier bending. To just name a few examples of the top of my head. So while proper mastering is suppose to be kinda hard was actually getting decent with proper teaching never shown as something difficult in the series. As for the whole lighting bending before Toph was metal bending though to be impossibel all together and before Iroh studied Water bending teachings was the Lighting technique thought to be unstoppable. What I want to say with it only because with the teaching Iroh know it seams like a very restrictive technique doesn't mean it actually is with the right teachings. Actually a far bigger issue in my opinion is that Wan's era was already to advanced for the quick development speed bending allowed to happen to make the progression from Last Air bender to Korra logical.
I find actually that those who dislike the Legend Of Korra, they point to how the Avatar Wan episodes have completely retconned the entirety of the bending system
@@airpodsmurf6175 LoK was realistically just a shitty fanfic that we can look back at and go "now if we were to make a sequel to AtLA, this is what we shouldn't do"
@@anonymousgaslighter345 Yes, i know this well. I read 10000 Manga; which is not just an overexaggereted number with many Zeroes, but literally the thing. What i dont get is why you tell me this.
30:28 - _"... doing nothing can be taking the side of tyranny..."_ Reminds me of a Norwegian poem called "Peace on Earth" (Fred på Jord) which shows that peace isn't always good, in fact it can sometimes be pretty bad.
I actually remember when I first saw these episodes. I had actually missed a couple of the previous episodes and came back to them. I thought an entirely new season had started. They felt so out of place, I genuinely didn't think they were a part of the season I had been watching. Objectively, the episodes are fine, but in the context of the entire series, they don't fit at all.
I agree that sometimes it's more interesting to leave certain things to the audience's imagination since the mystery and intrigue is often more interesting than the answer. I also agree that the Water Tribe civil war plot had a lot of potential that was really derailed by the cosmic spirit warfare nonsense.
@@philter105 Wasn't 10,000 established in ATLA? Then it would be a problem with ATLA's math (just like Azulon's reign, which was said in ATLA to have lasted less than 30 years).
Not that I can think of. The history of the Avatar always seemed longer than 10,000 years to me. Partially because they left it quite vague. Putting a number on it spoils it like Tim says in the vid
@@philter105 Same thing with the statues in Book 1. There was just an unending amount of them lighting up when Aang went Avatar state. We're never supposed to know the exact number, we just know he's been around since the beginning of bending itself.
Tim 2020: "I don't solve my problems with alchohol" Tim 2021: Drowning your PTSD in bombay saphire gin for three hours. atla the movie will do that to a person.
@@loturzelrestaurant what the hell is cirticism? Is that supposed to be criticism? Why are you and other people misspelling the same word all the time? Is it a meme? Is it a case of mass copy paste without double checking grammar?
Well to be fair, Korra did lose her connection to the past avatars, making it impossible to ever communicate with them. It would have been hard to see them again given that. I wonder why none of them are in the spirit world? Is it because they are the same soul every single time just in a different body?
@@co7769 because we see aang in the mist of lost souls my guess would be that all avatars are there hidden within the nebula and waiting for a new avatar to come and find them
@@azzkin9401 ot wasn't clarified if that was an illusion of tenzin or if aang actually appeared there. He showed himself to tenzin telling him to be himself and not just aangs son and then tenzin was able to temporarily see clearly to take his siblings out. I personally like to think that aang is actually in there as well as all past avatars after korras connection to them got crushed because the avatar is obviously highly spiritual just as iroh was, who managed to get to the spirit world while also being lost withno purpose after losing their connection to the current avatar. Of course seing aang as an illusion of tenzins mind makes just as much sense!
Yeah, I was also dissapointed by how the second season ended... Big Good against Big Bad... when the start of it was so much more grey. Which means I was totally taken by surprise by the third season. I really love an antagonist with depth that does what he does not because he is evil but because he believes in what he does.
Zaheer's philosophy (anarchy) is a very flawed one. Unlike Amon's equality which makes sense. Zaheer wants every human to decide for themselves, which creates a power vaccum. A society cannot survive without someone to lead them
@@nathanj3528 I mean.. sure.. maybe? But that's sort of orthogonal to the issue at hand? Like, I think that you're wrong, that humanity can be organized in a more non-hierarchical, just way, but your point, even if correct, doesn't really invalidate Atlante Fou's. One can think *both* that Anarchism is a philosophy doomed to fail because of ~human nature~, *and* that exploring the mind, motivations and lengths to which an antagonist will go in pursuit of that philosophy makes for a fascinating story
@@Lilith_NightRose True, but when you pursue a goal, and hardcore want to do find way to achieve it, you must also fine the flaws within. The problem with Zaheer was that he knew how to achieve it, but the consequences of it were well beyond his reach.
@@nathanj3528 You criticism of anarchism is debatable, but I agree that Zaheer's philosophy is flawed. He is an antagonist after all. but he HAS a philospophy, which makes him more interesting than most villians. He does not see himself as evil, he really believes in his cause. He has depths. Off course, he does not see the flaws in his plan (just like Thanos by the way, another great villian in my opinion). He's an extremist after all ! No extremism can really work in our world but we still have a bunch of them in the real world.
@@atlantefou566 Let me get the anarchism part straight first. No society can run on that system. There is no debatable reason for this. Even the animal kingdom has a structure for survival, of course, we aren't animals, but if any man lived by their own ideals, than that would lead to chaos. Anarchy always leads to chaos. I should have explained Zaheer more. He had his own philosophy, which is amazing, because I love antagonists with their own motivations, but the problem with him is not his way on how he wanted to reach his goal. It wasn't that hard actually. Take down governments and that's it. All done. The problem was the consequences of his actions. The earth nation was in absolute chaos after the Queen's death. Was that a good thing? No. He didn't take responsibility nor did he do anything to help reduce the riots because it was against his philosophy. Every man who was rioting had the rights (according to him) So it's not a debatable topic after all. Anarchism is not only flawed, but isn't applicable at all
I actually agree with you on pretty much everything. Beginnings are gorgeous episodes which are very fun to watch... And also ruin the lore and take away the entire mystery of the avatar.
I think that the way you put it at the beginning is perfect. In a vacuum, Beginnings is great both as a story and as a piece of visual media. The problem is that it doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's part of another story and piece of media. One that it doesn't fit well with.
The moment you brought up Lovecraft it just reminded me of Sovereign from Mass Effect and how they ruined the Reapers by expanding upon them. The same applies to LoK, I think. I just remember getting chills down my spine when Sovereign says "You are not Saren... rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh, you touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding." This how the spirits were portrayed to a certain degree in The Last Airbender, but by expanding upon the mythos of the spirits they ruined them at the same time, just like BioWare did with the Reapers.
I can't express how much I love ATLA. It's been with me since I was a child and I even got a tattoo of it. I've bought it twice for myself (one physical, one digital) and for my youngest brother (who doesn't live with me). But. I can't watch Korra. I've tried so much to get into it. I've watched S1and the start of S2 like 5 times but, just knowing about the cluster fuck that is Beginnings coming up, retconning lore and killing the past avatars, immediately makes me stop because I don't wanna see that - we never asked for the origin of the Avatar, so why did we get it? In my head, it was always just a "random human in the cycle born as the last Avatar dies gets the powers". There was never a greater meaning to it. LOK trying to force one really left a bad taste in my mouth...
@@delosdinh in what respects? LOK falls short of ATLA in almost every area with the exception of animation and art style (although it was made many years later so that makes sense). there's a reason why a lot of avatar fans despise the series and even ignore LOK as canon...
Is THAT what Season 2 was trying to do? I just thought the northerners were so blatantly and obviously evil that I legitimately never even saw that ambiguity as a theme. Well, now I can at least respect what they were going for, even if they missed the mark. As a fan of the Beginnings episodes, I really like your analysis of them. I think I enjoyed them purely because I didn't like LoK, so standing them by themselves was much easier to do. I'd already distanced the show from TLA so dramatically in my mind, it was just its own thing. Great video and I look forward to seeing more! I'd love a fresh take on LoK
20:21 Is a really solid point. Furthermore, I think creativity is really key to creating both the compelling mystery AND the answers. Contrasting the pilot for infinity train and the actual show demonstrates that really well but I first noticed it in Critical Role Campaign 2 with the character Fjord the Warlock. You don't know exactly what his patron is or what it wants but it speaks in one word visions: "Consume", "find" "return" and there would be all this weird shit, like he'd wake up vomiting salt water and there was this sword dripping salt water and covered in barnacles that he couldn't remember getting but would bond with any new weapon he got so he couldn't get rid of it. Really cool creative stuff. What was the reason? (spoilers i guess but its not that interesting) Its just kinda a sea god that wants to be unsealed from its prison and all the weird stuff is just kinda its theme-ing. Its like if the reason for the weird stuff was just as creative as the weird stuff itself, I don't think it would have felt so lack lustre. Maybe if those individual things were expanded into having their own reasons perhaps it could have been a lot better.
I've not seen Critical Role, but that's a really good example. It also tends to happen in TV shows where they don't really plan out the ending (think the Red John reveal in the Mentalist, perhaps Lost?). They fumble to the finish line with the reveal. ~ Tim
@@HelloFutureMe Make sense, your creativity is restricted by who knows what you've already established. Oh for a good example, go read Attack on Titan, holy shit. The mystery behind how titans are created got revealed last year and its so god damn creative and fantastical.
bro same. I actually love the worldbuilding and characters, which usually are the central focus of stories. But the themes, I mean, the themes are passable in all the other books. BUt season two is waaaaay too fucked up
I only think book 3 is good. Book 1 and 4 are decent to bad and book 2 was very good up until episode 4 but then got worse than any other book. I still like to watch first 4 over 1 and 4.
The whole story just comes to a grinding halt when it goes to Bolin and his film career. Every time it comes on screen you know there are more important things happening. It’s fine to have comic relief, it was handled masterfully with Sokka in ATLA. But while he made quips he also had character development and learned to become a leader. I just finished book 2 of Korra so I don’t know if the same thing happens with Bolin, but so far he just hasn’t been taken seriously. Him getting his heart crushed by Korra is treated as a joke, like he’s only a punching bag. That’s not a character, it’s just something to make kids laugh.
@@poggers3218 Bolin's filn career was the only thing I outright don't like about book 2. Although it did result in that cool fight in the bending arena. But still, I was reminded of Book 1 of ATLA, and how everytime Zuko was off screen I wanted them to go back to him. I honestly would've muched preferred a full show centered around him starting as a little kid. That would be amazing, seeing Azula & Zuko's dynamic with nothing to stand in the way and explored in much further depth.
This perfectly sums up how I felt after the beginnings episodes. I always liked how mysterious and unknown the avatar world felt with so much beyond our understanding. Sometimes the origin of the magic does not have to be explained and be left as it is because in the case of the avatar it took away so much of what made the world of avatar so interesting and immersive
Which is why yin is the passive force and not yang. Violence is an inherently yang concept but the west doesn't give a shit about what asians actually philosophised about.
@@limazulu6192 why is it often the west this, the west that, you guys have real problems, yeah grasping a concept that is outside of your culture and it's not normaly teached is hard, surprise
@@carso1500 taught and im not just busting the west on these things but everyone who's got little appreciation for the things they talk about especially when it gets on a cultural level. That shit just grinds my gears in general. Now surprise because im neither asian nor have i been taught that shit either. I just know because i cared enough to read about it. But do you know who should care more about it than i do? THE FUCKING JACKASS WHO WROTE AN ENTIRE BOOK ABOUT IT!!! THAT'S LITERALLY THE FIRST THING YOU DO IN THAT PROFESSION AND ITS CALLED RESEARCH! God i hate bad authors. Like seriously not only does this inform me that he has next to no interest to pay proper tribute to the things he's referencing, he's not even gonna treat his own art with respect. Like why even bother becoming an author in the first place if you're so dispassionate about it you're ok with half assing it?
@@carso1500 but acknowledging that you don't fully understand the concept and not seeing yourself entitled to tell it to people is very easy. This isn't someone struggling to fit another perspective to their own thinking the first time they hear about it; it's literally someone saying "I understand this well enough to create a story based on it and tell it to millions of people".
It rubs me the wrong way when someone plays smartass and says "but technically *technically wrong statement* is correct", especially when it's the same goddamn one over and over again
YES! Your understanding of the civil war is great! It’s supposed to be her understanding that sometimes you do.. nothing. Positive jing when you’re attacking Negative jing when you’re retreating And neutral jing... when you do nothing. Sometimes it’s not your fight. Yes she’s the avatar and yes she’s a member of the southern water tribe, but that doesn’t mean it’s her say on how complex sociopolitical conflicts should be resolved. Imagine if Aang had forced his beliefs on the northern water tribe and paku, forcing him to teach katara. It’s not his place to do that. Likewise the same goes for Korra and the politics of a nation. So long as that nation doesn’t threaten imbalance then her duty is to do nothing.
18:34 I have noticed this so often when background to a story was revealed: The world suddenly seemed small and boring. However, I think Tolkien was one of the examples of the opposite: With the reveal of the backstory and history of Middle Earth, the main story of the Ring becomes far more important.
Because for Middle Earth, the more we know, the more we realise how little we actually know and how little we can truly comprehend in the grand scheme of things. Like Eru Illuvatar, the supreme god-like being responsible for all creation in tolkein's world, is responsible for everything that happens in the world and that both "evil" and "good" are bound to his will. This itself places this supreme being on an amoral, orange-blue morality scale. He's not the Christian god who stands for absolute good. He's the amoral all-powerful Erú who is seemingly beyond human comprehension.
I love this. This is the biggest reason that I don’t like Legend of Korra: They set up some serious morally grey problems that don’t have obvious answers in practically every season except for 4, but then back out on them at the end. They did the same thing with Amon, by artificially giving him some bizarre halfway-hard magic answer to why he could take bending and throwing out Korra’s arc by just GIVING her the Avatar state. Book 3 I think answered not the questions the other seasons left, but the complaints about the earlier seasons. Zaheer learning to fly, the legend of the first guru to learn it, all of that was handled so lovingly, and the way the other seasons should have been. I think your idea of what could have been season three is basically perfect.
I hated how they just threw what ATLA had out the window, the bending became less threatening, beginnings ruined what was already established it was so unsettling and I hated how they made an Asiatic inspiration more western just because they think it looks cool bryke really are just pure idiots😂😭
DiverseJoe I don’t think they “threw out” anything that ATLA did, but rather added to it. The issue is that it didn’t need adding to, but more depth and that’s what Beginnings didn’t really do like Tim said in the video
@@Unison23 i disagree as they made the bending that was once tied to emotion just martial arts in beginning where wan at the start can literally just make a giant blast of fire
Once I got past the initial shock of what Amon was doing, I thought of it and realized, "oh, he's just combining blood-bending with chi blocking. It'd be kinda fitting if it didn't last forever, but long just long enough for people to impose a mental block on themselves by never trying again" Then, Korra getting everything back would've felt a lot less contrived than her whining until Aang just gives her the power back. Imagine if her journey into learning about spiritualism were a quest Aang gave in her in exchange for telling her how to undo what Amon did. When she complains after finding out the truth, he could then say "and that's why you need to learn more about spirituality"
Excellent critique! I had the exact same reaction to this arc. I loved the art style and the characters, but didn't like this as the origin story of and explanation for this universe. I also hated Korra having a kaiju battle with Unavatu. Legend of Korra botched so many golden opportunities, often at the 11th hour.
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~ Tim
Yes my child, let the E;R flow through you!
Couldn’t agree more I don’t like the beggings either.
my big problem is how....EASY all 4 elements came to wan, i woulda done it so that the first firebending avatar could ONLY firebend... and then the next airbender avatar would teach the avatar spirit airbending, then water, and finally earth, that way its earned, and shows that it would normally take a lifetime to really master each element. and it is the power of the legacy of the avatar spirit that makes them able to wield all four.
Hello Future Me goodbye 👋
since you are focused into good stories and good character arks. What are your top 10 most liked stories to read to watch and to learn from? i want to learn writing so I can design great OCs and plot for them as an artist but i always end up finding out how little I know about writing. Any tips were to learn and study from the best?
I don't know if you are reading comments so I will take my chance
I think my biggest issue with season 2 was that they just spontaneously removed Korra's connection to the past avatars and than just didn't explore the destruction of identity, history and culture and what that meant for the avatar, which imo would have been very in line with the themes of season 3
yeah!
What's even worse is that now the next avatar will only have Korra to go to for avatar advice. I like Korra but she is not a teacher. There should have been a way for her to reconnect with her past lives. If they did it one by one it would have been a great way to tell stories about avatars we haven't seen anything about.
Except they did do that. The loss of the past lives paved the way for character development for Korra, such as letting Korra rely more on her own experience rather than just taking the Avatar for granted.
@@ThexKiidxSausage The only reason people want the past lives back is because they're sentimental. And what makes you think Korra won't be able to give good advises to the next Avatar? She has done a great job as the Avatar and learned a lot. Even Roku, who was objectively a terrible Avatar, was very helpful to Aang.
@Vetarlit Torf I think being sad at the loss of ten thousand years of knowledge is a bit more than sentimentality...
If Wan had fused with both to end their conflict, it also wold have created a narrative symmetry with Aang's resolution of the Hundred Year war by stripping Ozai of his firebending.
It would have represented a third option to taking sides, and taught Korra a lesson about how the Avatar's role is to restore the balance not by crushing and suppressing evildoers, but by changing the game instead.
I like this. Conflict resolution doesn't have to mean fighting until one side 'wins', it can also mean compromise.
This resolution could've also possibly played into Korra's personality, considering she's way more chaotic than you'd think the embodiment of peace and light to be like.
Smart comment
Absolutely agree, they could have even partially solved this by having Korra fuse with both spirits. Sure it wouldn't have been as god as your suggestion. But it would have shown that the avatars can grow, that new avatars can improve on and do better than their predecessors.
Making better choices and bringing the world forward by the help of previous avatars and so on, I know she lost connection with the previous avatars, but still.
@@agilagilsen8714 Actually, I like your idea a bit better. It could have made for better development for Korra if they decided to portray her as believing that Raava's side of order is the only necessary and "good" side in all of this, with her eventually coming to terms with the natural duality of things and deciding to work as an agent of both sides, as necessities in the world. Personally, this all sounds like it could've made for a more interesting avatar series, where the major focus was an Korra discovering what the Avatar really was, and learning that the conceptcan evolve over time, even with the White Lotus trying to push her into becoming Aang 2.0. I feel like that's kinda whatthe series was going for, tbh, but they failed to make Korra likeable, instead making her more immature and reckless than 12 year old Aang and lacking in respect for the legacy set by her previous lives
the spirits in ATLA seemed a product of their universe, and they were terrifying at times and genuinely awe inspiring. the spirits in LoK feel like ghibli background characters and are more whimsical in a childlike way than in a fantastical way.
Agreed!
which is ironic since they're trying to make LoK more "mature" and "adult" for the old audience now all grown up.
yee, the more i saw of the spirits in lok the less intrested i got tbh. I wanted to like them, and i don't hate them, but it just felt like something's missing.
also, in ATLA, spirits appear very scarcely and their appearance alway provokes some sort of reflection and change in the main cast. In Korra they kind of become trivial
To me the spirits just look like Pokémon’s that have to mental state of a human and Raava and Vaatu look like Fancy, Glowing Rugs
Korra: **Leaves Spirit Portal open**
Koh about to steal a whole lotta faces: 🧐
LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
We're dead.
Koh: ....well this is way too convenient, even for me.
Koh's mom would probably have to say to him.
to be fair to this day i can see no positiv thing in letting this fucking portal open and opening the other one. does this girl even have a brain or know how to use it.
22:37 “Doing something is better than doing nothing”
*King Bumi wants to know your location*
That's quite different though as Bumi was waiting for the right moment, he wasn't just contentedly doing nothing.
@@567secret But that's the point, Bumi knew when to hold back and when to act, Korra frequently causes problems with her recklessness and doesn't ever really seem to get past that.
@@idigamstudios7463 its a joke
@@567secret its a joke
@@ultraghostrider8305 I know it is but it's a joke that highlights gripes I have.
The most relevant critique I have of LoK is that it brings up interesting concepts like war profiteering, anarchy, fascism, etc. but then doesn't answer any of the questions it raises in regards to the world, fictional or not. They answer mysteries with less compelling information and don't answer mysteries that have more compelling answers.
I agree, the main thing that makes me upset about the whole show is that I think about the potential it had but failed to make true time after time no matter how many chances I gave it.
There's also the underlying boring centrist liberal political message; 'wot if good thing but taken too far?!' forced into every season.
Some questions don't have answers or at least not yet.
Especially with the Equalist movement. Every character starts talking about this disparity between Benders and non-Benders that could’ve made for a pretty interesting allegory, except we’re never given any real examples or evidence of it
(SPOILER) It gets worse with kuvira imo. At first it seems like we’re getting a nuanced, morally grey exploration on the effects and philosophy of this new empire, but then she becomes fantasy Hitler and builds a giant robot to destroy the city
@@19peter96 'wot if good thing but taken too far?!' is an important message that many people never seem to comprehend. So as long as their good, I hope for more stories like them.
The owl in the library changes his physical state into a contorted evil version of itself like hay-by (dont know how to spell it) and trys to destroy them based on his morality that his knowledge should not be used for gain either good or bad.
He isnt "good" or "evil", i always liked that.
Wasn't the owl's perspective that his knowledge shouldn't be used for the purpose of gaining an advantage in a conflict, rather than that it shouldn't be used for gain in general? It's still a bit blue-and-orange, because he was holding to that principle when the Avatar probably had the moral high ground and giving Aang that information could be seen as rectifying the balance upset by the Fire Nation abusing his knowledge, but I think it is an important distinction.
Agreed, he really isn't evil, he's just following his moral code.
The owl or Wan Shi Tong is probably a really old spirit. To him The 100-year War is probably just another human war, even if he does know about The Air Nomad Genocide.
So for him to tell the humans that they can’t use his knowledge for war, even if he does think they are on the right side makes sense because he is tired of people using knowledge to win wars instead of making new medicine or adopting ancient cultures.
You have to think about it from his point of view. He opened a library to store all of the information in the world that he could find and share with everyone, but then everyone used that information to spread plagues, find new geopolitical vantage points, and even harm his own fellow spirits to dampen the power of any other benders just as General Zhao did.
And when he would ask them why they would do it the humans would just say “I’m on the good side.” What’s worse is that he probably believed the first few and even helped them, turning him into some sort of war criminal.
And maybe the worst part is that the so-called good guys who would use it to save the world would become drunk with power and turn into the very enemies he helped stop.
He decides no more and buries his library deep in the sand with only a tower peeking out in the hopes there might still be some humans left trusting.
Then General Zhao comes along and burns information against the Fire Nation after learning about the a weakness of the water benders to help in the war even though he probably told the owl “I’m just here for the knowledge." Let's not forget that General Zhao was targeting the moon and the ocean spirits, who were spirits just like him. Or that in doing so he was dooming the ENTIRE WORLD. So he was hurting everyone, and Wan Shi Tongs magnificent and beautiful library would be responsible for not just another war but the actual apocalypse. Not exactly the legacy he that he wants.
However Wan Shi Tong still keeps the library open, and one day a group of kids and one actual scholar come. They promise to only be interested in normal information but they use his naive nature to exploit his library just like so many others before them.
To a spirit, human wars are probably irrelevant, they happen over and over that it would probably be pointless to stop them. So it doesn’t matter to the owl if someone is the good guy or not because sooner or later the next bad guy is going to come and it might even be the so-called good guy that was in his library.
I totally get what he was thinking and honestly I didn’t like Sokka or the rest of the gang for lying to his face and stealing the information without any moral thought as to whether or not he could betray Wan Shi Tong's trust.
Not to mention that The Eclipse information was useless, Azula learned about it and prepared countermeasures that actually stripped them of even more resources. So in the end they had to use the original plan of learning all four elements.
As for rectifying the balance, no offense to anyone else but I can imagine a previous earth bender asking Wan Shi Tong for a book on water bending style and then after that a water bender asks for a earth bending style claiming "it's your fault that I lost to that earth bender because you gave him that water bending style book, Wan Shi Tong, you better give me a book on earth bending so I can beat him and his son, you owe me." And then even after that another Earth Bender asks for a water bending style book with the same excuse as the water bender. At that point he's confused as to why the two can't just make up and stop fighting.
See, it never ends, he'd rather just go back to the spirit world and avoid getting involved in any petty human squabbles.
Hei-Bai meaning black-white in chinese
@@Draxynnic I feel like its a case of understanding that the world was imbalanced via the chaos caused by an entire race of people being genocided as well as one nations power overexceeding the others ya dig?
In this case I feel lile owl homie was like, "Well if peanut ears is asking for it, then maybe Karen will go back to normal and stop demanding the kids"
@@franciscoancergomez3949 I don't think them lying to Wan Shi Tong is a bad thing plot wise. I absolutly get wherre the owl is coming from. However, i get where the gaang is coming from aswell. They don't have the privilege to be impartial in the current conflict, they're desperate. It makes sense for them to do anything in their power to get their hands on that information, even if it means lying to, and possibly ruining a relationship with a spirit.
Thats one of the things i like about the spirits tho, how impartial and removed from human conflict they are. They're neutral characters following their own moral code. I like how that breeds the conflict between humans and spirits. Its not a matter of one side is unresonable, both side have very good points, they just have different perspective that are at odds with each other.
..... idk how to end this comment lol, i just found the conflict and moral stanses in the library episode to be facinating. I enjoyed reading your comment and wanted to add something to the discussion ig (also pardon my grammar, im not a native speaker).
The thing about Yin-Yang in the Avatarverse is that Tui and La already perfectly embody that philosophy physically and spiritually.
Finally!
Someone said it!
Yin and Yang are not only one thing, are they? Multiple pairs of spirits can be yin-yang esque
I thought it was more Hinduism and not yin-yang. I am talking about Legend of korra not Tui and La.
@@ThomasBomb45 they treated one as simply evil, and that is just piss poor writing. yune was a goddess of war and chaos, but also justified her existence with freedom and transformation. having a foil of 2 entities simply being big bad murder god while the other is super duper good god is bad writing (generally).
@@comyuse9103 I 100% agree that they were written poorly and don't embody yin and yang. I'm just saying that we could have had multiple yin and yang type of spirit pairs. They just wrote this one pooorly
I'm not gonna lie, that line about imagining right at the end of the season someone finally airbending after a long span of cultural rebuilding gave me chills and now I'm upset I won't get to see it.
same!! the episodes he describes would be so much better than the ones canon, and i wish it would've been like that from the beginning. it's not like the canon episodes compared to his imagined ones are bad or horrible, it's just... disappointing.
Yeah it would have been great (I actually started tearing up/sort of crying). I also think it would have been cool if a similar thing had been done with Korra at the end of season 1 where instead of being given back her bending powers she has to re-learn them like the original benders did (from the badgermoles etc), including airbending, which I don't think she ever "mastered" in terms of the spirituality etc? Idk I haven't seen the show in a while. Or have her keep balance without her bending and knowing what it's like not to bend.
And adding to that. Imagine Azir was the one to finally air bend. How emotional and compelling is betrayal would be.
Yep. I'm just gonna believe that storyline is canon now.
What’s even worse is that Korra can give people air bending, she’s an energy bender
Problem is that Raava should actually represents "light and order" rather than "light and peace"; because the opposite of chaos is order, which, isn't always positive. Both Raava and Vauttu should be shined on a neutral tone of light, like the Greek gods, rivals each other but both essential to the universe. I say the ideas of Yin and Yang is hijacked and largely Christianized in the story, how disappointing! The journey of the first avatar should be focusing on putting Raava and Vautta back together.
Season 4 is them saying "Shit Raava could have been this"
@@TechBlade9000 right lol😂. Especially considering the villain being an militarist dictator who literally OBSESSED with order. Also I have a HUGE problem with Vauttu being destroyed at season 2 finale. They should be bounded back together and bind with the avatar's soul, so that the avatar finally whole, presenting true balance between order and chaos. Which would work better in season 3 and Tpoh's speech that the villains are "out of balance"
@@naturalinstinct4950 This whole season and the rest of the show could've been better and connect better to the ATLA if they flipped the idea. Instead of Korra and all avatars housing Raava, they house both Vaatu and Raava. Unalaq gains knowledge from the Spirit Library to remove them and split the spirits that create balance. Vaatu becomes the spirit of chaos and freedom, inhabits Zaheer. Raava becomes the spirit of order and control, inhabits Kuvira. Korra remains the fulcrum that can balance them and bring them back together, plus the past avatars collectively become their own spirit of balance. Hindsight is 20/20 though
@@javiercox2928 your idea of the avatar holding both Raava and Vauttu its great but remember a human soul cannot permanently bond with either of the spirits without touching the spirit portal during Harmonic Convergence. also if Korra has her avatar spirits completely ripped out of her, where does she even acquire the power to fight off Zaheer and Kuvira if they are respectively fused with Vauttu and Raava? she can't just turn into the huge blue cosmic Korra spirit projection thing whenever she wants, its only limited to the Harmonic Convergence. what about Korra consumes Vauttu in the season 2 finale, in that why she has both of them bonded with her soul, perfectly balanced
I think without season 2 Korra wouldn't get nearly as much hate as it does now. It'd probably be considered ok. Amazing music, good animation and action, some interesting ideas, and a serviceable follow up to avatar. The characters would still be lack luster and plot points being a mixed bag but ultimately we'd say it was a little boring but fine. But no season 2 was such an awful shit show that 75% of people's complaints/ hatred were because of or a result of this season. Spirit portals, bender's origins, Carpet spirits, Aang as a dead beat dad, energy bending are lasers, butchering Yin and Yang, letting spirits into the real world even though spirits could already come and go as they pleased. Hopefully Legend of Genji will be better.
i won't lie, when you first said "blue and orange morality," i hadn't heard of the term, and i thought you were just making a joke referencing the colors of aang and ozai's spirits in the finale of atla
wait, that WASN'T what he was referring to???
I thought of the main colours in the Harry Potter movies.. xD Hmm...
Also the colors Aang is wearing on his body.
I thought of Portal
It's a TVTropes term. Blue is "the path of bacon" and orange is "the path of necktie."
It's interesting to think: the AtLA explanation has a more eastern writing trope of great power through focus and hard work, while in the Korra explanation it goes off the western writing trope of having the great power granted from an outside force. Adding in the stark contrast of the morality of the Spirit realm between the two series and it feels like two very different look at core philosophical takes on the hero story.
Underrated comment. That's a really interesting take
I really like hard work better than natural power. I loved ATLA because even if Aang was a "chosen one", it was more about potential, and the actual power came from hard work
@@unlimon6382 You're forgetting that without the Avatar State, Aang would have lost to Ozai. That isn't power gained through hard work.
@@TheSuperRatt it is, hard work over thousands of lifetimes. It may not be Aang's hard work, but it is still hard work
@@TheSuperRatt aang could have beaten Ozai by redirecting the lightning back at him so he didn’t really need the avatar state
I feel like that was every season of legend of Korra. Each season had a great sometimes complex set up but then ends in a simple and mostly unsatisfactory way.
I dunno season 3 ended really great for me because it actually lead to the whole earth kingdom in ruins issue of season 4.
@@azulaeatingmochime2353 Yes they did.
@@azulaeatingmochime2353 maybe not 3 but season one never showed non benders getting oppressed like amon was preaching and season 4 rushed kuvira's ending by giving her an half ass ending that was, oh she's just like korra except she never got the attention she needed. Like since when was that your motivation?
@@grasstastesbad4605 There was the triad shaking down shops in the beginning of the season. And the non-bending curfew later in the season. Also, just the fact that there were no non-benders on the council is an issue.
I agree that it could have used a bit more, especially early on. But it wasn't absent.
@@cadekachelmeier7251
The triads were going against everyone
The curfew only happened as a reaction to the Equalists
There was no non benders at the time but Sokka had been head of the council during Aang's time(and I"m assuming at least the early years of Korra's since he was still alive then)
The Avatar state in Last Airbender: Spiritual One-For-All
The Avatar state after "Beginnings": *_Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan_*
at least SSB is coherrent with the worldbuilding
And we all know the opinions on Dragon Ball Super....
I also thought of one-for-all lul
No it's mure like UI
Dont you have the droid attack on the wookies to worry about?
"Why?"
Because writing a resolution to complex issues relevant to the real world is hard. Glowing kaiju spirit battle is easy.
glowing kaiju spirit battle also look real nice
Also if you're facing an extremist political movement, you can solve everything just by beating up its leader.
@@Boredman567 just like in season 1 lol.
If only solving class conflict is ever that easy
Especially since NICK was rushing the series out the door by this time
@Thomas the Dank Engine I've always felt there was more to Revenge Of The Sith than just fighting in my opinion. ☺
“It’s like they knew what I wanted and snatched it right out of my hands” pretty much sums up how I feel about Legends of Korra
Agreed😭
Same, I feel like all of the seasons have such good ideas, but then they absolutely fail at deriving anything big from them at the end.
Season two is the only straight up bad season though. Season 1 is flawed but tells a compelling story, and season 3 and 4 are almost as good as the seasons in Avatar.
@@curranfrank2854 season 3 is the worst though
@@luisandrade2254 How so?? Season 3 imo is freaking awesome. Zaheer is such a powerful guy! Love him!
28:20 The way they handled the reconstitution of the Air Nomads and the return of airbenders annoyed me so much, because I felt they had *already* set up how it might happen in the original series. Namely, the inventor's community that had taken up residence in one of the Air Temples. I expected to see them, as you suggest, learning airbending from the sky bison or some other means growing out of their connection with the element of air that Aang himself remarked that they had. I expected to see that after a few generations, that connection had grown stronger and more profound, leading to the emergence of new airbenders.
I personally liked the way they brought back the air nation, it was like the universe balancing itself.
@@alfreddozier832 but I thought the whole point of the avatar was that he had to restore balance, not the universe? Even taken as some "will of the universe", it has to act through an intermediary
@@peterparker8462 yes, but by opening the spirit portals, Korra did create balance in the world/universe, allowing airbenders to come back. It wasn't necessarily "the universe," but Korra establishing balance to it through the portals that allowed this to happen...
Why not both?
Also how do you know that didn’t happen in the series?
As a fellow fan of Korra, I am glad that I’m not the only person who found that the avatar’s origins took more away from the overall universe/story than in added. Those episodes, in my opinion, stripped away much of the mysticism, vividness, and complexity that the avatar and the spirit world previously had.
Destroying the collective consciousness of all the avatars predating Korra is another huge grievance I have. As you pointed out, the accumulated wisdom/knowledge/experience across all the avatar’s lifetimes is, in large part, what makes the avatar so powerful and compelling. To take that aspect away does a disservice to both The Last Airbender and any future stories that might yet be told.
While on the topic of the avatar’s origins , I always presumed that the avatar was born alongside the manifestation of the physical world as a sort of spirit made mortal. That, or a spiritually enlightened human was granted a great gift after resolving a major conflict between the two worlds. This person was then tasked with maintaining that harmony for all time.
The origin story-which should have been vague or remained a mystery-that the creators went with felt contrived, honestly. It feels like it was made solely to justify the overall story of Korra’s last two seasons. It just doesn’t quite jive for me.
I thought the Avatar was the reincarnation of the Spirit if the Earth and humans, animals, spirits and the Avatar existed all at the same time. The Gods who created them were the Lion Turtles.
Couldn't agree more. I don't know what these writers were thinking but they were way over their heads in season 2. Answering questions that really did not need to be answered. And making "consequences" like opening the portals and destroying the avatar lineage without really feeling like they meant anything.
@@eightRedHerrings I suppose but couldn't she just ask Raava? And wasn't the point of the past lives to offer possible solutions to a problem not solve them? Just my thoughts
@@eightRedHerrings I mean, not really? Korra turns on the Avatar state quite a few times during season 2 before losing the connection to the past Avatars and still gets her butt kicked (mostly against the spirits but also Unalaq). The Avatar state is used in the TLOK more like a short power up than how it worked in The Last Airbender (like when she uses it to win the airbender race), which was something really weird. Also Korra only communicated with Aang like once before she loses the connection, so it barely makes a difference to her in practical terms. She is probably more upset at the fact that she lost the connection than the knowledge/councel she lost, and the Avatar state doens't seem to be any less powerful without the connection. Like at the end of Season 3 she went in full power Avatar state against Zaheer and was still immensely more powerful than him, only failing to beating him because of the poison.
Yes, thank you for your comment! The destruction of the the connection to the past avatars got justified by what Tim explained; as the Avatars not being a culmination of human wisdom but merely a vessel for some higher power we could never understand.
*28:19*
*This was my favorite part of the video. Truly, they could've showed the disciplined people becoming Air Benders. I wanted to see more of the "horrors of genocide", the world suffered through, in the last 100 years. It would have then been so much better than the world pressing the "refresh" button and everything coming back to how it was. This totally takes the value of the genocide and all that Aang suffered through.*
This would only work for air nomads though. And air nomads were the less disciplined, the disciplined people were earth. It would make no sense for the other elements since bending is hereditary unlike personality.
Yup. Imagine a small village of a few hundred people (perhaps including a descendant of the SECRET TUNNEL guy) gathering a bunch of air bender scrolls in a attempt to keep the art alive, learning about their history from old scrolls and legends passed down like Robin Hood or Hansel and Gretel. They get some things right, some wrong, it's not all clear cut.
Imagine the new air nomads are like when Katara was first learning water bending, they're ALL novices. They struggle to fit into the new world order of republic city, they struggle to process the trauma of the air Nomad genocide.
I could picture Zaheer being a "radicalised" air bender who struggles to make peace with the past and instead seeks revenge. The story could also be quite interesting if they showed that Aang didn't punish the fire nation, and they continued to prosper as if nothing happened, similar to how the British brutalised India, but really escaped without any consequences. Surely, the viewers could then sympathise with Zaheer.
@@Ashitaka255 My biggest problem with having this secret society of air benders suddenly showing off is that, how is that aang never found them
We are supposed to believe that aang searched everywhere he could to see if he could find, something, everything left about the air nómads and it's actually show in the series that he kinda did, there are some non air nómads, non benders, that are trying to keep the culture alive living the same way the air nómads lived (just without air powers) and that aang allowed them to live in the air temples so that at least a part of their culture could keep going, it stands to reason that if there were some secret airbenders hiding somewhere in the 70 years between legend of aang and legend of korra aand would have found them even if just by chance
Personaly i think that even if that was the direction the show took people would still not like it because exactly of that "how is that aang spended 70 years searching for some renmants of the air nómads and he didn't found anything and suddenly korra just stumbles into them, OMG this series is shit and it makes aang look like an idiot" or something like that
@@carso1500 in the comics series they literally had the perfect group for this which aang helped mature from a fandom to non-bending cultural inheritors.
You know, Beginnings would have made soooo much more sense if Wan had absorbed Raava AND Vaatu, becoming the incarnation of balance, containing both the spirit of Order and Chaos and thus, the spirit of the World.
Nope that's too complex since it means the Avatar can't be the perfect Raava, because chaos is not good. :/
Seriously, that was a missed opportunity.
@@boardcertifiable that’s what I’ve been saying for so long
I think LOK had a lot of good pieces but ultimately didn’t really get a good conclusion.
I did enjoy Wan’s story but it was placed wierdly and the Raava-Vaatu duality wasn’t compelling.
The thing is, the series has had a lot of Yin-Yang concept before so why didn’t they do well for Raava and Vaatu. Vaatu is the spirit of Chaos and we’ve seen that Chaos can be good. I’d say the Air Nomads live a Chaotic life with no actual place of residence. Chaos is inherently linked to high levels of freedom and autonomy. Raava is the spirit of Order and we’ve seen from Ba Sing Se that too much order can lead to restricted freedom and misery. The writers should’ve done this duality instead of the Good/Evil duality that’s less compelling.
Blame Nickelodeon for that, under-funding a series people praised and making the creators of LoK live in fear of cancellation.
Also, Yin-Yang is just Good-Evil with more steps.
@@1005rhys Yin-yan is certainly not that
@@1005rhys that is not what made tlok a shitshow lmfao 😂😂😂 what made atla great was its editors and cowriters, which tlok didnt have so no nickelodeon wasnt at fault, it was bryke
not only that, but there is no balance at all, Vaatu is way stronger than Raava when they don´t connect, and is completely useless to the world, if Raava simply Kill Vaatu each time he reborn the world would be much better.
@Kuya Leinad YES!! Thank you! I’m so tired of “Chaos bad Order good” when we clearly see that both of them can produce _both_ good&evil! Book 1 Aang was a perfect example of the carefree/free-spirited “chaos”, but his propensity to evade rather than stand firm caused him to run away from his responsibilities when they needed him most. Meanwhile, the highly ordered Earth Kingdom (both under the Dai Li, and later under Kuvira) showed exactly how “order” could cause equally severe suffering under those it affects.
I have the same issue with "balance" as u pointed out, in star wars where the balance of the force is supposed to be balance but the focus is always on jedi good, sith bad, thats not balancing of the force
at the end of Return of the Jedi, Luke is kind of left somewhere in the middle. He went against the jedi masters and against the sith lords. He found good in one of the most evil men in the galaxy (who destroyed both the sith and the original jedi) and was left alone to whatever the future brought him. The jedi mistakenly thought that Anakin would destroy the sith and bring forth an age of the Jedi. The sequels made him an exact follow up to the original jedi (some might call "light" or "good" side)and left any sort of balancing to Rey as she is now the chosen one instead of Anakin and balance now means good.
Actually, I like the comparison to Star Wars because although Vaatu is pretty much the Dark Side given a shape and a personality, Star Wars was smart enough to
a) never imply that the Dark Side was anything but an evil, corrupting force that could only bring imbalance and misery.
b) never use the Dark Side in any sort of yin/yang imagery implying an equally important role than the Force.
Balance can be achieved in the Force, but not in the Dark Side. That's why the Jedi can be flawed and sometimes out of balance, but the Sith tend to be very bad people, always power hungry, often sadistic and cruel.
Yeah. Even though Anakin did bring balance to the force. After episode 3 there were 2 Jedi and 2 Sith
No, Balance in Star wars is something different, but rarely properly explained. The conception Lucas had for the force was NOT a Ying-Yang style Light and Dark where you have these two separate but equal forces(heh) that are both natural and necessary.
The phrase 'The Light' is *never* used in the movies until the sequel trilogy.
There is only The Force and it has its Dark Side. I'm not even sure you should really think of the Dark Side as a separate thing - the point is that The Dark Side IS Imbalance. It is being angry, or fearful, or out of control.
To be balanced in the Force doesn't mean having light and dark together and equal. The 'light' side of the Force IS balance.
There is a point nicely made in Clone Wars that the Dark Side exists in everyone, even Yoda, and that meeting it with force (heh...again) only feeds it. Because the Dark Side is your own darker nature - all thsoe impulses that you know are wrong but you feel anyway, that occasional flash of anger at a loved one, the urge to punch a wall when you're upset, or even just your own selfish desires etc etc.
To be balanced in the Force means acknowledged and recognizing those impulses but not allowing them to rule you. It isn't Order vs Chaos, or Serenity vs Passion, it actually IS a good(or arguably neutral) vs evil.
But people keep thinking Grey Jedi should be a thing, when the logical extrapolation of *that* view is 'right, what is my quota for puppy murdering today'
Its actually the opposite thing for TLOK, where it SHOULD have been a ying yang balance but they fucked up and made it good vs evil, in Star Wars its supposed to be good vs evil but people keep fucking up and making it ying yang balance
Except that version of "balance" is the only actually coherent one. If "balance" is between good and evil, why would you ever want balance? In order for "balance" to be a *good* thing, "imbalance" has to be a *bad* thing. Therefore balance = good and imbalance = evil.
The idea of balance between good and evil is nonsense.
And let's be honest, could you really imagine Aang going "well, the worlds too good now, too much peace, better add some more evil to bring balance."
No. Don't be absurd.
I've heard people say that when you try to explain everything in a fictional universe, it feels smaller. I think that's partially what's happening here.
Ghost Yon
Exactly. Don’t explain the magic, at least not like this.
Explaining the magic is fine because if you don't then you leave open questions like why some characters can use the magic and why some don't. Or why some can't use it beyond the writer just not wanting them to.
Honestly, I think you just perfectly summed up the problem with the explanation of the Force in the Star Wars prequels. It doesn’t really need an overly detailed explanation, we just need a quick explanation of how it works.
@@TF2Fan101 The comics explained the force. Not the prequels.
The prequels just explained how characters could use the force and why some characters couldn't.
Why can't droids the force?
Star wars nerds lose their shit at the thought of any droids using the force yet they accept every other thing in the series using it.
buster
Because Droids aren’t living things and are simply manufactured. They’re not organic or living or even completely synthetic, just a bunch of parts put together with a neural drive.
If droids could be Maude to use the force, then the clone wars would have been over with in a week, with droids demolishing everyone.
I have a love/hate relationship with the beginnings.
What I love:
- we learn why there can’t be a evil avatar (bc the avatar is raava, the spirit of light & order)
- why bending is genetic (bc the power was given to a few & never handed back)
- how the original energy benders (turtles) & human bending are linked (the turtles are the source & they gave aang the ultimate ability that was reserved for them only)
- my head canon: the humans received the energy to bend but perfected their abilities from their ancestors through original benders (dragons, bysons etc.)
- the original source of bending couldn’t be „learning“ it through the original benders because then there would be the question why bending is genetic & cannot just ne learned like the ancestors did
- i genuinely like how the avatar is rather accident than anything
- why the avatar is reborn (because raava wanders)
What I hate
- spirits getting much less mystical, why are they annoying fucking kids all of the sudden?
- vaatu being the bad guy when atla taught us that true harmony is balance
- raava being more of a moral preacher rather than keeper of balance (because sometimes to maintain balance morally grey actions need to be taken, like killing someone who brings imbalance to the world- heck that’s literally what kyoshi did)
I would have loved if Korea took both spirits, claiming that for balance, you need both light and darkness. Creating a true mixture rather than the violent flip-flopping that came before. Vatuus knowledge would also be able to compensate for the broken links and maybe even partially restore them.
@@profwaldone That would've been a better approach, yes.
But bending isn’t 100% genetic is it? Because a bender can be born from non-benders and benders can have a non-bender child. In TLA there’s even twins where one can bed and the other can’t
"we learn why there can’t be a evil avatar (bc the avatar is raava, the spirit of light & order)" Yes, and Vaatu is the spirit of chaos and destruction, so there can be an evil Avatar. Korra's uncle literally becomes one lmfao
@@sachintommy2246 bending can be a recessive trait
Wasn't there literally a temple full of non-bending Air Acolytes studying the ways of the old nomads in season 1?
Yes, Acolytes not benders. All the benders (as far as we know) were killed during the war, but Aang founded the Air Acolytes as a means of preserving the culture. They're basically just hardcore air nation fans.
@@jenniferernst4141 funnily enough he seems to have gotten inspiration from that time in the comics he met a bunch of people absolutely dedicated to studying air nomad culture, but since they couldn't actually talk to any air nomads they were doing everything in a very wrong and disrespectful way. Guess he just figured he'd get ahead of the game and take it into his own hands
@@jenniferernst4141 disgusting airboos
Yes and honestly I feel like Aang (or even Korra, as they both know how to grant bending) should have granted them bending to bring back the airbenders rather than the harmonic convergence nonsense. It would have made so much more SENSE in every possible way.
@@satinsleeves honestly I don't think the Avatar precisely should play god and give who they want bending or remove it. In ATLA it was used as a last ressource, as an alternative to death. In general giving it just because you think it is better, and not the only choice is a bit disrespectful. Airbenders learnt from sky bisons, and bending is about spirit and philosophy too. If there was enough dedication and luck, the air nomads would have gone back on their own, slowly healing the wounds of the past and saving the culture, piece by piece, not just suddenly receiving bending with no training and going to basic courses on how to monk.
Toph's parents were not earthbenders, she had the hability somehow, maybe spirit, maybe luck, maybe philosophy. She trained thanks to badgermoles and became powerful. I believe airbending should have been restored by people passionate about the culture, that connected with the philosophy, and that had the spirit, that something Aang mentioned with the refugees in the temple that learnt how to glide.
I always knew something was "off" with this narrative, but couldn't quite put my finger on it. I now consider my finger pointed! Thank you for this vid!
Science Druid same here, and for Season 4
Honestly, I just didn't like it because it removed a lot of the mystery of what the Avatar was. I was content with not knowing, especially when my imagination filled in the gaps with something that made this feel pretty underwhelming.
@@stoheha yeah me too I like the concept of avatar being a mystery force of nature kind of thing.... Avatar wan stuff just makes avatar lost it's mystery and turned out that avatar wasn't naturally born, but more like artificially born
Dude I hope ur parents understand this habit of u pointing ur finger ... I suggest u to wash ur hand thoroughly after every pointing session
I felt confused she loses her memory. Like I was missing or misunderstanding something. Turned out they just abandoned the actual story halfway through.
And Im still mad they haphazardly threw Airbenders in and acted like they were in any way culturally representative of the Air Nomads.
The real evil is Nickelodeon holding this show's music score hostage all these years
Korras score? I honestly never liked the violins much
Yeah, having only Book 1's soundtrack be released on CD is a crime. They should have released the rest of Korra's and ATLA's soundtracks
@@menkirdennis6686 I was a huge fan of the melding of early swing/second line jazz and traditional Chinese instruments. The only major piece of media I've heard that in since LoK was in Crazy Rich Asians
"Problem that maybe can't be solved by someone having the biggest Nuke"
Damn Tim always has this deep and meaningful quote out on each of his essay, truly word full of wisdom.
I just hate how the legend of korra severed the avatar's connection to past lives. Like is Korra the new "Avatar Wan" since the world is entering a new age?
i would forgive that if next season was about she needed to reconnect with the previous lives as in "finding their spirits"
@@ianr.navahuber2195 Omg that would be so cool! Like her traveling to different places to reconnect with them :O
@@ianr.navahuber2195 That wouldn't make any sense. If Raava can form new connections with spirits then might as well add Iroh to the list. Raava died the link was broken, it's high time we accept it. You can't sign in to a new PC and expect it to have all your saved passwords.
@@BhBc8f8 lol people can “accept” whatever they want from fiction or speculate about better narrative pathways. It’s fiction after all not a real world circumstance. It’s not that serious
I like the idea of each harmonic convergence requiring a new cycle
I thought that's what happened
I think this is my exact problem with Korra: the universe doesn't feel bigger after Beginnings.
It feels SMALLER. And while having the Air Nation back is nice, it doesn't feel EARNED. I ALWAYS felt that SOMETHING else should've happened to bring them back, but could never figure out what. But you summed it up perfectly. I also never liked that in season 2, they just kept resetting Korra to make mistake, learn from mistake, then make mistake again. she just rushed into shiz with no real thought of the potential consequences even after learning to think things through. With Aang, he CONSTANTLY and CONSISTENTLY grew and changed and LEARNED from his errors. It's what makes him in my opinion, a better Avatar-he made mistakes, but he learned from them, and grew upon them. I think Korra herself is an OK Avatar, but she's not a match for the Airbender.
Book 4 is basically her learning from her mistakes, tho.
@@MrShadowThief but the fact that she wasn't consistent with her growth is what turned off a lot of people with her.
@@HighPhoenix1754 It kind of just started at the end of season 3. She was the exact same in season 2 as in the beginning of season 1.
I found Korra had little to no character arc. She is the same whiny person she was in season one episode one, except now she is gay.
@@HighPhoenix1754 How does that make any sense when she was clearly consistent with her growth? She started off as an impulsive hothead who didn't know the first thing about spirituality, to an ambitious spiritual acolyte, to a patient hero to a spiritually enlightened Avatar.
I love this guy's critiques. I can listen to him all day.
I love your comments. I could read them all day.
can't relate
I agree.
Just Some Guy without a Mustache i have listened to him all day when I first found his content
I wish he’d make them longer
"I need a drink... A drink of milk, because I don't solve my problems with alcohol."
Literally a year later: * crying on a TWO AND A HALF HOUR RANT with a bottle of Bombay gin on hand about how TERRIBLE The Last Airbender movie was *
_Looks at the bottom of the bottle_ “Hey... I think I found the answers to all my problems!”
Too soft,
too nice.
Not enough Cirticism.
At least the movie was better than korra
@@BargB keep dreaming buddy
@@BargB ur drunk if yu think that
There was an online Avatar game that was similar to the set up to beginnings in Korra and I think they did a better job with it.
Basically after Azula shoots Aang while he's in the Avatar state, his spirit is damaged and therefore must reconnect with the four former avatars before him.
Each one telks Aang a bit about their past along with something to reflect on, like how Kyoshi created the dai lee and why.
When Aang meets the air bender Yang chen, he asks why the Avatar isn't an all powerful spirit that never dies. Yang Chen explains it's important that the Avatar is human so they can experience the joys and struggles of humanity so they can understand it better and will compel them to protect it no matter what.
That line always stuck with me as I found it, compelling.
This was actually a mini series of videos. Ugh I can't remember the name but they are floating online somewhere! I think here on YT somewhere
@@stanleystewart8444 Found it! It was called Escape from the Spirit World.
Technically they're cut scenes from the game. Ince completeing the level you were able to download them. I remember because I played it myself. Shame I couldn't figure out how to download the cut scenes though
I think this is actually canon
@@chinuaalibatya7345 In case you were still wondering, the cutscenes are in fact canon
You really need to get funded to write your own animated series or comic/manga or something because I was with you the whole 34 minutes and 06 seconds.
I think talking about telling stories and actually telling them are two very different things. That's why he made "On Writing", which is a blueprint, instead of a work that uses those same ideas
@@ofthecaribbean well isn't he writing another book?
@@g.e.e.k_talk4610 Is he?
@@ofthecaribbean He is
@@upg5147 what is it?
I wish that these episodes were framed as an alternative mythology from a certain group of people instead of the legitimate history that really actually happened. It’s really cool to have lots of mythology and folk lore and incredibly not cool to have facts just laid out unambiguously.
None of this matters, though, cuz I only watch those episodes for Jason Marsden’s voice
I would add to that: Doing that or maybe laying out the already known methods that humans learned bending myths/half truths. Something like "By the time those so called 'ancient' scrolls of yours were written the Dragon Turtles had already faded into myth and legend. Humanity looked to the creatures they lived with, creatures that lived far longer than them, and simply connected the dots. They wrote what they *thought* was the origin of bending."
Something along those lines, instead of making it look like the writers just forgot what was already set in cannon.
Ohhh, the writers should have watched the canyon episode again and then make like 4 different versions of the origin story, leaving the viewer with the choice to piece together their headcanon.
@@remem95 hmmm, now theres an idea.
remem95 I mean that’s what religions are; they’re just different cultures explaining worldly things through supernatural beings/events! I think Avatar does a great job of showing the different ways that the various groups express their spirituality but having diversity in the mythologies would have been really cool! I think even the good vs. evil thing wouldn’t have been that bad if it were about a specific religion as opposed to historical events...
@@remem95 now THAT'S a good idea!!
I rarely get to say this, but old MK lore actually pulled this off better with the Realms of Order and Chaos. The realm of chaos is utterly nuts, with anyone and everyone acting to their own whims, regardless of the consequences to themselves or others. The Realm of Order is an entire realm built of pure Authoritarian thinking, where even the slightest deviation from the rules and laws is punished harshly and severely. Its made very clear that neither place is a particularly nice place to live for anyone who doesn't also fall on the same extreme end of the spectrum as those Realms embody
The first half of season 2 feels like the beginning of an entirely different season than what it ended up like there was a lost season that attached itself to season 2 last second
"In the era before the Avatar... we bent not the elements, but the energy within ourselves."
-Lion Turtle
Indeed. ..
This was ignored.
I mean they did bend the Energy in themself and people
The Lion Turtle did technically bend their energies because they're part of the creation myth.
TBF the beginnings two parter only portrays, like what, the last 20 years of the era before the avatar? Considering just how long the era before the Avatar might have been, I don't take particular issue with that in and on itself.
I love how you just casually come up with REALLY compelling stories, your idea for how airbending could re-emerge is immediately deeply interesting.
You just made me realize the pun behind Wan's name.. I thought you said "The first avatar, avatar one".
The idea of how the air nomads cultures could have been learning from sky bison as a way to help restore their culture, until one of them finally airbends, really gave me goosebumps!
Netflix: **looking for ideas for the live action**
Netflix ***whispering***: write that down WRITE THAT DOWN
We hope so!
@@jameshenderson8321 I really hope so
I don't if I'll be more or less angry at Netflix if they plagiarism this this video
I would be so happy if, after the ATLA remake, we get a LoK remake that fixes some of these issues. I love the characters, the world, and so much about LoK but it could have been so much better.
Amen
Here's my headcanon: The version of Wan's story which we see in Beginnings isn't a literal or definitive depiction of those events, but rather a version of them which is comprehendible to Korra at that point in her development.
Between both series we see that each Avatar's understanding of the world, their place within in, and their own abilities, stems from both a synthesis of, and interpretation of, the collective experiences of their current and previous lives. We've also seen that the most recent previous Avatars are the easiest to call forth (Aang for Korra, Roku for Aang, etc.) which implies that lives from further back are harder to access. Therefore, Wan's life is now so distant that it can only be called up in bits and pieces, and in a more abstract way.
If Aang had seen the story of Wan (which he may well have at some point) it would have looked very differently, and reflected his more nuanced understanding of morality and the balance between the physical and spiritual. Korra however is a very concrete, black-and-white kind of person, at least at this point, and so that shades her experience of Wan's life. It also reframes the spiritual matters which have thus far gone over her head as something simple and straightforward; something she can grapple with. The idea of stories being told in multiple ways, and there being elements of truth in each, is something that ATLA dealt with more than once, and applied here it retains the ambiguity of the Avatar's nature and the nature of the spirit world despite what we see in Beginnings.
Of course, this headcanon makes it extremely hard to explain the final giant spirit fight at the end of the season. All I can suggest for that is that the way in which Raava and Vaatu are manifested is dependent upon the understanding(s) of those who call them forth. Korra and Unalaq both have very black-and-white views on morality, and so that is how Raava and Vaatu, manifestations of the essential duality of existence, become simply spirits of good and evil in this instance. There could even be something in this about how didactic worldviews inevitably breed violent conflict, tying it back to the civil war story, although that's even more of a stretch than the rest of this rant.
This interpretation of Beginnings certainly doesn't resolve all of season two's other issues, and was also clearly not the intent of the showrunners, but it is in line with a lot of the themes from ATLA.
I would love if the creators built on this, like the next avatar also has a confrontation with vaatu or something and then they also see wan's story but in a different light
That sounds Very accurate considering she was talking to a spiritual being, to show the actual littoral /literal events to her being may have ultimately been damaging in the long run
@@ron.behiri That would be soooo dope
That is an interesting interpretation. If they hadn't thrown in the bit about Unalaq having set Tonraq up, therefore making him less "someone who cares deeply about the spirits" and more "ambitious hypocrite", then they could have made Unalaq genuinely believe that Vaatu was the good spirit that represented a greater presence of spirits in the world. Would fit better with the later claim that he was a Red Lotus member, too (although I'd admit I'm sceptical of everything Zaheer said in that exchange - Zaheer had pretty much proved by the end of the series that he'd use any lie to get one over on his opponents, so I suspect that Zaheer was just saying whatever he thought would keep Korra in the spirit world long enough for his allies to grab her).
I'm so sorry ,man,..
BUT THEY DIDN'T THINK ABOUT THAT AT ALL!IT'S JUST A FACT NOW!
I agree with other commenters that people who hate lok normally hate beginnings too, people who enjoyed the spiritual lessons of atla not just the powers and abilities. You hit the nail on the head for the other stuff though imo.
For me, the morally grey situations were awesome, I remember thinking how terrible it would be to be a non bender in a universe like this, they start that on season 1, gave me high hopes, then make the leader of the movement an evil bloodbender, and forget this very real conflict entirely. This is consistently done. Easy endings. And black and white morality entirely forgetting the meaning behind yin and Yang and how the avatar is balance. Not light alone. That the avatar needs human wisdom from multiple generations, thats how the avatar has wisdom above us mere mortals, because in a way the avatar is just a collection of many many mortals.
I loved just how much Aang struggled to let go of his pacifist nature. He had literal nightmares about Ozai. He consulted the past Avatars but still couldn't let himself become a killer. You could interpret it as moral courage or weakness, but at least could understand that it was real.
It's also an incredible portrayal of contientious objectors. They don't all just do it avoid the draft, some really do believe their pacifist message.
Amon still would have been an interesting villain, if his ability didn't break the pre-established rules (full-moon bloodbending) or was actually explained within the show.
Hiding his bending and actually identifying with people who had suffered at the hands of benders (like he had), being ashamed of his heritage & abilities and only using them to take away bending. He could've really cared about his followers & been really insecure about them finding out, 'cause he didn't want them to hate him. Maybe he'd rather Matyr himself then let that happen?
@@TheMageOfVoid they do explain, the only reason regular water benders need the moon to blood bend wasnt because the moon somehow has something special that allows them to blood bend but because the full moon gives some kind of buff to their abilities that makes them a little more powerful and as such allows them to use blood bending (kinda like how zozins comet allows firebenders to fly just by how powerful their bending becomes), Amon just came from a family or waterbenders that were powerful enough to bloodbend without needing the full moon buff, they are exceptions and the story makes it clear to say that they arent normal for their capabilities to bloodbend outside of the full moon (which imo, doesnt contradicts anything)
I can agree about the second bit, it would be interesting to see some renmants of Amons movement post season 1, some people that even when they learned that their leader was a liar and using them just for personal power still believed in the anti bender movement and were causing trouble, maybe not have them as the main antagonista ñ but definetly as a threat that is still present i think it would have been an interesting move
I do agree, and am often left wondering how this transpires. Clearly the writers had great ideas in each season of blurring the line of right and wrong only to revert back. I wonder if it was conflict between the studio and the writers, but nevertheless it disappoints me.
I love this comment. I also hated that they completely abandoned a genuinely compelling plotline with regard to the non bender revolution. Also the idea that the leader would not have immediately become a martyr and the movement, which was shown to be gaining momentum fast, wouldn’t have swelled even more in the wake of his death baffled me. I was confident that’s what his death was foreshadowing, was *for*.
I feel like Beginnings also shows the problem that I have with Korra as a whole. For instance, in season 1, Korra has no ability to airbend because she solves her problems with brute force and is unable to connect with the world spiritually. Airbending is all about using finese and cleverness instead of violence and brute force. This was great. This lead room and motivation for character development within Kora, and served as kind of a contrast to Aang's problem throughout his series. However, her problem witth air bending was solved through brute force. She really tried to attack, to bend, and magically air bending started working for her again. She still sued brute froce and was impulusive throughout the series, and the meaning of airbending presented to us with season one was completely undermined. And she acted the exact same way in season 4, showing that she didn't grow at all through the series and instead was just having the same problem repeatedly. This was quiyte unsatisfying to watch for me.
Avatar: The Last Airbender - Written by Aaron Ehasz (head writer)
The Legend of Korra - Written by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko
No wonder the first one is so much better. Aaron Ehasz and his wife were the ones who came up with the world and how everything works.
Very much this
I've always heard this and been conflicted. Mike and Bryan have been very clear about their role in creating this world and so I'm hesitant to give them any less credit than they are due. However, I think it might be fair to say that Aaron and his wife as WRITERS, that being their primary craft, played a critical role in making the ideas behind this world work with actual mechanics (vis a vis lore, power systems, soft magic, etc.) I am a pretty big defender of LOK, I think a lot of the hate is overblown even though there are issues. However, this video does illuminate why LOK didn't 'land' in the same way ATLA did with fans. Everything in LOK starts out with a good idea, but falls flat on the execution. Season 3 is the only exception to that for me, and I'll die on that hill.
Brike, came up with the ideas together. Aaron Ehasz made those ideas work on a storytelling level. That's the difference between ATLA and TLOK
This is a pretty good video. I’ve always felt that there was something “off” about Season 2 especially with how the spirits and the spirit world is portrayed compared to the first series but never quite understood what it was or how to articulate it. Thanks for the amount of time and effort you put into explaining this!
Way back when this episode aired, I had the same exact thoughts, mostly about the destruction of the morality system of the show, and just the overall "dumbification" of a story that I highly cherished. Thank you for elaborating on these thoughts. Brilliant analysis! Also, heartbreaking, considering it's now canon. :(
We need a BIG REWRITE!
your version of bringing back the air nomads is so beautiful and everything they deserved
Raava and Vaatu: *exist*
Tua and Lai: "Are we a joke to you?"
Holy SHIT you're right!!! "Push" and "Pull" work so much better as embodiments of Yin and Yang, and have nothing to do with the tired "Cosmic Good vs Cosmic Evil" schtick. Replacing Raava and Vaatu with Tua and Lai and having both endow Wan with the Avatar State fixes EVERYTHING
@@badluckrabbit it also ties back into the whole north vs south plot somewhat as well.
Lol Yeah true
@@badluckrabbit I would agree if not for both of those entities / deities apparently existing in real life
@@badluckrabbit yeah you are right now that i think about it.
And i liked the "beginnings" episode but i felt it could be different.
it even has a nice excuse for nostalgia pandering by bringing yue (the new moon spirit) bakc into the fold.
also, yeah, i was so done with the "oh the cosmic good spirit looks so stereotypically good while the suppsoedly evil devil spirit looks so stereotypically evil" thing.
outside of Avatar, I would love for once that in one pice of media, the villain was the "deity / god of light" (and humans helping it thinking "light is good, dark is bad") and the good guy is the "deity of darkness".
the closest i have seen something like this was in YuGiOh GX, and even then, they still needed to feature a villain representing "evil darkness" as final boss
Maybe they should have left it at “A WIZARD DID IT!”
boy i hope some got fired for that blunder
i clicked on this video expecting to disagree but damn your point with blue and orange really resonated with me. video beautifully made as always!
I do enjoy how well you articulated and explained the faults and merits with Beginnings. You were able to explain it in a way I could not describe. The Avatar was someone trying to find a balance of their actions.
My tribe and culture we learn many lessons from our non-human siblings / relatives. For example Wolf taught us how to hunt and work in groups.
When they talk about learning from the original benders, I literally took that as them learning from Bison, Dragon, Badger-Mole, Moon and Water.
I guess this would be a discussion best for Discord or another platform.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and teaching me something. I am grateful.
People always jump on me for saying I hate the beginnings episodes. Thank you for explaining why they aren’t good.
I mean that super subjective but alright
@@brya9681 watch the video
@@Kage-jk4pj I did. Watching it doesnt make everyone agree with him like a sheep
Osiris Paradim Well of course everyone’s opinion is their own. I’m just saying thanks for explaining the negative in a comprehensive and clear way.
As a fan of the korra series and the beginnings episodes I respect your opinion
Is it weird that when I was a kid, I always assumed the whole Avatar thing had been a gift to a human from a Spirit? Like, the Spirit gave them the ability to reincarnate and bend all the elements to defend humans from the anger of Spirits and to unite the two worlds? It was just how I imagined it- A Spirit, using its own free will, wanted to unite the worlds and help humanity. IDK. It was just little me's headcanon.
Is that crazy? Probably.
I kind of thought that the Avatar was a unique "anomaly" that happened in the world. That all of the spiritual energy sort of pooled into this one being and it cycled through the different tribes because that was a way of maintaining balance. That the avatar was a "result" of the fact that they learned all of these different powers. Kind of like the universe forcing balance into a very unbalanced equation, the avatar was a way to "solve" the equation and restore balance. So when the avatar died, there was disruption in the balance so a new avatar had to be born, that energy had to go somewhere.
@@olandir And I think it's cool that everyone had different ideas about how the Avatar came to be. For me, at least, I think it's better to leave some things unknown, or at least not fleshed out in detail, because it's fun for the viewers to use their imaginations.
So kinda like Prometheus bestowing humanity fire as a means to have power and do with it as they wish? Kinda like the snake in Christian mythology that gives Adam and Eve the power of knowledge and free will which causes them to be banished from God’s eden as they now possess both the potential of good and evil. Sounds neat in that sense too.
"I need a drink... of milk because I don't solve my problems with alcohol." - Tim (2020)
He's a good boy.
To say alcohol is a solution is asinine.
@@NoxideActive or a mormon lol
And here I was going to offer him coffee.
@KaMau Mau actually a modified version of sweat.
What killed this was the old say that lot of writers forget " never explain the magic "
I don't think that's a blanket rule, there are examples where explaining magic does work (Mistborn comes to mind). I think it should be, "never explain the magic when it doesn't need explaining"
We already understood everything we needed to about Bending we didn't have to know about Wan merging with Kite-God and fighting Kite-Satan.
@@judeconnor-macintyre9874 I guess it also served as the origin of the Avatar, but even then I don't think that ever needed explaining. I always assumed the Avatar was the spirit of nature and the planet itself made into a physical manifestation to ensure the world always stays in balance, and existed ever since humans have been able to threaten the balance of the world. Not a giant, glowing, magic talking carpet that had a thing for some pathetic, asshole thief and merged with him into some cosmic abomination.
The Lion Turtle also mentions in the Avatar finale that "Before the Avatar we bent not the elements, but the energy within ourselves." Which alludes to the fact that there was a time in human history *before* they used any kind of elemental bending, yet in an episode literally titled "Beginnings" we see that immediately being contradicted. Would've liked to have seen that pre-elemental bending society, but I guess that's either been retconned out of existence now or retconned so that the Lion Turtle was talking about an even more ancient-er time waaay before Wan. Either way it's all pretty fucking lame and completely unnecessary, which perfectly describes Korra in a nutshell, honestly.
@@nagger8216 Agreed.
Not a strict rule, look at Hunter x Hunter, where the magic is explained in detail, but it makes the world 100x better. I guess never explain the magic unless you have a damn good explanation.
@@sunny74763 yes that what i mean , you can ofc give answers , but be good on it .
24:36 You know I think a lot of the problems with Korra is that it raises interesting political and sociological issues but always cops out at the end. Season one raises interesting debates about the bender/non-bender conflict, but focuses so much on the whole pro bending thing that that theme is not allowed to develop further and in the end the antagonist turns out be a hypocrite anyway. Season 2 is obvious. In season 4, my actual favourite season, Kuvira tries to unite the earth kingdom and even though she is taking harsh measures to do so, clearly has* a positive effect on the kingdom. That raises questions about how much interference is required in scenarios like this and what measures should you take to fix a broken nation. All of this is discarded when Kuvira starts doing obviously evil things like building a big ass mecha and trying to take over Republic city.
Movies like Zootopia and Black Panther actually deal with these things much better than Korra even though these movies still may be flawed in some ways. Zootopia is essentially the first season of Korra (replace the predator/non-predator conflict with the bender/non-bender conflict) but is allowed to actually develop the themes to its logical conclusion. Black Panther does not cop out at the end by having the antagonist turn out to be a hypocrite. Killmonger is 100% right and in the end the main characters acknowledge this and promise to change Wakanda by opening it up to the rest of the world instead of keeping it isolated.
Yeah I was sooo disillusioned by the liberal propaganda. And by liberal I mean anti-left. It basically took a bunch of cool leftist theories and practice and then said they were all bad because they made all their leaders ridiculously evil. It was a cheap way to discredit the actual ideas that could have been fleshed out more.
@@sierra750 I am so glad to see someone else talk about this. Zaheer and Amon are both basically right. Zaheer especially is an weird to be potrayed as evil, because we KNOW from the last series that the villages, towns and provinces are basically fine without a central authority, there problem isn't a lack of governance but an imperialist invanding force. Disposing of the Earth Kingdom is the correct thing to do, it only ever makes its citizens lives worse (see "Zuko Alone" or the Queens tax collectors)
I'm not willing to defend Kuvira for even a minute though, the woman is facist.
@@belegl.7721 If you think that Amon is right by bringing equality through force, I'm sorry but you are insane. Even without being a hypocrite he is completely wrong, as he basically strips people away from things that they consider part of their core identity by force. It is a terrible thing to do.
Zaheer is much more complex, but it shows that extremist ideas, even when they look good in paper, always have unforeseen consequences. The same can be said about Kuvira.
Unalaq was the villain that I mostly sympathized with at first, until they brought up the whole Vaatu thing.
@@Lacertos I think the point is that the Equalists have legitimate grievances in Season One - nonbenders ARE treated as second-class citizens and ARE at the mercy of the more powerful benders. Arguably, teaching chi-blocking and developing technology that lessens the advantages of bending are even healthy responses to this. Even Amon removing the bending from people like the crime lord who use their bending to oppress others seems at least a fairly light shade of grey. I mean, Aang the highly pacifistic Avatar did the same thing. Maybe it's not his "right" to do so, but if the correct authorities haven't found a way to stop him, it's hard to blame him for taking action.
There are pieces of a really interesting story about an oppressed class of people taking violent action against a society that won't protect them or respect them, how the situation becomes ever more political and polarized, and keeps constantly escalating each time either side uses force instead of peaceful resolution tactics. Equalist crimes are responded to with basic rights of non-benders being taken away which leads to what are essentially large scale terror attacks. LoK had the chance to (like Black Panther) create a story where the villain is right about something important but wrong in their methods, and this sparks lasting change.
Instead, by focusing on the family drama and cover-up lies of the leaders on both sides of the conflict, LoK has Korra defeat Amon and end the Equalists as an organization without actually dealing with their ideology at all. Amon and Tarlok kill themselves and we never hear another word about non-bender rights. It's kinda-sorta implied by the fact that no one talks about it at ALL that things are better now, but if they are, then how? Did being under non-bender military occupation somehow make all the benders nicer to non-benders? Were there laws passed protecting non-bender rights? Were Amon's actions enough to break the grip of organized crime targeting non-benders on Republic City?
Just like Season 2, Season One sets up a complex, morally grey idealogical conflict, and then late in the season introduces a backstory-related plot that allows the story to be reframed in more black-and-white terms and the villain to be defeated without addressing his original motivations.
@@StarryEyed0590 I understand all that, but I'm addressing Amon as a character, not the background that his actions take place.
You said that Amon took out the bending of the crime lord. It is debatable if justice by its own hands is justice at all, but even if it is, Amon didn't want to take away the bending only of criminals, he used his powers on innocent people as well, that is simply not justifiable.
If he wasn't a dangerous extremist and instead as more Robin Hood or Punisher type of character (that targeted only shit people) maybe he wouldn't be a villain, but it is pointless to discuss this, as the whole season arc would have to be completely different, with different questions asked.
13:26 I think you unintentionally hit the nail on the head as to what the problem was when you said, "The way *Mike and Bryan* wrote spiritual energy". Odds are that they didn't write it; Aaron Ehasz, the lead writer for ATLA, did. Who was missing from Legend of Korra? Aaron Ehasz.
@Mullerornis at least he writes characters not as complete morons
@Mullerornis Again, I'm not saying, "Aaron Ehasz for the win"; I'm saying that ATLA was a team effort, and that LOK was the result of a vital part of the team being missing.
The Dragon Prince has its issues, but it is a lot better than LOK, especially in character writing.
Aaron Ehasz hardly wrote anything in terms of world-building.
@@rararasputin2613 Huh. Interesting.
As someone who watches many 3-5 hour takedowns of things, gotta say, it’s great for learning about writing type stuff just as much as positively oriented things, and usually covers very different topics to the positive angle. They’re both good times
I absolutely love the avatar universe but I’d be lying if I said the beginnings episodes didn’t disappoint me, I couldn’t explain why it felt like it didn’t fit but this video explains it very well
Same. Apparently, the AU has been completely ruined and destroyed, thanks to Bryke.
The heart of the Avatar isn’t their powers, it’s their wisdom and humanity, several human lifetimes that converge on one person who will struggle with the world and themselves.
They’re not capital A “Avatars” of all the elements and the spirit world, they’re avatars of humanity, a fragile and conflict-ridden race. Aang struggled to learn the elements but struggled even harder against the world, its people, and ultimately himself. The world of Avatar was written to grow and support these subtleties, to tell a story with a deeper meaning beneath the setpieces and drama.
The world wasn’t built just for massive action scenes to occur and not all conflicts were meant to be resolved so easily *by the writers* . The reason why morally dubious conflicts with no clear cut good and evil sides are so engaging is because we’re human. We know they aren’t.
Agh, Avatar used to be such a good series.
Avatar also means teacher.
that's why I think the only good season of TLOK was season 3, it was far more morally grey.
You mean, that ATLA stopped being a good series?
Eh quit your whining. Korra was fine.
@@ryanmoore6259 man is entitled to having an opinion, and at least he's backing his opinion up with reasons.
This was an excellent analysis of Season 2 and really explained why I always felt that it (Specifically the second half) felt, Weak. The KorraKaiju fight felt out of place, spectacle overwhelming the rest of the show.
I think part of what they wanted to do with this season as well was depower Korra a bit. Season 1 left her with the Avatar state and the writers wanted to take that away. By cutting her off from the other Avatars it does so. So I think that would need to still be done. Maybe, IDK, I''m not a writer.
You're idea about rebuilding the air nomads really works, That's such a good idea about people having to work for it.
(In the comics) Aang already had Air Nomad Disciples post 100 year war and we see them in Season 1 of korra.
You had a group of people that had, for decades been living, behaving and basically being air nomads minus the bending. But it didn't work for them? because what? they didn't have the right midichlorians? They didn't have the blood of kings, they weren't skywalkers.
Keep in mind I say that season 2 of korra is weakest of the franchise. but it is by no means (IMO) a bad bit of Television. And Beginnings is great. but only when put in a vacuum
Bryke aren't writers either. I missed Aaron's writing skills.
It could have been an interesting story arc if she had to spend the rest of the series reconnecting with the past Avatars. That way it wouldn't have lost Aang and the others for all time, but also given her something to do while building her power back up.
I commented this elsewhere, but why didn't Aang give the Air Acolytes Airbending? We know from S2 that it's how you can bestow bending on a non-bender, and that Aang had become proficient with it as an adult. Makes no sense for someone so concerned with rebuilding his culture.
Just so much missed opportunity with this series. And while I still think that, overall, I like the series... it's really soured for me over the years. Just so many writing issues and improper handling of many of the lore and legacy characters. While The Last Airbender is still one of my all-time favorite series, and has actually improved in my estimation over the years, The Legend of Korra has become rather forgettable. I usually tell people to avoid it and just stick with the original series.
@@AzureKnight2 I still very much like Korra, It has a lot of good points. More weak points than ATLA, sure. But it's still excellent in my opinion. really it's only this part, the end of season 2 that I felt a bit meh about.
Half a bad season out of 7, that's a pretty good standard.
Iinm, the responsibles for giving airbending to non-benders are the spirits, which can have mysterious motivations.
This video should be titled “so much less compelling”
I feel like the title he went with was just... so much less compelling.
The way you described it especially wan bonding with both raava and vaatu. It’s so eloquently put that I can’t believe this isn’t the cannon
Same
I knew it, a mauler ref.
well, my fellow, he is your answer: "The dark side of the force is a pathway to many abilities, some considered to be unnatural"
When you talking about how to improved the episode, how the revival of Air Nomad should have happened, how the Water Tribe Civil War should have ended, I swear you could be a writer for this series. On a different note, i always thought it will be interesting to explore the Foggyswamp Water Tribe and added to the mystery of how much they connected to both the moon and that big tree.
“The magic carpets” 🤣🤣 exactly my thoughts when I saw that shit
Your content is fantastic. This explains a lot of the gut reactions I had Korra. I remember really enjoying the civil war section, but on a rewatch I was pissed by how blatantly evil Unalaq was--the interesting tensions just evaporated.
when I watched TLOK for the first time a month or two ago, I remember feeling like something was missing after finishing book 2. I didn't viscerally loathe anything about the show like a lot of ATLA fans seem to do, but this video made me realize exactly why I felt dissatisfied with book 2. The stuff about yin and yang did bother me when I first watched the show, because I know that they are supposed to represent balance between equal and opposite forces, not "good" and "evil", plus ATLA had already set up this idea with Tui and La, the moon and ocean spirits. To have the whole season be about "defeating" the "evil" of vaatu was lazy and predictable, and felt dissatisfying. I would have LOVED to see book 2 play out like you said at the end, where it sets up the revival of the air nomads in that group of fire benders, and has Korra fuse with Vaatu so she can truly restore balance. Even if they kept 90% of the final battle the same and just changed the narrative around rava and vaatu to be more "order and chaos" than "good and evil" (to better set up the main conflict of season 3!!), they could've had Korra pull Rava AND vaatu out of unalaq and bring them into herself, providing a visual callback to when it was done to her, and reinforcing the idea of the avatar's role as someone who is supposed to maintiain BALANCE, not just "fight evil".
Grammar?
Dang it you are right. There was much potential and not much needed to be changed.
Vatuu could have been the most interesting character.
Your analysis was once again beautiful. However, while I agree with the vast majority of it, I'm compelled to point out a correction and add my own thoughts.
The correction being that they did actually retcon the lore of TLAB. The avatar was originally supposed to be the spirit of the world made incarnate in human form, which is what gave them the authority and duty to balance things. The avatar spirit was the avatar themselves, and each prior avatar was the same spirit; not some carrier pigeon of power flitting between hosts. That retcon alone cascades into pretty much every other problem. And even though the other parts of the lore could technically be considered not retconned (like who bending was learned from), it is a massive directional shift away from the rather solid impression it gave. So while that might not be a retcon in letter, it wholly is in spirit. It jars the internal consistency to the point of cataclysm, and for me taints the whole experience.
That aside though, my thoughts are that they didn't just make the world less compelling; they simplified it to the point of dumbing it down and slowly picked away at all the connections it has to the original show.
Bending goes from being both a physical and spiritual art to being a generic tool with no real depth. Ancient techniques that required lifetimes of work and mastery suddenly become common place (lightning and metal bending being the two most blatant examples). Bending powers have hardly any feeling of being earned anymore, and they're no longer all that special.
Korra's connection to all the past avatars is stripped away and replaced for no reason, and yet it simultaneously has no effect on her abilities. The deep personal connection that the reincarnation cycle has, both to the audience and to the character, is just gone; replaced by some disembodied voice that is impossible to relate to and was mysteriously non-existent for previous avatars (except Wan, apparently). Bye, Aang; bye, Roku; bye, Kyoshi; it was nice getting to know you just to have you unceremoniously tossed into the aether alongside all the setup that went into fleshing you and your relationships out in TLAB. And all that was sacrificed for... absolutely no payoff/benefit. Turns out the experience of past avatars wasn't even contributing. All just Raava backseat bending.
And that's just a couple of the connections they devalued between TLAB and Korra.
Narratively speaking though, like you pointed out in season 2 where they subvert all the moral questions of the avatar's place in the world, they do the same thing in a bunch of other places. Every point they have an opportunity to address an adult theme in the primary story arch, they undercut the narrative and throw in some simple answer. It starts with Amon just being a blood bender, delegitimizing his entire revolution, and the moral questions with it. Not to mention not having to deal with any actual ramifications from him taking away people's bending. And while season 2 is certainly the worst offender of this subversion, it's a consistent issue with the show.
This all in the context that Korra was supposed to be the more "adult" of the two Avatar series? TLAB did a way better job answering moral questions, and it did it without feeling the need to try spell out the plot devices. TLAB recognized even its younger audience's abilities to understand abstract and complex issues, much less the adult audience. Korra gives its audience zero credit.
I'd rant about my issues with the characters themselves too, but I probably should've never allowed myself to start ranting in the first place and should stop now before I write another ten paragraphs. I can only imagine how far I'd go if I still drank Mt. Dew.
It just sucks because TLAB is more than just my favorite show; it ranks up there with Tolkien for me for how much it inspires me to write and imagine. While I can enjoy watching Korra to an extent if I don't think about what it changed from TLAB, the more I do think about it, the more it feels like it ruins a work of art that is very dear to me.
So that's my thoughts.
Thanks for another great vid, Tim. Looking forward to the next one.
I read through all that, and I agree. I really dislike how the show had every opportunity to tackle complex issues, and it squandered each of them. I especially agree about Amon.
Before he was revealed to be a bloodbender, he was easily the best part of the show. LOK had failed to really show that there was a societal inequality issue between benders and non-benders, but I could buy Amon's existence as someone who believes that there is and intends to bring an end to it. It helped that Amon was a cunning and downright terrifying antagonist, and that he was counterbalanced by Tarrlock: a bloodbending villain at the very top of society who was the product of his crime-lord father's vengeance.
Then they revealed that Amon's a bloodbender and made beating him way too easy. All they had to do was knock off his mask and expose his fake scar to a bit of water, and suddenly his whole revolution dies? Seriously?
There are many other problems with the reveal that Amon was actually a bloodbender, but that's how it ruined season 1 thematically.
I did not think about how the past experience of the avatars didn't mean anything and it was just Raava powering it all. It would have been interesting how Korra dealt with being weaker and having a useless avatar state but as you said, it never mattered cuz Raava. Raava is honestly the worst char in the series.
@@Niop_Tres I agree that its natural more people know about these top tiers bending. However lightning and metal bending were reduced to common everyday things which they are not. Even if you compare it to real life with people with excellent art skills or singers. Those are highgly sought after and valued. Lightning benders should be top of the food chain as its so powerful and deadly and the same goes for metal bending. Mako never uses it almost even thought he could have likely killed every enemy with it. I imagine you ill say its because hes not evil but what about any other fire bender? We saw a lot of them in the show. Even when he used in the factory as a tool, it was a low waging job that didn't pay shit. Your telling me lightning bending, something so dangerous and rare as Iroh said, would equal to a shitty job in a factory? No and no.
Anyway point is these incredible fighting skills were reduced to nothing special. Amazing martial skills are still hard to achieve and majority of people can't do them.. Nothing will change that. It should matter all the more in a world where guns haven't existed yet like in Korra.
@@Niop_Tres I understand the viewpoint that it's just a natural progression of the Avatar world (it was my initial perspective as well), but I feel that when scrunitized it loses credence.
In real life it usually takes much longer and much more rigorous training to actually reach mastery levels of martial arts as opposed to arts like drawing and painting. Self-teaching is much less efficient (and usually much less effective) with martial arts than other arts. You can't look up video tutorials of martial arts techniques and assimilate them like you can with other arts, what with its physical nature. It almost exclusively requires a need to be physically present with a teacher (or learned the hard way by actually fighting), which means the information is bottle-necked by the available practitioners. You can't just break down the difficulties of learning it by disseminating the information about it, the same way you can't with real martial arts. Because of the means by which you have to learn it, it's not the kind of thing that can evolve to be learned faster. Sure, more people might have access to the knowledge about it (and even that would take quite some time to happen), but they still need to invest significant time and energy into learning them regardless, much less mastering them. It's not like technology where it advances in exponents.
The idea that the information exploded as quickly as it did in Korra with the level of technology they had doesn't line up. There were so few individuals who could have provided the information to begin with, and in Korra they had only recently attained radio communication. Even with all of the vast armies of the fire nation during TLAB, only a handful could even begin to learn lightning bending (we only know of 3 who were capable). Iroh, probably the best firebender of the age, made a particular point on how almost nobody can do it by its very nature. Then you have Toph, who was only able to figure out metalbending because of her blind-sense, which is something more or less unique to her. The idea you can propagate a skill that required the loss of an entire sense to obtain as easily as they do in Korra breaks both the learning curve and some serious barriers of character progression. Aang didn't even learn it.
Yet in the short time since Toph discovered metalbending (only about 65-70 years) every cop in Republic City, a sizeable portion of Kuvira's army, and pretty much everyone we see in Zaofu (which had been around for 30 years at the absolute most) are now all incredibly proficient metalbenders, to the point they've produced a city out of massive and intricately designed metal structures, as well as booming industry and transport systems, and all without the need for Toph's unique circumstances to develop the necessary senses. That is quite a lot of people who suddenly have fine detailed mastery over things that were previously very obscure/incredibly difficult, and had only one person to teach them for about half of that 65-70 years span.
Bending wasn't so much of an "elites" thing as it was an "earned" thing through practice and hard work (with the exceptions of the main characters as prodigies, which is acceptable for narrative reason, and even they had issues with learning some things). You didn't have to be elite to know it, and the elites didn't learn it any easier (they just had easier access to the knowledge); everyone had to invest a ton of their time to advance in it. But in Korra, bending loses the reverence it had because now every average Joe can do all the special abilities that were established as being very difficult/rare/unique. In real life, other arts never transitioned out of being art into something that's not art. Art is still revered as something evocative, where bending completely loses that aspect. It becomes tantamount to using a wrench or tossing a ball.
Also in relation to art in our own world, if the Pareto distribution is to be trusted, you only have about 20% of people who actually participate in a field become substantial in that field, and only a fraction of those could be worthy of being called "masters" of their field. Much like real life, I imagine that even if you had a fair amount of people capable of performing such bending on a relatively competent level, many of them would never be encountered/discovered, just like with artists in real life (and we have the internet to help us).
As far as popular music goes, you only have a couple of writers shared between the vast majority of pop artists. Popular music has more to do with image and marketing than actual talent a lot of the time. Most big popular artists are just flashes in the pan. The vast majority of actors don't make the cut either; we only see a select few of the many who have tried. Even out of the ones that stick around, many aren't household names. Some aren't even good at acting; just ridiculous enough in some way to keep an audience, or have a loud cult following. Same could be said for many writers. But even with all those considered, they are still a tiny, tiny fraction of the population. I'd wager that the world of Avatar has a much smaller population than the real world (based on comparable time periods), which would make it an even more select few who would be capable of such things.
All those things considered, I don't feel the evolution of bending presented by Korra is very natural or reverent of what bending was shown to be in TLAB. It no longer feels worth venerating like it once was.
More to your last statement than the rest of the topic: While I could create my own version of Korra for myself, it doesn't change that Korra's official existence tarnished TLAB's legacy for me, and prevents anything Avatar from ever being officially released again without that taint. What I wish to imagine happened won't retcon the mistakes of Korra from the Avatar universe, or any future Avatar content that is officially released. Rather or not I make my own headcanon, fanfiction, etc., does not remedy those grievances, and I can't look forward to seeing more of the thing I most want to see.
(Apologies for the long-winded reply. The topic is nuanced and I'm bad at being succinct lol)
@@xLeechcraftx I sincerely thing you all overestimate how difficult it actually is to pick up bending with the right tutoring.
I mean Toph despite being a child is not only the most powerful earth bender ever with Bummy as the only real concurrence for the title but also managed to push Aang into very advanced techniques in under a year all on her own.
It took over a decade to invent Blood bending and yet Katara just picks it up in a few moments.
And Aang after meeting the last 2 dragons makes ridicules fast progress on his fier bending.
To just name a few examples of the top of my head.
So while proper mastering is suppose to be kinda hard was actually getting decent with proper teaching never shown as something difficult in the series.
As for the whole lighting bending before Toph was metal bending though to be impossibel all together and before Iroh studied Water bending teachings was the Lighting technique thought to be unstoppable. What I want to say with it only because with the teaching Iroh know it seams like a very restrictive technique doesn't mean it actually is with the right teachings.
Actually a far bigger issue in my opinion is that Wan's era was already to advanced for the quick development speed bending allowed to happen to make the progression from Last Air bender to Korra logical.
I find actually that those who dislike the Legend Of Korra, they point to how the Avatar Wan episodes have completely retconned the entirety of the bending system
I just thought it was boring.
It wasn't entertaining IMO and it is for the reasons mentioned in the video where it is not as compelling
i just dont consider tlok cannon
@@airpodsmurf6175 LoK was realistically just a shitty fanfic that we can look back at and go "now if we were to make a sequel to AtLA, this is what we shouldn't do"
airpod smurf rude
"The very essence of romance is uncertainty." - Oscar Wilde
Watch more Manga if you think that.
@@loturzelrestaurant you mean anime
@@anonymousgaslighter345 ??
@@loturzelrestaurant anime are the shows
Manga are the comics
Do you understand now?
@@anonymousgaslighter345 Yes,
i know this well.
I read 10000 Manga; which is not just an overexaggereted number with many Zeroes, but literally the thing.
What i dont get is why you tell me this.
30:28 - _"... doing nothing can be taking the side of tyranny..."_
Reminds me of a Norwegian poem called "Peace on Earth" (Fred på Jord) which shows that peace isn't always good, in fact it can sometimes be pretty bad.
I actually remember when I first saw these episodes. I had actually missed a couple of the previous episodes and came back to them. I thought an entirely new season had started. They felt so out of place, I genuinely didn't think they were a part of the season I had been watching. Objectively, the episodes are fine, but in the context of the entire series, they don't fit at all.
What's the second Avatar's name? Avatar Tu. I know it's overdue as well just give this to me
I'm more of a fan of Avatar Turi.
I agree that sometimes it's more interesting to leave certain things to the audience's imagination since the mystery and intrigue is often more interesting than the answer.
I also agree that the Water Tribe civil war plot had a lot of potential that was really derailed by the cosmic spirit warfare nonsense.
"there isnt a good and bad side"
beginnings: "hey here is a story about good and bad sides"
"I have mastered the elements a thousand times in a thousand lifetimes"
Is completely spoiled in Beginnings. Always bothered me...
Please elaborate.
Avatar Roku says that to Jeong Jeong in Season 1 of TLA. Makes the Avatar cycle much longer than 10,000 years.
@@philter105 Wasn't 10,000 established in ATLA? Then it would be a problem with ATLA's math (just like Azulon's reign, which was said in ATLA to have lasted less than 30 years).
Not that I can think of. The history of the Avatar always seemed longer than 10,000 years to me. Partially because they left it quite vague. Putting a number on it spoils it like Tim says in the vid
@@philter105 Same thing with the statues in Book 1. There was just an unending amount of them lighting up when Aang went Avatar state. We're never supposed to know the exact number, we just know he's been around since the beginning of bending itself.
I’ll never get sick of him saying “less compelling.”
Tim 2020: "I don't solve my problems with alchohol"
Tim 2021: Drowning your PTSD in bombay saphire gin for three hours.
atla the movie will do that to a person.
Too soft,
too nice.
Not enough Cirticism.
@@loturzelrestaurant what the hell is cirticism? Is that supposed to be criticism? Why are you and other people misspelling the same word all the time? Is it a meme? Is it a case of mass copy paste without double checking grammar?
@@alzhanvoid I think the Meme is your b-tchy rudeness, to say it frankly.
That and more.
@@loturzelrestaurant What meme is that?? I've never heard of it and it doesn't come up online. Give me some context on this poor grammar copy paste.
@@alzhanvoid mistyped grammar, chill, everyone makes mistakes.
I've chosen to ignore the existence of Wan. Seems the writers did too after season 2.
unalaq did korra the favor and ignored him for her too
Well to be fair, Korra did lose her connection to the past avatars, making it impossible to ever communicate with them. It would have been hard to see them again given that. I wonder why none of them are in the spirit world? Is it because they are the same soul every single time just in a different body?
@@co7769 because we see aang in the mist of lost souls my guess would be that all avatars are there hidden within the nebula and waiting for a new avatar to come and find them
@@qgame4941wasn't that Aang an hallucination of Tenzin?
@@azzkin9401 ot wasn't clarified if that was an illusion of tenzin or if aang actually appeared there. He showed himself to tenzin telling him to be himself and not just aangs son and then tenzin was able to temporarily see clearly to take his siblings out. I personally like to think that aang is actually in there as well as all past avatars after korras connection to them got crushed because the avatar is obviously highly spiritual just as iroh was, who managed to get to the spirit world while also being lost withno purpose after losing their connection to the current avatar. Of course seing aang as an illusion of tenzins mind makes just as much sense!
Yeah, I was also dissapointed by how the second season ended... Big Good against Big Bad... when the start of it was so much more grey.
Which means I was totally taken by surprise by the third season. I really love an antagonist with depth that does what he does not because he is evil but because he believes in what he does.
Zaheer's philosophy (anarchy) is a very flawed one. Unlike Amon's equality which makes sense. Zaheer wants every human to decide for themselves, which creates a power vaccum. A society cannot survive without someone to lead them
@@nathanj3528 I mean.. sure.. maybe? But that's sort of orthogonal to the issue at hand? Like, I think that you're wrong, that humanity can be organized in a more non-hierarchical, just way, but your point, even if correct, doesn't really invalidate Atlante Fou's. One can think *both* that Anarchism is a philosophy doomed to fail because of ~human nature~, *and* that exploring the mind, motivations and lengths to which an antagonist will go in pursuit of that philosophy makes for a fascinating story
@@Lilith_NightRose True, but when you pursue a goal, and hardcore want to do find way to achieve it, you must also fine the flaws within. The problem with Zaheer was that he knew how to achieve it, but the consequences of it were well beyond his reach.
@@nathanj3528 You criticism of anarchism is debatable, but I agree that Zaheer's philosophy is flawed. He is an antagonist after all. but he HAS a philospophy, which makes him more interesting than most villians. He does not see himself as evil, he really believes in his cause. He has depths.
Off course, he does not see the flaws in his plan (just like Thanos by the way, another great villian in my opinion). He's an extremist after all ! No extremism can really work in our world but we still have a bunch of them in the real world.
@@atlantefou566 Let me get the anarchism part straight first. No society can run on that system. There is no debatable reason for this. Even the animal kingdom has a structure for survival, of course, we aren't animals, but if any man lived by their own ideals, than that would lead to chaos. Anarchy always leads to chaos.
I should have explained Zaheer more. He had his own philosophy, which is amazing, because I love antagonists with their own motivations, but the problem with him is not his way on how he wanted to reach his goal. It wasn't that hard actually. Take down governments and that's it. All done. The problem was the consequences of his actions. The earth nation was in absolute chaos after the Queen's death. Was that a good thing? No. He didn't take responsibility nor did he do anything to help reduce the riots because it was against his philosophy. Every man who was rioting had the rights (according to him)
So it's not a debatable topic after all. Anarchism is not only flawed, but isn't applicable at all
I actually agree with you on pretty much everything. Beginnings are gorgeous episodes which are very fun to watch... And also ruin the lore and take away the entire mystery of the avatar.
I think that the way you put it at the beginning is perfect. In a vacuum, Beginnings is great both as a story and as a piece of visual media. The problem is that it doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's part of another story and piece of media. One that it doesn't fit well with.
The moment you brought up Lovecraft it just reminded me of Sovereign from Mass Effect and how they ruined the Reapers by expanding upon them. The same applies to LoK, I think. I just remember getting chills down my spine when Sovereign says "You are not Saren... rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh, you touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding." This how the spirits were portrayed to a certain degree in The Last Airbender, but by expanding upon the mythos of the spirits they ruined them at the same time, just like BioWare did with the Reapers.
I can't express how much I love ATLA. It's been with me since I was a child and I even got a tattoo of it. I've bought it twice for myself (one physical, one digital) and for my youngest brother (who doesn't live with me).
But. I can't watch Korra.
I've tried so much to get into it. I've watched S1and the start of S2 like 5 times but, just knowing about the cluster fuck that is Beginnings coming up, retconning lore and killing the past avatars, immediately makes me stop because I don't wanna see that - we never asked for the origin of the Avatar, so why did we get it? In my head, it was always just a "random human in the cycle born as the last Avatar dies gets the powers". There was never a greater meaning to it. LOK trying to force one really left a bad taste in my mouth...
lOL season 3 and season 4 are the mest
best*
LOK is an alright show I don't think I'll rewatch it
I honestly love it, even better than ATLA is some respect.
@@delosdinh in what respects? LOK falls short of ATLA in almost every area with the exception of animation and art style (although it was made many years later so that makes sense). there's a reason why a lot of avatar fans despise the series and even ignore LOK as canon...
21:35 summarized w/ Futurama quote: "They will learn of our peaceful ways...by force!"
I just think they should re write Korra. They’ve formed this new Avatar Studios thing so we have some hope I suppose.
My advice
Make them ashamed enough to do it.
They didn't sound too conscious of their failures.
They should reboot that show
@@lonemotheo1964 Agreed 👍
Is THAT what Season 2 was trying to do? I just thought the northerners were so blatantly and obviously evil that I legitimately never even saw that ambiguity as a theme. Well, now I can at least respect what they were going for, even if they missed the mark.
As a fan of the Beginnings episodes, I really like your analysis of them. I think I enjoyed them purely because I didn't like LoK, so standing them by themselves was much easier to do. I'd already distanced the show from TLA so dramatically in my mind, it was just its own thing. Great video and I look forward to seeing more! I'd love a fresh take on LoK
20:21 Is a really solid point. Furthermore, I think creativity is really key to creating both the compelling mystery AND the answers. Contrasting the pilot for infinity train and the actual show demonstrates that really well but I first noticed it in Critical Role Campaign 2 with the character Fjord the Warlock. You don't know exactly what his patron is or what it wants but it speaks in one word visions: "Consume", "find" "return" and there would be all this weird shit, like he'd wake up vomiting salt water and there was this sword dripping salt water and covered in barnacles that he couldn't remember getting but would bond with any new weapon he got so he couldn't get rid of it.
Really cool creative stuff. What was the reason? (spoilers i guess but its not that interesting)
Its just kinda a sea god that wants to be unsealed from its prison and all the weird stuff is just kinda its theme-ing.
Its like if the reason for the weird stuff was just as creative as the weird stuff itself, I don't think it would have felt so lack lustre.
Maybe if those individual things were expanded into having their own reasons perhaps it could have been a lot better.
I've not seen Critical Role, but that's a really good example. It also tends to happen in TV shows where they don't really plan out the ending (think the Red John reveal in the Mentalist, perhaps Lost?). They fumble to the finish line with the reveal.
~ Tim
@@HelloFutureMe Make sense, your creativity is restricted by who knows what you've already established.
Oh for a good example, go read Attack on Titan, holy shit. The mystery behind how titans are created got revealed last year and its so god damn creative and fantastical.
I don't hate The legend of Korra, I just strongly dislike Book 2.
bro same. I actually love the worldbuilding and characters, which usually are the central focus of stories. But the themes, I mean, the themes are passable in all the other books. BUt season two is waaaaay too fucked up
I only think book 3 is good. Book 1 and 4 are decent to bad and book 2 was very good up until episode 4 but then got worse than any other book. I still like to watch first 4 over 1 and 4.
@@sunwukong5518 I think book 3 was the best , book 4 was good, book 1 was decent and book 2 was kinda bad but has great episode
The whole story just comes to a grinding halt when it goes to Bolin and his film career. Every time it comes on screen you know there are more important things happening. It’s fine to have comic relief, it was handled masterfully with Sokka in ATLA. But while he made quips he also had character development and learned to become a leader. I just finished book 2 of Korra so I don’t know if the same thing happens with Bolin, but so far he just hasn’t been taken seriously. Him getting his heart crushed by Korra is treated as a joke, like he’s only a punching bag. That’s not a character, it’s just something to make kids laugh.
@@poggers3218 Bolin's filn career was the only thing I outright don't like about book 2. Although it did result in that cool fight in the bending arena.
But still, I was reminded of Book 1 of ATLA, and how everytime Zuko was off screen I wanted them to go back to him.
I honestly would've muched preferred a full show centered around him starting as a little kid. That would be amazing, seeing Azula & Zuko's dynamic with nothing to stand in the way and explored in much further depth.
This perfectly sums up how I felt after the beginnings episodes. I always liked how mysterious and unknown the avatar world felt with so much beyond our understanding. Sometimes the origin of the magic does not have to be explained and be left as it is because in the case of the avatar it took away so much of what made the world of avatar so interesting and immersive
Ironically, darkness is way more peaceful than constant bright light.
Which is why yin is the passive force and not yang. Violence is an inherently yang concept but the west doesn't give a shit about what asians actually philosophised about.
@@limazulu6192 why is it often the west this, the west that, you guys have real problems, yeah grasping a concept that is outside of your culture and it's not normaly teached is hard, surprise
@@carso1500 taught and im not just busting the west on these things but everyone who's got little appreciation for the things they talk about especially when it gets on a cultural level. That shit just grinds my gears in general. Now surprise because im neither asian nor have i been taught that shit either. I just know because i cared enough to read about it. But do you know who should care more about it than i do? THE FUCKING JACKASS WHO WROTE AN ENTIRE BOOK ABOUT IT!!! THAT'S LITERALLY THE FIRST THING YOU DO IN THAT PROFESSION AND ITS CALLED RESEARCH!
God i hate bad authors. Like seriously not only does this inform me that he has next to no interest to pay proper tribute to the things he's referencing, he's not even gonna treat his own art with respect. Like why even bother becoming an author in the first place if you're so dispassionate about it you're ok with half assing it?
carso1500 hard to grasp a concept youre not even aware of.
@@carso1500 but acknowledging that you don't fully understand the concept and not seeing yourself entitled to tell it to people is very easy. This isn't someone struggling to fit another perspective to their own thinking the first time they hear about it; it's literally someone saying "I understand this well enough to create a story based on it and tell it to millions of people".
Chemically speaking, alcohol *is* a solution.
Ah haaaaa
Depends on which alcohol though
INDIGO BLUEoO a cold one
Lmao
It rubs me the wrong way when someone plays smartass and says "but technically *technically wrong statement* is correct", especially when it's the same goddamn one over and over again
YES! Your understanding of the civil war is great! It’s supposed to be her understanding that sometimes you do.. nothing.
Positive jing when you’re attacking
Negative jing when you’re retreating
And neutral jing... when you do nothing. Sometimes it’s not your fight. Yes she’s the avatar and yes she’s a member of the southern water tribe, but that doesn’t mean it’s her say on how complex sociopolitical conflicts should be resolved. Imagine if Aang had forced his beliefs on the northern water tribe and paku, forcing him to teach katara. It’s not his place to do that. Likewise the same goes for Korra and the politics of a nation. So long as that nation doesn’t threaten imbalance then her duty is to do nothing.
One of the best critiques I've ever heard on Korra.. I love your channel
18:34 I have noticed this so often when background to a story was revealed: The world suddenly seemed small and boring.
However, I think Tolkien was one of the examples of the opposite: With the reveal of the backstory and history of Middle Earth, the main story of the Ring becomes far more important.
Because for Middle Earth, the more we know, the more we realise how little we actually know and how little we can truly comprehend in the grand scheme of things. Like Eru Illuvatar, the supreme god-like being responsible for all creation in tolkein's world, is responsible for everything that happens in the world and that both "evil" and "good" are bound to his will. This itself places this supreme being on an amoral, orange-blue morality scale. He's not the Christian god who stands for absolute good. He's the amoral all-powerful Erú who is seemingly beyond human comprehension.
I love this. This is the biggest reason that I don’t like Legend of Korra:
They set up some serious morally grey problems that don’t have obvious answers in practically every season except for 4, but then back out on them at the end. They did the same thing with Amon, by artificially giving him some bizarre halfway-hard magic answer to why he could take bending and throwing out Korra’s arc by just GIVING her the Avatar state.
Book 3 I think answered not the questions the other seasons left, but the complaints about the earlier seasons. Zaheer learning to fly, the legend of the first guru to learn it, all of that was handled so lovingly, and the way the other seasons should have been. I think your idea of what could have been season three is basically perfect.
I hated how they just threw what ATLA had out the window, the bending became less threatening, beginnings ruined what was already established it was so unsettling and I hated how they made an Asiatic inspiration more western just because they think it looks cool bryke really are just pure idiots😂😭
DiverseJoe I don’t think they “threw out” anything that ATLA did, but rather added to it. The issue is that it didn’t need adding to, but more depth and that’s what Beginnings didn’t really do like Tim said in the video
@@Unison23 That's a good point, I hate how they just ruined what was already established and it just left a bad taste in my mouth on so many levels😭
@@Unison23 i disagree as they made the bending that was once tied to emotion just martial arts in beginning where wan at the start can literally just make a giant blast of fire
Once I got past the initial shock of what Amon was doing, I thought of it and realized, "oh, he's just combining blood-bending with chi blocking. It'd be kinda fitting if it didn't last forever, but long just long enough for people to impose a mental block on themselves by never trying again"
Then, Korra getting everything back would've felt a lot less contrived than her whining until Aang just gives her the power back. Imagine if her journey into learning about spiritualism were a quest Aang gave in her in exchange for telling her how to undo what Amon did.
When she complains after finding out the truth, he could then say "and that's why you need to learn more about spirituality"
Excellent critique! I had the exact same reaction to this arc. I loved the art style and the characters, but didn't like this as the origin story of and explanation for this universe. I also hated Korra having a kaiju battle with Unavatu. Legend of Korra botched so many golden opportunities, often at the 11th hour.