I find it funny that the lead general, captain or whatever the guy leading the expedition into the Spirit Wilds has this running gag where every time he faces off against Wan, part of his cape gets burned. Like, they don't even address it which I think partially makes it even funnier.
In my own head canon, humans have forgotten that lion turtles exist mainly because aang is surprised to learn of their existence during their time in the library. So they have remembered the animals that taught them but not the lion turtles that gave them the power.
it also makes sense they would forget about the lion turtles in time since they arent actively giving bending anymore, but the animals with bending (except for air bison) are still alive in modern time and a person can still learn bending from them (Aang, Zuko and Toph as examples)
Also no one talks about it, but the fact that lion turtles can give and take bending immediately validates one of the bigger plot holes in Avatar. This isn't some creature who came out of nowhere to save the day against Ozai, this is something so old and fundamental to the world, bending, and the avatar that the people forgot about
I was about to say the same thing, pretty much. I guess some people can call it "retconning" but tbh it's moreso just lore expansion. Yes we weren't given further information about it in ATLA, but it also didn't specifically tell us what the origins of humans ability to physically bend the elements were. It makes sense that the reality of its origins isn't known by those in Aang's time and is a plotline to be explored later.
Jeong Jeong has to maintain concentration on the wall or at least we have never seen him do one without that being the case, that's why in the video he stated specifically that it's happening around him while he's doing other things and not fully focused on the ring.
So I still don't really know what this actually means. The lion turtles use energy bending to give and take element bending...? Whats the correlation here? Why can Aang take away any elemental bending? Can the lion turtles? They seemed to be focused on single elements. Are the lion turtles spirits? Can any spirit energy bend? Can any animal?
@@peanutbutter7721 We aren't given a certain answer in the show, are we? So there probably isn't one. Althought he Aang vs Ozai is rather clean cut. The Turtle says that for one spirit to change the other, the one spirit needs to be unchangeable otherwise the process will be mutual. Aang was ushakeable in that moment because that's the entire reason why he was looking for a new solution in the first place. This in turn would suggest that the Lion Turtles don't actually "give fire" but change people's spirits so they are attuned to fire, which allows them to bend it. So if fire benders all share certain personality or mentality elements (which is in line with the bending is a spiritual art theme), then the turtles force those personality traits into the humans. So the turtles themselves aren't really elemental benders they just prefer different attunements. It's just my interpretation of what they could represent so who knows.
@@Andrew-wl3hn The simplest explanation is that this referred to people and not the lion turtle specifically. At least in the original show . But since people were bending the elements in Korra prior to the Avatar shows that the whole bending thing was a retcon. We can admit things are retcons without commenting on whether they are good or not. Retcons happen in stories all the time. I don't see why it's so hard to admit it here. The statement just shows that the original concept was changed in Korra
It's aggravating that characters in this episode are really proficient with bending immediately after being given it. It really undermines the power system. Also "give me superpowers" "make sure you return them" is so stupid that I wonder why everyone doesn't do it
In theory one guy could burn down a bunch of stuff on top of the lion turtle so I get why not bringing fire back is kinda required. We see later on that it's not a rule for every lion turtle though
I personally think the Raava/Vaatu thing would have been stronger if they had been characterized as light and darkness in harmony and in conflict with each other, respectively. They could have shared the same color pallete, but Raava's patter would have shown light and dark intertwined with each other, while Vaatu's could have shown them clashing with each other.
An idea I saw online was to make Raava and Vaatu the incarnations of Order and Chaos respectively, and give the black and white colorpalets instead of blue and read. And the video where I saw that proposed the idea of Wan absorbing both of them into himself, representing balance. I think that would have worked a lot better
I think Vaatu would’ve worked better if he was basically just a mindless creature, like a true being of chaos, neither good or evil but if left uncheck he can cause get destruction, but in the same time can help cause change in a static world, being Raava’s counter to get her to her to change and adapt with her environment, because if everything is orderly and perfect why change it even if it slowly decays and weakens underneath that chaos vaatu would exploit. But no instead we basically get evil devil spirit who sounds like a reaper from Mass effect.
I don't think it was bad far from it but I would prefer a more serious tone and art style. I think its a important piece of lore and it conects direct with the original so it could have more work behind it, maybe people woudn't pick so much on it or maybe not who knows
One interesting thing I noticed is that the guy who got turned into a tree (I forgot his name, if he had one)'s reaction to Wan's fire bending. He's not just panicking over the thought of him stealing from the Lion Turtle, but because being partly made of wood makes fire extremely dangerous to him, so he immediately scrambles back in fear to avoid getting burned by it. Edit: I agree with the interpretation, that the power to bend was given by Lion Turtles before being mastered by observing nature or whatever, and over time people probably forgot about the Lion Turtles and instead only know how they learned to bend by watching animals, etc.
It certainly makes more sense than "We learned bending forms from animals, and that is where bending began" into "only the descendants of the original benders that learned from animals can bend."
Plus, seemingly by the time of ATLA, people over a time of 10,000 would probably have some embellishments, retellings, editing, and revisions of history (Bending included). We obviously saw this in the 100 year war with Fire Nation propaganda and education. And the tale of Omashu is probably just a founding myth to emphasize Omashu’s power in the Earth Kingdom. Besides, fans seem to always ignore the darn Lion Turtle in the finale, clearly hinting that they are important to humans in the past, in some way…(plus the ominous interesting scroll Aang finds in the Library about Lion Turtles). Now, is there a possibility that the writers and creators thought about it this far ahead? No, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have both? And basically acting like a possibility of history in the Avatar Universe can be retold and rewritten couldn’t be possible, really shows you haven’t watched ATLA. Examples on the top of my head are Avatar Day, The Headband, anything with Ba Sing Se, Zuko confronting his father, Iroh explaining to Zuko as to why he should be the Fire Lord, Sun Warrior Adventure, The Library (Fire Nation destroying info about them), The Dragon Bone Catacombs, Roku and the Firelord, White Lotus, The Fire Sages, Ember Island Players, The Mechanist and the Northern Temple (Plus peoples beliefs on Airbenders), The Darn Great Divide episode, and the Show’s intro! Those are the examples I can think of at the moment.
I always thought koh didnt just "set arbitrary rules" for how he could steal a face from someone, i just thought that he just liked faces and if someone made a cool face he would be interested and take it, but having a black face is just like whatever thats not interesting.
I think it was some kinda rule bc he clearly wanted to steal aang’s face, hence why he kept trying to freak him out. If he could’ve taken it he would’ve but idk the specifics of it. Also I feel it must be self-imposed to some extent bc koh could just attack a person to force their face to change or smth but he sticks to jumpscares
@@tiablue9106 that's what i love about koh, he's clearly interested in stealing aang's face, and his design just screams evil at you, but he's ultimately an ally. He answers the question aang came asking, what are the moon and sea spirits physical forms. He didn't attack aang, he didn't try to restrain or trick him, just lets him go on his way.
You.. You sure you wanna keep that typo there? XD But yeah, I also thought that "Spirit rules" were things they set, because they are people that´s basically immortal that were cutoff from society, so naturally since they also are capable of pretty weird stuff would basicallly start doing their own thing.
For me the biggest problem with the lion-turtles is that OG Avatar didn't just say how bending came to be but showed. Siege of the North: Admiral Zhou kills the Moon Spirit, literally ever water bender loses their bending! Yue gives her life up and revives the Moon Spirit and becomes one with it, water bending is back on! Cave of Two Lovers: Aang and Katara find the lovers' tomb. This is recorded and documented history of the very first two earth benders. Toph herself learns directly from banger-moles! The Fire Bending Masters: Zuko is literally losing his bending, it becomes restored after meeting the last two dragons. Plus, we learn that the secret tribe of fire-benders not only protected the last two dragons (along with Iroh) but also have kept an ancient dragon flame going for eons. To me, this is far more than: Lion-turtles give people "elemental powers" people then "learn" elemental-bending from animals and two spirit fish, and people forgot lion-turtles existed. It's just a retcon, and not a good one at that. And yes, I will die on this hill.
Thank you! As someone who loves birds to an abnormal degree but is also way too chronically exhausted to pursue knowledge of them quite to the degree that other people with similarly uncommon interests often do, I was having an experience of like "oh man the bird it's combined with looks SO familiar but I still have no idea what specifically it is" that felt fairly frustrating. But of course at the same time its being endangered is very sad. :(
Ive always had a massive soft spot for the art style of these episodes because it reminds me of a book I had as a kid. Also one thing im somewhat appreciative of in regards to this is that they didnt feel it necessary to make an airbender the first avatar.
You can still argue it if you really wanna be nitpicky. The "avatar cycle" would have "started" with an Airbender since the cycle would start with the reincaration. Wan as the original vessal for Vaatu wouldn't have "the avatar state" as we know it, since the avatar state takes into account the memories and experiences of past avatars. So the cycle of air -> water -> earth -> fire is still respected. That's needlessly nitpicky and doesn't really matter though. Also, technically Wan does have an "Avatar state" which is the one retcon part of the Avatar I don't particularly like. being able to tap into 4 elements as one person was OP enough. you don't need Light Spirit Power as additional context (especially with how they use that concept in S3 and especially S4).
@@raze2012_ Except the Avatar state was always clearly more than just access to past knowledge, it was definitely a power boost and that part being from Raava makes sense.
@@lukacvitkovic8550 oh right, because god and satan are equal in power and always neutralize each other.. Not one guy being all powerful and the other taking tiny potshots.
@@KairuHakubi since the dichotomy is based off of Ohrmazd and Ahriman then yes, they would be absolutely equal. But I don't expect the show to know that
@@lukacvitkovic8550 Last I checked there is no indication Raava created the universe nor is portrayed as perfect. That kind of is a big deal when it becomes to God and like the other guy said Satan not being God’s equal is something you can’t just ignore. Also, Christianity isn’t the only religion to depict the eternal battle between good and evil. There is the ancient Egyptians with Ra and Apep.
The main issue I have with the origin of bending is that it completely demistifies how it came to be. Before, we simply didn't know why benders existed, it was a fact of life that some people were born with the ability to bend and numerous legends gravitated around it. Now bending has become a gift from the lion turtles and that's that. It also doesn't help that it raises a lot of questions as to why modern benders exist. Are they all descendants from the gifted ones? Also, if benders bequeath their abilities to their children, why are some children proficient with bending and others aren't? The gift was genetically coded into humans and it spreads like a gene? Just a lot of questions that can't be answered and wouldn't have existed if the writers hadn't tried to explain how bending came to be.
Reminder that a retcon is not a contradiction, it stands for retroactive continuity, which is when an author adjusts, changes, or explains already established narrative elements later in the story and in a different manner. This CAN lead to a contradiction but not always. What it does is recontextualize the already known events with the new given information. With that being said, since ATLA mentioned numerous times how the badgermoles, dragons, sky bisons and the Moon were the original benders from whom humans learned bending, the lion turtles in Korra being the ones who gave the original ability to bend to humans is a retcon since it gives a new context on what ATLA meant with the bending origins. Whether it was for better or worse, that can be argued
Its also a retcon because the Lion Turtle linked the invention of elemental bending with the emergence of the Avatar. "In the days before the Avatar we bent not the elements, but the energy within ourselves." Meanwhile in Beginnings humans are shown to have bend the elements with the aid of the Lion Turtles long before the Avatar, considering that they don't even remember the world ever not having been overrun with spirits.
well it kinda makes sense looking back at Atla since humans learning bending from animals fails to explain the biological nature of bending (AKA bending being a gene and not everyone being able to bend) because if it wasnt for that matter ANY non-bender could go to the animals and learn bending, but the og show establishes (yet never explains) that bending is something one can be born with/out
oh 100%! people tend take “retcon” in a negative connotation and that’s what creates the arguments of “nuh uh” and “yuh huh” acting as if it’s inherently bad for creatives to do that is silly and wrong, and while i personally don’t like these episodes, they aren’t a bad way to explain the avatar world (just not the way i’d go about it)
@@origin484 retcons like any trope or literary device is a tool a writer can used. If used properly and well handled it can make a story look beautiful, but in improper hands and thrown around haphazardly the story will look like a sloppy made mess.
yeah it's annoying how retcon's meaning encompasses a broader and narrower idea.. and most people use it to mean deliberately making changes. sometimes, in-universe changes.
@@shadenox8164 This was established. It was very clear what the intension was for where bending came from. The way it was established was a way that it could be retconned without breaking cannon. Its still a retcon as much as a character's words being retconned is.
Its his first time seeing it as an actual creature, he knew that he was living on one but for all intents and purposes he was essentially living on land. Like id be surprised seeing the Earth from space even though I've been living on it my entire life.
The lion turtle thing is definitely a retcon As the lion turtle said: “In the age before the avatar, we bent not the elements, but the energy within ourselves”. But here we have Wan’a story where it seems like people very clearly did not know what energy bending even was.
@@hueyfreeman6262 because ancient deities would _totally_ speak in colloquialisms. What exactly would this solve/change about how either interpretation works?
This new bending explanation is so upsetting. The Sun warriors were like study how dragons move and breathe soak the energy from the sun. But nah, how firebending was actually discovered was People: "Hey I need firebending". Lion Turtle: "Okay". No trials? No epiphany? No bartering? No effort? Just zippity zappity?
I feel like the turtles are a retcon and I don't let it into my headcanon for a very simple reason. Learning from the sources as TLA described it has a very nice spiritual implication. The first benders had to live well with nature to learn from it. There was a connection needed between the humans and the animals or benders for one to teach the other. Giant turtles cut that connection.
@@kakssplyou are choosing to ignore the actual lore that was always the purpose of the lion turtles since the creators came up with the concept for them in atla
even if we take it as a retcon, it's something that was done in ATLA. Lion-turtle statues were very prominent in the background since the early episodes, so the creators probably had the intention to introduce them as a concept, even they hadn't ironed out how/why/what they do
I personally don't have that much of an issue with the spirits being relatively regular compared to Last Airbender. It's set 10.000 years ago and I am sure that being in the normal world makes them a bit more regular. It's also not stated that the spirits in Last Airbender aren't just like elite and massive spirits, there are some smaller spirits in Last Airbender too. The baboon spirit in the Siege of the North episode 2 is just a guy chilling somewhere near Koh's lair. Over time I'm sure the bigger spirits just kind of took hold in the spirit world whenever Aang went there.
Yeah I was confused by Overanalyzing’s critique there- I just assumed they were “lesser” spirits, unlike say a Koh the offspring of Mother of Faces or the literal Moon. Unless the critique was that there’s too many or that even lesser spirits should be more otherworldly, I don’t see his point
The critique was they were too humanized. ATLA showed a vast difference between spirits, while Korra makes them look like they are all human-like in Beginnings.
10:41 It's not an argument, much less a "feeling" that altering our understanding of bending lore is a retcon. It IS a retcon--- to the letter of the definition of the term. It "feels" that you're trying to get out from under the term since it has such a negative connotation attached to it, and that's understandable--as a literary device, it's too often used to lazy/poor effect and as a conduit for contradictions ( I can also argue it's contradictory in tiers with A:TLA, but I don't feel the need to do so rn). But really, a retcon means only there was an established continuity known to the audience at a point and then later, otherwise unfamiliar changes or additions are presented that fundamentally change said audience's interpretation. This is exactly what the Lion Turtles do for bending here--it's as cut-'n-dry a piece of retroactive continuity as they come. The remaining question, then, is if one believes it's for the better or not. And personally, I ain't a fan that a random guy is "gifted" firebending by request and immediately throws a massive fireball with minimal effort/no knowledge of bending forms, esp when contrasted with A:TLA, such as the scene of young, struggling Zuko presenting his firebending forms to Azulon but can barely produce a spark. Bryke used to go on and on about bending being something you can't simply be granted and just do, so I find it substantially cheapening when it's, well, granted and just done.
But this is just not true. I'm sorry you're so eager to want to tear apart a simply delightful story, but a random guy being "gifted firebending" is NOT what happens here at all. He is simply gifted the element of fire. *That's it*. Fire "bending" is still an art that needs to be learned and mastered. And that can only be taught by the firebending masters. None of this rejects the challenge Zuko faced with struggling to produce a spark of fire. If the Lion Turtles wished it, they could bend the spirit within them to produce fire easier too. But could they firebend with that fire? Not until they learned the proper forms and techniques - taught to them first by the dragons. It's disheartening to see how much you've stonewalled yourself against an explanation so simple that the show expects you to form that connection on your own. But if you wish to dislike this show, then there are plenty of other reasons to do so. No need to invent one here.
"Is it a retcon" shouldn't matter as much as "does it make it more interesting" when it comes to what Korra did with the spirit stuff and, in my opinion, it makes it less interesting.
@@toastmaster914Personally the Spirits in general are nowhere as bad as Raava and Vaatu THOSE 2 specificly demystify the Avatar concept Hey, remember how in Last Airbender The Avatar was supposed to take Neutrality over everything? Yeah nope, lets turn him to Jesus by making him fight Satan
@@toastmaster914 It's not even the lion turtle bit either like if it was just the lion turtles that gave people the ability to access elements in the first place that would be fine, but then they had to do the whole very generic good vs evil order vs chaos light vs dark garbage which ATLA was never about. It kind of completely strips nuance from the avatar because no matter what, they are an incarnation of pure good who symbolizes order. It turns the avatar into a caricature instead of a fallible character that has to overcome things and may make the wrong choices.
Wan's introduction is basically a play by play of Aladdins intro; both steal bread, run from three guards (who we get a close up on looking angry with their weapons), rooftop running, clothesline jumping and even the end where they both give up the bread to feed someone less fortunate. All Wan has to do is break out into song and the scene would be complete.
Honestly Wan brings up a really good point that would have been argued over in the OG show but obviously here it is brushed off without comment. "What gives you the right?" What does make Raava more in the right than Vaatu? Now obviously Wan doesn't know what is happening amd would want a age of darkness. But its not like Vaatu going to blow the world up. And Im pretty sure he even never talks in the same way as Raava. Only "I will bring forth the age of darkness" or some shit like that but Raava is the only one that talks like her way is truly the only right way and that its what needs to happen. Raava IS holding Vaatu hostage for 10000 years. Honestly that would have been a pretty interesting direction to take. Vaatu isn't in the wrong (tehnically), he just believes that his turn has come and that it is time for Darkness and Chaos to be center stage.
I like to think that Raava should embody stagnation in addition to balance and light and whatever, with Vaatu embodying change along with chaos and darkness. Ties into Avatar decisions like closing/opening the spirit portals.
It’s an issue have a with a lot of the spirits in Korra, we’re supposed to see them in high regard and to always respect them. But most of the spirits are all hostile ungrateful jerks who think they are automatically better than stupid humans . Sure not all of them are like that but for the most part what we are shown a bunch of times they basically act like high elves in many fantasy universes, sure they may have good points and are great in what they can do, but it’s hard for me to take there words seriously when they constantly insult me and say how much better they are.
Given that they have done this dance for eternity Raava in all likelihood has seen what happens when Vaatu at least couple of times and it probably wasn't pretty.
The spirit friend is named Aye Aye and he's voiced by Jason Christopher Marsden. I had to look it up because the voice stood out to me. He also voiced Haku from Spirited Away and many many other roles.
9:56 This argument raised a question for me. Are Non-bending Animals possible? Like I don't mean something like Wolf Bats, or Bears, I mean is there ever a case where a Sky Bison can't fly, or a Dragon can't breathe Fire? What about Badger Moles? That thing would be crippled for its entire life. It can't see, AND can't Bend.
I like to think of it this way some animals gained the ability to bend to compensate for an apparent weakness(the bison's lack of mobility and badgermole's blindness) and the lion turtle being an exception because of there enlightenment
Man, OA is my comfort show, I'm so glad I found your channel when you started it (thx algorithm) so I didn't miss any episodes. The comedy has also really improved, and your commentary is one of the best put together. You should have a mil subs by now, but I'm kinda happy this is a small community ❤
The lion turtles giving bending away does break the lore though. It's clearly stated multiple times in ATLA that people learned bending from animals, and there's a strong thematic link of spirituality and bending. Katara and Sokka's characterization in the first scene of the show basically spells out bending as a spiritual connection instead of anything strictly genetic or gift-given. The Fire Nation royal family marrying powerful benders into the fold is a really shaky justification that is proven thematically incorrect by zuko when he loses bending due to his rage going away. I's the perpetual trauma of the family was the source of their power (the show beats the viewers heads with this every time it can - literally Azula's entire character), instead of what the dragons & sun culture use. A lot of the peak episodes of ATLA deal with exploring bending as an extension of the human condition and lion turtles freely giving master level bending abilities shits on everything the original show wanted to convey. I think the dragon dance scene comparison is the most fitting juxtaposition. One is fulfilling a rediscovery of a healthy source of strength that's the culmination of 2.5 seasons of building up characters and the world dynamically animated - the other is a cheap imitative callback being done by a dude we've known for 15 minutes and is completely inconsequential to the plot and themes of the show. The biggest sin of Beginnings imo is that you can cut everything pre-Rava-Vaatu fight and nothing about the show changes. The "origin of bending" and the little characterization of Wan served zero narrative, thematic, or contextual purpose to the series in being explained. But also this means, the more egregiously poorly written part is the ONLY relevant thread from these episodes. It reeks. In isolation or by lobotomizing yourself it's pretty decent, but in the context of everything good it shits on that came before and it's extremely poor effects on what came after it's a certified dumpster fire.
One thing I actually really like about this episode is when Wan tries to first fire bend, he gets a huge kick of recoil. And with training he gets less recoil. But in airbender in the childhood shots of zuko and azula, they barely get any recoil, so I think this somewhat implies that humans evolved to take less recoil. And I think that’s pretty fucking cool
Did the group that got killed or horribly deformed by the spirts and Wan really deserve that? I mean, since when is hunting animals for meat a crime punishable by death? Especially since one of them showed kindness to Wan earlier by allowing them to come with them. Am I missing something?
The spirits felt so strange just talking to Wan. The OG series spirits with studio ghibli levels of ambiguousness. They spirits should’ve been harder to read/understand fully, more other worldly then just the “hey we’re just guys that look weird” they became.
And here we have the "Korra is knocked out due to the special water bending technique of the shady politician guy who abused her position to put himself in charge, and then gets a vision from a former Avatar who all but spells out the current plot by way of a flashback to their former life" part of the season again. I swear, season 2 is just season 1 stripped to its tropes, and rewritten with a couple different prompts to be _much_ bigger in scope... Personally I feel giving the origin of bending to the lion turtles (whether you want to call it a retcon or not) makes it feel less special. With how AtlA depicted it, humans learned to bend nature to their whim by sheer force of will. It felt like a massive achievement that shaped how the world worked. To me shifting that to be a gift by the turtles makes it feel decidedly less special. It's not just a latent talent either (like Aang hat for his other elements, not knowing how to use them until trained), but even the non-protagonist extras are instantly on the level of your average fire army mook... Also doesn't help to sell that whole story that the first Avatar's name literally sounds like "One". -Should have named him Smitty Werbenjägermanjensen.-
@@shadenox8164 Do we have it 100% confirmed that can never be the case ever though...? LoK season 3 establishes that spiritual influence can lead to people manifesting bending abilities. So people living in harmony with beings/spirits that _do_ have those abilities for generations may make them predisposed for such abilities as well. Or it may just be something any human _could_ technically unlock, but they need to spiritually align with the element enough - and actually get a feeling for how bending works at all. Aang was initially convinced that he was fundamentally incompatible with earth bending. And that was _after_ having mastered two elements already and briefly dabbling in a third. So someone with no previous experience (or proof that they should be able to) at all may never learn it - especially back when bending wasn't discovered yet. I don't see why humans should be fundamentally unable to unlock abilities like that in this setting, unless it was explicitly gifted by them. They're able to manifest other spiritual abilities independent of bending, as seen with Guru Pathik, Iroh, Jinora and others, which may have been the origin point to "align" with the respective original benders. Who knows? What if humans are the origin of "spirit bending" after all, and the lion turtle from AtlA was just old enough to remember the devastating ancient wars around it? In the aftermath of these wars humans may have decided to lock themselves into one of four elemental bending styles, inspired by those "original benders" - still powerful, but not on the same devastating scale - and established the Avatar to make sure they'd never regress to that state. I'd just rather keep it to vague but inspiring legends than reduce it to a handout like this. To me that only cheapens the whole concept.
@@shadenox8164 No comment has ever made me so fucking mad holy shit. Genuinely never waste your breath talking about anything media related ever. Go sit in a cave forever so nobody never has to hear from you again. The idea that all this cool mythos and mystical world building we get in avatar, one of the greatest aspects of the show which helped it be so incridibly unique compared to all other kids cartoons at its time, was all just som dumb bullshit the characters had thought up and had no basis in reality is so godawfull. Makes the show so fucking lame.
In ATLA the Lion Turtle explicitly states the following: "In the era before the avatar, we bend not the elements but the energy within ourselves" The retcon basically means that ANYONE can wield all of the elements so long as a Lion Turtle gives them the ability to do so. Instead of being attuned to the element due to genetics, for some reason, and originally learning how to use bending from the respective animal or the moon in Waterbending's case. Now we have 4 Lion Turtles who can just give anyone a form of bending or even more if they just ask which apparently no one did before Wan.
Also worth noting that the lion turtle is only in atla because the writers ran into a moral problem that they couldn't answer without giving aang the ability to cheat the problem.
I think part of the idea with the difference between spirits then and spirits now could also be that, well, when they get moved to the spirit world, just as humans changed with a less mystical spirit wilds, the spirits changed with a less mundane underpinning to their reality. Like, to use a DnD reference, they basically got sent to the Astral Realm / Limbo, and over generations of living in this world of PURE spiritual energy, they lose more and more of that mundane aspect of themselves.
to me though, it's not that there couldn't be a reason for this happening in canon, it's that spirits are less interesting when presented this way. I think having spirits be weird and inhuman with desires and morals that don't line up with human ones is interesting, and making them more human is just less interesting,
Dude I love this channel, I've been watching Avatar literally since it's premiere back in '05 and when I found this channel a few years ago I just absolutely fell in love. It's amazing to see so many fans of this show, I love seeing ATLA succeed.
Wan attacking those hunters whose whole job is to bring food back to the people living on the lion turtle is kinda screwed up, like they weren't the nicest people but they were just doing what they are supposed to do.
Ultra simplistic morality doesn't tend to work in real life. Shows that apply it either have to be accepted at face value or you're going to struggle to be immersed.
@@lokenontherange i think "humans need to eat" is simplistic morality and it works just fine. Those guys are right, Wan is wrong. That said, Avatar world really blurs the line by having so many animals that combine predator and prey features.
Yea. The simplicity is so… boring. They do it with Raava and Vaatu as well. Instead of /truly/ balancing each other out, keeping each other in check, it’s Pure Good vs Pure Evil. Thats not a balance. It’s so… christianity western.
@@citruscirrus5607 lol crack a bible open once in a while. it's roman, but it's not the least bit judeo-christian. it's old zeus-vs-hades stuff. Which, even then, wasn't really that extreme.
We don't see Aang trying to stop Sokka from hunting to eat. He just doesn't partake in it. The only exception being when he decided to claim Momo as his pet while Sokka tried claiming him as dinner.
Honestly, I'd say the lion turtles are a retcon, but their problematic nature extends to ATLA too. I love ATLA so much, however, the finale despite all of the areas where it phenomenally shined, the lion turtle was an out of nowhere quick solution to Aang's biggest problem in the show. Showing up randomly before the fated battle to give him energy bending, when he could've done that at anytime, or Aang could have had a side adventure episode of looking more into the lion turtles that were referenced prior in the show, but only for a few seconds on the page of a scroll in the library. Also if a Lion turtle could give energy bending, then where were the energy bending turtles, or is all bending a form of energy bending? I think giving humans an overall ability to harness and manipulate the chi around them would've been a better fix, but regardless, it just undermines the importance of the "original benders." If lion turtles were the ones to originally give bending, then why are there original sources for it, and how come people haven't learned to acquire bending by studying the original benders back then, much like how that is how someone learns bending in the future?
There's not argument that can convince me that it wasn't a reckon.. In ATLA it literally said the original benders where the animals.. It feels so right at home.... The lion turtle thing is so wack
They don’t all the bending is still learned form the animals nothing in atla gets changed because of it all it does is explain why the lion turtle could give aang energy bending
it would have been so easy to fix just have the lionturtles give them the abilities via spiritbending, and have them be like "What is this gift you gave us? I don't get it" and then the turtle is like "seek out the dragons, they will teach you what i've just given you" One quick montage and bam, there you go. firebenders. Then at the end when a bunch more people are getting powers, the lionturtle could be like "There are other teachers, but you will have to discover them for yourselves. In the water, in the air, and in the earth"
@@GBlockbreaker was that story even a real thing that happens though and if it was it still could have still happened just like wan found the dragon to teach him fire bending after leaving his lion turtle oma and shu found the badger moles to teach them earth bending after they left their lion turtles nothing changes
It's kind of staggering how many people don't know what a retcon actually is. Beginnings is absolutely retconning aspects from ATLA, this isn't a question, it's a fact. If those retcons are good additions to the world and story, or if they do little more than remove interest, is an entirely different discussion. I'd personally say the latter, though good retcons exist as much as bad ones do.
It's funny that in Avatar civilization started before agriculture, and they had weapons, tools, advanced clothes and stuff before they had food security, and that just a party of like 7 guys were supposed to get food for the whole population of a town (lion turtle)
"Is it a retcon or is it not? The enlightened answer: Who cares?" I am sorry, but I really hate this kind of condescending attitude. It's fine if you don't think it's a retcon, but I care about a piece of fiction keeping its own rules consistent. Especially when those rules apply to the very foundation the show is built on. I think the biggest problem with the lion turtle granting bending powers, is that the person that is granted it doesn't have to actually have to put in the mentality of that specific element. Like when Zuko lost his firebending because he lost his anger, so he had to relearn it from the dragons and finds out he needed a new 'burning' desire in order to bend again. Firebending also required a proper breathing technique. Is that in any way showed when Wan made a fireball for the first time? No. The retcon changes more than just the origins, but also strips away the spiritual aspect of bending, which in my opinion, made the world more interesting. Also, people just forgot that lion turtles were the ones who gave people bending? The avatars later reincarnations never bothered to record that small detail or they had to keep it a secret from the world for some unknown reason? Having a retcon in your story is not necessarily a bad thing, but the best retcons are the ones you don't really notice because they don't break too many rules to become noticeable. This retcon snaps the goddamn series in half.
This is unironically my favorite part of avatar, cause after all my life I finally know how the cycle started, and what lion turtles are good for. Also the art style is so dope
"Very interesting, but is it a good idea?" Pretty much exactly what i thought. It's like they wanted to write a new original story with some of the same themes as avatar, and shoehorned it in here. It does at least explain how this is an avatar, since an avatar is supposed to be a god in a mortal body, and I GUESS the lionturtle thing only creates the ability to bend, while the dragons, moles, etc teach them the techniques, but.... I still have issues with it. I mean THAT MANY THOUSANDS OF YEARS pass, and the world hasn't changed until THIS generation when it finally becomes 20th century? Like seriously they could have made Wan's era look more primitive, but it really doesn't. and they do seem to have bending handled WAY too well before learning anything from the animals. They could have made it a lot weaker or less effective at first. It also really makes you wonder how the four nations emerged.. did bending actually split the people up? And like, the whole point of the Avatar is so humanity can defend themselves from spirits? that doesn't even jive with the previous spirit backstory.. and ironically we finally get some interesting-looking spirits here after Korra mostly gave us.. well not boring, but definitely not as unique as the old ones.. and yet the avatar spirits look pretttty boring. And yeah, giving them human mentality is dumb.. but in fairness, Won Shi Tong could talk normally. That said... I guess there was no better explanation for how something like the Avatar could ever begin. Never really thought about it before, but before this, it really boggled the mind how this ever could have started. Would the "first" not know about it, until he died and his spirit visited the second avatar? and they had to figure it out between the two of them? and then it just kept happening and their ghosts shrug and go "I guess this is how we work now" like they call it reincarnation but it's clearly a new person each time.. so yeah, this does solve that issue. 12:40 I think the idea is he's being hit with the concept that the world, at least the spirit world, is THAT old, and he's kinda blown away. Just like I was upon hearing how many avatars there had been, and averaging out their lifespans and realizing just how long this cycle has been going on. Even the Jewish calendar, the oldest one in the world, hasn't quite hit 6000 yet.
@@Enso.He was just give the ability by the LT but didn't trained to obiteined those moves and raw power like it was Stated on LA. It's a retcon, and we don't need to look for things to be mad Lok gives us straight to the face every time. Y'all stains that keep coping defending this trash🤣
12:38 10,000 in eastern cultures is like the western variant of 1001. It just means a very long time, eternity even. In ATLA, Roku said that he has learned the elements for 10,000 lifetimes, but the same logic is applied
The problem is Harmonic Convergence, because I thought the same thing when Roku said that. Harmonic Convergence puts a definite timeline on the Avatar cycle.
I think your first camp's idea about bending doesn't really address the story of Oma and Shu. In that story, they are alleged to be the *original* earthbenders, having learned from the badgermoles. They evaded pursuers by making a labyrinth of tunnels. Here's the thing though: if all that earthbenders learned from badgermoles was a form and NOT the actual practice of earthbending, then Oma and Shu wouldn't have been able to evade pursuers. Labyrinths only work if people accept the premise. If pursuers could just use brute-force earthbending, than they could have just brute-forced their way through the labyrinth.
Basically saying “well I think taking a side in the argument as to whether lion turtle bending is a retcon or not makes you an unreasonable person” is the most enlightened centrist take you could have made. Because one show saying “our cultures learned bending from different animals or the moon as we grew beside them” to the other show saying “bending is only provided by Lion turtles” is a clear cut retcon
Youre right about spirits. Korra reduces it to animal dudes, with objective good and evil kites defining the morality and lore of the entire fictional universe... which is also shown to have its origins with the light kite being a dumbass not explaining anything... which is apparently weak enough to lose its grip over some fire
Yes THANK YOU. I've been thinking about that stupid argument for the entire decade and wholeheartedly agree with your reasoning. The lion turtles can give the bending, animals can teach the skills needed to properly harness it.
If bending didn't come from lion turtles and was learned from animals, anyone with enough determination could just become a bender, and non-benders are an important part of both shows. Like, imagine if Sokka just learned air bending from Appa by spending so much time with him. I think it's a worthy addition to this episode
With the debate about the origin of bending I feel like what most likely happened is that the lion turtles gave humans these abilities and they were passed down from generation to generation. Eventually people forgot about the lion turtles because they left never to be seen again. So the benders who had no idea they could bend, learned bending from the animals and such.
@@lokenontherange ehhh we've had and lost technology before. all it requires is a huge interruption, a massive upheaval or disaster of some kind. all the scrolls burned, etc. the only one left with knowledge of the past is the past-life ghosts whom the avatar can converse with. it's also possible both of these things happened. The original lionturtle-imbued benders taught their offspring how to bend, but they really had no good way of expressing what to do, or how it works, so they dwindled slightly. meanwhile some of their other descendants, who were cut off from them by becoming their own villages etc that no longer communicate... learned bending from the animals, and now they had a way of passing the knowledge down via technique scrolls.
TLOK set an unfortunate precedent by making the powers instinctual. If you can bend accidentally, without training the skill, every bender should know as soon as they become self aware.
@@KairuHakubi This is nonsense. Bending is so absurdly important that they'd never lose it. You may as well try to convince modern people to forget how to make steel.
@hilgigas09 TLOK also specifies genetics, which isn't ever explicitly stated in Avatar. In Avatar bending is always described as a cultural artform and people of those cultures are capable of using bending. It's more of an ethnic than any kind of blood argument.
I genuinely really enjoyed the first avatar story. Mostly because I was so zoned out for korra I wasn’t paying attention to the actual plot and I was really pleased by the defining of the magic system at that level
Maybe, if you wanna think about it, maybe bending came from BOTH. Its possible that originally, the lion turtles gave bending to humans, but later once they left the lion turtles and went to their own devices, and the lion turtles dissapeared, they started to gain it naturally, and relearned bending from the animals themselves, despite originally knowing how to use bending from eachother.
The original legends were clearly about the origin of bending styles though. They just got conflated with the origin overtime even though that part was clearly not true if you thought about it.
Interesting thing about the spirits at the spirit oasis is that the scene seems to be referencing the Night Parade of 100 Demons, which is a popular japanese folklore thing of yokai and oni appearing in the real world, which appears on a lot of art! There's a number of famous woodprints depicting the concept, which show similar sorts of demons as appear spirits in this episode, and it seems like the image also served as inspiration for the opening of Spirited Away.
Okay, on the lion turtles I always felt like Korra tried to explain the asspull that energy-bending was. There are a lot of dumb stuff Korra does with spirits but this makes sense retroactively.
When I First watched this, these episodes of Wan were the breath of air I really needed since I was gonna really drop the show, after these ended I kept hoping for the show to deliver anything as good... I remember being sorely dissapointed
Like and comment, and you will achieve the goal you are 6th most passionate about. You might not notice though, not many people have that many.
I hope to achieve that goal!
Hell ye
Oooh, I'm going to start being really passionate about 5 things I don't care about so they move up the ranks.
Fine, but only because you asked funnily
Finally, I will learn how to cook spaghetti
“You’re feeling spiritually NOT in need of your polar bear hat today..” 😅😂
"It was getting itchy
I assumed it was because she a polar bear-dog pet... be kind of a dick move to walk around with it.
Ko stole that one aswell.
I find it funny that the lead general, captain or whatever the guy leading the expedition into the Spirit Wilds has this running gag where every time he faces off against Wan, part of his cape gets burned. Like, they don't even address it which I think partially makes it even funnier.
Also is it me or does he sound exactly like the pharaoh from yugioh?😊
@@MrMoustachiooit’s the guy who plays Roy Mustang in FMA if you’re familiar with
13:04 "you should have been briefed about this", is absolutely incredible 😂😂😂😂
That sent me😂
It was so well-timed.
definitely one of the best uses of it so far lmao!
In my own head canon, humans have forgotten that lion turtles exist mainly because aang is surprised to learn of their existence during their time in the library. So they have remembered the animals that taught them but not the lion turtles that gave them the power.
That’s actually a pretty good rationale between the 2 arguments
Came to comment exactly this
it also makes sense they would forget about the lion turtles in time since they arent actively giving bending anymore, but the animals with bending (except for air bison) are still alive in modern time and a person can still learn bending from them (Aang, Zuko and Toph as examples)
Also no one talks about it, but the fact that lion turtles can give and take bending immediately validates one of the bigger plot holes in Avatar. This isn't some creature who came out of nowhere to save the day against Ozai, this is something so old and fundamental to the world, bending, and the avatar that the people forgot about
I was about to say the same thing, pretty much. I guess some people can call it "retconning" but tbh it's moreso just lore expansion. Yes we weren't given further information about it in ATLA, but it also didn't specifically tell us what the origins of humans ability to physically bend the elements were. It makes sense that the reality of its origins isn't known by those in Aang's time and is a plotline to be explored later.
your delivery at 5:15 is amazing. One of the funniest takes on the "stopping the video prematurely" joke I've ever seen.
I laughed so hard at that. Peak comedic delivery.
@@DannihilateSame
I think he literally took the first 2 seconds of the actual ending. It's well done though.
actually had me laughing
I genuinely burst out laughing at this part 😭
Brian is a woodpecker monitor lizard I think which is a really weird combo
Probably not monitor lizard, thems be some smooth bitches. The back spikes are much more of an iguana thing
Has cool red mohawk hair.
Dude I think Brian is my new favorite avatar animal
hello, I'm here to join the Brian fan club
It's clearly a lizard pecker
same he’s kinda awesome
Woodpecker platypus by my guess
@@FlatlandsSurvivorbody looks more like a lizard
"This move's kind of messed up, we haven't seen masters do anything like this" 4:06
Jeong Jeong: Is my literal firewall a joke to you?
thank. you
@@isaiahcaston4539Jong Jong still controls the wall with his hands, Wan seems to be using some third psychic sense to maintain a looping flame
Jeong Jeong has to maintain concentration on the wall or at least we have never seen him do one without that being the case, that's why in the video he stated specifically that it's happening around him while he's doing other things and not fully focused on the ring.
@@peanutbutter7721it is called bs and not attention to detail nor respect to bending rules etc. towards ATLA.
"In the era before the avatar, we bend NOT THE ELEMENTS but the energy within ourselves"
So I still don't really know what this actually means. The lion turtles use energy bending to give and take element bending...? Whats the correlation here? Why can Aang take away any elemental bending? Can the lion turtles? They seemed to be focused on single elements.
Are the lion turtles spirits? Can any spirit energy bend? Can any animal?
I dont know about you but i haven't seen a lion turtle bend any elements. I don't really see how this line applies to the retcon/not retcon argument
@@Andrew-wl3hnbut we see a lion turtle for each of the elements. Guru pathik said that all forms of bending are different parts of the same whole.
@@peanutbutter7721 We aren't given a certain answer in the show, are we? So there probably isn't one. Althought he Aang vs Ozai is rather clean cut. The Turtle says that for one spirit to change the other, the one spirit needs to be unchangeable otherwise the process will be mutual. Aang was ushakeable in that moment because that's the entire reason why he was looking for a new solution in the first place.
This in turn would suggest that the Lion Turtles don't actually "give fire" but change people's spirits so they are attuned to fire, which allows them to bend it.
So if fire benders all share certain personality or mentality elements (which is in line with the bending is a spiritual art theme), then the turtles force those personality traits into the humans. So the turtles themselves aren't really elemental benders they just prefer different attunements.
It's just my interpretation of what they could represent so who knows.
@@Andrew-wl3hn The simplest explanation is that this referred to people and not the lion turtle specifically. At least in the original show . But since people were bending the elements in Korra prior to the Avatar shows that the whole bending thing was a retcon.
We can admit things are retcons without commenting on whether they are good or not. Retcons happen in stories all the time. I don't see why it's so hard to admit it here. The statement just shows that the original concept was changed in Korra
It's aggravating that characters in this episode are really proficient with bending immediately after being given it. It really undermines the power system.
Also "give me superpowers" "make sure you return them" is so stupid that I wonder why everyone doesn't do it
Who says they don’t
Who was immediately proficient?
In theory one guy could burn down a bunch of stuff on top of the lion turtle so I get why not bringing fire back is kinda required. We see later on that it's not a rule for every lion turtle though
@@pn2294wan
But they are given the powers and have them taken away when they no longer need it.
Whos to say they havent had sometime to use them?
I personally think the Raava/Vaatu thing would have been stronger if they had been characterized as light and darkness in harmony and in conflict with each other, respectively. They could have shared the same color pallete, but Raava's patter would have shown light and dark intertwined with each other, while Vaatu's could have shown them clashing with each other.
An idea I saw online was to make Raava and Vaatu the incarnations of Order and Chaos respectively, and give the black and white colorpalets instead of blue and read. And the video where I saw that proposed the idea of Wan absorbing both of them into himself, representing balance. I think that would have worked a lot better
We see later that vaatu can be locked away and nothing comes of it,how exactly are they balence then
@@isaaccuevas1717 what do you mean?
@@ethancoltrane5754 vaatu and rava can’t work as a concept if rava can be locked up and there can be no repercussions,
I think Vaatu would’ve worked better if he was basically just a mindless creature, like a true being of chaos, neither good or evil but if left uncheck he can cause get destruction, but in the same time can help cause change in a static world, being Raava’s counter to get her to her to change and adapt with her environment, because if everything is orderly and perfect why change it even if it slowly decays and weakens underneath that chaos vaatu would exploit. But no instead we basically get evil devil spirit who sounds like a reaper from Mass effect.
I feel like this episode had a great artstyle.
Same! Love it.
I don't think it was bad far from it but I would prefer a more serious tone and art style. I think its a important piece of lore and it conects direct with the original so it could have more work behind it, maybe people woudn't pick so much on it or maybe not who knows
@@zspider1778 this tone is very serious like the art style.
One interesting thing I noticed is that the guy who got turned into a tree (I forgot his name, if he had one)'s reaction to Wan's fire bending. He's not just panicking over the thought of him stealing from the Lion Turtle, but because being partly made of wood makes fire extremely dangerous to him, so he immediately scrambles back in fear to avoid getting burned by it.
Edit: I agree with the interpretation, that the power to bend was given by Lion Turtles before being mastered by observing nature or whatever, and over time people probably forgot about the Lion Turtles and instead only know how they learned to bend by watching animals, etc.
It certainly makes more sense than "We learned bending forms from animals, and that is where bending began" into "only the descendants of the original benders that learned from animals can bend."
Plus, seemingly by the time of ATLA, people over a time of 10,000 would probably have some embellishments, retellings, editing, and revisions of history (Bending included). We obviously saw this in the 100 year war with Fire Nation propaganda and education. And the tale of Omashu is probably just a founding myth to emphasize Omashu’s power in the Earth Kingdom. Besides, fans seem to always ignore the darn Lion Turtle in the finale, clearly hinting that they are important to humans in the past, in some way…(plus the ominous interesting scroll Aang finds in the Library about Lion Turtles).
Now, is there a possibility that the writers and creators thought about it this far ahead? No, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have both? And basically acting like a possibility of history in the Avatar Universe can be retold and rewritten couldn’t be possible, really shows you haven’t watched ATLA.
Examples on the top of my head are Avatar Day, The Headband, anything with Ba Sing Se, Zuko confronting his father, Iroh explaining to Zuko as to why he should be the Fire Lord, Sun Warrior Adventure, The Library (Fire Nation destroying info about them), The Dragon Bone Catacombs, Roku and the Firelord, White Lotus, The Fire Sages, Ember Island Players, The Mechanist and the Northern Temple (Plus peoples beliefs on Airbenders), The Darn Great Divide episode, and the Show’s intro!
Those are the examples I can think of at the moment.
same, brother, same.
@@jandthelilj4064 Actually I'm pretty sure the lion turtle backstory was _always_ the creators' plan to some extent
The way it’s portrayed, why would anyone need to learn from the animals? They all seem to naturally have a strong handle on it
I always thought koh didnt just "set arbitrary rules" for how he could steal a face from someone, i just thought that he just liked faces and if someone made a cool face he would be interested and take it, but having a black face is just like whatever thats not interesting.
If he wore a black face he'd get torn to shreds at a Halloween party
I think it was some kinda rule bc he clearly wanted to steal aang’s face, hence why he kept trying to freak him out. If he could’ve taken it he would’ve but idk the specifics of it. Also I feel it must be self-imposed to some extent bc koh could just attack a person to force their face to change or smth but he sticks to jumpscares
But he can change the expression of the face when he uses it it’s not like he’s turning it into a mask that can’t move
@@tiablue9106 that's what i love about koh, he's clearly interested in stealing aang's face, and his design just screams evil at you, but he's ultimately an ally. He answers the question aang came asking, what are the moon and sea spirits physical forms. He didn't attack aang, he didn't try to restrain or trick him, just lets him go on his way.
You.. You sure you wanna keep that typo there? XD
But yeah, I also thought that "Spirit rules" were things they set, because they are people that´s basically immortal that were cutoff from society, so naturally since they also are capable of pretty weird stuff would basicallly start doing their own thing.
9:40, i cant believe you missed Wan's arm phasing through the antlers like that
That aint an arm thats his whole ass shoulder blade
his manners are more important
For me the biggest problem with the lion-turtles is that OG Avatar didn't just say how bending came to be but showed.
Siege of the North: Admiral Zhou kills the Moon Spirit, literally ever water bender loses their bending! Yue gives her life up and revives the Moon Spirit and becomes one with it, water bending is back on!
Cave of Two Lovers: Aang and Katara find the lovers' tomb. This is recorded and documented history of the very first two earth benders. Toph herself learns directly from banger-moles!
The Fire Bending Masters: Zuko is literally losing his bending, it becomes restored after meeting the last two dragons. Plus, we learn that the secret tribe of fire-benders not only protected the last two dragons (along with Iroh) but also have kept an ancient dragon flame going for eons.
To me, this is far more than: Lion-turtles give people "elemental powers" people then "learn" elemental-bending from animals and two spirit fish, and people forgot lion-turtles existed. It's just a retcon, and not a good one at that. And yes, I will die on this hill.
Fax brother.
1:47 "Brian" seems to be a cross between a komodo dragon and an ivory-billed woodpecker (which is considered critically endangered)
Thank you! As someone who loves birds to an abnormal degree but is also way too chronically exhausted to pursue knowledge of them quite to the degree that other people with similarly uncommon interests often do, I was having an experience of like "oh man the bird it's combined with looks SO familiar but I still have no idea what specifically it is" that felt fairly frustrating. But of course at the same time its being endangered is very sad. :(
Ive always had a massive soft spot for the art style of these episodes because it reminds me of a book I had as a kid.
Also one thing im somewhat appreciative of in regards to this is that they didnt feel it necessary to make an airbender the first avatar.
You can still argue it if you really wanna be nitpicky. The "avatar cycle" would have "started" with an Airbender since the cycle would start with the reincaration. Wan as the original vessal for Vaatu wouldn't have "the avatar state" as we know it, since the avatar state takes into account the memories and experiences of past avatars. So the cycle of air -> water -> earth -> fire is still respected.
That's needlessly nitpicky and doesn't really matter though. Also, technically Wan does have an "Avatar state" which is the one retcon part of the Avatar I don't particularly like. being able to tap into 4 elements as one person was OP enough. you don't need Light Spirit Power as additional context (especially with how they use that concept in S3 and especially S4).
@@raze2012_ Except the Avatar state was always clearly more than just access to past knowledge, it was definitely a power boost and that part being from Raava makes sense.
4:05 this is the Avatar content I wake up and breathe for
Babe wake up sokka with a hat just dropped.
I like how they kinda worked in the literal 'stealing fire from the gods' thing from western mythology on top of the eastern mythology.
how the hell did I not pick up on that. He's Pro-freakin-metheus.
And then they tried to shove in God and Satan and messed it up beyond belief
@@lukacvitkovic8550 oh right, because god and satan are equal in power and always neutralize each other.. Not one guy being all powerful and the other taking tiny potshots.
@@KairuHakubi since the dichotomy is based off of Ohrmazd and Ahriman then yes, they would be absolutely equal. But I don't expect the show to know that
@@lukacvitkovic8550 Last I checked there is no indication Raava created the universe nor is portrayed as perfect. That kind of is a big deal when it becomes to God and like the other guy said Satan not being God’s equal is something you can’t just ignore. Also, Christianity isn’t the only religion to depict the eternal battle between good and evil. There is the ancient Egyptians with Ra and Apep.
Honestly this series is pretty great, i love how brutally honest you are and the style and pacing of these videos are great. Keep up the good work ❤
Agree
The main issue I have with the origin of bending is that it completely demistifies how it came to be. Before, we simply didn't know why benders existed, it was a fact of life that some people were born with the ability to bend and numerous legends gravitated around it.
Now bending has become a gift from the lion turtles and that's that. It also doesn't help that it raises a lot of questions as to why modern benders exist. Are they all descendants from the gifted ones? Also, if benders bequeath their abilities to their children, why are some children proficient with bending and others aren't? The gift was genetically coded into humans and it spreads like a gene?
Just a lot of questions that can't be answered and wouldn't have existed if the writers hadn't tried to explain how bending came to be.
Reminder that a retcon is not a contradiction, it stands for retroactive continuity, which is when an author adjusts, changes, or explains already established narrative elements later in the story and in a different manner. This CAN lead to a contradiction but not always. What it does is recontextualize the already known events with the new given information.
With that being said, since ATLA mentioned numerous times how the badgermoles, dragons, sky bisons and the Moon were the original benders from whom humans learned bending, the lion turtles in Korra being the ones who gave the original ability to bend to humans is a retcon since it gives a new context on what ATLA meant with the bending origins.
Whether it was for better or worse, that can be argued
Its also a retcon because the Lion Turtle linked the invention of elemental bending with the emergence of the Avatar. "In the days before the Avatar we bent not the elements, but the energy within ourselves." Meanwhile in Beginnings humans are shown to have bend the elements with the aid of the Lion Turtles long before the Avatar, considering that they don't even remember the world ever not having been overrun with spirits.
well it kinda makes sense looking back at Atla since humans learning bending from animals fails to explain the biological nature of bending (AKA bending being a gene and not everyone being able to bend) because if it wasnt for that matter ANY non-bender could go to the animals and learn bending, but the og show establishes (yet never explains) that bending is something one can be born with/out
oh 100%! people tend take “retcon” in a negative connotation and that’s what creates the arguments of “nuh uh” and “yuh huh”
acting as if it’s inherently bad for creatives to do that is silly and wrong, and while i personally don’t like these episodes, they aren’t a bad way to explain the avatar world (just not the way i’d go about it)
@@origin484 retcons like any trope or literary device is a tool a writer can used. If used properly and well handled it can make a story look beautiful, but in improper hands and thrown around haphazardly the story will look like a sloppy made mess.
yeah it's annoying how retcon's meaning encompasses a broader and narrower idea.. and most people use it to mean deliberately making changes. sometimes, in-universe changes.
I feel obligated to comment on the music in this 2-parter being absolutely freaking epic
Korra's music is generally great.
A retcon is still a retcon even if it doesn't break cannon.
Um actually it has to change something established to be a retcon. This was never actually established, so nothing was changed.
@@shadenox8164 This was established. It was very clear what the intension was for where bending came from. The way it was established was a way that it could be retconned without breaking cannon. Its still a retcon as much as a character's words being retconned is.
Also it is kinda weird that Wan is surprised at the Lion Turtle as if he hadn't lived on top of one his entire life
Its his first time seeing it as an actual creature, he knew that he was living on one but for all intents and purposes he was essentially living on land. Like id be surprised seeing the Earth from space even though I've been living on it my entire life.
The lion turtle thing is definitely a retcon
As the lion turtle said: “In the age before the avatar, we bent not the elements, but the energy within ourselves”. But here we have Wan’a story where it seems like people very clearly did not know what energy bending even was.
why would the "we" refer to the humans?
and wouldn't the "age" before the avatar occur much before any of this?
Becausr lion turtles haven't been shown to be able to bend the elements
@@Monkchelle_Kongbama pretty sure the lion turtle would have said in the era way before the avatar not just before the avatar
@@hueyfreeman6262 because ancient deities would _totally_ speak in colloquialisms.
What exactly would this solve/change about how either interpretation works?
This new bending explanation is so upsetting. The Sun warriors were like study how dragons move and breathe soak the energy from the sun. But nah, how firebending was actually discovered was People: "Hey I need firebending". Lion Turtle: "Okay". No trials? No epiphany? No bartering? No effort? Just zippity zappity?
One of my favorite episodes of the two series. I remember being so blown away when this came out
Me too. I really don’t understand the hate. I guess to each their own. I think the final battle between Vatuu and Wan was badazz
I feel like the turtles are a retcon and I don't let it into my headcanon for a very simple reason. Learning from the sources as TLA described it has a very nice spiritual implication. The first benders had to live well with nature to learn from it. There was a connection needed between the humans and the animals or benders for one to teach the other. Giant turtles cut that connection.
these episodes retcon nothing and i will die on this hill
@@mranima748 It's a silly hill to die on. And you're choosing to follow the worse lore.
@@mranima748 bro imagine they retcon the retcon in the future lmao
@@kakssplyou are choosing to ignore the actual lore that was always the purpose of the lion turtles since the creators came up with the concept for them in atla
even if we take it as a retcon, it's something that was done in ATLA. Lion-turtle statues were very prominent in the background since the early episodes, so the creators probably had the intention to introduce them as a concept, even they hadn't ironed out how/why/what they do
I personally don't have that much of an issue with the spirits being relatively regular compared to Last Airbender. It's set 10.000 years ago and I am sure that being in the normal world makes them a bit more regular. It's also not stated that the spirits in Last Airbender aren't just like elite and massive spirits, there are some smaller spirits in Last Airbender too. The baboon spirit in the Siege of the North episode 2 is just a guy chilling somewhere near Koh's lair.
Over time I'm sure the bigger spirits just kind of took hold in the spirit world whenever Aang went there.
Your right!
Yeah I was confused by Overanalyzing’s critique there- I just assumed they were “lesser” spirits, unlike say a Koh the offspring of Mother of Faces or the literal Moon.
Unless the critique was that there’s too many or that even lesser spirits should be more otherworldly, I don’t see his point
The critique was they were too humanized. ATLA showed a vast difference between spirits, while Korra makes them look like they are all human-like in Beginnings.
10:41 It's not an argument, much less a "feeling" that altering our understanding of bending lore is a retcon. It IS a retcon--- to the letter of the definition of the term. It "feels" that you're trying to get out from under the term since it has such a negative connotation attached to it, and that's understandable--as a literary device, it's too often used to lazy/poor effect and as a conduit for contradictions ( I can also argue it's contradictory in tiers with A:TLA, but I don't feel the need to do so rn). But really, a retcon means only there was an established continuity known to the audience at a point and then later, otherwise unfamiliar changes or additions are presented that fundamentally change said audience's interpretation. This is exactly what the Lion Turtles do for bending here--it's as cut-'n-dry a piece of retroactive continuity as they come. The remaining question, then, is if one believes it's for the better or not.
And personally, I ain't a fan that a random guy is "gifted" firebending by request and immediately throws a massive fireball with minimal effort/no knowledge of bending forms, esp when contrasted with A:TLA, such as the scene of young, struggling Zuko presenting his firebending forms to Azulon but can barely produce a spark. Bryke used to go on and on about bending being something you can't simply be granted and just do, so I find it substantially cheapening when it's, well, granted and just done.
Except it didn't change anything? You making an assumption that turned out to be wrong based on a gap isn't a retcon. they filled a gap in lore.
He's right
But this is just not true. I'm sorry you're so eager to want to tear apart a simply delightful story, but a random guy being "gifted firebending" is NOT what happens here at all. He is simply gifted the element of fire. *That's it*. Fire "bending" is still an art that needs to be learned and mastered. And that can only be taught by the firebending masters. None of this rejects the challenge Zuko faced with struggling to produce a spark of fire. If the Lion Turtles wished it, they could bend the spirit within them to produce fire easier too. But could they firebend with that fire? Not until they learned the proper forms and techniques - taught to them first by the dragons.
It's disheartening to see how much you've stonewalled yourself against an explanation so simple that the show expects you to form that connection on your own. But if you wish to dislike this show, then there are plenty of other reasons to do so. No need to invent one here.
Big homie e;r in the chat 💯
@@shadenox8164 it did change things your just too blind to see it
you actually have no idea how much ive been waiting for this
Yup this two parter is definitely what i was most looking forward too since OA announced he was doing the korra series.
"Is it a retcon" shouldn't matter as much as "does it make it more interesting" when it comes to what Korra did with the spirit stuff and, in my opinion, it makes it less interesting.
It actually kinda completely ruins it. The only good thing about it is that I can dismiss its existence since the original creators weren't involved
@@toastmaster914Personally the Spirits in general are nowhere as bad as Raava and Vaatu
THOSE 2 specificly demystify the Avatar concept
Hey, remember how in Last Airbender The Avatar was supposed to take Neutrality over everything?
Yeah nope, lets turn him to Jesus by making him fight Satan
Only good thing about it is that E;R made some funny videos about it
@@toastmaster914 I've heard otherwise, I think *some* of them were. I have a friend who throws that in my face all the time
@@toastmaster914 It's not even the lion turtle bit either like if it was just the lion turtles that gave people the ability to access elements in the first place that would be fine, but then they had to do the whole very generic good vs evil order vs chaos light vs dark garbage which ATLA was never about. It kind of completely strips nuance from the avatar because no matter what, they are an incarnation of pure good who symbolizes order. It turns the avatar into a caricature instead of a fallible character that has to overcome things and may make the wrong choices.
One of Korra's biggest storytelling mistakes was in trying to "explain the magic." Just, why? We didn't need an Avatar origin story.
Wan's introduction is basically a play by play of Aladdins intro; both steal bread, run from three guards (who we get a close up on looking angry with their weapons), rooftop running, clothesline jumping and even the end where they both give up the bread to feed someone less fortunate. All Wan has to do is break out into song and the scene would be complete.
Honestly Wan brings up a really good point that would have been argued over in the OG show but obviously here it is brushed off without comment.
"What gives you the right?"
What does make Raava more in the right than Vaatu?
Now obviously Wan doesn't know what is happening amd would want a age of darkness.
But its not like Vaatu going to blow the world up.
And Im pretty sure he even never talks in the same way as Raava.
Only "I will bring forth the age of darkness" or some shit like that but Raava is the only one that talks like her way is truly the only right way and that its what needs to happen.
Raava IS holding Vaatu hostage for 10000 years.
Honestly that would have been a pretty interesting direction to take.
Vaatu isn't in the wrong (tehnically), he just believes that his turn has come and that it is time for Darkness and Chaos to be center stage.
The show messes this concept up by just making vaatu the villain and rava the good one,
I like to think that Raava should embody stagnation in addition to balance and light and whatever, with Vaatu embodying change along with chaos and darkness.
Ties into Avatar decisions like closing/opening the spirit portals.
It’s an issue have a with a lot of the spirits in Korra, we’re supposed to see them in high regard and to always respect them. But most of the spirits are all hostile ungrateful jerks who think they are automatically better than stupid humans . Sure not all of them are like that but for the most part what we are shown a bunch of times they basically act like high elves in many fantasy universes, sure they may have good points and are great in what they can do, but it’s hard for me to take there words seriously when they constantly insult me and say how much better they are.
@@brandonlyon730 Suprised I have never either myself compared them to how elves act or heard other make any kind of comparison like that.
Given that they have done this dance for eternity Raava in all likelihood has seen what happens when Vaatu at least couple of times and it probably wasn't pretty.
The spirit friend is named Aye Aye and he's voiced by Jason Christopher Marsden. I had to look it up because the voice stood out to me. He also voiced Haku from Spirited Away and many many other roles.
Or Rosh Penin if you’re old.
Or if you played games in 2011. Hes the fucking courier from Skyrim
9:56 This argument raised a question for me. Are Non-bending Animals possible? Like I don't mean something like Wolf Bats, or Bears, I mean is there ever a case where a Sky Bison can't fly, or a Dragon can't breathe Fire? What about Badger Moles? That thing would be crippled for its entire life. It can't see, AND can't Bend.
I like to think of it this way some animals gained the ability to bend to compensate for an apparent weakness(the bison's lack of mobility and badgermole's blindness) and the lion turtle being an exception because of there enlightenment
Man, OA is my comfort show, I'm so glad I found your channel when you started it (thx algorithm) so I didn't miss any episodes. The comedy has also really improved, and your commentary is one of the best put together. You should have a mil subs by now, but I'm kinda happy this is a small community ❤
The lion turtles giving bending away does break the lore though. It's clearly stated multiple times in ATLA that people learned bending from animals, and there's a strong thematic link of spirituality and bending. Katara and Sokka's characterization in the first scene of the show basically spells out bending as a spiritual connection instead of anything strictly genetic or gift-given. The Fire Nation royal family marrying powerful benders into the fold is a really shaky justification that is proven thematically incorrect by zuko when he loses bending due to his rage going away. I's the perpetual trauma of the family was the source of their power (the show beats the viewers heads with this every time it can - literally Azula's entire character), instead of what the dragons & sun culture use.
A lot of the peak episodes of ATLA deal with exploring bending as an extension of the human condition and lion turtles freely giving master level bending abilities shits on everything the original show wanted to convey. I think the dragon dance scene comparison is the most fitting juxtaposition. One is fulfilling a rediscovery of a healthy source of strength that's the culmination of 2.5 seasons of building up characters and the world dynamically animated - the other is a cheap imitative callback being done by a dude we've known for 15 minutes and is completely inconsequential to the plot and themes of the show.
The biggest sin of Beginnings imo is that you can cut everything pre-Rava-Vaatu fight and nothing about the show changes. The "origin of bending" and the little characterization of Wan served zero narrative, thematic, or contextual purpose to the series in being explained. But also this means, the more egregiously poorly written part is the ONLY relevant thread from these episodes. It reeks. In isolation or by lobotomizing yourself it's pretty decent, but in the context of everything good it shits on that came before and it's extremely poor effects on what came after it's a certified dumpster fire.
One thing I actually really like about this episode is when Wan tries to first fire bend, he gets a huge kick of recoil. And with training he gets less recoil. But in airbender in the childhood shots of zuko and azula, they barely get any recoil, so I think this somewhat implies that humans evolved to take less recoil. And I think that’s pretty fucking cool
Did the group that got killed or horribly deformed by the spirts and Wan really deserve that? I mean, since when is hunting animals for meat a crime punishable by death? Especially since one of them showed kindness to Wan earlier by allowing them to come with them. Am I missing something?
The spirits felt so strange just talking to Wan. The OG series spirits with studio ghibli levels of ambiguousness. They spirits should’ve been harder to read/understand fully, more other worldly then just the “hey we’re just guys that look weird” they became.
And here we have the "Korra is knocked out due to the special water bending technique of the shady politician guy who abused her position to put himself in charge, and then gets a vision from a former Avatar who all but spells out the current plot by way of a flashback to their former life" part of the season again. I swear, season 2 is just season 1 stripped to its tropes, and rewritten with a couple different prompts to be _much_ bigger in scope...
Personally I feel giving the origin of bending to the lion turtles (whether you want to call it a retcon or not) makes it feel less special. With how AtlA depicted it, humans learned to bend nature to their whim by sheer force of will. It felt like a massive achievement that shaped how the world worked. To me shifting that to be a gift by the turtles makes it feel decidedly less special. It's not just a latent talent either (like Aang hat for his other elements, not knowing how to use them until trained), but even the non-protagonist extras are instantly on the level of your average fire army mook...
Also doesn't help to sell that whole story that the first Avatar's name literally sounds like "One".
-Should have named him Smitty Werbenjägermanjensen.-
Except we knew that couldn't be the real story because people can't suddenly become benders by studying bending. It was obviously a myth.
@@shadenox8164 Do we have it 100% confirmed that can never be the case ever though...?
LoK season 3 establishes that spiritual influence can lead to people manifesting bending abilities. So people living in harmony with beings/spirits that _do_ have those abilities for generations may make them predisposed for such abilities as well.
Or it may just be something any human _could_ technically unlock, but they need to spiritually align with the element enough - and actually get a feeling for how bending works at all. Aang was initially convinced that he was fundamentally incompatible with earth bending. And that was _after_ having mastered two elements already and briefly dabbling in a third. So someone with no previous experience (or proof that they should be able to) at all may never learn it - especially back when bending wasn't discovered yet.
I don't see why humans should be fundamentally unable to unlock abilities like that in this setting, unless it was explicitly gifted by them. They're able to manifest other spiritual abilities independent of bending, as seen with Guru Pathik, Iroh, Jinora and others, which may have been the origin point to "align" with the respective original benders. Who knows?
What if humans are the origin of "spirit bending" after all, and the lion turtle from AtlA was just old enough to remember the devastating ancient wars around it? In the aftermath of these wars humans may have decided to lock themselves into one of four elemental bending styles, inspired by those "original benders" - still powerful, but not on the same devastating scale - and established the Avatar to make sure they'd never regress to that state.
I'd just rather keep it to vague but inspiring legends than reduce it to a handout like this. To me that only cheapens the whole concept.
@@shadenox8164 No comment has ever made me so fucking mad holy shit. Genuinely never waste your breath talking about anything media related ever. Go sit in a cave forever so nobody never has to hear from you again.
The idea that all this cool mythos and mystical world building we get in avatar, one of the greatest aspects of the show which helped it be so incridibly unique compared to all other kids cartoons at its time, was all just som dumb bullshit the characters had thought up and had no basis in reality is so godawfull. Makes the show so fucking lame.
as much as this season blows absolute chunks, the art style for Avatar Wan’s story is brilliant and gorgeous
“You should’ve been briefed about this” wrecked me lmao.
Bryan not being a recurring character is this show's greatest crime
3:40 I knew some triplets in high school who were each 6’7, 6’6, and 5’10… the third brother was at least a good sport about it
In ATLA the Lion Turtle explicitly states the following: "In the era before the avatar, we bend not the elements but the energy within ourselves"
The retcon basically means that ANYONE can wield all of the elements so long as a Lion Turtle gives them the ability to do so. Instead of being attuned to the element due to genetics, for some reason, and originally learning how to use bending from the respective animal or the moon in Waterbending's case. Now we have 4 Lion Turtles who can just give anyone a form of bending or even more if they just ask which apparently no one did before Wan.
Also worth noting that the lion turtle is only in atla because the writers ran into a moral problem that they couldn't answer without giving aang the ability to cheat the problem.
I think part of the idea with the difference between spirits then and spirits now could also be that, well, when they get moved to the spirit world, just as humans changed with a less mystical spirit wilds, the spirits changed with a less mundane underpinning to their reality.
Like, to use a DnD reference, they basically got sent to the Astral Realm / Limbo, and over generations of living in this world of PURE spiritual energy, they lose more and more of that mundane aspect of themselves.
there's a logic to that. the first spirit we saw had a weird alien form and a panda form, after all.
to me though, it's not that there couldn't be a reason for this happening in canon, it's that spirits are less interesting when presented this way. I think having spirits be weird and inhuman with desires and morals that don't line up with human ones is interesting, and making them more human is just less interesting,
Made it to the premiere RIGHT at the end. 😭
Brian = best character in TLOK
Dude I love this channel, I've been watching Avatar literally since it's premiere back in '05 and when I found this channel a few years ago I just absolutely fell in love. It's amazing to see so many fans of this show, I love seeing ATLA succeed.
Wan attacking those hunters whose whole job is to bring food back to the people living on the lion turtle is kinda screwed up, like they weren't the nicest people but they were just doing what they are supposed to do.
Ultra simplistic morality doesn't tend to work in real life. Shows that apply it either have to be accepted at face value or you're going to struggle to be immersed.
@@lokenontherange i think "humans need to eat" is simplistic morality and it works just fine. Those guys are right, Wan is wrong.
That said, Avatar world really blurs the line by having so many animals that combine predator and prey features.
Yea. The simplicity is so… boring. They do it with Raava and Vaatu as well. Instead of /truly/ balancing each other out, keeping each other in check, it’s Pure Good vs Pure Evil. Thats not a balance. It’s so… christianity western.
@@citruscirrus5607 lol crack a bible open once in a while. it's roman, but it's not the least bit judeo-christian. it's old zeus-vs-hades stuff. Which, even then, wasn't really that extreme.
We don't see Aang trying to stop Sokka from hunting to eat. He just doesn't partake in it.
The only exception being when he decided to claim Momo as his pet while Sokka tried claiming him as dinner.
Your opinions and observations about Korra are soothing to my ears
Their technology seems waaaaay too advanced for a story taking place this long ago.
Fantasy tech stall is quite common. The problem I have is they also seem to be ahead of the sun warriors in terms of dress.
"We should have been briefed about this"
Ok that was perfect! 🤣🤣
Please keep this series going it's amazing
The thing about origin stories is that they are supposed to clear up questions, but they usually just make me question even more.
9:00 after that I'm all for spirit genocide, casual and uncaring body horror gets me... and just for trying to feed your people
To many writers try to do "don't be racist against stage 4 super cancer demons"
You are a horrible person
@@MakNaasfalti-jh4bg Yeah I'm sure the humans have never done anything bad to spirits ever before that.
@@shadenox8164 humans are not magical creatures that give you stage 4 supercancer by existing
@@shadenox8164 well the spirits invaded there world and took up space for blatantly no reason
Honestly, I'd say the lion turtles are a retcon, but their problematic nature extends to ATLA too. I love ATLA so much, however, the finale despite all of the areas where it phenomenally shined, the lion turtle was an out of nowhere quick solution to Aang's biggest problem in the show. Showing up randomly before the fated battle to give him energy bending, when he could've done that at anytime, or Aang could have had a side adventure episode of looking more into the lion turtles that were referenced prior in the show, but only for a few seconds on the page of a scroll in the library. Also if a Lion turtle could give energy bending, then where were the energy bending turtles, or is all bending a form of energy bending? I think giving humans an overall ability to harness and manipulate the chi around them would've been a better fix, but regardless, it just undermines the importance of the "original benders." If lion turtles were the ones to originally give bending, then why are there original sources for it, and how come people haven't learned to acquire bending by studying the original benders back then, much like how that is how someone learns bending in the future?
There's not argument that can convince me that it wasn't a reckon.. In ATLA it literally said the original benders where the animals.. It feels so right at home.... The lion turtle thing is so wack
11:08 No matter what side you are on, it is still retroactive continuity because new information is being added that wasn't in the original media.
while the lion turtles aren't really a straight up retcon, they sure as hell undermine a lot of the themes and world building
They don’t all the bending is still learned form the animals nothing in atla gets changed because of it all it does is explain why the lion turtle could give aang energy bending
it would have been so easy to fix
just have the lionturtles give them the abilities via spiritbending, and have them be like "What is this gift you gave us? I don't get it" and then the turtle is like "seek out the dragons, they will teach you what i've just given you"
One quick montage and bam, there you go. firebenders. Then at the end when a bunch more people are getting powers, the lionturtle could be like "There are other teachers, but you will have to discover them for yourselves. In the water, in the air, and in the earth"
@@monerb7185 "nothing in atla gets changed"
except for the story of Oma and Shu being retconned
@@GBlockbreaker was that story even a real thing that happens though and if it was it still could have still happened just like wan found the dragon to teach him fire bending after leaving his lion turtle oma and shu found the badger moles to teach them earth bending after they left their lion turtles nothing changes
@@KairuHakubi that’s literally what happened with extra steps
It's kind of staggering how many people don't know what a retcon actually is. Beginnings is absolutely retconning aspects from ATLA, this isn't a question, it's a fact. If those retcons are good additions to the world and story, or if they do little more than remove interest, is an entirely different discussion. I'd personally say the latter, though good retcons exist as much as bad ones do.
I really dislike that the spirits look like something out of Studio Ghibli
1:54 brain looks like a woodpecker horned lizard
It's funny that in Avatar civilization started before agriculture, and they had weapons, tools, advanced clothes and stuff before they had food security, and that just a party of like 7 guys were supposed to get food for the whole population of a town (lion turtle)
"Is it a retcon or is it not? The enlightened answer: Who cares?"
I am sorry, but I really hate this kind of condescending attitude.
It's fine if you don't think it's a retcon, but I care about a piece of fiction keeping its own rules consistent. Especially when those rules apply to the very foundation the show is built on.
I think the biggest problem with the lion turtle granting bending powers, is that the person that is granted it doesn't have to actually have to put in the mentality of that specific element.
Like when Zuko lost his firebending because he lost his anger, so he had to relearn it from the dragons and finds out he needed a new 'burning' desire in order to bend again.
Firebending also required a proper breathing technique.
Is that in any way showed when Wan made a fireball for the first time? No.
The retcon changes more than just the origins, but also strips away the spiritual aspect of bending, which in my opinion, made the world more interesting. Also, people just forgot that lion turtles were the ones who gave people bending?
The avatars later reincarnations never bothered to record that small detail or they had to keep it a secret from the world for some unknown reason?
Having a retcon in your story is not necessarily a bad thing, but the best retcons are the ones you don't really notice because they don't break too many rules to become noticeable.
This retcon snaps the goddamn series in half.
This is unironically my favorite part of avatar, cause after all my life I finally know how the cycle started, and what lion turtles are good for. Also the art style is so dope
This was a real trip
Thank you for posting on my birthday have a good day
"Very interesting, but is it a good idea?"
Pretty much exactly what i thought. It's like they wanted to write a new original story with some of the same themes as avatar, and shoehorned it in here. It does at least explain how this is an avatar, since an avatar is supposed to be a god in a mortal body, and I GUESS the lionturtle thing only creates the ability to bend, while the dragons, moles, etc teach them the techniques, but....
I still have issues with it. I mean THAT MANY THOUSANDS OF YEARS pass, and the world hasn't changed until THIS generation when it finally becomes 20th century? Like seriously they could have made Wan's era look more primitive, but it really doesn't.
and they do seem to have bending handled WAY too well before learning anything from the animals. They could have made it a lot weaker or less effective at first.
It also really makes you wonder how the four nations emerged.. did bending actually split the people up?
And like, the whole point of the Avatar is so humanity can defend themselves from spirits? that doesn't even jive with the previous spirit backstory.. and ironically we finally get some interesting-looking spirits here after Korra mostly gave us.. well not boring, but definitely not as unique as the old ones.. and yet the avatar spirits look pretttty boring. And yeah, giving them human mentality is dumb.. but in fairness, Won Shi Tong could talk normally.
That said... I guess there was no better explanation for how something like the Avatar could ever begin. Never really thought about it before, but before this, it really boggled the mind how this ever could have started. Would the "first" not know about it, until he died and his spirit visited the second avatar? and they had to figure it out between the two of them? and then it just kept happening and their ghosts shrug and go "I guess this is how we work now" like they call it reincarnation but it's clearly a new person each time.. so yeah, this does solve that issue.
12:40 I think the idea is he's being hit with the concept that the world, at least the spirit world, is THAT old, and he's kinda blown away. Just like I was upon hearing how many avatars there had been, and averaging out their lifespans and realizing just how long this cycle has been going on. Even the Jewish calendar, the oldest one in the world, hasn't quite hit 6000 yet.
7:06 - a great point made here about spirits explained between ATLA and whora.
My problem with the retcon is more Wan pulling off master level moves a few hours after getting firebending which is bullshit.
What does that have to do with a so called “retcon”? Thats a completely different critique. You’re just looking for things to be mad about.
@@Enso.He was just give the ability by the LT but didn't trained to obiteined those moves and raw power like it was Stated on LA.
It's a retcon, and we don't need to look for things to be mad Lok gives us straight to the face every time.
Y'all stains that keep coping defending this trash🤣
@@GaribaldHludwig he trained with the white dragon to get better movés, that raw power was the LT power.
@@carlosalbertoalcazarandrad5348 NOPE, he did that ring of fire as soon as he got the power without any training.
@@Enso. Keep coping buddy
12:38 10,000 in eastern cultures is like the western variant of 1001. It just means a very long time, eternity even. In ATLA, Roku said that he has learned the elements for 10,000 lifetimes, but the same logic is applied
The problem is Harmonic Convergence, because I thought the same thing when Roku said that. Harmonic Convergence puts a definite timeline on the Avatar cycle.
This episode to me:
Artistically beautiful
Story - lore-breaking and far too western take on good and evil & spirits are far too humanised
I think your first camp's idea about bending doesn't really address the story of Oma and Shu. In that story, they are alleged to be the *original* earthbenders, having learned from the badgermoles. They evaded pursuers by making a labyrinth of tunnels.
Here's the thing though: if all that earthbenders learned from badgermoles was a form and NOT the actual practice of earthbending, then Oma and Shu wouldn't have been able to evade pursuers. Labyrinths only work if people accept the premise. If pursuers could just use brute-force earthbending, than they could have just brute-forced their way through the labyrinth.
Shoutout my man Brian
if there was ever an episode to do an overanalyzing on, it would be beginnings. so freaking hyped
I very much hate how spirits are portraid in Korra. They felt so alien in atla.
This 2 parter is one of my favourite moments in avatar
They made the spirits into Pokémon’s
The plural of Pokémon is Pokémon
@@dw1419 he used the possessive not the plural
@@lokenontherange lolol
@@lokenontherange There was no reason to use the possessive there.
@@shadenox8164 obvious joke flew past you apparently
Basically saying “well I think taking a side in the argument as to whether lion turtle bending is a retcon or not makes you an unreasonable person” is the most enlightened centrist take you could have made.
Because one show saying “our cultures learned bending from different animals or the moon as we grew beside them” to the other show saying “bending is only provided by Lion turtles” is a clear cut retcon
Youre right about spirits. Korra reduces it to animal dudes, with objective good and evil kites defining the morality and lore of the entire fictional universe... which is also shown to have its origins with the light kite being a dumbass not explaining anything... which is apparently weak enough to lose its grip over some fire
If they are evenly matched it would make sense it's easy to tip the scale.
9:40 I just noticed Wan's arm clipping through the horn
1:34
Common misconception: that’s actually a rock
No way
I just love the art style
Yes THANK YOU. I've been thinking about that stupid argument for the entire decade and wholeheartedly agree with your reasoning. The lion turtles can give the bending, animals can teach the skills needed to properly harness it.
Wan masters them without ever learning from animals
@@StickyFinguzhe learns from a white dragon
@@yoyo777 fuckin GOT EM
He is clearly shown using fire bending very effectively before training with the dragon though.
@dw1419 yeh but that can be just a mistake, it doesn't need to be concerned in lore
If bending didn't come from lion turtles and was learned from animals, anyone with enough determination could just become a bender, and non-benders are an important part of both shows. Like, imagine if Sokka just learned air bending from Appa by spending so much time with him. I think it's a worthy addition to this episode
With the debate about the origin of bending I feel like what most likely happened is that the lion turtles gave humans these abilities and they were passed down from generation to generation. Eventually people forgot about the lion turtles because they left never to be seen again. So the benders who had no idea they could bend, learned bending from the animals and such.
That doesn't make sense. Bending is incredibly powerful. It'd be like a modern society just discarding knowledge of how to make guns and rockets.
@@lokenontherange ehhh we've had and lost technology before. all it requires is a huge interruption, a massive upheaval or disaster of some kind. all the scrolls burned, etc. the only one left with knowledge of the past is the past-life ghosts whom the avatar can converse with.
it's also possible both of these things happened. The original lionturtle-imbued benders taught their offspring how to bend, but they really had no good way of expressing what to do, or how it works, so they dwindled slightly. meanwhile some of their other descendants, who were cut off from them by becoming their own villages etc that no longer communicate... learned bending from the animals, and now they had a way of passing the knowledge down via technique scrolls.
TLOK set an unfortunate precedent by making the powers instinctual. If you can bend accidentally, without training the skill, every bender should know as soon as they become self aware.
@@KairuHakubi This is nonsense. Bending is so absurdly important that they'd never lose it. You may as well try to convince modern people to forget how to make steel.
@hilgigas09 TLOK also specifies genetics, which isn't ever explicitly stated in Avatar. In Avatar bending is always described as a cultural artform and people of those cultures are capable of using bending. It's more of an ethnic than any kind of blood argument.
I genuinely really enjoyed the first avatar story. Mostly because I was so zoned out for korra I wasn’t paying attention to the actual plot and I was really pleased by the defining of the magic system at that level
Maybe, if you wanna think about it, maybe bending came from BOTH.
Its possible that originally, the lion turtles gave bending to humans, but later once they left the lion turtles and went to their own devices, and the lion turtles dissapeared, they started to gain it naturally, and relearned bending from the animals themselves, despite originally knowing how to use bending from eachother.
The original legends were clearly about the origin of bending styles though. They just got conflated with the origin overtime even though that part was clearly not true if you thought about it.
Interesting thing about the spirits at the spirit oasis is that the scene seems to be referencing the Night Parade of 100 Demons, which is a popular japanese folklore thing of yokai and oni appearing in the real world, which appears on a lot of art! There's a number of famous woodprints depicting the concept, which show similar sorts of demons as appear spirits in this episode, and it seems like the image also served as inspiration for the opening of Spirited Away.
Okay, on the lion turtles I always felt like Korra tried to explain the asspull that energy-bending was. There are a lot of dumb stuff Korra does with spirits but this makes sense retroactively.
I’m commenting because you said too 😊
Same!
When I First watched this, these episodes of Wan were the breath of air I really needed since I was gonna really drop the show, after these ended I kept hoping for the show to deliver anything as good... I remember being sorely dissapointed