Animation Review: Avatar Last Airbender, Legend of Korra

[W.E.B. Du Bois]

Avatar the Last Airbender is a Nickelodeon animated series that concluded its third and last season last year I believe. This is one of the better animations that has aired/been developed by Americans (I assume it was developed by Americans). It is a welcome change of pace from shitty animations that one used to and may still see on Cartoon Network. The series is about people who can manipulate one of four elements (water, air, fire, earth) called benders and the avatar who can bend all four. The world is divided into four nations with each nation specializing in one of the elements and the all-powerful avatar keeps the balance between the nations.

The main character is about 11 or 12 years old and he and his nation are based on Tibetan monks. I think this is one of the best cartoons ever made (all though I think the show seems to lose some of its magic in the third season as it appears to become more serious and drop a lot of its humor and freshness). There's a bit TOO much China-bashing in the show with China's first emperor being a short idiot who dies an ignominious death. Other than that, it's quality.

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A sequel to the show is currently being aired in its first season called The Legend of Korra. It takes place about 100 years after the first series and there's a new avatar who is female and older than the avatar in the first series. This animation has great drawn and computer-rendered animation, but the magic is gone. All the freshness of the first series is gone and this show lives in its shadow much like episodes 1 and 2 of the Star Wars prequels lived in the shadow of the first trilogy. It's decent enough to watch, especially if you liked the original.

[W.E.B. Du Bois]

My comment on the season finale of The Legend of Korra.

MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT

Filler space added to create a barrier.
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OK, so in the season finale Korra takes on Amon. There's several things that are wrong with the finale and the show in general:

* You never really give a shit about Korra or practically any of the characters in the show, which is very different from how most watchers liked most of the characters from Avatar The Last Airbender.

* The execution of Korra and the fire-bending guy getting together sucks.

* The first time they try to get together in the episode is stupid. She gives him a "not now" because she's lost her bending abilities. Wow, how romantic. Your love means so much to me, I gotta go feel sorry for myself before I can acknowledge it.

* The unraveling of Amon was pathetic. Amon was both cool and powerful, yet he goes out on a whimper, making an irrational bad judgment to trust his younger brother and having no plan for the future except for pie in the sky.

* The conversion of the bad younger brother into a sympathetic figure lacked credibility and just didn't sit right. The guy was pure evil and now he's the good guy/victim. No, it doesn't work that way. Good and evil should have a little bit more inelasticity and inertia than that. A bad guy, even with a good beginning, should stay mostly bad in a show (see the Batman character Two Face).

* Whatever happened to all the reinforcements on United Army ships? They bring 8 or so battleship full of benders and those dudes are just gone.

* Why does the admiral refer to the old avatar as if he was familiar with him? This is never made clear. His reasoning for following Korra was also dumb: "my grandfather trusted the avatar, so will I." I see how he got to be an admiral. Is the admiral Zhuko's son or grandson? Logically an admiral would be old, so he should be his son, but he looks so young that he could be Zhuko's grandson. Oh well.

My biggest complaints were the crappy romance and how Amon just went out like a total punk.


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