The Legend of Korra Reviews- “The Coronation”, “The Calling” and ” Enemy at the Gates”

I need this made into a t-shirt. Like right now.

All right, I’m assuming everybody reading this has watched the three most recent Korra episodes, because, I mean, what the hell would you be reading this for if you hadn’t? So, instead of doing my usual blurb about the pot, I’m just going to do a point form list of anything that interested me about the three episodes. Starting with the coolest character this show has had:

• Toph Beifong is a freaking badass. Even at age 100 or whatever, she is still so damn cool. I’ve never been a giant fan of her “twinkle toes” catchphrase, because I find that really juvenile (I know, I know, it’s a kids’ show), but otherwise, she acts just like she did when she was a kid, unlike Katara, who is basically just filling the stock roles of “wise old lady” and “convenient healer” whenever she appears. Also, kudos to the voice actress (Philece Sampler) for really making the character sound like she did when she was twelve, except, you know, old. I do hope she comes back later in the season, I think it’d be real cool to have her beat the crap out of Kuvira. Or anybody, really.
• So, Kuvira turned out to be the bad guy,to absolutely no one’s surprise. Continuing the trend in Korra of having villains that aren’t just blubbering madmen, Kuvira is…. Unsavoury, but she does make some good points. Yeah, the uniting of the Earth Kingdom is a good idea, and it’s probably best that technology and a progress are prioritized over an outdated, unegalitarian monarchy, and yes, the Earth Empire does reward the territories it unites with food, prosperity, etc. So yeah, Kuvira does seem like a pretty legit ruler… Until you realize that you just justified the aggression of this world’s equivalent of Hitler or Mussolini.

Erde Reich über alles!!!

• Yeah, as good as those things are, replacing an indifferent monarch with a super-controlling fascist is really not the best move you can make. Speaking of which, I really liked Prince Wu’s interactions with Mako and his character development as a whole. Just as Kuvira is a fairly accurate representation of a leader who will unhesitantly go to extremes to preserve her power, Wu is an accurate representation of somebody who wants to be in power because of the prestige that the position would bring him (Think Marie-Antoinette, I guess).
• Mako and Bolin are kinda breaking my heart. Bolin’s endearing stupidity got the better of him, and, once again, Mako couldn’t talk him out of doing something really stupid. I get so sad when Mako and Bolin are fighting, because they’re so close, and they’ve been through so much shit together that it can be upsetting when they don’t see eye to eye. And yeah, Mako may have the moral high ground in this case, but Bolin so wants to believe that Kuvira’s cause is just, and that he’s helping people, but then, he comes to his senses too late, and off he goes to a re-education camp. Speaking of which…
• DAMN YOU ZHU LI!!! VARRICK GAVE YOU EVERYTHING AND YOU THREW IT ALL AWAY, AND FOR WHAT?!?!!?!?! YOU BITCH!!!! YOU HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE BITCH!!!!
• When I first started watching Korra, Meelo was one of my least favourite characters, because as much of an immature man-child as I am, fart jokes seemed really out of place on a show that contains military coups, political assassinations and a teenage girl getting crippled. However, partway through the second season, I warmed up to him. He has, to date, one of my favourite lines in the series (“Look to your left, look to your right” etc….). However, he’s definitely better as a supporting character than as the main focus of an episode, as he was in “The Calling” along with his sisters, as I found that he just got grating once again. I think I’ll end up just fine with him now that he’s (probably) not going to star in any more episodes.
• Also, is it just me, or does the voice actor for Meelo (Logan Wells) sound a little young for the character?
• Lastly, I’m really digging Korra’s journey back into Avatar-dom. A minor complaint of mine is that, after wisely avoiding this trait in the third season, Korra almost fell into the fatal flaw from the first two seasons, in which she temporarily joined the side of the devils (Tarrlok’s Anti-Equalist squad and Unalaq’s invasion of the Southern Water Tribe) until she came to her  senses. It kinda looked for a while that Kuvira may have swayed Korra to her side and, yeah, it looks like Korra’s convinced in part that joining the Empire would be best for the city of Zaofu, but she’s clearly more interested in peace than any ideological bullshit. I dunno, the show’s done a great job so far, so I have faith that it won’t descend into the mediocrity that plagued parts of the first two seasons.

“The Coronation”: 4.5/5

“The Calling”: 4/5

“Enemy at the Gated”: 4.5/5

The season so far: 9.0/10

The Legend of Korra Reviews- “After All These Years” and “Korra Alone” (SPOILERS)

Holy crap! Flying squirrel suits!!!

So, at long last, I’ve caught up with Legend of Korra and have reviewed the first two episodes of the fourth and final season, titled “Book 4: Balance”.

The Avatar franchise: sub-titling its seasons before American Horror Story ever did.

First, a little background. The Legend of Korra is a Nickelodeon animated series that debuted in 2012. It is a sequel to the legendary animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender, which is my third favourite television show of all time, after Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones, not necessarily in that order.

Legend of Korra takes place around seventy years after the events of The Last Airbender, in a world where some individuals, known as “benders”, can manipulate one of the four elements (Water, earth, fire or air), mainly for combat, peacekeeping or, most infamously, athletic purposes, combat techniques based upon martial arts such as t’ai chi, kung fu and wudang. The people of this world originate from the four different nations, which are, in fact, based on the elements, and different Asian or aboriginal cultures. The Northern and Southern Water Tribes (Seemingly based on the Inuit people), the Earth Kingdom (Chinese, I think), the Fire Nation (Japanese, I’m sure) and the endangered Air Nomads (Tibetan). The main hub of these four nations is the United Republic of Nations, the capital of which is the originally named “Republic City” (20’s New York, but Asian).

There is only one person in the world who can bend all four elements. This person is known as the “Avatar.”

No, not that one. Pay attention.

The Avatar, along with supposedly being the most powerful human being in the world, is also the human link to the spiritual world and the main peacekeeper in the tumultuous world of the show, in which the amount of social unrest, violent populist uprisings and political corruption would put most African countries to shame.

The current Avatar is a young woman from the Southern Water Tribe named Korra (Voiced by Janet Varney), who, throughout the series, fights crime, corruption, and the forces of darkness in general, along with her friends, a firebending detective named Mako (David Faustino), his brother, an earthbender named Bolin (P.J. Byrne), Korra’s airbending instructor and the previous Avatar’s son, Tenzin (J.K. Simmons) and industrial magnate Asami (Seychelle Gabriel), who isn’t actually a bender, but she makes up for it by being super rich.

Shock glove, motherfucker!!!

Now that I’ve finished up the brief overview, it’s time to get into the recent episodes as best as I possibly can. This, of course, means that a spoiler warning is now in effect. If you haven’t watched the first three seasons, you best get on that right away. I take no responsibility for spoilers as f now, so don’t come crying to me if I ruin the show for you.

So, in the season premiere (“After All These Years”), three years have passed since Korra fought the anarchist airbender Zaheer (Henry Rollins) and his Red Lotus clan. Though Zaheer was defeated, Korra was crippled both from the waist down, and mentally, falling into a deep depression, as she returns to the South Pole to take a break from being the Avatar for a bit. Her friends go their separate ways, with Tenin and Jinora (Kiernan Shipka) re-working the resurgent Air Nation into a crime-fighting task force that tries to restore order to the devastated Earth Kingdom, which has been thrown into disarray ever since Zaheer murdered the Earth Queen. Problem is, the Earth Kingdom is huge, and there’s a lot of crime to fight.The time crunch isn’t helping either, as Prince Wu (Sunil Malhotra) is set to be crowned Earth King momentarily, and, being a vain prick, is eager to be crowned as soon as possible. Speaking of Prince Wu, he is accompanied by Mako (Much to Mako’s dismay), who has been assigned by the powers that be to be Wu’s bodyguard.

And Asami’s doing whatever. She doesn’t really interest me when she’s not adventuring with Team Avatar . She’s a great character, but still…

Speaking of Team Avatar, everyone on the aforementioned group of adventurers is excited about the upcoming reunion, a result of everybody getting back together for the coronation of Wu (By the way, I call dibs on the name “Coronation of Wu” for my indie rock band). However, when Tonraq (James Remar) , Korra’s father, arrives from the South Pole, everybody’s shocked to learn that Korra has vanished off of the face of the Earth, having not been seen for six months.

I really wish I had a lot to talk about, because it’s kind of a slow burn of an episode. That’s not a bad thing, by any means though. I enjoyed seeing here the characters have ended up after three years, and I like the new character of Wu, even if I want to punch him in the face. I also liked the new character of Kuvira (Zelda Williams, daughter of the late Robin Williams), a new character who is unifying the Earth Kingdom again with the help of Bolin and Varrick (John Michael Higgins). However, I feel like it’s a bit too obvious that she’s meant to be the new villain of the show, as she seems to be more into hostile takeovers instead of peaceful reunifications, and it is suggested that she may be plotting against the prince.

All that’s fine and well, but the show didn’t do an especially good job of showing what exactly Kuvira was supposed to be doing. So, she’s uniting the Earth Kingdom. Okay, simple enough. She’s conspiring against the prince? Great. Here’s my question: Does anybody else know? I mean, the governor who she bullies into joining her is really against it and so is Opal, which wouldn’t be so surprising if the idea wasn’t that she was supposed to be paving the way for the monarchy. Someone mentions that the people who throw pies at Wu support Kuvira. Aren’t Wu and Kuvira on the same side (At least supposedly)? And if it’s common knowledge that Kuvira has gone rogue, why haven’t they done anything to stop her? I sure as hell wouldn’t have let her take over as much territory as she had without stopping her, if I knew she had gone rogue.

That doesn’t make the episode bad though. It’s a great episode, and, with any luck, my lone nitpick gets some sort of reasonable explanation. Maybe I just wasn’t listening when they explained it. Whatever. She’s a badass.

As good as the first episode was, “Korra Alone” blows it out of the water. During this episode, the focus is entirely on what happened to Korra after Zaheer was defeated. Through sheer persistence, and thanks to Katara’s help (And a pretty cool Kill Bill reference, I like to think), regains her ability to walk. However, when she goes to travel back to Republic City, she finds that she is a pretty damn terrible bender now, as she gets her ass handed to her by some puny crooks. Her self-confidence destroyed, she renounces her Avatar identity and becomes a cage fighter, where she gets the shit beaten out of her. She starts hallucinating a dark version of herself that torments her, until she chases it into the woods where it… Beats the shit out of her. Notice a recurring theme?

Anyway, she is sucked into a hallucination of a puddle of mercury, but she is found by an old woman, who reveals herself to be Toph Beifong!!!

Cue goosebumps.

We’ve seen Korra lose hope before, and feel unable to go on before As great as Korra is, her arcs during the first two seasons were pretty repetitive), but we’ve never seen here actually physically and mentally unable to go on. She regained her ability to walk, sure, but her bending is lacking and she can’t even handle sparring partners, much less street toughs, anymore. Not only that, but when she was growing up, she grew up mostly secluded from other people’s opinions of her, only hearing from the White Lotus about how great she is, and about how important the Avatar is. Then, she goes to Republic City and she immediately has the fact that the Avatar is, in fact, a useless relic of a bygone era. The Equalists, Amon, Vaatu, Unalaq, Zaheer and the Red Lotus all felt  that the Avatar was no longer worth having around for one reason or another. That can do a number on a person, and that, combined with the physical element of being beaten, poisoned and crippled, made the comedown of the realisation that, yeah, that might be the case.

Great stuff here, man!!! I fucking love it!!! As much as I like Gotham (Though it’s flawed as hell) and loved the first episode of The Flash (More on that later) Korra has blown the other two out of the water. It’s just so beautiful and so dramatic. The last season of Korra was one of the best seasons of TV of that year, and this season looks to build onto that success. I can’t wait!!!

Damn, now I have to decide between Fury, The Book of Life and The Legend of Korra on Friday. Talk about first world problems.

“After All These Years”: 4.5/5

“Korra Alone”: 5/5

The season so far: 9.5/10

Also, just saying, the girl can rock the short hair.