Avatar TLA & LoK: Your thoughts + favourite bending.

[Josh123914]

Here I was hoping people liked the show.

Couple of examples:

Spoiler

There is destroying the avatar cycle, pretty much annihilating the souls of all avatars before Korra including Aang, just so she'll be a "strong woman who's not dependent on any male", there's bridging the human and spirit world so they can draw funny animals, there's the turning random people to air benders which is a giant cop out to an important series wide (since ATLA) issue so Korra's choice in the end of season 2 will be immediately justified, there's the airbending murder superman in season 3 which completely subverts the lore behind air benders so the writers have a villain. There's Korra learning metal bending in 10 minutes. In general it seems bending becomes "hard art you need to practice your entire life to be good at" to "everybody can pick up and play".

I'll spoil my response too (but I feel the need to say that so others know it's not a quote).

Spoiler: Things

-It's implied there was a way to maybe get the previous Avatars back. I'm not holding my breath, but maybe they'll get some tangible connection to them again in the comics.

-They'd been drawing funny animals since S1E1 of the last Airbender. What is Appa?

-Even I wonder about the implications of turning random people into airbenders. Some fan theories state that any non-bending air nomads were cast out from their society and so the Earth Kingdom airbenders are actually distant descendants of these people.
I like to adhere to that because 1) Bumi inherited the airbending after HC and 2) racial purity it would explain why no fire nation or water tribespeople became airbenders.

-Zaheer and Guru Laghima may be new additions to lore, but remember the time Aang and all visited the Southern Air Temple. How the hell did an unarmed old man kill half a dozen Fire Nation soldiers without airbending them?

-I always thought that bending required specific motions and emotional states in order to grasp. Surely educating crews of firebenders to avoiding shitting for 6 hours and then striking specific poses should do the trick, right?
And Korra could always bend the elements rather easily, I'd have been surprised she didn't figure out metalbending with all the people training her over the years.

All in all, the biggest distinction between TLA and LoK is that Aang and Korra are polar opposites. Aang could meditate all day long, but struggled with bending an element that wasn't air mainly due to not wanting to hurt others/himself.
Korra on the other hand, could bend all the elements (bar air) but until season 2 lacked any appreciation of bending other than it being a method for beating people up.

-Imply isn't really cutting it, so I suppose to think there's a chance Aang's soul is not in the void?

-Actually the weird thing is that other than korra's practically uninspired dogbear i don't remember any animals in the show after they were pretty prominent in ATLA. And in the end Korra caused what Griffith caused in Berserk and the result is nothing much. What a dud.

-I also thought that, but even with that argument, it doesn't make a lick of sense with Bumi. What, they activated recessive air bending genes? It just out of place explanation (if can even be called that) to a major series problems.

-It's not the murder thing, it's the "doing bending without moving your body" supermaning that's wrong. Heck, for a culture that prides non violence Zaheer is a fucking mess of a character.

-No, not really, bending shuold be hard. Fuck, people in ATLA were worse benders and their lives were in stake for that. It's like if everybody knows shaolin kung fu fighting. And Korra metal bending was presented as first experience for her at least in that scene.

I wouldn't say that Korra and Aang are differnt, it's like saying a rock is the opposite of a book.

I see your point.

I've always enjoyed both series enough to just suspend my disbelief about that sort of stuff.

And as a sidenote, Zaheer admired Guru Laghima, but Laghima was shunned by the other airbenders for a reason. So the culture clash is established.

 

[Redryhno]

I see your point.

I've always enjoyed both series enough to just suspend my disbelief about that sort of stuff.

And as a sidenote, Zaheer admired Guru Laghima, but Laghima was shunned by the other airbenders for a reason. So the culture clash is established.

I'd honestly be able to say the same, if they'd focused slightly more on the fantastical elements than they did.

The electricity was explained by way of fire-bending instead of just something non-benders came up with on their own, the spirit gates had some kind of scientific explanation, pro-bending in general was too focused on early in the series. Just alot of "modernness" without supplementing it with its own brand of supernatural, depending too much on TLA's spirituality in that department to carry it for people to overlook it.