Josh123914 said:
-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.
Okay, how? Seriously, we have seen them getting literally beaten out of Korra and it was categorically stated that the line of Avatars was broken and Korra is starting a new line. How the hell could that be reverted outside of either some aggressive retcon or even more aggressive fan-wank?
-They'd been drawing funny animals since S1E1 of the last Airbender. What is Appa?
Apples an oranges, though I rather doubt the involvement with the spirits had anything to do with them trying to "draw funny animals" on the first place. LOK was not a very merchandised series, and I see no other reasons why the producers would mandate having those in the series.
-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.
This is headcanon at best, though I would also say that the real issue is the reappearance of them at all. As inu-kun has already stated, it feels like a cheap way to justify Korra leaving the portals open, like this unintended consequence somehow made her baffling decision any better.
-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 don't see the connection. Air Nomads were technical pacifists, but as all the fighting Aang and Tenzin had done in the two series has shown, they are not above fighting in self-defense or defending others. Also note that, due to the nature of the show, we don't really see the aftermaths of battles. As far as we know our air-bending heroes have already killed a bunch of people by proxy (sending a mook flying through the air with a gust of wind is a pretty good recipe for a broken back.)
On the other hand though, I don't even think we can judge Laghima and his philosophies taken that all we are shown of them are through Zaheer, and it is entirely possible that he only latched onto the parts he could use to justify his own beliefs. We may never know.
-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.
First off, no, it is not about "specific motions and emotional states". You either have affinity for something or you don't, and then if you do you have to train it until your eyes bleed if you want to become proficient. We have seen that Bolin was a pretty impressive earthbender but he could not metal-bend no matter how hard he tried while he could pick up lava-bending after seeing it in action a few times, but he only becomes proficient with it in season four.
As for the whole "you just have to learn the motions" thing, that was another aspect of bending LOK kind of messed up. In ATLA, bending was part martial art for a reason; one needed to guide the element they were bending with their bodies, as it required the chi flowing it them to work. That's why you could chi-block someone's arm and stop them from bending for a while. Then LOK comes along and in have people blood-bend and fly without even moving a muscle. Because who needs consistency?
Finally, Korra being able to bend everything off the bat is actually one of those things that make people call her a Sue all over, and being able to bend metal AFTER she lost her connection to the other Avatars... I am sometimes inclined to agree, but then I remember what a colossal screw-up artist she is and I just shrug my shoulders.
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.
No he wasn't. Aang could easily bend water, in fact he picked it up so quickly it actually made Katara jealous and once he overcomes his fear of fire he gets the basics of it down immediately. What he has real trouble with is earth, because its principles are completely against his starting element, air. This is a pattern that is established to be part of every Avatar's training, as shown by Roku's flashback.
Unless you are Korra of course, who learns FIRE while being a water-bender toddler, along with earth and water, without any formal training! That's like being able to write, read and do math at the same age, without anyone ever teaching these to her. In fact LOK's entire idea of people just randomly "activating" bending powers (as later seen in the "comedic" scenes centered around the new Air Nomads) kind of torpedoes the idea that bending is actually something you have to practice and perfect to be able to use instead of just being an X-men who is born with the power.
But back to Korra: No, the biggest distinction between TLA and LOK is that the former is a single, cohesive story with proper character arcs while the latter is a mis-mash of antagonists, rushed arcs and jumbled character-relations. Aang's and Korra's differences are just the tip of the iceberg, and even those are often more about the quality of their writing instead of the direction of their writing.
But I digress. As much as I complain about LOK, it wasn't a bad show (save for maybe the majority of season two). It was just that it had the perfect recipe to be a classic that could have overshadowed even the original, and then the chance was squandered because of executive meddling, audience-pandering and just plain sub-par writing. It is just irritating to think about, that's all.
