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I'm really happy that the Avatar State is something that Korra doesn't have access to. I think they realized that it was just a "get out of jail free" deus ex machina in season 1 and made it a lot more dangerous and uncontrolled in Season 2, then removed it entirely for almost all of Season 3. Things are a whole lot more real and dangerous when you can't just become a glowing god at the drop of a hat
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| # ¿ Apr 12, 2012 01:39 |
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| # ¿ May 19, 2013 17:13 |
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So if Tenzin is 51 and the new series takes place 70 years after the old, Katara had him when she was 33? That seems a bit old for a first kid in this universe
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| # ¿ Apr 13, 2012 15:45 |
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Charlz Guybon posted:Isn't he the youngest? Oops, yeah, you're right
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| # ¿ Apr 13, 2012 16:12 |
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The relationship isnt bad when you remember the ages of the participants. Of course the real problem is that Aang and Katara weren't made a year older at least from the beginning if they were going to do a romance subplot, but what're you gonna do.
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| # ¿ Apr 14, 2012 03:34 |
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Is the notion that you can get tired and temporarily "run out" of bending something that was introduced in episode 2 of Korra? I don't recall anything like it in TLA. In fact quite the contrary, normal duels involved more movement, much bigger and longer fire blasts, more water volume and MUCH more earth volume being moved and the participants never seemed to run out of bending
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| # ¿ Apr 15, 2012 18:45 |
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It didn't seem from Avatar that bending was terribly strenuous. Aang and Toph could, for example, push out a six-foot-diameter, 20-foot-long tunnel of rock with one quick physical motion while talking normally. Nobody's bending ever failed due to exhaustion until this episode, iirc. I mean yeah, the characters from the last series were prodigies, but even so they were manipulating ten or a hundred times more volume of element than the probenders without ever getting tired.
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| # ¿ Apr 15, 2012 19:15 |
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Himuro posted:I hope they don't make romance a huge element in this series. I have some bad news.
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| # ¿ Apr 17, 2012 00:10 |
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Paracelsus posted:It's disturbing how many people in this thread apparently read Harrison Bergeron and thought "yes, that's exactly what we need to do." The moral of the show is precisely the opposite. While he might or might not be sympathetic, Aman is the villain and we want him to be defeated.
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| # ¿ Apr 23, 2012 01:28 |
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thebardyspoon posted:I think Tenzins slightly suspicious glance away when he says "That's... That's impossible, only the Avatar has ever possessed that ability" is significant. He falters a bit mid sentence as well, like he knows that last part is a lie but if he says it enough it'll be true. You could see the Avatar world government being very interested in a way for dangerous benders to be neutralised when Aang was gone and the new Avatar was unknown/being trained. I think it was more that he was a bit afraid by the news.
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| # ¿ Apr 23, 2012 01:39 |
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We can also hypothesize about how benders get a leg up in society, but we haven't actually seen it in detail; if Mako was walking out of the plant getting hassled by nonbender protesters who just lost their jobs, that would be something. Generally speaking it would be an easier sell if the world hadn't just gone under 70 years of peace and unparalleled prosperity under the guidance of heroic benders, who shot technology ahead one to five centuries and built a gleaming multicultural metropolis undoubtedly with earth and firebending.
Quackenbush fucked around with this message at Apr 23, 2012 around 01:53 |
| # ¿ Apr 23, 2012 01:51 |
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The fire nation had some relatively advanced technology, but nobody else did; the earth kingdom's technological level was feudal chinese circa 1600 AD, and the air nomads and water tribe were apparently no better.
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| # ¿ Apr 23, 2012 02:30 |
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Flanker posted:Adding to my Amon speculation: Guessing it was Koh who took his face.
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2012 02:30 |
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Read posted:He has eyes and a mouth, you can see them through the mask. We don't really know what happens to a person when they have their face stolen + I want to see Koh again.
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2012 02:58 |
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I touched on this earlier, but it really feels that they've walked the power of bending back a little bit. While "super-bending" like lightning and metal are commonplace, so far we have yet to see any really epic bending like Aang blowing out the volcano, Toph removing all the stairs from the palace, Jeong Jeong's fire walls, Katara and Aang against the water dragon, and so on. Plus bending can apparently tire you out now. I'll eat my words if we see it, but so far what we've seen has been pretty minor compared to what we saw in the last show. That's not necessarily a bad thing, especially in an urban setting.
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2012 04:06 |
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I also hope we see some enemy benders. Bender-on-bender combat is a lot more interesting and open to permutation than bender-on-nonbender. The only tactics chiblockers have are to dodge and disable with one strike, which has its place, but it'll never have the same range of fight possibilities as, say, Azula vs. Katara. There's a reason that the last nonbenders the Gaang ever fought exclusively were the Yu Yan Archers way back in season 1, and they were already basically supernatural to begin with.
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2012 05:48 |
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If you really think that this is the episode to "get all the romance stuff out of the way" then I think you're going to be disappointed. Okay, cool, we all have unrequited feelings for each other that haven't been resolved, not gonna see this again this season.
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| # ¿ May 5, 2012 18:20 |
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Does anyone have a link to the episode 6 commercial?
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| # ¿ May 5, 2012 19:16 |
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Shutting down a public building when there is a credible terrorist threat made against it is the right call, I wonder why it inevitably gets re-opened. So far, for all the talk about how nonbenders are oppressed, we haven't seen any of it. As far as we can tell, nonbenders have full legal rights, rights to property, and if they lack a right to vote (we really have no idea one way or another) benders don't seem to have it any different. Nonbenders may have a rougher time of it with organized crime, but we've seen no evidence that the police fail to take crimes against nonbenders seriously or give benders special treatment, quite the opposite. It's possible that benders can get certain jobs unavailable to nonbenders, but we've seen no great unemployment among nonbenders and the richest man in the city is one too. This really does look like what I was worried about months ago, a facile elitist theme of how the proles hate our heroes Just Because They're Jealous of How Awesome We Are.
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| # ¿ May 10, 2012 03:13 |
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Cantide posted:Why are non benders feeling so oppressed if bending seems to be entirely useless in a fight? Especially fire bending should pretty much be relegated to lighting fires and cooking since it's apparently impossible to hit anyone or, once hit, seems not to have any deterring effect on people whatsoever. If you're going to complain about an element being unrealistically nonlethal, start with earthbending. A rock the size of a basketball hitting you in the chest going 80 miles an hour is going to put you down for a few weeks, at best.
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| # ¿ May 13, 2012 15:49 |
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I remember that video when Korra was first introduced and they were like "and this is Tenzin, son of Aang...and Katara" and most of the audience hooted but there was a noticable undercurrent of fangirls screaming "NOOO" like somebody was trying to rip their skull out of their head
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| # ¿ May 22, 2012 16:07 |
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Maybe the two water tribes have representation because Tarrlok lobbied for it.
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| # ¿ May 24, 2012 03:21 |
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I called this months ago. To the extent that there is any theme of inequality in Korra, it is strictly about how the weak hate the strong because they are jealous and crazy.
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| # ¿ Jun 20, 2012 03:11 |
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Preface: I liked LoK a lot, not as much as Avatar, but it was still a really great show. The biggest problem with Korra as a season was how their stated purpose in having as few episodes went directly against what they used those episodes for. They said that they only wanted to have twelve episodes so they could tell a tighter, more self-contained story, but most of the front half of the season was focused on Pro-Bending, which while it had rules that at least made sense, was of no real import to anything in the story except as a vehicle to introduce Mako and Bolin and as a setting for Amon to attack. That all could have been accomplished in one episode.
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| # ¿ Jun 24, 2012 03:33 |
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PhazonLink posted:Another reason why this show is terrible. Fire. Earth. Air. Fire. Air. Water. Water. Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then everything changed when bad crowd logistics attacked.
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| # ¿ Jun 24, 2012 03:44 |
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Amon bursting out of the ocean on a water tornado would have made a lot more sense if he looked incredibly angry, maybe delivering a short monologue on how dare you strike me, blah blah blah. As it stands he just did it out of drowning panic, which is a sensible reason to use waterbending to rapidly get to the surface, not to stand atop a 100 foot cyclone.
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| # ¿ Jun 24, 2012 04:34 |
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As long as we are nitpicking, one thing I really didn't like is that it didn't feel like there were any really Epic Bending moments in the show. Don't mistake me, I don't mean that there weren't any cool fights, there were tons. But they definitely scaled back bending in the show. Watch most episodes of ATLA, especially in Season 2 and 3, and you'll see people manipulating ten or 100 times the volume of element we see in this show. The showdown with Amon was also really subdued. The final fight with Ozai and Azula was enormous blasts of fire, lightning, colossal boulders, flying, huge airship crashes. Season 1 finale felt incredibly epic, with the Spirit World, the black and white, Koizilla. Season 2 finale felt classically tragic, with an enormous fight between Zuko, Azula, Aang and Katara, and two dozen Dai Li. Amon vs. Korra and Mako was him shutting them down instantly and then Korra airbending him nonfatally out a window.
Quackenbush fucked around with this message at Jun 24, 2012 around 07:26 |
| # ¿ Jun 24, 2012 07:22 |
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e:nm
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| # ¿ Jun 24, 2012 20:21 |
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dj_clawson posted:
This is a point I was just about to make. I was watching an episode of Futurama today, and I noticed that it was written by Aaron Ehasz, whom I remembered from the credits of an ATLA episode or two, so I looked him up. Here are all the episodes he wrote: quote:"The Spirit World (Winter Solstice, Part 1)" (1.07) Notice how every one of those episodes (aside from The Awakening, maybe) was an instant classic? Why were they so keen to get rid of this guy? In addition to those, other classic or otherwise central episodes not written by the creators include: The Warriors of Kyoshi, Jet, The Deserter, The Cave of Two Lovers, Zuko Alone, The Library, The Desert, Lake Laogai, The Earth King, Sokka's Master, The Avatar and the Firelord, The Puppetmaster, The Boiling Rock 1&2, and The Ember Island Players. Quackenbush fucked around with this message at Jun 24, 2012 around 23:28 |
| # ¿ Jun 24, 2012 23:24 |
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dj_clawson posted:Holy poo poo, this post basically listed all of my favorite episodes. Except "The Beach" which to be honest had to grow on me and I can understand why people don't like it. Virtually all the character-development episodes were written by somebody other than the creators. Take Zuko. Winter Solstice Part 1, The Storm, The Siege of the North, Zuko Alone, Bitter Work, The Crossroads of Destiny, The Avatar and the Firelord, The Day of Black Sun Part 2, The Firebending Masters, and The Boiling Rock constitute 95% of Zuko's character arc, and they were all not written by the creators. The only episodes which really involve Zuko, written by the creators, are The Blue Spirit and the series finale.
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| # ¿ Jun 25, 2012 00:07 |
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The creators only wrote 13 episodes of the original series. Three of those were the first three episodes, and another three were in the last four episodes. They wrote classics like The Blue Spirit, The Blind Bandit, and The Guru, but also some mostly forgettable episodes like the first three, the Drill, and the Serpent's Pass. The more I think about it the more it the more I think the biggest problem was that they got rid of so much of the talent from the first series. And whoever seemed underwhelmed with the scope of Korra was spot-on. Comparing three seasons of ATLA to one season of LoK is unfair, but even if we look at the first seasons against each other LoK comes up lacking. Aang went to the spirit world, single-handedly destroyed dozens of warships, and his team reversed an insane plot to kill the Moon. That feels epic. Korra failed at everything except escaping until her enemy, already victorious, accidentally screwed up his own plans. That is literally what happened! Amon was not tricked, goaded, or forced into revealing he was a waterbender. His forces were not defeated, he didn't even get cocky. He just randomly hosed up at an inopportune time. Quackenbush fucked around with this message at Jun 25, 2012 around 00:33 |
| # ¿ Jun 25, 2012 00:29 |
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The biggest problem with the series was pro-bending. The romance plot was prettymuch the only character interaction, drama, or development in the series amongst the teens, so it has some value. Nothing about it was really that bad except that we didn't really care about the participants. Pro bending was a waste of limited time, had no real consequences, and was less interesting in general than any other plot element.
Quackenbush fucked around with this message at Jun 25, 2012 around 02:05 |
| # ¿ Jun 25, 2012 02:01 |
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Jesto posted:I find it kind of funny that Korra's absolute lowest point was her inability to earth, fire or waterbend but suddenly being able to airbend. Even moreso if that falling tear really was supposed to symbolize suicide. I don't have any problem with that, it's been established that Korra knows that her sole identity is the Avatar and she is terrified of losing her bending, believing that she will be nothing.
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| # ¿ Jun 25, 2012 02:08 |
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Avatar series finale: Ozai has defeated Aang and all seems lost. But wait! Katara is in trouble. Aang launches one last desperate attack! Ozai falls into the ocean! Rather than swimming, Ozai attempts to rocket out of the ocean, boiling himself alive! The end
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| # ¿ Jun 26, 2012 01:24 |
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computer parts posted:You act as if this is worse than "Ozai hits Aang with a rock, Aang goes avatar state gg". Both Aang and Korra won as a result of what was basically an accident, but Aang at least did not win because Ozai was an idiot who destroyed himself without goading or trickery
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| # ¿ Jun 26, 2012 01:38 |
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SpiderHyphenMan posted:Okay stop. Resurfacing is understandable. Standing for several seconds atop a 100 foot cyclone in front of an arena containing thousands is stupid.
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| # ¿ Jun 26, 2012 01:47 |
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I am going through ATLA to make sure that I don't have rose-colored glasses on and, man, is the animation in the first six or so episodes really underwhelming. The backgrounds and such are still incredible, but the linework and motion range of the characters, especially out of combat, are flat and static like a low-budget anime. That is something Korra wins hands down.
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| # ¿ Jun 26, 2012 04:05 |
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MrAristocrates posted:I know what you mean, man. I've been watching the series again on Netflix because of this thread. The animation is pretty unpolished, and it's clear that they weren't quite in the groove yet from a writing perspective yet either. No, in the first few episodes the characters are really more or less their parody versions from The Ember Island Players. Sokka is obsessed with meat, Katara is hyper-motherly, Zuko is obsessed with his honor, and Aang is a childish naif. It's to the credit of the show that they did the inverse of sitcom character cliches, where all the characters gain a lot of depth instead of just hyper-exaggerating the characters' traits.
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| # ¿ Jun 26, 2012 04:18 |
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Still rewatching AtLA, and a real problem I'm seeing with LoK is the almost-absolute lack of bender-vs-bender combat. The only real bender-on-bender action we get in LoK is Korra vs. Tarrlok, which was probably the best fight of the show. Watch the duel between Katara and Pakku in season one. Not only does it last three times as long as the duel between Korra and Tarrlok, it also has some things that most of the fights in Korra do not. First, we hate Pakku. He's a smug, sexist jerk. We want to see him get his clock cleaned. We hated Tarrlok and Tahno, but none of the Equalists. Amon was too much of a cipher to really hate, and the Lieutenant had no personality until the last episode. Second, the Katara-Pakku fight had back-and-forth, and incomplete victory. Katara was clearly losing, yet she managed to stay in the fight for a long time while still losing, throwing credible attacks at Pakku. This isn't true of the fights we see in Korra. Chiblocking, Bloodbending, and Amon's Psychic Dodging have the exact same narrative problems: Since they are the main (or only) trick available and shut down the fight immediately when used, they destroy the ability of a long, interesting, back-and-forth fight to exist. They're also really unspectacular compared to battling it out with the elements.
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| # ¿ Jun 27, 2012 03:59 |
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SatansBestBuddy posted:I kinda expected this when I heard that the main conflict would be centered around the Equalists, but I also expected probending to pick up the slack. So that didn't happen either. I loved the crazy, DBZ-style bending in the last series. Some of the epic bending moves in the last series were really cool and memorable, like Toph turning that massive staircase into a Scooby-Doo slide, Aang fighting Combustion Man, or everything to do with the comet or the Avatar state. I don't see any problem with liking the cool magic powers in a kid's show about people with cool magic powers. Think about what a waterbender can do vs. what a chiblocker can do. A waterbender can shoot water, shoot ice daggers, turn water to ice, create a wall of water or ice, make a surface slippery, surf on ice structures, hover on a cyclone, grab or push people with water tendrils, turn water to snow or steam, etc. A chiblocker can a) dodge and b) chiblock. That's it.
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| # ¿ Jun 27, 2012 04:56 |
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| # ¿ May 19, 2013 17:13 |
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Chi-blockers are always going to be less interesting fights than benders because benders have so many tricks and chi-blockers only have the one. Even their secondary tricks like smoke pellets and bolas can be essentially copied by earth and waterbenders. And dodging and parrying and, say, using the momentum from an earthbending attack is not something specific to a chiblocker - they are all things that a bender can easily do and we saw examples dozens of times in Avatar. It also doesn't help that at the beginning of the show they were hyper-nimble, spooky ninjas with incredible martial arts skills who were a match for the Avatar one-on-one and then ended getting jobbed out over and over to the point that they ended up as a bunch of dudes with goofy voices who got defeated by the half-dozen by a farting infant. Quackenbush fucked around with this message at Jun 30, 2012 around 23:21 |
| # ¿ Jun 30, 2012 23:13 |
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