MorningMoon posted:Ozai Jr, the secret third son. He has TWO scars! I’m just imagining him going around and wildly shooting fire in every direction like the Bullet Farmer from Fury Road.
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Sep 24, 2020 17:25
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Other issue is there's not a lot of places to really go from there with conflict in the setting, unless you do the fanfic thing and have them invade not-Europe on the other side of the planet where they have alchemy instead of bending. Really suffers the shonen problem of the need for constant escalation at the expense of thematic consistency. (Which at this point even shonen has worked out ways to deal with)
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Sep 24, 2020 17:31
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Nothing makes people suffering from online poisoning lose their minds more then kids shows they accuse of subversive and crazy political messaging.
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Sep 24, 2020 17:48
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mycot posted:Somehow, Ozai has returned. Find out how in Fortnite!
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Sep 24, 2020 17:56
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mycot posted:Somehow, Ozai has returned.
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Sep 24, 2020 17:57
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Other issue is there's not a lot of places to really go from there with conflict in the setting, unless you do the fanfic thing and have them invade not-Europe on the other side of the planet where they have alchemy instead of bending. I mean, they could've fleshed out more complexity of the world, and they kinda didn't. They briefly implied that Republic City had complex internal politics and trouble with crime during season 1, but they accidentally resolved all of that in one fell swoop. I guess thanks Amon for cleaning up street crime forevermore. All you have to do is just murder the gang leaders and that's it done forever. And by leaning towards the Earth Kingdom being mostly unified anyways and the 3 nations having peaceful and amicable relations with eachother and the White Lotus as just interpol, there's...not much room for extra complexity.
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Sep 24, 2020 18:07
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...Actually, do we know for sure that Ozai isn't still alive and kicking during Korra? Even if we exclude Avatars, Bumi was in great shape at 110+, and Ozai wouldn't be all that much older.
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Sep 24, 2020 18:10
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mycot posted:Not having a single overarching bad guy affected the structure of Korra a lot, but tbh I'll always be grateful that Bryke didn't immediately start off the sequel with another world war. It's the immediate re-raising of the stakes that makes stuff like the Star Wars sequel trilogy unintentionally depressing. And lazily repetitive
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Sep 24, 2020 18:20
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On the other hand, Bumi wasn’t imprisoned for most of his life.
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Sep 24, 2020 18:20
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pentyne posted:Nothing makes people suffering from online poisoning lose their minds more then kids shows they accuse of subversive and crazy political messaging. at the same time i also think criticism of the stuff we enjoy is good too. there's just an extent to which it becomes exhausting and puts me to sleep it's a good thing for creators to be aware of as they create works now, how their works can be interpreted in those ways, and how to mitigate that. especially in plots involving people with any kind of superpowers being resented by people who don't have them, and intend to do something about it. but i don't think it's that nefarious. these are, after all, hypothetically impossible scenarios in which people can either control you through your blood, or get stretchy like taffy. it's not quite the same as the less fantastical and more tangible ways that wealth inequality are destructive, oppressive, subliminal, self-sustaining, etc. although there are certainly metaphors!!! what am i even saying at this point, is this what online poisoning is, not being able to finish a thought and wanting to keep adding to it?? or am i just neurotic!!!! The 7th Guest fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Sep 24, 2020 |
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Sep 24, 2020 19:00
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Metaphors can go a few ways. I've interpreted supers in The Incredibles as analogues for the social safety net. Even ties into 2 with how one guy didn't benefit from it so he thinks no one should have it.
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Sep 24, 2020 19:27
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I'm predisposed assume anyone going full woke on a cartoon show is acting in bad faith. She-ra was getting cancelled all of a sudden because some anime furry AVs decided some comments during a stream were anti-queer trans hate and tried to make it the new thing.
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Sep 24, 2020 19:33
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She-Ra discourse instantly dropped when Chadwick Boseman died the day after and people had actual news to talk about, it's not that big of a deal.
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Sep 24, 2020 19:43
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Also because it turned out that it was a bunch of over exaggerated bullshit, right?
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Sep 24, 2020 20:01
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Cattail Prophet posted:...Actually, do we know for sure that Ozai isn't still alive and kicking during Korra? Even if we exclude Avatars, Bumi was in great shape at 110+, and Ozai wouldn't be all that much older. Ozai's gone. Azula's kinda the wildcard. Thus far, Korra's time hasn't a peep from her but judging from the current ATLA comics, they're waiting to figure out what it is they want to do with her before (or not) trying a storyline with her in the Korra comics. I'd like to see my favorite little brokebrained disasterdork in that series; but whatever.
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Sep 25, 2020 01:07
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Regalingualius posted:Also because it turned out that it was a bunch of over exaggerated bullshit, right? 99% bullshit. Bow, a black character with 11 brothers, was the source of an in joke with the all white crew about all his brothers having jobs with rhyming names ex. Gogh the painter and the "one who works the fields" was Sow. Woke-brains proclaimed it the worst thing in the world and tweeted about sobbing over having to now cancel the show, while most black people just said "a single black person could've told you that was in poor taste if you had one working with you, do you see the real problem?" Everything else was them reading off fan comments that the anime furry AVs then accused the crew of trans hate, queer bashing, etc. Probably the same people who tried to cancel Steven Universe for not being queer enough. One of the crew thanked a podcast called Desperate Housedykes and was dragged for saying the "slur" word as well. pentyne fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Sep 25, 2020 |
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Sep 25, 2020 01:28
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Binged a good chunk of book 3 of ATLA. Finally reached the "Hello, Zuko here" factory. I was really dumb as a kid lol. First half of Book 3 is great, and even if it was obvious that the invasion couldn't work when there's half a season after it, it's still a really good false finish 2.5 count. Katara gets a lot of really good stories, the Fire Nation as a setting is so interesting and oppressing; for Zuko it's a prison where he is miserable, while Team Avatar hide themselves somewhat but stay completely true to themselves and help everyone they can. Seeing Zuko finally stand up for himself, and return the abuse of his father by using his uncle's teachings was so good. Back when it was airing, I was impatient and thought it was too much "filler", but nah, like The Painted Lady has a troubled third act, Sokka's Master is a bit odd since the previous episode had Sokka say their schedule was tight down to the minute yet he spends from one to four days training, and I don't fully agree with Zuko being a descendant of Roku, but everything else has been as spot on as ever. I also love Azula. So many tells throughout the season. She always knew Zuko was going to betray them, and acted on it. She set him up to take the fall for Aang not dying, she knew he was talking with Iroh, and she took Zuko's outburst at the beach as confirmation that he was going to switch sides. Set herself up perfectly to use his betrayal for her political gain... but also in the beach we see that she cannot handle interactions without the context of conquest. She is troubled by her mother seeing her as a monster... fearing another betrayal. And she knows those boys thought of her that way, she opened up so slightly and received silence, it all fuels so that when she goes from warrior to dictator, she has no way of handling it because she would just be surrounded by people who think she's a monster and could strike her down. She simply has no future after the war and that's why she'll fall.
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Sep 25, 2020 02:06
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MorningMoon posted:I don't fully agree with Zuko being a descendant of Roku, but everything else has been as spot on as ever. Zuko's ma wasn't happy about it either. It was part of Ozai's master plan to build prestige, which wasn't good. It still made sense as a way to appeal to Zuko while he was in the thrall of his family's prestige and honor to remind him that his family on his father's side are dishonorable traitors and on his mother's side they were directly opposed to the war. It's a thing that Zuko would care about, even though it doesn't really have a broader philosophical moral. Or at least, the story doesn't try to make it into one.
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Sep 25, 2020 02:57
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I liked that the Ember Island Players episode seems to be doing one thing, but then reveals that it's actually doing another - you think it's just poorly researched and written, with the protagonists being made into total buffoons, but then the ending happens and you realise, Aang and the others were reading themselves as the heroes because of their experiences - but the play is an empire propaganda piece. They aren't the protagonists at all, they are the bumbling villains. Toph sees herself portrayed positively because she likes that they show her taking out dozens of guards at once, but it's not portraying her as the badass she's reading it as, it's portraying her as a terrifying brute, as is how the fire nation presents earth bending in general compared to the "noble" art of firebending.
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Sep 25, 2020 03:45
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SlothfulCobra posted:Zuko's ma wasn't happy about it either. It was part of Ozai's master plan to build prestige, which wasn't good. It still made sense as a way to appeal to Zuko while he was in the thrall of his family's prestige and honor to remind him that his family on his father's side are dishonorable traitors and on his mother's side they were directly opposed to the war. I think the story does put some emphasis on Zuko's destiny being grander than what he thinks. Specifically that he can take over and end the war, but Iroh cannot. On top of Iroh literally saying htat in the finale, when Iroh brings up the family stuff, it's presented as him trapped by his bloodline while Zuko has the choice to walk out of that jail metaphorically. It makes sense and adds to Zuko's big confusion time, but I think it's overall something that wasn't entirely needed, even though a lot of that episode was terrific. BioEnchanted posted:I liked that the Ember Island Players episode seems to be doing one thing, but then reveals that it's actually doing another - you think it's just poorly researched and written, with the protagonists being made into total buffoons, but then the ending happens and you realise, Aang and the others were reading themselves as the heroes because of their experiences - but the play is an empire propaganda piece. They aren't the protagonists at all, they are the bumbling villains. Toph sees herself portrayed positively because she likes that they show her taking out dozens of guards at once, but it's not portraying her as the badass she's reading it as, it's portraying her as a terrifying brute, as is how the fire nation presents earth bending in general compared to the "noble" art of firebending. Yeah, but the effects were decent.
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Sep 25, 2020 03:50
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I liked that during Azula, Zuko, Mei and Ty Lee's vacation, the latter three all had massive breakthroughs about their issues while Azula just doubled down with hers. Mei and Ty Lee were directly called out about their issues and their responses were fairly mature, with Ty Lee basically being all "Huh, I guess I do have a need to be the centre of attention all the time due to being ignored as a child, good call!" and then Zuko explodes after figuring out what IS actually eating him. Then Azula kind of makes clear when it's her turn that she can't really think about herself, being all dismissive about her mother fearing her rather than admitting that it could have bothered her. It foreshadows the other three being better people than her and caring about each other enough to turn on her after she treats them as nothing more than tools. Azula's kind of interesting in that way because she can't pretend that nothing's wrong with her - outside of military and political situations she finds it impossible to manipulate people because she can't help but say the quiet part loud and scare people off. If she was as well put together as she thought she was, she'd have been able to at least act normal enough to blend in, but even that early on something in her brain is broken enough she can't stop herself from saying something stupid like "WE'LL TAKE OVER THE WORLD TOGETHER!" rather than "Wanna get a drink?" BioEnchanted fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Sep 25, 2020 |
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Sep 25, 2020 04:07
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Finally got back to my rewatch. It's been slow going since I feel the need to pay attention instead of just putting it on in the background. It's really cathartic to see them just smash through Long Feng after he spent so long hemming them in. It's such a cool fight when Team Avatar goes full force on the Earth King Palace too, methodically plodding through the defenses. The shot of Toph at 39 seconds where she's turning around while walking and bending is one of my favorite moments of action in the series. The whole narrative of some councilor or vizier or 'master of the palace' keeping the rightful ruler in the dark or somehow misinforming him to maintain control on their own is a pretty common story, largely because it's happened a good amount throughout history, from China to Japan to France to Turkey. It's natural for any administrative system that works to find ways around something stupid like a person who supposedly has supreme power because of their birth instead of any real qualifications, but then whoever 'efficiently' manages the realm can end up just as out of touch with what's right for the people as their misbegotten sire. And then I really like how both Zuko and Aang had their own sequences where they have to quell their inner turmoil in their spirit, only for both of them to fail. Zuko fails to figure out what is best for himself in exchange for the destiny that others had in mind for him, and Aang fails to accept the destiny that the world placed on him in favor of his own personal desires.
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Sep 25, 2020 04:14
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It would have been hilarious if Aang and the others decided to check out Iroh's tea shop due to good word of mouth, not knowing it was his and Zuko's business. Just "(quietly)Zuko, I swear if you start a fight in my Tea shop with one of MY customers I will rip out your other eye... *to aang* "Welcome to the Jasmine Dragon, how can I help you?"
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Sep 25, 2020 04:27
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SlothfulCobra posted:Finally got back to my rewatch. It's been slow going since I feel the need to pay attention instead of just putting it on in the background. It's really cathartic to see them just smash through Long Feng after he spent so long hemming them in. It's such a cool fight when Team Avatar goes full force on the Earth King Palace too, methodically plodding through the defenses. The shot of Toph at 39 seconds where she's turning around while walking and bending is one of my favorite moments of action in the series. With nine episodes to go, I still think that's the best fight in the series so far. It's so strong, and I love how Aang goes from airbending a little to full on earthbender, with his staff being pointed downwards and helping his stance. The fight in The Drill is my second favorite because of how distinct Aang's style switching is. Going Air to Water to Earth to Air felt like him seriously switching his whole moveset. Such good fights. BioEnchanted posted:I liked that during Azula, Zuko, Mei and Ty Lee's vacation, the latter three all had massive breakthroughs about their issues while Azula just doubled down with hers. Mei and Ty Lee were directly called out about their issues and their responses were fairly mature, with Ty Lee basically being all "Huh, I guess I do have a need to be the centre of attention all the time due to being ignored as a child, good call!" and then Zuko explodes after figuring out what IS actually eating him. Then Azula kind of makes clear when it's her turn that she can't really think about herself, being all dismissive about her mother fearing her rather than admitting that it could have bothered her. It foreshadows the other three being better people than her and caring about each other enough to turn on her after she treats them as nothing more than tools. Ty Lee and Mai also open up super easy compared to Zuko. They can see their issues even if it hurts to confront them, and throughout the day they were able to socialize with people. Zuko meanwhile tried hard to fit in with the cliches of getting nice stuff for his girlfriend and was able to reflect on himself with enough questioning. Azula just turned social interactions into war plans, she doesn't really know anything outside of that.
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Sep 25, 2020 05:20
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It really strikes me how expressive the fights in the season 2 finale are. Like after the triumphant sequence of storming the Earth King's castle just an episode ago, you have all these fights that run the gamut. There's the sinister bit of quickly taking out the generals without a struggle, there's Iroh giving a killer one liner for escaping Azula, and there's Sokka vs. Ty Lee, where it's a funny fight, continuing Ty Lee's flirting that she had been doing with Sokka earlier. In the cavern, there's a brief moment echoing the 4 way standoff with Azula in the abandoned ghost town where you get to see Zuko's last hesitation before deciding to fight the Avatar, and then you see the look in Zuko's eyes when he's just full of nothing but fury, punching fire at Aang like a maniac. There's big fancy fight moments like Aang's gem armor against Azula's rocket power or Katara tentacle dueling with Zuko, but what sticks with me are the moments that hold emotional weight, like Iroh staying rock solid when defending Team Avatar's escape while getting hit with rocks, only to calmly surrender. Like I remember these moments and they've really stuck with me. And I don't think Legend of Korra really mixes its emotional arcs and fights much. Korra has 3 moods, happy, angry, and brutalized. Her only real limits are from technically lacking the skill to win a fight. The only real emotions to her final fight with Zahir are "I sure wanna punch you" and "Well, I sure don't wanna be punched. Also I'd like to kill you." BioEnchanted posted:It would have been hilarious if Aang and the others decided to check out Iroh's tea shop due to good word of mouth, not knowing it was his and Zuko's business. Well, that's what Katara does, she just stops by to have some tea only to see Zuko on the tables.
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Sep 25, 2020 05:33
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Doesn't help that the fight choreography in LOK is so much worse than in ATLA, not to mention how bending in general feels weaker overall
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Sep 25, 2020 07:06
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there was one other kind of big plot related thing that bugged me. one of the crucial events that would hopefully take down the fire nation was the eclipse, right? they built it up to be such an important, critical event, and...it ended like a wet fart. it was an ignomonious defeat for the team avatar and the other kingdoms. now, i'm not complaining about the fact that the good guys lost a major battle. my problem is that this was something that was built up for two seasons, and you come to realize that in the end, they didn't need the eclipse anyway. on the other hand, the story HAD to end with the arrival of sozen's comet, and if that happened, then the eclipse would probably be kind of pointless anyway. so maybe the writers realized that they would give it its own separate story arc. i mean, all that being said, i still do think it was handled pretty well all things considered, but just seemed nothing was gained from it. SlothfulCobra posted:Finally got back to my rewatch. It's been slow going since I feel the need to pay attention instead of just putting it on in the background. It's really cathartic to see them just smash through Long Feng after he spent so long hemming them in. It's such a cool fight when Team Avatar goes full force on the Earth King Palace too, methodically plodding through the defenses. The shot of Toph at 39 seconds where she's turning around while walking and bending is one of my favorite moments of action in the series. it's interesting you highlighted exactly my favorite moment in that battle as well  this along with the battle on the drill are my two favorite in the last half of season 2 (i actually like it even more than the season finale fight too). in addition to the choreography, the animation is beautiful too. the colors in that sunset environment pop out quite nicely and mix well with the shadows.
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Sep 25, 2020 07:29
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drrockso20 posted:Doesn't help that the fight choreography in LOK is so much worse than in ATLA, not to mention how bending in general feels weaker overall Uhhh what. Say what you will about Korra, but the fights are magnificent. Between it and Banshee, that was a good time for fight choreography on television.
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Sep 25, 2020 09:51
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Not really. Watching both shows back to back, LoK very rarely deviates from basic kicks and punches But With Element, at least in the first season. It’s also kind of noticeable how earthbending in general went from giant rocks to tiny pebbles.
Asgerd fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Sep 25, 2020 |
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Sep 25, 2020 15:50
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Though Earthbending with a modestly sized rock and good aim could be... well, not suitable for a kids' show. Is still funny that from what we see of Fire Nation mass battle tactics, like in the intro, is they've basically invented pike and shot with Firebending instead of guns.
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Sep 25, 2020 16:05
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Asgerd posted:Not really. Watching both shows back to back, LoK very rarely deviates from basic kicks and punches But With Element, at least in the first season. It’s also kind of noticeable how earthbending in general went from giant rocks to tiny pebbles. Nah. The animation is more fluid, better staged, and has a far stronger sense of force behind it. (ignoring the Pierrot episodes). There's a different sense to the fighting, I agree, but that's part of the text of the show... the way the world is changing, moving towards mass industrialisation and atomisation, and the way this also means losing touch with spiritualism. I get the sense people prefer the different way bending was portrayed in the original series, and that's cool, but Korra's set pieces are bigger and better shot, more regularly, than thenog series. That said, I generally find Korra's plots to be more emotionally compelling than the original, so that may account for the preference too.
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Sep 25, 2020 16:05
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Also, it cannot be said enough times: pro bending loving suuuuucked. It was boring to watch, more or less irrelevant to the story, it ate up an inordinate amount of screen time, and it reduced something cool and mystical to a mundane commodity (and no, I really don’t care if that was totally their point if it consciously makes the setting less interesting).
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Sep 25, 2020 16:05
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Asgerd posted:Also, it cannot be said enough times: pro bending loving suuuuucked. It was boring to watch, more or less irrelevant to the story, it ate up an inordinate amount of screen time, and it reduced something cool and mystical to a mundane commodity (and no, I really don’t care if that was totally their point if it consciously makes the setting less interesting). Again, I'd argue that it makes the setting more interesting. I don't think Korra ever quite handled it well enough at times, but the quotidian nature of bending was, and I still think is, a compelling hook. It reminds me of the kind of work China Mieville put into his new weird Periditot Street Station. Finding a way to ground the bending in an ilk contemporary setting and materialist concerns. Amon was, of course, an evil hypocritical fascist rather than a unionist. Which kind of makes his skulking around in warehouses a bit Ninja Turtles meets Neo Nazi, come to think of it. But there's good and interesting stuff in the first two seasons, particularly the Bolin Varrik stuff, and I appreciate that.
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Sep 25, 2020 16:13
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There was already a precedent for pro-bending in Toph's wrestling promotion, plus a bunch of times we see benders use their powers to entertain. Making an actual sport out it just seems like a logical path.
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Sep 25, 2020 16:22
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I’m not saying it wasn’t logical, it just wasn’t entertaining enough to justify the baffling amount of time dedicated to it.
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Sep 25, 2020 16:30
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Funky Valentine posted:There was already a precedent for pro-bending in Toph's wrestling promotion, plus a bunch of times we see benders use their powers to entertain. Yeah this isn't like, turning the force into midichlorians. Bending was always a very large and mundane part of setting because the ability to bend wasn't actually that rare. It's a pretty distinct part of Avatar compared to other fantasy settings.
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Sep 25, 2020 16:30
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Open Source Idiom posted:Nah. The animation is more fluid, better staged, and has a far stronger sense of force behind it. (ignoring the Pierrot episodes). Legend of Korra has more detailed pictures and more complicated shots (from the use of more advanced technology), but that was balanced out by the non-fight scenes being even less expressive and less animated. Within the fight scenes themselves...there's no jokes, there's no gags. They're emotionally monotonous. There's no little stories being told through the choreography as to how the balance of the fight is changing and why they fight the way they do, or if there are, they're not supported by the rest of the show illustrating the themes and principles so you can follow along with why what happens in the fight is happening (possibly because the narrative is already so rushed and cluttered it can't really make time for doing that kind of groundwork). You have to just guess on your own. There's visual complexity in the fights, but without narrative complexity, they're just kinda fancy dances with lots of movement and color. The whole problem is exacerbated by the tendency of the 'fancier' fights to go full DBZ and ignore the more understandable martial arts in favor of flying around firing lasers, so there's not really a grounding in anything, just impossibly high powered people slinging impossible power around, and you hope that the one you're rooting for has the higher power level.
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Sep 25, 2020 16:36
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Though Earthbending with a modestly sized rock and good aim could be... well, not suitable for a kids' show. Combustion Man was defeated not by a giant ball of fire or a mountain falling on him, but by a small blunt object hitting his head in two different occasions.
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Sep 25, 2020 16:37
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mycot posted:Yeah this isn't like, turning the force into midichlorians. Bending was always a very large and mundane part of setting because the ability to bend wasn't actually that rare. It's a pretty distinct part of Avatar compared to other fantasy settings. The mystification of bending was more about taking you in deeper to show what's happening inside a character's head while they're struggling with whatever they're doing. Without that dimension, there's not as much value in characters being good or bad at what they're doing, either you got it or you don't. And Pro-Bending was a big example of fights not having emotional weight, because to Korra it's a hobby. She doesn't find true meaning in the sport, she isn't destroyed by a defeat, she isn't amazed or changed by a victory. Most of the matches are against people they have never seen before and probably never will again.
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Sep 25, 2020 16:53
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I'll admit I forgive probending because the ending and payoff of the whole sports arc is one of the best scenes in the series.
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Sep 25, 2020 17:33
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