Review: The Legend of Korra: Book One: Air

This weekend I took the opportunity to rewatch the first season of The Legend of Korra, and wow – who can deny it was a discouraging beginning? Naturally expectations were high after the success of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and with the exception of a few overzealous Zutara shippers who seemed convinced that developments such as Aang/Katara marrying and having children was a direct pot-shot at them, most people were eagerly awaiting the arrival of the next Avatar.

It didn't quite work out the way we expected. Character development was stilted, the storyline was resolved with a hat-trick of deus ex machinas, and too much time was wasted on that tedious love triangle. (Why are writers convinced that audiences want love triangles? Is it because of Twilight? Is that what's to blame?)

But by looking back in hindsight from the vantage point of all four seasons, I found myself warming up a little to Book One. Yes, there were some missteps, and no, nobody cared about Pro-Bending, but for the most part these issues were ironed out in subsequent seasons. Reading back through the post I made just after the season finale aired, it was obvious that I was disappointed but still hopeful – and I'm very grateful that I hung in there for the duration of the entire show.

So here it is, the review I wrote back in July 2012, reblogged here for the sake of posterity. I found it interesting that many of my initial complaints were dealt with across the duration of season two (though the show didn't really hit its stride until season three), and maybe you'll recognize some of your own disgruntlement after Book One wrapped up.

I’ve been thinking about this post for a while and wasn’t quite sure what to say about this show that hasn’t already been said very eloquently elsewhere (such as here, and here, and here). I was hugely enthusiastic about The Legend of Korra, not least because it meant a female protagonist and a return to the Avatar world, but because writers Mike DiMarteno and Bryan Konietzko had told such a wonderful story the first time around with Avatar: The Last Airbender. 

With such a strong foundation upon which to continue exploring their unique world, characters and concepts (such as bending and spirits), it was with utter confidence that I sat down to watch Korra, fully prepared to be swept away. However, after writing mini-reviews for episodes one and two, I stopped commenting. This was mainly because I was short on time, but also because (as I realized halfway through the season) that I wasn’t all that invested.

And I was disappointed that I wasn’t invested.

Even though I spent hours bemoaning the lost opportunities and unfortunate implications of Robin Hood and Merlin, I did so because I was invested in the characters and their storylines, and I want each show to be as good as it can possibly be. In many ways, The Legend of Korra is objectively better than they are, and yet it never grabbed me the way its predecessor did. 

Obviously this won’t be true for everyone, for who’s to say what piques your interest, gets under your skin, plucks your heartstrings, and has you dive into the mad world of fandom, on-line speculation, shipping, fan-fiction, re-watches, and GIFs of people sobbing and flailing?

Yet for whatever reason, Korra didn’t do that for me.

For the record, I adored Avatar: The Last Airbender (I can see my DVDs from where I’m sitting). The likes of Aang, Katara, Sokka, Toph and Zuko weren’t just interesting characters; they were living characters, with all the strengths and flaws, longings and idiosyncrasies, fears and ambitions of real people. Forced to grow up quickly in a time of war, each one is faced with the threat of an imperialist nation set on conquering the free world, a force which is not intrinsically evil, but populated by human beings raised in a culture convinced of its own superiority. In this battle, the tools to their triumph were found in themselves: not just the usual themes of teamwork and friendship, but in the show’s supernatural take on martial arts, in which “bending” allows certain people to manipulate the elements according to their will.

In my review for The Night Circus, I speculated that a successful fantasy series must have three components: an interesting plot, sympathetic characters, and vivid world-building. Having watched Korra, I’d like to amend that statement: you must have plot, character and world building working in accord. And if you do it right, if you hit that perfect threefold note, then magic will ensue.

It’s not by any means a golden rule, but I think it holds up fairly well against our most popular fantasy stories. Would Frodo and Sam’s struggle against evil have been as awe-inspiring if it wasn’t the beauty and scope of Middle-Earth that was at stake? Would Harry Potter have been as famous without his story’s twisty plotting or Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry? Would we have been interested in a galaxy far, far away if it wasn’t populated by the likes of Han Solo and Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia?

Avatar captured this magic. In my short summary, you can see how closely integrated the characters were to both their stories and the world they lived in. It would impossible to remove any one component and still have the same viewing experience. Each character’s growth is marked by their physical, emotional and spiritual journeys and the stories that organically emerge from their backgrounds, innate skills, and the war taking place around them. The relationships they forged with each other were fascinating, their problems were solved in creative, surprising, heart-breaking or hilarious ways, and their triumphs achieved through blood, sweat and tears.

There's more. The premise was fascinating and the writers mined every kernel of potential. The animation was astoundingly beautiful; certainly nothing you’ve ever seen on a Saturday morning cartoon before. I loved every character, was invested in all their successes, was awestruck by the beauty of the world they lived in, whether it be the snowy grandeur of the poles or the sprawling metropolises of their largest cities.

Aang, a unique protagonist who is one-half Messiah, one-half Trickster archetype, Katara, driven by themes of breakage and healing, Sokka, who goes from narrow-minded chauvinist to a warrior who is filled with awe and respect for the women that have touched his life, Zuko, an antagonist whose story is filled with more heartache, pain, mystery, angst, change and redemption that you could have thought possible, and Toph... well, we'd never seen anything like her before. Even minor characters had that rare quality of conveying the sense that they had a life outside their interaction with the main characters.

So yeah, I was a fan. I remember participating on one of those “You Know You’re Obsessed With Avatar When...” threads, in which my contribution was “you don’t care that it’s Christmas in three days’ time, you just want another Avatar episode.” Naturally, I was excited for a continuation of the story in The Legend of Korra.

So what happened?

Well, sometimes lightening just doesn’t strike twice. The X-factor is just missing. But if I really try to pinpoint the problem, I think that Korra failed my threefold rule: not that it didn’t have good characters and an intriguing storyline and a captivating setting, but that the threefold components simply didn’t fit together in a coherent way. So, let’s break it down.

Character:

Like a kid on Christmas morning, I was eager to meet this new cast and love all of them as I did their predecessors. Yet not one character in Korra comes even close to attaining the adoration I have for the first generation. As much as it pains me to admit it, I could cross-examine the arc of every character on this show and find it wanting, but for the sake of time management, we’ll just focus on Korra’s.

TV Tropes describes what is called an Establishing Character Moment. This is the very first scene in which a major character appears, a scene which is specially designed to give the audience clear first impressions as to who this character is. Everything we need to know about Korra is demonstrated by her initial appearance. 

At little more than four years old, Korra is not only aware that she’s the Avatar, but displays perfect control over the elements of fire, earth and water. Given that Aang was twelve when he discovered he was the Avatar and struggled to learn each element that wasn’t his own, Korra appears to be a prodigy even by the show’s standards. Her words in particular are even more telling. Utterly at ease with her identity and powers, she shouts: “I’m the Avatar! You gotta deal with it!”

She's so cute when she's tearing apart the house.

Fast-forward several years, and Korra has mastered the art of fire, earth and water bending, and clearly excels in the physicality and discipline of combat. But there’s a catch. Viewers of the show know that any new Avatar is trained in the art of air-bending first. Because of its techniques and the mentality that is required to master it, air-bending is deemed the natural first step to learning each element in turn. (Aang learnt the hard way of attempting to learn the elements out of sequence). Air-bending is flexible, swift, and almost entirely defensive, and since other bending styles are more aggressive, it provides a key lesson in maintaining balance and restraint. It also requires patience and spirituality, traits that Korra most certainly does not possess.

After watching her effortlessly defeat her fire-bending opponent, her trainers tell her that she “lacks restraint” and that “you’re getting ahead of yourself, as usual”. We soon learn that Korra has not only not learnt the art of air-bending, but that she finds it difficult to tap into her spiritual side, a grave oversight considering one of the Avatar’s duties is to act as the bridge between the mortal and the spirit world. Furthermore, her ability to call on past incarnations for wisdom and advice is a crucial part of her role as guardian of the world.

More clues as to her upbringing and background accumulate: she’s been raised in a compound run by the White Lotus Society, where all the decisions regarding her training are made for her, from whom she has to ask permission for a brief excursion on her polar-bear dog, and in which her safety is considered paramount. When her would-be air-bending master Tenzin finds that his duties in Republic City prevent him from training Korra in the art she needs, there’s no question of Korra not accompanying him back into a potentially dangerous situation. It’s therefore rather ironic that the only bending she has yet to master is the one equated repeatedly with freedom.

In just a few short scenes, we’re presented with a potentially fascinating character study. Here is a young woman who is well-aware that she’s (quite literally) the most important person on the face of the earth, and yet one that has been isolated and cared for her whole life. She’s a poor little rich girl, if we replace “rich” with “outrageously talented and super-special” who has a multitude of responsibilities that she may be tenuously aware of, but hasn’t even begun to fulfil. 

She’s oozing confidence to the point of arrogance, but is painfully naïve about the world outside the compound walls. She reveals in her own strength and power, but lacks the one key discipline that would allow her to temper her own abilities. She knows she’s the Avatar, it is the first and foremost attribute with which she defines herself, yet she has little idea of what being the Avatar means, to either herself or the world around her.

In other words, she’s the complete inversion of Aang, who was immensely spiritual and gifted at air-bending, but had trouble with the other elements. Whereas Aang’s fighting technique hinged on deflection and finding the path of least resistance, Korra barges headfirst into combat. Where Aang often goofed off or ran from his responsibilities, Korra is desperate to learn and embrace her role as Avatar. And whilst Aang’s situation required him to come to terms with alternative modes of confrontation and problem-solving that didn’t rely on his usual tactics of avoidance, trickery and evasion, Korra too begins her story by entering a set of circumstances in which her personality and skills need to be seriously modified if she’s to have any chance of success.

***

Every single story in existence sets some ground rules when it comes to plot-arcs and character development. In this case, the audience is given some clear expectations when it comes to the journey that Korra is about to embark on. We're shown that she’s aggressive, confident, head-strong and unrestrained. That she lacks the ability to air-bend and all the qualities that this particular bending-style implies: patience, moderation, discipline and pacifism. That she loves the physicality of bending, wants to fulfil her destiny as Avatar, and that she identifies completely with her abilities and prowess.

By knowing her strengths, weakness and the goal she's striving toward, we also know what the narrative can to do challenge, weaken or scare her, and how her established personality can either help or hinder her on her way to achieving her objectives. We know that her arc will end with her mastering air-bending, successfully negotiating the bender/non-bender conflict that has arisen in Republic City, and defeating her adversaries, but how she gets there is something for the writers to surprise and delight us with.

The problem is that getting from Point A to Point C is not a particularly coherent journey. It starts off well enough, especially in the tension that arises between Korra and her air-bending teacher Tenzin. His traditional methods of instruction, which involve lengthy stints of meditation to achieve relaxation and weaving through several spinning gates to practice one’s ability to dodge and evade, fail miserably and are completely at odds with Korra’s impatient nature. 

Losing her temper with the lack of results these lessons bring her, Korra sneaks out to visit the Pro-Bending tournament that’s taking place across the harbour, thrilled by the modern bending techniques that she witnesses there. Tenzin is furious, believing that air-bending requires a calm and quiet environment, and Korra shoots back with a declaration that maybe she doesn’t need air-bending at all. Yet both are astonished when near the end of the match, Korra secures a victory for her team by utilizing the air-bending footwork that Tenzin has been instructing her in, but which eluded her in his teaching environment.

A compromise is struck and an understanding arises between pupil and teacher: clearly what Tenzin has to teach Korra is important and necessary, but the methods used to instruct her must be modified to play to her established strengths. It’s clear however, that there’s still a long way to go to instil air-bending qualities into Korra.

So far so good, right? Well unfortunately, that’s as far as this particular story-thread goes. Though Pro-Bending is set up as the instrument through which Korra will grasp the basics of air-bending, we never again revisit Korra’s attempts to master the techniques. Tenzin never integrates himself into her training sessions, never meets with her teammates Bolin and Mako in order to help them help her, never monitors anything she does. Though we occasionally see her practising the spiral movements in the training area on the island, there is no more exploration of her attempts to learn the skills and mentality required for air-bending.

So how does she eventually master it?

Having had her fire, earth and water-bending abilities taken away by Amon, she is able to tap into her latent air-bending when she sees that her love interest is in trouble.

Yeah. She doesn’t learn it through hard-work or enlightenment; it just comes to her in her time of need. What’s worse, she doesn’t utilize any of the prescribed methods of attaining this particular form of bending – it is fear and anger that finally unlocks her ability to bend air.

So after making a fairly big deal of how difficult it is for her to master air-bending, we not only don’t see her working for it, but witness her grasping it in a way that doesn’t require her to change or grow at all. When you compare this to Aang, whose struggles with learning his elemental opposite was explored in the aptly named Bitter Work, demonstrating how he not only had to learn the earth-bending techniques, but rethink his personality and outlook on life in order to grasp the concepts behind the techniques, Korra is simply able to achieve air-bending ability due to the brash attitude that she had all along. It pretty much defeats the entire purpose of a season that’s called Air.

And what about her spiritual side? This has been closely linked with air-bending in the past, and learning to tap into it seemed a natural journey for Korra to take. Yet this goes nowhere either. Korra’s preoccupation with martial arts and pro-bending belies her neglect of her spiritual side, but the exploration of this is slip-shod. 

Aang’s journey was replete with the beauty and mystery of the unseen world: often he would contact his past lives for wisdom, call upon spirits to help him, or visit the spirit world itself to find answers. At the heart of all this was “the Avatar State”, a state of mind that was difficult to control and hazardous to his safety, but which allowed him to tap into all his power and all the knowledge of his past lives. Learning to master it was the crux of his journey, and the key to defeating the Fire Lord. 

Korra on the other hand, has virtually no contact with the spirit world at all – more importantly, she has very little interest in making any. Yet having established that she is found wanting in this area despite it being a crucial part of becoming the Avatar, no one either in the story or out of it deems it a worthy plot for Korra to follow. Through the entire season, Korra has hardly any connection to the spirit world, her past lives, or the Avatar State. In fact, I’m not even sure that anyone even mentions the Avatar State.

Despite this gaping hole in her education, Korra is allowed to putter along with her prodigious bending skills as her only weapons against Amon, and only very rarely does she try to tap into her spiritual side. But when she does, the spirit world manifests as glimpses of the past; a story surrounding a man that eventually provides the answer to Amon’s identity. But these little “info-dumps” appear more like puzzle pieces than any sort of spiritual guidance; in fact, most of the time it feels as though it’s Aang contacting her, rather than the other way around.

And finally, Korra comes to her dark night of the soul, her waking nightmare (quite literally; one of her dreams involves Amon breaking into her room and telling her: “after I take your bending away, you will be nothing”), the reality that she’s feared for the entire duration of the series: all her bending has been taken away from her, leaving her bereft to the point of suicide. Come on, you can’t tell me she wasn’t contemplating throwing herself off that cliff at the end there. 

But at this point Aang just turns up and gives her bending back to her, his reasoning being: “when we hit our lowest point, we are open to the greatest change.” If someone wants to explain that one to me, be my guest. 

As an added bonus, he grants her the ability to spirit-bend so that she can restore bending to those who lost it. She achieves the Avatar State though NO meaningful spiritual development whatsoever. What’s more, all this happened in the last few minutes of the final episode. There was simply no time for us to process Korra’s plight or what it might mean for her – by the time we get an inkling of what she’s lost, Aang has appeared to give it all back to her.

(Now granted, Aang’s ability to spirit-bend in the last series was something of a deux ex machina itself. Whilst agonising over the thought of having to kill the Fire Lord, he is given a third option by a giant lion-turtle, which is just as bizarre as it sounds. Yet I tend to forgive this particular “cheat” considering the final episodes of The Last Airbender involved a three-strand storyline, and Katara and Zuko’s duel with Azula and Sokka, Toph and Suki’s assault on the air fleet was as close to storytelling perfection as you can possibly get.)

Now, I understand that a season two was green-lit quite late in the game, perhaps complicating things in the writers’ studio. But even taking that into account, it’s painful to consider the lost possibilities. Season two could have explored Korra’s personality beyond the simple ability to bend the elements, forcing her to look deeper into her spiritual side and rely on a bending art that doesn’t come naturally to her. She could have taken forays into the spirit world, seeking out a way to heal herself and others. She would have been required to find solutions to problems that didn’t rely on brute strength or confrontation. She would have had to lift herself out of her own despair; her greatest fear; her loss of identity. 

Damn, someone tell me that there’s some fan-fiction out there that does precisely this, because it would have been so awesome to see on-screen – and it’s the type of story that could be told only in this particular world. Given that the next season is going to be called Spirits I’m once more filled with confusion as to how the writers could miss the boat so completely.

***

Korra is a character that doesn’t seem to learn or grow or change in any way. This may not necessarily have to have been a bad thing, but time and time again the show itself prepped the audience to expect a learning curve or self-epiphany that never came. And it wasn’t simply in regards to air-bending, but in Korra’s personal growth.

Take her feelings for Mako for example. Though there’s nothing particularly charming about Korra’s pushy pursuit of Mako, I could at least appreciate it for being in-character. Taking into her account her utter confidence, her assumption that she’s the centre of the universe, and the fact that she’s (presumably) been sequestered away from cute guys for most of her life, it makes sense that she’d make a move on him despite knowing that he’s dating another girl. His rejection comes as a shock to her, and she reacts childishly, unable to fathom that a guy might be “just not that into you”. 

She continues to nurse her crush, but having befriended Mako’s girlfriend Asami in the interim, ultimately encourages Mako to support her when the latter faces a personal crisis. It’s a sign of maturity that she would place someone else’s needs above her own desires, but this is completely undermined by the final episode in which Mako has (somewhat ambiguously) broken up with Asami and declared his love for Korra instead. A make-out session commences and it’s worth noting that at this point, Korra doesn’t know that he’s ended it with Asami. She selflessly gives up Mako, only for the narrative to reward her with him anyway.

Yay?

When it comes to her conflict with Amon, things get even more garbled. Throughout the entire season, Tenzin has stressed the importance of patience. The narrative has backed him up on this, for every time Korra acts impulsively, it ends in disaster. She hurtles after Amon during the attack on the pro-bending arena and has to be rescued twice by Lin Bei-fong. She challenges Amon to a duel and is left humiliated, violated, and terrified. She goes to confront councilman Tarrlok at his office and ends up beaten, trussed up, and driven out of the city to an isolated location in the back of a van. 

Finally, Tenzin’s caution seems to have penetrated her thick skull when the air temple island is occupied and he encourages her to go into hiding. Grudgingly, she admits: “we need to be patient.” Yet soon enough she’s grumbling: “I hate this being patient stuff,” and in the very next episode she rejects the strategies put to her by the very General that Tenzin requested that she wait for in order to seek out Amon, stating: “I’m sick and tired of hiding. It’s time I faced Amon. My guts tell me it’s time to end this on my terms.”

Really, was there ever any point at all in trying to teach this bull-headed girl anything? Yet this time – probably because it’s the last episode and time to wrap things up – she succeeds, despite her short-sighted tactics, the string of failures that followed all her previous experiences with Amon, and her complete lack of any plan that didn’t involve overpowering Amon with her own bending. Naturally, Amon almost effortlessly takes her down, and it's only thanks to the aforementioned surprise air-bending that she manages to get the advantage.

Finally, she never really gets a clue when it came to the whole bending/non-bending conflict. Early on, Tenzin says to her: “being the Avatar isn’t all about fighting,” yet ultimately her ability to fight is all that matters in the resolution of her problems. Harking back to that moment when she first happens upon the anti-bending rally, in which she declares “bending is the coolest thing in the world!” it’s clear that she never grows out of this mind-set, nor comes to understand any point of view beyond that which her own ultimate privilege accords her. 

But I’ll get to that in my next part. In short, when it comes to discussing Korra’s character, I was disappointed that her development was caught in stasis. She’s the same person with the same flaws and the same temperament that she was at the beginning. She defeats Amon by using the very traits (brashness, impatience) that she was meant to grow out of. Things like air-bending and spirituality (and a hot boyfriend) weren’t earned, but simply handed to her. She regains her identity as a powerful bender, and will never have to question that ever again. In short: she hasn’t learnt anything.

World:

The most memorable aspect of The Last Airbender is the concept of elemental bending, and a natural continuation of this is making the backbone of the plot in The Legend of Korra the tension which exists between benders and non-benders. The lack of this friction in the previous series was a source of much speculation, as it seemed almost ridiculous that a group of people who possessed innate superpowers were happily co-existing next to ordinary people without any sort of management in place to monitor and control the inevitable imbalance that would arise between those who could break rocks with their minds and those who couldn’t. The whole scenario was just asking for trouble.

Most viewers chalked it all down to the fact that the population at large was too worried about the war being waged all around them to pay much attention to smaller social inequalities, but in any case, the emergence of this theme in the follow-up series was apt. Not only are the characters now living in a time of peace in which social issues can be more easily addressed, but the leap forward in years means that technology has bridged the gap somewhat between the two factions. 

In the past, benders were relied upon for transport and construction, mining and farming, protection and entertainment. Now thanks to an Industrial Revolution, there are other ways of achieving such things – if nothing else, benders run the risk of becoming redundant. It’s the perfect time and setting to revisit the possible conflict that could erupt between the gifted and the normal.

Again, Brian Koniezko and Michael DiMartino (or "Bryke") set up a complex and multi-faceted scenario that poses no clear solution and which takes pains to examine both sides of the equation. When Korra first arrives in Republic City, she’s quick to realize that something is rotten beneath its shining exterior, and that her duties as Avatar require her to intervene in the unfolding events – just as quickly, she learns that for the first time in her life, not everyone is on her side, and she can’t do whatever she wants.

One of the first things Korra comes across is a small Equalist rally in which a non-bender is denouncing benders, arguing that they can effortlessly intimidate, oppress, injure and even kill people like him. Anyone with even a passing interest in this show can see that he has a point: we’re talking about people that can shoot fire from their fingertips, move the earth beneath people’s feet, and manipulate water into doing just about anything. Can you imagine your average street thug or football hooligan armed with these sorts of powers?

Soon enough, Korra comes across a protection racket run by three benders who are using their powers to terrorize others. Unsurprisingly enough, Korra reacts to both situations in her typical headstrong manner, but interestingly enough, the consequences of her conduct only supports the non-bender argument that people like her are dangerous. 

She confronts the Equalist spokesman with flimsy (and nonsensical) insults and later uses bending against him to extract information. Against the gangsters her intentions are certainly in the right place, though it doesn’t take long for a metal-bender cop to point out all the damage she's caused to surrounding buildings and streets. Benders abuse their powers, and Korra just as guilty of this (albeit to a lesser extent) as anyone else. As councilman Tarrlok tells her, the two of them aren’t so different, using force and power to achieve their goals (something Korra vehemently denies with shades of "the lady doth protest too much", though the story never brings it up again). Essentially, Korra attempts to solve the anti-bending problems in the very way that proves the point they're trying to make.

So it’s no wonder that non-benders are demanding rights, training themselves in “chi-blocking” (a martial art that disrupts the ability to bend by attacking pressure points) attending Equalist rallies, and lending support to a masked figure known as Amon, an enigmatic man who has the ability to permanently remove a person’s bending. 

He’s the leader of an Equalist movement who not only preaches the existence of an equal society, but who can literally make this happen. He and his Chi-Blockers are formidable opponents, not only for their lightning-quick reflexes and electrified weapons that put them on an equal footing with your average bender, but because they hold the moral high-ground. 

Benders do hold a disproportionate amount of power; not just in themselves, but in society as well. The Republic City Council is made up entirely of benders, and all the cops in the city are metal-benders. Over the course of the story, these people form a task-force that attacks a group of Chi-Blockers (this is entirely unprovoked, and since the story has already established that no less than three main characters lost loved ones to fire-benders, it’s hardly unreasonable to suppose that normal people would want to learn ways to defend themselves) and impose a curfew on non-bender neighbourhoods (ending with them getting arrested when they take to the streets to protest their rights). 

Korra herself even tells Tarrlok: “you’re doing exactly what Amon says is wrong with benders. You’re using your power to oppress and intimidate people.” And of course, we can’t forget all those mentions of turf wars and gang warfare.

Clearly all this resentment and turmoil was a problem long before Amon came to power. Clearly the Equalists are a result of this tension, not the cause. Clearly Amon’s defeat is only the first step in establishing balance between these two factions. Clearly the benders have had too much unmitigated power for too long. This is why Amon makes such an effective villain – he’s addressing problems that are already there. If nothing else, the sheer number of people who swell the ranks of Amon’s rallies and protests is pretty demonstrative of the population’s discontent with benders.

For Korra personally, Amon is a threat not just to her life, but to her identity. He can take her bending away; that which she defines herself with. It’s no surprise that she’s terrified of him, for he comes out better off in every confrontation. Though his identity is wrapped in mystery, it’s clear that he’s passionate about his cause, and has no qualms about practising what he preaches: ridding the world of bending. But more than that, he serves as a potent message of what disempowered populations do when they’re angry, scared and desperate enough: resort to terrorism. Some of the most powerful moments throughout the series are the effects and consequences of Amon’s anti-bending campaign, and though Amon and the Equalists’ methods are clearly villainous, he’s very clever in the way in which he plays his cards.

Amon’s first victims are gangsters from the cities, people who we’ve already seen frightening and extorting money from helpless non-benders. Later when he attacks the Pro-Bending arena, he points out to the crowd that he’s taking the bending from “bullies and cheaters” who have paid off the referee to ensure a victory. When Korra challenges him to a one-on-one match, he effortlessly restrains her, only to free her again, telling her that taking her bending away at this point would only make her a martyr. His plans escalate as the show goes on, from punishing those who (arguably) deserve it, to attacking council-members in or around their homes and places of work, to finally tying up three children and preparing to forcibly remove their bending.

Yet throughout, he continually argues that his is a noble goal: to rid the world of benders’ powers (calling it “an impurity”) and thus rendering everybody equal. His tactics are inhuman – in fact, the intensity of the de-bending scenes suggest a type of rape or other violation – but when it comes to his goals and ideas in context of the bigger picture...well, you can’t say that the man doesn’t have a point.

Of course, losing all of her bending would have been a great way of forcing Korra to confront her privilege and learn first-hand what it’s truly like to live as a non-bender (barring one element), but the deus ex machina denied us this. Alternatively, Korra’s latent spiritual side that could have provided the answers needed to resolve this sticky situation, perhaps with her appealing to people’s desire for balance and equality born out of her own desire to serve the needs of the people. Either way, the bending versus non-bending conflict was set up so that Korra could solve it.

But she doesn’t. She just defeats Amon.

The idea of benders versus non-benders is a conflict that could only ever be told in this particular world. Harry Potter deals with Fantastic Racism through the wizarding world’s prejudice against Muggles and Half-Bloods, and the X-Men explore the tension that arises from a new faction of super-powered individuals in a world where they are the under-represented minority – but this was something rather different. And ultimately, nothing was done with it. There is still a huge mass of people in Republic City who aren’t happy with the way they’re treated, and who have clearly demonstrated that they’re prepared to take decisive action in order to secure their rights. 

It’s not simply a matter of the show raising difficult questions and giving ambiguous answers – the fact is that no attempt whatsoever is made to answer those questions or resolve the issue in any way. I guess we’re just meant to assume that the Equalists disbanded and went back to their homes after Amon was outed as a bender. We’re given no indication of the situation after the climactic scene. We never learn if the imposed curfew was lifted, whether Korra plans to restore bending abilities to dangerous criminals, or if Amon’s followers disbanded – nothing that answers the question: “what happens next?” The argument that Amon represented seemingly dies along with him.

***

The Last Airbender was essentially a very simple story (learn the elements, defeat the Fire Lord) that was enriched by each characters’ arcs, whereas The Legend of Korra had a more complex premise with more one-note characters. I think a lot of this had to do with the shorter run-time: there were only twelve episodes in the first season of Korra, as opposed to the twenty of Avatar. And yet the writers knew this coming in. Time management is important, and when you look at the number of abandoned storylines and short-changed characters, it was clear that Bryke were trying to juggle too many characters, too many ideas, too many concepts and plot-threads. 

It occurred to me that The Last Airbender had fewer characters to explore in more time, whilst Korra had more characters in less time. Over the duration of Avatar’s season one we had Zuko, Iroh, Katara, Sokka and Aang as our main characters, each with their own distinct personalities and story arcs. Korra had Bolin, Mako, Asami, Tenzin, Lin, Amon, Tarrlok, and Korra herself – all vying for time, each with own arcs, and only with twelve episodes to do them justice. It just felt that there were too many balls in the air. Some were dropped. Some floated up into the ether somewhere. At least three hit me in the face.

Which leads me to...

Story:

Given my understanding of storytelling’s threefold law and how integrated all three strands are, I’ve already covered most of the storylines in my exploration of character and world-building. Plot is naturally tied into both these things, and so there’s not much more to be said. Korra’s lack of meaningful development and the lack of resolution to the bender versus non-bender conflict are flaws in the storytelling, though there are others as well...

Pro-bending. Despite my complete lack of interest in sport generally, I could at least appreciate the cleverness with which Bryke designed an imaginary sport that utilized the art of bending with rules that made sense (no game-winning Golden Snitches here!) 

That said, the purpose of this sport in the wider narrative is a bit lost on me. As I’ve already said, Korra’s need to learn air-bending through non-traditional techniques gets off to a good start when she uses air-bending footwork to win a match. But then this thread disappears entirely. The tournament feeds in exceptionally well with the Equalist plot when Amon and his followers attack the arena (and I especially liked the fact that Pro-Bending had been held up as a symbol of both factions coming together in harmony to enjoy something), but again, this thread feels like it’s just left dangling. In hindsight, all those early scenes of training and competitiveness and hype leading up to the finals seem like padding.

Lin Bei-fong. What a wonderful character! So clearly her mother’s daughter, and easily the most kickass character on the show. And yet the writers undermine her greatest moment not once, but twice. Ignoring the revelation that her caustic attitude toward Tenzin and Korra is the result of her failed romantic relationship with the former (because I’m honestly not sure what the point of it was), Lin sacrifices herself to save Tenzin’s wife and children in a magnificent action sequence that involves her leaping from the back of an air-bison and taking down two air-ships by herself. Captured by Amon, she refuses to disclose the location of the air-bending family, and tragically gets her bending taken away. If there was ever a point in this series that I get teary-eyed, it was now.

But then in the very next episode, Amon reveals that Tenzin and his children have been captured, forcing them on stage in front of a contingent of non-benders in order to remove their bending. It’s another terrifying image – but it’s given no context whatsoever. How did they get captured? When? By who? We never find out (we certainly don’t see it) and Lin’s sacrifice was in vain. 

But then there’s another U-turn at the end of the final episode in which Korra restores Lin’s bending. So her sacrifice was for nought twice over. As with Korra, it would have been fascinating to see Lin try and cope with life without bending, and for her to learn that as terrible and tragic as it was to have an innate part of her taken away, she still has a life worth living in which she’s not the sum of her bending abilities.

She doesn't get it either.

The love triangle. Gaaaah. The entire thing was time-consuming, predictable, and largely pointless. Words cannot express how much I didn’t care. To be fair, I’m not much of a shipper at the best of times. I have my OTPs (both canonical and non-canonical), but I’ve never quite understood the level of emotional investment that many viewers seem to pour into fictional couples to the point where they seem to be vicariously experiencing the relationships of fictional characters as their own. That such a thing as “shipping wars” exist confounds me.

So when I talk about the whole Korra/Mako/Bolin/Asami mess, I’m not dredging up feelings that go any deeper than mild apathy. Usually I’m happy to just take what the show gives me in terms of pairings, but I just wish I’d been given a reason to care about Korra and Mako. They didn’t ever seem to enjoy each other’s company or have proper conversations. They spent most of their time griping and snapping at one another. Their conduct toward Bolin and Asami was insensitive to say the least. Mako’s development goes from the relatively interesting: “I must work hard to protect my little brother” to the tiresome: “hmm, which girl should I pick?”

There’s currently a shitload of Mako-hate going around the fandom right now, and as pleasantly bemused as I am that a fandom’s vitriol is actually being directed at a male character for a change (quite astonishing considering romantic entanglements are usually considered the sole responsibility of female characters), I’ll admit to feeling a bit sorry for the guy. I can get that sometimes you like two people at the same time, that sometimes it gets complicated, and that sometimes you can’t sort out your feelings - but the problem in this case is that it just wasn’t interesting. An inordinate amount of time is spent on Mako dithering about his feelings, when all anyone really wanted to see was four friends kick some ass together.

As much as I appreciate that Korra and Asami never partake in a cat-fight (in fact, when Asami confronts Mako about his feelings, she makes a point of saying: “I like Korra” – though goodness knows why considering Korra was downright rude to her for a long time) the mere presence of a “two girls pitted against each other over a guy,” storyline, no matter how understated, was wearisome and unnecessary.

 The “show, don’t tell” rule was broken (or at least bent) when Korra goes missing and Mako responds by leading the search-party to find her – it's not necessarily a bad decision on paper, but by making Mako the only one who is frantic about Korra’s location in order to demonstrate his *deep and meaningful* feelings for her, whilst the rest of the characters (which include a police officer and the missing girl’s guardian) are trailing along behind him in a calm and orderly manner, only really serves to make them look bad by comparison. 

At this point Asami also questions Bolin about Mako/Korra, and he tells her about the kiss they shared (the one that had him run off in hysterical tears after witnessing it) before shrugging and saying: “I’m over it.” Thanks for telling us, because you definitely didn’t show us. In fact, the more I think about it, the more superfluous Bolin becomes. He really only existed in order to make up the numbers: a Pro-Bending team member, the requisite earth-bender, a point on a romantic triangle, and ultimately the comic relief. He has a line in the final episode that pretty much sums it up: “I’ll just stand over here quietly, in silence.”

And when it came down to it, I thought that (in Mako’s own words) the pairings of Bolin/Korra and Mako/Asami made more sense. We were shown how attracted Mako was to Asami and how well their personalities complimented each other. We were shown how well Bolin and Korra got along during their super-cute date in Republic City, how sweet Bolin was in his admiration and appreciation of Korra’s strength, and how they could bond over something as gross as a belching competition (heh, shades of Arthur/Mithian, there). Oh, and he looks at her like this:

Pay attention guys; this is the dreamy half-lidded look that every girl secretly wants to have directed at her.

Which inevitably brings us to...

Asami. Well, first of all, I’m sincerely happy that Seychelle Gabriel will be remembered in this fandom for something more than penis hair.

See it? See it?

I loved that we were given a beautiful, wealthy young woman who wasn’t a spoiled brat or an alpha bitch (heh, once again, I’m reminded of Princess Mithian). I loved that she was allowed to be immensely feminine whilst still enjoying “boyish” pursuits such as race-car driving and martial-arts. I loved that she was the “token non-bender” of the team, and proved her worth through her skills at self-defence, driving and strategy. 

I loved that she (unlike Korra) had to give up her life of privilege and leave her beautiful mansion in order to do what she thought was right (even if she did take a boatful of luggage with her!) I loved that despite losing her father, her boyfriend and her way of life, she never becomes ungracious or embittered or even particularly sulky. I loved her hair.

And yet the writers seemed to hate her. Her father’s treatment of her makes little sense (see below) and Mako is never honest with her, leading to a half-hearted apology which focuses more on the situation than his behaviour, and an ambiguous breakup scene which doesn’t feel definitive enough to excuse Mako and Korra from falling into each other’s arms in the season's final moments.

It’s hard to truly sympathise with Korra losing her bending when we’ve got this other girl over here, who – newsflash! – never had it in the first place! The things that Asami cares about: her home, her father and her boyfriend are all taken away from her, yet unlike Korra, she doesn’t have a past life to turn up out of nowhere and magically give them all back to her. What the writers put this poor girl through was gruelling, and by the end of it she’s on her own, presumably sticking with Korra and her extended family because she literally has nowhere else to go. She deserved better.

Hiroshi Sato. So what the heck was up with this guy? He starts off as an industrialist who is fond of pro-bending and certainly bears no ill-will toward benders. Great, so he’s a positive example of a non-bender who doesn’t side with Amon. 

But then we discover that he’s secretly in cahoots with the Equalists, providing them with all the mecha-technology they need to wage war. Interesting, so he’s a sympathetic example of a non-bender who sides with Amon because of deeply personal reasons and a genuine belief that what he’s doing is right. His estrangement with Asami (who sides with the Avatar) is sad because it’s the precise opposite of what he’s trying to achieve by arming the Equalists: to ensure that no families are ever harmed by benders again.

Yet what becomes of him? In the final episode he is actively trying to murder his own daughter. Buh? When exactly did: “I shall rid the world of benders in order to protect my daughter” become: "I will avenge my wife’s death by destroying her (and my) only child?" Unless we assume the guy is a lunatic, it just makes no sense.

Pema and the air-bending kids. I enjoy depictions of happy families, ones in which parents are happily married with offspring who are well-adjusted, so for the most part any complaints surround Tenzin’s family stems from the fact that there simply wasn’t enough of them. Tenzin and Pema’s marriage was a potent symbol of the harmony that can exist between bender and non-benders, and their children were a beautiful reminder that the art of air-bending has not been eradicated from the world.

Admittedly, I wasn’t fond of Meelo’s strange design, nor all the fart and snot jokes that went with him, but the moment in which Jinora, Ikki and Meelo air-bend to Lin’s rescue was a real “clap my hands in front of the monitor and hope no one hears me” moment. Apart from Bolin, their antics probably got the most laughs out of me.

Pema seemed pleasant enough, but I never really got a fix on her character, nor on her relationship with Tenzin. We're never privy to a scene in which they interact as husband and wife, save for that amusing moment when Pema glares at Tenzin for inviting Tarrlok to the dinner table. Other than that, we get little understanding of their relationship beyond (here’s that word again) what Tenzin and Pema tell us about it.

Let’s face it, though Pema could have been an interesting voice for the non-bending faction and female support for Korra to lean on, her only real purpose in the story was to have that baby. In fact, between all the children and Pema’s surprising youth (in comparison with the much older Tenzin) does anyone get the sense that Tenzin and Lin’s relationship was partly dissolved because Lin didn’t want to have children? And that as the last air-bender, Tenzin realized that he needed a young, fertile wife, pronto? I can’t go so far to say that it was directly implied in any way, but the facts certainly open themselves up to that interpretation.

Fire-benders. When Amon said that his parents were killed by fire-benders, it was chilling. When Mako reveals that his parents were killed by fire-benders, it was sad. When Hiroshi informs us that his late wife was killed by fire-benders...well, by this point it’s just funny. Has anyone ever been killed by anything other than a fire-bender?

***

So really, the only question is – what went wrong? I have a theory that I’d like to just throw out here. First of all, it’s based on the understanding that there’s a difference between writing a book and creating a film or television show. In the case of authorship, a book is in the hands of one person. That person has a single vision that they want to share, and total control of the characters and storyline (sure they might have editors and so forth, but the telling of the story is essentially entirely up to them). And this is as it should be. More than one author working on a single book simply isn’t feasible. 

But a film or television show is a different beast. There are hundreds of people involved: producers, writers, actors, animators, directors and so on, each lending their own skills to a finished project. No one should ever have total control, because no one is ever an expert in all fields.

The Ur-Example is obviously Star Wars. The original trilogy is a classic for a reason, and to quote Red Letter Media at the conclusion of his review for The Phantom Menace:

Lucas has always been a rouge filmmaker who hated the studios system. He always seemed to want total control in his projects, which I can understand. And while a director should have control on the project, film-making should also be a collaborative process. The second screen-writer can help focus the story and the dialogue. Actors are creative people too. They can provide valuable insight on the characters and a lot of really good ideas. And a good executive producer can be the voice of reason when things start to get out of hand... 

With total control of every aspect of the film, from the writing to the directing to casting, etc, this [The Phantom Menace] was the result. Then when you hear tales of about how Luke was supposed to be a sixty five year old man with a robot head, Han was supposed to be like a frog, and CP3O was like a slimy used-car salesman, you just have to wonder “what if”. What if Lucas had the type of control back then that he does today?

It’s a harrowing thought, and I mention it because it’s a pattern that comes up frequently when a single person is given too much control over a project (heck, it even happens to successful authors when they start ignoring their editors). I’ve had several Xena Warrior Princess fans tell me that they were astonished by Rob Tapert’s lack of insight into his own show and its characters, accumulating in a universally reviled finale that was (partly) written and directed by him. Robin Hood had a second season that was rolling along nicely until creator Dominic Minghella wrote the series 2 finale, effectively destroying everything that made the show so special and sending it hurtling toward cancellation.

In short: creators are not the same thing as writers.

The Last Airbender was written by a lot of people, most notably Aaron Ehasz, who was not only responsible for switching Toph from a male to a female, but also episodes such as The Siege of the North, The Avatar State, Bitter Work, The Crossroads of Destiny, The Day of Black Sun: The Eclipse and Sozin’s Comet: The Old Masters. That’s the cream of the crop right there - not only this, but he was co-executive producer and head writer of the show.

The Legend of Korra was in Bryke’s hands totally. They wrote every single episode. That’s telling, I think.

***

Okay, I think I’m pretty much done with the negative stuff now. I feel as though I’ve had a bad run of books/films lately – most things have disappointed or underwhelmed me in some way, and my hopes were high for Korra given the excellence of its parent-series. Yet in saying that, I hope this critique doesn’t suggest that I consider the show a write-off or that I hated every moment of it. Because for the most part, I did enjoy it, and I’m definitely going to be back for more when season two rolls around (not least because the panel at Comic Con promised spirits, my favourite component of this fantasy world, as well as the inclusion of episodes that aren’t written by Bryke. See more HERE).

To go out on a high note, here are some things that I truly enjoyed about The Legend of Korra:

Bryke’s sense of humour. These guys have always been wonderful at adding little moments of levity and humanity throughout the darkest of proceedings, and their quirky sense of humour has always guaranteed some laugh-out-loud moments. Many of them even gain meme-status, such as Shiro Shinobi, the Pro-Bending tournament commentator who continues to narrate events even as Equalists begin their attack, up until the moment that they break into the commentator’s box and electrocute him. It’s simultaneously funny, terrifying, and oddly heroic.

More irreverence can be found at the police station, where a little old lady inexplicitly waits with a platypus bear on a leash, at the air temple, where Korra scratches her backside whilst trying to meditate, and even in the south pole, where a shield falls from the wall of Korra’s parents' humble abode when the White Lotus comes knocking. And then there was this...

Scares and thrills. In the wake of recent tragic events, much of Amon’s revolution becomes even more chilling to behold. Having watched the season in its entirety before starting this review, I have to say that much of the anti-bending revolution was truly frightening in its portrayal and execution. Their use of electrified prods was a great way of evening the playing field between themselves and benders; even better (or worse, I suppose) you could really tell that then people were electrocuted, they were in very serious pain. Every time you could feel the searing heat and violent jolts running through the victims, and when they inevitably passed out on the ground, you could be sure they'd be nursing pounding headaches for hours afterwards.

Sequences in which Amon began his takeover of Republic City held some of the most memorable images of the season: the slow-motion effects of the Equalists donning their masks and preparing their weapons as the Pro-Bending tournament drew to a close, the targeting of council members as they went about their daily business, unaware that Equalists disguised as exterminators and window-washers were watching their every move, the airships moving in on the defenceless air-island, where we know three children and a pregnant woman encompass the last remnants of the Air Nomads, and a line of blindfolded benders being forced to submit to Amon and have their “impurity” taken away from them. It’s not difficult to find real-world analogies to all these events, and find them all the more terrifying for it.

I loved the double-whammy when it came to Tarrlok blood-bending Korra, and then his inability to do the same to Amon, who manages to overcome his willpower and take away his bending. Both sequences were haunting and evocative, and when Tarrlok cries in horror: “what are you?” after Amon throws off the effects of his blood-bending, I was whispering the same thing.

We got five seconds worth of Bumi, and in those five seconds, he became one of the show’s most popular characters. It's quite possibly the purest embodiment of One Scene Wonder and Ensemble Darkhorse I've ever seen.

And of course, the animation is beautiful. I can’t possibly rave enough about this, save to say that I’d sooner visit the world of Avatar than any place dreamed up by George Lucas, J.K. Rowling, James Cameron or J.R.R. Tolkien.

So bring on season two...