Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legends of Korra

Anyone else getting an Atlantis: The Lost Empire vibe?

I was a HUGE Avatar: The Last Airbender fan. It was really weird too, because initially I was wary of it. I am pretty sure I saw the episode called "The King of Omashu" first and then other episodes following that by accident while flipping through channels on Nickelodeon when the series first started and I just wasn't impressed. Actually, I saw "The King of Omashu" and then "The Waterbending Scroll" and then "Jet" randomly on three different occasions and I just wasn't impressed. I just found the whole thing somewhat predictable and childish and I just didn't like it. It all changed when I was bored and they were having a marathon and the two episodes that changed my view of the show most were "The Storm" and "The Blue Spirit".

I'm serious, I went from feeling very mild about the show to having a bunch of interest and did everything I could to figure out what was going on and see the episodes and this was prior to being able to find them on the internet... or knowing I could and DVR so I really had to wait for them to be on TV. I only knew the episode order because I looked it up on Wikipedia and I mostly forgot it and sort of remembered episodes according to the way I found them more than the order they were actually aired in, but I could still make sense of the story and it was really, really good.

I'm serious. I had never really been excited to see the new episode of a show on Nickelodeon before that. I was raised on Disney and PBS morning programming with a smattering of Fox morning programming. I only saw shows on Nick when I was hanging out with my friends or cousins on Saturday mornings and usually they had to explain to me what was going on.

I was a very sheltered child.

The Last Airbender excited me almost as much as Buffy the Vampire Slayer did, and I own all seven seasons of Buffy. So, you can imagine how excited I was. The series finale awed me in some ways and disappointed me in others. I wanted to know what happened to Ursa, Zuko's mom. I hated what I felt was the ass-pull to give Aang a way out of killing the Firelord. I didn't want Aang to kill the Firelord, I just wanted more to lead up to it.

However, I blame Nick for that more than I blame the series' creators who I'm pretty sure were screwed over by Nick. I'm serious. I remember how painful it was to wait and wait and wait for those last four episodes and then they showed them as weird times, in my opinion and it was just really weird. Nick kind of pulled a Fox on Avatar: The Last Airbender and up until the end, the whole thing was beautifully paced with each episode leading you closer and closer to that awesome and wonderful ending.

On the whole, when I heard they were making a sequel series called The Legend of Korra about the Avatar after Aang, I was pumped and excited beyond belief. I couldn't wait to see it... until I saw it. I was so disappointed, but probably not in the way you'd expect.

See, the ideas presented were really good, but my expectations of a well-written, excellently paced story compared to the product I got... left me so underwhelmed that I just... lost interest. Heck, I didn't even watch the second half of that first Book for ages because I was so underwhelmed by what I saw.

I HATE love triangles. I HATE sports movies. I really don't like it when I feel people changed the rules on me for shock value and then have the changed rules have seemingly no affect for a period of time. They had a character who could seemingly spirit bend and they were worried about their personal lives and winning some bullshit tournament. Really? REALLY?!

I felt insulted and angry and I couldn't really figure out where they were going, but it didn't seem anywhere good. So, I read up on how it ended and found out about the deus ex machina ending and the fact that Spiritbending is now somehow connected to Bloodbending... and I decided I didn't want any part of than until my younger cousin said something that I can't remember that somehow convinced me to finish the season just so that I could see for myself what happened and not read it in a Wikipedia article.

So, I watched it, I still was underwhelmed, but the finales were really well-put together until about that last five minutes... So, go watch them now.

Anyhow, I started watching the Nostalgia Critic and his Avatar Vlogs on That Guy With the Glasses last week because I was trying to work on my new story and review Doctor Who and wanted a bit of a break... which turned into a distraction... and turned into a bit of an obsession. The Walker brothers reawakened how much I loved that original show and the things that I did enjoy about Korra which were the idea. I loved the steampunk look of Republic City. I loved that idea that some person somehow ended up with the ability to Spiritbend and decided to use it to "equalize" the world. I loved the "after the happily ever after" tone of the story. All those were great ideas. My problem was the execution.

Then I found out about Book Two: Spirits and I decided to check it out.

My roommate, Cyn can attest to how much I enjoyed the first two episodes. I was yelling at the computer screen about every event that took place. The dark spirits are sooo creepy and they come in so many shapes and sizes. The light spirits are beautiful and the way the spirits move in general is just so... otherworldly and yet it makes sense. They're spirits. Hello!

Also, the story had me immediately engaged and I'm not sure where it's going, but I can already state one thing with certainty. Doug Walker predicted that Korra, being sheltered and so cocky and bombastic could lead to a lot of trouble if she got a bad mentor. This season, I'm pretty sure her newest mentor is not the nicest person in the world. In fact, I know he's bad news. I can feel it. He may be like Mayor Richard Wilkins, but I don't like him, I don't trust him, and I cannot wait to see what happens next with... Unalaq.

And we got to see the Southern Air Temple! And there's monks there!

I'm dancing in my seat as I type this. This is so amazing. I really, really, really, really, really, really hope that they've fixed this execution problem though. I can already see problems with the Bolin storyline, but I'm hoping it goes in an interesting direction rather than the whole "creepy evil girlfriend" direction. Maybe she'll turn out to be more like Mai. I hope so, because I'll get bored with it very quickly if it goes the way I think it'll go. Then again, part of me really hopes that this story shoots off in a direction I can't even predict and I'm really, really excited about it.

Can you tell?

So, if you want to get into this stuff, you should start watching at least Book One of Legends of Korra yesterday. The episodes are a half-hour long so, that's just six hours of being glued to your TV or computer.

Have fun!