Evaluating Criticism of The Legend of Korra
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- čas přidán 31. 12. 2023
- The Legend of Korra is not a perfect show, but I feel that some of the criticism against it is unwarranted, so I wanted to break it down and assess the most common points of that criticism.
- Krátké a kreslené filmy
My problem with Korra as a character is that she kinda feels like she lives in her own little world during seasons 1 and 2 and just jumps into things without thinking or listening to the people around her who keep trying to help.
Also the fact that her group of friends felt very chemistry-less. Aside from Asami and sometimes Bolin I never found myself thinking "Oh, I want to see this character interacting with this character!" like I used to feel with Aang's group.
The thing about Korra's show, to me at least, isn't that things don't make sense, or ruin the lore, or aren't realistic... It's just that a lot of them are very joyless.
Watching Korra being stubborn during the first two seasons wasn't fun, watching the love triangle with Mako and Asami wasn't fun, watching the ball bending game wasn't fun, watching the four kids hanging out wasn't fun, and even a lot of the action, which used to be such a selling point from the first series, felt toned down.
So many fights just felt like exchange of projectiles, people launching a fireball, or a waterball, or a rock, and then dodge and repeat. In the first series people would jump all over the place while doing crazy things with bending, but here, so many fights felt like an RPG game with people waiting their turn to throw a move.
Of course there are exceptions, Avatar also had a lot of projectile-based fights, and Korra had some very big and creative fights, usually during the season finale, but again, they felt like the exception more than the norm.
Like, Korra fights freaking Toph in season 4, an avatar and an earth master, they should feel like absolute titans battling inside that swamp, and yet I barely even remember how their fight went. I remember Zuko fighting Aang during the day of the black sun and how they kept moving from inside the house, to the forest to the beach, to the top of the house, and so on... that little fight felt so much more fun and memorable than most of the stuff that happens in Korra.
I don't think Korra is a bad show, but to me at least, it feels very boring at times.
I think you do a pretty good job addressing common criticisms pretty quickly here. Many fans have some surface level opinions on both shows, which is fine but the show offers so much more than they realize.
I am glad you brought into focus the growth aspect Korra's character arc, it was by far the most compelling continuous aspect of the show to me. The villains were also excellent, with most ppl complaining we didn't get more of them (a good complaint IMO).
One complaint I'm curious to hear your thoughts on are the other members of the gang in Korra being pretty lackluster, especially compared ATLA.
And my one concern about the copaganda dismissal: IMO, you can't address issues of copaganda w/o bringing Mako, and to some extent Korra, into the conversation, who I'd argue are the main embodiments of the show's fondness toward policing and the "not all cops are bad" sentiment that much copaganda perpetuates. Probably deserves its own vid tho haha.
and knowing Toph, she most likely became a Chieftan of Police not only due to the unfair restrictions her superiors placed on her as a child, but its simply because kids grow up into slightly different people.
she WAS very chaotic and bold, and iirc she did eventually become a mentor at some academy for earthbending, but there's still many logical reasons she probably went into the direction of an officer of order.
perhaps she was ashamed of her younger self's brash confidence? but at the same time, there were multiple moments in ATLA where she took it upon herself to help save the Gaang from situations that would have left them for dead, like the Archive falling into the sand, diving into a hole that she made to hide from the firebenders in the Drill (cant fully remember), as well as literally taking it upon herself to discover an entirely new form of earthbending JUST to escape a cage that was designed to send her back to her parents.
I think her becoming a police officer is WARRANTED (get it?) when she has shown plenty of agency in the original series. Yes, AGENCY. Some of us are forced to become independent and take charge of our own lives when no one else wants to teach us.
My main issue with it was just that forced plot between Korra and Mako. I loved Korra as a protagonist and was actually quite intrigued by the plot, but having two characters with no chemistry being forced to play out all of the motions of a romantic subplot was just distracting. ESPECIALLY since they seemed so out of character the whole time.
I guess it just really broke my immersion.
But other than that and the writing on season two (which had a good reason for being bad) I did really like it!
what's the background song being played in the 2nd minute mark? I'm really invested in this video!
That song is Faux Video Production by C418. The other songs used in the video are also by him: Pr Department, Jayson Glove, One Last Game, and This Doesn’t Work