AVATAR: THE LEGEND OF KORRA

I really liked the first avatar series and there's a lot to like about the second avatar series, but I have mixed feelings. The protagonist is Korra. Let me take this opportunity to point out that there are few TV shows and movies with protagonists whole aren't white and male. Also, you don't see a who lot of breasts in American animation.

Most characters are great. The only characters I have problems with actually happen to be two of the main characters, Bolin and Mako (voiced by Bud Bundy!). They're brothers. Bolin is a traditional dork and Mako is a dork like Squall Lionhart. As of the more recent episodes, Bolin feels like a third wheel. They're pro bending athletes.

Yeah, people developed a sport around bending and all the professional athletes appear to be teenagers. Go figure. It really reminds me of blitzball in that it looks about as sensible. Its a sport where you shoot fireballs and throw round bricks at opponents to knock them off a 3 story platform into an unsupervised pool. Note that fire bending and earth bending were extensively used for war in the first series, now they're used for sport.

Let's focus on just one episode. In S1E6 "And the Winner is..."  The villain Amon has announced that he's going to crash the Pro Bending Tournament. Rather than cancel the game, the City Council decides to beef up security. We watch the grudge match between the Fire Ferrets and the Wolf Bats before Amon and his minions show up and start doing villainous things. Then Korra and police chief Lin Beifong kick some ass together but ultimately fail to accomplish anything. The end.

What was the purpose of this episode? I think they were trying to accomplish too much. As of the previous episode, I was looking forward to a pro bending match. I figured we were going to focus on this particular conflict and wrap it up, but this is also an action show so they had to give us something more. The match would build up to nothing. It ate up half the episode so it seemed like it was going to be a legitimate sports drama, but to my dissatisfaction, Amon shows up after the Wolf Bats cheat to victory and takes away their ability to bend and their ability to ever have a rematch against the Fire Ferrets. The cheating will probably never be addressed either. I guess the moral is cheaters never win? I don't think so.

The fire ferrets loss was then swept by the wayside in lieu of more important matters. So I really want to know, what was the point of that pro bending match! I honestly feel like it was wasted time. A lot of build-up over previous episodes led to nothing. Why were we ever so heavily invested in pro bending in the first place? Because it was some sort of outlet for Korra or something like that. I think the pro bending plot line should have been treated differently. I've got a complaint about the fight scene too. You know how Dragon Ball Z had too much fighting? I feel like there was too little in this episode. Well, maybe a whole quarter of the episode was dedicated to the attack by Amon, but none of it was particularly meaningful, just minions. Amon, the big bad, did squat but he was the only character who accomplished anything. He used this attack to make an example of and intimidate his enemies, build his reputation and bring himself one step closer to fulfilling his destiny as masked guy who does evil.

Addendum 6-26-2012: I just saw the finale of Korra. After anticipating this new series for 2 years, season 1 (of 1?) was adequate. I'm not sure what the intention of this series was. What was it trying to accomplish? More than anything, it felt like a big *Easter Egg hunt rather than a story about a girl (and her friends) on her/their own hero's journey.

*There was lots of Easter Eggs!