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Legend of Korra Book 4: Balance |OT| A Feast of Crows

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Also, I see Kuvira likes blinding her enemies while fighting. If only someone who is good at fighting blind was around. Hur hur.

Someone already pointed this out, didn't they?
 
I hope Mako and Bolin have trained hard over the time skip.

I expect some serious badass battle feats!

Bolin has been in that earthbending army for the past 3 years, at the very least he has gone through some training under Kuvira. He has probably also fought some bandits on those three years. But him and Mako are already decent fighters, and from the trailer we already know that Bolin
will lavabend
in a fight.
 
Yes, but if she is just using the bandits she becomes Amon mk.II. I'd like something different.

It depends. I think the use she has for the bandits is almost certainly to have them scare independent states back into the Earth Kingdom, whether or not the bandit we see in the air was one of the ones from earlier. What the show needs to do to make her not just another evildoer who loves evil is give some reasons why such extreme measures might be necessary. Why is she so anxious to reunite the Earth Kingdom?

This is going to be difficult. There's no hint of some greater threat facing the world or anything like that. Probably this is just about the Earth Kingdom's historical claim to the territory, which is a very unsympathetic motivation. The viewer doesn't have any real attachment to the Earth Kingdom as a single political entity, and it's not actually clear that any of the people in territory outside of Ba Sing Se want to be part of the political Earth Kingdom.

Even if Kuvira isn't behind at least some bandit attacks, which makes the recruitment scene hard to make sense of, Opal basically has the right of things as far as we can see. It's not clear why the leaders of states should need to declare personal loyalty to Kuvira or the Earth Kingdom in order for Kuvira to do something about the bandit problem. It's a problem that the bandits appear to be hopelessly outmatched; helping out isn't a meaningful sacrifice on Kuvira's part such that she can reasonably choose to only help people who help her in return (perhaps by supplying recruits, equipment, food, etc.). She's not putting together a mutual defense arrangement. This is just about withholding cheap humanitarian aid unless people give up their sovereignty. That's not an unrealistic sort of thing to do, but especially from a modern perspective it's not what good or even grey guys do.

Also it's got to be incredibly embarrassing for two airbenders and a skybison to get airjacked by a guy with a grappling hook.
 
Kuvira mob boss confirmed. Lol "It would be a shame if something happened to all these nice things of yours". Also I'm liking this so far. :3
 
It depends. I think the use she has for the bandits is almost certainly to have them scare independent states back into the Earth Kingdom, whether or not the bandit we see in the air was one of the ones from earlier. What the show needs to do to make her not just another evildoer who loves evil is give some reasons why such extreme measures might be necessary. Why is she so anxious to reunite the Earth Kingdom?

This is going to be difficult. There's no hint of some greater threat facing the world or anything like that. Probably this is just about the Earth Kingdom's historical claim to the territory, which is a very unsympathetic motivation. The viewer doesn't have any real attachment to the Earth Kingdom as a single political entity, and it's not actually clear that any of the people in territory outside of Ba Sing Se want to be part of the political Earth Kingdom.

Even if Kuvira isn't behind at least some bandit attacks, which makes the recruitment scene hard to make sense of, Opal basically has the right of things as far as we can see. It's not clear why the leaders of states should need to declare personal loyalty to Kuvira or the Earth Kingdom in order for Kuvira to do something about the bandit problem. It's a problem that the bandits appear to be hopelessly outmatched; helping out isn't a meaningful sacrifice on Kuvira's part such that she can reasonably choose to only help people who help her in return (perhaps by supplying recruits, equipment, food, etc.). She's not putting together a mutual defense arrangement. This is just about withholding cheap humanitarian aid unless people give up their sovereignty. That's not an unrealistic sort of thing to do, but especially from a modern perspective it's not what good or even grey guys do.

Also it's got to be incredibly embarrassing for two airbenders and a skybison to get airjacked by a guy with a grappling hook.

imho what the show really needs is a military villain who isn't 'evil evil evil evil' but morally grey. If there is a lot of good from her uniting the earth kingdom and the only bad is her power hunger, and she isn't especially evil then I'm all for it. I'd love for Bolin to be against Team Avatar on principles that he's doing good for example.
 
Decent episode to start things off.
So Korra's going through that ol' training stage again.

Kuvira doesn't look like the type of enemy that requires the avatar state so there must be another threat happening later in the season.

Great first episode. Kuvira is an absolute boss. Like Amon-tier levels of badass. Hopefully her character doesn't fall apart like his did.

She seems like just the type of character who will have a breakdown if things don't go her way.

I hope he either a) has a moment of redemption and turns into a good support character, or b) turns out to be the real Big Bad after outmanoeuvring Kuvira. Either are acceptable.

He's certainly doing an impressive job hiding it if that's the case.
 
She's not putting together a mutual defense arrangement. This is just about withholding cheap humanitarian aid unless people give up their sovereignty. That's not an unrealistic sort of thing to do, but especially from a modern perspective it's not what good or even grey guys do.

I don't know if I agree with that. If a state in the US seceded do you really think the federal government would do nothing? It would be far more bloody than what Kuviera is doing. Reunification of the earth kingdom is what she has been tasked with and she is doing it very well, even though the show wants us to think she is bad, even if she used the bandits that is nothing in comparison to what nation states have and will do to stop breakup of a country. Just look at Ukraine, according to the "morally good" thing then they should just let them separate and give them free food as they send them on their way? That's not how things work.
 
imho what the show really needs is a military villain who isn't 'evil evil evil evil' but morally grey. If there is a lot of good from her uniting the earth kingdom and the only bad is her power hunger, and she isn't especially evil then I'm all for it. I'd love for Bolin to be against Team Avatar on principles that he's doing good for example.

All I really want, like I said before, is for the series to show exactly why Kuvira is wrong, despite her good intentions, and I believe they'll do it through Bolin. Kuvira is helping only those they pledge allegiance to her, and through show of force. She doesn't just come with supplies in tow, she goes around showing off her military might. She may believe it's the correct way or the only way to unite the Earth nation, but that's what makes her a "grey" villain, "good" intentions with bad actions, not so much that has both good and bad intentions. She's using fear in her favor. Fear of the bandits and fear of herself. She's a fascist all right.

Bolin will come to realize that, unlike himself, Kuvira is helping only those who help her gain power, and possibly later on Kuvira will miscalculate and overreach in her ambitions, perhaps by being too forceful against those who stand up to her, at which time Bolin defects from her army.

I notice that her Earth Kingdom map showed dark green areas as those that have not yet united under her. Curiously, she showed the United Republic as the same color as states that are still not under her control... Could she be plotting to take back the Republic, because she believes that's what's best for the people?
 
Have nick.com's video player been absolute horseshit for anyone else? I let it buffer enough to fill up the timebar, but I'm still getting pauses and quality drops left and right. Either their UI is lying about it being buffered when it's not, or something else is happening, because I get pauses for no discernible reason and it drive me mad.
 
Have nick.com's video player been absolute horseshit for anyone else? I let it buffer enough to fill up the timebar, but I'm still getting pauses and quality drops left and right. Either their UI is lying about it being buffered when it's not, or something else is happening, because I get pauses for no discernible reason and it drive me mad.
It's shot up for me, too. It's no problem if I watch it on my phone or my 360.
 
I don't know if I agree with that. If a state in the US seceded do you really think the federal government would do nothing? It would be even more bloody than what Kuviera is doing. Reunification of the earth kingdom is what she has been tasked with and she is doing it very well, even though the show wants us to think she is bad, even if she used the bandits that is nothing in comparison to what nation states have and will do to stop breakup of a country. Just look at Ukraine, according to the "morally good" thing then they should just let them separate? That's not how things work.

I noted that this was not an unrealistic thing to do. This is probably not the thread to work out a theory of secession, but I think it's uncontroversial in the western world to say that secession is the right outcome when you've got a large territory with a distinct people with little everyday intervention from a distant national government and almost no representation in the national government, where a large majority wants to secede and seems to want this for reasons of self-determination rather than self-interested political claims. Like, no one expected the UK to go to war to get Scotland back if the vote last month had gone differently, and Scotland actually falls far short of being the ideal candidate for secession. We generally think that US independence was very justifiable. Indian independence was a clear moral good. Most people think China's wrong in its efforts to hold on to Tibet, and most people would be pretty horrified if China decided to retake Taiwan. You can even find people who will say that Lincoln was wrong to try to preserve the Union, but it's also important for many people who think the Civil War was justified that the South seceded because it wanted to protect a system of racial slavery. It's obviously not the case that a majority of people living in the rebel states actually wanted to secede. It is almost universally the case that the wider world is on the side of the secessionists (when secessionists are in the clear majority in the territory) on almost every occasion where the secessionists don't clearly want to secede just so that they can do something horrible.
 
Where's the best place to watch this? Season 3 i could see in HD on amazon, when i tried the nick player the quality wasn't that good.
 
I don't want Bolin to defect. I want them to show a real conflict with people wanting different things and fighting to achieve them.

Assuming that Kuvira tries to hurt somebody that he cares about/an innocent he will defect. And seeing some of her current sneaky tactics, it's not a matter of IF he defects but when.

Where's the best place to watch this? Season 3 i could see in HD on amazon, when i tried the nick player the quality wasn't that good.

Amazon has HD but you'll have to pay per episode.
 
Season 1 is bad
Season 2 is terrible (apart from those 2 episodes in the past which were good)
Season 3 is OK at best
Yeah.

The praise for Season 3 is pretty ridiculous on the internet. I've seen people claim that S3 is as good if not better than Avatar as a whole!

I think the reason behind it is that the majority of Avatar fans who started watching LoK, realized pretty quickly that it wasn't a good show, and so they dropped it during S1 or S2. Now we are left with a core audience who have been forgiving enough to stick with the show this whole time, and who are practically determined to love it.

Anyway, I just watched S01E04. It was pretty dull, and feels like ground we have covered a few times before. Not liking Kuvira at this point, doesn't feel final-season-villain worthy, but I suppose it's early.
 
Yeah.

The praise for Season 3 is pretty ridiculous on the internet. I've seen people claim that S3 is as good if not better than Avatar as a whole!

I think the reason behind it is that the majority of Avatar fans who started watching LoK, realized pretty quickly that it wasn't a good show, and so they dropped it during S1 or S2. Now we are left with a core audience who have been forgiving enough to stick with the show this whole time, and who are practically determined to love it.

Anyway, I just watched S01E04. It was pretty dull, and feels like ground we have covered a few times before. Not liking Kuvira at this point, doesn't feel final-season-villain worthy, but I suppose it's early.

Yes, everyone who has a different, more positive opinion than you on the show are just pretending to like it, or are deluded. That's a reasonable claim.
 
Opal and Kai much better than before.

Show needs to be renamed "Everyone loves Kuvira!"

That prince felt like a bad parody of Bolin from what I saw.

Episode 2 asap plox.
 
Yeah.

The praise for Season 3 is pretty ridiculous on the internet. I've seen people claim that S3 is as good if not better than Avatar as a whole!

I think the reason behind it is that the majority of Avatar fans who started watching LoK, realized pretty quickly that it wasn't a good show, and so they dropped it during S1 or S2. Now we are left with a core audience who have been forgiving enough to stick with the show this whole time, and who are practically determined to love it.

Anyway, I just watched S01E04. It was pretty dull, and feels like ground we have covered a few times before. Not liking Kuvira at this point, doesn't feel final-season-villain worthy, but I suppose it's early.

If you look at rankings of people here in GAF you'd see that most still hold 2 of the three AtLA seasons higher than Korra when ranking them from best to worst. Korra season 1 was decent, season 2 was ok because the first half is horrible and the final episode is stupid. Season 3 had the choreography and a tighter krew, it was good man. Season 4 started out decently too with more developed characters.

If we could only call something good if it holds up to previous titles, we'd have almost nothing worth watching. Just because ATLA as a whole is better it doesn't mean Korra can't be good. Season 3 and 4 will probably be the best Korra, with season 1 being the other season and season 2 being eh.
 
Yes, everyone who has a different, more positive opinion than you on the show are just pretending to like it, or are deluded. That's a reasonable claim.
Ha, I guess it does sound silly when you put it like that.

I'm not saying that everyone who is positive about the show is deluded, just that those who have stuck with it this far are a bit more forgiving than most. I think that is a reasonable claim.
 
I don't know if I agree with that. If a state in the US seceded do you really think the federal government would do nothing? It would be even more bloody than what Kuviera is doing. Reunification of the earth kingdom is what she has been tasked with and she is doing it very well, even though the show wants us to think she is bad, even if she used the bandits that is nothing in comparison to what nation states have and will do to stop breakup of a country. Just look at Ukraine, according to the "morally good" thing then they should just let them separate? That's not how things work.

This is one of the reasons the show stays fascinating, despite your misgivings.

It's not exactly the same as Ukraine or the American Civil War, there are always major caveats. In the case of the current Ukraine crisis, it's outside intervention from Russia that is extending most of the chaos within Ukraine. In the case of the American Civil War, half the country separated because of slavery, a reason that very few people in the rest of the world and the northern U.S. sympathized with.

The Earth Kingdom has always been a loose federation of states or petty kingdoms, and throughout the centuries it looks like the nation finally settled on being united by the Monarchy of Ba Sing Se and the shared spiritual and cultural propensity for Earth. The Queen screwed that up with her authoritarian ways and already had a tenuous hold on the rest of the nation and it snapped when she unexpectedly died.

BUT, this is where Kuvira will probably fail too. The Earth Kingdom is more of a federation that agrees to stay united, but as we saw with Hou-Ting's authoritarianism, they don't respond well to monarchs that suppress this diversity, despite all sharing the common element of Earth. It's about BALANCE, between total disintegration and total integration.
 
Yeah.

The praise for Season 3 is pretty ridiculous on the internet. I've seen people claim that S3 is as good if not better than Avatar as a whole!

I think the reason behind it is that the majority of Avatar fans who started watching LoK, realized pretty quickly that it wasn't a good show, and so they dropped it during S1 or S2. Now we are left with a core audience who have been forgiving enough to stick with the show this whole time, and who are practically determined to love it.

Anyway, I just watched S01E04. It was pretty dull, and feels like ground we have covered a few times before. Not liking Kuvira at this point, doesn't feel final-season-villain worthy, but I suppose it's early.
"Stop liking what I don't like."
 
Yeah.

The praise for Season 3 is pretty ridiculous on the internet. I've seen people claim that S3 is as good if not better than Avatar as a whole!

I think the reason behind it is that the majority of Avatar fans who started watching LoK, realized pretty quickly that it wasn't a good show, and so they dropped it during S1 or S2. Now we are left with a core audience who have been forgiving enough to stick with the show this whole time, and who are practically determined to love it.

Anyway, I just watched S01E04. It was pretty dull, and feels like ground we have covered a few times before. Not liking Kuvira at this point, doesn't feel final-season-villain worthy, but I suppose it's early.

I liked it because it had the least amount of 'dumb' in it. I think that's why many liked it. THe action was really solid and Korra was less emotionally erratic and the piddly problems between the main gang was finally put to rest so they could act as a team again.

I think the biggest problem with LoK, if it could be summed up, is simply not enough episodes to get to that same level as ATLB.
 
Hair color looks the same to me. Clothes are almost identical. Do you recall the exposition about Bolins hair?

Where do bandits get planes from? Why would they even bother with having Kuviras exposition on having the bandits join her? If the only thing they wanted to accomplish was show her bending prowess they would not have shown the scene the way they did.
Well, in general it's easy for bandits to get military weaponry in troubled states. And with the capitol in disorder it certainly needed a lot of soldiers from the provinces.

Im suprised people think Wu is gonna be a bad guy. He's probably gonna be assassinated.
It would be cool if he actually turn out to be. I mean, there are characters who just act whacky and worthless so people won't take them serious. Not saying that it applies here, but it would be interesting. Just think that everyone including Suvira thinking that she have the upper hand and takes the land, just for Wu to jump in killing Suvira and taking everything she collected by herself.
Apparently my country is wrong too.
 
Kuvira = Zelda Williams? Well I'll be damned. She sounds so different! :o

Anyway, solid first episode. Some exciting things to be seen
bless that good heart of yours Bolin, but why do you keep making weird choices? Come on son. On the other hand, his brother is a bit peeved. Lol at Bei Fong telling him he doesn't work for the police anymore. The prince soon to be king looks like a schmuck. Asami doing well.

Kuvira is a creepy dame from the start. I suppose she's going to declare war on the other nations when she takes control of the Earth kingdom. Her fighting style is amazing though. Wonder how strong she really is.

And Korra. Girl, you be C-list now in bending.
 
Those mechas are very quickly getting more and more advanced, in a couple more years they'll be flying around in Gundams and tossing out burning fingers.
 
Yeah.

The praise for Season 3 is pretty ridiculous on the internet. I've seen people claim that S3 is as good if not better than Avatar as a whole!

I think the reason behind it is that the majority of Avatar fans who started watching LoK, realized pretty quickly that it wasn't a good show, and so they dropped it during S1 or S2. Now we are left with a core audience who have been forgiving enough to stick with the show this whole time, and who are practically determined to love it.

Anyway, I just watched S01E04. It was pretty dull, and feels like ground we have covered a few times before. Not liking Kuvira at this point, doesn't feel final-season-villain worthy, but I suppose it's early.

Not really. Just because some people like it, doesn't mean there's something wrong with them. Plenty of those who have stuck with the show throughout these seasons had a lot of negative opinions about the first Books and enjoyed Book 3 a lot, and others are coming back after abandoning it in Book 1 or 2 and liking Book 3 also.
 
It would be cool if he actually turn out to be. I mean, there are characters who just act whacky and worthless so people won't take them serious. Not saying that it applies here, but it would be interesting. Just think that everyone including Suvira thinking that she have the upper hand and takes the land, just for Wu to jump in killing Suvira and taking everything she collected by herself.Apparently my country is wrong too.
Bigger twist, he's red lotus.

Speaking of which, they better not throw RL under a rug this season
 
I notice that her Earth Kingdom map showed dark green areas as those that have not yet united under her. Curiously, she showed the United Republic as the same color as states that are still not under her control... Could she be plotting to take back the Republic, because she believes that's what's best for the people?

This is very likely. I would like to note that there was a scene in this episode where she placed an odd emphasis on reuniting the entire Earth Kingdom.

That combined with the suggestion that the Spirit Wilds play a pivotal role this season leads me to suspect that the final showdown will most likely be in Republic City.
 
I don't want Bolin to defect. I want them to show a real conflict with people wanting different things and fighting to achieve them.

That doesn't make sense. That wouldn't show he wants different things, it would show he was "bad" or the least moral of Team Avatar all along. It would be bad writing and a waste of character development. We really don't need Bolin going along with everything Kuvira says just to show that Bolin wants something different in life, like helping people in the Earth Kingdom. There are indeed universally agreed upon moral ways to carry out change or a mission in the world, and Kuvira seems to be going beyond what's acceptable.

Bolin might agree with a lot of what Kuvira is doing, but of course there are limits, nobody expects him to be completely changed so much that he would agree to Kuvira's methods and forget basic human rights.

If it does happen, and Bolin all but becomes an enemy of Korra, it would have to be EXTREMELY well written, even relative to LOK's standards. Few series are able to pull that through.
 
This is very likely. I would like to note that there was a scene in this episode where she placed an odd emphasis on reuniting the entire Earth Kingdom.

That combined with the suggestion that the Spirit Wilds play a pivotal role this season leads me to suspect that the final showdown will most likely be in Republic City.

Makes sense, considering that's where the series started, along with the Spirit Wilds importance hinted by Bryke.
 
That doesn't make sense. That wouldn't show he wants different things, it would show he was "bad" or the least moral of Team Avatar all along. It would be bad writing and a waste of character development. We really don't need Bolin going along with everything Kuvira says just to show that Bolin wants something different in life, like helping people in the Earth Kingdom. There are indeed universally agreed upon moral ways to carry out change or a mission in the world, and Kuvira seems to be going beyond what's acceptable.

Bolin might agree with a lot of what Kuvira is doing, but of course there are limits, nobody expects him to be completely changed so much that he would agree to Kuvira's methods and forget basic human rights.

If it does happen, and Bolin all but becomes an enemy of Korra, it would have to be EXTREMELY well written, even relative to LOK's standards. Few series are able to pull that through.

In 12 Episodes? After having pretty much no indication during the 40 Previous?

No. No one is that good.
 
I liked it because it had the least amount of 'dumb' in it. I think that's why many liked it. THe action was really solid and Korra was less emotionally erratic and the piddly problems between the main gang was finally put to rest so they could act as a team again.

I think the biggest problem with LoK, if it could be summed up, is simply not enough episodes to get to that same level as ATLB.
Honestly, season 3 sort of made me feel that's not the case. Its pacing was fine. Its just they weren't effectively using the time they were given in the earlier seasons. I mean, certainly longer seasons would have been nice, but 12 episodes seasons should have been workable.
 
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