So I feel I'm torn between two camps of worshipping Bryke for what they've done, and laughing my way to the bank at all my friends and some of you users who actually think this show has more redeemable qualities than irredeemable ones.
Jesus this show sucked worse than a Hoover vacuum in the first two books. The gravity of how poorly written Book 1's plot was cannot be understated. In fact, I feel it was the promise of having a successor to A:TLA that made it that much worse. Yes, the animation was gorgeous, the music? Lovely! But we're introduced to our cast of characters alongside teenage romance that we were accustomed to back with the Gaang.
But so early though. What the fuck Korra? I know you had no idea what a dick was at the time, but Jesus what about our plot with the Equalists? We could've had less probending and you fantasizing about Mako's sweaty musculature because I'll be damned if Mako had a personality beyond swimming in vagina with a scowl.
The only redeemable thing about him back in Book 1: He had (and still has) batarangs for eyebrows.
There were some points in Book 1 where the actual plot was given a back seat to whatever bullshit we had to watch between Korra, Mako, and Asami. I don't remember what Bolin did. In fact, I don't remember anything Bolin did as a character that had any sort of agency upon the plot if either Book 1 or 2, so feel free to remind me and school me on his actions.
So here we are with our new Team Avatar (where did they get the name anyway? I believe Sokka came up with the term for the Gaang. I don't see how this new generation learned about it). Asami has her plot going with her father building tech for the Equalists, and this is probably the only time she has an actual character along with actual significance with the unfolding story. Folks figured she'd betray Korra, but to follow up with that would require better writing than what we were getting (and arguably what we got ultimately).
I remember getting physically angry when characters began saying they loved each other. Some of my friends chalked it up to them being kids, whereas I chalked it up to them being idiots focusing on some insignificant shit when there was this guy running around creating an uprising and seemingly having the ability to spirit-bend. So many good concepts and interesting thoughts were introduced within Book 1 that allowed the question of whether or not benders really did have power over non-benders as a whole. Social issues that bring up the idea of privilege within fiction? Awesome.
But hell if that was shot down. Instead, we're force fed a backstory by an imprisoned Tarlok because, you know, we spent the whole time watching teenagers bullshit around as opposed to getting things done. Some people dig the whole bloodbender revelation. I'm not in that camp - I thought it was a shoddy piece of retconning with the only explanation being that some folks are special, and the example presented was to look at metalbending. I found that to be bullshit because bloodbending was its own special thing way back in A:TLA, along with metalbending back then. However, metalbending was taught in schools by Toph, which gave way to the Republic City police force squads, Zaofu, and the Earth Empire's metalbenders. Bloodbending wasn't given the time of day, and all we get is some OP criminal raising his OP kids.
So in the end, we get Korra suddenly getting Air Bending from nowhere, regardless of whatever explanation a fan can give that automatically assumes more than what was provided within the context of the show. Amon is a hack, commits suicide in what was a touching scene that I'm impressed was even in Book 1, Korra apparently hints at offing herself when she loses her powers (which could've spawned its own lovely dialogue in the show about how and why benders consider bending so important to them), and we get our Aang coming back to fix everything with a magic touch.
Our finale has Mako confess his love to Korra, and I'm throwing up wondering why this show was even made.
This set the precedent of Book 2 for me, and I thought Book 2 was worse than Book 1 by a country mile sans the second half of it.
