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The Legend of Korra: Book 4 |OT2| ALL HAIL THE GREAT UNITER
- Thread starter Toa TAK
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BKatastrophe
Member
I love metalbending and earthbending. It always seems super awesome and creative. Same with waterbending. I always feel like we get just enough airbending and firebending.
Kuvira is very disappointed in you.
Haha yep some pegging fanart was indeed posted.
Icyflamez96
Member
Su's just weird
Book 1 was just so good pre-Endgame, and the only real problem was Korra's airbending and Avatar State resolution, plus Amon getting away and actually being killed by his brother.
The noir feel of Book 1 was spot on in many episodes, but it collapsed almost completely by Book 2 and Bryke decide to leave it behind like a bad part-time job. It's not that I didn't like Book 3 and 4's settings, it's just that Republic City was never dull, in theory.
I still feel it didn't get fleshed out enough. The answer was to destroy it and just make it more like ATLA by the end of Book 4, I guess.
Now I want an Asami as the Blue Spirit comic even more :S
The noir feel of Book 1 was spot on in many episodes, but it collapsed almost completely by Book 2 and Bryke decide to leave it behind like a bad part-time job. It's not that I didn't like Book 3 and 4's settings, it's just that Republic City was never dull, in theory.
I still feel it didn't get fleshed out enough. The answer was to destroy it and just make it more like ATLA by the end of Book 4, I guess.
Now I want an Asami as the Blue Spirit comic even more :S
I like how the advanced airbending we got was fartbending.
I'm going to rewatch LoK so I can pick it apart, but I'll keep in mind folks actually think Book 1 is better than 4. I'm in disbelief, but hey, perhaps I'll think the same thing too when I'm done.
m_shortpants
Member
Yes I am. Is there a problem?
And you're right about book 4, but I can easily say the same about book 1.
Really?
Villain: Amon/Tarrlok > Kuvira, and that's not even close
Pacing: Far better in season 1, where we get huge confrontations by episode 3 and 4. Yes, there's a romance episode, but it's followed by amazing episodes until the very last 15 minutes of the finale.
In season 4, nothing happens until episode 6. There are multiple filler episodes or episodes where the plot goes absolutely nowhere. There's even the clips episode. Yeah, that's a result of the budget cut, but it's still in there.
Plot:
A mysterious masked man voiced by the excellent Steve Blum is able to take people's bending away.
vs
Earth-Hitler voiced by monotone Zelda Williams.
I'll give you the ending of season one as being disappointing, but I can make the same argument for season 4. I'm not awed by Korrasami like you are. Azula has made some great posts here on why the ending of season 4 is poorly done. So we'll call ending a tie.
But I'd argue with conviction that season 1 is better than season 4 in the other categories above.
i think book 4 is mostly just... aimless. the villain was all right, but not terrible. unalaq was terrible - lacking anything that resembled sense. he was the only mwahaha evil! villain in the show and quite bad at it. kuvira became focused on just one goal over the course of several years, which led her to believe that the ends justified the means. she was more like sozin.
season 1 overall is a helluva lot better than season 4 though. season 3 and season 1 are on a different plane versus the other two, but season 2 is definitely the show's low point.
season 1 overall is a helluva lot better than season 4 though. season 3 and season 1 are on a different plane versus the other two, but season 2 is definitely the show's low point.
I KNOW no one in here is talkin' shizzah about Willaims voice acting for Kuvira.
Kuvira is very disappointed in you.
They sure are very shifty eyes ha.Those eyes were shifty as eff
Not surprising since it is Su.
Forgetting about Zaheer using that Asphyxiation/air suction technique on the Earth queen. It was quite cool to see it in motion after all the theories that airbenders should be able to do it.
m_shortpants
Member
BKatastrophe
Member
You know what? Let's say Book 4 had actually developed Kuvira. Have her be the orphan of the Earth Queen (dunno, just roll with it for me), and just repeat Book 1's whole "siblings having a turf war" theme and you're good. Wu (but it's really Reiko) and Kuvira vying for control of the Earth Kingdom and carrying on the legacy. Apples don't far fall from the tree sort of thing. Sure, it would've been unoriginal, but the idea of a legacy villain is still pretty cool. TLoK has a pretty tight focus on legacies anyway.
Ughnoliesocool
Icyflamez96
Member
ok kuvira's voice actor is good
I KNOW no one in here is talkin' shizzah about Willaims voice acting for Kuvira.
Are you putting the NO HENTAI PLEASE rule in the OT or?
You're damn right.
Are you putting the NO HENTAI PLEASE rule in the OT or?
Honestly, I just want to put more Kuvira gifs in the OP at the moment before I head to bed.
BKatastrophe
Member
But for me, I see it differently. You say Unalaq lacked sense, but here's the thing: I see so many complaints about how Unalaq was just evil for the sake of being evil, and how so many things he did didn't make sense (merging with Vaatu, for example). If you look at Unalaq as a pure megalomaniac though, someone who wants nothing but power and will do everything to get it, every single thing he does makes sense. I see him as Marvel Loki.
Kuvira, on the other hand, makes less sense to me. She wanted to establish order in the Earth Kingdom, right? Alright I'll buy it, but now you have a problem. That problem is...at what point, did she jump from "helpful peacekeepers" to "total domination?" At some point, the power and ambition went to her head and she made a huge jump, but we are never truly given that impression. I even bought her breakdown at the end of the series, but that still doesn't give a proper reason as to why, and we're never given what her train of thought was to do what she did. Why all the Earth Kingdom purity all of a sudden? She never seemed to give off that vibe at any point. I mean we're given this bit at the end where she says that she didn't want her people to feel weak and abandoned like her. So I guess she didn't like that Earth Kingdom citizens had been taken advantage of? I mean, had they? I suppose Reiko was playing a game like an asshole, but as far as we're concerned, the only other problem was the Earth Queen, and she was deposed. The puppet regime may have been a dick move, but it still would've been better than the Queen.
m_shortpants
Member
I see your point. Not only that, but she wanted to conquer Republic City to get it back. Instead she ends up leveling the city when she could have just gone to Raiko to sign the terms of surrender, which he had already said he'd do...
And in those three things, I too will argue with conviction that Book 4 was better at all of that. Especially pacing, because holy shit probending kinda killed that IIRC. I also remember Tarlok's infodump episode, which both was a testament to how everything up to that point was Bryke writing themselves into a wall they had to bust down quick because Book 1 was approaching the end, and a way to give Amon a weakness in the worst possible way - by outing him to the audience as a hack OP waterbender.
Also I recall the leadup to this being kind of dumb with that flashback of Aang and Sokka's boomerang, with mentions of Yakone here and there.
Ugh I gotta watch this again. I'm going off memory.
Now I will say Book 1 had a shit ton of promise, both coming from ATLA and the fact we have an antagonist that apparently could do the same thing Aang pulled off on Ozai at the end of that series. I will also concede that the amount of fuck ups Book 1 had hold more gravity for these reasons.
For Book 4, we already knew Kuvira was planning to build SOMETHING, right? You knew, beat by beat, she was getting closer to completing it and we saw progress. I mean, yeah, basic development that the audience could follow, right? But at least it was gradual throughout the episodes. I can't say I was disappointed with what Kuvira pulled off.
Hell, the only moment I ever felt Kuvira was about to enter a character suicide was when Korra talked her down. And despite the fact Earth Hitler ultimately had some shitty reasoning to make an empire that felt a lot lamer than her previous reasonings, it didn't require an entire episode of flashbacks. Besides, of all the heavy-handed grand issues the show tried to bring across to the audience (power inequality, uselessness of government, reclaiming one's land), I gotta give it to Book 4 for managing to have an antagonist who was actually convincing about how the Earth Kingdom needed help.
Well, at least before that orphan FF8 shit but we don't think about that.
I'll add more thoughts on Book 4 later I guess.
Hell, now that I think about it, what the hell did Book 1 carry over into the other books that was so important aside from setting up the main cast and setting? I'll never forget when Korra straight up said she kicked Amon's butt. I swear that was Bryke saying they fucked up, however they went on to fuck up all the way through Book 2.
And while I'm at it, perhaps Book 2 was better than Book 1 because Book 1 was a disappointment.
...
Actually no. I can't praise book 2 for a god damned thing.
You're damn right.
Honestly, I just want to put more Kuvira gifs in the OP at the moment before I head to bed.
You should definitely add this one heh.
SilentMatthew
Member
Wait a minute, you're right. Kuvira could have just went to Raiko to sign the surrender instead of shooting her goddamn lazer. soooooooo dumb. mah god.
Edit: Although, it might end the same way anyways. Since Su gives no effs for laws, ready to commit war crimes 24/7.
Just look at dis face. *quoted myself to reduce the image size*
BKatastrophe
Member
Well, that I kind of understand. She sent Bataar Jr. to retrieve Raiko to negotiate the terms. She does this because she's obviously paranoid at this point, considering all of the betrayals, the most recent of which was Bataar Jr. surrendering to Korra's group. Not only that, there's no way she trusts anyone else to control the colossus. So now she can't trust anyone and she refuses to back down, so *BOOM* goes the spirit laser.
Kuvira actually had a full and total psychological breakdown as the book went on, but it wasn't properly portrayed. She was a basic villain pretending to be complex. Unalaq was basic, but he never tried to be anything more than that.
Wait, wasn't there more to it than that? She had him on the phone for a minute. Hmm....
m_shortpants
Member
Bataar was supposed to go and sign the surrender.
He gets kidnapped, so she blows him away (or so she thinks)
Next logical step would be to go to Raiko herself. Instead she blows up Republic City.
Listening to the Book 3 commentaries and they really seem to like giving a lot of the dialogue over to P. J. Byrne to do improv. Guess the blame might fall on PJ then for a lot of the cheesy jokes in Book 3.
"This is a good example of where we had a line for PJ and actually I think in this case we literally wrote PJ improvise. We had a bunch of ideas, but we were like ah he'll come up with something. So that little like venom was PJ. His improvs are amazing."
"This is a good example of where we had a line for PJ and actually I think in this case we literally wrote PJ improvise. We had a bunch of ideas, but we were like ah he'll come up with something. So that little like venom was PJ. His improvs are amazing."
m_shortpants
Member
Uh, there was nothing about Aang and Sokka's boomerang. All the flashbacks were fine. They came in short bursts till episode 9, and even that extended flashback was well done. We all loved it because it gave us adult Toph, Sokka, Aang, and some avatar state yip yip action.
I mean, I'm looking at the list of episodes in season 1 and 4.
Season 1 just had so many good ones.
"Welcome to Republic City"
"A Leaf in the Wind"
"The Revelation"
"The Voice in the Night"
"And the Winner Is..."
"The Aftermath"
"When Extremes Meet"
"Out of the Past"
"Turning the Tides"
And I look at season 4 and only see maybe 3-4 good episodes, with the rest being filler like rescuing Wu and Jinora™.
Hmm. I'll rewatch.
Wait what? Those lame as lines Bolin gave in Book 3 when they were in Zaofu were his? Oh fuck no.
WrenchNinja
Member
I watched the finale again
Watching that scene right after Korra takes the brunt of spiritual energy is so disappointing.
Like you have that same mirror scene from book 2 as she was facing the past avatars
But here you have fucking kuvira appear where Korras reflection is
Yeah I get it bryke, you want to show them as similar people
But this is like showing people hope for a few seconds and then pulling all hope away from people who wanted her to reconnect using the Same scene. It's just a huge dick move, unintentional or not
It just makes me mad
Watching that scene right after Korra takes the brunt of spiritual energy is so disappointing.
Like you have that same mirror scene from book 2 as she was facing the past avatars
But here you have fucking kuvira appear where Korras reflection is
Yeah I get it bryke, you want to show them as similar people
But this is like showing people hope for a few seconds and then pulling all hope away from people who wanted her to reconnect using the Same scene. It's just a huge dick move, unintentional or not
It just makes me mad
Yep sounds like it from the commentaries and also in recent interviews they're stated they'll just let PJ go crazy with the improv.
well that's what i mean that unalaq was bad at it. he was a boring villain because he just wanted power for power. i could see an argument that vaatu twisted his mind, confusing him like vaatu had with wan. but before they merged he was talking about becoming a dark avatar and there was never really any reason behind it? his motives seemed supremely confusing considering vaatu would have destroyed everything, where unalaq seemed to relish having control. compare him to ozai, and ozai is someone who actually not only wants overwhelming power, but also takes it for himself. he runs an actual scorched earth campaign and it's based on generations of belief in fire nation superiority and the idea that he was special. i get none of that with unalaq.
with kuvira, i think you have to buy into the time skip. it's also important that you go into it with her thinking she's right. these two things mean she's had a lot of run-ins with people she believes stand in the way of progress. sozin also believed he was doing the right thing by uniting the world under the fire nation's banner, to the point where he murdered children and committed genocide against the air nomads. it's not hard for me to see her go from point a to point b.
aside from nickelodeon absolutely fucking with the schedule and planning, this is my biggest problem with the show:
avatar:
book 1:
1. zhao
2. aang
3. zuko
4. iroh
5. katara
6. sokka
7. roku
book 2:
8. toph beifong
9. azula
10. the dai li
11. mai and ty lee
book 3:
12. ozai
13. suki
the legend of korra
book 1:
1. korra
2. bolin
3. mako
4. asami
5. tenzin
6. amon
7. lin beifong
8. tarrlok
book 2:
9. kya and bumi
10. unalaq and vaatu
12. desna and eska
13. varrick
14. reiko
15. tonraq
book 3:
16. zaheer and the z-team
17. jinora
18. kai and the rest of the airbenders
19. suyin and opal beifong
book 4:
20. kuvira
21. bataar jr. beifong
22. zhu li
23. toph beifong
i mean what is this, gurren lagann?
avatar:
book 1:
1. zhao
2. aang
3. zuko
4. iroh
5. katara
6. sokka
7. roku
book 2:
8. toph beifong
9. azula
10. the dai li
11. mai and ty lee
book 3:
12. ozai
13. suki
the legend of korra
book 1:
1. korra
2. bolin
3. mako
4. asami
5. tenzin
6. amon
7. lin beifong
8. tarrlok
book 2:
9. kya and bumi
10. unalaq and vaatu
12. desna and eska
13. varrick
14. reiko
15. tonraq
book 3:
16. zaheer and the z-team
17. jinora
18. kai and the rest of the airbenders
19. suyin and opal beifong
book 4:
20. kuvira
21. bataar jr. beifong
22. zhu li
23. toph beifong
i mean what is this, gurren lagann?
Icyflamez96
Member
what is this
goo lagoon?
goo lagoon?
BKatastrophe
Member
Again, Unalaq is a megalomaniac. It's not about national superiority or spirituality or anything like that. He wants power to get power and everything is a means to that simple end. He didn't care about control in the end, since merging with Vaatu would have given him the power of the Avatar. Keep in mind throughout the entirety of TLoK that the Avatar is seen as some form of ultimate power (again, something I've gone into before). Vaatu benefitted from the deal with Unalaq because that meant he got access to bending, the same power that defeated him in the past. Unalaq let that power go to his head and Vaatu took him over totally. His own lust for power did him in and everything to get to that point was bullshit he spewed because it got him where he wanted to be. I guess I just don't see what's confusing.
I have also made the comparison of Kuvira to Sozin in the past, so I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm saying she was poorly done, and thus came off as a simple character attempting to be complex. She's a conflicted character with the way she's written. You say it's important to go in thinking she's right, but how can you when she clearly does villainous shit from the get go? You could argue the same for Zaheer, but he has the Earth Queen as his counterbalance, so his ideals can seem right because they contrast with her bullshit. Not only that, his true intentions are kept secret and vague, so you get the idea that he may not exactly be a bad guy. Not until the final stretch. What does Kuvira have as her foil, though? Wu? Sure I guess, but Wu's biggest sin is that he's a selfish ass with a flair for incompetence, not an evil monarch. Is it Suyin, who is busy being an isolationist? I don't really see isolationism as a bad thing, especially considering the current state of things. Is it Raiko? We really don't see him do much, honestly. Is it Korra, the girl who is broken and trying to fix herself and be relevant? No, it's none of those things. Kuvira's means of trying to get you to see the right way is "look at that bullshit 3 years ago," and that's it.
Interesting tibit from the Book 3 commentaries. Apparently Toph has the most statues of any of the old characters from that world.
Bryke have no self control when it comes to adding more characters. Hopefully they learn a tad more restraint for whatever their new show will be in the future.
Bryke have no self control when it comes to adding more characters. Hopefully they learn a tad more restraint for whatever their new show will be in the future.
and i guess that's just the problem with unalaq. he's just kind of whatever. with sozin there was the idea that he was doing the right thing. with ozai and azulon, they thought they led by some sort of divine right and deserved power. unalaq just kind of is there. he's like the asami of villains - not even the barest hint of motivation for his actions. his only saving grace is that he was retconned in book 3 as 'that asshole,' who no one understood - so basically he's just crazy.
kuvira on the other hand hasn't done any villainous shit from the get go. we meet her when she's near the end of a three year campaign. sozin only gets started on his world tour after he lets his best bud die. what kicks off kuvira's decision is shown in a flashback and it's, 'fuck you, if you won't restore order, i will.' she argues with suyin over what she believes is right. what is kuvira fighting against? anyone she thinks is wrong. that means people who are against restoring order, against protecting the earth kingdom, and against what she thinks are the earth kingdom's best interests, and she, like sozin, are willing to go to extremes to meet those ends. it's not a war against any one person in particular.
m_shortpants
Member
Watched episode 5 of Young Justice.
Now that's how you handle character development.
Now that's how you handle character development.
BKatastrophe
Member
Like I said, Unalaq has proper motivations, it's just that they're very basic, so everyone brushes him off. I'm fine with that, because he doesn't try to be anything more than what he is: a power-hungry maniac. Azulon and Ozai were crazy assholes following in Sozin's footsteps (Azulon was perhaps less crazy than Ozai), so you're right on that. Sozin, on the other hand, tried to get Roku to help him and then went behind Roku's back and established a colony (or at least the only one we know of at the time) and then tried to kill Roku when he got in the way. Roku stomped his ass, and then when he needed Sozin's help, Sozin left him to die and then committed genocide. Sozin was most definitely a villain and never given any proper justification for his motives post Colony Numero Uno aside from being a crazy asshole, and even then "spreading our peace and prosperity" is a thin justification. Very thin.
Kuvira is established right from the get go as a villain. We learn about all of her awful shit before we even get her flashback at Zaofu. In fact, we learn about some of it in the first episode of the season (she sends bandits after Kai and Opal to intentionally force that village to join her empire). Even then we still don't see enough of her before the time skip, or even during it to make any of her decisions or personality feel even remotely justified. Again, I bought her whole breakdown at the end, but that thing could not have carried any less weight if it tried.
m_shortpants
Member
Young Justice is soooo good, I'm only 7 episodes in.
I'm setting myself up for disappointment given I know it got canned
I'm setting myself up for disappointment given I know it got canned
Icyflamez96
Member
What the heck I had the trippiest moment. I could have sworn I saw a lock on this thread and so many things were rushing to my head about what would make this thread get locked and then I dropped the phone on my face.
I need sleep.
I need sleep.
Atraveller
Banned
ayy lmao
thebaroness
Member
I like to think even the writers were aware of how terrible of a villain Unalaq was. Considering in Remembrances they portrayed him as Ming the Merciless, one of the most infamous mustache twirling villains of all time. Having a villain that just wants power for the sake of it is poor as fuck writing.
All hail the great uniter.
Not only am I seeing book 1 being favoured against book 4, but book 2 is being favoured against it too?! ROFL! I can already tell that the community rewatch is going to be hilarious.
Book 3 > book 4 > book 1 > book 2
God damn, I love this Korrasami shit.
PM? You know, for research.
Book 3 > book 4 > book 1 > book 2
It's easy to highlight the good parts via gifs.
here is moe
God damn, I love this Korrasami shit.
PM? You know, for research.
No self control?
The Last Airbender has less characters because there was only 1 big bad in Ozai and it was all building up towards that one big fight. Not to mention there were only 3 seasons.
Korra had to have a new main enemy every season.
So I don't really think what you're saying has a lot of merit.
The funniest thing about this is when CN complained the first time.
"We literally didn't sell any toys for this show!"
And they were right. Because there weren't selling any! No toys were out yet, but Cartoon Network complained about them not selling. They also had big problems with female action figures and it took some time for them to approve them.
Let's face it. Cartoon Network just didn't like the show. WB should throw their executives out or give their DC cartoon shows to someone else. I am sure the Hub would treat them well. Part of why Bronys are quite strong is the endorsement of the show producers and the network, so I am sure the Hub would treat a DC fandom equally well.
That and the figures they did release weren't worth buying in the first place.
Hopefully 3D printing catches on quick so people can just print their own fucking toys so animated shows can survive without being beholden to fucking toy sales. /fack
thebaroness
Member
aww man I would shit myself for a killer Korra figure. Where she's like bending all the elements...mmmmmmmm yeah.
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