The Legend of Korra - Book Two: Spirits

Given that there were, what, like a dozen lion turtle civilizations, I guess that explains the differing tribes within the benders, like the Fire Masters and the swamp benders and the sand benders. In fact, the Earth Lion-Turtle that Wan visited looked like the basis for the sand benders.

 

^Not necessarily. According to online sources, the Foggy Swamp Tribe was descended from people who migrated from the Southern Water Tribe. There could've been other instances of bending cultures migrating to new environments and learning to adapt their bending. Even granting what I said before about progress not necessarily happening at the same rate it did on Earth, 10,000 years is still an awfully long time, and it would be inevitable that many cultural migrations would occur within that span.

 

I'm surprised no-one has mentioned the whole Discworld bit of everyone living on the backs of giant turtles

(NOTE: I looked it up. Discworld started in 1983. Stephen King's It didn't come out until 1986.)

 

^But Discworld was itself riffing on a vastly older idea found in multiple world mythologies:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Turtle

And perhaps on the "turtles all the way down" anecdote which goes back to the 1850s:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

 

absolutely disagree. like I said, no body. we never saw tarrlok and Amon die. you saw an explosion. I saw an explosion. but to think a water bender couldn't have survived in that scene is naive. he was the best part about book 1. I wont be surprised if he makes a return. I highly doubt if it happens it will be in spirit. I wont disregard the possibility until I see the writers confirm he is dead. so far, they haven't. you heard it here first! AMON LIVES.

 

I just reviewed the scene. We see a close-up on Noatak's face, and there's a blinding flash of light. We immediately cut to a long shot of a brilliant, extremely large explosion that engulfs the entire boat. I fail to see how that doesn't constitute seeing them die.

What has waterbending got to do with it? Unless you're proposing that, as a bloodbender, he was able to cancel out the hydraulic shock within his organs that would've been the most likely cause of death from being in such proximity to an explosion. But I'm not sure it's possible to bloodbend oneself (okay, maybe it is, since he was able to negate Tarrlok's attempt to bloodbend him), and he would've had to have an inhumanly fast reaction time in order to defend against the shock wave from an explosion he had no idea was coming. Even the most adept bender needs time to perform a motion; but the explosion was instantaneous. We cut instantly from a shot of Noatak standing motionless and facing away from the source of the explosion to a shot of the huge explosion engulfing the boat without leaving a trace. He would've had to be The Flash in order to react in time.

Bloodbending or waterbending would also provide no defense against the shrapnel and heat from the explosion. Even if Noatak had impossibly fast reaction time, water can only move so quickly. The blast wave from the explosion would have propagated at supersonic speed, faster than any watery shield or whatever could've been brought into place. So there's just no reasonable way he or Tarrlok could have survived the explosion as it was shown.

They confirmed it by showing it so unambiguously.

And they have said that they intend each season to tell its own separate, self-contained story.

 

Amon and his brother are dead. We didn't see a body because 1) this is still a kid's show and 2) anyone who's sat on top on an explosion like that isn't likely to have enough left of them for it to be called a body. The man is quite literally fish food.

Ten thousand years is a *long* time. Plenty for any number of groups to emerge, migrate, split, merge with other groups and migrate again, ad nauseum, all over the planet. It'd be damn strange if any one civilization would remain static for more than a few centuries at a time.

 

But what would be the point?

 

Now that "Beginnings" has put things into perspective, I decided to go back and watch the first five episodes of Book 2 in order to get a fresh new take on things.

- Unalaq wants power and he definitely has some interest in those portals.

- Tenzin's daughter saw a statue and said "what avatar is this?" It had swirls surrounding it, the same ones that Unalaq generated around the spirits to cleanse them. Then I realized that it was Wan once I saw that both he and the statue had the same garments.

- I'm not sure that Aang spent too much time with Tenzin and not enough with Bumi and Kya, that's just the way Bumi and Kya tell it. Even if it's true though, Tenzin has a point, he was the future of the airbenders, so I could imagine Aang's concern over his wellbeing. I also thought of something else… Bumi was born first and he was a non-bender, then they had Kya, a waterbender. That must have caused some worry for Aang and tension in the family followed by some relief when Tenzin was finally born.

- People have been commenting on Korra's change this season. It's like the darkness is rising in her or something. It's been 10,000 years. Or maybe it's just the civil war.

- Korra kicked a desk up in the air and it flew a good 20 feet or so across the room. Chi energy? Woodbending? Pure strength? Plain old cartoonish exaggeration?

- With all the technological advances and the nations uniting, it makes me wonder if the age of the avatar is coming to a close.

 

There's plenty of cartoonish or wuxia-style exaggeration in this franchise, people and objects getting thrown much farther than they realistically would. Look at all the pro-bending scenes in the first season where players were thrown back dozens of meters just from getting hit by relatively low masses of clay or water.

However, on top of that, Korra has always been portrayed as freakishly strong. Case in point: at the end of episode 1 she hugs Tenzin and his children and lifts all four of them into the air at once. (You can only see the girls in the screencap, but Meelo's there too.) And Tenzin's a full head taller than Korra. She's probably lifting at least twice her own weight there.

 

Or when people tumble down the sides of cliffs or steep hills without injury. I think the desk bit stood out because it didn't involve a lot of frenetic action. She just kicked a desk.

A lot of people are taller than Korra. That's another thing I only noticed last night. I thought she'd be bigger. Or maybe she is and the people she was with were just really tall. A quick search revealed this.

 

I wouldn't object to this possibility. I just hope we see more of Wan before the close of the season.

 

Korra is physically modeled on actress/model/former MMA fighter Gina Carano, who's 5'8" and 143 lb. I'd expect Korra's own stats to be about the same.

 

I thought she was air-bending when she kicked the desk.

 

^ I checked the scene again and it looks like she was. You could see a bit of wind animation in there.

 

Like Heimdall.

Oh please.

 

I saw episode 2x06 again. I didn't like it the first time around but like the other episodes, it comes off a lot better in a rewatch once you've seen "Beginnings". I appreciate Unalaq's visit to the spirit world most of all, but I also enjoyed Bolin's movie where he plays a Korra knockoff and Varrick's talk of propaganda films. They're a sign of the changing times.

I still think Book 2 is a weak entry but I'm taking things a little better now.

He does have an Asiatic look and would probably fit well in a project with an eastern esthetic that was slightly westernized, something that Avatar already does anyway. As for the age thing, I think he still looks youthful enough look to play a part similar to what we saw in "Beginnings".

Her character seems underdeveloped for the task but I can see it as more of a possibility now.

And here's something interesting... Vaatu is pretty much Raava with the color pallet inverted. Click here.

 

Human political and economic unity does not equate to balance. They're increasingly at odds with the spirit world which was the cause of the problem in the first place. In a way they're regressing to the state things were in during to age of the lion turtles.

I think if anything the job of the Avatar is only becoming more difficult.

Also, random thought: if Vaatu is fed by war and conflict, the 100 years war must have been a feast. Doubly so given that Raava was dormant for almost the whole time while Aang was in the iceberg. Maybe that's why he's been able to regain his strength?