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That be a lot o' Korra.
On the one hand, good that we get to see them sooner.
On the other, well, how have the ratings been again? I don't know the exact numbers, and I'm sure there are plenty of people like me who mainly catch it online, (thank you nick.com), but as far as I know, it has not been the best.
Wow! That is a big surprise :boo:. I just heard about that on ign.com. I'll check the finale out at some point tomorrow or Sunday, then I'll watch it again on HD TV on Nick next week.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dragonvarsity
The ratings weren't as strong as Book 1 due to wrong time slot and a more than a year long hiatus gap between Book 1 and 2. However, the amount of viewers have been improving since "The Guide" episode. The series is already renewed for three seasons after a huge success of book 1, so Nick will still be airing Book 3 and 4 in the future regardless of the TV ratings. Hopefully, Nickelodeon will learn from what went wrong with Book 2 when they premiere the last two seasons.Quote:
Originally Posted by xxMATEOSxx
EDIT: Alright, I just watched the two episodes before the big Book 2 finale and things got a lot more interesting.
Spoiler - Night of a Thousand Stars/Harmonic Convergence Review
OVERALL: Great episodes. "Night of a Thousand Stars" is a 9 out of 10, while "Harmonic Convergence" is a 9.8 out of 10. Looking forward to the Book 2 finale, which will be online at midnight and on TV next week.
That was epic.
So much better.
My overall thoughts of the season. Well, yes, it got better. Way better. But I don't really want to just ignore the first half because of it. There had to have been better ways (yes multiple, I refuse to believe it would be hard to miss) to reach this point, so I'm gonna give the season a "decent to good, with great parts attached" as my arbitrarily arbitrary rating.
Yes, the second half was much better and, oh lord, that finale.
I just saw it online. What a great way to end Book 2.
OVERALL: A perfect 10 out of 10 on both finale episodes.
And now...here's a recap of Book 2 scores:
Rebel Spirits: 9
The Southern Lights: 9
Civil Wars Part 1: 8
Civil Wars Part 2: 8.9
Peacekeepers: 7.5
The Sting: 8.8
The Beginnings Part 1: 9.5
The Beginnings Part 2: 9.5
The Guide: 8.2
A New Spiritual Age: 9.5
Night of a Thousand Stars: 9
Harmonic Convergence: 9.8
Darkness Falls: 10
Light in the Dark: 10
Overall score of season 2: 9.05/10 (wow, it's .05 higher than Book 1 :p). The plot is much better than book 1, despite a decent subplot involving Mako, Bolin, Asami, and Lin, plus Korra acting like a jerk in the season's first half. The animation is still brilliantly drawn, and the spirits looked awesome. And such new characters as Uralaq, Varrick, Desna, Eska, and Wan are a great addition to book 2. Another great season of the series. Looking forward to Book 3.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dragonvarsity
I agree that Amon was a much better villain though. He wasn't one-dimensionally evil like Ozai and this season's baddies. He actually had a few valid points about the inequality between benders and non-benders. And during the first few episodes the series actually illustrated that, by showing us how the triads and Tarrlok abused their powers and how all members of the ruling council were benders. The problem was that Amon's solution for equality was incredibly misguided, and that's the thing that made him a villain.
And then when the first season was nearing its end, the writers decided to sweep the whole thing about non-benders being oppressed under the rug and started portraying the fight between benders and Equalists as unambiguously good vs bad. I'm still bitter about that. They had an excellent, surprisingly mature theme of social unrest going on and they screwed it up.
Oh right, there was that... :FQuote:
Originally Posted by SnipySev
It was really a missed opportunity in season one to have some great discussion on it come up. As I recall from episode one, the protester gave the speech of bender oppression against nonbenders, classism stuff, etc, and Korra's response was something along the lines of, "But Bending is the greatest thing in the world." End of discussion. Bending is awesome, I'm right, you're wrong, let's fight about it. It never evolves beyond that.
Amon was still the best villain though. Mostly. Between this guy and Ozai, sure their motivations were both basic, but at least Mark Hamill pulled it off with style.
Co-creator of the series Michael Dante DiMartino has revealed that the title of Book 3 will be called...
And not a single Fire Lord was visited that season.
To be fair, there wouldn't have been much point to it in terms of plot. Yeah, they aalmosst had her there, but whatever.
For the characters that seemed to be there to please fans, I don't think they needed another one quite yet. Save it for next season when she travels to deal with making a decision without input from any of the people, much less said leaders.
No, you're right, I just didn't like how General Iroh was teasing us about her. :pQuote:
Originally Posted by xxMATEOSxx
General Iroh was teasing people just with his presence.
"Hey guys, I'm awesome right? Well I'm gonna be back in this season. Or not really. Bye."
It was nice to see the return for a little bit though. yes, seeing "Iroh" again sure was nice.
So, this. Glad to know it's coming along.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrJiCf03UWQ
Book 3 trailer has arrived a few days ago. Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0UBbzeFc74
Yeah, awesome trailer! And the premiere date will be announced pretty soon (mostly during this year's San Diego Comic Con).
So IGN just revealed that...
Pretty exciting stuff :DQuote:
Yes, The Legend of Korra Book Three: Change will debut on Friday, June 27th at 7pm on Nickelodeon. You’ll get a ton of Korra that night, as the first two episodes of Book Three air from 7pm-8pm ET/PT, followed by a special bonus presentation of the third episode of Book Three, “The Earth Queen", at 8pm.*
I think Nickelodeon should have either announced the air date a lot earlier or maybe air it on July, but I'm fine with the show starting this Friday.
I changed the title of this thread just to get ready for tomorrow.
Well, three episode premier was last night. Not a bad start all in all.
Korra's struggling with self-doubt over her decision at the end of the last season has given her a much-needed dose of humility to balance out her usual boisterousness though time will tell if she grows from it more then she did the last two seasons. I do like that she and Asami seem to genuinely be growing as friends, but then again Asami has been my favorite character in the series for a while now. Though the fact that she can pony up the cash to provide the team with a giant airship and tag along for their Airbender recruitment drive does make me question what state of Future Industries; weren't they in financial straits the last season? And Verrick, who was providing patronage, seems to have disappeared.
In regards to the other characters, I do wish Tenzin was given a greater degree of dignity that you would expect from an older master (a trait that all the older white lotus masters from ATLA had in spades). Granted, I don't expect him to be a master of the air nomad sales pitch but its sad that he has to resort to cheap showmanship to earn just one disciple after his sorta epiphany about himself at the end of season two (even sadder still when you consider the true motives of that disciple). Surprisingly, I find Mako's behavior the most realistic; he and Korra just called it quits but he's being dragged along with her and his other ex for her recruitment drive and its all supremely awkward for him. I do hope that their relationship isn't rekindled as I don't really think they gain much from it and it would come off as very rehashed and telegraphed. I've also grown to utterly loathe Bolin; he's just become increasingly and completely grating to me throughout the course of two seasons and three episodes. He started out as mostly comic relief in the first season, then became a smug celebrity/propaganda prop in the second and I'm not sure how he really contributed anything substantive to the plot; here, he's just a naïve, gullible fool. And I'm supposed to believe that this manchild grew up in harsh conditions on the streets? Was Mako doing all the heavy lifting during those years? Granted, it would explain a lot about both of them.
Ranting aside, I do appreciate the callouts to the past series. Even though he technically didn't do a lot it was good to see Zuko again; even though it would be rather gratuitous, I really hope he gets a lot more screentime and interaction with the other characters this season. It is a bit sad that Ba Sing Se and its secret police haven't really come very far at all; I guess in addition to being a completely clueless puppet of a ruler, the Earth King didn't know how to raise a daughter or worthy successor.
One thing I do think is promising is the antagonists for the season; not because of their abilities, but because they come off as straight-up malevolent compared to the first two seasons. Granted, this does seem like they will have less complexity conceptually then previous season antagonists but the problem with their predecessors was how botched their execution was. Amon brought to discussion how equity could exist in a world were a portion of it's inhabitants had superpowers that placed them above the muggles but turned out to be the worst example of what he rallied against. Unalaq exposed the need for balance and harmony in the world but turned out to be behind many examples of the problems he claimed needed to be addressed while being in league with the setting's equivalent of the devil. I guess it is a bit too early so say exactly what they are, but if the irregular benders are indeed what they appear to be, a group of superpowerful supervillain benders I'd frankly find them to be an improvement. I'm of the opinion that the best antagonist in the entire franchise was Azula, not only because she was dangerous and cunning, but because she was a complex character that didn't need some well-intentioned motivation to give her that depth. Her motives (a lust for power and approval) were ultimately selfish, but ultimately very human and in that sense very relatable even if they didn't justify her actions at all. If this season's antagonists are more like her than their immediate predecessors then I'm all for it.
What a start of Book 3! The first three episodes have impressive improvements over the first two season premieres. There's finally some avatar teamwork which was lacking the most of Book 2, including Korra and Asami battling the bike gangs. Speaking of Korra and Asami, the scene where Asami teaches Korra to drive finally shows a good friendship between them. Such new villains as the criminal in Air Nomad prison who can airbend after the harmonic convergence, the magma bender, the armless waterbender, and the "sparky boom boom" lady looks like those crooks will be more interesting to watch than Amon and Unalaq (so far). And it's great to see Zuko in the series as he's on a mission to stop those freed crooks. There's even clever jokes, like a scene where Zuko, Desna and Eska were in a elevator. Lots of great stuff on the premiere of book 3. Hope all these improvements stay that way in the rest of the series.
A Breath of Fresh Air: 9.5/10
Rebirth: 9.6/10
The Earth Queen: 9.8/10
AGHHHHH I couldn't see it! I'm not reading anything here until I get to watch the episodes. Was it a good start though?
Any idea where one could watch the episodes online? Nick was pretty good at posting episodes on their site for books 1 and 2, but I can't seem to find any full episodes of book 3 yet there.
I do know that there's some random websites across the internet that show that kind of stuff, but the ones I found seemed to be stuffed with obnoxious ads and couldn't even load the videos properly.
As in Mexico I just can't find that show yet anywhere, I used this nice page to see the whole season 1-2. I believe they started uploading season 3 as well: http://avatar-site.blogspot.mxQuote:
Originally Posted by Dragonvarsity
The only downhill is that the episodes are subtitled in Spanish, if you don't mind that could be an option. There must be tons of other sites though.
Edit: Sorry just double checked and the site hasn't uploaded Season 3 yet. And the whole page is in Spanish :p
Nevermind, I found a place to watch them online. Thanks, though. ^^
http://anilinkz.com/the-legend-of-ko...ange-episode-1
I use this site for my animated shows. :)
Just watched eps 1-3, pleasantly surprised. :D
Glad they addressed the story issues (love triangle/ramifications/etc) and the new villlan(s!(evil team avatar!)) will be a welcome change from the standard S1/2 big bad guy.
The only thing I didn't care for was the voice acting/choices for the new villans.
9/10 average rating from me. :)
I find that the best way to start the third season of the show that is a sequel to one of my favorite all time series is to forget that it exists entirely. Finally got around to watching those first three episodes and I liked what I saw.
The look is still impressive, though I hope they scale back on the cgi just a little bit. It was nice back in the day when it was used to contrast the technological aspects from the naturalistic, but it doesn’t seem to serve that purpose much anymore. Other shows have handled it much worse though.
The characters are more or less the same as they were before, though with some of them bothering me about 120% less. Seriously, I no longer dislike Korra with great intensity. Now her personality bothers me less than her actions. Ok, her personality still bothers me but not to the same degree.
The other characters get some more (varying degrees of) development. I agree with Justin that the Asami and Korra driving scene was a good addition. Bolin is of course back to comic relief, not much else to say. Mako meets the standard quo veering on the ok side. As for Zuko, while it was nice to finally see the character return, there really wasn’t anything special about it. I’m waiting to pass judement on him and new kid until we see them more.
Same with the villains, all we really know is that they are powerful, and they are evil. They don’t have the development time like Zuko did, or the immediately sinister presence of Azula, or even the buildup and subtle payoff that Ozai got (I cannot stress how brilliant it was to make him look so ordinary, also Mark Hamill). Certainly they don’t strike me as anything close to another Amon. But they’re just getting started and I’m excited to see (not be told) what a team of master bad guys can do.
Now to the major driving force of these episodes.
Also, Varrick needs to return. He was too fun a character and his payoff was too underwhelming for him not to come back.
Korra Writing Team: "Let's see how many cheesy ways we can fit the word 'change' into the first two episodes."
Sorry, I just had to get that off my back. :p
It was just so silly to me. Other than that though, nice start to the season. Removal of love triangle is nice despite now with Mako filling the post-breakup awkward cliche, but it doesn't seem like they're going to try stretching that out. I did end up rolling my eyes some when Kai said that he was an orphan. I mean, I know it's a tough world, but wasn't it enough that Mako/Bolin's parents are gone, as is Asami's mother, plus Aang being not that great of a father to Tenzin's siblings? Oh, and Korra's dad being caught up in things, but at least Korra has some normalcy. (That is, when you ignore the extended family, yikes.)
Seeing them travel all over the place to recruit airbenders was nice just for the fact that we got to see Korra and friends actually explore the world, and not just caught between Republic City and icy villages. The big group of baddies certainly look conniving, although I really don't have much attachment to them. One girl has water arms which is cool, although the airbending villain's voice sounded pretty weird. The buildup to the fourth member of Anti-Team Avatar was pretty cool, and it was nice to see Eska and Desna return (although them appearing just reminded how many characters this new season is saddled with).
One thing I did find silly had to deal with what I believe was a conversation between Zuko and Tonraq. They were overlooking the prison crate holding Phui or whatever her name is. I think Tonraq or a guard said there's no way that she could be broken out, and Zuko says that "that's what we/they thought about the others." What I find silly about that being the case is that the cage for one of these super baddies was made of WOOD, out on some island, nothing around it, and just a few measley guards. The same could be said about the airbenders' fortress with the rinky dinky jail bars, although admittedly there wasn't a boat that could be stolen by there. :/
Suspension of disbelief, I know, but c'mon White Lotus crew, you guys need to step up your security.
The floating wooden prison makes sense. The guy they were holding is a skilled earthbender, so he can probably metalbend. So it wouldn't be very wise to lock him behind iron bars. Or in a place close to the earth, for that matter. Hence the boat in the middle of the ocean.
All those prisons were designed to cut off the convicts from their respective element, kind of like Magneto's plastic cell in X-Men 2. But if someone sneaks in the smallest amount of rocks or water (or, as in Zaheer's case, unexpectedly gains access to airbending) then everything unravels.
Maybe that's why there were so few guards - unless someone screws up royally, having a lot of guard is redundant. And the smaller your staff, the easier it is to manage. Imagine if someone made the little mistake of bringing some water or a metal object into the facility. Besides, maybe there just aren't that many White Lotus guys.
It's kind of sad that airbending isn't exclusive to the air nomads anymore. The fact that all airbenders used to be air nomads and vise-versa always set them apart from the other nations.
Yesterday's two new episodes are interesting.
Overall: both episodes are interesting, despite some issues I mentioned.
In Harm's Way: 8.8/10
The Metal Clan: 9/10
Duuuude. There really are no characters in Avatar that don't have any daddy/mommy issues.
Ozai?Quote:
Originally Posted by SnipySev
..and the airbender children..so far at least
Didn't Azulon order Ozai to get rid of Zuko? He doesn't exactly sound like a caring father and grandfather.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bremnen
Quote:
Originally Posted by SnipySev
Well, there was that one person, who.. umm...
Cabbage man?
Quote:
Originally Posted by SnipySev
Cabbage man.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dragonvarsity
The best man.
Who would have thought that children who grew up in a warn torn world that were eventually forced to not just take part in, but lead the battle against the evil tyrant ruler hoping to kill everyone would grow up to be anything other than well adjusted parents to children in a time of peace?
So basically yeah, I liked them. :)
Very fair points, I did actually like the concept of the White Lotus taking each prisoner somewhere away from their respective element, and I'm sure dealing with someone who can control just one of the four elements can make things very difficult. I suppose my disappointment was more in the White Lotus. Trying to avoid bringing any sort of element that matches with the imprisoned bender would be tricky for sure, but it still seemed poorly managed as a whole, I don't know.Quote:
Originally Posted by SnipySev
Korra finding out that her friends and family have kept yet another major secret from her is funny, mainly because of all the secret-keeping from Book 2. Then again, she is hot-headed about some of these things, although her calm reaction was interesting, and something that I see more as character development than the writers forgetting to supply her a response that fits with the character, as the whole Tonraq-being-set-up story unraveling in Book 2 must have allowed her to trust those she love more about these sort of things.
Zuko was a victim of the Worf Effect. That trope strikes me as shoddy writing most of the times it's put into use. There are ways of proving that the new villain is strong without making a powerful hero seem completely useless.
As for the White Lotus... keep in mind that all the White Lotus guys we saw during the first series were grand-masters of the order. They were the best fighters in their respective elements. We never got to know how good the regular agents were back then. So maybe you guys had the wrong expectations about the order?
It's also important to note that they have been prisoners for over a decade, so its to be expected that the White Lotus would grow complacent and to be fair, the only reason these breakouts were possible at all was the occurrence of something completely unprecedented; namely a non-bender suddenly becoming one and having command over an element that people are largely unfamiliar with.
Personally, I'm not too miffed that they slipped through both the White Lotus and Zuko's fingers so rapidly. I mean, half the crux of this season's plot would meander if they didn't and it's not like they scored a completely overwhelming victory in the North Pole; they merely fought until they gained enough of an advantage and used that opportunity to slip away rather than risk the tide turning against them. This is also reflected in the more recent episodes; when Zaheer realizes the avatar is not in the Air Temple and his cover is blown he only fights enough to create a window to escape and when all four are taking their leave of Republic City all their actions are meant to expedite their getaway rather then escalate a conflict and for the show to boast their power. The only thing that really bothers me is how good a shape each criminal is after such a long period of confinement; I know prisons tend to be characterized as gymnasiums but other then Zaheer I got the sense that they were under such heavy lock and key that any sort of serious exercise would be impossible and that their bodies would have atrophied as a result.
Anyway, I gotta say even though it's only 7 episodes in this season seems like a huge improvement over the first two. No intrusive love triangles or ancillary subplots about sports and more exploration of a world that has advanced since its time when it was already engrossing in the predecessor series. It was ultimately a good thing that Korra was kicked out of Republic City given we've already become familiar with it since season one and I loved the design of Zaofu (though I found the chrome on green fashion sense rather ugly). My only concern is that all this time spent on world building hasn't actually left much time for developing the villains and that it may result in the final confrontation with them feeling rushed.
Another two interesting episodes. One revolves around Lin's flashbacks, the other is about Tenzin training the new airbenders.
Overall: A couple of good story-driven episodes with some good surprises.
The Old Wounds: 9.2/10
Original Airbenders: 8.5/10