I honestly don’t know why it’s taken me so long, but I finally started watching The Legend of Korra. I am a big fan of the original Avatar The Last Airbender series so I was looking forward to this sequel series. I think the reason why it took me so long to watch it though was because I don’t really watch TV that much so I missed it when it was aired. It wasn’t on Netflix so I didn’t know where I could watch it, though honestly I probably could have looked a little harder and I would have found out sooner that it is on Nickelodeon’s website… d’oh >_< Anyway, so what did I like about the original series? Well one big thing I liked was how it was a kids show so it was safe for kids (of a certain age at least, since it did still have a lot of fighting) to watch, but it could also be enjoyed by older audiences as well. It was pretty popular in my high school while it was on TV. Also, I really liked the characters. Aang was so happy go lucky and he wanted to just enjoy life and have fun, but he knew that he had a responsibility as the Avatar that he had to fulfill. My other favorite characters were Toph and Zuko. Toph was just awesome, I though she was a really cool and unique character in how she was blind but she still had her own way of “seeing” and she was surprisingly (at first) rough and tough and independent for a little girl. What I liked about Zuko was his character arc and his transformation over the course of the series. He was a villain at first, but he still had conflictions and then he started to change and doubted his previously unquestioned loyalty to his father, and then eventually by the end of the series, he realized how terrible his father was and decided to do the right thing.
So, here are my first impressions after watching the first couple episodes of Korra. I liked Korra, she was very different from Aang in that while he was kind of a reluctant hero, Korra was eager to get started right away. Not that either is necessarily better than the other one, I just liked that they were different. Although I personally found the first episode to be kind of rushed, I guess as long as you’ve seen Avatar, there’s not really any need to explain the whole concept of the Avatar in as much detail. I also liked the villain, he was quite intimidating and the concept of a group of people that want the benders gone and the fact that Amon can apparently take away people’s bending powers permanently like (spoilers) Aang did with Fire Lord Ozai. I think that will make for a very dangerous adversary. Honestly, I found the whole more modern (relatively speaking of course) ’20s style vibe kind of odd at first, like the fact that they had cars, motorcycles, radios, and stuff like that and it feels very different from the original series. It is set 70 years after the fact though so it does make sense. It’s not bad, I will just have to get used to it. Also, some things in the story were really obvious, like the whole cliche Mako and Korra don’t like each other and just turn up their noses and humph at each other but of course they end up liking each other. The other thing was how Amon was attacked by a fire bender and the scars forced him to wear the mask, I also figured that out right away. The art is great though, it’s even more detailed than the original series I think and the music is still gorgeous, and the different styles like the more traditional styles and the more modern styles of the metropolic city go off each other pretty well. All in all, I think I’m going to love it and I can’t wait to watch the rest of it!