Anyone else a fan of these things? I had a boyfriend a number of years back who turned me onto the show and I found it delightful.
The series contains a lot of flashbacks to former Avatars (past lives of the protagonist) my favorite has been Avatar Kyoshi. I kinda have always wished she would get her own series or something.
I am super excited that her novel series has started rolling out this week. Im usually not big on YA fiction but my love of Avatar Kyoshi will merrily look asside that point.
While looking up the novel again, Im also surprised and not surprised that theyve seemingly canonically made her bisexual. Their really doing a lot in terms of representation in this franchise, more and more as it has gone on.
2 Likes
I loved AtLA and LoK both, although I think Viacom did Korra dirty during the inital run. Long hiatuses, being yanked from TV, low promotion, sad.
Dark Horse actually publish(es/ed) AtLA and LoK comics as well, with a number of side stories that are pretty well received I hear!
I think AtLA was the first action-oriented cartoon I ever saw as a kid where the main character not only cries and expresses emotion in a generally healthy (or at least natural way), he did it early and often. I usually express the effect this had on me as now “being a sucker for cartoons where they cry”, like Steven Universe.
If you don’t mind YA tv programming I’d suggest you check out the first two seasons of The Dragon Prince by the same writers of AtLA. It’s that CG style that can be done more cheaply, and it’s clear they were given a shoestring budget for the first season since it’s really apparent that they had to cut frames to make budget, but the second season has more money behind it and the framerate isn’t nearly as noticeable or bad.
And they bump the inclusion quite a lot in this show. We’ve got:
- Mute, badass power woman top general/aunt of the main characters
- Badass power woman co-queens with a daughter from a neighboring kingdom
- The main characters are part of a mixed, bi-racial family, brothers with the same mother but different fathers, but this is never a point of contention between them, even though the younger brother is the one in line to be king
- The main character suffers from anxiety and we get a flashback to his mom (now deceased) guiding him through a panic attack
We’ve also got complex themes running in this show:
- bi-directional racism (the elves are evil because they’re purple and they’re just out to crush us with magic! The humans are evil because they lack a spiritual connection to magic and the rest of the planet, and the only way they can use magic is by crushing the spiritual connection to magic out of other animals (“dark magic”))
- do the ends justify the means? (Dark magic as a way to do good works, since dark magic only describes the mode of acquiring magic juice, not the spells that can be done with it. One character kills an endangered species in order to guarantee that a huge number of people in the human kingdoms don’t die of famine one year)
- other heavy micro-themes
I’ve really enjoyed it so far, eagerly awaiting the third season!
2 Likes
It’s in the “too watch queue” though I dont know if im going to get to it or the new She-Ra first. That Queue is long and gets randomly resorted from time to time too.
2 Likes