Last year’s Avatar: The Legend of Korra is one of my
favourite animated T.V. shows, and I was incredibly excited for the release of
book two. The first two episodes of this series had their ups and downs, but
overall, left me hopeful for the rest of this season to be great.
As usual, Michael Dante DiMartino
and Bryan Konietzko have done an excellent job introducing their audience to
the beautiful world they have created. Book two takes place six months after
the events of book one the scene is set pretty well. Bolin has put the Fire
Ferrets back together (minus Mako and Korra), Mako has joined the police and is
working towards becoming a detective, Asami is running Future Industries and
Korra is still practicing her air bending with Tenzin who is planning a trip to
the four air temples to help Korra with her spiritual training.
Unfortunately, despite everything
she went through in book one, Korra has had next to no character development,
meaning that she is still a hot-headed, impatient and selfish character who has
no time for anyone else. This is particularly frustrating considering as it
seems that the lack of character development is to server the purpose of moving
the main plot in the direction that the writers want it to go. What this means
is that the start of book two is way too similar to that of book one which
makes the story telling feel very lazy.
This laziness is further shown in
the presentation of Korra’s uncle Unalaq. Unalaq is the chief of the Nothern Water
Tribe who is visiting the Southern Water Tribe for the spirit festival. Korra
and friends are also visiting the Southern Water Tribe at this time. Almost
immediately, Unalaq seems very similar to one of last season’s villains: Tarrlok,
not least because they look very similar. But the strained relationship he has
with his brother, his cold demeanour and mysterious form of water bending he
uses later in the episode shows just how lazy the story telling really is.
Despite the lack of original
ideas, the hour long season premier is still very enjoyable. For a start, the
animation as perhaps even better, than that of book one. The dark spirits are
beautifully drawn and the fight scenes that include them are very pretty
despite the fact that action scenes in the Avatar universe are much more
entertaining when humans are fighting each other. I feel that the fighting
scenes have much more depth when two benders are locked in combat.
Also enjoyable, was the high
calibre of voice acting. Pretty much the entire cast of season one, (barring
characters like Amon, Tarrlok and Mr Sato) reprise their roles for book two.
The only let down in this aspect, is that Lin Beifong is not featured at all in
the season premier. Lin was one of my favourite characters from book one and it
seems pretty unlikely that she will appear much this season.
Despite all the letdowns, there
are a couple of things that leave me hopeful that the rest of this season will
be good. Firstly, Jinora’s story is very intriguing and I am excited to see
where they are going with it. It seems pretty likely that Jinora and Korra’s
stories will come together at some point and this is exciting.
The other thing that peaks my
interest, is the parallels between the Northern Water Tribe invasion at the end
of episode two and the 100 year war with the fire nation. This seems to be a
good way of giving Korra some character development this series and sewing the
seeds for a wider story that may extend into next season.
Overall, I really enjoyed the
start of book two and I’m excited to see where the series will go. There were a
few weak points, but not enough to ruin the experience.
8/10
No comments:
Post a Comment