Legend of Korra Book 2 Episode 5 Review

I’m so happy to see that with each episode of Book 2 there is improvement. Episode five had some very strong aspects to it that have been a little absent in the past few episodes. There were a few weak points, but these were not major enough to ruin the episode and are problems that can be easily corrected and will hopefully be addressed.

Episode five saw Korra and friends arriving back in republic city in order to find allies to help fight off the Northern Water Tribe forces. One of the issues I’ve had over the past few weeks is the lack of Lin Beifong in the series. However, this week we saw her again, if briefly. And as usual, every scene that features Lin is enjoyable. I’ve also realised that Bolin is no longer the most humorous character on the show. It seems he has been knocked off the top spot by new-comer Varrick, whose hilarious brain storm scene was my personal highlight of the episode.

One of my favourite additions to Legend of Korra in season two is that of Eska and Deska. In this episode, the terror twins were particularly interesting. After the traumatic incident of Bolin leaving her, Eska has gone crazy, and I have to say, super crazy angry Eska is just as entertaining as emotionless yet entertainingly witty Eska. These two further helped this episode by providing the best fight scene yet this season. I really enjoy fights involving water benders. Water bending has the best animation second only to earth. I was however, disappointed when this well animated fight was interrupted by a giant dark spirit.

Their return was inevitable. As mentioned in previous reviews, I do not like spirit fights. They are not entertaining and the benders seem so futile against them not to mention that the only way they can end is if someone knows how to use ‘spirit bending’. I certainly hope that the series writers have something interesting planned concerning the spirits since their story has, for me, taken a back seat to Tenzin’s.

Speaking of Tenzin, this week we saw him helping his young son Meelo to train a friendly lemur in the southern air temple. It would seem that Meelo has a talent for training things as he managed to train an entire fleet of lemurs to fly in formation. This was perhaps my favourite segment of the episode. I find Tenzin’s family life and his parenting difficulties to be endearing and interesting to watch. Tenzin is probably the most developed character so far this season and his story really helps to create a fully formed world in which all of these characters live.

Overall, episode five was very enjoyable and possibly the best episode so far this series. I’m certain at this point that Book 2 is definitely improving episode by episode. I can only hope that the spirit storyline gets more interesting and that Korra developes a little more. It is unfortunate that the main character of the series can be so unlikeable.

8.5/10