“The Legend of Korra, Book 1: Air”

Date: January 21, 2021

Music Video of the Day:

Interstellar News: Today was another rough day at work and another rough mental day for me. I chose to plow through the rest of Season 1 of The Legend of Korra and decided to write about it tonight. I’ll get back to Trek soon, I promise.

TL;DR: Korra, a water bender, is identified as the new Avatar after the death of Aang about 70 years after The Last Airbender ended. She’s then trained in earth and fire and is ready to learn air bending from Tenzin, Aang and Katara’s youngest son… but there’s trouble in Republic City. She follows him there and meets Tenzin’s wife and three children (they’re all air benders too), Toph’s daughter Lin (an earth bender), and two brothers, Mako (a fire bender) and Bolin (an earth bender) who are also in the pro-bending league. A group of anti-benders, called “Equalists”, are led by Amon who has the ability to strip benders of their bending.

Along the way Korra joins Mako and Bolin’s pro-bending team, The Fire Ferrets, as well as a task force bent (no pun intended) on ferreting (again, not intended) out Amon. She likes Mako, but Bolin likes her, and then Mako meets and starts dating Asami, who is the daughter of the dude who makes all the cars and turns out to be a traitor. There are lots of bad guys and lots of teenage drama, but eventually Korra learns to air bend and how to connect to her past lives. Korra and crew save Republic City and now have to help clean up.

“When we hit our lowest point, we are open to the greatest change.”: A few years ago I introduced the husband person to Avatar: The Last Airbender and we both loved it. The Legend of Korra was not available, so we bought it on Blu-ray and then never watched it … because life happened. It’s now on Netflix and we ran out of cooking reality shows to watch while eating dinner. The first season has 12, 20-minute episodes and they’re really great. It’s a fun journey with lots of twists and turns and callbacks to the series which it’s a spin-off of, but still its own show. Naga and Pabu are amazing animal companions, just as Momo and Appa were, and the new Team Avatar is just as well balanced as before with one non-bender and the three elements the Avatar has already mastered on board. The “benders vs. non-benders” feels a lot like what’s happening in America right now and it’s sobering. It’s a continued wonder that the show runners and writers do such a great job with these hard topics on a “kids show”, and can also make the story enjoyable for adults who are watching at a much later date. I’m excited to watch the next three seasons.

TA Out!