Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra Thread

Jacob and I just finished AtLAB tonight. Here is a round up of my feels thoughts:

• Katara is awesome and I really wish I had watched this as a child.  I honestly think the way she is presented would have had a huge impact on how I viewed and felt about myself.
• I appreciate that Aang didn't fall into the man man does shitall but still gets to be the hero
• The theme of honour was something that just doesn't resonate with me. I understand the motivation but I don't get it.
• Sokka's humour was childish but refreshingly so.
• Sokka and the moon forever. 
• Zuko and Katara tie for being my favourite characters. 
• Love Iroh. Cried a little at his picnic short story clip.
• Azula was a bit too inexplicably bad for my taste. Sure she was taught that she was super special and to hate the other nations but her level of evil was too much.
• Toph inventing metal bending was sooooo awesome.
• I love Appa. He's basically a giant puppy. I just want all the baby air bison forever.
• If Zuko and Mai didn't have little goth babies then what was this show for.
• HOW DOES BENDING GET PASSED DOWN? WHAT IS THE GENETICS? I JUST WANT TO KNOW SO BAD AND WAITED ALL THREE SEASONS FOR NOTHING! 

 

@whitesubtitlesoncanadianwinter - I'm incredulously glad that you were able to enjoy the Last Airbender to the extent that it seems you that you have! As far as shows presented on Nickelodeon go, both Aang and Kora's stories go a long way in innovating the media in a positive and mostly non-linear fashion. They oftentimes end up representing the real definition television gold, to me, far than most other popular shows of the century thus far.

Regarding honor, I'd cogitate that the show did a fantastic job of creating a "dirty" divide between both it and love in that the choices made by the cast throughout each season weren't always totally in one's corner or the other. Even in the end, the idea of honor usurps some areas of love (for a time), whereas others give into the more natural-given leanings for humanity (for a time). Family honorifics are huge in East Asia even to this day, and they were even further expressed in the ancient world that the Last Airbender's politics are based off of. 

The funny thing is that it's always a bit obscure in its delivery, this idea of honor, but it essentially would mean to do right by your family and by your specific people: both Aang not wanting to kill Ozai despite his past incarnations' pressuring him to and Zuko's eventual betrayal of his father in the name of his love for Mai and a higher moralistic power, having seen that Aang isn't the "evil" one out of the situation, are both great examples of this. To me, this made Zuko and Iroh cutting off their hair to be one of the mightiest scenes I'd observed throughout the entire series; they were finally making their choice based on what was truly right, and not just right by the family's eyes, which would be more or less to blindly follow Ozai even though he was crazed, like special snowflake Azula did. I do agree that her character was a bit too extreme, though at the very least, she represented the other side of following "honor" over love in this subbranch of the overarching plot and, for that, served her purpose. It wasn't enough that she was a total freak to offset the rest of the show's incredibly strong characters, such as Katara, as you'd mentioned.

As for bending, I think that that's probably the biggest blindspot that the series just doesn't care to answer. The showrunners have been implicitly vague on it, too, so I suppose... Whatever theory you come up with can be your own personal truth, unless it's explored further in canon one day? Anywho, I'd wager that you would really love the Legend of Korra given all of the reasons that you'd pegged for digging the Last Airbender above. Without spoilers, I can say that most, if not all, of your other concerns are answered in one way or another, and that a good amount of those elements that you love are further fleshed out within the sequel series.