Legend of Korra Book 4 Talkback - "Balance" (Spoilers)

[xerex]

Also saw the Nostalgia Critic's review, and heard one thing I took as sort of self-evident but hasn't come up in this thread. So far as major political movements of the early 20th Century go, we've seen Avatar-verse versions of communists, religious fundamentalists, and anarchists.

I really have no idea where Doug and Rob Walker gets stupid shit like that first one in their brains. Amon was clearly a Malcolm X-like figure, not Lenin or Marx. Seriously, his greatest ally was an industrialist businessman . He didn't have a Martin Luther King figure to be his foil, but that's because in this story and this universe its Korra's job as the Avatar to figure out where the middle ground is when extremists arise to power.

Just throwing that out there. The Walker Brothers are quite shallow and dim reviewers/analysts when push comes to shove.

You can see the similarities in broad strokes to the idea of class warfare. The Benders monopoly on elemental power had made them the ruling class. But technology had now rendered the benders advantage obsolete. The idea that advancing technology could level class differences has more in common with early 20th century socialists than black supremacists.

Also the whole mass debending of enemies bears a strong resemblance to revolutionary mass executions. Perhaps even closer to the the French revolution than the Russian.

[Formless]

Yes, but the idea of first class vs second class citizens and the injustice of that social structure isn't just a communist idea. Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela and many other figures drew open inspiration from Marxism, but their philosophies weren't about economic class. Without the economic element, you really can't call it a communist or socialist ideology. And with a significant Capitalist backer like Hiroshi Sato being a key figure to Amon's movement, it makes the similarities to the claimed real life analogue more of a stretch than the political stances of Korra's other villains. Like you said, its also similar to the French Revolution, with a strong element of Civil Rights. It is analogous to multiple real world movements, unlike Unalaq's theocracy and the Red Lotus' anarchism; but Amon himself is definitely more Malcolm X than Lenin, no matter the imagery he surrounded himself with.

Being distracted by surface appearances and not understanding content or subtext is what I mean when I say people like the Walkers have a shallow or dim reading of the show's story. For example, in their season 3 finale vlog neither of them picked up on the fact that all of Korra's villains attacked her specifically for being the Avatar and thus "obsolete", which is how their collective efforts damaged her sense of identity. I have watched enough of his vlogs to get these impressions, and many other videos he has produced over the years. But enough about that. I think my opinions on the Nostalgia Critic are well known enough I don't really need to say anything more; its a tangent to the thread. I just think its good to be clear on what the villains here are actually representative of, particularly when people are already speculating about Kuvira's role in the story. Putting stormtrooper helmets on her soldiers is not enough to make her a fascist, for instance. What she is will be revealed by what she says and does. I suspect Bolin's involvement will be the key to figuring her out.

[Ahriman238]

Of course it's pretty shallow and not a 1:1 correspondence, but it does seem to be what they're going for.

Old Toph is all kinds of awesome, could the rest of the season just be about her?

And a third of the way in, the Avatar is back! I figured on it taking much longer.

I also liked that they had an explanation for why Jinora can't find Korra in a few seconds, like she has before. It was bugging for a few minutes until they showed her trying and failing.

I can't seem to find the latest episode anywhere, but I'm really pumped to see Zaofu under siege by the Earth Empire.

[Mr Bean]

Episode 5 "Enemy at the Gates" is up on nick.com's website.
Spoiler

Zhu Li is a unit of weight, Varrick is a unit of work and he invented something that looks like a Vatuu based weapon of mass destruction. Either way they used science on a spirit vine and it turned into a beam cannon that melted through a metal.

Also Kuvira is not Hitler or Stalin but confirmed for Mao including reeducation camps, forced collective labor, relocations and turns out her fancy uniforms include metal shoulder pads so she can choke the shit out of subordinates. Except she purposes an obvious Hitler style ultimatum along with fake peace treaty.

Asami is visiting her dad in jail. Looks like they are reconnecting more to come from that.

Then the rest of the episode happened and man you can tell Kuvira and Su have a fuck ton of history between them. And... they don't have a good family history. There is some serious unconformable silences in that meeting.

Also Su is still a dirty fighter, while Korra is visiting Kuvira she's plans on assassinating Kuvira while the Avatar is distracting her.

[MrDakka]

Spoiler

So did Zhu Li really switch sides? Or was that just an act to try to free Varrick and Bolin later? Also yay for power armor!

[mr friendly guy]

Loved how Bolin Spoiler

took out two mechas with lavabending. When they were first invented by Sato they gave Benders a tough time. Later on it seems they will be taken out by really strong Benders. Not that I can imagine the mecha's beating Toph or Bumi (the Earth king, not Aang's son) given the Benders tend to get the first shot in.

[Formless]

Old Toph is all kinds of awesome, could the rest of the season just be about her?

Apparently the writers confirmed that this wasn't the last time she will appear this season. But that's something I heard second hand, and I didn't get the primary source.

@MrDakka: Spoiler

There were a lot of hints dropped that Zhu Li has unrequited feelings for Varrick. I bet she's either doing this out of jealousy for him never noticing, or in the hopes she can break him out from the inside. Or both.

Nice to see that Varrick has a conscience too. I'm betting that he's going to become Avatar's Oppenheimer now.

Here's hoping for Korra to discover Bolin during Suyin's raid and getting the message that Kuvira is no more capable of diplomacy than Ozai. I'm kinda getting annoyed with the idiot plot of "no one tells Korra that her close friend was present at the previous diplomacy session, and things went really badly because of it" Weak plot meets strong plot, I guess. Kuvira is pretty much playing right to type as the fascist dictator (boring), while Korra is flat out stating that fighting first is what her old self would do, initiating diplomacy like Aang is her new first instinct (character development, yay!).

[Ahriman238]

Ah got it.
Spoiler

Ju Li is incredible. Her skills apparently extending to mad science, Mecha combat and manipulating Kuvira. She may not have actually turned on Varrick, but I think we can all agree he's taken her very much for granted.

Why do I have a feeling Korra is about to ruin things yet again? I see it took Kuvira approximately no time to talk Korra around to at least not outright opposing her.

So Kuvira was the named guard from last season. I'd wondered, but didn't bother to check.

[Kingmaker]

Given the name "Enemy at the Gates", I was half-expecting the beginning of cartoon Stalingrad.

It seems like after a couple of episodes of waffling over whether or not Kuvira was at least well-intentioned, they've settled firmly on the 'not' side of things. I'm a little curious as to what made her jump off the deep end, or if she was always a closet totalitarian.

Loved how Bolin took out two mechas with lavabending.

We don't necessarily know that that those were bender-resistant. Sato's original model was made specifically with Republic City's metalbending police in mind. Mass-produced models for military use might not bother with the same protections on account of the general scarcity of metalbenders* and a need to limit cost. I guess we'll see.

Also, given that the last lavabender we saw was able to melt a fucking mountain, does Bolin count as a weapon of mass destruction?

*one of the things that has always seemed a little incoherent to me about the avatarverse is that on the one hand, bending is supposed to be at least moderately rare and certain talents (e.g. metalbending or lightning) even rarer. On the other hand, there never seems to be any shortage of benders to perform somewhat menial tasks or fill out the ranks of military/security organizations (the armies of the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation did not appear to want for benders during the war).

(Why are we spoilering things?)

[Formless]

*one of the things that has always seemed a little incoherent to me about the avatarverse is that on the one hand, bending is supposed to be at least moderately rare and certain talents (e.g. metalbending or lightning) even rarer. On the other hand, there never seems to be any shortage of benders to perform somewhat menial tasks or fill out the ranks of military/security organizations (the armies of the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation did not appear to want for benders during the war).

I take it that it only appeared rare because in the original series the Fire Nation successfully kidnapped all the Southern Water Tribe benders except Katara, were working on doing the same to parts of the Earth Kingdom, and committed outright genocide on the Air Nomads who were the only nationality composed entirely of benders. Plus, in wartime it was advantageous to recruit as many bending soldiers as possible, so they were overrepresented in military occupations while the non-benders had to get by doing labor at home without them. Its much like the situation in World War 2 when more women were recruited into the workforce to allow more men to fight in the military.

The Northern Tribe, the Swamp tribe, the Earth Kingdom (which is at least as big or bigger than China), and the Fire Nation itself still didn't lack for benders; but save for the Water Tribes they were often just in the military or the Dai Li. At least half the people you meet in the Avatar Universe are probably benders with some degree of talent (from barely competent like Tenzin's brother Bumi to prodigies like Toph), but the war forced people to suppress or hide their talents if they had any (shown exactly six episodes in). By Korra's time, the bender population has probably recovered and no one but the now marginalized Equalists are looking to oppress benders. Also the show started in peacetime and only deteriorated into outright war after the Red Lotus society assassinated the Queen, so benders are more represented in the workforce using their skills for non-combat jobs. And of course thanks to Korra there is the New Air Nation running around, meaning even more people have bending that didn't have it before.

@Ahriman: Spoiler

Why do I have a feeling Korra is about to ruin things yet again? I see it took Kuvira approximately no time to talk Korra around to at least not outright opposing her.

Well, this is the way Korra has been growing and the way her identity as a fighter has been evolving into something more. She's starting to think more like Aang and learned from her uncle the need to think first when dealing with political crisis. And actually, someone on i09 speculated that Kuvira's plan was to goad Su Yin into attacking her so that she could claim Su was the aggressor (you know, on paper-- bringing her entire army to bear is a clear act of war if you are, say, a Fire Nation citizen reading the newspaper). Korra attempting to get between them might just be, ironically, the thing that complicates Kuvira's plan. Its also possible that there is a personal element to Kuvira and Su Yin's conflict that hasn't yet been fully revealed, but hinted at between the refusal to acknowledge her son, her son's comment about living in his father's shadow, and many other things. Korra will eventually have to take on Kuvira, but she probably has to confront Su about what the hell is going on between them first. There have also been hints that Su herself is loath to let her citizens and public servants leave Zaofu to pursue other endeavors. That might hint at the seeds of Kuvira's fascist-communist approach to imperialism.

Oh, and I don't have any idea why we're using spoiler tags. Seems like they were intended for threads where the spoilers were tangential to the original topic and not the whole point of the thread.

[mr friendly guy]

Preview for the next episode is up. Why do I think this raid will go horribly wrong?

[Formless]

So Kuvira uses conscripts... interesting. Also, true tanks! I probably just didn't notice them before, but its good to see that the heavy armor hasn't been superseded entirely by power armor/mecha.

[mr friendly guy]

All Korra has seemed to learn is how to take punishment in a fight.

[Kingmaker]

This episode's unexpected twist: Amon is still alive and just escaped from one Kuvira's prisons. And has bigger hair. And is a firebender.

I am a little baffled as to why there was a military checkpoint in, apparently, the middle of nowhere, or what they expect a border wall to do in a country where a significant fraction of the population can tunnel through dirt or rock without much difficulty.

So Kuvira uses conscripts... interesting.

It's not really surprising. While she's clearly got some die-hard supporters, I suspect that the average Earth Kingdom peasant isn't particularly likely to get fired up over Kuvira's crusade. Especially if conditions in her territory are shit, which it sounds like they are. Conscription is a logical way to bolster numbers.

[Formless]

I am a little baffled as to why there was a military checkpoint in, apparently, the middle of nowhere, or what they expect a border wall to do in a country where a significant fraction of the population can tunnel through dirt or rock without much difficulty.

Why does the U.S. have a significant border fence in the middle of bumfuck nowhere with checkpoints between it and Mexico?

That's probably the border with the Republic, whose territory is in fact bigger than some people realize: remember, Republic City is just the capital of a larger confederacy of former Fire Nation colonies, not a city state. Unfortunately, the wiki says otherwise, despite what was shown on the map in episode 1. The wall probably is only needed in wooded areas like that one, whereas the train they tried to smuggle Wu on went through a more arid part of the landscape. That part would only require a fence and observation towers. But then, Kuvira has a big ego, and metalbenders like the clan at Zaofu like to show off the scale of the things they can accomplish, like those domes over their city. The wall was, if anything, fairly short compared to some earth nation architecture, like the walls of Ba Sing Sa

Tunneling is something we've really only seen very powerful or advanced earthbenders do, like King Bumi, the Avatar (Roku against Sozin), or Bolin. Even Toph didn't use a lot of tunneling tactics, though she presumably could; probably because of her preference for Neutral Ji tactics.

Besides they could likely stop 99% of all earthbenders simply by making the foundations out of steel and putting them deep enough to make tunneling too difficult to do without tripping a seismometer. Then throw anyone foolish enough to try into gulag.

[Formless]

God damnit, not a clip show! Fair warning to you all, turn back before you feel the time circling down the drain. You don't have to watch this one. Ep. 8: not cool. If you want a summary of events, read the wiki.

[mr friendly guy]

Too late, I already watched it.

[Guardsman Bass]

It's totally worth it just to watch Varrick describe his "Bolin Movie", complete with a Legion of Doom conference call between Zahir, Vaatu, Aman, and the irritating Unalaq who keeps sneaking on to their conference calls.

[Mr Bean]

It's totally worth it just to watch Varrick describe his "Bolin Movie", complete with a Legion of Doom conference call between Zahir, Vaatu, Aman, and the irritating Unalaq who keeps sneaking on to their conference calls.

Yes, it was a clip show but the fact it was a old style pop-up video made it great. Still I have to wait ANOTHER week for Toph to throw down but in the mean time I got to watch "Bolin Hero of the World"

[Mr Bean]

So the Avatar creators explained what's up with Episode 8. To be exact Nick took one look at the budgets for Season 4 and decided to cut a show's worth of budget off. That's right Nickelodeon decided hey ten episodes, and it costs 10x budget to make ten episodes? Well here's your budget, you'll notice it's onyl 9x have fun with that.

So yes clip show was cost issue.

[FaxModem1]

Well, at least they were able to get some character development out of it, and Varrick's story was hilarious.

[mr friendly guy]

I loved how Zaheer got to see the consequences of his actions, unintended as they are. That is he killed the Earth Queen believing it would lead to freedom, but instead it just led to the rise of another dictator. Although if you think about it both the Queen and Kuvira weren't exactly democratically elected.

[Formless]

Its kind of ironic that the person who most believes in her ability to do what needs to be done is the person who nearly killed her. Guess first hand experience is worth something!

[Lord Relvenous]

The missing episode budget explains why episode 9 felt so rushed. I liked the elements of it, but the fact that Korra reconnecting with Rava was breezed over in 5 seconds left me with a "what?"

[Formless]

I think its fine. This is episode nine-- they don't have much more episodes to go, so her recovery needs to get moving. I know of some people who were wanting more action from this season four episodes ago (although I don't necessarily agree with their opinions on pacing). Her inability to feel Raava within herself and flashbacks to battling Zaheer needed to be dealt with at some point, and having Zaheer himself help her come to terms was a brilliant move. When she asks him where the prisoners are and he says "no, but you do", I think "you" was directed at Raava, not Korra, considering how spiritual Zaheer is. And Korra realized this, because that's literally the second question she asks the spirit. I think there is a reason he emphasized that he thinks Korra has all the power in the world (which is a nice parallel to what Ozai said about Aang, btw). That power comes from somewhere, her connection to the Light Deity, but that connection rests on her self confidence. Raava herself bolstered that during her fight with the Dark Avatar/Unalock (before getting ripped out and beaten up). So it makes sense that having it bolstered again by someone important to Korra would help her reconnect.

Also, I like how Korra told Mako she could never forget what Zaheer did to her and her father, even if she was ready to move on. Again, nice parallel to Katara before her saying she could never forgive the death of her mother.

Besides, there are still a couple problems caused by Korra's trauma that she hasn't dealt with yet. We still don't know what the Dark Korra Specter is, or whether or not it was just a hallucination. She still hasn't dealt with the other three villains she faced in her memories, although doing that will be tougher since two of them are dead. And we don't know whether or not Korra can actually fight people like Kuvira without being crippled by her own self image (am I the only one who has noticed Korra use evasion more and more this season?). That gives them plenty of material for the next four episodes. Not to mention the other three or four plotlines they have going.