It's almost impossible to review a sequel without comparing it to the original, so I won't even try it.
The events take place 70 years after Aang's story. The world has changed, from the medieval times, we immedietaly find ourselves in some steampunk version of the 1930s, and it's one of the things that does good to the series. The other huge upside of the series is Korra herself. She's very different from Aang. Headstrong, brash, knows no respect, and maybe an even greater natural talent. She's everything but perfect, which makes her a great subject of character development. A development, that unfortunatelly never happens. At least not in a way it should happen. Actually, as unique and loveable as she is in the beginning, she loses the things that made her special. She loses her cheerfulness, that cheeky attitude, and her general badassness also goes out the window. Especially in the last season, but I'll get back to that later.
Unfortunatelly the supporting cast is with very few exceptions underwhelming.
Tenzin, Aang's youngest son, Korra's master is one of the few better ones. He's a strong character, who constantly wears his mask of seriousness, but rather often we can see Aang's natural sillyness in him, just as his insecurities no matter how hard he tries to mask them.
Asami could've been a good character too, if she wouldn't have been handled as about the sixth or seventh most important character in the cast. She has an interesting backstory, and in general she's a true badass, unfortunatelly she's kept in the background for the whole time.
There is Mako, the mutual love interest for both Korra and Asami for two seasons. It would've been really hard to write a more boring, one dimensional character. He's the silent, handsome, serious guy. That's it. There's nothing that makes him complex, interesting, or anything. Pretty much like a dreamboy for a 14 year old girl, who knows nothing about life.
There's Bolin, who's probably meant to be the new Sokka. The difference? Sokka, as silly as he tended to act, wasn't actually stupid. He was a great leader material, bright, and rarely was fooled by anybody. Now, imagine him without his leadership skills and intelligence, change his constant dissatisfaction to constant cheefulness, and you get Bolin. He's painfully stupid, and unfortunatelly he (along with Varric) is the source of about 80% of the humor from the second season. Awful, childish, incredibly anyoing humor. And I would understand childish humor in a cartoon for children, but the theme of Korra is everything, but childfriendly material.
Jinora, Tenzin's oldest child has potential too. A bright girl with exceptional talent, who saves the day more times than one could count.
Varric is interesting too, but he's often times too much with this crazy genius behavior.
The biggest problem of The Legend of Korra is the story itself. Unlike with Aang's story, there wasn't a backbone for the series, which isn't problematic by itself, but it doesn't work as it should. There the main plotpoints were Aang's journey to master the other three bendings, and the war. Here the story changes with every single season, but in a way that it's the same for the first three seasons. For example, we watch for a whole year how Korra's trust grows toward Tenzin, just to watch how it's get rebooted to the level of the begining of the first season in the second season. Korra gets captured several times in each and every one of the first three seasons. Every season ends with Korra gets defeated, than BAMMM! deus ex machina, the writers drag a rabit out of a hat, while we didn't even know about the existence of the hat. They made Korra making the same stupid amateur mistake twice (risking to sacrafice the fate of the whole world for the much smaller bad) The events keep repeating themselves, and they got to a point with season 4, which can't be called anything, but ridiculous. The last battle was against a giant mecha... In a steampunk world, against Korra, who defeated the most powerful evil being of the material and spirit world. And Korra struggles against it. She can't defeat a giant bipedal machine...
What makes everything worse there is no feeling about a true ending. The ending of the fourth season was a simple season finale, it didn't feel like a true closure. And I haven't even mentioned that other than the deus ex machinas, the creators can't surprise the audience at all. When you see a character for the first time, you know exacly whether they'll be good or bad, you see all the twists long before the characters realize them. And it's not just the repeated mistakes, and cliché plot twists, it's the darkness of the story too. In Aang's story there were only a few truely dark episodes, and they served their purpose. Here, there are two full seasons (seasons 2 and 4) that are completely dark. The worst offender is season 4, as the majority of it is about Korra's PTSD and depression. Yup, PTSD and depression as themes in a child series. And don't get me started with "theses seasons have their fun moments too" as ALL those fun moments are tied to side characters and side stories. The biggest problem with Korra's depression, is it's out of place. It don't belong here, and even the cause of it is ridiculously made up. And what makes everything even worse, is the creators somehow couldn't find any balance between the dark and the funny moments. There is some serious, depressing, dark thing in one scene, then cut to Bolin, who does something annoyingly stupid, that's most certainly meant to be a comic relief, but in that moment, a comic relief was the last thing one needed. There are such huge contrasts even within one episode, it almost feels amateur work.
And that's where we got to Korra's awful character development. When we first see her in the series, she's already the master of three elements. By the start of season 2, she's master of all four, plus can control her avatar state, and as it obviously made her overpowered to write real challanges against her, the creators started to write ridiculous things to cut her power back. From the start of season 2, Korra literally losts more fights than she wins. Instead of writing a proper development curve for her, she's the most powerful at the begining of season 2, and the least powerful at the end of season 3, and even at the end of season 4, she isn't any more powerful than a simple bender. And her personality also changes for the worse. Sure, it was clear she can't stay the same headstrong girl for the whole time, but in the end, she's just a hollow frame of what she was in the begining. Zest, love for life, confidence all gone, she not simply matured, she became a pessimistic adult.
And that's where we get to a point I can't not talk about. The infamous Korrasami romance. I started to watch the series long after its finale, so I knew about the two of them would become a couple, and... and it seemed less and less likely as the series went by. It's not just they've never shown affection toward each other, they were merely acquaintenances until the finale of season 3. And even during season 4... They exchanged few letters, which doesn't mean anything as Korra during her time away wanted to talk to another woman in her age, and when they first met and Asami says some polite compliment to her, she blushes. And those are all the signs about their affection toward each other. Their whole "love" seemed more like some bait toward the lgbt community, and nothing else, as they put no effort in evolving and representing it. At the end, BAMM it was there without any real foundation. Sure, we can explain it by, they fell in love thru letters, but it should've been shown then. Did they seriously expect us to root for a love for the main protagonist that was formed completely off-screen?
Honestly, I really wanted to love this series. I wanted to, but I couldn't. I enjoyed season 1, and about two thirds of season 3, the story of the first avatar, and I loved how Korra was originally, that's why I gave the 7 points. The other parts of the series (with the awful, depressing season 4 on the top of all of it) don't worth more than 3/10. Because of Korra herself it had much promise, but the creators couldn't live up to it. I only started to watch Aang's story, because I was curious about Korra, and I am really thankful I started with the original series, as after The Legend of Korra, there's no force that would've been able to make me watch that one.
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