As a teenager, she’s desperate to ascend to her full powers she’s rash and immature, often lashing out at people and events that hold her back. With swagger, braggadocio, and seemingly endless willpower and strength, she sported traits that would make her an ideal traditional hero - if she’d been a traditional male hero with a traditional male hero arc.īut Korra has things much harder than Aang. Aang is a lovable all-powerful kid who grows steadily into his identity and powers Korra has to learn to be the Avatar through a series of grievous mistakes and errors in judgment.

If Airbender’s main character, Aang, is a lovable, sweet-tempered boy, Korra is an irascible, cocky, rash teen girl. Legend of Korra was an ambitious follow-up - much like its main character. Fans were eager for the franchise to overcome the film's ignominy, and the show’s creators, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, were eager to change the conversation - so in July 2010, they announced the coming Nickelodeon cartoon sequel, with this now-famous art preview of the next Avatar: Korra. When it was released in June 2010, the finished product turned out to be a giant artistic embarrassment. The movie spent years battling widely publicized fan backlash over its racist casting (coining the term “ racebending” after the show’s element “benders”). Night Shyamalan’s live-action film adaptation.

And with a pre-planned, three-season story arc, it got to deeply invest in both its world-building and its characters over time, allowing it to evolve organically to a deeply satisfying conclusion.Īfter all of Airbender’s success, however, came the disastrous 2010 M. In addition to carefully avoiding harmful Orientalist tropes, the show took pains to depict its various cultural allegories as distinct. Set in a fantasy world mainly based on Asian cultures, Airbender was acclaimed for its sensitive multicultural storytelling, which revolved around a team of “benders” - people who can manipulate the four elements - using their powers to stop an aggressive, militarized nation from its violent conquest of neighboring countries.

The Peabody-winning animated fantasy series Airbender has been a beloved favorite ever since its original three-season run on Nickelodeon from 2005–2008. Korra, like its title character itself, had a lot to live up to.

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