A Brief Retrospective - Avatar The Last Airbender VS The Legend of Korra in 2021

0:00 for the past few years whenever winter came to an end and the early spring set in i've always felt this almost nostalgic feeling that has made me want to re-watch avatar the last airbender and the legend of korra why this is the case i'm not exactly sure it might be because when this tradition began the series helped me through a pretty hard spot in my schoolwork or maybe the seasons changing in the show itself but either way this year is no exception so today i want to go through each series and compare how they both approach storytelling and its themes the world the characters the bending system all not to find out which one is better but to simply see how different they both are i

0:45 already know that simply by doing this sort of video there are already going to be some quite polarizing opinions but personally even though there are certain aspects of these shows that i like and dislike which we will of course get into i don't get bogged down with which one is better i enjoy both and want to compare how the series changed over time but with the intro out of the way let's get into it i think the avatar itself is a good starting point for this aang being raised by the monks always approached his challenges in a peaceful and pacifist manner as opposed to korra who even found joy in battle this was a very nice contrast that really reminded you that the avatars are indeed very different we of course

1:30 got glimpses of this with roku and kiyoshi but korra takes the idea and runs with it quora is fascinated by the pro-bending scene and is very eager to join it compare that to aang who while not afraid of a fight never went actively looking for it unlike aang korra had trouble connecting to our spiritual side which made connecting to her past lives extremely difficult thus not being able to enter the avatar state luckily for her the world was a more peaceful place compared to aang's younger years so she did fine without it for a while it's also important to keep in mind that quora is 5 years older than ang was at the beginning of their respective series so that just shows how much aang's upbringing as a monk

2:16 helped him master the spiritual side of bending even with the help of the white lotus and tenzin korra couldn't really get into touch with this side of her which shows just how different they were in personality another interesting aspect with korra is that our upbringing is much much different to any of the previous avatars there's a rapid technological progress and the world is changing faster than ever before if you compared roku and ang their core personalities were much much closer than that of korra and angs we'll talk about this a little more in detail later but the idea of quora being the first of the second generation of avatars is actually true in more ways than one the shift in storytelling from the last

3:02 airbender to the legend of korra is an aspect of these shows that i absolutely love if you've watched the video on my bizarre adventure through jojo you know that part 3 stardust crusaders and part 4 diamond is unbreakable were my favorites and i'm only now realizing why that might have been the case the last airbender and the legend of korra has the same sort of change in approach let me explain what i mean aang's story was set out right from the get-go he had to master the four elements and defeat the main villain firelord ozai of course there were other small arcs with their own characters and challenges but the overarching story was quite linear in its nature quora on the other hand told four major stories that were all

3:47 interconnected to some extent it was extremely different in the sense that it felt more open world than experimental unlike the clear goal with aang khora's story could really take you anywhere zeroing in on the story themes once again shows you just how different these shows are during aang's years the world had been devastated by a hundred year brutal war which would of course dictate a lot of the story themes in the series the show opens by telling you that an entire culture has been wiped off the face of the earth and this 12 year old boy is not only holding up the weight of the world as the avatar but is also the only person who can carry the history of his people forward the immense pressure of balancing his duties as the avatar

4:33 and the last airbender is at the core of his stories time and time again we see him ask for help from his previous lives by getting answers that go against his morals as an air nomad he's also constantly burdened by the fact that he ran away a hundred years ago and couldn't stop the war before it began in the episode the storm we see just how much grief this is causing him not helped by the people blaming him for not being there this is further showcased after aang recovers from azula's lightning strike at first he refuses to go undercover claiming that he already let the world down once and that he wouldn't do it again by making them think that the avatar has died after meeting kotaro and saka we see just how afraid he is of losing them

5:18 when they come across bato and the letter from their father aang hides it fearing that they choose to see their father over staying with him he feels extremely alone in this world his culture is almost gone most of his friends are no longer around and a lot of the population has lost their faith in him as the avatar even when he gets saved by zuko under the disguise of the blue spirits aang asks zuko the person who's been chasing him around this whole time could they have been friends this forgiveness is another thing that sets aang apart from korra sometimes to his own detriment he gives everyone another chance whether it's zuko or even the fire lord himself the final episodes of the last airbender are all about

6:05 aang coming to terms with the fact that he may have to kill the fire lord something that everyone including his past lives have been telling him is for the greater good and would finally return the world to peace but for aang this is a human life that deserves another chance despite all the horrible things the fire lord has done aang is willing to risk his own life just to save ozai katara's in saka's story despite being closely connected at the start with the loss of their mother diverge a lot throughout the show their joint pain of their family being torn apart by the war despite the constant bickering immediately establishes just how close they actually are after meeting aang saka clearly didn't trust him but after seeing how bad

6:52 katara felt about aang protecting them by giving himself up to the fire nation saka is the one packing to go and save him much of katara's story in the first seasons is proving herself as a waterbender and overcoming the stereotypes that have been established in the northern water tribe where women would only use water bending for healing after proving herself as a fighter we get deeper insights into katara's motives by mastering water bending she felt closer to her mother and would ultimately end up using it to get closure we also see how much katara is actually the one holding the group together after oppa gets taken she is the one motivating everyone to keep going after seeing that tov's gambling antics are dangerous she tries to stop them before it brings

7:38 trouble and so on the way her story is balanced between the motherly character of the group and an extremely experienced fighter is absolutely brilliant and is showcased to the fullest extent in the episode's southern raiders after finally coming face to face with her mother's murderer she chooses forgiveness echoing aang's moral violence is a repeating cycle soccer's story is also very much about proving himself but to an even greater extent his only wish in life was to live up to the great leader that his father was and even though he is obviously hurting over the loss of his mother it isn't such a prominent detail as it is for katara another interesting aspect of soccer story themes is the general growth of him

8:24 as a person after meeting the warriors of kiyoshi he dismissed their ability simply due to them being women after seeing their dedication to the mastery of their fighting style however sakura showed humility and wanted to train under suki and the rest of the warriors a thing that i think many people overlook is that despite saka often being the comedic relief he's extremely intelligent as soon as episode 10 he is the one who picks upon the fact that the freedom fighters are not as righteous as they appear and are actually a group of anarchists in episode 17 when paired with another scientific mind they invent the hot air balloon a technology that would later be widely used in the series his arc ultimately culminates in the events of season 3

9:10 with him forging his own blade which could be interpreted as saka finally forging his own path and then leading the troops into battle on the day of black sun also keep in mind that the whole attack is essentially planned out by saka himself funnily enough when looking back at the story themes of saka he honestly feels like one of the characters who's had the most growth throughout the series with the exception of maybe zuko saka is somehow both the brains of the group and the comedic relief which is something you certainly don't see often speaking of zuko i genuinely believe he has one of the best written story arcs of all the shows i've seen there are so many little details that we could be here for hours so i certainly won't be able to cover all the nuances

9:56 but we will examine the more major themes of which he actually shares quite a few with his uncle iro both of them are trying to fix their past mistakes in a sense for ira this is of course his regrets over his part in the war after losing his son he stops the siege of bossing sei and returns home after coming to terms with the death of his son he adopts a more peaceful approach to life and develops a new view on the world one which understands the importance of balance unlike his ancestors who would slay the dragons to prove their abilities as a fire bending master iro lied about killing them in order to protect the last dragons and so was granted the teachings of the ancient sun warriors

10:41 similar to aang iro is also a character who will always give you a second chance making his reunion with zuko absolutely devastating when finally meeting back up with zuko after his betrayal in book 2 he says that he was never angry he was only worried that zuko had lost his way his overarching story ultimately culminates in the freeing of bossing sei this time as a part of the white lotus and in the name of peace instead of the warmongering fire nation we'll touch on this more with zuko but iros coming to terms with the mistakes of his nation and becoming a better person as a result makes him such a likable character looking back at the series pretty much any character that comes into contact with airo

11:27 is ultimately better off in some way except for the tales of bossing say that episode really didn't make me feel any better jokes aside the tales of bossing say is an incredibly meaningful episode for iro as it encapsulates a very major part of his story i don't want to make you cry so i won't show you the episode or play the song but the short story of him helping out numerous people in the town even somebody who tried to rob him and then only wishing that he could have helped his son is at the core of iro's story it's the drive that has pushed him to protect and guide zuko all this time on this notes we can move on to zuko himself and oh boy there is a lot to look into

12:12 he is a tragic character in the sense that he is a product of his environment the constant rivalry with azula and only wishing to prove himself made his entire life a struggle there's even the line that his father uses azula was born lucky zuko was lucky to be born after the events of his childhood he is left fighting off all of his demons with only his uncle by his side his overarching story is all about redemption to different characters throughout the series at first it's his father but that completely changes once he finally goes against the fire nation the tragic part about zuko is that everything he does up until joining gang blows up in his face he is constantly left feeling bad for himself

12:59 and asking for forgiveness even to his uncle iro zuko only ever begs for forgiveness three times in the series once to his father which ended with him being burned and banished then to team avatar where katara threw water in his face and sent him away and then to iro who forgave him and as i mentioned before says the line that can still reduce me to a crying pulp i was never angry with you i was sad because i was afraid you had lost your way there are multiple times throughout the show where we get hints that zuko's motivations are much more complex than we realize in episode 7 of book 1 zuko stops his chase of aang

13:44 to save iro showing us that his uncle is actually much more important to him than he lets on in episode 13 he rescues aang under the disguise of the blue spirits demonstrating that he is willing to essentially risk his own life just to get a shot at capturing aang himself this of course shows us that these motivations are absolutely not his own but only as a prerequisite to fulfill his father's wishes the rest of the show is zuko fighting his demons and coming to terms with the fact that his father will never truly appreciate him after betraying airo and teaming up with azula he rejoins the fire nation only to realize that this is absolutely not what he wanted the show does an incredible job showing

14:30 you that zuko is reaching his breaking point at this point in time he was completely alone with even ira ignoring him but his greatest transformation comes in his lowest point and he finally realizes his true destiny there is one brilliant detail of zuko's story that is told in the comics after the defeat of ozai aang and zuko become incredibly close friends zuko of course becomes the fire lord and the world slowly returns to peace there is something zuko asks of aang however he tells him that he's not sure of his own loyalty at times and tells aang to stop him without hesitation if he ever starts to resemble his father i really wish more people knew about this detail as i kind

15:16 of feel this is the pinnacle of zuko's growth he switches sides so many times throughout the show that it's extremely rewarding seeing him fully take responsibility of his actions and lastly i want to talk about the general themes of toph's story her story is almost a mirror of zuko's unlike him who was fighting to get back to his family and be praised by them taff is constantly trying to break free she already knows that she is much more capable than her parents know so she is sick of this constant pampering that she is subject to this is also a reason why she has such a hard time integrating into team avatar her character by its very nature is a misunderstood lone wolf because of this she immediately rejects the leadership

16:01 and general team-based thinking that exists in the team as she immediately views this as another form of her overbearing parents we of course later learned that this isn't simply because she doesn't like people it's because everyone automatically underestimates her due to her blindness this is no doubt a commentary on injuries or disabilities in real life as well some people simply cannot stand being dependent on someone else and this lack of independence absolutely tears them apart just like it does for tough finally some broader themes for the last airbender before we move on to quora there is a constant underlying message about change the best example of this is aang coming to terms with the refugees living in the air temple this was of course an extremely

16:47 important cultural site for him but things change and now it has been remade to fit more modern needs this is an endless debate of what is more important retaining history or progress on one hand it is history that makes us who we are but on the other we should look past it if we ever want to grow and develop we also see some pretty dark insights into the corruption of the police force in boston say to the point that even the king is oblivious to what is actually going on due to the fear of the citizens not responding well mass censorship about the war is imposed leaving everyone in the city clueless even when their wall is about to be destroyed a similar situation is happening in the

17:32 fire nation the people don't feel like what they're doing is wrong some even believe that they are uniters helping the world but for everyone on the outside it is clear that they are warmongerers willing to do anything to get ahead and this has only gotten worse as the war went on a hundred years of fighting later ozai's only goal is to kill the avatar so no one could ever oppose him he clearly only wants power the commentary on dictators in history here is pretty on the nose so i don't think there's too much to discuss moving into legend of korra gives us a pretty large shift in the ways of storytelling as well as the themes explored i already mentioned that unlike the last

18:18 airbender quora doesn't have a distinct overarching narrative so there are much more themes that can be explored the first major arc is the equalist movement following the anti-bender propaganda by amman the non-benders of republic city believe that they're being treated unjustly and that they're being oppressed by what they call the bending elite the real world commentary here is pretty straightforward people with their radical beliefs fighting to establish their twisted goals of equality it is even played up to the point where bending is referred to as an impurity which is just you know the most ironic part is that the leaders of these non-vendors is in fact a bender himself showing that he is very much a hypocrite and is simply using the state of the city

19:05 to accomplish his own selfish goals again i don't think further elaboration here is really necessary you can probably think of quite a few examples yourself the next major story is about unlock opening the spirit portals by opening these portals their tribes would be freely able to travel between each other but this would impose on the spirit world this of course raises the questions whether the spirits and humans should live together or were they meant to be separate there are several interpretations that i think you can draw from this one is similar to what was raised in the last airbender when is it more important to uphold traditions and what is it better to allow for change the avatar had always been the bridge between these two worlds but now that the spirit portals were open communication between them was

19:52 completely open for the first time since avatar won the other idea i draw from this is about humanity's expansion into what once belonged to nature now that the spirits were free to move around the physical world they were reclaiming many areas which were now part of republic city now more than ever we're starting to realize what our industrialization consumerism has done to the environment and i believe this is also a commentary on that moving into book 3 we get the most mature story in the whole of korra or the last airbender in my opinion and that's saying a lot since we've already covered war and the devastation caused by it dictators and their radicalists and even a whole nation being wiped out with the red lotus we see an anarchist

20:38 movement wanting to completely overthrow the world's leaders wipe out the avatar for good thus removing any sort of balancing force in the world we also find out that unlock was also a part of this organization and opening the spirit world was a part of their new age ideal their core ideology is the epitome of classic anarchism by removing any sort of established powers the world will shift into its ultimate form through basic evolution as you might expect dismantling the nations can't really be done peacefully so we see some pretty twisted things come to fruition this leads us into the darkest theme of the show after fighting red lotus cora is left traumatized both physically

21:25 and mentally she desperately tries to hold on to hope that everything will get better but ultimately she feels like no one understands her and runs away she joins an underground bending ring where she simply gets beat around and constantly sees flashbacks of what happened with the red lotus not only that but after losing her connection to rava and thus all her past lives she is left more alone than ever and simply does not know who she even is anymore people keep addressing her as the avatar but she simply doesn't view herself as one anymore she feels like she is not worthy of the title it is a dark story of dealing with trauma doing self-destructive things in the form of her bending fights and finding yourself once more the final

22:11 broad theme of the show is similar to ozai's story once again after the earth kingdom queen was murdered by the red lotus kuvira considers herself as the only one capable of uniting all of the earth kingdom she does this through complete and utter order she develops highly destructive weapons to scare off her adversaries but obviously ends up using them as well again the real world interpretation for this one is pretty straightforward an iron fist ruler establishes themselves as the leader simply do to everyone under them being afraid to speak up it's the age-old paradoxical power problem in reality it would only take one person to stop her but again her absolute order approach makes it terrifying for anyone to contest her moving on to the

22:58 individual character themes asami's story in a sense is a very interesting remix of zuko's in that after learning of her father's true beliefs about benders she tries to distance herself from her family's mistakes she prides herself on rebuilding its reputation and restoring the satou name in which she is very successful unlike zuko her father does get a redemption during the last arc of the series making her relationship with him that much more complicated an interesting note is that she is the only non-bender in the group so in a way it feels like she not only wants to prove herself to the world as the ceo of future industries but also as a part of team avatar using various tech and her own smarts she was quickly able to fit in and hold

23:44 herself against the benders as well often functioning as the brains of the group she is also a part of the makokoro love triangle that happens in the show this is a part where to this day i'm confused as to why people think it was surprising the relationship between korra and asami had been building for an extremely long period of time she was the only one who cora communicated with while recovering from her fight with the red lotus and so on overall i feel like kasami's growth as a character was very gradual throughout the show and felt natural because of that while there were some twists and turns with her father and so on it just felt that over time she became a more and more important part of the team avatar moving on to bowlin and mako i always thought that these characters kind of work as a duo

24:31 while their personalities are extremely different their general character themes around them are quite similar i feel that both of their stories is about finding your place in the world but one is by following your mind and the other by following your heart with mako being the more rational thinker and bolin being the creative from their backstories we find out the brothers really didn't have much growing up and would work as a part of the criminal organization the triple threat triad which we saw a few times in the series their lives do turn around somewhat after becoming pro-benders but breaking free of their past is quite difficult and i feel like this is the core message of their story we see macaw joining the police force and steadily rise through the ranks what's thought of the traditional way of

25:17 employment in real life you find a job work hard maybe get promoted work more and so on his younger brother however has a more artistic and freedom loving attitude and becomes an actor for a while he then believes that kovira's intentions of uniting the earth kingdom is pure and joins up with her once again following his heart but in the end despite their rough start in life they both end up where they were supposed to be and i think that is a pretty nice message tenzin is an interesting case as he is very similar to aang but completely different at the same time just like his father he feels like he is the only one who's capable of carrying the air nomad culture forward but unlike kang who was more tolerant

26:03 towards change and evolution tenzin is a lot more paranoid about upholding these traditions a major part of his story also deals with the upbringing of him and his siblings it may really hurt to hear this but aang wasn't a great father while trying to teach tenzin all about the traditions of air nomads and airbending itself he neglected boomi and kaya due to this his older siblings do hold some of that against him tenzin is also the primary mentor of korra guiding her both in the ways of spirituality and airbending while their relationship could also get pretty tense at times he clearly only ever had the best intentions in mind and would do anything to protect korra

26:51 as he truly felt that it was his destiny as the son of the avatar to lead the next one in the cycle overall there's not much else to say about tenzin him and his family were all great to see in the show and ultimately seeing him and boomi and kaia make up for their rocky past was also really nice to see opal is a character that only joins way later in the series but also has a nice little story she comes in as a supporting character for korra and bolin but ends up having an interesting mini story with her aunt lynn with lynne being the extremely closed off person that she is she really doesn't want to get to know oppal which for a niece who has heard stories about her is quite devastating i think this is something that everyone in some capacity

27:37 has experienced in their lives you may have heard a lot about a person but you never truly know what they are like until you meet them yourself on the notes of lin we can also talk about her along with sue ying the two daughters of toff just like mako and bolin they're the opposite sides of the same coin after toff's incredibly strict upbringing she gave her children absolute freedom which caused this weird division in their family lin the older of the sisters thought that it was her duty to continue in the steps of her mother by leading the police force sooying on the other hand was more of a creative spirits often got into trouble and was generally nowhere near as serious as her older sister ultimately they grew apart so much that

28:24 they didn't talk for nearly 30 years this is something that i also think most people with siblings can relate to someone always feels like they have to be the one to carry on their parents legacy even if they don't particularly want to this leaves them maybe even unconsciously blaming the rest of their siblings for not taking their place in lynn and suian's case there was of course the whole dispute of soyin getting tied up with the terror triad which would muddy the beifong name since they were supposed to be the police force but you get the idea ultimately the 30 years they spent apart were something they both regrets as they were able to put aside their differences and ultimately make up and for the broad themes that's all i wanted to cover i've certainly missed something that will pop into my mind as soon as i

29:10 upload this video but even with the things we have covered it's clear that while some stories are similar between the series they are still vastly different and even more mature with korra for some cases but now i want to discuss the bending in both series once again starting with the last airbender i've already made a video on the power progression throughout the series so i may repeat some things and skip others from that video on bending in the last airbender overall i always seem to forget just how weak at the beginning it actually is you get so used to seeing the extremely powerful bending later that going all the way back feels quite

29:55 weird but that just speaks how well power progression is handled it's gradual and thus very believable another thing i want to mention is that the bending in the last airbender seemed to be a much more spiritual and special thing despite the pro bending in quora i genuinely feel that the last airbender puts much more focus on the martial arts aspect of bending what's more is that the special types of bending we see are extremely rare taf is the only metal bender only a handful of people can redirect lightning and bloodbending is also only seen a few times this is by no means a bad thing for either series it's just something to note but moving on to more specific cases of bending

30:41 aang's story is very much about him becoming the avatar by mastering all the four elements it is the main plot of the story so not surprisingly his bending abilities improved drastically over the course of the show comparing his avatar state of book 1 to the final battle with ozai speaks for itself just like the rest of the cast he doesn't get more powerful simply due to learning new elements but also because of his new approach to problems just a quick example i used in the previous video as well before learning earthbending aang's fighting style was mostly focused on dodging attacks themselves but after training with toff and taking boomi's advice aang uses neutral jing in his fight against the sparky sparky boo man

31:26 he hides in the pillar and waits for his opportunity to strike there are many many more examples of this type of progression in this combat and covering all of them would take way too long so i won't be doing that in this video one note before i move on to the elements themselves while in the avatar state aang pulls off some incredible feats of strength but what many people overlook is what he does in his final fight with ozai he first uses toff's thought skill of listening to ozai's movement through the earth he then uses earth-bending moves that flow just like water bending and finally deflects ozai's fire breath so precisely to still not harm him all with just his strength if that

32:13 doesn't demonstrate how powerful of a bender aang had become then i don't know what will so the elements i'll start with air as is the simplest one to tackle we mainly see airbending from aang with just a few flashback shots of kiyoshi and roku not surprisingly since hank is the main wielder his style is very much the traditional monk approach of mostly using it to evade instead of strike there are of course some exceptions but broadly speaking it isn't an offensive element and is often used by aang in combination with another one to gain the upper hand in a fight interestingly in the terms of story aang is already a master airbender at the beginning of the series so the progression of his technique with air is quite limited

33:00 but despite this we do still see some increase in power throughout the show moving on to water bending unlike with air we get to see the full cycle of mastering the element both from angs and katara's point of view starting the series we see some super basic water bending forms but by the end their techniques have changed beyond recognition this is especially true with katara her mastering blood bending changes her quite a bit and that is on full display in the episode the sudden raiders where katara goes to confront her mother's killer her fighting style is absolutely ruthless incorporating both blood bending and devastating water bending moves with aang our other main waterbender it's a little more complicated

33:46 as his bending is always interwoven with other elements but it's safe to say that it still gets magnitude stronger over the course of the show earthbending is interesting as it was the first element in the show that felt more foreign than the others in the last airbender earth is very much a stoic element where every single character we see use it is generally quite bold this is very much the case for our main earthbender tough who is so bold in fact that she starts bending metal as well just like with bloodbending this is a very limited ability in the original much different from what we see in quora but we'll get to that interestingly taf is the only one to use earthbending

34:31 very precisely and in a calculated manner every other bender even ang mostly uses it at a very large scale just to overwhelm the enemy this of course goes hand in hand with the general boldness of the element itself fire bending is an interesting case in the last airbender as it always had an almost taboo feel to it with it being the adversary element for most of the show this idea is further expanded after aang misuses fire and burns katara obviously it's no coincidence that the person later teaching yang fire is zuko the character whose mission was to hunt him down right up until then fire is another element that only a handful of characters use

35:17 very precisely notably azula whose bending is very rarely just a showcase of power this of course changes their final agnikai where the roles flip and zuko is the one precisely defusing her attacks and retaliating with calculated strikes of his own for firebending the super rare and special form is lightning generation redirection which as i mentioned in the power creep video i view as just the form of telling us that these characters mean to kill what i mean by that is that the only characters we actually see use lightning as an offensive tool is the firelord and azula both obviously with the intention to kill the other characters we see use it those being zuko iro and aang

36:03 always simply redirect it instead of using it as a form of attack fire is set apart by having another extremely rare form of bending combustion bending we only ever see it a handful of times and used by a single character in the original it was hard to say whether sparky sparky boom man was even a firebender himself but this does get elaborated on later in quora which we'll get to in due time there's not too much to say about this form of bending except that it does already establish telekinetic bending in the original show wrapping up the bending for the last airbender the notable things is that there is a very noticeable power curve throughout the show which made progression of our characters

36:48 that much more enjoyable for me comparing the fights of book 1 to the final ones in book 3 will likely surprise many as this improvement is very gradual there is no distinct power up moment our characters simply become more powerful with time and with training the elements themselves are also used in a very traditional manner a bender uses their element to the best of their ability and that is it it is a pure and hard magic system in the sense that there are very strict rules that the elements follow lastly if you're keeping count the only element lacking a special form in the main show is airbending with water having blood bending earth having metal bending and fire lightning redirection

37:33 and combustion bending the bending in legend of korra is well complicated jokes aside the bending in quora feels more powerful right from the get-go the power curve we saw in the last airbender is not really present in the same form in a sense it does appear in the form of pro bending but it's not really the same this is why i mentioned the precise nature of some of the benders that is turned up to 11 for quora the elements here are not really used as an overwhelming force instead their tactical strikes use the first offset and then finish the opponent it is also important to note that quorus starts

38:20 off with already the mastery of three elements only missing air both of these changes might feel off when looking at in an isolated manner but when you consider that this is a follow-up from the last airbender seeing the same sort of bending progression might just feel redundant with quora we jump straight into seeing all the elements at essentially their power ceiling already most notably some of the special forms of bending have really lost their prestige with both metal and lightning bending being used as day-to-day tools they're still not as widespread as bending itself but they are far less rare blood bending arguably the strongest form of bending out there is also delved into deeper aman the leader of the equalists is an

39:06 even stronger bloodbender than katsara being able to use the special form without a full moon and being able to do it pretty much telepathically this telepathic ability is what a lot of people call out as straying too far from the traditional bending of the last airbender but just as i mentioned previously it was already established by the sparky sparky boom man so this isn't really the first time such an ability is used this incredible mastery comes from years and years of practicing this taboo form of bending allowing feats that we never saw in the original show earth sees another special ability in the form of lava bending this was an interesting choice as when i first watched the last airbender i actually thought of the avatar using

39:51 firebending to melt earth and then bend the molten form of it but as it turns out lava bending does actually appear in the original series as well but only in flashbacks with both kiyoshi and avatar setso being capable of this bending form in quora we see only two benders being capable of this ability those being bolin and gazan a member of the red lotus as for metal bending it is now widely used by the police force utilizing it in a myriad of creative ways these new applications give earthbenders much more movement capabilities changing the whole stoic feel of earthbending we saw in the last airbender by using metal bending the police force

40:38 can now use these metal cables to zip around buildings in a almost spider-man-like way they can also use parts of their armor as weapons further establishing the more precise and deadly nature of bending in quora moving on to firebending as i mentioned lightning is much less rare than it was in the original but we do see another combustion bender in the show as a part of the red lotus for lightning i wouldn't really interpret it as the intention to kill like i did in the original series but it is still of course a very powerful ability as for combustion bending just like with sparky sparky boom man we don't get too many insights into this form of bending except that we find out that it's even more rare than the other rare special forms

41:24 moving on to air with the reappearance of airbenders due to the harmonic convergence not surprisingly we see a lot more use of it the special form of airbending is also revealed that being flight by once again a member of the red lotus air has become much less of a pacifist mainly evasion-based form of bending and is now used as a full-on offensive style of combat this is of course demonstrated by zaheer who has absolutely mastered the element through his previous experience with martial arts we'll talk about this a little later as well but we see a form of airbending that will go against everything ever taught by the monks zahir uses it to create an air bubble around the queen's head and draw out all of the air within it

42:12 suffocating her if this doesn't work as a contrast to the pure and traditional approach by the air nomads in the original then i really don't know what will and lastly for air spirit bending this is one that we kind of saw in the original but it was more so tied in with the avatar itself rather than being with airbending in core though we see genora learn the ability of spirit projection similar to how it worked with aang allowing her to travel vast differences in her spirit form to see what is going on in distant and hard to reach places quora also uses a form of spirit bending and if i've been very neutral so far i'll be honest i was not a fan of this korra and unlock both channel rava and vaatu to astral project

42:57 themselves and fight during the harmonic convergence wielding the very power of spirit energy this of course ends with korra being cut off from her past lives which sets up a lot of the later themes of the show but overall i think this astral projection giants straight a little too far from the quite hard magic system that had been established so far while we see aang energy bend as well it didn't involve giant laser beams and whatnot but anyway that's that so bending nicora overall it already starts off at pretty much the power cap however the approach to combat also changes to a more tactical style we see more calculated forms of fighting mostly in the pro-bending field

43:44 but we also see how various techniques have changed into much deadlier forms most notably with airbending for the last part of this video i want to look at the various villains we see in both of the shows once again starting with the last airbender in ang's story we see quite a few sub-villains during the first seasons but there's always the looming threat of the fire lord which is not the case for korra but we'll get to that the first villain we see is of course zuko we covered a lot of his character arc already so there's not too much to mention here he's the only villain in the main series who is a lot more complex in the sense that he switches sides quite a few times throughout the show

44:30 ultimately becoming a member of team avatar when you look back at the series i actually find it quite difficult to mark zuko as a villain per se as he is fighting another fight himself against commander zhao who we'll talk about in a second as well while his motivations appear to be purely black and white at the very start with his whole regaining honor obsession that really doesn't last long in the grand scheme of things moving on to commander zhao was both an individual villain for zuko and a grander scale adversary for a main gang during season 1. a good demonstration of the type of person zhao is is the agni kai against zuko after being defeated fair and square he attempts to get a cheap shot on zuko but uncle iro stops him saying that

45:16 even the banished prince is more honorable than zhao then later in the show aang uses zhao's blind rage to destroy his own fleet of ships and finally he is so obsessed with becoming a conqueror that he kills the moon spirit all in all he is very much a black and white type of villain he really has no redeeming qualities whatsoever he steals zuko's intel to get ahead and is generally just not too good of a guy season 2 brings in azula and the corrupt daily forces unlike zhao azula is not fueled by blind rage which makes her just that much more dangerous instead she infiltrates bossing say something that was thought to be impossible

46:02 and dismantles the security from inside azula's power is showcased in the book 2 episode the chase banging on the fact that none of her characters will harm her she tricks everyone and even manages to get a shot on iro she takes on five benders and saka all by herself not only is she incredibly powerful as a bender but she also recruits two of her friends mei and ty lee who are equally as dangerous with ty lee being a chi blocker and mei just being very experienced in martial arts and weaponry after infiltrating the daily we finally see her take on the avatar properly needless to say we see just how ruthless she is when she generates lightning

46:49 and shu tang the trio is also a part of book three until mei and tylee realize that azula is really starting to lose it and betray her left alone she only gets worse until completely losing grasp on reality and being defeated in the final agony kai and finally the big bad ozai himself i didn't mention this with azula but the last airbender does an incredible job building up some of its more major villains for example the very last shot of book 1 is ozai sending azula on her mission establishing that she is pretty much the right hand of the firelord himself with ozai a thing many people seem to forget after numerous re-watches is that you actually never see ozai

47:34 before season 3. his face is never shown and he always appears as a figure looming over the characters he interacts with keeping the big bad hidden until the very end does an incredible job of gradually building up the tension until we finally see just who the fire lord is just like zhao ozai is pretty much a straightforward villain with absolutely no redeeming qualities while you could argue that azula is simply a product of reupbringing we don't really get anything to sympathize with ozai he attempts to kill his own son numerous times after his defeat baiang he still attempts to get a cheap shot and even after being imprisoned he still acts like an absolute douchebag overall the villains in the last

48:21 airbender pull off exactly what they're supposed to do change your characters in new and interesting ways there is a gradual but constant escalation of odds that always makes you feel like there's still room for our characters to grow moving into the legend of korra we see a different approach to villains each book has its own primarily villain but personally i feel like some feel far more dangerous and impactful than others but we'll get to that starting off with book one is the equalist and amman i won't lie when i first watched through the series i had no idea that each of the seasons would have their own villain so when we were introduced to a character who had the ability to take people's bending away i immediately thought this would be the big bad

49:08 this speaks to how the villains in quora feel like they hold much more power yes azula was incredibly powerful as well but this sort of ability feels more like a final boss we of course later find out that he is just an extremely powerful waterbender and revealing that he is in fact a bender himself to the anti-bender radicals has the power to immediately dismantle this organization he was certainly an interesting starting villain for the series as it also accomplished to show that the fire nation is no longer the big bad this was a waterbender and was capable of the same amount of evil as ozai this will of course be a theme for the rest of the series book 2's main villain was unlock along

49:53 with the dark spirit vatu this is one that i personally think could have been handled so much better with just a few small tweaks to the story if the dark spirit just fought kwara in a traditional fight without astral projection of giants i think it would have been far more impactful but anyway that's not the purposes of this video oonalock is a villain that wants against treys from what was established in the original series he is not just some random bender he is cora's uncle and mentor which makes his turn that much more of a betrayal i wouldn't call him a super complex character but i don't think he was really pure evil either it's hard to say whether his idea of spirits and humans living together

50:38 really would have been that bad and it's not like he had no idea about spirits either he was incredibly experienced in dealing with them which is why he became chorus teacher in the first place on the other hand his ambition was to become the dark avatar all along and as we saw lead humans into what he called a new era overall unlock was a very interesting villain and i just don't think he was used to his full potential but now we get onto the darkest villains of the show the red lotus i'll say it right now i don't think there is a more powerful villain in any of the two series led by zaheer this group of anarchists were all elite benders with each and every one of them using elite and rare techniques like it was

51:23 nothing mingwa's water bending was easily the level of kataras at the end of the series gazan was an earth-bending master with the skills to lava bend ple is one of two combustion benders we've ever seen and zaheer is a martial arts master that has now become an incredibly powerful airbender who could hold his own even against a master like tenzin who was trained by aang himself in a longer fight tenzin might prove the better fighter but when posed with the four of them he has no chance none of the red lotus members are ultimately defeated in one-on-one combats and all require at least a few of our incredibly experienced benders to take down with korra still being poisoned zaheer

52:11 was moments away from ending the avatar for good and if it wasn't for the young airbenders channeling a massive tornado to stop him he would have been victorious the defeat of the red lotus is also just as brutal as everything else about them unlike the righteous defeat of ozai gazan commits suicide to escape capture p lee's head gets blown off by her own combustion missile mingwa is killed by mako's lightning and zaheer the only surviving member is imprisoned the crazy part about zaheer is that he ultimately helps quora get over the trauma by guiding her into the spirit world even after his defeat and imprisonment he had no hate for korra and still believed that his goals were righteous

52:57 eventually helping her take down kuvira whose dictatorship obviously clashed with his anarchist ideals for me this makes zaheer an absolutely fascinating villain but with that out of the way let's move on to the final villain in the legend of korra kuvira i'm not going to lie this was my least favorite villain in the series i don't know why but i feel like the kovira arc feels the least dangerous and important and this really might just be a me thing as they did have incredibly powerful weapons but when i think of someone who has the ability to take bending away or the dark avatar or even an incredibly dangerous group of benders they all feel more dangerous maybe it's because it's the most similar to what we've seen before

53:44 with kovira's story being quite similar to sozens but i'm not sure ultimately the battle for republic city was quite tense but i really feel like the giant death robot just like the astral projection in book 2 kind of cheapened it for me personally i enjoyed the actual kuvira vs korafight much much more i don't really have too much else to say about kuvira other than that the final invasion of republic city was really awesome and something that we hadn't really seen before on that scale so overall it was still a pretty good story arc looking at the script so far we've already spent quite a bit of time together but there are just a few more things i want to mention

54:29 since i don't want this video to be 2 hours long i won't go into too much detail on these things but i still feel like they're worth mentioning the cabbage man in the last airbender and later in the legend of korra this is something that became way more popular than i think the writers ever anticipated so it was nice to see some callbacks in the legend of korra with the cabbage corp also in the legend of korra two side characters that i absolutely loved were julie and varick their little story was really a joy to watch and i'm glad that they got a happy ending as well the three simple words of do the thing will always give me a good chuckle because of these two another awesome duo in the legend of korra was woo and mako the antics vulgar himself and mako into

55:15 were simply brilliant the juxtaposition of marco's stern approach and wu's carelessness was on point up next the roku flashback episode in the last airbender seeing the very start of the war through roku's and sulzen's point of view was really interesting it also further drove home the point that aang had to do the impossible by mastering the elements in just a few months something that took roku years then the avatar won episode seeing the origins of the avatar was absolutely fascinating i know opinions are mixed on whether the origin should have remained a mystery or not but there is something that many people incorrectly point out as a plot hole

56:00 the lion turtles being the ones that give the ability to bend is not a retcon it's them that give the ability but is their respective beings that teach it like the moon for waterbenders and so on and finally for this little bullet list of cool things the last airbender has the best recap episode of any show i've seen if you've watched a lot of anime you know the dreaded recap episode or as i call it the skip week avatar on the other hand gave us the ember island players and while it clearly wasn't an important episode it does still further the plots by giving us insights into aang's thinking and his struggle of coming to terms that he may have to kill the fire lord cora's recap episode is also a very

56:46 welcome change to what most other shows do with mako retelling the events and a bunch of characters butting in with questions but i don't think it was quite as creative as the original wrapping up i want to restate that the purpose of this video is simply to examine the two series not decide which one is better i absolutely love both and while i do have a preference myself yours may differ and that is completely fine there are certainly a lot more things that i've probably forgotten to mention and i'll remember right as i upload this but i think this video is already too long as is if you want to keep up to date with everything in and around the mystery shack be sure to check out the social media links below that is by far the best way to follow

57:32 what i'm up to and what to expect but other than that i want to say thank you very much for watching i hope you have a great day and hopefully i'll see you in the next one bye bye

58:41 you