Legend of Korra Book 4: You aint bout Dat Toph
 

So, Book four.
Awesome things:
Kuvira
Toph
Kuvira
New Designs!
Airbender Superheroes
Kuvira
Bad Things Happening to Prince Wu
Kuvira.

Seeing Korra fight Hallucination Korra brought to light how cool a Legend of Korra fighting game would be.

I'm also glad they've kept Verrick on board the show, since he just seems to work really well in his current role.

Also Kuvira.

I for one welcome out new Iron Overlord. That said, Korra's got her work cut out for her.

Toph is still Toph

And that's all we could ever want from her. :)

Yeah, this has been some A+ Tophing.

Also Kuvira is basically girl!Gestahl. And I like it.

More like, Kuvira is basically girl!Unalok, and it is making me worried.

"I AM TRANSPARENTLY EVIL YET PEOPLE ARE STILL TRUSTING AND GOING ALONG WITH ME UNTIL THE MOMENT COMES WHERE MY SUDDEN BUT INEVITABLE BETRAYAL HAPPENS. 2X COMBO, SINCE BOLIN STILL TRUSTS ME. 3X COMBO IF YOU COUNT UNALOK IN THE COMBOING."

Aside from that, Toph was still Toph, which was really refreshing after both Old!Katara and Old!Zuko didn't quite feel like older versions of the characters we knew.

I don't think they'll make the same mistake twice. They might handle her better then they did Unalok.

Its Bolin, how long was he trusting with Verik?

I think it's different in that I got the sense that they didn't /WANT/ us to view Unalok as evil until he tipped his hand, Whereas Kuvira is presented as a counterpoint to Prince Wu's incompetence. I.E. We're not supposed to "fall" for her(Not in the way I did, but whatever) but instead view her as the "Good at leading, but mean" to contrasts Wu's "Nice, but terrible at leading".

Unalaq wasn't forcibly uniting a continent under an empire based around advanced technology, employing walking, weaponized armor mechs and now apparently having her lead scientist researching ways of draining the spiritual energies of beings from another realm who haven't roamed the Earth in millennia to power her army.

Like for real, the writers clearly just played FF6 before coming up with this. She's Gestahl.

That's the thing, I don't think she's "mean", she's, "Clearly blatantly evil". When they did the spirit draining thingy, that sort of cemented it.

New thread rule where we say fuck it and purposely mispell any name that already has a weird spelling to its pronunciation?

Haven't seen that yet.

I do love Mako's counter-argument to Bolin

I'm not saying she isn't a better leader, just that that doesn't change the fact she's evil.

Speaking of, I think she's what you expect a realistic megalomaniac to be like. This is all for her own self interest, but I am sure in her mind its in everyones best interest to be ruled by her. Everyone is the hero of their own story kinda thing.

I've always believed as long as everyone understands what you are saying being overly concerned about stuff like that is just being pedantic

End of episode 3. It's mostly implied but obvious at this point.

Toph is back! And she's still the greatest earthbender in the world!!

All other plotlines are irrelevent.

That reminds me of something. Why the hell is Katara a healer? Yea its a useful thing to know but there was an entire story arc that her priority was using her bending to fight. Why wasn't she at the North Pole with Zuko last season fighting?

She was a combat medic. And by this point in the time line she's a world famous doctor. It's likely she was up to her knees in patients at the time. Nothing wrong with becoming a doctor over fighting. Katara wasn't all for violence to begin with. Fighting was always sort of a last resort kind of thing.

Also, when you're super old, being able to practice magic medicine is way more useful to society than shooting fireballs.

And if you're an old guy that only knows how to shoot fireballs and swing a couple swords around, then you're probably going to stay more on the ball about your ability to fight than the lady who spends all day healing people.

I'm not actually reading anything in this thread, just here to say I saw all of season 2 in a couple of days.

I should be discussing season 4 with you all next week.

Nearly done with season 3.

Why'd they give driving duty to THE ARMLESS LADY!?

sure she has water tendrils she can control with surgical precision, but c'mon.

She was the only one with a license, obviously.

Zaheer can totally also drive.

And now I just saw the first episode of the new season.

It's been pretty crazy.

I like imagining the swamp as being REALLY clingy

So, now that I'm done I'd like to talk a bit about seasons 2 and 3.

Season 2 was pretty weird with that ending, but I liked it even if it continues the trend of LION TURTLE EX MACHINA. Also, clearly evil villain somehow manages to fool Korra perfectly. Also, I expected those two detectives to actually be working for Varrick but as it turns out they were just incompetent.

Season 3 was great, except for the you're an airbender now that means you're an air nomad and you better accept that part. Another odd thing is that Fire Nation didn't have a single new airbender, and, in fact, very very little is shown of the Fire Nation throughtout the whole series. And "Oh hi, my name's Kuvira." was basically OotS. Also, did they forget Mako can lightningbend until the very last fight?

I think it's more that he didn't feel a need to use it due to that technique being fatal for moments where he just wanted to score K.Os, and requiring time to charge up making it tricky to set up.

It certainly seems like he can do it pretty fast, he's used a non-lethal lightning bolt against Amon and he's been using a lot of fire, so it's clearly not a "no I can't kill them" thing.

The only explanation other than they forgetting about him being able to do it is if he wants to keep it a secret.

I completely forgot he did that to Amon and he lived.

I'm more interested about the long-term consequences of the second season, since it's unclear about whether or not Unalok and Vatu are bound to their own avatar cycle. Sure they were totally killed in the avatar state, which Zaheer believed would sever the avatar fusion, but that's not actually confirmed. But they probably won't do that since "we have to kill this kid before Unalok's memories overwrite his/her personality" is probably too dark for Nickelodeon.

The Fire Nation is probably sidelined because it was the big thing in AtLA and the rest of the world deserved more attention, but the neglect is really starting to show now (water-arm lady's prison in season 2 was probably the only scene to take place at the Fire Nation if I'm remembering properly.)

Also, it never really stood out to me before, but the elements are stupidly imbalanced for combat.

Air: Godlike in versatility and speed (no wonder Plot Nation wiped out the airbenders)
Fire: Pretty good, but weak on barrier penetration.
Water: Strong, but dependent on water supply.
Earth: Pretty weak aside from large projectiles and making cover.
Earth (with consideration of the variant earthbenders): Fear itself, taking the form of the weaker elements to a limited degree while using metalbending to basically be SpiderIronManThor.

I don't think we've seen anyone Firebending or Earthbending anywhere on the level where it was shown in AtLA yet, besides using it for propulsion. Also, Lightningbending is probably the best thing for "barrier penetration".

Lavabending is pretty OP, though.

Vaatu is probably part of Raava currently.

All the elements are nerfed to be less fatal. We saw what airbending is like when someone is trying to kill another human being. Likewise earthbending attacks, a rock of that size going at that speed would break bones if not kill you. Fire bending is the only one not weakened but only because they ignore convection. Fighting a fire bender would quickly become like fighting inside an oven
I dont see why, its not like Korra's personality was being overwritten by the first Avatar's. I think thats part of the idea. While some core things are always there, a desire for peace and stability, selflessness, each Avatar is their own unique person with different opinions and beliefs of what should be done

I mean, look at AtLA, firebenders would shoot huge fireballs and waves of fire, earthbenders would blast the ground beneath their enemies while dodging and their covers would be more than a tiny wall that can get blown away by almost anything.

Bending, as a whole, seems to be a lot more about precision than large attacks now.

Also, Earthbending would be freaking overpowered if more earthbenders would just do what the evil king did in AtLA and suck people underground. It solves 99% of the fights in seconds.

Also also, we know for a fact that being killed in the avatar cycle ends it, it was a major plot point in AtLA, said to us by the person who knew the most of spiritual stuff and the avatar cycle of anyone we've met thus far, who taught Aang what the avatar state was/how to use it.

That wasn't in the movie. I forgot about that, but I guess it's for the best since having the dark avatar cycle would be darkening the tone too much.

The Avatar cycle seems to exist because of Rava's pledge to Wan to reincarnate after each avatar's death in order to maintain peace. Vaatu making no such promise to anyone, and the potential that he will not manifest(if he hasn't been completely neutralized) in 1000 years, and then only by bursting forth from Rava most likely means there is no dark avatar cycle.

I just realized what Kuvira might be doing to Su.

Gotta love those Villain mind games. And Su is playing right into it.

New Episode

As expected, Su's assassination attempt was exactly what Kuvira wanted and ended up costing them Zaofu. Korra's still not quite past her PTSD understandably and a one on one fight with Kuvira for Zaofu was the worst possible time for it to flare up.

And Varrick is bat shit insane... and I love him for it.

Now more than ever it seems like Korra has learnt how to bend the four elements, but doesn't know the techniques and motions for any of them.

It definitely showed in the Kuvira duel. Korra treats every element as a simplistic ranged attack while regular benders like Kuvira learn to make the most of their ability, being able to attack from all directions or make subtle changes to the fight that throw off such an aggressive approach. Korra's water bending is slightly better, likely from growing up as part of the Water Tribe, but she seems to treat every other element as the same kind of ranged attack or mobility enhancer.

I don't think I've ever hated a fictional character more than Kuvira right now. Also I don't think I've ever liked a character more than Varrick right now. This has been a strange day.

She is by far the worst airbender I have ever seen, and last season I saw people that have been airbenders for mere weeks.

I was hoping she'd have learned something from getting beat up by Toph.

"I've completely mastered Airbending, look! PUNCHPUNCHPUNCH! See? mastered."

But I feel like Toph is literally the worst person to teach you airbending.

To be fair though, she hasn't had the chance to really work on her air bending all that much given everything that's happened.

Plot hole I noticed. So he was trying to use the spirit vines to create clean energy. The electrical grid is powered by benders. They already have clean energy

Likely he's trying to create a power source that doesn't rely on bending that'll net him a few millions.

Are we sure that the electrical grid is FULLY powered by benders? what about Satomobiles, Boats, planes, Tanks,mechs, and airships?

Yeah those all seem to be Gas powered or Steam powered.

Also enslaving lightning benders to pump enough ki into the grid to power an entire nation poses more logistics issues than just harvesting spirit vines, so Kuvira is understandably on board the literal spirit lasers train.

I'm almost 90% sure boats are gas/coal powered because

1. Fire nation uses coal and gas power, and they invented the internal combustion engine, and the motorboat engine as evidenced by the Jet Skis(although that might have been the mechanist, same difference, basically)
2: Tarlokk and Amon's Suicide was by explosion to the boats gas tank

I doubt even Republic City is powered solely by lightningbending.

New episode

Bolin and Varicks excellent adventures continues. With Varick showing us some more of that engineer genius by building a makeshift EMP to down a unit of Mecha Tanks. And Bolin continues to remind us why he's an awesome guy by saving prisoners on the run from Kuvira's forces. Korra x Prince Lu is probably all over the internet now even though Korra doesn't really care about this guy. And Kuvira and Toph are about to duke it out from the looks of it next episode. When she goes "Get off my lawn!" all over Kuvira's forces. Sadly it'll probably be a worf battle to show just how powerful Kuvira is.

I haven't even looked yet but I already know it's that blush when she was talking to Asami.

EDIT: Nailed it.http://i.imgur.com/9tCwwTe.png

Man, Toph is going to be sooo pissed off when she finds out what Kuvira's up to.

I just realized yesterday why Bolin's lavabending makes total sense based on his parents. I'm not sure why it took me that long.

kinda bums me out that as korrasami stuff is probs just queerbaiting that wont actually go anywhere

I haven't seen the last two episodes, but this clip is fucking incredible. http://suetsugi.tumblr.com/post/103203525710/

Today's episode was a flash back clip episode. Long story short from the creators. Nick screwed them over with the budget by a full episode and still expected them to deliver the full season. Resulting in them having to resort to making a clip episode to fit within the small budget. Though they did try their best to make it a pleasant as possible.

http://uproxx.com/tv/2014/11/we-were...gend-of-korra/

What really gets me is the "heard them everywhere" voice actors for them.

KORRA ABRIDGED

Yea it seemed like an abridged episode, especially when they did the conference call. For a clip show it was pretty good.

Though on the Asami/Korra thing. Honestly I don't think its fanbaiting. I think its more like the writers going "look this is as close as Nickelodeon is ever going to let us get so try and make do."

Asami/Mako didn't work, Korra/Mako didn't work, Bolin/Korra died in season 1 and Bolin/Asami is a best friends deal. Clearly, this leaves Korra/Asami.

What about Korra/Kuvira?



What? It could happen.

I feel like we're very very close to a time when creators will have full control over even 'all-ages' content through independent publishing and so forth. Adventure Time also got achingly close to this, but clearly had to draw a line.

You can see some stuff, in like, the reasonably popular Bravest Warriors on youtube, that isn't so unnecessarily censored.

It will be nice if for once not immediately going to full scale war doesn't blow up in people's faces. Its an all too common trope in American fiction of the audience going "see this is what you get for not using a military solution right away."

With only 4 episodes left, that seems to be the case . It looks like defense is going to be the right choice.

Haven't been keeping up like I should but considering the spirit energy weaponizing I'm sure letting kuvira have time to get things done will bite them.

It would be nice if she had a moment of anger about not being able to paint any future aggressive action as responding.

It just occurred to me, since the creators said they are done after this. There is a real possibility we will never find out what happened to Sokka

I'm sure the comic will shed some light on that eventually.

Boomerang finally came back after all those years. And it wanted revenge.

I'd like to think that he just passed away of old age. There's no battle or foe he could face that would be suitably epic enough for him anyway.

The guy's diet primarily consisted of meat. I'd say natural causes are a given.

We know he was alive like 10 years ago atleast. I like to imagine him being whisked away upon his death to Princess Yue by freakin Valkyries

My wife thinks he may have settled down with he Kioshi warriors. We haven't seen any of them yet and I'm sorta surprised that they haven't come up yet in all of the Earth Kingdom dominating that Kuvira has been up to.

Which begs the question of rather or not they're still around by this point in the time line. Unless we're going to see the new generation of Kioshi warriors in the 4 part finale.

EDIT: Actually I just realized something. Kioshi Island technically might not be a part of the earth kingdom but is instead a sovereignty. Meaning Kuvira can't touch them...yet.

New Episode.

Operation: Beifung!

As everyone expected, Zhu li was a double agent and has been doing everything she could to slow down development on the Spirit Vine Cannon. Getting caught by Kuvira in the process. We finally find out about Lin and maybe Su's father along with some nice touching character development between Lin and Toph. Speaking of, seems like Katara, Toph won't be seeing much action due to her age (she admits this towards the end of the episode). Baatar Jr. may finally be realizing just how corrupt Kuvira really is when she tried to snipe Opal and Bulin with the Spirit Vine Cannon a few miles away while they were trying to rescue Zhu li. Despite him pleading for her not to kill Opal. It fails thanks to the rest of the Beifung family (minus Baatar and Baatar Jr) fighting back in a vain attempt to down the Cannon and Kuvira. However they were forced into an early retreat, unable destroy the Cannon.

Mean while... back at Republic City.

Prince Wu is...improving? it's hard to tell sometimes. Varrick and Asami are designing a flying Mech. And Korra was unable to convince the spirits to help protect Republic City. Which is about to be invaded in 2 weeks with a fully functional Spirit Vine Cannon.

Shit is about to hit the fan. And the seeds for what might be Baatar Jr. switching sides have been planted.

You say that and yet don't mention Toph and Sui showing how master earth-and-metalbenders do their thing?

Didn't want to spoil all of it.