Once more, this post contains spoilers. If you haven't watched this season in it's entirety, you'll probably want to steer clear of this post.
I may have jumped the gun with my earlier review of The Legend of Korra's second season; also known as Book 2: Spirits. I had previously stated that the first half of this season felt a little too unfocused and cliche. (Read that review HERE if you haven't yet)
About halfway through the season, Korra gets amnesia. AMNESIA!! As far as I'm concerned, amnesia is the greatest tool that you could ever use in stroytelling. When has amnesia ever been an effective tool of stroytelling? The fact that this was made into a cliffhanger for one episode, makes the impact all the more awful. It was at this point that I decided I had had enough and I actually took a pretty long break from watching this show.
When I returned, I got a great surprise. For 2 episodes, the focus of the show shifts onto another story entirely. I know that I've been complaining about a lack of central focus, but this one I can excuse. We are introduced to Avatar Wan, the very first Avatar. The entire art style of the show was changed for these 2 episodes, and to great effect. It felt so refreshing and it just demanded my attention so strongly. The first episode focused on certain revelations about what exactly The Avatar is and how it came to be. It also introduced us two new key characters in understanding what The Avatar is. Raava, the spirit of light and Vaatu, the embodiment of darkness. As much as I enjoyed all these things coming to light, the 2nd episode in particular was fantastic. I'm not usually one to go crazy for battle scenes, since they're usually pretty lazily done and visually boring. The battle between Wan and Vaatu was possibly the greatest animated battle I have ever seen. Never did I think I could get such goosebumps from watching this show, much less this season.
An issue that I had was that by the end of this whole Avatar origin story was that Korra immediately had her memories return; making that whole element really irrelevant. Why was it included? Was it a cheap shot at a cliffhanger? I still don't know.
Korra then travels The journey into the Spirit World was also visually refreshing as well as just plain interesting. Yet another locale for this season. It's just all over the place. We're in The North Pole, Republic City, we're in the ancient past, we're in the spirit world, we're at the air temple, we're in some random island where old women give Korra a hallucinogenic dreams. EVERYWHERE. And it is such a contrast to the first season where we stayed just in Republic City. But The spirit world is different. Things change and bend in impossible ways. People travel instantly. Laws of physics are broken. Plus, you get a few shocking cameos in there from the original Avatar series.
The final battle between Vaatu and Korra feels a little goofy. Vaatu and Unalaq fuse to create a giant generic man-shaped blob of...spirit energy. And Korra transforms into I giant version of herself made of...spirit energy. It's all kind of cheesy and unnecessary. Overall, I enjoyed it, but I'm kind of ashamed of saying so. It just feels so wrong.
This season ends with it's loose ends a little too well tied up, just like the first season. Only this time, the entire world of The Avatar series is changed. Spirits now intermingle with the world of mortals. Once again, I get thoughts like "How can they possibly continue from here?" and "Why didn't they just let at least a little bit of one season spill into the next?" and "Why make it to where each season is virtually unrelated to the next?". They do plan on making a 3rd season, but I have no idea what they can do. And if they do, I doubt it can top this season. But of course, these are all things that I said of this season before it's release too. So I have faith that the shows creators can prove me wrong again and create a really stellar show.
I may have a lot of gripes with it, but this show still is what I believe to be the greatest animated show on television. This is what TV animation can be. It can be mature and still be okay for children to watch. It can be a grandiose story with fantastic animation. Children's TV shows are too often overly simplified and really kind of insulting to kids. We don't respect our children's ability to understand a larger story. Kid's are smart, people. And you know what? They eat this stuff up. This show represents what I want to see more of. It is a pioneer in an era of cheaply made educational shows. Kids can learn a lot through shows with deeper meaning; shows with emotional content. Shows with physical and emotional strife and how to combat it. Things that I believe are outstandingly more important that teaching a child how to count to ten over and over and over again. I know that that has little to do with the show itself, so I'll save it for a later posting since I just now realized how passionate I am about this.
Thanks for reading and GOD bless you.
