The Legend of Korra

The only time Avatar generally scared me as a kid was in "The Puppetmaster". Not because of the bloodbending(which I actually thought was pretty cool), but for the "Water Tribe Ghost Story" that Katara told at the beginning of the episode.

Never felt scared from anything in Avatar.

That's how I felt about a lot of his picks. Most of the episodes on his list made me go, "Aww, I liked that episode. *listens* Well, actually, I agree with him on that, it's other stuff in the episode I liked. This pick makes sense."

For instance, when he talks about the episode with the secret lovers' tunnel, I actually totally agree with him about the Aang/Korra bit being incredibly cliched, predictable, and just...boring. It was the hippies and Sokka that I loved about that episode, and that's not what he was complaining about. "We let huge ravenous beasts guide our way."

edited 18th Sep '14 5:21:27 PM by TobiasDrake

I'm very pissed off about "Avatar Day" not being on the list,while "The Swamp" is. Actually,one of those parts of "The Swamp" was made awkward just because "Avatar Day" came before "The Blind Bandit"

Also I completely disagree with his analysis of "Bato of the Water Tribe", and find more fault in "The Painted Lady" for what it did to Katara than the environmental stuff.

Never understood this line of reasoning. We can afford to wait one episode.

What was wrong with Katara in The Painted Lady?

I totally agree with his analysis in Bato of the Water Tribe; Aang's behavior was so reprehensible as to be completely out of character in that episode.

I was glad to see both The Painted Lady and The Headband on his list for largely the same reason; both of those episodes felt arbitrary to me. In both episodes, the characters are on their way to start the big battle, but decide to stop and dick around for no good reason. In both episodes, other characters even call them out on the fact that they're on a time crunch and instead they're dicking around, but these complaints go ignored.

The Avatar crew spent two whole episodes being Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer and it just made the entire conflict feel less urgent as a consequence. At least Sokka's Master had Sokka doing things that would actually benefit their overall objective.

edited 18th Sep '14 5:46:15 PM by TobiasDrake

I like The Headband. Pretty much every line of Sokka's in that episode is gold.

Sokka was a saving grace in that episode, I agree. It also gave us the glory that is Wang Fire.

However, I still feel like it was out of place for Aang to drop everything and go attend school for a couple days in the Fire Nation for no reason just so he could reignite the art of dance, as the Day of Black Sun rapidly approaches. It had a thematic purpose in helping establish the people of the Fire Nation as more than a faceless army of evil, but the characters' motivations are just nonsense.

edited 18th Sep '14 5:48:42 PM by TobiasDrake

For what i see, you can call dougs video "11 things that bug me about avatar" because he really like the episode, it just that i find somethings very weird or jarring, let see

-I thing he find wierd the fact that there is a whole episode of katara dealing with sexism, something that never happen again in the show(or in korra for that matter)for Doug, that looks like more as very special episode about sexism

-The same can be said for the painted lady, is a blunt green aseop it a more subttle show, and after all the force and anivallious episode doug have to watch, you can see why is bug by that

-the headbang....is the damn footlose in the final book, and after a pretty heavy moment, is pretty much a mood whisplash

-cave of two lovers: i think here doug complain more of a trend many shows have, of having two people bickering,fighting for the entire show just to get togheder in the end, i have to admit that(a least for me)Doug is right:having katara and anag be a couple early in the show would be a very intresting dinamic

the swamp: yeah here doug is weird out by the fact that well....is a damn swamp, and of course the whole "avatar version of duck dinasty" was funny as hell

and as you can see, aside from the gran divide, who is really filler in all the sense of the word, many thing in his top bug him a most

Didn't Kiyoshi Island episode kind of take on sexism in its own way?

i dont think so, i meant is a only female organization and for most it was a side plot, with the main one being katara and anag having a fight(or as far i can remenber)

Most of the stuff in Korra I find more horrifying than scary. Like the Earth Queen's death and Korra being poisoned. Not "horror movie" scary, just "holy crap that was just emotionally jarring and raw."

Exactly. There's a lot of that kind of stuff, though, and it seems like it gets more and more horrifying as the show goes on. I'm honestly wondering whether they can top suffocation and mercury poisoning... but, then again, I could have asked the same question about Tarrlok's Murder-Suicide and Yakone trying to break Aang's neck back in Book 1, and we all know how that turned out. =P

I think it still counts because it still showed that sexism was a thing in the setting. I mean, Sokka's attitudes came from somewhere.

sokka actitude seen more of being responsable of the south water tribe, so he must protect womans

think is, this kind of actitude is inconsistent in avatar or a least tond down because is a kid show, so is bound to happen

Well, the southern water tribe was founded by the northern one.

It had a lot of the same attitudes but it was more lax on some of the traditions.

All the men went off to fight the war so Sokka had the attitude that women couldn't be warriors.

So he gets all aggrieved that the Kiyoshi warriors captured him, calls their training 'a dance lesson', and 'normally I'd hold a grudge but you're a bunch of girls.'

And then Suki embarrasses him, he shapes his shit up and wears a dress.

edited 18th Sep '14 8:58:10 PM by Bocaj

The Sokka/Suki part of Kiyoshi Island definitely covered sexism and (thankfully) beat the last vestiges of sexism out of Sokka's character.

No it didn't. Sokka was still kind of sexist in a "must protect women" type of way up until at least Serpent's Pass.

Although, that may have been just overprotectivness towards Suki.

I think that was specifically towards Suki in response to Yue becoming the moon.

You know, one issue I have with "The Headband" is this:
A twelve year old boy just randomly shows up in town out of nowhere, and nobody at all has ever heard of him. He is using 100 year old slang and doesn't understand customs that have been around for under a century. He literally has the face of Public Enemy #1 of your nation.

...does nobody at all find this suspicious? I mean, yeah, the Avatar was announced as dead earlier, but I still think this might trigger some warning bells in people's heads, or at least in the heads of the teachers Aang encounters.

Presumably, nobody in the Fire Nation for a single moment expected the nations public enemy number one to start attending a public school in the middle of their country.

I admit, it's not very plausible of an assumption, but I still think that his behavior and appearance might raise some red flags beyond "troublemaking new kid."

About Aang's use of outdated slang, you could apply Fridge Brilliance to that — if I recall correctly, he claimed to have moved in from one of the Earth Kingdom colonies, and according to linguists in Real Life, language spoken by colonists outside their native country usually stays more similar to the language originally spoken at the time of colonization, while it evolves more rapidly in the language's native country. Hence, American accents are more similar to English at the time of colonisation than modern British accents, and Icelandic and Faroese are more similar to Old Norse than Danish, Swedish and Norwegian.

As for the rest, I just don't think Aang stayed long enough for his behaviour to really ring any warning bells.

On that point, you're thinking from the point of view of someone who grew up in a society of fully realized photographic and video capture technology. In real life, descriptions of facial features and sketches are not very reliable for identification—even if the sketches are close likenesses, and often they are not. And descriptions of faces tend to be quite ambiguous unless there is a feature that really sticks out like a scar, a distinctive birthmark, etc. This is still a common problem today lamented upon by police and sketch artists, which is why cops prefer actual photographs.

edited 19th Sep '14 2:35:07 AM by Malchus

@Sokka's sexism, I wonder how much came from genuine values ("Men have to protect women") and how much from his status as Muggle of the Gaang ("I have to show that I am tough so I prove I am not useless").

The second issue was solved only with Piandao.

edited 19th Sep '14 2:59:20 AM by Julep

That.

Aang's most distinguishing characteristics are his bald head and arrow tattoos, neither of which were visible during his time at the school. While I still think that entire episode was silly and inconsequential, there is no reason to expect anyone to be able to positively ID him at that point in time.

edited 19th Sep '14 7:52:14 AM by TobiasDrake