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The Youtube comment is Made Of Win.

Oh God, not Korval.

SOATIGOTE

On a somewhat related note, Ultimate Spiderman must be HELL for you. That series has almost ruined 4th Wall jokes forever at least.

Also, there's a fun little foreshadowy Easter Egg on the wall of Amon's quarters.

The Ultimate Spiderman TV show had always been something on my todo list. So thanks to the above comment, I decided to give it a shot, after polishing off Spectacular Spiderman. How different could it be?

Now I only want to curl up and die.

I mean, my God, can a show insult the intelligence of its audience more than that one? I just... I saw an episode where Spiderman whips up a cure for Venom... in a high-school science lab. In five minutes. While having spent zero time studying how Venom works. Because he's a "science nerd".

Seriously, your audience has to literally be mentally retarded to buy that. I'm sorry, that was crass; that's an insult to people with learning disabilities.

That show makes me want to apologize for calling anything in ATLA stupid. I would rather watch The Firebending Masters and The Great Divide, back to back, twice, than watch any one episode of Ultimate Spiderman.

And the worst part is that I can't even review it here. It would just be me repeating over and over how shit the show is for pretty much the same reasons. Plus, I'd have to watch the show again, which is something I'm not going to do.

Hahahaha HAHAHAHA!!!!....Korval....Come suffer with me.

How many episodes did you see? Because I don't think that was even the worst episode. That goes to the previous Venom episode which had Harry as a Black Spiderman, upstaging normal Spiderman, and Jameson actually PRAISES THE NEW SPIDERMAN AS A REAL HERO DESPITE DOING NOTHING DIFFERENT.

I submitted after episode 14, the one where Spidey steals a brick that becomes a child-like giant robot, because he couldn't just talk to Coulson about not having gotten the project done due to super-heroing.

That episode was nothing special for USM. That was just the point where I tapped out. Strange Days was probably what ended me (proof positive that a title character can in fact be a Mary Sue); it just took an additional episode to make me stop trying to see if it could get better.

Yeah, the Jameson thing there was stupid as hell, and the best evidence yet that the writers are under the thrall of Joe Quesada. Only he can have that much disdain for the sanctity of his characters. Because they aren't characters to him; they're caricatures.

Jameson is anti-Spidey; therefore he will now, forever, and always be anti-Spidey. Regardless of the situation, circumstances, or basic logic, he is anti-Spidey.

You could not design a show more to be the antithesis of Spectacular Spiderman...

Wow, you guys lasted a LOT longer than me. I stopped watching USM after the first two episodes. As for Korra, I liked the episode. It set up Korra and Tenzin very well, and Steve Blum gave me chills with just one line. So it worked for me, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the show.

Huh. You took this ep better than I expected. But it was a good introduction.

Not sure if you're aware, but there is an official pro-bending rulebook PDF online. You can download it from the "Welcome to Republic City" flash game.

"Tenzin says no, that it makes a mockery of bending"

Airball was a sport played by the Air Nomads and your father used his airbending to pelt the other masters with cakes. Tenzin, you have no business lecturing people about how one can and cannot use bending in their spare time.

To be completely fair to Tenzin:

A: He never saw or played Airball. If he even knew of it, it would be from stories his father told him.

B: His problem seems to be that it's a spectator sport. Airball was probably just a fun activity children did that helped them practice airbending. It wasn't for paying crowds, with celebrity stars and so forth.

Of course, Aang also mentioned serious Airbender-on-Airbender competitions in The Northern Air Temple. So yeah, he's either full of it or simply woefully ignorant of Air Nomad history.

Besides, you want a sport that makes a mockery of bending? Earth Rumble.

Honestly, even the Avatarverse wasn't war-free prior to bending. Remember Oma and Shu's villages?

Interesting observation about Mako. Though personally, I found him closer to Cyclops.

Wow. "Poor" Mako. I never thought of him as an intended audience surrogate. Though judging by how shippers are okay with mutating a character's personality to fit into their personal fantasies, it may not have mattered.

The bane of my enjoyment.

Hiroshi honestly doesn't strike me as a "seductor". As duplicious as he is, he's really a very impulsive character, driven solely by overwhelming emotions like hatred. Even when he's "in disguise" he's a bad liar ("So I take you're dirt poor"), so I doubt he'd have the consideration to make a well reasoned speech, especially in such an emotionally charged time.

Interesting observation on Hiroshi, from both of you. If he were smarter (socially speaking), he would have tried to go into more detail why Asami should share his hate for benders. But if he's driven in part more by impulse, he really wouldn't think do to that.

So we can only assume that Tarrlok will banish Korra to the world of Pagan! No one there knows of the, AVATAR.

Well I think that Zuko "won" the Agni Ki when Azula forfeited by attacking Katara.

Your review is awesome. I agree that the final episode really could have done some things better, and that stupid romance episode was a waste of time. Ditch that romance episode and extend this to a three-parter, and we could have more time for fleshing out characters.

And I am looking forward to seeing your review of the last 2 and a half minutes. :P

As far as the fence posts, the technology of harnessing lightning was still pretty far behind our standards - so to them, that 'was' a new thing. It'd be Too Dumb to Live for us, certainly, but merely a Shocking Swerve for them (no pun intended) imo.

Also, it's already been established that bending can be done without the 'proper' motions/gestures/etc. In A:TLA, the firebenders fueled their craft with rage... but the dragons showed this was not the proper way. Not to mention Azula, who had snapped, managed to summon lightning despite needing absolute focus + calm. As Korra (and later Zaheer) showed, it can still be done, but it's simply crude by comparison

To be fair, I'm actually satisfied with the Deux ex Machina ending. It's both ironic and highlights how Korra's pride was her only genuine flaw.

Eh, I don't really think the ending was that much of a Deus Ex Machina. It's been established clearly that that kind of stuff was possible in the Avatar-verse. It's well within the realm of possibility.

Deus Ex Machina can be something as simple as this. Let's say you have a Western, in which you have a town plagued by some gang of gunmen. The Sheriff has let this go on for a while, to keep the peace, but one of them goes too far, and he's had enough. We see the Sheriff's struggles, triumphs, and losses.

Then he goes into the final battle, with far too few men to hold the gunmen off. They're probably going to die, fighting for what they believe in. But wait, what's that? Here come the Federal Marshalls to rescue them and put down the badguys.

That's Deus Ex Machina.

Is it possible for someone to have called in the Marshalls beforehand off-screen? Yes. It is possible for a random group of Marshalls to have just fortunately waltzed into town on other business, then hearing about the incident and dropped by to help? Absolutely.

It's still complete horseshit from a story perspective. Reality Is Unrealistic; just because something could happen doesn't mean it's a legitimate event for a narrative.

It's not a question of possibilities within the totality of the universe. It's a question of what is possible within the context of the story. If the above story had actually been about holding out until the Marshalls arrive, that's one thing. But that wasn't the story. The Marshalls were not a part of the story being told; therefore, them appearing in the third act to resolve the plot is completely unacceptable.

Just like here. This is supposed to be Korra's story. For Aang to show up and just fix everything for no adequately explained reason completely destroys her story. Oh sure, he says that she called him, but we certainly never saw that. And that's the problem.

If they wanted to have an episode about Korra seeking out Aang as a way to resolve her issue, that's fine. Well, it wouldn't be good, but it'd suck less.

One thing I'd be interested in would be an Avatar prequel. Something that looks into the history and prehistory of the world. Among them, how and why did the Avatar cycle start?

Reading through this whole blog, it occurs to be that it could have been very interesting if Mako had joined the Equalists. I always thought it was odd that he, Amon (at least his cover story), and Sato all had the same element in their backstory: having a loved one killed by a firebender, and nothing ever came of that shared point. It could have been really interesting if, when Sato called for Asami to join him, it was Mako who answered his call instead (obviously requiring build up to this that isn't in the show as it is).

This would have given Mako more personality, and putting Mako in the unnamed Equalist lieutenant's place during the final episode would have made more sense, as he'd have more reason to listen to Korra's accusation of Amon lying, and to be disillusioned when the thing he had in common with Amon turned out to be a lie. It also would have given Korra and Asami common ground other than Asami turning out to be an Action Girl, too, and given Korra more reason to see the conflict from the Equalist's point of view.

Holy shit, you win for predicting the end of Korra season 2 months before it aired. My hat goes off to you sir.

I'm curious to know, but are you going to do a review of Season 2?

Season 2 ends with Korra whipping out some bullshit to defeat the badguy. A shame, as I enjoyed the season with the exception of the last few episodes. It got too metaphysical and random. But it had a lot of good aspects, almost all of which didn't involve the spirit world. And it made me not hate Asami and Mako, both of whom I disliked as characters in season 1, but who both became more interesting in season 2.

I'd like to see how you'd review it.

Actaually it was consistent; they laid out the tree of time earlier, and it ties in with Korra defining herself as the avatar. now in her darkest hour she realizes its the other way around; she defines what the avatar is not vice versa.

will you ever do book s2 3 and 4

I enjoyed your takes on ATLA Korval but it really does feel like you went WAAAY too soft on Korra. There are a fuckton of issues that you just kind of ignored here that you would have ripped Avatar a new asshole for. I\'m especially confused how you think Korra\'s character \"worked\" when she doesn\'t really grow at all during the series and gets everything handed to her on a platter without even working for it and you even acknowledge as much. Or how you completely skipped over the absolute bullshit that was Amon magically removing people\'s bending with bloodbending that energybending can somehow reverse but Katara (a bloodbender) can\'t. Or the complete mishandling of the entire Equalist conflict.