Vs. Korra: The Legend Renewed! - Comic-Con 2012

The ORIGINAL! Often imitated never duplicated.

Korra? Renewed?? Up to season 4?!!! It's certainly a good time to be an Avatar fan and it's never too late to tag along with Team Avatar on their many adventures.

Like many others, at first glance, I thought the first Avatar series with the 'Aang Gang' was a pathetic knockoff of Japanese anime. Avatar was released at a time when Americans were trying to duplicate the look, humor and style of anime with garbage shows like Ben 10, Totally Spies, and others I would rather not mention. Every now and then, I would catch a glimpse of an action sequence of Avatar and marvel at how crisp and clean the animation was, but that's where I drew the line. My biases would get the best of me and I ended up just flipping to another channel. I just never gave it a chance. Early this year a cousin of mine had downloaded the entire series and persuaded me to copy it to my external hard drive. So I copied it and that same night, I took a chance at viewing the first episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Thereafter, I was pleasantly surprised, and officially hooked.

I grew up with both American cartoons and anime, but the Avatar series is just another beast in itself. As mentioned above, the animation is refined and fluid. The attention to detail especially as the benders wield their respective bending is definitely a sight to behold. Unlike some of the more popular anime out there, Avatar does not scrimp in the animation department. Shortcuts are not taken and animations are not reused, which anime has the penchant for unfortunately (I'm looking at you Dragonball Z, and other popular anime; first half of Rurouni Kenshin, although I still love the Kenshin-gumi). Avatar is a classic example of creating a serialized cartoon right. The character development is top notch with each main and supporting character getting enough screen time and interaction with others to conceive a story where we actually care about this company of adventurers and the world that surrounds them. In addition, the series also knows the right balance between action, humor, and drama. Yes, this is a show aimed for kids, but the maturity on how the creators and writers approach in telling their story is a rarity most cartoons and even anime cannot properly convey. The world and its characters grow on you and by the end leave a lasting impression long after the series conclusion. By the time Aang is in his Avatar state handing Fire Lord Ozai his ass, everything has come full circle. To sum it up, a cartoon of this stature and quality can even match or even surpass the best live action serialized dramas out there. It's a testament to the creators and Nickelodeon that the viewers were not spoon-fed as other cartoon series are guilty of. They trusted the audience's intelligence.

Team Avatar part deux!

So yeah! Korra is renewed for 26 additional episodes, which brings the series tally to 52 episodes! If you were turned off by M. Night Shyamalan's live action adaption, I won't take it against you. That once talented prick butchered the show in every way possible, but please don't let that sorry excuse of a movie deter you. Season 2 of Korra looks to be even more crazy-exciting as it will focus more on the spirit world. Plus, since Korra is now adept at transforming into her Avatar state, the series can't go any where but up as we can expect more balls to the wall bending action. Can the Legend of Korra get any more legendary?! Well, it seems it can.