TV Review: The Legend of Korra Book One

I watched the original series of Avatar and was thoroughly addicted (it’s still in my top-5 shows), but for several reasons I didn’t get to Korra until now. It’s a pretty good show; I don’t think it completely lives up to Avatar, but that’s probably because the originality is gone.
It’s actually pretty hard to watch Korra because pretty much all the characters from the original series are dead. I actually started tearing up when Korra saw memories of Aang, Sokka, and Toph. I was like “SOKKA!! NO!!! You can’t be dead!” The show also has a ton of Easter-eggs for fans of the original (Cabbage Corps, for example) which are so much fun.

The new characters are easy to like, but just as easy to compare. You just can’t help saying, “Oh! That’s the new Momo,” or whoever it may be. However, the character’s aren’t really just new incarnations of old ones. Korra is a completely new and different kind of Avatar from Aang, and really, I like her better in some ways. It’s nice that it’s a female Avatar, for sure. She’s also older, so some of the events seem a little more plausible. Then there’s Mako and Bolin. How can you not love them? And for completely different reasons. Bolin is pretty awesome as the comic relief, and Mako is pretty awesome just all together. If I’m being honest- I have a little crush on him, myself. I like that the romance is amped up in this series, too. Next, Asami is OK. I don’t really like characters that interfere with the main character’s love interest, so liking Asami was hard. Once she really became a member of Team Avatar 2, though, she did grow on me a lot. There are so many characters in this show that I could go on and on about how much I love them. I won’t, I’ll save you all from my rant. (If you’re curious about a certain character, episode, or plot point, just tell me in the comments and I’ll tell you what I thought!)

The world was still familiar, but the time was drastically different. It is almost a hundred years later, after all. Industrial Revolution, basically. I liked it. It was cool to see this steam-punk quality to such a fantasy show. And the villain- Amon- and the Equalists seemed totally realistic. I love when that can happen.

I’m not going to talk about the final episode, but it’s as epic as all the other finales were. It’s just such a fun, amazing show.

I’m giving Book One (which is technically season one, part one) a very strong ****4 stars****. I can’t wait for Book Two!

P.S.
I have this suspicion that they made Mako, a firebender, and Korra, a waterbender (and avatar) get together to make all the people who cheered for Zuko-Katara with the original show.