Korras Growth (Book 2: Spirits)

Korra’s Growth (Book 2: Spirits)

After the fallout of book 1 Korra is even more arrogant about her abilities, but now her confidence isn’t as easily swayed. In book 1 Korra had yet to prove herself against a threat and it caused her confidence to wane because she doubted that she really could accomplish her role as the avatar. Now she has stopped a movement that threatened the balance of society and she is even more powerful than ever with the avatar state and airbending. Her inferiority superiority complex is still in full swing and causes her to stand her ground even without the backing of her friends and allies in many large scale situations. This isn’t helped by the civil war within the water tribe which splits her loyalties. Korra’s confidence in her decisions wanes, but she is unable to outwardly admit to it and ask for help. She doesn’t want to admit to not knowing the answer, so she separates herself from people who doubt her decisions and leans toward people who support them. Unalaq picks up on this character trait and uses it to get her to open the spirit portal and begin his plan.

Korra is again faced with the consequences for her attitude and subsequent mindset. Her impatience and stubbornness thwart her at every turn and it culminates with her being attacked by a spirit and left on the precipice floating between life and death. She is forced to reconnect with rava and experience the story of avatar Wan. From this point Korra is markedly less brash, but still isn’t able to connect with people to an extent to truly help them change their ways. Seeing Wan’s humble beginnings and how he ultimately viewed his inability to bring about peace within the world as his failure caused Korra to realize that the avatar isn’t that different from other people, the avatar started out as someone who decided to step up to a situation that through their impulsive actions they caused. She comes to realize that the fact that you made a mistake isn’t what defines you, but how you deal with the mistake. She then decides to reconcile with Tenzin and his family and enter the spirit world. 

Up until this point she had always struggled spiritually and had defined herself by her bending and with this challenge she is forced to face both of these shortcomings. Her entrance into the spirit world marks Korra’s turning point when it comes to facing her weaknesses and fears. From this point on she stops avoiding her problems and starts actively trying to change and become a better, more understanding avatar. When her connection to the past avatars is severed it makes it so that korra feels like she has destroyed the avatar legacy, but it also forces her to create her own instead of defining and comparing herself to her past lives and their actions. Instead of breaking down she resolves herself to see her fight with Unalaq and Vaatu through to the end. Instead of giving up like she did after Amon took her bending she instead faces the consequences of the loss, resolves to move forward, and announces to the world her decision to keep the portals open. Showing that she did learn something from her enemy this time around and it marks a turning point in her character as a whole.

A Silent Voice - Portraying Isolation

A silent voice does an excellent job of portraying the different types of isolation the two lead characters experience. It is masterfully shown in these two shots.

The scene in Shouya’s apartment perfectly displays his self isolation. He is in his empty room in a fetal position. The choice of having him be in his room during this scene is important because a person’s bedroom is typically a place where people go to be alone and relax  and there is also the fact that he doesn’t own anything and it is empty showing that he isn’t here to relax or escape but to be alone. There is also the choice of his body position which seems like he is curling in on himself. He is hiding himself from the world and not letting them see the whole picture. Sound is also present in the scene with the scratching of his foot and neck seeming loud in the silence of his room. This is all in direct opposition to Shouko’s scene where it cuts from the noise of the fireworks festival to the dead silence that she experiences. In Shouko’s scene she is standing in an upright position that portrays an openness to the world and yet there are no other people in the shot showing that she is open with the world and trying to connect with others whereas others won’t try to connect with her and come into her world despite her efforts. Her isolation is shown to be through the others rejecting her instead of Shouya’s rejection of others and it isn’t until the scene on the bridge, which is used as their “spot” throughout the film, near the end where they finally find their voices and come to a true understanding of each other that they are both able to truly find a way out of their isolation. Shouya gets the world to open up to Shouko and Shouko gets Shouya to open up to the world. If the isolation they felt wasn’t shown so clearly in these scenes it wouldn’t be as powerful when their respective isolation is finally broken through.

             There are many scenes portraying the respective isolation of these characters but these directly juxtapose each other in the blatant comparison it draws to the way the characters are isolated and why each character is able to draw the other into the first steps outside of their isolation. It is because each individual understand a different type of isolation, self isolation and forced isolation. Shouko gets Shouya to open up to the world because of her understanding of the desire for human interaction and the world to open up to her. Shouya gets the world to open up to Shouko through his work to hear her voice and make up for the actions that started his own self isolation. Their respective journeys come full circle and thus create a new path where both are taking steps out of their isolation and to a new beginning.

In Defense of the Legend of Korra’s Power Crawl

People seem to take problem with the power crawl within the legend of Korra claiming that she breaks the previously established power ceiling within the series, but that isn’t really the case. The power crawl isn’t like the last airbenders where Aang is trying to build physical strength. Korra’s journey is about self discovery and gaining spiritual strength. In the finale of Avatar the last airbender energy bending is established to exist within the universe with the ability to take away and give bending. Though since it was introduced in the finale it wasn’t able to be expanded upon. The Legend of Korra expands on it and makes it the focal point of the power crawl. 

When Korra is first introduced it is firmly established that she excels at the physical side of bending, but struggles with the spiritual side. She starts the series at the bottom in spiritual development and connection to the world around her. The growth of her spiritual connection is directly linked to her growth of understanding of herself and connection to the world. She connects to her past lives at the end of the first season after finally getting to go out in the world after being secluded all her early life. In the second season she manages to journey to the spirit world and learn of her connection to it. The third season shows how accustomed and comfortable she has grown with it and Raava and ends with her hitting a physical, spiritual, and mental block. This block spurs on her journey of self discovery which leads to an expansion on her ability to energy bend, makes her more in tune with Raava and the world, and she becomes her most powerful within the spirit world. It is her increased spiritual growth that makes her able to overcome her enemies namely Unalaq, Vaatu, and Kuvira. Not becoming a more physically imposing avatar. This power crawl, sans the giant energy projection at the end of season 2, is done well and shows a power crawl that actually makes the main character more pacifistic and mirrors her growth as a person. Making her more powerful, but less likely to use that power unless absolutely necessary.

People tend to focus on the brute force end when it comes to power crawl, which if looking at that Korra ends the first season at the strongest she will ever be physically, but power crawl doesn’t have to be about brute strength as explained above. That’s why I think a lot of people miss the real power crawl within the Legend of Korra.

The Dragon Prince Rewatch Thoughts and Ideas About the Future

Since season 3 is right around the corner I have decided to rewatch the first 2 seasons of the dragon prince. And the show was better upon a rewatch than I remember it being. Knowing certain things that are going to happen changes how you read scenes near the beginning and allows you to notice the seeds for future events or character choices. There is a scene in the second episode, before we are told of Rayla’s fear and dislike of water, where she is determined to set her mistakes right and she gets to a river and hesitates, gathers her berrings, and then crosses. This scene is only a couple of seconds long, if that, but you can tell that she is wary of water even before you’re told. There are plenty more moments like this and it astounded me while I was watching. 

The pacing also feels better while rewatching. When I first saw the dragon prince I remember thinking the pacing felt off. In some moments it was really fast while others it was really slow. I’m typically not that affected by pacing, but there were certain moments that I felt needed more time to develop that were rushed through and some that were given too much time that weren’t that important to the story. I still think that some moments were rushed, but the slower moments fit a lot better now. For example when I first watched season 1 I was genuinely surprised that it ended at episode 9. It didn’t feel like a finale at the time, but going immediately into season 2 felt a lot more organic.

Now to get into talking about my thoughts on the show as a whole. And my predictions for the future.

Characters:

Rayla- Rayla is my personal favorite character. Our introduction to her manages to showcase the characteristics of her that will become the driving force of the story, her compassion which clashes with her mission and immense skill. It only takes a single scene to set up her most important characteristics to the story. It was interesting to learn how her culture affects the way she sees herself and the people around her. And how it lead to her negatively viewing herself because compassion and fear are frowned upon. She also didn’t just get over her bias against humans. Her view changes gradually and her decision to travel with the princes didn’t come from her being more enlightened than other elves, but from her unique set of circumstances with her past and inner conflict. The writing of Rayla managed to impress me yet again while watching the show. I couldn’t believe that they managed to create a character that was able to organically kick start the plot without neglecting the societal biases that would affect her character. I believe Rayla is a really well written character that has a lot of potential to grow. We will probably get to explore a lot of it in season 3. I hope to get her backstory and a greater expansion of Moonshadow elf culture now that her and Callum are in Xadia.

Callum- Callum really becomes a great character in season 2. Season 1 felt like it was setup for his character and season 2 was the season where he actually got to shine. His insecurities and disposition made for an interesting, yet predictable, starting point that was enhanced by how well it juxtaposed with Rayla’s insecurities and personality. They used it to create an interesting dynamic between the two. This insecurity lead to him gaining an intense focus on magic, because it was the first thing he felt he excelled at, until he finally learns how to perform it without a primal stone or resorting to dark magic. This also lead to a juxtaposition between him and Claudia, which I have no doubt will be explored more in depth later. Claudia is falling farther and farther down the hole that is dark magic and becoming over reliant on its “quick fix” nature, while Callum is taking the long path to learning primal magic which seems to be a safer, longer term fix than dark magic. Callum is a character I find the most interesting when he is mirroring other characters. He manages to put the journeys of others into a different perspective.

Claudia and Soren- These are the characters, other than Rayla, that I think will benefit the most from season 3. There is a lot of setup with their relationship between their father, the princes, and each other. They seem to be set up to take different paths within the third season to either follow their father or find some sort of redemption. Soren is the one with the most interesting relationship to their father in that, while Claudia ultimately seems to care more for her brother’s well being than their father’s opinion of her as shown with her decision to save Soren not the “egg” during her moment of truth, Soren wants so badly to make their father proud that when he’s paralyzed he’s happy because now he can’t do the bad things he felt he had to do to make his father proud. This moment changed the way I saw his character. He no longer seemed mean spirited or “evil”. And it lead to me believing that he could be heading toward a path of redemption where he eventually breaks free of his father’s influence. Claudia on the other hand has relied more and more on dark magic to where she will find herself at a crossroads where she will acknowledge the negative aspects of dark magic and choose either to continue down the rabbit hole or reject it. I want to believe that Claudia will make the decision to reject dark magic, but I have the feeling that Claudia and Soren will find themselves on separate paths where Soren will reject their father and try to save Claudia from herself and Claudia will continue down her path of dark magic and by association down the path of her father’s acceptance, at least initially. She is characterized as someone who cares a lot about the people close to her and she will do anything for them, so I think in the end she will make the right choice unless something drastic happens.

Ezran- The final member of our trio. He’s the character who’s future I’m the least sure of/have the least ideas of where it can go. He’s finally grown enough to stop running from his problems like he did so many times before, but he hasn’t shown an affinity for leading, mostly due to his young age, which leads me to believe he won’t hold the throne for very long in season 3. Ezran running from his problems and him liking hide and seek become sort of intertwined. In the first episode Ezran plays hide and seek with Bait and later runs away to hide in the secret tunnels in the castle when Callum harshly told him the truth about the moonshadow assassins. Later in season 2 he plays hide and seek with Bait and Zym while Callum and Rayla are defending the dragon, which he realizes was a bad idea when he can’t find Zym. He later “runs” away after learning the truth about his father’s death, but actually goes to talk with Claudia to go back and take the throne. The realization that hide and seek was a bad idea can be paralleled with his realization that he can’t run and hide from his responsibilities like he tried to before. Him actually playing hide and seek with someone other than Bait, who is easily found, made him realize that “hiding” actually created more problems, possibly losing Zym, than it solved, combating boredom. This was an interesting parallel I found on my second rewatch that once again hints at what is going to happen before it actually happens.

Story:

The dragon prince is a show that finds its basis in darker themes such as the cycles of war and vengeance, societal bigotry, that neither side is entirely just in war, etc. These are all heavy themes that the dragon prince handles surprisingly well. The pilot episode alone shows all of these things directly and doesn’t shy away. It ends with King Harrow and all the elven assassins but Runnan dead with Rayla, Callum, and Ezran on the run in hopes that while they have lost today they may be able to stop future all out war if they manage to accomplish a near insurmountable task with everyone seemingly against them. There isn’t a victory, just a quiet desperation that they must succeed later. This is very different from most animated shows aimed at the same demographic. This starts out dark and then gets lighter then slowly becomes even darker than before. Shows I’ve seen this compared to like Avatar: the Last Airbender, the Legend of Korra, etc all had much lighter pilot episodes before delving into much darker territory. This sets the bar right out of the gate. The story does a much better job than a lot of cartoons I’ve seen at dealing with the messiness of war. Both the humans and elves have done bad things in the name of “justice” and the show acknowledges this instead of naming a side that is “right”. This is rare in shows that thrive off of good vs evil. With the dragon prince no one seems truly evil. Even with Viren, who is the closest to a big bad this show has, is steeped in shades of grey. This is the major thing that sets the dragon prince apart from its contemporaries. The basic premise of the story is pretty straightforward and something that has been done before, but the way it does it is unique.

 It’s a bit hard to put into words all the things I think about the dragon prince, but this is my best stab at it. It looks like the dragon prince will continue to raise the stakes with this upcoming season and become darker and more morally nuanced with the upcoming season. I’m really excited for season 3 to release and hope it manages to continue the great things that it has done with its previous two seasons

The Dragon Prince Season 3 Review (Spoilers)

My excitement for the 3rd season of the Dragon Prince is what made me push through all my homework and responsibilities this week and I can finally say it was everything I hoped it would be. It wasn’t perfect and there were a few things that I found a bit odd, but overall its emotional moments and struggles hit home and gave me a satisfying conclusion to the major conflict of the first arc. There were some threads left hanging that will leave you craving more and hint at this just being the beginning to an even bigger conflict ahead.

Now onto spoilers, so if you haven’t watched the season you have been warned.

I posted about what I thought about the characters and what their arcs could be earlier this week and I hit it home with some, but was pleasantly surprised by others.

Rayla was the character I was most excited about heading into this season and I’m glad they decided to go more in depth with her character and culture. We see just how deeply her parents “betrayal” has hurt her and how it has given her a heavy burden to bear. She is shown to be 100% willing to sacrifice herself and her possible happiness to redeem her parents and her own mistakes. She believes that she deserves everything bad that has happened to her because she wasn’t/isn’t good enough. This was painful to hear out loud because anyone who has watched the Dragon Prince knows what kind of person Rayla is and that she is, what Callum later dubs her, a hero. Which is only further exemplified when Rayla is the one who gets the finishing blow on Viren in a confrontation that mirrors that of Viren and her parents on that fateful day. She takes Viren down with a last ditch effort that almost takes her out with him and it is through this success that she is finally able to move forward with her life instead of being stuck in the mistakes of the past. While it takes her a little longer to fully believe, or at least try to believe, that she deserves a happy ending she comes to accept the good things that have come her way and the brighter future that her actions have helped to create which was rewarding payoff for the seasons of struggle Rayla has endured.  

The second character I was looking forward to was Soren and his role this season was great and a bit heartbreaking at times. He comes to see his father for the villain he is and ends up helping Ezran, Callum, and Rayla showing that while he was coerced by his father to make questionable decisions in earlier seasons he has a heart of gold beneath it all. He realizes that his father doesn’t truly care about his well being or feelings. He is constantly belittled  by his father and his father makes it pretty clear that he is expendable. Soren’s revelation is a heartbreaking one, but he chooses to break off and take the road he knows to be right instead of continuing to follow hoping his father will eventually be the man Soren wishes him to be and finally showing Soren the love he so desires. Soren, despite everyone calling him dumb, makes the decision to break the cycle of hatred that his father is perpetuating and in doing so ends up making the choice most likely to create a brighter future. Like Rayla said “To break that cycle, someone has to take a stand when no one else will”, it takes one person to start a chain reaction and break the cycle and that’s what the dragon prince is about. Soren got the redemption arc he deserved and I was so glad that it happened.

Claudia is the character I was wishing I would be wrong about, but hit the mark on. So much happened this season that she was sort of pushed to the side, but we did get her downward spiral. When the moment of truth came she decided to continue down the rabbit hole of dark magic and self destruction. Claudia’s biggest downfall is her big heart. She loves those close to her so deeply that she can’t give up on them. She had to have noticed how far her father had fallen like Soren did but she stubbornly kept on her blinders because she loved her father which was tragic. I’m afraid her final desperate actions to “keep her family together” by bringing her father back from the dead just signaled the beginning of her journey down the rabbit hole.

The show’s animation has improved greatly from its less than stellar season 1. There were some genuinely gorgeous shots. The backgrounds were incredibly detailed and the facial animation was great. There was a lot more expressiveness in each reaction shot. The scene where Rayla saves Nyx from the soul fang serpents had incredibly fluid action and was a lot of fun to watch.

My only real complaint this season was episode 2. While I absolutely loved the content the tonal shifts were a bit jarring at times. That really does feel like a stretch though because the content was pretty strong and gave a lot of development to Ezran.

This season delivered the spectacle and climax it promised and finished out a lot of the main characters arcs. The cliffhanger we were left on has me begging for more and it feels like there is so much more that can happen with the world and characters. I hope it gets a season 4 and the hanging plot threads are allowed to reach their conclusion and we are allowed to see the aftermath of reuniting the dragon prince with his mother. This season is one of my favorite seasons of television this year and I think it was worth the wait.

I Want to Take Time to Talk about What I Love about the Third Books in Rick Riordan’s Quintologies

The third books in Rick Riordan’s quintologies all create massive paradigm shifts within their respective series. In all of the third installments the stakes become real and the heroes are faced with decisions that alter the courses of the series and change the tone moving forward. I want to talk about each individual book and express my thoughts on how they change the status quo of the series and characters as well as what I liked about what was done and how I think they stand apart from the first two entries and set up the rest of the series.

First up is the Titan’s Curse. Many people, myself included, remember this book fondly because this is where Percy Jackson and the Olympians got serious. There were hints here and there about how dark the series could become, but no death stuck until this book and the deaths present carried lasting effects as the series continued. Bianca’s death affected Nico from this point up until the Hidden Oracle where he had finally made peace with what had happened. And even after the quest was over there is a hanging sense of melancholy and foreboding of the losses that had happened and the ones yet to come. This is where it hit that the trials would only get harder and more emotional from here. I really liked that the deaths in this book weren’t cheap and that they weren’t reversed. Bianca’s death had the biggest impact on the story moving forward of any of the death in any of Rick’s series (we’ll have to wait an see the ramifications of Jason’s death, but I think it may surpass this one in terms of personal impact on the characters). Zoe’s death is, in my opinion, the most emotional death in this book and really set the tone for the sacrifices that will have to be made in the future.

The Mark of Athena signalled the start of the seven questing together. This book gave us Annabeth’s solo quest, the beginning of greek-roman relations falling apart, and the iconic fall into Tartarus. This book probably changed the status quo of the series less than the other two books because the stakes were already built up in the two books leading up to this installment, but this book succeeds at building up to the following installments and showing the heroes both what they will have to endure and the trials they will have to face. Unlike the Titan’s Curse there isn’t a sense of mystery and foreboding because you know what trials the heroes will have to face moving forward. We know Percy and Annabeth will have to trek through Tartarus to get to the doors of death and we know that the rest of the seven will have to meet them on the other side, but it’s the fact that this is how it will play out that surprises us. It succeeds because this is the first time Gaea’s threat becomes real, where things don’t work out for the heroes and there isn’t some sense of momentary safety. It ends with the heroes in their most precarious situation, Annabeth and Percy are plummeting into Tartarus and the rest of the seven guided by Nico must find the doors of death, both of which are built up to be the most difficult tasks the half-bloods will have to face. I believe this book does a great job of paying off on the stakes set up in the previous two books and while there isn’t a sense of loss for characters who died it gives us a sense of loss over the fates of Percy and Annabeth, two characters we have followed since the beginning, with the knowledge their suffering is far from over.

The Burning Maze completely changed the tone of the trials of Apollo series and in my opinion for the better. I didn’t really like the Hidden Oracle. I found the Dark Prophecy to be good, but not anything special compared to Rick’s other books. The Burning Maze blew me out of the water. This book gave us the most radical shift in tone and changed the main players within the story permanently. Piper and Apollo change the greatest throughout the course of the story and I was captivated by how much they changed within the span of one book. Apollo, throughout the course of this book, truly learns the pain and suffering demigods go through because of the gods and by the end had resolved to remember what it’s like to be human. This is such a radical shift from the arrogant self-centered character we were introduced to in the Hidden Oracle. There were deaths that changed the characters and I hope carry through and guide the characters actions going forward. I really liked that Grover, Jason, and Piper all came back for this book and it was a really good move on Rick Riordan’s part. While a lot of people are mad Jason died in this series and not the heroes of olympus I really liked the decision. I liked Jason in HoO and having him die after surviving all the trials he was put through by being brought into yet another quest and having him stand up for Apollo in HoO it made it have more meaning to Apollo specifically. It also helped to emphasize the message that the gods are unfair. Jason was put through trial after trial and in the end it was Apollo and the god’s mistakes that did him in and makes Apollo realize that he has to remember what it means to be human in the mythological world. Piper was really compelling in this book and the development she was given in this book alone put her in my top 5 favorite characters in Rick’s mythological series.