Avatar (no, not that one)

So a new trailer for Avatar: The Legend of Korra launched this week at the San Diego Comicon and it looks pretty amazing.

The Avatar franchise (shut up James Cameron) is probably one of my favourite animated series in recent years. With the second season of the second series being released in September on Nickelodeon, now seems like a good time to explain why I like it so much.

Set in an unnamed world, the series follows a series of individuals who are the mortal embodiment of the spirit of the planet, the Avatar. It's the Avatar's job to keep things in harmony, that means keeping nations at peace, keeping the balance between the spirit world and the mortal world, and just generally being a good dude (or ladydude).

Aside from the Avatar and various spirits, there are a small percentage of the human population who can control, or "bend" one of the four elements to their whim. These people are called benders and the Avatar is the only person who can bend earth, fire, wind, and water (heart! By your powers combined...)

Oh no, that woman on the left is going to kick down a building!

The first series followed Avatar Aang, a young airbender who was frozen in an iceberg for 100 years. While he was asleep one of the four countries, the Fire Nation, set about world domination. It was a three-season run and mainly focused on Aang and his companions setting the world right again by taking out the insane dictator running the Fire Nation.

Truth be told, I was more than happy to leave the story there. It had a full arc, the hero's journey was complete, there was some awesome character growth and said characters were dynamic and compelling.

However, when I saw the second series, I fell in love with it all over again.

Partially because somebody makes this face.

Despite being made in the USA, Avatar has a very strong eastern influence. Everything from naming, architecture, martial arts, spirits, and even themes were affected.

Knowing the second series would be set 70 years after the first, I was worried it would either be more of the same or it would jump the shark somehow. Instead, it seemed like it progressed reasonably. Technology that was used during the war had been retrofitted for domestic use and was just starting to be distributed to the general public. Instead of rural China, the series was set in a turn-of-the-century-style city.

Look at that. Just look at it!

The animation is fantastic and subtle. While characters are "colour coded" to fit their nation, it doesn't feel like any one character shares a standard design template (military excepted). And while there are moments of cartoony humour reminiscent of shonen manga, they're neither frequent or prolonged.

Action is one facet the series does well. Bending happens when an individual moves through a martial art kata, creating the element they can control. This can lead to characters having an intense fight while standing five metres apart. While the blood and physical violence is kept to a minimum, there are some pretty interesting scenes. An early episode had a man's hands burnt on red-hot metal, and other episodes show people being thrown around fairly ruthlessly.

That's a polar bearwolf. A POLAR BEAR AND A WOLF AS ONE THING.

The characters are also compelling too. A 12-year-old tasked to save the entire world feels the weight of responsibility and the loss of his people. A teenager whose father banished him has to figure out if his father's acceptance and approval is worth it, or whether dad is just a big bag of dicks. The second Avatar has to live up to enormous expectations.

Korra is an interesting lead protagonist for the second series. She's a teenage girl, but she's also hot-headed and argumentative. She's strong and brash with little connection to the spiritual side of being an Avatar. She isn't the regular hero of a young adult action adventure series, which is refreshing. Seeing her character grow, even in the 12 short episodes she's appeared in so far, has been intriguing.

Hello? Yes, tell me more about this woman action hero....

What the series does best, however, is scope. The way the first series moved across the planet, starting in the south and headed north, showed an amazing variety. The second series moved away from the rural setting, which dominated the first series, and moved to show that bustling metropolises exist. Each location felt different and the ecology shifted with the geology.

The second season of the second series looks like it will focus on the spiritual side of being the Avatar, something the original 12-episode run did not. I imagine there will be a lot of episodes focusing on the clash of advancing civilisation against the natural and spiritual world and I'm curious to see how the creators handle it without being obvious.

Seriously, the original was pretty damn good.

I'm worried about the main "goal" of the second series, as well. Avatar: The Last Airbender had a definitive antagonist, giving Avatar Aang a clear goal to work toward. Legend of Korra doesn't have one such antagonist.

My prediction is the coming seasons will be heavily influenced by Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke.

The series isn't without it's problems, but the Avatar franchise has impressed me at almost every turn...except for that goddamn awful live-action movie.