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DarklyDreaming posted:I disagree with the idea that he's better than Kai, but I will make two arguments on why he should have gone along:
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Jun 28, 2014 23:56
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Ha, I don't know how I didn't think about goon airbender as a goon, but thats a fun thought. Very much enjoying these first 3 episodes. My only complaint is they don't explain why they locked up these 4 super evil and powerful people rather than kill them, but then again that happens in basically every "dangerous prisoner X escapes" story, Magneto in the X-men movies being a fine example of this. The sudden rise of airbending is being used in interesting ways too, all the story beats make sense to me. It sometimes goes to evil people, normal people who get it don't want to uproot their lives, young people use it for their own profit, and political factions recognize the power and try to take advantage of it. I hope that we get an explanation as to why airbending went to who it went to, aside from just the random will of the spirits or what have you. It certainly addresses a big concern I had regarding airbending still being nearly extinct long after Aang's death. I admit I teared up a little when Tenzin was talking about how he wished Aang was here to see this. 
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Jun 28, 2014 23:57
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Supercar Gautier posted:The idea of a goony shut-in learning to open up and change for the better wouldn't be a bad character arc, but he'd have to be written more charitably to begin with, not entirely as a broad gag. An air bending convention? These people invented "movers" just a month ago. If you hadn't noticed, the Earth Kingdom is a failed state, and it's not like the Queen would allow open borders. Add that to the fact that most of the peasants wouldn't be interested in a air bender synod and it makes sense that the air benders only organized out of necessity.
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Jun 29, 2014 00:07
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ImpAtom posted:Tenzin was literally raised his entire life with this expectation and idea foisted upon him as the centerpiece of his entire life. He is not the best at thinking outside of that. I can understand why he'd fall into that line of thinking, but I think the appropriate reaction would be for him to smarten up and realize that the new air culture won't replicate the old one-- not just dress up his sales pitch. They might explore that angle further, but LoK has disappointed me before with themes that are implied but never explored. Sithsaber posted:An air bending convention? These people invented "movers" just a month ago. If you hadn't noticed, the Earth Kingdom is a failed state, and it's not like the Queen would allow open borders. Add that to the fact that most of the peasants wouldn't be interested in a air bender synod and it makes sense that the air benders only organized out of necessity. They were already planning to fly a large group of Earth Kingdom residents to live in the Northern Air Temple. Compared to that, flying the same group (and inviting more) into a central capital for a few days to congregate and train their abilities (with the possibility of joining permanently) seems like it would be more reasonable and palatable. Supercar Gautier fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Jun 29, 2014 |
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Jun 29, 2014 00:09
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SpiderHyphenMan posted:Boy am I glad you're not writing this show. So am I, I come up with dumb ideas sometimes ImpAtom posted:Tenzin was literally raised his entire life with this expectation and idea foisted upon him as the centerpiece of his entire life. He is not the best at thinking outside of that. Tenzin has every reason to want to keep old Airbending culture in a box and lock it away from the modern world, after all if he doesn't, that culture dies completely. Being viewers we know tradition without adaptation is actively harmful both for the culture that shields itself and the culture surrounding it, just ask nearly every society/religion/philosophy that has ever existed, but change is also a very painful process by definition, so I don't blame him for acting that way.
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Jun 29, 2014 00:09
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I also thought at first that it was Azulon in the prison, despite the fact that timeline-wise it'd make no sense. The darker tone of the show is nice too. Granted, it was already pretty dark in the first season with a fraternal murder-suicide and an implied thought of suicide, but already we've got guards locked into a prison to starve or dehydrate to death, taking earth shurikens to the chest and getting tossed out into lava, along with a child soldier allegory. It really feels like the kid gloves are off for this season, and the creators are just going for it and making this the sort of show it should have been all along.
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Jun 29, 2014 00:11
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NowonSA posted:I also thought at first that it was Azulon in the prison, despite the fact that timeline-wise it'd make no sense. Remember when we thought that Amon would be a great chance for them to show a darker, more mature, more grey-nuanced political view of the implications of certain aspects of their culture? And then it turns out he's just the brother of another dude, and it's basically a superhero revenge story? I am just getting echoes of that sentiment in this statement right here -- I'd caution against getting too hopeful about "the kid gloves coming off".
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Jun 29, 2014 00:15
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Supercar Gautier posted:I can understand why he'd fall into that line of thinking, but I think the appropriate reaction would be for him to smarten up and realize that the new air culture won't replicate the old one-- not just dress up his sales pitch. I don't think it's really a case of 'smarten up' in this case. It is literally the core of his life. For it to be smartening up he would have to view it as "the art of Airbender" instead of "Airbending culture" and he has always had trouble with that. It was the core of his problem with Korra in the first season even, where he could only approach her from the perspective of someone who views the Airbender culture as 100% intertwined with Airbending. This is the same guy who gave up what seemed to be a pretty strong relationship because he felt his duty to his culture came before his personal feelings. He isn't going to leap on that particular train unless he's dragged kicking and screaming.
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Jun 29, 2014 00:17
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Sparky Boom Boom Girl sounded a LOT like Azula
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Jun 29, 2014 00:33
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ImpAtom posted:I don't think it's really a case of 'smarten up' in this case. It is literally the core of his life. For it to be smartening up he would have to view it as "the art of Airbender" instead of "Airbending culture" and he has always had trouble with that. It was the core of his problem with Korra in the first season even, where he could only approach her from the perspective of someone who views the Airbender culture as 100% intertwined with Airbending. It doesn't help that in the absence of other airbenders outside his own children, Tenzin's life has been entirely about teaching Air Nomad culture to interested people who came to the temples wishing to become monks. He's used to spreading airbending culture even to people who aren't and never will be airbenders, so this is not just outside his experience, it's totally in opposition.
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Jun 29, 2014 00:35
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DrSunshine posted:Remember when we thought that Amon would be a great chance for them to show a darker, more mature, more grey-nuanced political view of the implications of certain aspects of their culture? And then it turns out he's just the brother of another dude, and it's basically a superhero revenge story? I am just getting echoes of that sentiment in this statement right here -- I'd caution against getting too hopeful about "the kid gloves coming off". 
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Jun 29, 2014 01:15
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Saw the episodes, echoing the praise, this season has a lot more promise than the last one, but then, that's kinda LoK's thing, isn't it, starting every season with three/four really good episodes in a row? Even season 2, which got really terrible, really quickly, started with a lot of promise. But yeah, for now I'm really excited to see what happens next. Who knows, maybe they really were writing three seasons at once when they started on season 2, and so they had a full year to work out the kinks in the script this time.
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Jun 29, 2014 01:50
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DarklyDreaming posted:Tenzin has every reason to want to keep old Airbending culture in a box and lock it away from the modern world, after all if he doesn't, that culture dies completely. Being viewers we know tradition without adaptation is actively harmful both for the culture that shields itself and the culture surrounding it, just ask nearly every society/religion/philosophy that has ever existed, but change is also a very painful process by definition, so I don't blame him for acting that way. I'm normally one of the people who picks apart the show, since I wasn't a big fan of the previous seasons but Tenzin's hypocrisy of the first couple episodes has been very enjoyable. He preaches to Korra about how the world has changed and people have to adapt whether they like it or not before being faced with the changing face of the Air Nomands and him refusing to change. His arc, as I see it, is doing what Aang did in The Last Airbender and letting go of tradition and forging a new way for the air nomands. He needs to create the 36th Chamber, is what I'm saying.
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Jun 29, 2014 01:57
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So the new air benders are just the result of mother nature getting drunk on spirit energy and then vomiting magic all over the place.
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Jun 29, 2014 02:16
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NowonSA posted:The darker tone of the show is nice too. Granted, it was already pretty dark in the first season with a fraternal murder-suicide and an implied thought of suicide, but already we've got guards locked into a prison to starve or dehydrate to death, taking earth shurikens to the chest and getting tossed out into lava, along with a child soldier allegory. It really feels like the kid gloves are off for this season, and the creators are just going for it and making this the sort of show it should have been all along. Or, you know, they can break out as soon as the metalbender wakes up. 
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Jun 29, 2014 02:19
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seravid posted:Or, you know, they can break out as soon as the metalbender wakes up. Hell, even if that's just a stone door, they're in a mountain, they can dig their way out.
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Jun 29, 2014 02:25
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The Taint Reaper posted:So the new air benders are just the result of mother nature getting drunk on spirit energy and then vomiting magic all over the place. Nature abhors a vacuum/ unity of opposites etc. Episode 6 Megaspoilers After all that filler about Toph's flawed family, it was nice to see that Opul is basically Toph's opposite. Whereas Toph is hard on the outside because of her disability, Opul is gentle yet has the inner fortitude to gently diffuse conflicts and Bolin's natural self destruction. Ps. Stop taking away from bad guy's moment of badassery.
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Jun 29, 2014 02:29
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SatansBestBuddy posted:Hell, even if that's just a stone door, they're in a mountain, they can dig their way out. A bunch of benders of pretty much any kind should be able to break out of an unguarded prison cell pretty quickly.
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Jun 29, 2014 02:31
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My new pet theory:Before they tried to kill Korra, the Gang of Four killed Aang. I don't have evidence to back it, but it makes sense.
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Jun 29, 2014 02:32
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dj_clawson posted:My new pet theory:Before they tried to kill Korra, the Gang of Four killed Aang. I don't have evidence to back it, but it makes sense. Reddit already disproved this theory. As did the leaks. Sithsaber fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Jun 29, 2014 |
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Jun 29, 2014 02:39
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Sithsaber posted:Reddit already disproved this theory. Awwww. Oh well. I do like the new bad guys.
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Jun 29, 2014 02:52
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Jimbot posted:I'm normally one of the people who picks apart the show, since I wasn't a big fan of the previous seasons but Tenzin's hypocrisy of the first couple episodes has been very enjoyable. He preaches to Korra about how the world has changed and people have to adapt whether they like it or not before being faced with the changing face of the Air Nomands and him refusing to change. His arc, as I see it, is doing what Aang did in The Last Airbender and letting go of tradition and forging a new way for the air nomands. I have to give Tenzin some leeway here, for 40+ years he was the world's only Airbender and the duty of restoring an entire culture was on him, so much so that a major reason he broke up with Lin was because he had to have a lot of kids who would hopefully all be airbenders so the mother needed to be a non-bender. Now all of a sudden there are dozens if not hundreds of new Airbenders and all he can think about is how he can fill the Air temples and fulfill his father's greatest dream by restoring the Air nation, but most of the benders are adults with families and responsibilities who have no desire to adopt a monastic life. Tenzin's only realistic prospects are to form Airbender colonies in each nation and hope that people like the Earth Queen don't try to exploit them. dj_clawson posted:Awwww. Oh well. I do like the new bad guys. Zaheer is the most interesting, because he's a really proficient airbender who just got the power. I think he was a massive historian of Airbender culture and learned their martial arts styles and philosophies which made it really easy for him to master the his skills once they emerged. I'd love to see him in some flashbacks to know exactly why he was so dangerous even before he was a bender.
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Jun 29, 2014 03:49
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pentyne posted:Zaheer is the most interesting, because he's a really proficient airbender who just got the power. I think he was a massive historian of Airbender culture and learned their martial arts styles and philosophies which made it really easy for him to master the his skills once they emerged. I'd love to see him in some flashbacks to know exactly why he was so dangerous even before he was a bender. He strikes me as the philosopher criminal sort, and given he was said to be the leader in a group of incredibly powerful benders he was probably both already an extremely strong fighter and very intelligent and learned about a wide range of subjects. I think it's kind of funny and convenient that the only fourth in a quartet that wasn't a bender was given the element they were missing.
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Jun 29, 2014 03:57
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RyuujinBlueZ posted:He strikes me as the philosopher criminal sort, and given he was said to be the leader in a group of incredibly powerful benders he was probably both already an extremely strong fighter and very intelligent and learned about a wide range of subjects. I think it's kind of funny and convenient that the only fourth in a quartet that wasn't a bender was given the element they were missing. He was their evil Sokka. He bended the element of love
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Jun 29, 2014 04:06
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tribbledirigible posted:He was their evil Sokka. He bended the element of love I'm okay with this.
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Jun 29, 2014 04:17
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ImpAtom posted:I don't think it's really a case of 'smarten up' in this case. It is literally the core of his life. For it to be smartening up he would have to view it as "the art of Airbender" instead of "Airbending culture" and he has always had trouble with that. It was the core of his problem with Korra in the first season even, where he could only approach her from the perspective of someone who views the Airbender culture as 100% intertwined with Airbending. At the same time, haven't we been doing this exact same dance with Tenzin for two seasons now HAHA BOY HOWDY TENZIN SURE IS INFLEXIBLE FOR AN AIRBENDER He sure is. He suuure is. He learns a little bit of a lesson about it, then goes straight back to doing it again in the next season.
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Jun 29, 2014 04:24
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Captain Oblivious posted:At the same time, haven't we been doing this exact same dance with Tenzin for two seasons now Tenzin is not doing exactly the same thing. The first season was him dealing with a new Avatar in the wake of his father being the Avatar. The second season was about his family. The third season looks to be about him having to come to terms with the Airbender culture vs the new Airbenders. They are rooted in the same place of "Tenzin is extremely traditionalist and bound by his responsibilities and legacy" but that is a central point of his character. Once he gets over that his character arc is complete. I mean Zuko spend the entire TLA struggling with the conflict between his childhood lessons and honor and his own desires and he struggled with that even despite having personal or philosophical discoveries about himself. Tenzin is not as well handled as Zuko but his central conflict is (and will remain) the conflict between what he was raised to believe and the reality of the world, because that is his character arc and even at the end of his character arc he probably still is going to be a stuffy and traditional old man, just a better rounded and more flexible one. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 04:37 on Jun 29, 2014 |
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Jun 29, 2014 04:31
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Y'know, I was watching clips of the Book 2 finale, and it was jarring just how unimpressive all the bending is in this series compared to A:TLA. Most of it is just blasting stuff with fire or air, lobbing rocks at people, or whipping them with water. This is like Green Lantern making nothing but green bubbles all the god drat time.
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Jun 29, 2014 04:35
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AshB posted:Y'know, I was watching clips of the Book 2 finale, and it was jarring just how unimpressive all the bending is in this series compared to A:TLA. Most of it is just blasting stuff with fire or air, lobbing rocks at people, or whipping them with water. This is like Green Lantern making nothing but green bubbles all the god drat time. Except there are plenty of other examples of that not happening and also plenty examples of those sorts of things happening in TLA. "blasting stuff with fire" in particular is like 90% of what the Fire Nation does in the original.
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Jun 29, 2014 04:38
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When does Legend of Korra have something like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnFNjLnVVJw I'm honestly curious because I don't remember anything that creative.
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Jun 29, 2014 04:47
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ImpAtom posted:Except there are plenty of other examples of that not happening and also plenty examples of those sorts of things happening in TLA. "blasting stuff with fire" in particular is like 90% of what the Fire Nation does in the original. What the thread has taught me is that while things like this might be true, it's completely wrong for reasons I don't yet understand.
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Jun 29, 2014 04:48
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AshB posted:When does Legend of Korra have something like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnFNjLnVVJw I'm honestly curious because I don't remember anything that creative. I would say the assault on the Bending Arena in Season 1, just off the top of my head. it isn't as good as that scene (few fights are) but it's a creative and well-scripted fight. There are a lot of really good and interesting fight scenes in Korra. A lot of the "they're not as creative" stuff seems to come more from the fact that they're using a different flavor of martial arts for the basis and so the moves are less ornate and flowing and more like MMA. (Mixed with, yes, some genuinely bad animation and scenes.) There are tons of times where bending is used creatively and in unique ways in both shows. There are also a lot of times where the protagonists or villains just use 'basic' attacks. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Jun 29, 2014 |
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Jun 29, 2014 04:54
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AshB posted:When does Legend of Korra have something like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnFNjLnVVJw I'm honestly curious because I don't remember anything that creative. Nothing else in either shows is that creative. You're linking one of the best action sequences in animation and most shows don't even come close to something that good.
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Jun 29, 2014 04:58
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While I feel that Republic City didn't get explored anywhere near as much as turn-of-the-century bustling Chinese city in a world with massively interesting concepts like Bending SHOULD have been, seasons 1 and 2 of LoK really didn't live up to any of their potential. So, gently caress it, I'm totally on board with them doing the thing that made Avatar so much fun, the fact that it was a road show. I'm really liking season 3 so far, and feel that there's a lot of really fun plot threads going. Hopefully they don't just let half of them drop like they did in the past 2 seasons. (And I even liked season 2 for the most part)
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Jun 29, 2014 04:59
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rotinaj posted:While I feel that Republic City didn't get explored anywhere near as much as turn-of-the-century bustling Chinese city in a world with massively interesting concepts like Bending SHOULD have been, seasons 1 and 2 of LoK really didn't live up to any of their potential. So, gently caress it, I'm totally on board with them doing the thing that made Avatar so much fun, the fact that it was a road show. On that note, are there any population numbers for Republic City? It must've been pretty high otherwise why wouldn't the Earth nation just invade and take over? edit: Speaking of the respective nations, isn't the Fire Nation supposed to be Imperial Japan? Earth Kingdom is a blend of China/North Korea, The Air Nomads are Tibetian, and the Water tribes are...Inuits? pentyne fucked around with this message at 05:10 on Jun 29, 2014 |
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Jun 29, 2014 05:08
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pentyne posted:On that note, are there any population numbers for Republic City? It must've been pretty high otherwise why wouldn't the Earth nation just invade and take over? Take a look at the Fire Nation on the map and you'll get your answer clear as day. They're not even subtle about it.
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Jun 29, 2014 05:12
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pentyne posted:It must've been pretty high otherwise why wouldn't the Earth nation just invade and take over? I'm pretty sure that it would get them into another war with, at the very least, the Fire Nation.
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Jun 29, 2014 05:12
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ImpAtom posted:Take a look at the Fire Nation on the map and you'll get your answer clear as day. They're not even subtle about it.  After seeing this map the Earth Queen has a hell of a good reason to be pissed. The Earth Kingdom lost 1/3 of its land and it was the victim of the Fire Nation's aggression for over 100 years.
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Jun 29, 2014 05:16
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Superstring posted:Nothing else in either shows is that creative. You're linking one of the best action sequences in animation and most shows don't even come close to something that good. Sure that's easily one of the best scenes. But there are a ton of other fights where people were just really creative with using their surroundings, even if the bending was a variation of something we'd already seen (Toph vs. earthbenders in the arena, Katara vs. Master Pakku, Aang vs. Bumi, Aang vs. Ozai). Korra has lots of great fight choreography, but the bending hasn't been that creative as far as I can remember. I'm not even saying there aren't any good examples; I just honestly don't remember them.
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Jun 29, 2014 05:19
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pentyne posted:
1. That map seems off. 2. The voices in the youtube video are either sped up or inexplicably fan dubbed.
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Jun 29, 2014 05:24
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