Greetings Ladies & Gentlemen, It is I the shaman of Animation here! With the fourth and Final Book of the Legend of Korra less than a week away, I figured now would be as good a time to give my thoughts on Book 3. This is also my first review, so please feel free to tell me how it was.
Synopsis: Book 3 of the Legend of Korra, titled change, takes place two weeks after the events of Book 2: Spirits. After Harmonic Convergence, spirits are roaming everywhere and Republic City is covered in vines. Everything Korra has done to get rid of them has been all for naught, this in turn causes the citizens of the city to turn against her. To make matters even worst, new airbenders are showing up out of nowhere. The end of the first episode sees Korra being kicked out of Republic City, where she then decides that she along with the rest of her friends, decide to travel around the world to find new airbenders. What they don’t know is that a criminal named Zaheer has also been airbending powers and he and three other criminals with amazing bending abilities are now after Korra.
The Good: One of the biggest complaints about Book 2 of Korra was the regression of character development in the title character. It felt as though the events of Book 1 never happened and she was even more bullheaded and made more irrational decisions with thinking of the consequences. Book 3 does a terrific job of remedying this. We get to see actual growth in Korra as a character. We see her in vulnerable situations where she’s unsure of what to do and her willingly going to ask for help, and there are a few scenes where she’s actually being the mature one and offering words of wisdom. We also get to see her build a great dynamic with Asami (Which also led to the fans, myself included, jumping on the Korrasami ship). Another interesting thing is, where the last two seasons had perfect happy endings for Korra, this ending to this season, she’s quite possibly at the lowest fans have seen her.
This Season also gave fans insight on one of the show’s most popular characters Lin Beifong. This book reveals that she has a half-sister and they didn’t exactly have the best time growing up together.
We’re also treated to some nostalgic goodness as we not only get a flashback of our favorite Blind Earth Bender Toph, it was also confirmed that she is STILL alive and she’s wandering the world. Also, making his reintroduction into the Avatar universe, Zuko! I don’t think I need to go into much detail on why that’s a good. We’re also reintroduced to Ba Sing Se, which honestly hasn’t changed much from what we saw in ATLA.
Speaking of interesting characters, we have the main villain Zaheer. A man who is very knowledgeable of Air nomad culture and very obsessed with a certain guru. I felt his character was a breath of fresh air from book two’s Unalaq and Vaatu. He was the generic villain, he was someone who, in a way, wanted to help the world. With his arguements & his speeches, Zaheer in some ways wasn’t wrong with wanting to change the world.
Another bonus is that Books 3 takes the series back to the roots of its predecessor by having Team Korra traveling around the world in search of new airbenders. The last two books for the most part were confined in Republic City. It was great to see just how the Avatar universe had evolved in the seventy year gap between series with things like a new city made of metal benders.
The Bad: As great as Book 3 was, it wasn’t without its faults. The biggest one to me was the lack of explanations/expansions. Book 3 was originally about Korra and her friends going around to find new airbenders. The big question that was never answered was how did the new airbenders become airbenders? Sure, we know that Harmonic Convergence had a hand in it, but how exactly did it do so?
Speaking of Harmonic Convergence, one of the after effects of it were that humans and spirits were now living together. I felt that we didn’t really see that. It was treated as a really big thing at the end of Book 2 but in this book it’s really swept under the rug in favor of what’s going on in this book. The reason I stated this and the previous point above was that with Book 4 taking place three years after this one, I feel these questions won’t ever be answered.
As much as I enjoyed Zaheer, I felt the other members of his group, which consisted of a lava bender, a water bender with no arms, and the daughter (Or some kind of relative) of sparky sparky boom man, were heavily underdeveloped. I would have loved to get some kind of back story to them, how they ended up in prison, what were their lives before, things like that.
Conclusion: For me, The Legend of Korra, book 3 feels like a huge written apology for book 2. I came into the book terrified yet optimistic about what I was about to watch. Coming out, I can definitely say this has been the best book of the series so far. If you were a fan that dropped the series in book 2, I definitely recommend book 3 to you all. This book definitely has me excited for Book 4
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