ANIME: Legend of Korra Season 1

So I have finally gotten around to seeing Legend of Korra (Avatar) and I'm most of the way through season one. I have to say the city is interesting, largely consistent with the sort of injustice we saw in the previous Earth Kingdom cities. It is interesting to see that the Benders (a sort of element controlling wizard martial artist) ruling close to a million people, with skyscrapers, cars, and airships and trains (mass transit) and an organized police force and justice system don't understand how the non-benders feel terrorized and abused by the superpowered benders. The core arc is that the new Avatar is good at three of the four kinds of bending, has no spiritual connection, which is significant in this setting, and there's a serious imbalance in this world because it is modernizing but losing track of its roots, namely that spirits aren't myths in this place, but actual beings that show up and wreak havoc when they are unhappy. They can also be killed, which is a major problem too.

Worse, there's a rebel leader who picked up the trick that Avatar Aang used to end the threat of mad Fire King Ozai, who killed his wife, burned half his son's face off, and was planning to kill pretty much everybody and rule what was left of the world. Avatar Aang takes away his bending power, reducing him to a human. The villain in the new series has the same ability, and it is interesting that the adorable bouncy girl from the first series has spawned her martial art system of pressure points that stop benders from using their power is now going to the rebels. And there's other mad kings making things worse, right up till the abused normal humans have become convinced that war is their only chance. And unfortunately, the mad kings made that true. The little bit of industrial heaven, of progress, where people mostly got along despite goons threatening people with their power... well its fallen apart.

The art in the show is still flat, like the first series, but it remains nice looking and the buildings are really interesting and gothic, with a Hong Kong flavor to them. The cars are sort of pagoda carriages with engines, what you'd get if the automobile had been invented in China rather than Germany, Britain, Italy, USA, and France.

The city gets points for being modern, and for making use of their common talents, but it also reminds the viewer that the biggest problem our species faces is tolerance of Evil. We let evil beings hurt us, and turning the other cheek is the coward's answer. Then we put those same beings in charge, so they can hurt more of us at a time. This is a major flaw in our species, and it is important to see that it explains so MUCH of what is wrong with Asia in particular, and how its depicted in this show remaining as a problem despite a hundred years of prosperity and peace. It is sad how this just doesn't matter. And I applaud the honesty of the creators who included this. It's people who deny natural human cruelty that create and elect the monsters that hurt us in the first place. As long as we allow evil to persist in the open, we deserve what we get. That seems to be the primary theme of the first season, and is a great way to teach us that the spiritual connection, the driving morality and connection with the Earth/Nature (in this setting), is crucial to sanity and humanity.