Avatar: The Legend Of Korra Season Premier Review
The follow up to the hugely popular Avatar: The Last Airbender is just as good as the original and should be checked out!
Warning: This review contains spoilers. After a catastrophic attempt from M. Night Shyamalan to bring the beautiful and rich world of Avatar: The Last Airbender to the big screen, you could be forgiven for giving up hope that there would be any future in the franchise. While Mr Shyamalan may have done little for the credibility of the franchise (not least by using the term "bender" without an elemental prefix) fans of the series were hungry for more. Thankfully, so were the creators and now four years on we are finally getting what we wished for. Avatar: The Legend of Korra is set roughly 70 years after the climactic events of the original series. Avatar Aang and Firelord Zuko have finally brought peace to the world and successfully united the benders of the world.....sorry. Anyway, Aang's time has sadly passed and the Avatar has been reborn as a water tribe girl named Korra. A new era, a new Avatar and a new adventure. The Legend of Korra feels distinctly different for Aang's adventures, cities are now industrial with roads filled with cars. The music is jazzy and elemental bending has been turned into a professional sport. Korra's era feels much more modern and yet, this is still very much the Avatar we know and love. The comedy is still the same balance of of child friendly slapstick and comic irony and the characters are still well rounded and filled with personality. 
The biggest triumph with this return to the world of the Avatar is in Korra herself. Korra's personality lies between Aang's adventurous spirit and Toph's tomboyish affinity for forceful resolution. In terms of her looks she strongly resembles an older slightly stronger Kitara which will help fans to connect with her instantly. The first two episodes, which will début in America on April the 14th, focus on Korra as she struggles to get to grips with the basics of Air Bending. This works well as obviously Aang had mastered Air Bending and thus we saw very little training in the art in the original series. Air Bending goes against Korra's nature (much like Earth Bending for Aang) and it is her frustration with herself that drives the events of the first two episodes. Korra finds her self drawn toward pro-bending, attracted by its modern fighting styles (a clever parody of the modernisation of martial arts) and ends up competing against the wishes of Tenzen, her Air Bending master and Aang's son. 
The antagonist for the series comes in the shape of a Amon, the leader of The Equalists, an anti-bending organisation. This shady organisation is very much in the background in these episodes however, it seems clear where things are heading. Still, this makes a change from the 'Fire Benders are bad' stance of the original show and highlights that even peaceful times come with their own problems such as crime and corruption. All in all this is as smart and entertaining as its predecessor and retains the exceptionally high standard of animation that helped to make the original show such a success. The action is just as well choreographed as before, introducing new styles such as evolved metal bending and pro-bending and the introduction of new characters fills the void left by Aang and his friends. 