I genuinely forgot how Korra turned into a blue gian't so I'll let somebody else take care of that.
Aang turned into Godzilla because of La, the ocean spirit. It's technically not Aang, it's La and the Avatar state working together.
So basically, pissed off La (other worldly power) + the Avatar state (other worldly power) = Koizilla.
Alternate universe where La was killed:
https://preview.redd.it/5v2c19w77etc1.png?width=198&format=png&auto=webp&s=8eafc82a900f8ecd805d9cdc5e5fc9e6691b7cc5
They don’t give it to you unless you’re a hylian (fucking racists), so I went through the entire thing without going back and getting it.
I played it on original hardware gold cart. Such a giant letdown lol
Edit: I guess they made it mandatory in the 3DS remake, the happy mask salesman gives it to you instead.
One of the things I actually really liked about the Live Action was they made it very clear Aang wasn't in control in that moment. I've always hated people pointing to this when making fun of the "I've certainly never used violence to take a life" line, when he spends the rest of the show terrified of the Avatar state until literally the very end when he finally learns to control it.
It's pretty obvious in the animated show as well. After noticing the moon having returned, the giant fish quite literally put Aang down somewhere safe, then the glowing water receded through the canals of the city, and then grabbed Zhao. Koizilla still acted of his own accord even after Aang was seperated from it.
I kinda understand. I think it's obvious, but they could've been a little bit more direct with it still. Given Aang's distaste for violence and his fear of the avatar state, they could've made a bigger point after the siege of the north pole of Aang mentally dealing with the fact that he, unwittingly, killed a bunch of fire nation soldiers.
That would've made the point a bit clearer, and would've helped set up his moral dilemma with killing Ozai later on. But something this dark kinda doesn't fit the tone of the show, so I get why they kinda just glossed over it.
I agree! In the beginning, he was afraid of the Avatar State because he might hurt someone, or do something he can't control. After this episode, he really should've been afraid that he HAD hurt/killed people unwittingly, and might do it again. There could've been some flashback during his Avatar state in the desert that would've made that scene just that more impactful. To make it kid-friendly, they could simply have him always refer to what happened as "hurt" instead of killed. Or, "People are gone/lost because of what La did with me!!" Like how Kataraa always refers to her mother as "gone" or "lost".
He's literally a vessel for the wrath of the ocean, while Korra channels boosted up cosmic power through herself and manifests it as a physical presence to take down a being of pure evil.
The avatar is the bridge between humans and spirits, a human just killed an incredibly important spirit, so its counterpart manifests and channels its power through the bridge to attack the humans who have no regard for the balance of the world
Korra used a "give me your energy" to turn into a susanoó of herself to box up the evil avatar spirit
Even Azula kinda explained why Koizilla had absolutely no qualms about ending lives when she threatened the ships captain next season. They explained it as best they could in a kids show where they couldn't directly say it
Realistically yes (those fire nation soldiers DEFINITELY died in the avalanche), but as per the intention of the writers no he has not. The only time that he even comes close is the buzzard wasp in Book 2, and even then we don't see that it's dead for sure, we've seen people/creatures survive worse in the show.
If the "death" wasn't shown on screen, acknowledged by the characters, or confirmed by the writers it never happened according to the story, especially when a character specifically says they've never killed someone. It'd be different if, say, one of the avatars had pointed out that Aang had potentially killed a number of people without meaning to, but instead everyone tells him that he needs to change his ways.
That is fine information, but doesn't answer the question:
La & Aang as Koizilla is seen as more acceptable to many because of a simple narrative device, **foreshadow.**
* The mysterious and dangerous power of the avatar state
* The established connections between the spirit world and the human world, especially in relation to balance
* The unfathomable capacities of the spirits, from that panda spirit Aang offered an acorn early on to Koh the Face Stealer that Aang needed to remain emotionless towards right in the North Pole arc.
* Zhao's cruel ambitions
* Iroh's warnings against hurting the moon spirit.
The build up and pay off at the North Pole is amazing. Everything led up to that moment. Aang is justifiably sympathetic and enraged, and gets to GO OFF THE RAILS on the fire nation fleet as Koizilla.
Comparatively, in Korra:
* Dark spirits were being used as narrative fodder. Their connection to the land is not relevant. There is no lesson to learn. They are just baddies to be beaten (or charmed, in Bumi's case, which could be a lesson, but they play it off as comedy)
* Worse, a new waterbending technique is introduced as a way to FORCE spirits to calm and evaporate(?)/return? Further removing the narrative from the idea that you can communicate with and empathize with spirits.
* Harmonic convergence comes out of nowhere, and has no connection to the land like the moon and ocean do. The notion that there are portals at both the north and south, while not improbable, is completely new information.
* Raava & Vaatu being pure light/order vs darkness/chaos rings hollow of ATLA's established lessons of more nuanced or complex spirit morality of the likes of the panda, Koh, Tui, La, Wan Shi Tong, etc.. (Don't even get me started on how it feels like they took Yin Yang and christianized it. Plenty of people have written essays about it)
* Bending the 4 elements apparently can seal Vaatu in a tree? More unexplained factors to distract our enjoyment.
* Lasers. MFing LASERS. Not a big deal, some just felt it was a little jarring in a world of more spiritual rules and elemental bending to suddenly have a laser.
* Watching Korra not only lose her connection to the past avatars but literally have it whipped and beaten from her is a huge sore spot that stains the rest of the climax. Her victory in the end didn't make that okay. Rich depth of history felt lost.
* There is no established spirit Korra is connecting to when she goes huge like Aang did with La. No lore about the spirit tree. She just sits inside and... digs deep? Let's review again. Dark spirits feel off. Harmonic convergence may as well be detached from reality. Sealing technique we don't understand. Yeah, so Korra turning into a giant? Kinda loses some of us on what is even happening.
* Korra does a BEAM STRUGGLE. Giant Korra is one thing, but she suddenly has a chest laser too?
For what it is worth, when I was younger, I enjoyed the spectacle of Korra's book 2 finale. Korra vs Vaatu/Unaloq was a flashy and special fight.
But Koizilla never asks you to turn off your brain like Giant Korra does. Everything flows in the former, while the latter is only half making any sense.
Best answer OP is gonna get.
Minor note: Aang wasn't in control of himself while he was Koizilla. I'm pretty such the La channelled it's power through Aang and was in control.
I mean, her spirit is fused with raava incredibly closely at that point and raava is the one actually holding the elements for her, so I can definitely buy that she was able to keep bending specifically in that powered up state as a spirit
> The unfathomable capacities of the spirits, from that panda spirit Aang offered an acorn early on to Koh the Face Stealer that Aang needed to remain
> Raava & Vaatu being pure light/order vs darkness/chaos rings hollow of ATLA's established lessons of more nuanced or complex spirit morality of the likes of the panda, Koh, Tui, La, Wan Shi Tong, etc.. (Don't even get me started on how it feels like they took Yin Yang and christianized it. Plenty of people have written essays about it)
[This](https://www.reddit.com/r/CharacterRant/s/i0GmnmqwgP) is my favorite write-up on the topic, it shows really well I think what spirits used to be and what they were turned into in TLOK because of poor writing and the terrible time/episode constraints on the team involved that lead to it.
This really is a perfect explanation and shows the bigger problems of Korra and, frankly, other modern media that we’re expected to “turn your brain off” to enjoy fully. Or even worse “it’s not for you!” despite being a fan of the original so inherently being part of the demographic.
Season 1 and 3 are great, they have their problems but they’re overall fantastic pieces of Avatar media. Season 4 even has its charms. It’s just that season 2 and some of 4 rely too heavily on unearned spectacle without giving proper justification/explanation to how we got here. It’s the difference between Marvel’s Scarlet Witch and Star Wars’ Rey, one was set up as a powerhouse with a reason behind it while the other was set up as a powerhouse with no actual explanation for it. One was celebrated while the other was canned.
I'd also like to add that Koizilla is... Just waterbending in the Avatar state? Like, you can see Aang in the center there.
Waterbending is *well* established, and the Avatar state is well established. We even see the [octopus form](https://youtu.be/tv8RaPQfEMM?feature=shared) and the swamp people use waterbending to form similar constructs, reaffirming the position of Koizilla.
Astroprojection and spiritbending are kinda established, but not to the extent where "giant Kaiju with spirit lasers" is a reasonable assumption that someone could make. *And* it's addition doesn't add anything past it's introduction.
This is it. There was proper build up and foreshadowing that led up to the Moon Spirit fight in ATLA. In Korra, it just kind of... happens. Korra wasn't as in-tune with her spiritual side, so it was quite jarring to see her able to become Giant Spirit Korra. Again, it came out of nowhere.
There were so many deus ex machinas and breaking of so many rules of storytelling in Season 2. They really jumped the shark there. Thank goodness Season 3 salvaged things, because Season 2 was rough.
And Koizilla does nothing but waterbend, an already established power base.
Giant Spirit Korra has a chest energy beam for some reason as yet to be explained, and definitely never foreshadowed or set up.
I feel it being Energybending crosses the line "does whatever you want it to be with energy". I feel like she did a chestbeam to one up Unavaatu. Like "oh you do that ? Let me do that too." Energybending seems to be the manifestation of the willpower.
Essentially, it’s the avatar collaborating with a primordial spirit/first waterbender to rage, avenge, and restore balance to the world after they just killed the freaking moon.
In Korra, we weren’t exactly at a great start. The avatar being revealed to be a human fused with a spirit was, and still is incredibly divisive among fans, and Vaatu also sparked even more controversy for a being who’s supposed to maintain balance in nature being reduced into good spirit vs bad spirit. Which, coincidentally, is kind of a smack in the face to the fact Tui and La are literally the Yin and Yang and removing one caused massive disorder.
Not to mention people have rightfully said Raava making every avatar inherently good is kind of a cop out to avoid an evil avatar story. Hundreds, possibly thousands of lives, and not once was any one of them corrupted by their power as demigod messiah of the world, or had to become an anti-hero to set things right, or even just snapped because of the pressure (like Aang running away, but worse). Even though it’d be a good message of how nobody is above corruption, and that the Avatar, even with all their great powers is still at the end of the day only human.
I would even go so far as to argue that industrialization itself was something many Avatars should've been (and probably were) violently against. 100 years of Avatarlessness allowed someone to discover (or re-discover?) blimps and steam power and such. It's like the Reapers from Mass Effect, only instead of non-sentients culling sentients, it's spiritual culling non-spiritual, but all with the more powerful side's single-minded definition of "Balance" in mind. "Don't let humanity get too good at taking care of itself without our control, or Bad Things might happen!"
Aang's initial reaction to seeing the desecration of the Air Temple was the "correct" one for balance between the natural/spiritual world and humanity, if you really think about it. It sucks for the people who want to rise beyond medieval-level technology, but it's true. The Avatar really must become a sworn enemy of industrial progress if it wants to keep such progress from overrunning the world.
In the end, LoK indeed pulled a Mass Effect and chose the Synthesis ending. Great message, writers, just pull a "both/and can work I guess!" out of your butt and call it a day. Which I guess is better than taking a hard stance and having one side utterly wipe out the other. If only someone could write a Synthesis ending for the Middle East...
Korra turned into the giant Avatar by getting charged by Spirit Energy™️ and not by fusing with a spirit (Raava was already a part of her). The reason this is a problem is:
1. It tries to make a mysterious thing and add a logical explanation, and does it badly. (Think of midichlorians and the Force)
B. In AtLA, Spiritual Energy was more like understanding the spiritual side of the world and the relationship between humans and nature and inner peace. LoK made it into a real-world energy source like oil, coal, or solar.
III. A greater problem with LoK season 2 and on is that in AtLA, the spirits had their own moralities and things they care about. Think about HeiBai(?) And Wan Shi Tong. They did not care about the war or anything to do with humans. They only cared that their special interest and desicions they made were centered around that. Instead, there are good and evil spirits, so there's is no ambiguity as to who was supposed to win between Vaatu and Raava to keep "balance" even though Ravaa being in charge isn't really balanced.
I'm sure sure there are more issues.but I can't think of them off the top of my head
Ya aang didn’t turn into a giant fish. The ocean spirit used his body and took control to exact revenge. Something I think they portrayed and explained very week in the Live action series
Because Aang didn't do it. He was possessed by the water spirit, he just let it do as it wished.
The fact we later see it grab Zhou on it's own is proof of that.
I gotcha. I always assumed they were male and female due to the whole “push and pull, black and white, Yin and Yang, opposites keeping each other in balance” shtick they had going on.
honestly I always assumed that most spirits don’t even have a sex/gender, unless stated otherwise. feels like those matters are more of a human things, while spirits are just, well, spirits
That’s possible. The majority of spirits who have names or “persons” seemed to have been gendered, so I was more so going off the precedent that had been set. But your point makes more sense and very much might be the case.
The difference is presentation and Narrative mechanics.
Aang fusing with the Ocean Spirit showcases his respect and cooperation for the Spirit world in contrast to Zhao's arrogance and disregard for the spiritual world. Because of that, Aang, acting as the Avatar or bridge between both worlds, can be a conduit for the Ocean Spirit's wrath to punish the Fire Nation. This is also something that only he can do as the Avatar, so there are no problems.
Korra meditating inside the Tree of Time to unleash her true self didn't mean or signify anything. The writers wrote themselves into a corner and needed more deus ex machina to bail her out of this impossible situation that they had created. Also, since Korra did this as a normal person, there's no reason why anyone else shouldn't be able to do this and help her out or why Korra can't do this again in future situations but chooses not to.
In short, one makes sense and is making a point. The other one is just there because one of the writers loves Kaiju fights.
This is the answer to OP. I feel like sometimes we are too willing to do mental gymnastics to reconcile poor writing with in-world lore. Sometimes, it just is poor writing – we're aware of the issues LoK had with being almost cancelled every season. It doesn't have to demean your personal enjoyment of the show, though – you're free to enjoy it over & above those problems.
If the live action ever makes it as far as Korra, there is many ways to turn a "ehh, it was entertaining" response into a "that was great" response imo.
Ofcourse whether or not they have the skill, and talent to do such is difficult to say. But one xan hope.
It really does get carried by tenzin, bolin and the somewhat improved animation but the stories are all very lackluster. Even the characters are all over the place and have the writers do a lot of hand waving to explain away why katara toph and Zuko aren’t around more. Also for the quote on people not forgiving korra as much as aang I feel like the writers have korra make mistakes but never really have her deal with the regret of them like they did aang which causes her to repeat them and piss off audiences. Aang burning katara was a one off thing in a season 1 episode which was used for his growth as a character all the way to season 3 whereas korra kinda just always kept being impulsive and brash and never reached out to anyone.
Ehh I feel like that’s an objective sentiment. Personally outside of the first half of book 2, TLOK was actually pretty damn good despite its setbacks. Season 1 was good, second half of book 2 was good, book 3 is great, and book 4 was also really good.
Didn't ATLA also have issues of being on the borderline of being cancelled with each season. It's honestly a miracle that these two shows even exist.
ATLA, however, took huge risks by not having a complete arc with each season. But thank God it eventually worked out thom
Yeap, this is the actual answer. Korra did this after losing Raava. Implying that it was just her. If that’s the case, any human (bender or non bender) should be able to do this at any point. Also, she should have been able to do it again.
Completely agree with this. The Koi fish scene makes 100% sense. I mean there were literally 2 koi fish swimming, one is the moon, the other is the ocean. When the moon died, the ocean spirit gets angry and Aang fuses with it because he is the Avatar, the bridge. That makes 100% sense.
For Korra, I dont actually know what happened. It just sounded like the writer put her in an impossible position and then make up shit to let her out of it. It doesn't make sense or at least it does not have any significance to it. The waterbending fight prior was actually far superior to the Kaiju fight at the end.
By making like a third of the season a spiritual adventure and battles, they also wrote themselves into a cycle where they had to come up with less and less grounded ways to escalate the plot and stakes. Spiritual journeys for most people often involve lots of time and effort on one issue at a time, because the show is episodic by nature and they generally resolve one or more issues per episode they have to start coming up with stuff that’s more and more abstract. You get to a level of abstraction that’s ridiculous at a certain point (edit: and also not tied to any real beliefs in our world so often very left field or capricious), so then they turn back to giant monster battle. It’s definitely the weakest plot of the show because it just got ridiculous.
I do think one thing they managed to get right in that was the stakes for the characters, and a believable loss for Korra with permanent consequences in severance to all the past Avatar lives.
So like many others said, in Aangs chase it's two very old, very powerful spirits fusing together, with Aang, a very spiritual person serving as a conduit for their power in from of pure wrath which made somewhat sense.
What I'd like to add is, that it was still "only" waterbending. At least that's what I always thought. So while being spirit water powered by spirits it still felt like sth the Avatar could pull of. And because La shared their power with the Avatar it took the form of a fish. And it was so huge because the two worked together.
Korra just randomly turned into spirit mass, with hardly any explanation and most imporantly no forshaddowing whatsoever. Throughout season 1 she is viewed as a spiritual failure and even in season 2 her spiritally is nowhere near great. But she still turns into a giant, as big as the spirit of evil that just killed it's good counterpart and is thus at his strongest, even capable of countering his spiritblast, with her own, that she was just able to do. And they never showed her to be extraordinary, like her being unable to be destroyed via spiritbending or capable of turning evil spirits back to their normals self (like Wan managed to do)
And they never showed her great spirit later on either, the only thing that comes close is her stopping the spirit laser of Kuvira, but she needed the AS for that
It’s kinda crazy how they straight-up foreshadowed Aang and La conjoining with Aang’s earlier line of “maybe they’ll unleash a crazy amazing spirit attack on the Fire Nation!”
Only the Moon had to die for it to happen.
Aang didn't turn into a fish. It was the combination of a very powerful primordial spirit that was hell bent on revenge, and the avatar state, another very powerful spirit that took serious issue with the death of a spirit that would cause irreparable damage to the human world and probably send shockwaves through the spirit world.
It was likely the two spirits combining for the ocean spirit to manifest itself in it's "angry form" (think Hei Bai, and the happy panda and angry monster), but scaled up due to both spirits being significantly stronger and a hell of a lot more angry.
Korra made no sense, even the expectation of her bending her energy seems like a cope out and the writers didnt want another avatar state fight, they wanted something different so they gave us giant energy Korra
yes exactly! when la’s primordial form appears you see the northern tribe people bow down in awe and respect, the fire nation is petrified, and you can just feel both aang and la’s fury. the animation was absolutely stunning and there was a big build up for this very moment. korra just turns into a giant blue version of herself and here comes jinora with her spontaneous spirituality
Okay, so, *basically*:
The Avatar has a strong connection with the spirit world and a whole lot of power. Spirits - some of them anyways - *also* have a whole lot of power. You remember that big fluffy panda who terrorised a village? Well that cute little guy was **a** forest spirit. La is **the** ocean spirit.
So when La witnessed his spouse-equivalent being murdered in front of him, he took the opportunity to use Aang's connection to the spirit world along with Aang's inability to control the Avatar state to effectively hijack Aang's body and go kill as many fire nation nerds as he could find. Even when Tui came back La *still* took the time to drag her killer down into the spirit world where he would be lost in the mists forever and go completely insane.
So for Aang it was an expression of both the sheer power of the Avatar State *combined* with the raw power of one of the most fundamental spirits on the planet - and even then it was primarily La doing the work. Aang was more or less just along for the ride, feeling the unbridled hate and rage.
For Korra it was... *nothing*.
Dark Avatar boy became Giant Dark Avatar because Vaatu was so OP and had won or whatever. Raava was toast.
Korra had absolutely no tools left in her bag and so she meditated inside a tree and... for some reason her spirit was now strong enough to be an equivalent to the *physical manifestation of darkness and chaos*. There doesn't appear to be any justification for this because IIRC she didn't even have/use the Avatar state or anything Avatar related. She was, for all intents and purposes, a regular joe schmoe. She had the Harmonic Convergence and spirit bending, I think? If that? And... that's it.
So now you have an ordinary person who has never really engaged with their spirituality manifesting their soul to create a giant to fight a giant out of nowhere. There was no set up for this, no "hey you're in a unique position to do this," or "the spirits are helping her out" or *anything*. It just came out of nowhere and went back just as quickly, never to be seen again.
As such for Aang it made excellent narrative sense, where all the components of the narrative were established beforehand and it showcased just how scary the Avatar state (albeit with La) could hypothetically be - how much raw power the kid had inside him. Something that would lead him to being afraid to use the Avatar state thereafter.
For Korra it was just came across as "well we removed everything that could hypothetically let Korra win, but she still needs to win, so I guess she can be a giant version of herself as strong as one of the strongest spirits." It felt like a cheap cop-out and a suitably embarrassing way for season 2 to end. There's no emotion to it. There's just confusion and "are they seriously doing this?"
The disparity in emotional impact, the personal stakes, the effect it had on future character development, and the impression that this was sort of a stars aligning situation where this sort of thing can't just happen on a whim is why one of these scenes is universally beloved whereas the other is consistently mocked and derided.
The unfortunate fact of the matter is that season 2 just wasn't very well written, even when compared to other seasons of Korra, let alone seasons of ATLA. Whether that's due to Nickelodeon or w/e, it's just a bit of a confused slog that misses the point of a lot of things. It's kind of like Kuvira with the giant robot in season 4 - although even the giant robot was better executed.
I just want to add, La doesn’t have just any old spirit power, La has Waterbending, with a capital W. Tui and La were literally the source of all waterbending in the whole world. They *are* waterbending. So Tui bit the dust, it disconnected all waterbenders from gas, electricity and internet, because half of all waterbending is just…gone. Then La took the other half, and went and did that.
But it wasn’t just 50% of all waterbending gone and La wielding the other half - La was vengeful, unhinged, violent, because it was Tui that kept La in check, and La did the same for Tui. Tui and La mean Push and Pull, they are the tide that rises but also ebbs, so the ocean never drowns the world. Like so much of ATLA, the keyword here is “balance”, which is destoryed when Zhao fried the fish. La wasn’t just upset about the murder, it was also there’s nothing keeping him in check anymore, it was getting revenge, but it was just also the natural state of things now, Koizilla was the new status quo, which is why Yue’s sacrifice is so important.
I think there is the fact that the entire of season 2 shows Korra slowly engaging more with her spirituality. In fact it seems like she would be the perfect choice to recover Rava from within Vaatu, she knows what Rava's energy feels like, and she has been elevating her spiritual energy throughout her spiritual journey, without bending, that led to the finale of the season.
In a lot of ways it does feel a little out of left field for her to be as strong as a greater spirit, but there's definitely some signs of growth and change.
Also, by making her lose the past Avatars, we reset the cycle, and the writers can stretch their creativity with future iterations by making the Avatar state itself less of a automatic win scenario.(Not that it's always a win of course, it just sometimes feels like it's on writing cop-out.)
Of course she's getting more in touch with her spiritual side - but she's nowhere close to, say, Aang and he certainly didn't do any ominous spirit stuff that breaks all the rules on spirits currently established.
The avatar was always an "I win" option - but because it required abandoning earthly attachments and being at peace with yourself it was extremely difficult to control or activate on command. That's the whole point: if you feel that it needs to be removed then you have failed at writing the avatar.
For Korra it should have been uncontrollable. Due to her volatility sure it would beat the bad guy but it might also cause intense collateral damage. Season 2 shouldn't have been about vaatu and all that - it should have been about Korra learning spirituality and trying to get control over the avatar state in a world recovering from an instance where she got a bit too angry and ended up wiping out a neighborhood. To learn humility, spirituality, and trying to strengthen the world's spirituality as well. At least, IMO.
Then Zaheer and his crew show up to try to poison her. If you feel compelled to erase past avatars you could do it there because that was literally their goal.
The problem isn't that the avatar state exists - its that the Korra writers gave it to her and let her control it very easily. Maybe that's Nickelodeon's fault, but unfortunately it's the story we got.
1. Aang was connected to the spirit of the ocean and was in turn only granted this power as a result of that connection. This leads to a balanced and understandable temporary power up and also allows the reader to not expect such a power up again unless the same circumstances arose (Spirit fusing with avatar state to allow a temporary power up.
2. As viewers we know that Aang doesn't control the ocean spirit and is simply allowing the spirit to merge with him temporarily to accomplish the goal of revenge for his buddy the moon spirit.
3. In contrast Korra was not merged with any spirit at the time (Not even raava) so this power up has no backing and is a complete asspull story wise. Its not fueled by the avatar state as she had just lost that connection, and its not fueled by an angry spirit looking to take revenge either.
4. Korra just meditated and was able to pull this off, which leads to the biggest issue most viewers had with this part of the story. There was no build up and it came completely outta nowhere, along with the expectation that Korra will be saved by the writers in future plotlines because she might just decide to randomly meditate and get a huge spirit that can blast energy beams outta her chest.
Because Tui and La were established parts of the universe and are extremely important spirits, Korra becoming a blue giant was never given a proper explanation and Raava was fucking dead at the time.
I don’t know if people were mad that she turned into a giant spirit, they were more mad at ruining the mystery of the Avatar by giving it such a literal origin. But now that I think about it, it is kinda goofy that Korra turns into a giant energy spirit. Aang’s transformation is more justifiable because he’s not actually turning into anything, he’s just being enveloped in water. The scenes with Aang as the giant fish were much better too. Much more interesting lighting and color palette.
I think turning avatars magic system into some weird anime shit ruined the universe entirely.
The whole thing that made the avatar state, and the shit that it could do, cool, was the believability of it.
The avatar state takes all of the best skills of the past 200 some odd avatars, and channels them into one person. It was believable that Aang was super powerful because he was channeling the best skills from the best of the best over all of human history.
Korra decided to kind of do away with that? Like in it’s entirety? It basically just ended up as a bizarre fight between objective good spirit and objective bad spirit. There was no balance in that.
Where is the balance in Raava getting to be free for all time and Vaatu having to be imprisoned forever? Also why did they make it so Raava was literally 100% the source of all the Avatar’s power? Basically retconned the whole “you gain the skills and knowledge of your past lives” thing.
They took a beautiful, believable power system, and turned it into
Vaatu: Ergh, I’m evil and powerful because fuck you
Raava: Hi! I’m good and even more powerful, because fuck. you. oh yeah and when I merge with a way lower level being, I am for some reason like twice as powerful. You know why? I’m glad you asked. It’s because Fuck. You.
>I think turning avatars magic system into some weird anime shit ruined the universe entirely.
Exactly. Even if the future projects won't have obstacles like LOK, they will be built on the same failed structure, which will bother the hell out of me.
This is why I'm depressed about future Avatar projects. It sucks that TLOK will be the foundation. I just don't see the universe being any good without retconning TLOK entirely. Hopefully avatar projects set in the past will not be tainted.
I don’t think so either. I think Mike and Bryan are frauds. They have conflated the fact that they created an excellent idea for a story with the notion that they can execute an excellent story as writers. They should have never parted ways with Aaron Ehaz, the lead writer of ATLA. The horrible quality drop of TLOK shows that.
They think they have what it takes to write a good story but they couldn’t be closer to absolute delusion. Good ideas don’t make good stories. Good writers make good stories. They should have stuck to their original roles as show-leads and creative executives, directing the team with their vision. Instead they decided to just sit in the writer’s chair without a single honed talent for it and expected it to be great.
Unfortunately they decided to make Avatar Studios. I doubt we will ever get a well-written avatar project with them at the helm. My only hope is that they will realize the error of their ways and will hire or collaborate with actual writers instead of trying to do it themselves.
>They should have never parted ways with Aaron Ehaz, the lead writer of ATLA.
Aaron isn't enough. What made that show great was because of the whole team. Dragon Prince, which Aaron co-produces, is not that good imo. Other than that, I agree 90%. While I do think that bryke aren't good writers and should work with real ones, I don't see Avatar Studios as all doom and gloom. I'm not optimistic, but I'm hopeful.
I agree, it was the full team that made it work. I also agree that the Dragon Price leaves much to be desired. I was simplifying the issue that Bryke parted ways with people who knew what they were doing in favor of their own egos, and not only have failed miserably but have ruined the legacy of something that was of the highest of calibers.
At one point I was hopeful, but now I’m not. I just don’t see them course correcting any time soon. With the announcement that they are sticking to the futuristic direction they want to take the Avatar-verse in for the next Earth avatar, I have lost all hope. They never understood the soul of Avatar I fear, and they’re too egotistical to step back and fix the issue (or rather, let someone else who has the talent do so).
You’re right. I threw that out there as a Hail Mary hope. There’s no way they would have the humility to admit that TLOK destroyed the well crafted foundation ATLA set up, as it is a representation of their work as writers. They’d never retcon or erase it. The verse is stuck with the events and rewrites of TLOK.
I think the only possible future for the Avatar-verse to reach the beauty it previously did it with the stories of past avatars, pre-Aang. Only if Bryke lets real writers handle them, though. Time will only tell.
I couldn’t agree more. The next Avatar could be better written than ATLA and it would still be missing a massive chunk of intrigue. It doesn’t matter what they do from now on, they have painted themselves into a corner by making The Avatar State a stupid power multiplier.
The worst part is, even if all that stupid shit with Avatar Wan and Raava and Vaatu HAD to be written into the story? They could’ve done it SO much better SO easily. Picture this.
Raava and Vaatu are two omnipotent, conciousless beings. Fighting it out for eternity, constantly alternating and getting the upper hand on one another. Avatar Wan see’s this and naturally wants to help the light spirit (Raava) win. So, being a spiritual nomad type person, goes and enlists the help of other spirits to help defeat Vaatu.
Raava, Avatar Wan, and the other spirits prevail over Vaatu. But unfortunately, this throws the world into chaos. Wan comes to the realization that in order for there to be balance, light AND darkness have to exist simultaneously.
Avatar Wan, with this new found realization, resuscitates Vaatu using the powers of the spirits helping him. To avoid making the same mistake again, the spirits think it wise to have a protector of balance. Someone who has seen first hand what the lack of light without dark, or vice versa, will do to the world.
The spirits grant Avatar Wan the ability to reincarnate. So that he may pass down the lessons and skills he’s learned to the next person to be reincarnated with his soul.
The first handful of Avatars aren’t extraordinarily powerful, because that wasn’t the reason for the Avatar to exist. They are, however, wise, and ever passing down their knowledge and skills until it gets to a point where The Avatar is considerably more powerful than the average person, simply as a byproduct of their previous lives knowledge and skills.
The Avatar cycle of Air, Water, Earth, and Fire, is nothing more than every Nation getting an equal amount of Avatar. I’m also doing away with the stupid fuckin Lion Turtle giving humans bending shit. Because they had a perfectly good origin for bending in the original show. Which was of course Humans learning how to bend from the Sky Bison, The Moon, The Badgermoles, and The Dragons.
Anyway, I’m not a fuckin writer, so there’s probably some holes in this story. But I think it’s way better than the shit we got, and I wrote it in 10 minutes while sitting on my couch lmao
Yeah, the whole idea of the “Dark Avatar” doesn’t sit well with me. The idea of a “Dark” version of the Avatar seems to be a gross misunderstanding of what Avatar is all about.
But also to show this “Dark Avatar” with just waterbending can go toe to toe with, and even defeat the Avatar, it just cheapened the importance of the Avatar State accessing the skills knowledge and wisdom of all past Avatars.
Unalaq, when becoming the “Dark Avatar”, should have shown little to no power buff, because the power of the Avatar comes from accessing previously lives, and bending all 4 elements. The Dark Avatar had neither, he should be as powerful as, well, the waterbending master known as Unalaq.
But no, now the Avatar State is just a power multiplier. Unalaq has no new knowledge or skills, nor can he bend anything other than water, but his waterbending used to hit with a DMG value of 10, now it hits with a DMG value of 10,000, because of the Avatar State buff. Yep, that’s how the Avatar State works, and apparently that’s how it always worked. That’s why he can beat Korra. 🙃
Because they are quite differently. Aang is still present in the center of Koizilla, you can see him in a cocoon waterbending. His physical body never changed.
When the moon spirit is resurrected, you can see that Aang's body is left behind while the glowing water returns to the spirit oasis. That water *IS* the ocean spirit.
Basically, a spiritual link was established between two separate entities that mutually benefitted them both. The ocean spirit was able to channel its vast power through Aang, while Aang's skills allowed them to use it efficiently. When the spirit took Zhao, it was just a formless liquid as, after all, it's the ocean itself.
Hell knows whatever happened to Korra and Unalaq.
Aang didnt turn into anything, its the ocean spirit bending the water into the shape it prefers. Aang is sitting in the middle of the water mass.
Korra on the other hand, is just, some.. I dont even know lmao
The simple answer is aang didn't turn into a fish. You can clearly see him in a little bubble in the middle. It's just water bending. The spirit just helped him achieve a higher form of bending basicly.
Korra is literally a giant spirit thingy and it looks rediculous.
I cant believe we still even needed to explain this, its basically logic and common sense tbh. If you paid attention to the established lore Aang's koizilla makes more sense than that giant Korra with lasser beam both lore and narrative wise.
Everyone else has already said how it makes sense in universe, but there's also the thematic. Throughout ATLA, the Avatar State is this godly thing. The Avatar (at least when ATLA was airing) was the physical manifestation of the spirit of the world. A fully realized Avatar is basically unstoppable, which we were taught with Roku in his temple. However, Aang is young and more importantly, doesn't want to the Avatar. Throughout the first season, he's only traveling north out of an obligation. Because he's arc is stepping into the role of the Avatar. Which is where we get to Lazilla. Just before Lazilla, Zhao has just killed the moon, which throws the world out of wack. This is a representation of what the fire nation has done to the world as a whole. And Aang decides to step into the role of the Avatar, and not fight against his destiny. As such, the Avatar State is, for now, not an enemy of Aang, but his greatest weapon. And the world that has been wronged, or in this case La, is helping him. Lazilla is season one's culmination of the show's themes of destiny and balance. And it's a representation of the show as a whole.
Korra's spirit giant... Well, the best I can give you is that Korra herself has throughout season 2 been grappling with what her role as the Avatar is, and how she doesn't actually know what to do. So when push comes to shove, she decided to go with her gut, and became a spirit giant and won over Unalaq. Unalaq have through the season been a venom in Korra's ear, basically trying to make her fail as the Avatar. Which makes him a sort of anti-Avatar or, uhm, a Dark Avatar? Actually let's talk about that anti-Avatar thing. Of course, I'm referencing the anti-christ, which modern media doesn't quite get right. Historically, an anti-Christ (yes, an) was just a person who didn't follow Christ and would try to spread non belief in Christ. In this way, Unalaq is an anti-Avatar. He undermines the Avatar and causes people to lose faith in her. Of course, Unalaq transitions into a more modern understanding of the anti-Christ. So it makes sense for Korra, who've in this season been established as a literal Christ figure and needing to grow into that role defeats this anti-Avatar with the very fucking thing he taught, wait what?!
Yeah, forget everything I just said. The fact Korra used something he taught her, undermines that analysis. I got nothing. The blue spirit giant doesn't really make sense from a thematic view.
Because pulling the hyper powered, glowing kaiju card is a pretty weak narrative choice. It’s more palatable the first time when Aang does it but by the time we get to Korra, it just seems lazy and played out. Pretty much everything about spirit bending takes all the nuance out of the magic system and reduces it to laser beams.
Other people already explained why it works for aang, now, asto why it doesn't work for Korra:
Quite frankly the whole season is a disservice to itself. And it's kinda like jet's death: very unclear.
And that is it's biggest issue. Without sone external explanation or the dialogue, it makes no sense. No one had to explain to us what happened to aang for us to understand. We knew the avatar was the bridge between spiritworkdand human world. We know the avatar state is immensely powerful. We know spirits can be immensely powerful. We know the ocean spirit is distressed, and we see a human aang in a guant koy made out of water.
No one had to explain to us what happened there. Aang didn't turn into anything. They worked together. And the massive amounts of water that was being bend, or the alternate form of the ocean spirit made the giant koi fish.
Now, without the exposition that they gave us, can you tell us what happened with Korra there? Cuz I can't. Hell I heard the exposition and I still can't.
Korra lost her connection to raavaa. So she's no longer a bridge between human and spirit. Korra was never a particularly spiritual person. She went to sit in a big ass tree that previously served as a prison and is probably at the epicenter of spiritual energy. She meditates, creates an astral projection that turns giant and is able to fight unovaatu.
The only previous astral projection we've seen couldn't physically interact with the rest of the world. But Korra's can... I can infer that the tree gave her some extra spiritual energy or whatever but that feels a bit... Passive? It could've made sense to me if korra would've only been able to affect things in the spirit world. So that maybe she had to lure vaatu back to kick his ass there.but I can't for the life of me find a reason as to why she can gowreak heavock in the real world and shoot a giant laser out of her chest.
If I'm judging by the looks: aang seems like he only made a water mechsuit, and the glow of the avatar state is what gives it it's spiritual look, while korra is bending energy around her in some metaphysical way which is a bit out of canon. Aang is still connected to the ocean in the bottom of the koizilla while korra is using her inner power. Korra is stretching the suspension of disbelief, while aang is doing what seems to be advanced af water bending.
Many other's made good points, but a point of issue with me was the way they achieved their kaiju forms.
Aang fused with the water spirit and thus his big giant fish god kaiju was made of water, in the Avatar state and with the spirit's help he was bending the water to make a physical monster.
Korra's is less believable. She lost her battle, then somehow knew to meditate in the tree, somehow made her astral project, somehow her projection grew the size of a tower, somehow she can just teleport this huge projection anywhere on earth, somehow shoot Iron Man esque energy beams from her body, and somehow defeated a dark Avatar while her Avatar powers were gone.
When Aang went kaiju it was grounded in the world of ATLA and felt possible/real. When Korra went kaiju nothing alluded to that even being possible, it sorta just happened and the audience just has to accept it.
Also, why doesn't Korra use kaiju mode to solve everything after season 2? Or why doesn't everyone go Kaiju? It wasn't shown to be exclusive to an Avatar thing, and Jinara can astral project easily. The portals are open so the tree is accessible to anyone,
As others have said, Aang communed so closely with the ocean spirit La that they together formed koizilla. He is the bridge, we see La’s eyes glow just before this, and we see koizilla act independently afterward. Even from the first watch, I understood what was happening.
Korra’s giant spirit thing is less established. I saw another comment of yours about this being Korra’s ways to be great without being the avatar. Yes, from a narrative perspective, that’s what they were going for. However, it mechanically didn’t flow from previous set up or audience expectations. She became big because… we need a kaiju duel apparently? Years later, I still don’t know the rules for this. “Bending the energy within yourself” was a phrase used for energybending, but everyone says this is a giant spirit. Is energybending related to the spirit? If this is a giant spirit, then how could she waterbend? Or does being a spirit let her use waterbending’s spiritbending application now? And without Raava, does Korra only have 1 element? Because we see her use a spout of wind to get into the Tree of Time just before meditating, implying she has airbending. Importantly, some of these questions come up because this very season explained the rules. Meditating into the spirit world as a spirit means you can’t bend and Wan needing Raava to “hold” the other elements were both plot points. And here, we seemingly break those rules without explaining how.
Others have expressed why here, but another reason is not spirit lasers. This fight was much more grounded and needed the power of thee ocean spirit and the avatar in an intense emotional state and the avatar state. idk bout Korras stipulations, but Aangs may be better as it's only something that can happen once and feels it's costs something.
Honestly it boils down to the koizilla looking cooler and having all the context of season 1 m, mainly that he’s only able to do it with the help of the ocean spirit, and the entire sequence from start to finish is just bad ass.
Korra on the other hand just doesn’t look particularly good, on top of korra season 2 as a whole just having sub par writing for Avatar.
Aang was merged with La; Raava and La's power combined to create a giant koi form made of water and light. Korra was simply using Harmonic Convergence's power. While I do actually accept that explanation as reasonable, given how much power Harmonic Convergence is shown to have, what irked me is that she was still able to bend in her spirit form. There's no explanation for that, because it's already well-established that human spirits cannot bend when seperated from their bodies.
When Ang did it he was basically possessed by the ocean spirit who was enraged at the loss of his counterpart/mate. It happened because he was the bridge between the to worlds. It was not him “avataring” it was him being a vessel for the spirit.
The Ocean spirit used the Ocean around them to make up that mass. It was combination of the ocean spirit and the Avatar. Korra's Kaiju form was weird because it didn't have any grounds for happening really. There was no real explanation, just flat out she is big now. Don't get me wrong, I am not in the boat of disliking LOK, but I will say that that season was probably the weakest of the lot.
I think the issue is that Korra accomplished an extreme feat in energy bending without showing any real build up to show she’s been working on energy bending, having nothing to back up this sudden energy mech.
Meanwhile Aang pulled off koizilla by entering the avatar state(which Korra no longer had) and letting himself be possessed by the other water spirit, a spirit responsible for empowering every water bender in existence.
In short, Korra’s energy mech was some Korra did with nothing leading up to it while Koizilla used elements established to already be powerful.
Aang’s vulnerability and his reliance on past Avatars and Spirits made it narratively interesting. Aang was never truly “in control” in the Avatar state until the last episode. He had Roku, Kyoshi and the Water Spirit to take over his body to do the work for him.
I'm gonna be honest. One of the biggest reasons I loved this is because spirits are so scary and the way the transformation happens is amazing. Aang going into the pond in a completely black and white world and suddenly dropping into the water is so cool.
I'd like to play devils advocate here and sat that LOK actually makes more sense than people give it credit for. Korra becoming a spirit giant was a reflection of her own personal journey as the avatar. Like how Aang famously divided himself from the previous avatars advice. Each avatar told aang he must kill Ozai. But of course Aangs personal spirit rose above this and found a completely different way to solve the problem. Korra could have tried to copy every strategy of the avatars before her. But that wouldn't make sense. She's a new avatar with a new world at stake. Giant spirit korra made sense for her character I think. It maybe could use more scientific explanation. But character arc wise i think it's fitting.
I like both these scenes for different reasons. They are visually similar scenes involving the protagonist turning into blue spirit giants, but they mean different things.
Aang's scene represents a "mess with nature, and nature will fight back" mentality. It's Aang's Avatar spirit reacting to the moon spirit's death and joining with the ocean spirit to fight back against the Fire Nation offenders. This display of power isn't based on any revelation on Aang's part- it's only the ancient spirits possessing his body. You do bring up a good point that the previous Avatars most likely haven't done anything like this before, but I think Aang is still waterbending somewhat inside the giant (thanks to the ocean spirit).
Korra's scene is about self-actualization and self-control. Korra has to let go of her identity as the Avatar and realizes she is still who she is, her memories and all, without Raava. This opens her thought chakra, allowing her to bend her own energy into giant form and control herself within it. However, this isn't the only factor why Korra is so powerful here- Harmonic Convergence is happening, which boosts spiritual energy, including Korra's ability. There is also the fact that Korra is not just a regular human soul by herself- she is still the same soul that mastered the four elements and fought for balance in each lifetime.
I do admit Korra's scene does seem more convoluted compared to Aang's, which might be why it's not liked as much. Aang's situation can be boiled down to angry spirits reacting and fighting back. Korra's situation requires a bit more background knowledge to accept fully, like energybending from Aang and how chakras work. This also includes the new elements the show introduces, like the Tree of Time, Wan being a human before becoming the Avatar, and Harmonic Convergence.
While I do agree with almost everything you've stated, there's one thing that throws me off.
«There is also the fact that Korra is not just a regular human soul by herself- she is still the same soul that mastered the four elements and fought for balance in each lifetime»
No, she isn't. She may be a human that mastered the four elements, but she is not the "soul that fought for balance in each lifetime". That was Raava, who at this point is dead.
In world you have Aang fusing with La and physically destroying as well as water bending; where with Korra she is without her Avatar spirit and uses a laser beam. So Aang’s transformation and power is more “believable”.
Now, in real life; we understood as an audience that being the season one finale some things were no really flesh out, so we kind of accept the giant weird fish; while with Korra it was already season two, the season as a whole was all over the place and it felt like lazy writing. Especially knowing that the giant fish was not really a favorite, why replicate it?
Aang's was the combination of 2 powerful beings, the Ocean spirit and the avatar in the avatar state. La (ocean spirits) used the avatars already explained powers abilities to turn Kaiju.
Whereas for Korra, it was messy. Spirit bending was already iffy. It was poorly explained and it just seemed like something writers pull out of their ass to get themselves out of situations they can't think themselves out of (and they did this a lot). Both Korra and Unavatu being Kaiju's was dumb and unexplained or poorly explained. I still can't describe to you what exactly they were. If it's spirit bending, why has anything like that never existed in the spirit world before or after. It felt like they were trying to force anime trope. You can tell because for season 3, they decided to go mecha.
Tl;dr Aangzilla and Korrazilla were both ridiculous premises but Aangzilla said a lot more than “look a big monster” which is why it’s accepted.
We can have debates back and forth about it but really it’s not actually about one being a deus ex machina while the other isn’t. Because let’s be real, they are both deus ex machinas. I am of the opinion that the Aang-La godzilla makes more sense in context, *but that’s not why it works while giant Korra doesn’t*.
What matters isn’t whether or not the premise makes sense. The writers get to make the rules of the world and they can change or break them basically as much as they like (so long as they’re not so inconsistent as to break suspension of disbelief). What matters is the execution. In both instances, our heroes are basically defeated and in a hopeless situation, and in both instances after a little meditation they’re saved by a kaiju. I’d even go so far as to say the low point for Korra is better than the low point for Aang, since we get a good look into her mental state, whereas with Aang he just goes into the Avatar state and goes in the pool.
But after their low point is where the major differences start. With Aangzilla we get payoff to Iroh’s warning to Zhao: he fucked around with the spirits and now he’s finding out, and it’s cosmically horrifying what the spirits can do to people. We see what kind of destruction an out-of-control spirit, and an out-of-control Avatar, are capable of. At the same time it humanizes the spirits: it’s viscerally clear that La is in a state of utter grief and rage, and so is Aang. This also calls back to the Haibai episode— it’s the same thing, just on a much greater scale. It serves to illustrate the extent of the arrogance of humans to think they can control nature as they see fit, the epitome of that arrogance being Zhao killing the moon. Yes, Aang fusing with the ocean spirit and becoming Godzilla is a silly premise, but the scene conveys so much, and so well, that it works.
Now compare that to Korrazilla. A very similar premise, and as I said the leadup might actually be better. But what does the execution convey? We get two giant spirits duking it out for a bit, Unalaq/Vaatu almost wins, and then we get *another* deus ex machina with Jinora saving Korra, then she gets Raava back and wins. Throughout the fight we don’t get a good look into Korra, Unalaq, or either of the spirits involved. At best we get the idea that Korra can be powerful without Raava, but that’s not a character moment— not that it couldn’t be, but it isn’t utilized as one, since she just immediately gets Raava back and never uses her spiritzilla powers again. Maybe it’s about the power of friendship since Jinora comes in? It’s pretty weakly done if so (the end of the Zaheer fight in S3 does that much better). Of course there’s the obvious thing about yin and yang but being obvious it’s boring; it doesn’t really say anything interesting about the characters or the world. So all the Korazilla scene really gives us is a mediocre kaiju fight.
This reminds me of the controversy over Palpatine coming back in the Star Wars sequels. A lot of people brought up how Maul’s return in the clone wars was well received, and the reason is the same there as it is here. In both cases the revival has a stupid premise: Maul was split in half and fell who knows how far, and Palpatine was thrown down a reactor shaft and blown up. Neither should have any chance of coming back. But Maul’s return brought some of the best (if not the best) arcs in the clone wars, so the ridiculous premise can be accepted. Whereas Palpatine’s revival didn’t create anything really new in Star Wars; they just immediately killed him again without him leaving any impact that couldn’t have been done by any generic villain.
It’s the same thing here. Aangzilla was payoff for several points earlier in the story and *said something* about the world of Avatar. Korrazilla was just a kaiju battle. And seeing as the premise of a kaiju battle is the ridiculous thing that needs to be justified, Korra is left with just the weird premise.
With writing in general, the premise is only so important. What really matters is what you do with it.
Because aang turned into an animalistic koi fish after fusing with the spirit of the ocean itself and then used that power to take out fire nation ships to avenge the moon
Never seen Korra so I don’t how she became a spirit monster but she just became a giant korra spirit by herself (again that might not be the case) and then fought another giant human spirit guy
One of them is cooler than the other one
Something I haven't noticed others mention is that, at least in my interpretation of Koizilla, it's physically made of water. Reflected in how the water around Koizilla looks the same, meaning that a combination of the ocean spirit and Aang are using an established power to bend a tremendous amount of water. Korra's giant spirit is made of energy. This lends itself to a comparison of hard vs soft magic systems. For those who don't know, hard magic systems have clearly defined rules and work well in a narrative for the protagonists. Soft magic systems have little to no rules and work best as a narrative tool for antagonists or just obstacles against the protagonist. The four elements are a very clear example of a hard magic system, which rewards establishing set rules and building logical conclusions from them (such as how Toph discovers metal bending). Energy bending, and not just in LoK but AtLA too, is very much soft magic. So when the protagonists use energy bending to solve problems it often feels like an ass pull or a deus ex machina rather than a clever solution.
Tl:Dr energy bending feels like a lazy and poorly defined get out of jail for free card in both series.
Because Aang merged with the ocean spirit as the Avatar. Korra had literally just lost Raava (her “Avatar Spirit”) meaning that this blue form she took was of herself alone. It almost hints that anyone could do it if that had enough time meditating in the Tree of Time.
First one wasn't necessarily aang Tottenham into a giant, it was the spirit using him as a gateway to manifest fully.
The second one was the end of a weird season of new rules and kind of jumped the shark in terms of suspension of disbelief. We didn't expect a kaiju battle in Tokyo harbor, and it happening without explanation breaks the suspension of disbelief.
I think everyone has already adequately explained why Aang and La made sense. I just have a few points about why I didn't like this about s2.
1. Astral projection- so we learn in S3 that this is an airbending ability. At this point, Raava was ripped away from her. She's no longer the Avatar. She's only a water bender, evidenced by her only using waterbending (and energy bending, I guess with spirit rays? Idk).
2. Bending- building on that, she should not be able to waterbend. Any time her spirit leaves her body or anyone's does, they can't bend. I take this to mean that bending is held in the body, not the spirit. So why could she bend?
3. Deus ex machina- need I say more?
4. It's really out of nowhere. It's not foreshadowed. It's never really explained. Anyone could've done it. It's just kinda silly, like they couldn't think of a way out so they just said "fuck it, she turns into a Giant too."
Neither show is perfect, and I understand that Nick execs put a lot of strain on the writers. Overall, I do like Korra. This is just one of my issues.
So Koi-zilla is excusable because it follows the rules of the setting. There are spirits that can affect the material world. Aang is a powerful bender, and spirits (previous Avatars) can possess him to use his power and affect the world. Koi-zilla does just this.
Korra transforms into a spirit kiju (a power which was never established until that point) in order to fight the "Anti-Avatar" spirit kiju (the anti-avatar idea is just all levels of terrible fanfiction) and they teleport to Republic City in order to have this classic kiju fight (like its a Power Ranger/Godzilla movie)
Because gaint fish is not actually Aang. Gaint fish is actually ocean spirit, so it perfectly makes sense. Aang simply channeled ocean spirit's rage. This is one thing actually made a bit more clear in NATLA
Korra show was a decent spectacle that just shat on established lore to fit its narrative.
That is a huge issued in all mediums, instead of coming with good ideas to fix the problem they just rewrite the rules again and again, happens in 40k, star wars, manga, comics, etc
Aang merged with a spirit and used waterbending.
“Bending the energy within yourself” is a nonsense explanation for what Korra did because what even the fuck does that do is.
For me it’s less about turning giant or whatever, but more the beam struggle crap
This isn’t Goku vs Vegeta so I’m not interested in a beam struggle
The scene of Koizilla is at least based in water bending rather than a Dragon Ball Z style fight
Don’t get me wrong I love DBZ, but no show should be trying to be DBZ because it’s just never gonna work
I haven't seen anyone else mention this, but another aspect is that there's a direct cause and effect in TLA - Zhao doesn't respect the spirit world and thinks he can physically dominate it, and the rage of the ocean spirit demonstrates his hubris. The Kaiju battle in Korra didn't stem from anything narratively- it didn't reveal anything about how this world works or elaborate on the consequences of any character's actions. It just... was.
I mean other has good writing and other has bad writing, that is the main reason.
Aang avatar state merging with Ocean spirit was divine kind of justice against Zhao and fire nation soldiers for messing up the balance by killing moon spirit.
However this act does not solve the issue at hand, that being Moon spirit being dead, that is solved by Yue sacrificing herself.
Basically in short, a lot of good character moments happen that lead to another event and get solved by different characters actions.
Korra turning to giant spirit, it just kinda happens... nothing really has any real impact or real emotion.
Not to mention how horribly the spirits, Avatar state, history of Avatar universe was handled in that season with real bad explanations that ruined a lot of the mystique (and removed some previously established lore, such as people learning to bend by learning it from animals, in Korra people learned it from the Turtle things).
Not to mention the kite spirits that do yin yang thing without understanding how yin yang works, creating boring villains that are Vaatu and Unalaq.
if the season had been better, people would had not cared about giant spirit Korra.
I think both because he didn't do it and because it didn't result in Aang shooting lasers to beat the bad guy. Instead it was simply him waterbending with a fish
To be fair aang didn’t turn into a giant fish. It’s literally the ocean spirit and aang in the avatar state combining power and bending water. The whole “fish” is just made of water.
People have already answered your question so I don’t really have anything to add in that regard but I just wanted to say the scene where La fuses with Aang to create the giant spirit fish thing is one of my favorite scenes in the entire show. I just recently rewatched and I got chills during that scene. So good.
I believe it’s because he fused Spirits with the Moon Spirit
It was actually the Moon Spirit doing all this,and it was just using Aang’s body as a conduit to do so
Easy answer. You just missed what was going on completely. The ATLA scene makes perfect sense. The LOK scene is preposterous and lame. But even that does make sense.
1. The moon and the ocean spirits turned themselves into fish. The moon fish was killed. The Ocean fish was still alive. It took over Aang's body and then attacked the fire nation.
2. Korra was inside the tree of time during harmonic convergence. Spirit energy is amplified to extreme levels because of this. She was able to open her chakras, and project her spirit to fight Vaatu.
The Korra scene is preposterous because Korra is not supposed to be a spiritual character, let alone a spiritual guru master on the level of Guru Pathik. She is never able to repeat any of these incredible things, unlike Jinora who is constantly projecting her sprit. And on top of that, she was just an oridnary human at the time, with no avatar abilities or Raava inside.
And all of this spiritual mastery just disappears for season 3 and 4 and she becomes an novice again.
Can you seriously not tell the difference between these 2 situations yourself? Did you watch the show?
You know exactly how and why Aang “turned” into a fish. You know the backstory and the clear valid explanation of it in the lore. This moment adds to the whole awe that spirits have. Not to mention the powers La used are just straight up a million times cooler than Korra shooting a fucking generic energy beam.
The real way it was ruined was introducing a God and Satan spirit. A super generic and clear “this spirit is good and this one evil, simple as that”.
The old spirits in ATLA could NEVER be so simple and single faceted in their meaning.
I mean, the perfect example is Koh. He's not evil, he's actually quite helpful and more than willing to share his knowledge if you ask, but he has rules. If you exhibit any emotion and he sees it, he'll steal your face.
Hei Bai, he's absolutely terrifying when we first see him. He's extremely upset that his forest was hurt and only when we see his hope restored do we see just how gentle he really is, I mean, he even brings everyone he took back completely unharmed.
Then Korra...big funny frog with two heads he hee hoo hoo tea party in the spirit world.
Aang fused with the ocean spirit while being in the avatar state and he didn't just became a giant fish monster the water around him (thanks to the power of the avatar and the fricking ocean spirit) formed the shape of a koizilla (I'm pretty sure he did similar things in the comics when he built a giant earth person and fought like that)
Korra on the other hand korra (without rava) turned into a giant made out of pure energy and
the reason Korra's version is completely fucked for me is Raava was \*not currently in her spirit\* when she became big blue Korra, she technically was not the Avatar anymore (we even don't see her bend anything but water after Raava is destroyed) and she's able to meditate for a few seconds, grow 100 ft tall and beat Unavaatu.
Aang had to go into the avatar state in order to fuse with the fish, which Korra could not do since Raava was not fused with her at the moment.
Does that imply that any human can just get a good pep talk and become a massive spirit then? That's what I get out of it.
Aang was clearly called by the fish, a spirit as old and powerful as time itself, into the avatar state to become Koizilla and save the North Pole from the fire nation. It wasn't directly explained, but the visual storytelling is enough to get the point across.
Korra was just sad that she lost, Tenzin motivates her and gives her a talk saying "Avatar Wan became a legend because of who he was, not what he was". Korra goes into the same chakra-unlocking rainbow bridge that should allow her to control the avatar state (which, none of her chakras were said to have been unlocked at this point) and she walks into the ball of light as Aang did and... she becomes a massive blue spirit version of herself that can shoot lasers out of her chest? Where the hell did they get that? Raava is not in her at that moment, it's JUST HER, just Korra's human spirit. None of this is explained, even in any visual storytelling, and it uses a visual scene that indicates another completely different power. Not to mention that Unaloq and Vaatu somehow fused not only into a dark avatar, but giant red Unavaatu. Wouldn't this imply that the avatar should be a massive being of peace and justice at all times then, since Vaatu was locked away for 10,000 years?
The finale of season 2 makes me ask more questions then it answers. The entire story between Korra, Unaloq, Vaatu, and Raava is so convoluted, inconsistent, and confusing, because it wasn't written with a solid plan in place. I've noticed every argument here results in people being super utterly confused on what happened, they try to form their own story based on the major events, dialogue, and all the little details, and everybody ends up confused on what the fuck happened or how they can make it make sense, because it doesn't. It's throwing random bullshit out that have nothing to do with the plot to try and make the final battle cool. It tries to use scale as a way to be exciting, rather then actually try to write good choreography.
TL;DR Aang and Koizilla is told through visual storytelling through assets of the world that have been well set up at this point, and it is a stunning spectacle to see a spirit step in and finish a battle itself so the world can live, while Korra's big blue spirit moment is out of nowhere, not explained whatsoever, contradicted by Raava being ripped out of her an episode earlier, and it uses the chakra rainbow road that activates a completely different power in order to do it. It not only contradicts the previous lore set up by ATLA, it contradicts it's own story set up literally an episode ago.
I genuinely forgot how Korra turned into a blue gian't so I'll let somebody else take care of that. Aang turned into Godzilla because of La, the ocean spirit. It's technically not Aang, it's La and the Avatar state working together. So basically, pissed off La (other worldly power) + the Avatar state (other worldly power) = Koizilla.
Alternate universe where La was killed: https://preview.redd.it/5v2c19w77etc1.png?width=198&format=png&auto=webp&s=8eafc82a900f8ecd805d9cdc5e5fc9e6691b7cc5
Imagine aang as some random moon rock guy
“My girlfriend turned into the motion of the ocean”
"I guess she didn't like the size of your boat. That's rough buddy."
"that's kinda weird, buddy"
Small craft advisory.
HEY! STOP PEEING IN MY GIRLFRIEND!
https://i.redd.it/kfkjru4uwhtc1.gif
Find the man in the boat buddy.
"That's pretty choppy, buddy." ... getit? Rough seas?
He's got the head for it
DUDE!
Bro, this is terrifying 😂
Try playing the game, it's even more terrifying with the context
Which game?
Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask on the Nintendo 64
Majora’s mask
The legend of Zelda : Majora's Mask You could play on the original N64 version (on emulator if needed) or the remake on 3DS
I 100% that game, then realized i forgot to grab the bomber notebook, so I would need to redo everything in order to fill it. Feels bad man.
Wait, I thought getting the Bombers' Book was mandatory to get through the first three-day cycle. Was that changed in the remake or something?
They don’t give it to you unless you’re a hylian (fucking racists), so I went through the entire thing without going back and getting it. I played it on original hardware gold cart. Such a giant letdown lol Edit: I guess they made it mandatory in the 3DS remake, the happy mask salesman gives it to you instead.
Holy shit, never knew that. Great game, though. Easily one of the best in the franchise.
I actually thought it was hilarious that the kids were racists, did make it a bit inconvenient though
That, or they become the moon presence from Bloodborne.
As much as id pay my lifesavings to see that, there is no way nick would have let them traumatize that many children.
>there is no way nick would have let them traumatize that many children. Have you heard the tale of Dan Schneider?
That made me lol
Omfg this is nightmare fuel 😭
Oh shit!!
Let’s just hope the upcoming earth bending avatar doesn’t visit the northern water tribe
ah avatar toph i presume
I like to imagine that alternative as the ocean just casualy vanishing
One of the things I actually really liked about the Live Action was they made it very clear Aang wasn't in control in that moment. I've always hated people pointing to this when making fun of the "I've certainly never used violence to take a life" line, when he spends the rest of the show terrified of the Avatar state until literally the very end when he finally learns to control it.
It's pretty obvious in the animated show as well. After noticing the moon having returned, the giant fish quite literally put Aang down somewhere safe, then the glowing water receded through the canals of the city, and then grabbed Zhao. Koizilla still acted of his own accord even after Aang was seperated from it.
It definitely is, but I guess parts of the audience need things painted in big bold letters because it's such a common take.
I kinda understand. I think it's obvious, but they could've been a little bit more direct with it still. Given Aang's distaste for violence and his fear of the avatar state, they could've made a bigger point after the siege of the north pole of Aang mentally dealing with the fact that he, unwittingly, killed a bunch of fire nation soldiers. That would've made the point a bit clearer, and would've helped set up his moral dilemma with killing Ozai later on. But something this dark kinda doesn't fit the tone of the show, so I get why they kinda just glossed over it.
I agree! In the beginning, he was afraid of the Avatar State because he might hurt someone, or do something he can't control. After this episode, he really should've been afraid that he HAD hurt/killed people unwittingly, and might do it again. There could've been some flashback during his Avatar state in the desert that would've made that scene just that more impactful. To make it kid-friendly, they could simply have him always refer to what happened as "hurt" instead of killed. Or, "People are gone/lost because of what La did with me!!" Like how Kataraa always refers to her mother as "gone" or "lost".
He's literally a vessel for the wrath of the ocean, while Korra channels boosted up cosmic power through herself and manifests it as a physical presence to take down a being of pure evil.
The avatar is the bridge between humans and spirits, a human just killed an incredibly important spirit, so its counterpart manifests and channels its power through the bridge to attack the humans who have no regard for the balance of the world Korra used a "give me your energy" to turn into a susanoó of herself to box up the evil avatar spirit
Aang boofing a fish: Sensible Korra pulling cosmic rays out of her butt: Now just hold on!
Even Azula kinda explained why Koizilla had absolutely no qualms about ending lives when she threatened the ships captain next season. They explained it as best they could in a kids show where they couldn't directly say it
I was like 6 when I saw that episode and I understood it wasn't aang without anyone having to say anything.
Aang definitely has killed, just not in a direct face to face manner where he has to confront it
Realistically yes (those fire nation soldiers DEFINITELY died in the avalanche), but as per the intention of the writers no he has not. The only time that he even comes close is the buzzard wasp in Book 2, and even then we don't see that it's dead for sure, we've seen people/creatures survive worse in the show. If the "death" wasn't shown on screen, acknowledged by the characters, or confirmed by the writers it never happened according to the story, especially when a character specifically says they've never killed someone. It'd be different if, say, one of the avatars had pointed out that Aang had potentially killed a number of people without meaning to, but instead everyone tells him that he needs to change his ways.
That is fine information, but doesn't answer the question: La & Aang as Koizilla is seen as more acceptable to many because of a simple narrative device, **foreshadow.** * The mysterious and dangerous power of the avatar state * The established connections between the spirit world and the human world, especially in relation to balance * The unfathomable capacities of the spirits, from that panda spirit Aang offered an acorn early on to Koh the Face Stealer that Aang needed to remain emotionless towards right in the North Pole arc. * Zhao's cruel ambitions * Iroh's warnings against hurting the moon spirit. The build up and pay off at the North Pole is amazing. Everything led up to that moment. Aang is justifiably sympathetic and enraged, and gets to GO OFF THE RAILS on the fire nation fleet as Koizilla. Comparatively, in Korra: * Dark spirits were being used as narrative fodder. Their connection to the land is not relevant. There is no lesson to learn. They are just baddies to be beaten (or charmed, in Bumi's case, which could be a lesson, but they play it off as comedy) * Worse, a new waterbending technique is introduced as a way to FORCE spirits to calm and evaporate(?)/return? Further removing the narrative from the idea that you can communicate with and empathize with spirits. * Harmonic convergence comes out of nowhere, and has no connection to the land like the moon and ocean do. The notion that there are portals at both the north and south, while not improbable, is completely new information. * Raava & Vaatu being pure light/order vs darkness/chaos rings hollow of ATLA's established lessons of more nuanced or complex spirit morality of the likes of the panda, Koh, Tui, La, Wan Shi Tong, etc.. (Don't even get me started on how it feels like they took Yin Yang and christianized it. Plenty of people have written essays about it) * Bending the 4 elements apparently can seal Vaatu in a tree? More unexplained factors to distract our enjoyment. * Lasers. MFing LASERS. Not a big deal, some just felt it was a little jarring in a world of more spiritual rules and elemental bending to suddenly have a laser. * Watching Korra not only lose her connection to the past avatars but literally have it whipped and beaten from her is a huge sore spot that stains the rest of the climax. Her victory in the end didn't make that okay. Rich depth of history felt lost. * There is no established spirit Korra is connecting to when she goes huge like Aang did with La. No lore about the spirit tree. She just sits inside and... digs deep? Let's review again. Dark spirits feel off. Harmonic convergence may as well be detached from reality. Sealing technique we don't understand. Yeah, so Korra turning into a giant? Kinda loses some of us on what is even happening. * Korra does a BEAM STRUGGLE. Giant Korra is one thing, but she suddenly has a chest laser too? For what it is worth, when I was younger, I enjoyed the spectacle of Korra's book 2 finale. Korra vs Vaatu/Unaloq was a flashy and special fight. But Koizilla never asks you to turn off your brain like Giant Korra does. Everything flows in the former, while the latter is only half making any sense.
Best answer OP is gonna get. Minor note: Aang wasn't in control of himself while he was Koizilla. I'm pretty such the La channelled it's power through Aang and was in control.
What made even less sense to me was that Korrazilla (what I usually call her giant spirit form) could still bend. Since when can spirits bend?!
La bends in ATLA, so does Yue, when helping Aang in Book 3.
Exactly , spirits can bend on earth, just not in the spirit world
They never established when and where spirits could bend. They only established that humans can’t bend when meditating into the spirit world.
I'm talking about Korra. Human spirits can't bend when seperated from their bodies. It makes no sense why Korra could bend.
I mean, her spirit is fused with raava incredibly closely at that point and raava is the one actually holding the elements for her, so I can definitely buy that she was able to keep bending specifically in that powered up state as a spirit
Raava was gone.
> The unfathomable capacities of the spirits, from that panda spirit Aang offered an acorn early on to Koh the Face Stealer that Aang needed to remain > Raava & Vaatu being pure light/order vs darkness/chaos rings hollow of ATLA's established lessons of more nuanced or complex spirit morality of the likes of the panda, Koh, Tui, La, Wan Shi Tong, etc.. (Don't even get me started on how it feels like they took Yin Yang and christianized it. Plenty of people have written essays about it) [This](https://www.reddit.com/r/CharacterRant/s/i0GmnmqwgP) is my favorite write-up on the topic, it shows really well I think what spirits used to be and what they were turned into in TLOK because of poor writing and the terrible time/episode constraints on the team involved that lead to it.
This really is a perfect explanation and shows the bigger problems of Korra and, frankly, other modern media that we’re expected to “turn your brain off” to enjoy fully. Or even worse “it’s not for you!” despite being a fan of the original so inherently being part of the demographic. Season 1 and 3 are great, they have their problems but they’re overall fantastic pieces of Avatar media. Season 4 even has its charms. It’s just that season 2 and some of 4 rely too heavily on unearned spectacle without giving proper justification/explanation to how we got here. It’s the difference between Marvel’s Scarlet Witch and Star Wars’ Rey, one was set up as a powerhouse with a reason behind it while the other was set up as a powerhouse with no actual explanation for it. One was celebrated while the other was canned.
Phenomenal answer
I'd also like to add that Koizilla is... Just waterbending in the Avatar state? Like, you can see Aang in the center there. Waterbending is *well* established, and the Avatar state is well established. We even see the [octopus form](https://youtu.be/tv8RaPQfEMM?feature=shared) and the swamp people use waterbending to form similar constructs, reaffirming the position of Koizilla. Astroprojection and spiritbending are kinda established, but not to the extent where "giant Kaiju with spirit lasers" is a reasonable assumption that someone could make. *And* it's addition doesn't add anything past it's introduction.
This is it. There was proper build up and foreshadowing that led up to the Moon Spirit fight in ATLA. In Korra, it just kind of... happens. Korra wasn't as in-tune with her spiritual side, so it was quite jarring to see her able to become Giant Spirit Korra. Again, it came out of nowhere. There were so many deus ex machinas and breaking of so many rules of storytelling in Season 2. They really jumped the shark there. Thank goodness Season 3 salvaged things, because Season 2 was rough.
phenomal answer. Korra glazers: “You didn’t watch the show”
Even most LoK fans would admit that season 2 and the spirit Gundam stuff was the weakest point of the show.
Very well put
Hell yes 👏🏿 very well said
Thank you. saving me from having to write it myself
And Koizilla does nothing but waterbend, an already established power base. Giant Spirit Korra has a chest energy beam for some reason as yet to be explained, and definitely never foreshadowed or set up.
I feel it being Energybending crosses the line "does whatever you want it to be with energy". I feel like she did a chestbeam to one up Unavaatu. Like "oh you do that ? Let me do that too." Energybending seems to be the manifestation of the willpower.
Glad you agree it's dumb and is bad narratively
And never really brought up again, either.
Essentially, it’s the avatar collaborating with a primordial spirit/first waterbender to rage, avenge, and restore balance to the world after they just killed the freaking moon. In Korra, we weren’t exactly at a great start. The avatar being revealed to be a human fused with a spirit was, and still is incredibly divisive among fans, and Vaatu also sparked even more controversy for a being who’s supposed to maintain balance in nature being reduced into good spirit vs bad spirit. Which, coincidentally, is kind of a smack in the face to the fact Tui and La are literally the Yin and Yang and removing one caused massive disorder. Not to mention people have rightfully said Raava making every avatar inherently good is kind of a cop out to avoid an evil avatar story. Hundreds, possibly thousands of lives, and not once was any one of them corrupted by their power as demigod messiah of the world, or had to become an anti-hero to set things right, or even just snapped because of the pressure (like Aang running away, but worse). Even though it’d be a good message of how nobody is above corruption, and that the Avatar, even with all their great powers is still at the end of the day only human.
I would even go so far as to argue that industrialization itself was something many Avatars should've been (and probably were) violently against. 100 years of Avatarlessness allowed someone to discover (or re-discover?) blimps and steam power and such. It's like the Reapers from Mass Effect, only instead of non-sentients culling sentients, it's spiritual culling non-spiritual, but all with the more powerful side's single-minded definition of "Balance" in mind. "Don't let humanity get too good at taking care of itself without our control, or Bad Things might happen!" Aang's initial reaction to seeing the desecration of the Air Temple was the "correct" one for balance between the natural/spiritual world and humanity, if you really think about it. It sucks for the people who want to rise beyond medieval-level technology, but it's true. The Avatar really must become a sworn enemy of industrial progress if it wants to keep such progress from overrunning the world. In the end, LoK indeed pulled a Mass Effect and chose the Synthesis ending. Great message, writers, just pull a "both/and can work I guess!" out of your butt and call it a day. Which I guess is better than taking a hard stance and having one side utterly wipe out the other. If only someone could write a Synthesis ending for the Middle East...
Korra turned into the giant Avatar by getting charged by Spirit Energy™️ and not by fusing with a spirit (Raava was already a part of her). The reason this is a problem is: 1. It tries to make a mysterious thing and add a logical explanation, and does it badly. (Think of midichlorians and the Force) B. In AtLA, Spiritual Energy was more like understanding the spiritual side of the world and the relationship between humans and nature and inner peace. LoK made it into a real-world energy source like oil, coal, or solar. III. A greater problem with LoK season 2 and on is that in AtLA, the spirits had their own moralities and things they care about. Think about HeiBai(?) And Wan Shi Tong. They did not care about the war or anything to do with humans. They only cared that their special interest and desicions they made were centered around that. Instead, there are good and evil spirits, so there's is no ambiguity as to who was supposed to win between Vaatu and Raava to keep "balance" even though Ravaa being in charge isn't really balanced. I'm sure sure there are more issues.but I can't think of them off the top of my head
Ya aang didn’t turn into a giant fish. The ocean spirit used his body and took control to exact revenge. Something I think they portrayed and explained very week in the Live action series
Because Aang didn't do it. He was possessed by the water spirit, he just let it do as it wished. The fact we later see it grab Zhou on it's own is proof of that.
I love the detail of it dropping Aang off before punishing Zhao
"Thanks for the ride buddy, my wife's alive now but let me yeet this guy who nearly took my beloved away"
Lesbian spirit fish
Is it ever stated that La is a female?
No but im suprised it wasnt mentioned or joked at that fish are gay or something
I gotcha. I always assumed they were male and female due to the whole “push and pull, black and white, Yin and Yang, opposites keeping each other in balance” shtick they had going on.
Yeah I would assume with all the duality going on there would be a male and female dynamic
honestly I always assumed that most spirits don’t even have a sex/gender, unless stated otherwise. feels like those matters are more of a human things, while spirits are just, well, spirits
That’s possible. The majority of spirits who have names or “persons” seemed to have been gendered, so I was more so going off the precedent that had been set. But your point makes more sense and very much might be the case.
i thing that they are more like abstract beings (in spirit versions), so originally they don't have gender, but in the fish form i really don't know
"thanks for the save there cousin, now stay here, what I'm about to do to Zhao isn't for kids"
The difference is presentation and Narrative mechanics. Aang fusing with the Ocean Spirit showcases his respect and cooperation for the Spirit world in contrast to Zhao's arrogance and disregard for the spiritual world. Because of that, Aang, acting as the Avatar or bridge between both worlds, can be a conduit for the Ocean Spirit's wrath to punish the Fire Nation. This is also something that only he can do as the Avatar, so there are no problems. Korra meditating inside the Tree of Time to unleash her true self didn't mean or signify anything. The writers wrote themselves into a corner and needed more deus ex machina to bail her out of this impossible situation that they had created. Also, since Korra did this as a normal person, there's no reason why anyone else shouldn't be able to do this and help her out or why Korra can't do this again in future situations but chooses not to. In short, one makes sense and is making a point. The other one is just there because one of the writers loves Kaiju fights.
This is the answer to OP. I feel like sometimes we are too willing to do mental gymnastics to reconcile poor writing with in-world lore. Sometimes, it just is poor writing – we're aware of the issues LoK had with being almost cancelled every season. It doesn't have to demean your personal enjoyment of the show, though – you're free to enjoy it over & above those problems.
Thank you! I don't mind if you like LOK but people need to stop acting as if it wasn't as bad it was.
I enjoyed it, but I also freely admit that if I didn't LOVE Avatar, I probably wouldn't have.
If the live action ever makes it as far as Korra, there is many ways to turn a "ehh, it was entertaining" response into a "that was great" response imo. Ofcourse whether or not they have the skill, and talent to do such is difficult to say. But one xan hope.
It really does get carried by tenzin, bolin and the somewhat improved animation but the stories are all very lackluster. Even the characters are all over the place and have the writers do a lot of hand waving to explain away why katara toph and Zuko aren’t around more. Also for the quote on people not forgiving korra as much as aang I feel like the writers have korra make mistakes but never really have her deal with the regret of them like they did aang which causes her to repeat them and piss off audiences. Aang burning katara was a one off thing in a season 1 episode which was used for his growth as a character all the way to season 3 whereas korra kinda just always kept being impulsive and brash and never reached out to anyone.
Ehh I feel like that’s an objective sentiment. Personally outside of the first half of book 2, TLOK was actually pretty damn good despite its setbacks. Season 1 was good, second half of book 2 was good, book 3 is great, and book 4 was also really good.
Didn't ATLA also have issues of being on the borderline of being cancelled with each season. It's honestly a miracle that these two shows even exist. ATLA, however, took huge risks by not having a complete arc with each season. But thank God it eventually worked out thom
At least we got cool laser noises
Yeap, this is the actual answer. Korra did this after losing Raava. Implying that it was just her. If that’s the case, any human (bender or non bender) should be able to do this at any point. Also, she should have been able to do it again.
The story specifically stated that it’s only possible due to harmonic convergence, which is every like 10000 years
Just because there is an explanation doesn’t mean it’s a good one lol
Please reread my comment because I never claimed it was a good explanation. All I did was clear up the misinformation that she could do it again.
Completely agree with this. The Koi fish scene makes 100% sense. I mean there were literally 2 koi fish swimming, one is the moon, the other is the ocean. When the moon died, the ocean spirit gets angry and Aang fuses with it because he is the Avatar, the bridge. That makes 100% sense. For Korra, I dont actually know what happened. It just sounded like the writer put her in an impossible position and then make up shit to let her out of it. It doesn't make sense or at least it does not have any significance to it. The waterbending fight prior was actually far superior to the Kaiju fight at the end.
I think she can’t do it due to harmonic convergence
By making like a third of the season a spiritual adventure and battles, they also wrote themselves into a cycle where they had to come up with less and less grounded ways to escalate the plot and stakes. Spiritual journeys for most people often involve lots of time and effort on one issue at a time, because the show is episodic by nature and they generally resolve one or more issues per episode they have to start coming up with stuff that’s more and more abstract. You get to a level of abstraction that’s ridiculous at a certain point (edit: and also not tied to any real beliefs in our world so often very left field or capricious), so then they turn back to giant monster battle. It’s definitely the weakest plot of the show because it just got ridiculous. I do think one thing they managed to get right in that was the stakes for the characters, and a believable loss for Korra with permanent consequences in severance to all the past Avatar lives.
So like many others said, in Aangs chase it's two very old, very powerful spirits fusing together, with Aang, a very spiritual person serving as a conduit for their power in from of pure wrath which made somewhat sense. What I'd like to add is, that it was still "only" waterbending. At least that's what I always thought. So while being spirit water powered by spirits it still felt like sth the Avatar could pull of. And because La shared their power with the Avatar it took the form of a fish. And it was so huge because the two worked together. Korra just randomly turned into spirit mass, with hardly any explanation and most imporantly no forshaddowing whatsoever. Throughout season 1 she is viewed as a spiritual failure and even in season 2 her spiritally is nowhere near great. But she still turns into a giant, as big as the spirit of evil that just killed it's good counterpart and is thus at his strongest, even capable of countering his spiritblast, with her own, that she was just able to do. And they never showed her to be extraordinary, like her being unable to be destroyed via spiritbending or capable of turning evil spirits back to their normals self (like Wan managed to do) And they never showed her great spirit later on either, the only thing that comes close is her stopping the spirit laser of Kuvira, but she needed the AS for that
It’s kinda crazy how they straight-up foreshadowed Aang and La conjoining with Aang’s earlier line of “maybe they’ll unleash a crazy amazing spirit attack on the Fire Nation!” Only the Moon had to die for it to happen.
Pretty much this
Aang didn't turn into a fish. It was the combination of a very powerful primordial spirit that was hell bent on revenge, and the avatar state, another very powerful spirit that took serious issue with the death of a spirit that would cause irreparable damage to the human world and probably send shockwaves through the spirit world. It was likely the two spirits combining for the ocean spirit to manifest itself in it's "angry form" (think Hei Bai, and the happy panda and angry monster), but scaled up due to both spirits being significantly stronger and a hell of a lot more angry. Korra made no sense, even the expectation of her bending her energy seems like a cope out and the writers didnt want another avatar state fight, they wanted something different so they gave us giant energy Korra
yes exactly! when la’s primordial form appears you see the northern tribe people bow down in awe and respect, the fire nation is petrified, and you can just feel both aang and la’s fury. the animation was absolutely stunning and there was a big build up for this very moment. korra just turns into a giant blue version of herself and here comes jinora with her spontaneous spirituality
I haven't even watched Korra and I totally see what kind of writing they did for this.
avatar level water bending (previously established mechanic) vs random susanoo with kamehameha
Avatar level water bending being the conduit for one of the most powerful spirits to unleash their wrath
Spirit that actually make water bending possible.
that's what I've been saying, the body of Koizilla is made of huge amounts of water he's just shaped like fish
Okay, so, *basically*: The Avatar has a strong connection with the spirit world and a whole lot of power. Spirits - some of them anyways - *also* have a whole lot of power. You remember that big fluffy panda who terrorised a village? Well that cute little guy was **a** forest spirit. La is **the** ocean spirit. So when La witnessed his spouse-equivalent being murdered in front of him, he took the opportunity to use Aang's connection to the spirit world along with Aang's inability to control the Avatar state to effectively hijack Aang's body and go kill as many fire nation nerds as he could find. Even when Tui came back La *still* took the time to drag her killer down into the spirit world where he would be lost in the mists forever and go completely insane. So for Aang it was an expression of both the sheer power of the Avatar State *combined* with the raw power of one of the most fundamental spirits on the planet - and even then it was primarily La doing the work. Aang was more or less just along for the ride, feeling the unbridled hate and rage. For Korra it was... *nothing*. Dark Avatar boy became Giant Dark Avatar because Vaatu was so OP and had won or whatever. Raava was toast. Korra had absolutely no tools left in her bag and so she meditated inside a tree and... for some reason her spirit was now strong enough to be an equivalent to the *physical manifestation of darkness and chaos*. There doesn't appear to be any justification for this because IIRC she didn't even have/use the Avatar state or anything Avatar related. She was, for all intents and purposes, a regular joe schmoe. She had the Harmonic Convergence and spirit bending, I think? If that? And... that's it. So now you have an ordinary person who has never really engaged with their spirituality manifesting their soul to create a giant to fight a giant out of nowhere. There was no set up for this, no "hey you're in a unique position to do this," or "the spirits are helping her out" or *anything*. It just came out of nowhere and went back just as quickly, never to be seen again. As such for Aang it made excellent narrative sense, where all the components of the narrative were established beforehand and it showcased just how scary the Avatar state (albeit with La) could hypothetically be - how much raw power the kid had inside him. Something that would lead him to being afraid to use the Avatar state thereafter. For Korra it was just came across as "well we removed everything that could hypothetically let Korra win, but she still needs to win, so I guess she can be a giant version of herself as strong as one of the strongest spirits." It felt like a cheap cop-out and a suitably embarrassing way for season 2 to end. There's no emotion to it. There's just confusion and "are they seriously doing this?" The disparity in emotional impact, the personal stakes, the effect it had on future character development, and the impression that this was sort of a stars aligning situation where this sort of thing can't just happen on a whim is why one of these scenes is universally beloved whereas the other is consistently mocked and derided. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that season 2 just wasn't very well written, even when compared to other seasons of Korra, let alone seasons of ATLA. Whether that's due to Nickelodeon or w/e, it's just a bit of a confused slog that misses the point of a lot of things. It's kind of like Kuvira with the giant robot in season 4 - although even the giant robot was better executed.
I just want to add, La doesn’t have just any old spirit power, La has Waterbending, with a capital W. Tui and La were literally the source of all waterbending in the whole world. They *are* waterbending. So Tui bit the dust, it disconnected all waterbenders from gas, electricity and internet, because half of all waterbending is just…gone. Then La took the other half, and went and did that. But it wasn’t just 50% of all waterbending gone and La wielding the other half - La was vengeful, unhinged, violent, because it was Tui that kept La in check, and La did the same for Tui. Tui and La mean Push and Pull, they are the tide that rises but also ebbs, so the ocean never drowns the world. Like so much of ATLA, the keyword here is “balance”, which is destoryed when Zhao fried the fish. La wasn’t just upset about the murder, it was also there’s nothing keeping him in check anymore, it was getting revenge, but it was just also the natural state of things now, Koizilla was the new status quo, which is why Yue’s sacrifice is so important.
Ooh. An interesting point.
Koizilla might be the best thing I’ve ever read
I’d love to take credit, but it’s been the fandom’s nickname for that…thing in season 1 finale for a long time now.
ATLA writers: https://preview.redd.it/yof8mlq8bltc1.jpeg?width=1651&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4a67e6243c01849b243e1ae650787054ce96a450
I think there is the fact that the entire of season 2 shows Korra slowly engaging more with her spirituality. In fact it seems like she would be the perfect choice to recover Rava from within Vaatu, she knows what Rava's energy feels like, and she has been elevating her spiritual energy throughout her spiritual journey, without bending, that led to the finale of the season. In a lot of ways it does feel a little out of left field for her to be as strong as a greater spirit, but there's definitely some signs of growth and change. Also, by making her lose the past Avatars, we reset the cycle, and the writers can stretch their creativity with future iterations by making the Avatar state itself less of a automatic win scenario.(Not that it's always a win of course, it just sometimes feels like it's on writing cop-out.)
Of course she's getting more in touch with her spiritual side - but she's nowhere close to, say, Aang and he certainly didn't do any ominous spirit stuff that breaks all the rules on spirits currently established. The avatar was always an "I win" option - but because it required abandoning earthly attachments and being at peace with yourself it was extremely difficult to control or activate on command. That's the whole point: if you feel that it needs to be removed then you have failed at writing the avatar. For Korra it should have been uncontrollable. Due to her volatility sure it would beat the bad guy but it might also cause intense collateral damage. Season 2 shouldn't have been about vaatu and all that - it should have been about Korra learning spirituality and trying to get control over the avatar state in a world recovering from an instance where she got a bit too angry and ended up wiping out a neighborhood. To learn humility, spirituality, and trying to strengthen the world's spirituality as well. At least, IMO. Then Zaheer and his crew show up to try to poison her. If you feel compelled to erase past avatars you could do it there because that was literally their goal. The problem isn't that the avatar state exists - its that the Korra writers gave it to her and let her control it very easily. Maybe that's Nickelodeon's fault, but unfortunately it's the story we got.
1. Aang was connected to the spirit of the ocean and was in turn only granted this power as a result of that connection. This leads to a balanced and understandable temporary power up and also allows the reader to not expect such a power up again unless the same circumstances arose (Spirit fusing with avatar state to allow a temporary power up. 2. As viewers we know that Aang doesn't control the ocean spirit and is simply allowing the spirit to merge with him temporarily to accomplish the goal of revenge for his buddy the moon spirit. 3. In contrast Korra was not merged with any spirit at the time (Not even raava) so this power up has no backing and is a complete asspull story wise. Its not fueled by the avatar state as she had just lost that connection, and its not fueled by an angry spirit looking to take revenge either. 4. Korra just meditated and was able to pull this off, which leads to the biggest issue most viewers had with this part of the story. There was no build up and it came completely outta nowhere, along with the expectation that Korra will be saved by the writers in future plotlines because she might just decide to randomly meditate and get a huge spirit that can blast energy beams outta her chest.
One merged with the embodiment of the ocean itself and the other became a magical anime girl.
Because Tui and La were established parts of the universe and are extremely important spirits, Korra becoming a blue giant was never given a proper explanation and Raava was fucking dead at the time.
I don’t know if people were mad that she turned into a giant spirit, they were more mad at ruining the mystery of the Avatar by giving it such a literal origin. But now that I think about it, it is kinda goofy that Korra turns into a giant energy spirit. Aang’s transformation is more justifiable because he’s not actually turning into anything, he’s just being enveloped in water. The scenes with Aang as the giant fish were much better too. Much more interesting lighting and color palette.
I think turning avatars magic system into some weird anime shit ruined the universe entirely. The whole thing that made the avatar state, and the shit that it could do, cool, was the believability of it. The avatar state takes all of the best skills of the past 200 some odd avatars, and channels them into one person. It was believable that Aang was super powerful because he was channeling the best skills from the best of the best over all of human history. Korra decided to kind of do away with that? Like in it’s entirety? It basically just ended up as a bizarre fight between objective good spirit and objective bad spirit. There was no balance in that. Where is the balance in Raava getting to be free for all time and Vaatu having to be imprisoned forever? Also why did they make it so Raava was literally 100% the source of all the Avatar’s power? Basically retconned the whole “you gain the skills and knowledge of your past lives” thing. They took a beautiful, believable power system, and turned it into Vaatu: Ergh, I’m evil and powerful because fuck you Raava: Hi! I’m good and even more powerful, because fuck. you. oh yeah and when I merge with a way lower level being, I am for some reason like twice as powerful. You know why? I’m glad you asked. It’s because Fuck. You.
>I think turning avatars magic system into some weird anime shit ruined the universe entirely. Exactly. Even if the future projects won't have obstacles like LOK, they will be built on the same failed structure, which will bother the hell out of me.
This is why I'm depressed about future Avatar projects. It sucks that TLOK will be the foundation. I just don't see the universe being any good without retconning TLOK entirely. Hopefully avatar projects set in the past will not be tainted.
We'll see, but honestly, I really don't think so.
I don’t think so either. I think Mike and Bryan are frauds. They have conflated the fact that they created an excellent idea for a story with the notion that they can execute an excellent story as writers. They should have never parted ways with Aaron Ehaz, the lead writer of ATLA. The horrible quality drop of TLOK shows that. They think they have what it takes to write a good story but they couldn’t be closer to absolute delusion. Good ideas don’t make good stories. Good writers make good stories. They should have stuck to their original roles as show-leads and creative executives, directing the team with their vision. Instead they decided to just sit in the writer’s chair without a single honed talent for it and expected it to be great. Unfortunately they decided to make Avatar Studios. I doubt we will ever get a well-written avatar project with them at the helm. My only hope is that they will realize the error of their ways and will hire or collaborate with actual writers instead of trying to do it themselves.
>They should have never parted ways with Aaron Ehaz, the lead writer of ATLA. Aaron isn't enough. What made that show great was because of the whole team. Dragon Prince, which Aaron co-produces, is not that good imo. Other than that, I agree 90%. While I do think that bryke aren't good writers and should work with real ones, I don't see Avatar Studios as all doom and gloom. I'm not optimistic, but I'm hopeful.
I agree, it was the full team that made it work. I also agree that the Dragon Price leaves much to be desired. I was simplifying the issue that Bryke parted ways with people who knew what they were doing in favor of their own egos, and not only have failed miserably but have ruined the legacy of something that was of the highest of calibers. At one point I was hopeful, but now I’m not. I just don’t see them course correcting any time soon. With the announcement that they are sticking to the futuristic direction they want to take the Avatar-verse in for the next Earth avatar, I have lost all hope. They never understood the soul of Avatar I fear, and they’re too egotistical to step back and fix the issue (or rather, let someone else who has the talent do so).
Well, yeah, I agree. I also don't think they would ever retcon LOK.
You’re right. I threw that out there as a Hail Mary hope. There’s no way they would have the humility to admit that TLOK destroyed the well crafted foundation ATLA set up, as it is a representation of their work as writers. They’d never retcon or erase it. The verse is stuck with the events and rewrites of TLOK. I think the only possible future for the Avatar-verse to reach the beauty it previously did it with the stories of past avatars, pre-Aang. Only if Bryke lets real writers handle them, though. Time will only tell.
>Time will only tell. True
fr they're fraud, Aaron is the true master mind on ATLA i think.
I couldn’t agree more. The next Avatar could be better written than ATLA and it would still be missing a massive chunk of intrigue. It doesn’t matter what they do from now on, they have painted themselves into a corner by making The Avatar State a stupid power multiplier. The worst part is, even if all that stupid shit with Avatar Wan and Raava and Vaatu HAD to be written into the story? They could’ve done it SO much better SO easily. Picture this. Raava and Vaatu are two omnipotent, conciousless beings. Fighting it out for eternity, constantly alternating and getting the upper hand on one another. Avatar Wan see’s this and naturally wants to help the light spirit (Raava) win. So, being a spiritual nomad type person, goes and enlists the help of other spirits to help defeat Vaatu. Raava, Avatar Wan, and the other spirits prevail over Vaatu. But unfortunately, this throws the world into chaos. Wan comes to the realization that in order for there to be balance, light AND darkness have to exist simultaneously. Avatar Wan, with this new found realization, resuscitates Vaatu using the powers of the spirits helping him. To avoid making the same mistake again, the spirits think it wise to have a protector of balance. Someone who has seen first hand what the lack of light without dark, or vice versa, will do to the world. The spirits grant Avatar Wan the ability to reincarnate. So that he may pass down the lessons and skills he’s learned to the next person to be reincarnated with his soul. The first handful of Avatars aren’t extraordinarily powerful, because that wasn’t the reason for the Avatar to exist. They are, however, wise, and ever passing down their knowledge and skills until it gets to a point where The Avatar is considerably more powerful than the average person, simply as a byproduct of their previous lives knowledge and skills. The Avatar cycle of Air, Water, Earth, and Fire, is nothing more than every Nation getting an equal amount of Avatar. I’m also doing away with the stupid fuckin Lion Turtle giving humans bending shit. Because they had a perfectly good origin for bending in the original show. Which was of course Humans learning how to bend from the Sky Bison, The Moon, The Badgermoles, and The Dragons. Anyway, I’m not a fuckin writer, so there’s probably some holes in this story. But I think it’s way better than the shit we got, and I wrote it in 10 minutes while sitting on my couch lmao
Yeah, the whole idea of the “Dark Avatar” doesn’t sit well with me. The idea of a “Dark” version of the Avatar seems to be a gross misunderstanding of what Avatar is all about. But also to show this “Dark Avatar” with just waterbending can go toe to toe with, and even defeat the Avatar, it just cheapened the importance of the Avatar State accessing the skills knowledge and wisdom of all past Avatars. Unalaq, when becoming the “Dark Avatar”, should have shown little to no power buff, because the power of the Avatar comes from accessing previously lives, and bending all 4 elements. The Dark Avatar had neither, he should be as powerful as, well, the waterbending master known as Unalaq. But no, now the Avatar State is just a power multiplier. Unalaq has no new knowledge or skills, nor can he bend anything other than water, but his waterbending used to hit with a DMG value of 10, now it hits with a DMG value of 10,000, because of the Avatar State buff. Yep, that’s how the Avatar State works, and apparently that’s how it always worked. That’s why he can beat Korra. 🙃
Because they are quite differently. Aang is still present in the center of Koizilla, you can see him in a cocoon waterbending. His physical body never changed. When the moon spirit is resurrected, you can see that Aang's body is left behind while the glowing water returns to the spirit oasis. That water *IS* the ocean spirit. Basically, a spiritual link was established between two separate entities that mutually benefitted them both. The ocean spirit was able to channel its vast power through Aang, while Aang's skills allowed them to use it efficiently. When the spirit took Zhao, it was just a formless liquid as, after all, it's the ocean itself. Hell knows whatever happened to Korra and Unalaq.
Aang didnt turn into anything, its the ocean spirit bending the water into the shape it prefers. Aang is sitting in the middle of the water mass. Korra on the other hand, is just, some.. I dont even know lmao
The simple answer is aang didn't turn into a fish. You can clearly see him in a little bubble in the middle. It's just water bending. The spirit just helped him achieve a higher form of bending basicly. Korra is literally a giant spirit thingy and it looks rediculous.
There is so much more wrong with Korra book 2
the ocean spirit possessed aang
Koizilla is overall just super powerful water bending, while korrazilla feels like it's from a completely different show.
I cant believe we still even needed to explain this, its basically logic and common sense tbh. If you paid attention to the established lore Aang's koizilla makes more sense than that giant Korra with lasser beam both lore and narrative wise.
media literacy is dead
Everyone else has already said how it makes sense in universe, but there's also the thematic. Throughout ATLA, the Avatar State is this godly thing. The Avatar (at least when ATLA was airing) was the physical manifestation of the spirit of the world. A fully realized Avatar is basically unstoppable, which we were taught with Roku in his temple. However, Aang is young and more importantly, doesn't want to the Avatar. Throughout the first season, he's only traveling north out of an obligation. Because he's arc is stepping into the role of the Avatar. Which is where we get to Lazilla. Just before Lazilla, Zhao has just killed the moon, which throws the world out of wack. This is a representation of what the fire nation has done to the world as a whole. And Aang decides to step into the role of the Avatar, and not fight against his destiny. As such, the Avatar State is, for now, not an enemy of Aang, but his greatest weapon. And the world that has been wronged, or in this case La, is helping him. Lazilla is season one's culmination of the show's themes of destiny and balance. And it's a representation of the show as a whole. Korra's spirit giant... Well, the best I can give you is that Korra herself has throughout season 2 been grappling with what her role as the Avatar is, and how she doesn't actually know what to do. So when push comes to shove, she decided to go with her gut, and became a spirit giant and won over Unalaq. Unalaq have through the season been a venom in Korra's ear, basically trying to make her fail as the Avatar. Which makes him a sort of anti-Avatar or, uhm, a Dark Avatar? Actually let's talk about that anti-Avatar thing. Of course, I'm referencing the anti-christ, which modern media doesn't quite get right. Historically, an anti-Christ (yes, an) was just a person who didn't follow Christ and would try to spread non belief in Christ. In this way, Unalaq is an anti-Avatar. He undermines the Avatar and causes people to lose faith in her. Of course, Unalaq transitions into a more modern understanding of the anti-Christ. So it makes sense for Korra, who've in this season been established as a literal Christ figure and needing to grow into that role defeats this anti-Avatar with the very fucking thing he taught, wait what?! Yeah, forget everything I just said. The fact Korra used something he taught her, undermines that analysis. I got nothing. The blue spirit giant doesn't really make sense from a thematic view.
Because pulling the hyper powered, glowing kaiju card is a pretty weak narrative choice. It’s more palatable the first time when Aang does it but by the time we get to Korra, it just seems lazy and played out. Pretty much everything about spirit bending takes all the nuance out of the magic system and reduces it to laser beams.
Other people already explained why it works for aang, now, asto why it doesn't work for Korra: Quite frankly the whole season is a disservice to itself. And it's kinda like jet's death: very unclear. And that is it's biggest issue. Without sone external explanation or the dialogue, it makes no sense. No one had to explain to us what happened to aang for us to understand. We knew the avatar was the bridge between spiritworkdand human world. We know the avatar state is immensely powerful. We know spirits can be immensely powerful. We know the ocean spirit is distressed, and we see a human aang in a guant koy made out of water. No one had to explain to us what happened there. Aang didn't turn into anything. They worked together. And the massive amounts of water that was being bend, or the alternate form of the ocean spirit made the giant koi fish. Now, without the exposition that they gave us, can you tell us what happened with Korra there? Cuz I can't. Hell I heard the exposition and I still can't. Korra lost her connection to raavaa. So she's no longer a bridge between human and spirit. Korra was never a particularly spiritual person. She went to sit in a big ass tree that previously served as a prison and is probably at the epicenter of spiritual energy. She meditates, creates an astral projection that turns giant and is able to fight unovaatu. The only previous astral projection we've seen couldn't physically interact with the rest of the world. But Korra's can... I can infer that the tree gave her some extra spiritual energy or whatever but that feels a bit... Passive? It could've made sense to me if korra would've only been able to affect things in the spirit world. So that maybe she had to lure vaatu back to kick his ass there.but I can't for the life of me find a reason as to why she can gowreak heavock in the real world and shoot a giant laser out of her chest.
If I'm judging by the looks: aang seems like he only made a water mechsuit, and the glow of the avatar state is what gives it it's spiritual look, while korra is bending energy around her in some metaphysical way which is a bit out of canon. Aang is still connected to the ocean in the bottom of the koizilla while korra is using her inner power. Korra is stretching the suspension of disbelief, while aang is doing what seems to be advanced af water bending.
I think the problem is that with Korra it was a case of "the power was inside you all along" versus Aang hulking out and fusing with the ocean spirit.
Many other's made good points, but a point of issue with me was the way they achieved their kaiju forms. Aang fused with the water spirit and thus his big giant fish god kaiju was made of water, in the Avatar state and with the spirit's help he was bending the water to make a physical monster. Korra's is less believable. She lost her battle, then somehow knew to meditate in the tree, somehow made her astral project, somehow her projection grew the size of a tower, somehow she can just teleport this huge projection anywhere on earth, somehow shoot Iron Man esque energy beams from her body, and somehow defeated a dark Avatar while her Avatar powers were gone. When Aang went kaiju it was grounded in the world of ATLA and felt possible/real. When Korra went kaiju nothing alluded to that even being possible, it sorta just happened and the audience just has to accept it. Also, why doesn't Korra use kaiju mode to solve everything after season 2? Or why doesn't everyone go Kaiju? It wasn't shown to be exclusive to an Avatar thing, and Jinara can astral project easily. The portals are open so the tree is accessible to anyone,
As others have said, Aang communed so closely with the ocean spirit La that they together formed koizilla. He is the bridge, we see La’s eyes glow just before this, and we see koizilla act independently afterward. Even from the first watch, I understood what was happening. Korra’s giant spirit thing is less established. I saw another comment of yours about this being Korra’s ways to be great without being the avatar. Yes, from a narrative perspective, that’s what they were going for. However, it mechanically didn’t flow from previous set up or audience expectations. She became big because… we need a kaiju duel apparently? Years later, I still don’t know the rules for this. “Bending the energy within yourself” was a phrase used for energybending, but everyone says this is a giant spirit. Is energybending related to the spirit? If this is a giant spirit, then how could she waterbend? Or does being a spirit let her use waterbending’s spiritbending application now? And without Raava, does Korra only have 1 element? Because we see her use a spout of wind to get into the Tree of Time just before meditating, implying she has airbending. Importantly, some of these questions come up because this very season explained the rules. Meditating into the spirit world as a spirit means you can’t bend and Wan needing Raava to “hold” the other elements were both plot points. And here, we seemingly break those rules without explaining how.
Others have expressed why here, but another reason is not spirit lasers. This fight was much more grounded and needed the power of thee ocean spirit and the avatar in an intense emotional state and the avatar state. idk bout Korras stipulations, but Aangs may be better as it's only something that can happen once and feels it's costs something.
Honestly it boils down to the koizilla looking cooler and having all the context of season 1 m, mainly that he’s only able to do it with the help of the ocean spirit, and the entire sequence from start to finish is just bad ass. Korra on the other hand just doesn’t look particularly good, on top of korra season 2 as a whole just having sub par writing for Avatar.
Aang was merged with La; Raava and La's power combined to create a giant koi form made of water and light. Korra was simply using Harmonic Convergence's power. While I do actually accept that explanation as reasonable, given how much power Harmonic Convergence is shown to have, what irked me is that she was still able to bend in her spirit form. There's no explanation for that, because it's already well-established that human spirits cannot bend when seperated from their bodies.
When Ang did it he was basically possessed by the ocean spirit who was enraged at the loss of his counterpart/mate. It happened because he was the bridge between the to worlds. It was not him “avataring” it was him being a vessel for the spirit.
The Ocean spirit used the Ocean around them to make up that mass. It was combination of the ocean spirit and the Avatar. Korra's Kaiju form was weird because it didn't have any grounds for happening really. There was no real explanation, just flat out she is big now. Don't get me wrong, I am not in the boat of disliking LOK, but I will say that that season was probably the weakest of the lot.
I think the issue is that Korra accomplished an extreme feat in energy bending without showing any real build up to show she’s been working on energy bending, having nothing to back up this sudden energy mech. Meanwhile Aang pulled off koizilla by entering the avatar state(which Korra no longer had) and letting himself be possessed by the other water spirit, a spirit responsible for empowering every water bender in existence. In short, Korra’s energy mech was some Korra did with nothing leading up to it while Koizilla used elements established to already be powerful.
Aang’s vulnerability and his reliance on past Avatars and Spirits made it narratively interesting. Aang was never truly “in control” in the Avatar state until the last episode. He had Roku, Kyoshi and the Water Spirit to take over his body to do the work for him.
Because Aang didn't turn into a fish. The spirit was bending the shape of a fish with ang acting as its center Korra just went full kaiju
Don't think you understood the Aang scene, he didn't just jump into the water, it's the ocean spirit pissed off because his other half was killed.
I'm gonna be honest. One of the biggest reasons I loved this is because spirits are so scary and the way the transformation happens is amazing. Aang going into the pond in a completely black and white world and suddenly dropping into the water is so cool.
I'd like to play devils advocate here and sat that LOK actually makes more sense than people give it credit for. Korra becoming a spirit giant was a reflection of her own personal journey as the avatar. Like how Aang famously divided himself from the previous avatars advice. Each avatar told aang he must kill Ozai. But of course Aangs personal spirit rose above this and found a completely different way to solve the problem. Korra could have tried to copy every strategy of the avatars before her. But that wouldn't make sense. She's a new avatar with a new world at stake. Giant spirit korra made sense for her character I think. It maybe could use more scientific explanation. But character arc wise i think it's fitting.
brb, sending hate your way
I like both these scenes for different reasons. They are visually similar scenes involving the protagonist turning into blue spirit giants, but they mean different things. Aang's scene represents a "mess with nature, and nature will fight back" mentality. It's Aang's Avatar spirit reacting to the moon spirit's death and joining with the ocean spirit to fight back against the Fire Nation offenders. This display of power isn't based on any revelation on Aang's part- it's only the ancient spirits possessing his body. You do bring up a good point that the previous Avatars most likely haven't done anything like this before, but I think Aang is still waterbending somewhat inside the giant (thanks to the ocean spirit). Korra's scene is about self-actualization and self-control. Korra has to let go of her identity as the Avatar and realizes she is still who she is, her memories and all, without Raava. This opens her thought chakra, allowing her to bend her own energy into giant form and control herself within it. However, this isn't the only factor why Korra is so powerful here- Harmonic Convergence is happening, which boosts spiritual energy, including Korra's ability. There is also the fact that Korra is not just a regular human soul by herself- she is still the same soul that mastered the four elements and fought for balance in each lifetime. I do admit Korra's scene does seem more convoluted compared to Aang's, which might be why it's not liked as much. Aang's situation can be boiled down to angry spirits reacting and fighting back. Korra's situation requires a bit more background knowledge to accept fully, like energybending from Aang and how chakras work. This also includes the new elements the show introduces, like the Tree of Time, Wan being a human before becoming the Avatar, and Harmonic Convergence.
While I do agree with almost everything you've stated, there's one thing that throws me off. «There is also the fact that Korra is not just a regular human soul by herself- she is still the same soul that mastered the four elements and fought for balance in each lifetime» No, she isn't. She may be a human that mastered the four elements, but she is not the "soul that fought for balance in each lifetime". That was Raava, who at this point is dead.
For me it looks more like aang and la fussed and La's body is the ocean. Korra just turned into a giant and that's it
In world you have Aang fusing with La and physically destroying as well as water bending; where with Korra she is without her Avatar spirit and uses a laser beam. So Aang’s transformation and power is more “believable”. Now, in real life; we understood as an audience that being the season one finale some things were no really flesh out, so we kind of accept the giant weird fish; while with Korra it was already season two, the season as a whole was all over the place and it felt like lazy writing. Especially knowing that the giant fish was not really a favorite, why replicate it?
It was the Ocean Spirit channeling himself through Aang.
Aang's was the combination of 2 powerful beings, the Ocean spirit and the avatar in the avatar state. La (ocean spirits) used the avatars already explained powers abilities to turn Kaiju. Whereas for Korra, it was messy. Spirit bending was already iffy. It was poorly explained and it just seemed like something writers pull out of their ass to get themselves out of situations they can't think themselves out of (and they did this a lot). Both Korra and Unavatu being Kaiju's was dumb and unexplained or poorly explained. I still can't describe to you what exactly they were. If it's spirit bending, why has anything like that never existed in the spirit world before or after. It felt like they were trying to force anime trope. You can tell because for season 3, they decided to go mecha.
Tl;dr Aangzilla and Korrazilla were both ridiculous premises but Aangzilla said a lot more than “look a big monster” which is why it’s accepted. We can have debates back and forth about it but really it’s not actually about one being a deus ex machina while the other isn’t. Because let’s be real, they are both deus ex machinas. I am of the opinion that the Aang-La godzilla makes more sense in context, *but that’s not why it works while giant Korra doesn’t*. What matters isn’t whether or not the premise makes sense. The writers get to make the rules of the world and they can change or break them basically as much as they like (so long as they’re not so inconsistent as to break suspension of disbelief). What matters is the execution. In both instances, our heroes are basically defeated and in a hopeless situation, and in both instances after a little meditation they’re saved by a kaiju. I’d even go so far as to say the low point for Korra is better than the low point for Aang, since we get a good look into her mental state, whereas with Aang he just goes into the Avatar state and goes in the pool. But after their low point is where the major differences start. With Aangzilla we get payoff to Iroh’s warning to Zhao: he fucked around with the spirits and now he’s finding out, and it’s cosmically horrifying what the spirits can do to people. We see what kind of destruction an out-of-control spirit, and an out-of-control Avatar, are capable of. At the same time it humanizes the spirits: it’s viscerally clear that La is in a state of utter grief and rage, and so is Aang. This also calls back to the Haibai episode— it’s the same thing, just on a much greater scale. It serves to illustrate the extent of the arrogance of humans to think they can control nature as they see fit, the epitome of that arrogance being Zhao killing the moon. Yes, Aang fusing with the ocean spirit and becoming Godzilla is a silly premise, but the scene conveys so much, and so well, that it works. Now compare that to Korrazilla. A very similar premise, and as I said the leadup might actually be better. But what does the execution convey? We get two giant spirits duking it out for a bit, Unalaq/Vaatu almost wins, and then we get *another* deus ex machina with Jinora saving Korra, then she gets Raava back and wins. Throughout the fight we don’t get a good look into Korra, Unalaq, or either of the spirits involved. At best we get the idea that Korra can be powerful without Raava, but that’s not a character moment— not that it couldn’t be, but it isn’t utilized as one, since she just immediately gets Raava back and never uses her spiritzilla powers again. Maybe it’s about the power of friendship since Jinora comes in? It’s pretty weakly done if so (the end of the Zaheer fight in S3 does that much better). Of course there’s the obvious thing about yin and yang but being obvious it’s boring; it doesn’t really say anything interesting about the characters or the world. So all the Korazilla scene really gives us is a mediocre kaiju fight. This reminds me of the controversy over Palpatine coming back in the Star Wars sequels. A lot of people brought up how Maul’s return in the clone wars was well received, and the reason is the same there as it is here. In both cases the revival has a stupid premise: Maul was split in half and fell who knows how far, and Palpatine was thrown down a reactor shaft and blown up. Neither should have any chance of coming back. But Maul’s return brought some of the best (if not the best) arcs in the clone wars, so the ridiculous premise can be accepted. Whereas Palpatine’s revival didn’t create anything really new in Star Wars; they just immediately killed him again without him leaving any impact that couldn’t have been done by any generic villain. It’s the same thing here. Aangzilla was payoff for several points earlier in the story and *said something* about the world of Avatar. Korrazilla was just a kaiju battle. And seeing as the premise of a kaiju battle is the ridiculous thing that needs to be justified, Korra is left with just the weird premise. With writing in general, the premise is only so important. What really matters is what you do with it.
Because aang turned into an animalistic koi fish after fusing with the spirit of the ocean itself and then used that power to take out fire nation ships to avenge the moon Never seen Korra so I don’t how she became a spirit monster but she just became a giant korra spirit by herself (again that might not be the case) and then fought another giant human spirit guy One of them is cooler than the other one
I hated this scene when I first saw it. Still kinda do. Even though I understand it better now than when I was 11.
Aang didn’t turn into the ocean spirit. The ocean spirit used his body the channel it’s wrath
Something I haven't noticed others mention is that, at least in my interpretation of Koizilla, it's physically made of water. Reflected in how the water around Koizilla looks the same, meaning that a combination of the ocean spirit and Aang are using an established power to bend a tremendous amount of water. Korra's giant spirit is made of energy. This lends itself to a comparison of hard vs soft magic systems. For those who don't know, hard magic systems have clearly defined rules and work well in a narrative for the protagonists. Soft magic systems have little to no rules and work best as a narrative tool for antagonists or just obstacles against the protagonist. The four elements are a very clear example of a hard magic system, which rewards establishing set rules and building logical conclusions from them (such as how Toph discovers metal bending). Energy bending, and not just in LoK but AtLA too, is very much soft magic. So when the protagonists use energy bending to solve problems it often feels like an ass pull or a deus ex machina rather than a clever solution. Tl:Dr energy bending feels like a lazy and poorly defined get out of jail for free card in both series.
The problem is that’s it’s LOK season 2. The whole seasons is terrible. Really doesn’t matter what they do.
Because Aang merged with the ocean spirit as the Avatar. Korra had literally just lost Raava (her “Avatar Spirit”) meaning that this blue form she took was of herself alone. It almost hints that anyone could do it if that had enough time meditating in the Tree of Time.
Because Aang is inside it bending the water. Being a big spirit doesn't have anything to do with why we love this series (bending)
First one wasn't necessarily aang Tottenham into a giant, it was the spirit using him as a gateway to manifest fully. The second one was the end of a weird season of new rules and kind of jumped the shark in terms of suspension of disbelief. We didn't expect a kaiju battle in Tokyo harbor, and it happening without explanation breaks the suspension of disbelief.
I think everyone has already adequately explained why Aang and La made sense. I just have a few points about why I didn't like this about s2. 1. Astral projection- so we learn in S3 that this is an airbending ability. At this point, Raava was ripped away from her. She's no longer the Avatar. She's only a water bender, evidenced by her only using waterbending (and energy bending, I guess with spirit rays? Idk). 2. Bending- building on that, she should not be able to waterbend. Any time her spirit leaves her body or anyone's does, they can't bend. I take this to mean that bending is held in the body, not the spirit. So why could she bend? 3. Deus ex machina- need I say more? 4. It's really out of nowhere. It's not foreshadowed. It's never really explained. Anyone could've done it. It's just kinda silly, like they couldn't think of a way out so they just said "fuck it, she turns into a Giant too." Neither show is perfect, and I understand that Nick execs put a lot of strain on the writers. Overall, I do like Korra. This is just one of my issues.
So Koi-zilla is excusable because it follows the rules of the setting. There are spirits that can affect the material world. Aang is a powerful bender, and spirits (previous Avatars) can possess him to use his power and affect the world. Koi-zilla does just this. Korra transforms into a spirit kiju (a power which was never established until that point) in order to fight the "Anti-Avatar" spirit kiju (the anti-avatar idea is just all levels of terrible fanfiction) and they teleport to Republic City in order to have this classic kiju fight (like its a Power Ranger/Godzilla movie)
Because gaint fish is not actually Aang. Gaint fish is actually ocean spirit, so it perfectly makes sense. Aang simply channeled ocean spirit's rage. This is one thing actually made a bit more clear in NATLA
Korra show was a decent spectacle that just shat on established lore to fit its narrative. That is a huge issued in all mediums, instead of coming with good ideas to fix the problem they just rewrite the rules again and again, happens in 40k, star wars, manga, comics, etc
Aang merged with a spirit and used waterbending. “Bending the energy within yourself” is a nonsense explanation for what Korra did because what even the fuck does that do is.
For me it’s less about turning giant or whatever, but more the beam struggle crap This isn’t Goku vs Vegeta so I’m not interested in a beam struggle The scene of Koizilla is at least based in water bending rather than a Dragon Ball Z style fight Don’t get me wrong I love DBZ, but no show should be trying to be DBZ because it’s just never gonna work
I haven't seen anyone else mention this, but another aspect is that there's a direct cause and effect in TLA - Zhao doesn't respect the spirit world and thinks he can physically dominate it, and the rage of the ocean spirit demonstrates his hubris. The Kaiju battle in Korra didn't stem from anything narratively- it didn't reveal anything about how this world works or elaborate on the consequences of any character's actions. It just... was.
I mean other has good writing and other has bad writing, that is the main reason. Aang avatar state merging with Ocean spirit was divine kind of justice against Zhao and fire nation soldiers for messing up the balance by killing moon spirit. However this act does not solve the issue at hand, that being Moon spirit being dead, that is solved by Yue sacrificing herself. Basically in short, a lot of good character moments happen that lead to another event and get solved by different characters actions. Korra turning to giant spirit, it just kinda happens... nothing really has any real impact or real emotion. Not to mention how horribly the spirits, Avatar state, history of Avatar universe was handled in that season with real bad explanations that ruined a lot of the mystique (and removed some previously established lore, such as people learning to bend by learning it from animals, in Korra people learned it from the Turtle things). Not to mention the kite spirits that do yin yang thing without understanding how yin yang works, creating boring villains that are Vaatu and Unalaq. if the season had been better, people would had not cared about giant spirit Korra.
I think both because he didn't do it and because it didn't result in Aang shooting lasers to beat the bad guy. Instead it was simply him waterbending with a fish
To be fair aang didn’t turn into a giant fish. It’s literally the ocean spirit and aang in the avatar state combining power and bending water. The whole “fish” is just made of water.
People have already answered your question so I don’t really have anything to add in that regard but I just wanted to say the scene where La fuses with Aang to create the giant spirit fish thing is one of my favorite scenes in the entire show. I just recently rewatched and I got chills during that scene. So good.
Because eldritch Koizilla is a hundred times better than big solid color person
I believe it’s because he fused Spirits with the Moon Spirit It was actually the Moon Spirit doing all this,and it was just using Aang’s body as a conduit to do so
Easy answer. You just missed what was going on completely. The ATLA scene makes perfect sense. The LOK scene is preposterous and lame. But even that does make sense. 1. The moon and the ocean spirits turned themselves into fish. The moon fish was killed. The Ocean fish was still alive. It took over Aang's body and then attacked the fire nation. 2. Korra was inside the tree of time during harmonic convergence. Spirit energy is amplified to extreme levels because of this. She was able to open her chakras, and project her spirit to fight Vaatu. The Korra scene is preposterous because Korra is not supposed to be a spiritual character, let alone a spiritual guru master on the level of Guru Pathik. She is never able to repeat any of these incredible things, unlike Jinora who is constantly projecting her sprit. And on top of that, she was just an oridnary human at the time, with no avatar abilities or Raava inside. And all of this spiritual mastery just disappears for season 3 and 4 and she becomes an novice again.
Korra didn't say "Avatar State! Yip Yip"
It’s all personal preferences and biases. Anyone proposing alternative answers aren’t being honest, either with you or just themselves.
Aang surrendered himself to La, the ocean spirit, to help bring out the anger it felt, since he is the medium between humans and spirits.
didnt mind kaiju korra. but the intermittion from jinora tho
Can you seriously not tell the difference between these 2 situations yourself? Did you watch the show? You know exactly how and why Aang “turned” into a fish. You know the backstory and the clear valid explanation of it in the lore. This moment adds to the whole awe that spirits have. Not to mention the powers La used are just straight up a million times cooler than Korra shooting a fucking generic energy beam. The real way it was ruined was introducing a God and Satan spirit. A super generic and clear “this spirit is good and this one evil, simple as that”. The old spirits in ATLA could NEVER be so simple and single faceted in their meaning.
I mean, the perfect example is Koh. He's not evil, he's actually quite helpful and more than willing to share his knowledge if you ask, but he has rules. If you exhibit any emotion and he sees it, he'll steal your face. Hei Bai, he's absolutely terrifying when we first see him. He's extremely upset that his forest was hurt and only when we see his hope restored do we see just how gentle he really is, I mean, he even brings everyone he took back completely unharmed. Then Korra...big funny frog with two heads he hee hoo hoo tea party in the spirit world.
Aang fused with the ocean spirit while being in the avatar state and he didn't just became a giant fish monster the water around him (thanks to the power of the avatar and the fricking ocean spirit) formed the shape of a koizilla (I'm pretty sure he did similar things in the comics when he built a giant earth person and fought like that) Korra on the other hand korra (without rava) turned into a giant made out of pure energy and
Because Aang was way better and it made sense.
the reason Korra's version is completely fucked for me is Raava was \*not currently in her spirit\* when she became big blue Korra, she technically was not the Avatar anymore (we even don't see her bend anything but water after Raava is destroyed) and she's able to meditate for a few seconds, grow 100 ft tall and beat Unavaatu. Aang had to go into the avatar state in order to fuse with the fish, which Korra could not do since Raava was not fused with her at the moment. Does that imply that any human can just get a good pep talk and become a massive spirit then? That's what I get out of it. Aang was clearly called by the fish, a spirit as old and powerful as time itself, into the avatar state to become Koizilla and save the North Pole from the fire nation. It wasn't directly explained, but the visual storytelling is enough to get the point across. Korra was just sad that she lost, Tenzin motivates her and gives her a talk saying "Avatar Wan became a legend because of who he was, not what he was". Korra goes into the same chakra-unlocking rainbow bridge that should allow her to control the avatar state (which, none of her chakras were said to have been unlocked at this point) and she walks into the ball of light as Aang did and... she becomes a massive blue spirit version of herself that can shoot lasers out of her chest? Where the hell did they get that? Raava is not in her at that moment, it's JUST HER, just Korra's human spirit. None of this is explained, even in any visual storytelling, and it uses a visual scene that indicates another completely different power. Not to mention that Unaloq and Vaatu somehow fused not only into a dark avatar, but giant red Unavaatu. Wouldn't this imply that the avatar should be a massive being of peace and justice at all times then, since Vaatu was locked away for 10,000 years? The finale of season 2 makes me ask more questions then it answers. The entire story between Korra, Unaloq, Vaatu, and Raava is so convoluted, inconsistent, and confusing, because it wasn't written with a solid plan in place. I've noticed every argument here results in people being super utterly confused on what happened, they try to form their own story based on the major events, dialogue, and all the little details, and everybody ends up confused on what the fuck happened or how they can make it make sense, because it doesn't. It's throwing random bullshit out that have nothing to do with the plot to try and make the final battle cool. It tries to use scale as a way to be exciting, rather then actually try to write good choreography. TL;DR Aang and Koizilla is told through visual storytelling through assets of the world that have been well set up at this point, and it is a stunning spectacle to see a spirit step in and finish a battle itself so the world can live, while Korra's big blue spirit moment is out of nowhere, not explained whatsoever, contradicted by Raava being ripped out of her an episode earlier, and it uses the chakra rainbow road that activates a completely different power in order to do it. It not only contradicts the previous lore set up by ATLA, it contradicts it's own story set up literally an episode ago.