Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Video Vednesday: Legend of Korra S4E5 "Enemy at the Gates"


In which I make predictions that are confirmed by the TITLE of the next episode, plus predictions that are proven wrong by the next episode. Also some of why Kuvira is scary, and general ramblings about fascism, imperialism, and bad CG.

As usual, Tumblr folks will need to click through to my main blog to see the video for some absurd reason.

2 comments:

  1. My response will be delayed because Nick.com pulled season four and has season 1 up behind a "included with your cable subscription" paywall. It appears all other legal streams are paywalled.

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  2. Grumbling a little about the effective spoiler in the post text. Not even close to the most severe spoiler I've been subjected to, but still.

    There's one big reason why Republic City is certain to be in Kuvira's crosshairs: That's where spirit vines come from. Varrick collected samples from there, which implies that there are no sources in Kuvira's empire. She needs Republic City for spirit vines and she has a historical claim to press.

    You've been characterizing Kuvira as fascist, and I think you're either wrong or using an overbroad definition of fascism. There's no sign of obsession with ethnicity or reactionary restoration of a mythologized past glory. Kuvira appears to me to be inspired by "communist" China rather than by fascist Italy or Germany. "Reeducation camp" is a key tell - the U.S.S.R. called their ideological prison camps "Gulags". As a personality she doesn't map neatly onto Mao but that would be clumsy (in many ways she reminds me of Napoleon).

    My big complaint regarding the Sato scenes is that Mr. Sato appears to have utterly forsaken having political feelings. He would be an excellent vehicle to reintroduce us to Equalism so that we can learn what all those Chi-Blockers have been up to. It would be totally great if that was part of Korra ultimately teaming up with moderated Equalists, Red Lotus inspired rebels, and Vaatu to take on Kuvira. But I don't think it's going to happen.

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