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Overanalyzing Korra: Beginnings Part 1 (Patreon)

Published:
2024-07-09 20:00:50
Imported:
2026-06
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Didn't get past copyright in time this week, so you'll have to deal with Vimeo.

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Overanalyzing Korra: Beginnings Part 1

Comments

The1AMparty

Curse you youtube copyright hell!

ZeroDividesByYOU

It's ok. Dropped everything for this episode ANYWAY

GB2 _

I WILL GLADLY DEAL WITH VIMEO FOR THIS EPISODE FUCK YE

David Smith

youve conditioned me so well that i thought when you zoomed in on the lizard bird thing (brian) i thought you were telling me to subscribe

Aeiou

Damn that Simpsons joke was good. Your humor has been on point recently

Jordan

I think this is one of the coolest segments in this show. It expands the lore and I really like the "old" animation

Eli Tadmor

Excellent analysis! One comment: I think there is one feature of Airbender’s account of the origins of bending that just cannot be squared with the one in Beginnings - the story if Oma and Shu in “The Cave of Two Lovers.” We are told, in no uncertain terms, that they were the very first earthbenders - not the first to earthbend with good form - and that they learned earthbending from the badger-moles. That just can’t be squared with earthbenders already much being a thing in Beginnings

Eli Tadmor

As you say, the enlightened opinion on the retcon question is “who cares.” Be that as it may, it is notable that is was the fans who came up with the “lion-turtles gave bending but benders learned proper form from other animals so this is actually consistent with ATLA” explanation, not the show - which never acknowledges the seeming contradiction apart, perhaps, from the implicit acknowledgment of that one shot of Wan doing the dragon dance. This is in keeping with other changes Korra makes to the lore without offering an in-universe explanation for them: “Why can blood bending lift you fully off the ground now? We don’t say”; “Ahy does the Avatar state seem a lot weaker? Who knows”

D G

I wouldnt call the lion turtles giving the humans their bending a redcon. We saw in Airbender that Aang got his Energie Bending from an Lion Turtle

D G

To be fair Humans get lots of things wrong when time passes. Badger-moles might be the first Earthbenders. Or Humans being Humans and knowlagde of the Lion Turtles giving them their bending was lost in Time. A strong Argument for this would be we see an Lion Turtle giving Aang his "Energy Bending"

Eli Tadmor

It’s totally true that humans may have gotten things wrong and that the stories we hear in ATLA are wrong or at least incomplete - it’s just that we are never given any indication of that, even in Korra, and explanations like that feel like smart ways for the fans to excuse what can most plainly be explained as a simple retcon. None of these ways to harmonize the two accounts come from Korra itself, which never makes the effort to provide them

AntiMatterDynamite

this is my favorite episode(s)... thank you for picking it apart!!!

Monkeyzone

its for sure a retcon because they say that watterbenders come from the moon

Ryan

Yue actually describes it as waterbenders saw how the moon pushed and pulled the tides and learned how to do it themselves, not that they got their bending from the moon. I do agree it’s a retcon, but more so trying to expand on what we know about the origins of bending, not necessarily contradicting what we’ve already been told

Jeremy Grover

The patron shoutout fake out after the fruit fly demon creatures was great. Totally caught me off guard and I half thought the video was just that short. Well done

Origin

The lion turtle does specifically say that in the era before the Avatar they only bent the energy within themselves—not the elements. It wouldn’t be a retcon if not for that detail With that said, it’s fine for them to retcon it since it’s their story and it’s a detail that doesn’t make much of a difference to current events in the story, even if I personally find it less compelling than other ideas that could’ve been written

Doctor Xerox

Woo, time for another round of sequels tearing down the old rather than building upon the greatness that came before! This is one of the most infuriating writing blunders and we see it more and more these days with endless bland sequels (not that Korra is a part of that particular trend imo). Thanks for bringing attention to the stuff done well in the midst of writing I hate. It’s nice to keep a more fair perspective, even if it doesn’t save the whole for me.

Sascha Lois

one of my favorite episodes of the show :)

Nichelle

it's a woodpecker platypus

Bodhacious

Mr. Overanalyzing, I’d just like to say that you routinely make my day with your content. I look forward to your videos as much as i would look forward to a new episode of atla back in the day. I now rewatch the OA series more than I rewatch the actual show. You’ve revitalized this content for me in a big way. Thanks for noticing all the little things i missed though Ive seen the show ~30 times over. Thank you for your humor that always gets a chuckle out of me even if I’ve heard it before. And thank you most of all for being the same creator that you were prior to becoming one greats in avatar content creation. Really appreciate your dedication to the original intent of saying everything that you have to say, without letting the following change you or the quality of your content. Keep doing you man. I would say ‘never change’, but I know that any changes you make will be an improvement on what was already spectacular. And thats all I have to say about that

Wesley Lao

I think 10,000 years here is actually a reference to that value's significance in east asian culture, where it was synonymous with an indefinitely long time and had heavenly connotations

Thomas Cassidy

I liked Wan's story, except for the inclusion of Raava and Vaatu. Their themes of light and dark are very Abrahamic or Star Wars rather than keeping to the otherwise Western themes of the show. The use of light as the balanced side and dark as a bad inherent corruption reminds me more of the way Lucus portrays the Jedi and Sith than the way that Eastern cultures show balance. I would have liked the rewrite of the Vaatu and Raava thing to have more of a Ying Yang or, in this case, due to the elementality of the story, a Korean Yang Um approach to it. It just makes me think of the pervading Christianized good and evil that pervades Western storytelling.

Aneurin Hunt

I mean maybe these are the D tear spirits. All the big natural forces are taken there a bunch of the weird mysterious ones and they don't want to copy another sports gimmick. So they end up just being a guy. Also on the recon of bending. How much do we know about from 10000 years ago? That's a very long time. So maybe so details have been lost.

A Person

I feel like the idea that it’s Western centric in itself is Western centrism. There are lots of Asian stories that are similar.

A Person

Tear down what?

A Person

It’s not a retcon at all. The turtle was never shown bending

Duncan

I've always thought that it was a third explanation. The humans that leave the lion turtles at the end are explicitly not given bending. So I always took it as the humans just knew they could bend from previous generations and rediscovered it from the animals. Like grandma told me stories of being able to bend water from the lion turtles and one day i looked at the moon and figured it out for myself.

The Violet Bee

Didn’t the Lion Turtles say something in the end of the OG about bending the energy within people? And then gifted Aang with the ability to take bending? I feel like them being able to gift bending is a pretty natural conclusion.

Eating Pancakes Right Now

I don't like the spirits, but worse I don't respect them. They're basically just talking animals so the humans should hunt them and cut down their forests to survive. Better than being eaten by grass.

Eating Pancakes Right Now

I kind of find criticism of the introduc of "Western" elements to the story just weird. But I don't like the spirit Kites and their story on the face of it

Eating Pancakes Right Now

I find it hilarious Overanalyzing went of this exact arguement dynamic in the video and you guys are just... doing it verbatim

Chibi

This episode raises a lot of questions for me. If bending comes from the Lion turtle, why does killing the Moon Spirit deactivate Waterbending? Why is Firebending turned off by an eclipse? Most importantly, why doesn't Wan look like a Sun Warrior?

Mateo David

You were killing funny!! I laughed so many times. “Brian” got me out of nowhere.

Kinkini Bhattacharya

I think learning to use it as an extension of yourself added a spiritual aspect of it. Cutting off the spiritual aspect of the bending (moon/sun) cuts off the ability to access the innate ability to bend.

Kinkini Bhattacharya

I would argue that whole Chin the Conqueror and Kyoshi episode is an indication in ATLA as to how humans in the universe often get things wrong.

Eli Tadmor

That's an excellent point. I would say, however, that when it comes to the distortion of Chin's memory the misremembering townspeople had every reason to misremember - it makes their fallen leader seem better. There would be no such reason to forget the true origins of bending. Of course, this is something that could easily have happened - people just forget stuff - but until the show itself gives me any indication that this is what happened, as opposed to just presenting us an entirely different story than the one told to us in ATLA and letting the fans do the legwork, I would still regard such explanations as fans being smarter about things than the writers of season 2 (who were not Mike and Bryan!) themselves were. The comment below about how the lion-turtles giving bending doesn't fit with eclipses making firebending impossible fits with this - you could harmonize the two things after the fact, but I would still regard the change as a simple retcon until proven otherwise. The things just don't jive, and the show never tries to make them to.

Thomas Cassidy

I don’t hate western elements to a story, just the nature of what the kites are supposed to mean is set up in the story like it’s going to be a very specific eastern philosophy story element and it plays like god and satan instead. Which is a let down of the orientation of the story.