Republic City Dispatch

Ding.

– Matt

We can confirm that Elizondo is one of the actors from Avatar: The Last Airbender returning this week. – Matt

Good explanation, ThisIsTheNameOfTheWebsite, but here are the facts of the matter:

If you meditate into the Spirit World, your body is left in the real world and therefore you cannot bend.

If you enter the Spirit World through a portal, your body is with you and you can bend. 

The Avatar needs her body to enter the Avatar State.

The Spirit Portals are on the same plane as the rest of the Spirit World. 

-Spirit Da7e-

I can give you reasons to be optimistic about the rest of THIS season:

1) We’re done with sub-par animation.

2) We’re out of the first half of the season, which – if you recall – was slow even in Book One. Remember how everything fell together with Amon and Tarrlock? I think that same things is going to happen in a big way this season.

3) WHERE’S ZUKO?!?!! (I’m going to put this on the looking-forward list too)

4) Grey DeLisle is supposed to be in this series and we haven’t seen her yet, right? 

As for reasons to be optimistic about FUTURE seasons:

1) The love-triangle will come to a definite conclusion, if that’s your thing.

2) Considering what SPIRITS put on the table, we might be in for 10,000 years of darkness if Vaatu wins – if he doesn’t win, something is going to change about The Avatar. Raava and Vaatu are supposed to be connected, this is the first 10,000 year cycle they haven’t been. Stay tuned to find out what that is! My vote is “Dark Avatar." 

3) WHERE’S ZUKO?!?! We got so close to getting to the Fire Nation.

4) Someone’s a-gonna die.

-Da7e-

(Poorly planted) evidence or not, there are more people telling Asami that Mako’s some crazy plotter than people telling Asami that Mako’s the good guy. Even Korra assumed the Northern Water Tribe blew up the Cultural Center.

Sadly, I think we’re supposed to believe Asami is doubting Mako, because that’s what that “look” says to me, with Asami glassy-eyed at the center of Mako’s now-empty apartment. Since this is also the last shot of Asami in the episode, it could also be picked up later and Asami’s “look” explained by her actions, but that sinking “No-Asami-Don’t-Believe-The-Lies!” feeling you got was exactly what the show was shooting for.

-Da7e-

I hear you, but there hasn’t been much to support this outside of people’s warm and fuzzy feelings for Lin. THIS Season, Lin has thus far been just the Chief of Police or whatever. Also “those two” being the other Detectives aren’t BAD, they’re just not very GOOD at their jobs.

But – hey – maybe I’ll eat my words. Or maybe everyone who thinks Lin has some grand plot will eat their words. It’s my experience that a Detective going rogue is a lone wolf and this season that rogue is Mako.

-Da7e- 

Wikipedia Brown was genius.

Hi Everyone! And Hi StillThinkingOfACreativeName!

I enjoyed listening to this week’s episode because so rarely do I get to listen to the show and not know what it’s going to be about (this happened once last season). It’s stimulating because it gets me thinking about the episode again. It’s also frustrating because I have opinions and I’m used to being able to interrupt these people. : )  

Overall, I was much more positive on the episode. Granted I was technically on a vacation and my mood was good, but I thought it was an uptick in characterization while a downturn in animation quality (for the last episode this season, it looks like).

I agree with Devindra that Tenzin holding onto his pride gave us a few too many scenes of attempting to meditate. Time that could have been used better to give Kya some sort of warning about Jinora’s Spirit Friends. Joanna was right that it happened suddenly and oddly. The time spent on Tenzin wasn’t too bad. I don’t think he was withholding information. By the time Korra gets there, we’ve had side-story moments with Tenzin and most everyone else. Tenzin’s breaking down and doesn’t want to join the “I disappointed dad” club. The pride made sense, and it was nice that Jinora – the only one not previously sidelined with Tenzin – explained why the weird glowing Avatar statue was cut into the story when it was.

On the Detective Mako side, there were frustrating decisions made, but they weren’t out of the realm of possibility. I may not agree with them, but the show has given us reasons to believe them, or at least believe it long enough to give the show a chance to elaborate.

I don’t believe Bolin and Asami would believe Varrick over Mako, but I believe the show is trying to make me think that. Asami says the company is all she has of her Dad, Bolin is getting noticed and wealthy. It might make the characters seems dumb because it’s executed as quickly as it is (and the animation isn’t helping me engage), but I can see what I’m supposed to believe. All of this is leading to, like, a Mako prison break that’ll be awesome. If I have to tolerate some briskly-plotted stuff, so be it.

Mostly, after Beginnings, I have the confidence I was missing at the start of the season: the confidence that at the end of the season, I will have wished this was all one big movie so they could maneuver the story better. It’s funny how often I forget there’s a Civil War in the South because of Harmonic Convergence. I assume that at the end of this season they’ll wrap it up, but I felt like this all could have been dealt with differently.

Would the fandom react to a single episode of “Tenzin Finds Himself With His Family” like a lack-luster “Appa’s Lost Days?” Or would that have contributed to a less herky-jerky transition in-and-out-of Republic City?

I’ve asked this question before: Is it a compliment to say you’re really looking forward to binge watching the series when it ends if that means week-to-week it doesn’t fire on all cylinders? 

Anywho – I like episodes of Republic City Dispatch I’m not on, because then I can rant on the website later.

This Saturday, though, “The Fearsome Foursome” usher in A New Spiritual Age.

-Da7e- 

You are not the only one with this opinion! 

When I first heard it regarding her actions before Beginnings (BB – I might need the acronym, I’m hoping Beginnings was our pivot point for this season), I didn’t agree. Mostly because I thought that Lin wasn’t going to be a huge character this season (best way to acknowledge last season was an especially meaningful elevation of Batman-like awesomeness), but also because she isn’t so much Lin this season as she is the Police Commissioner. In this season’s Mako plot, where he’s the detective that doesn’t play by the rules, there are certain actions expected of a Police Commissioner, and one of them is to be down on the Rouge Detective.

However, after the show had Varrick end up a grand manipulator, I’m considering that I might have underestimated the degree of subtext in this season. With that on the table, I guess a Long Con from Lin is too, I just find it unlikely.

-Da7e- 

Out of our control? We can do anything!

We love Joanna and she has an open invitation to join in on episodes whenever time allows. We completely agree — while I think Dave, Devindra, and I would all consider ourselves feminists to the degree that we’re permitted, having a female voice on the show adds a ton. Beyond the fem-angle, Joanna is just a smart cookie who knows her television, her storytelling, and her wisecracks. And we’re in desperate need of those things. So the short answer: Yes! – Matt

It definitely is! For folks who are unfamiliar with this landmark film, considered the first feature-length documentary, it is in the public domain and can be viewed immediately. The movie is a straightforward portrait of a Canadian Inuk named Nanook and his family. Over the year’s it’s drowned in a fair share of controversy, but that’s what happens when you make a movie concentrating on anything remotely ethnic in 1922. Anyway, watch this movie!

– Matt

The rules of the Spirit World are a little vague, to be sure. Way back in Book One, Hei Bai the Black and White Spirit lead Aang into the Spirit World for the first time where he met Fang and we got some quick world-building rules about the Solstice and the Spirit World and whatnot. 

My initial thought is that Wan and his entry into the Spirit World during Harmonic Convergence is a human physically entering the Spirit World through one of two portals that are sealed for all time after the battle. This means that no one else, in theory, entered the Spirit World in this way, which could imply that Bending totally works in the Spirit World if you can get the entirety of your being into the realm. Aang was carried into or meditated into the Spirit World instead of physically being transported there.

Then again, the Avatar’s past lives are given ghostly presence in the Spirit World despite other humans not getting the privilege and Iroh managed to see Aang on a Spirit Fang, giving rise to the backstory that Iroh had attempted to enter the Spirit World to save his son.

And then there’s Koh’s tree looking like Vaatu’s tree even though Koh’s counterpart is the Mother of Faces. And there’s Aye-Aye acting somewhat similar to the Mark Hamill Monkey outside Koh’s tree.

And there’s the Spirit’s immortality in the Spirit World versus mortality when taking on a form in our Realm.

There are a lot of rules, and I don’t think we have all the information yet.

-Da7e-

It would be super awesome, but we haven’t seen a lot of evidence that this will happen. 

We also haven’t ever seen anything that suggests a human becomes a Spirit after death, so that’s also working against this theory.

It’s not that it’s impossible, it’s that there’s a lot of story-rules that would break. 

-Da7e-

*Job wrong

And – yes – up until Aang and Zuko at least.

There was something special about the mythical quality of Beginnings that allowed it to do a prequel story without detracting from the overall worlds of both A:TLA and Korra. Unlike, say, midichlorians, which will be the shorthand for botching a prequel for all time. 

-Da7e-

Yup!

I recently rewatched “Tales of Bah Sing Se” from Book Two of A:TLA and the Iroh story there is dedicated to the memory of Mako as well as having the full performance of “Leaves from the Vine.”

Such a good episode and Mako was such a good voice actor. 

-Da7e-

It’s true we haven’t seen a Grey DeLisle character yet and she did say she was playing a Dark Spirit.

As of this moment, my best guess is that Vaatu was trapped in his Spirit Tree at least up until Unalaq could physically get in there during his brief “The Sting” scene.

Unalaq also has some erroneous ideas about the history of those Spirit Portals. Assuming what we saw in “The Beginning” was true, Unalaq’s talk about how the Water Tribe used the portals to move back and forth probably isn’t. Unalaq also has some sort of spirit calming power we haven’t learned the details of (it makes sense the Avatar can do it because s/he’s just using Raava to change the spirit’s mood).

Overall: it seems like Unalaq has SOME idea of what’s going on. 

What seems likely is that there is a middle-man dark spirit, possibly the Dark Spirit Grey DeLisle is voicing, that is working with Unalaq as an agent of Vaatu. Like a Wormtongue or a Saruman. 

A serious middle-bad, but a mini-boss compared to the apocalypse that is Vaatu. 

Or Grey DeLisle and everyone totally got us and Azula’s still alive. That could be fun.

-Da7e-