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No. 114303
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Look, it's a relatively new setting, with a new cast and a new protagonist that is vastly different from the original; I can understand a few hick-ups here and there. However, there really isn't that big of a margin of error for Korra herself here. There's no easy way to say this, so I'm going to right to the heart of it, nice and neat; Korra's the leading, LEADING (main, not secondary or supporting, main) protagonist who is not only female, but a person of color. Her behavior and level of competence are thus, potentially detrimental to seeing more of either of that in western animation.
Now calm yourselves for a moment and think. After years of Caucasian, male protagonists (or of species too alien or fantastic for conventional categorization) pervading cartoons, suddenly the TLOK announcement and teaser image came along; The new Avatar's going to be a Water Tribe girl, and a rather fit one at that! Finally, a chance to show the viability of female lead outside of Disney movies and animes, something action-oriented and conservatively dressed in lieu of the princess, tokenism and fanservice sets. Imagine the SJ crowd's delight, followed by their mixed apprehension as the first season went underway. While Aang was far, far, far from perfect, Korra's flaws and failures are easily more pronounced. This can be attributed to the show's more condensed running time (12 eps vs. 20), but the multitude of plot threads and desire to establish the setting forced the removal of all subtlety from what could have been a decent character arc. You may find yourself thinking, "Social awkwardness, issues with authority, living up to legacies, learning new skills, romantic entanglements? All this is hardly unprecedented, why such a fuss in this particular instance?" You'd be right in thinking that none of those predicaments are particularly new, but the protagonist going through them is.
The makers have to be applauded for attempting to tackle such heavy issues in TLOK, but when you fail or tepidly perform in delivering upon those themes, it's pretty glaring. These shortcomings don't do Korra's image any favors since as she's intimately tied to the motifs, happenings and resolutions of the story. The narrative's flaws are unfairly piled onto her own, making them appear worse. Thus, Korra being so unique works against her, as it appears to the impulsive mind that switching from a more traditional kid hero to a vastly unconventional one results in these inadequacies. So in the harsh criticism camps you have the rash individuals who attribute TLOK's missteps to Korra being so different from the norm, and the smarter, if no less incensed fans who thought that this revolutionary (a tragically apt distinction) protagonist would be above such pitfalls and her uniqueness was indicative of bold, new stories to come instead of clumsy retreads of old concepts. There’s the common retort that everyone wanted different things from Korra, but the people in that aforementioned latter party were all ready on cloud 9 when they saw her design, and all of them wanted this aesthetic summation of progress to do the same thing: Not mess up and make everything tied to her look bad.
Is it a bit unfair that all that expectation and scrutiny fell on a single character? Yes, but the way she was designed and hyped, you could hardly expect a different outcome. Some would say that Korra’s difficulties are an attempt at deconstructing the ‘tough, action girl’ trope, but in the context of western animation, that archetype is usually held by a side character distinct from the chief protagonist. In that respect, Korra is a rather new entity. To illustrate, it’s like opening up an issue of Action Comics #1 in the 1930s only to see the Plutonian, the Homelander or Kid Marvelman wrecking havoc within its pages. Superman was built on previous strong man myths, but in terms of being a tights-wearing, caped superhero, he was unique. People have been taking apart and analyzing his character and make-up for years because they had this simple, firm test object to refer to. With Korra, who is perhaps even more innovative in her medium, she came to the public shattered instead of whole, and there has been great debate as to how she and her show could be fixed or could do better or if their condition is all that bad to begin with. It’s akin to a meta-singularity wherein people aren’t taking bits of the program and trying to spin out new stories, but are instead scouring what’s there and trying to salvage what in their mind’s could’ve been a work of sublime greatness and import. Again, I must commend the writers for taking a chance with her in preference to giving all the difficult trials and issues to a Sokka or Jack Sparrow type character to play with. I’m of the mind that her character design was a substantial risk (if a bit reasonable due to their reputation garnered from ATLA) and ultimately sufficient, and they really should have played it safer in the other aspects of the show.
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