Right then. Let’s all hope Ginger doesn’t appear in this episode and we can all pretend she’s having a happy time somewhere far away.
…okay, fire sages are carrying Korra on a stretcher now, despite her being perky enough last episode to airbend at them. On the other hand, there’s a female fire sage who seems to be in charge! Who seems to be doing some positive firey healing trick to tell she’s…
…infected by an evil spirit trying to destroy the avatar state dammit I was hoping the spirit was trying to get help. And now they’re trying to heal her with water.
Why can’t fire purify dark spirits? Also, just, why does fixing her involve dropping her down a hole? I can’t think of any time that’s happened before.
Anyway, so her task is to regain the avatar spirit. All her past lives are here to tell her she’s screwed up and needs lots of help, unlike how in the first series, they showed up to tell Aang they needed him to do stuff.
“My name is Wan and I will show you how I became the first avatar.”
FUCK YOU SHOW
See, this is what we get with a “balanced” cast. Sure, we had a male avatar last time and sure, his most recent past life and the one who showed up most and got the most attention was also male, but hey, after that one was a female avatar…followed by another male one. But then there is a female one behind that one! Who appears once in the show ever. She sure doesn’t make the cut this time – just the four most recent past lives, so, three men, one woman. Why exactly we needed to go back far enough to get to the last waterbender avatar guy when his sole contribution last time was that he was a screwup I don’t know.
And while this series we have a female avatar, she’s so fucked up being the avatar she has to go regain the avatar spirit by piggybacking on the first avatar who is male. She never is tasked to do anything. The show is all about her trying to find her place in a world that doesn’t need her unless it’s for some evil plot.
Also, the first avatar that was so damn important is just the usual cliche thief with the bouncing and quipping and the other people who depend on him for supper down to his cute animal friends so see even though he’s a thief he’s good! What a shocker!
Obligate dependent urchin says that he should accept the world as it is and how some people have power and some don’t. So we’re maybe going to get a storyline about how the status quo isn’t inherently good, even if it’s only because it’s leading to the current status quo. Did I mention they’re also guys? Guys guys guys.
Also apparently the spirit world is much more antagonistic in this, and there’s this thing where you go out into the forest and fight spirits to get food. And they just shout for volunteers in the square, so he joins.
So here’s the lion turtle! Apparently it grants temporary bending, so now they’re firebending. Maybe the writers listened when everyone pointed out that the counterpoint to Amon should’ve been giving everyone bending, not saying non-benders should suck it up at the same time that losing bending was the most awful thing ever? Maybe that’s what Korra’s going to learn, that once everyone could do this? Maybe she’ll actually take something positive out of this rather than just clawing her way back to being the avatar like last season?
And I’m really confused what the setup of this world is. He and his friends are in poverty, but why? There’s some rich guy with more stuff than other guys, but are there jobs other than thief if you want to get stuff? Is the issue not enough jobs, or that there are plenty of jobs but they’re all on starvation wages? When they leave, it looks like things are pretty cramped back home, which would be why there’s not enough food, but his rundown home seems to be in the forest edges where he lives with animals, so… And it’s not clear if there’s major inequality or not, because the angry mob attacking the rich guy with food isn’t even a dozen guys strong, and it’s not like we see them running off with slabs of bacon or anything, so it seems everyone’s eating the same loaves of hard bread.
Anyway turns out joining the group was just a trick to get the fire and he’s run back home without giving it back, which apparently no one ever thought to do before. So he leads everyone to attack the big guy in charge and steal some food, and there’s this whole point about how the bad guys have weapons and there’s class inequality so bending is the equalizer, except this seems totally irrelevant to the present day when only some people get bending. Anyway he gets caught. Like the last time, it’s pretty much because he’s an idiot. We also still don’t know if it’s possible to get food by just doing work, because we don’t see what his payment for going with the gang into the forest would’ve been.
And his punishment is exile from the city while keeping his superpowers. Lion turtle doesn’t seem to much care about the theft. I’m not clear what its relationship to the city is at all. Is the guy in charge only in charge because the lion turtle respects his right to make laws?
Okay, now he stepped on an innocent frog and as it’s pointing this out he just stares, doesn’t move his foot slightly let alone say sorry. See, in a proper fairy tale, he’d have apologized before it turned twenty feet high and decided to step on him back. But yeah, forest does seem pretty dangerous. But see, he could’ve avoided a lot of this by going along with the forest party, letting the veterans teach him the basics while he practiced with the fire, and then he’d have known a bit more by now.
Now he’s demanding he be let into some spirit’s oasis, and when it refuses him, he immediately attacks. “Let me in!” “No!” “I KILL YOU WITH FIRE!” First off, Korra would’ve been nicer than one request followed by murder, and second, the show would’ve then kicked her in the teeth for being so brash anyway. Yet it’s okay when it’s a boy. Then he tries to trick his way in. At no point does he actually try to deal with the spirit like another person. Also, the spirits are a really jarring mix of art styles.
And now he sees a cute little kitty-deer in a trap!
So he decides to let it go, and just then the original spirit-hunting gang comes to say it’s their food, so, and I must emphasize he does this without letting the caught animal down, he gets into a fight with them leading them into the hazards so two die and a third is disfigured. This callous disregard for his own kind including the guy who originally vouched for him to come along care for nature pleases the spirits and they let him in. Apparently nothing in the forest eats meat, including the kittydeer with its claws and sharp teeth.
And so he decides to protect nature. So what if his original motive was to change things for the better, protecting the status quo is way more important! And he gets better at throwing around fire so he can kick around anyone else who tries to show up.
Ah, and we see him practicing with a dragon, so this is how we square bending from the lion turtle with bending learned from dragons/air bison/badgermoles/the moon. That is, badly.
And now everyone’s decided to head out and live in the forest with fire since they heard he does it. And the lion turtle does this. Still no idea what its motivation here is – I thought it liked having human cities, but now it’s letting people wander off. Also, the guy disfigured by a spirit is happily heading off. Since he’s only surviving because as one human he can easily live off the land without hunting or anything, this is probably going to end terribly.
But he’s already left, so instead of actually showing he can help people by setting up a sustainable village full of equality, he’s off to wander the world and have fun!
Now two super spirits are fighting. The black one begs his help in escaping, so he does, and wouldn’t you know it, the black one is darkness and chaos and the white one light and peace because color coded for your convenience.
“I let chaos into the world?” he repeats, shocked. Because chaos evil, stagnation good, even though just before he was all about the chaos.
Also, she’s a girl and presumably will need this idiot to help her. See, female characters exist. To explain things patiently to the main character instead of chasing after the evil spirit who only escaped a second ago.
We end with Korra saying “Rava…I found you.” which sounds all cool and important – I guess the dark spirit possessing her is saying that? Not sure why yet, presumably cleared up next episode.
But anyway so apparently the dark water spirits are legit evil.
Good: The art style for the flashback is nice and the spirit sections are great, even if he spends half the time being an asshole.
And the setting is interesting and raises all sorts of questions about the setting of the world – how many cities are there, and how do they function? It seems like the cities can only exist around the lion turtles, but it doesn’t seem like that’s because of the lion turtle handing out firebending because the spirits tell him to go back to the city if he hates the woods so much. Do the lion-turtles protect the cities, and why? What’s the economic setup? The area seems very heavily populated and the questers say they’re venturing into the spirit forest for food, but we don’t see much of that beyond the one animal we see them catch, and split between five people there wouldn’t be much left to bring back. Why is one guy super rich and everyone else doing what he says? Does he have extra pull with the lion turtle? Is he elected and the lion turtle cares about democracy? Does money allow you to bribe the lion turtle? Does he use his storehouses of food as offerings to the lion turtle?
But christ is he a terrible character.
He’s not a proper fairy tale character, where he’s good, does good, and eventually rewarded for it. Neither does he do bad things, realize they’re bad, and develop as a character. Instead he does shit and sometimes he’s rewarded for it therefore he’s great and never changes his behavior at all. And now he’s going to get rewarded for dooming the world by becoming the avatar.
And why? Why are we getting episodeS, plural, on this guy in Legend of Korra? Aang’s past lives were barely mentioned in his show, and he had way more episodes to work with. We got a bit from his previous life showing how the war got started, just as last season Korra spent a bit seeing Aang. But what the hell is this? If they wanted to do Legend of Wan, they could’ve done that! Why is this taking up time of Korra’s story? Especially when I just sat through the fucking Mako episode!
So, I’ll say the fan reaction to this episode – everyone fucking loved it. The general consensus was that while Wan started like Korra, by the end he had changed into a decent character. I mostly agree with this, though they gloss over a huge chunk of his life.
Next, I’m pretty sure the episode(s?) discuss how neither of the two spirits can be fully destroyed, touching lightly on some of the subtlety of dark not existing without light, chaos not without order, so on and so forth with Eastern philosophy. However, it’s all thrown out immediately and it’s all about punching again, because punching is best method.
I like these episodes a considerable amount more than what’s happened earlier, but there’s still some serious problems. Like the balanced cast being not balanced at all.
Considering hating the show itself seems universal and this is pretty much a new, different show, that makes sense. Plus there’s actually stuff going on in it.
But Wan is a dumber, nastier Korra. He’s got the usual gloss of thief with a heart of gold, but he’s short tempered, can’t plan and unlike Korra, abandons people without a problem (Hey I’m living happy in spirit oasis watch me not wish I could bring my friends here to remember they exist at all) and flat-out murders people when they do something he doesn’t like. The only character development I see this episode is that he learned to firebend. That’s it. He doesn’t learn to respect nature, because he always liked animals. He doesn’t learn not to be a dick to spirits, because they change their behavior instead due to him liking animals. He’s finally fucked up in a way that the series will have to address by firebending the dark spirit free, but he’s just going to deal with it by continuing to do what he was already doing.
It really bugged me that in this spirits seem to just be weird animals that are a little weirder than the regular weird animals on the show and can talk, plus the spirits of good and evil (sorry, “peace” and “chaos”). Spirits in the original series were deeply alien and largely amoral, but here they’re completely demystified and blandly categorized into good and evil. Everything that was interesting about spirits in the Avatar world seems to have been mostly dropped.
It feels like they saw some new anime and decided to copy that in wholesale. They’re a hodgepodge of styles and they don’t act like or have the powers that they did last series.
Say what you will, I really liked this set of episodes. More on that later.
[And why? Why are we getting episodeS, plural, on this guy in Legend of Korra?]
Ninety-five percent sure that we get the focus on Wan because Korra’s supposedly lost her touch with the Avatar state/spirit world/some other stuff that’ll make sense with episode eight, not because of some misogynist conspiracy to take over a children’s show. Korra’s been known for having a good physical mastery of stuff as an Avatar and a poor spiritual mastery, and this deficiency is (supposed to be) rectified by her learning about the very roots of who the Avatar is–and, somewhat by extension, who she is as well, both as the Avatar and as Korra. It’s mostly just an extension of the identity theme we were seeing from season one, especially later on in this season.
Also, origins episodes have been all the rage as of late (for instance, the Pokemon one)–it’s a good way to excite your older fanbase, plug some mythos into the pre-existing canon, and basically shamelessly exploit your credibility so people like your newer episodes. For me, it worked quite well, and I really did enjoy these episodes.
Not for Wan, though; he was pretty cliche and was basically helped tell the story of Aladdin but with bending (down to the bright blue cosmic deity that ends up helping him out whom he still screws over). The plot was pretty typical as well, and, once again, since I’d seen Aladdin, I had most of my bases covered.
However, I felt like these two episodes brought back that quirkiness that made me love AtLA–the kind of quirkiness that I haven’t seen in LoK for quite a while. There are silly spirits and stories generally about friendship, and yet the darkness/impending doom fits in quite nicely with everything else, all things considered. I liked seeing the older versions of the world/four nations (um, since these two episodes aired at the same time, I’m not sure which is seven and which is eight; sorry) and the spirit-ness of everything. I felt like we were going back to the basics, both literally and figuratively, and while the whole thing was almost certainly exploiting my love for the series or an attempt to shoehorn in exposition, these episodes are by far my favorite of the seven/eight you’ve reviewed so far (then again, that’s saying very little, haha).
Oh, and the return to Eastern mythology was pretty awesome. Iunno.
Ninety-five percent sure that we get the focus on Wan because Korra’s supposedly lost her touch with the Avatar state/spirit world/some other stuff that’ll make sense with episode eight, not because of some misogynist conspiracy to take over a children’s show.
And why did she lose touch with the avatar state? Because the show said she did through some outside force. Why are they rehashing this again when she starts the series unable to contact it, and then ends the first season having a past life hand it to her, so now they’re doing an even more drawn out having a past life hand it to her? And why do the episodes that are all about the male avatar come after the episode that was centered on the other male character who isn’t the avatar?
Aang has a journey too – he didn’t take things seriously for some time and even when he realized he should he still had trouble with the physical conflict side. Did he get a good chunk of his season devoted to watching this guy murder people and unbalance the world to teach him that this is serious business and so he should get to work? No. Aang actually had the damn journey. He learned that he needed to buckle down and be the avatar by doing it. He learned about spirits by having to deal with spirits, repeatedly, not by watching this guy. When he lost the avatar state, he had to deal with it, they didn’t wipe his character again and tell him to shut up and watch someone else.
It’s the show’s decision that they’d rather spend their time on this other guy than show Korra develop. And it looks really, really bad when you compare it to how when similar things happened to Aang, the focus stayed on Aang.
I felt like Korra was never in-sync with the Avatar state in the first place–that was the price she paid for starting off the series being able to bend three elements out of four (compared to Aang, who started with one element and a good spirit connection). Not sure what you’re referring to about having the past life hand her access to her spiritual connection–I thought when old!Aang gave her back her bending, she basically just got back her bending. Yeah, she could use the Avatar state properly (which she can still do this season, by the way), but there wasn’t much that openly stated “hey, now you’ve got a perfect connection to the Avatar state that we’re going to take away in three episodes because plot.” She doesn’t even airbend the classic way: it still reeks of punching everything, except now with air, so I saw that as a sign that she hadn’t really mastered everything right with the end of the finale (and, given that there are three more seasons, I think it’s better that way).
I think maybe you’re looking too far into things? There’s, like, a fifty percent chance that a character will be male or female. Seeing as Wan has an obligatory two-parter, saying that there are three episodes in a row focused on a guy (in a show that’s the Legend of Korra) is a tad ridiculous.
Aang got to journey because that was the entire premise of his show–he’s supposed to go around the four nations to learn the other three elements. That was the founding principle of AtLA. LoK was never so obvious in it’s plot. There was no clear-cut “go to Land X to collect Skill/Object Y” that there was in AtLA. AtLA also had a much wider focus than LoK did; most of the main cast got at least an episode that focused entirely on them (or there were episodes, at least, that didn’t focus on Aang at all, and quite a few per season). LoK, on the other hand, has an obligatory Korra appearance every episode, so, yes, there are episodes that don’t focus entirely on her or the other girl out of the four main characters.
If you look closely, you’ll notice that Korra learns how to deal with spirits by herself–she never gets proper instruction from her crazy uncle, but picks it up on her own. She masters the Avatar state by herself between seasons, and even if she’s lacking on the spiritual part, that’s not something that comes easily to her–she’s a less calm and more violent person than Aang was, and I’m perfectly fine if they have different character trajectories because of that.
The writers of the show wanted to go back and show how the Avatar state first came into being. It’s a shame that they tied it directly into Korra’s character development and didn’t do it on her own, but since they spent the first six episodes being an idiot and they’re running out of time to end off the season, I’d rather have Korra get competent again by getting in touch with Rava ( the female spirit, mind you) rather than have her flounder around miserably until the finale.
They did not need to have her watch some other guy to get the avatar state back. The reason she needs to get the avatar state back is because they wanted an excuse to switch to Wan. You can tell by the fact she’s lost access to the avatar state because they threw a random monster in her path to do it and not because of anything that has to do with her. And the fact they’d rather deal with Wan than Korra, and rather deal with Mako than Korra when they have any excuse, is the thing I’m complaining about.
And they’re the ones who decided that forget what was said with Aang and earthbending, you can just get bending without the ability to use it properly, and they’re also the ones who don’t want to bother showing her learn to use it properly either. You can’t excuse one thing by pointing to another problem.
In fact, continuing that comparison just makes it worse. Aang was so awesome at airbending he invented a new move at age twelve. As soon as he saw Katara demonstrate the little she knew of waterbending, he could do it and improve on it a little with his existing bending knowledge. By thirteen, he’d mastered all the bending.
In contrast, Korra loses most of her fights, doesn’t seem to perform measurably better than any of the regular benders around, needs the avatar state to beat children in a race, AND even with that boost can’t purify a single damn spirit. All for the “benefit” of having three elements when she was a little kid, even though Aang managed to not only use but master all four years before Korra.
There is no balance here. There’s no tradeoff. Aang was both highly spiritual and a bending powerhouse years before she was. Korra is currently a weak bender despite her whole life spent learning it with no spirituality powers, but somehow she has to pay that price for being so sueish as being able to chuck around three elements back when she was a kid in one scene.
There’s, like, a fifty percent chance that a character will be male or female.
And yet the past avatars who have shown up are now four men, one woman. The people in Wan’s time are entirely male. It’s almost like this isn’t just coincidentally turning out this way but is some sort of decision people are making.
By this point, three out of eight episodes are entirely about a male character, and it’s not like the previous Korra episodes didn’t revolve around her dad and uncle and Varrick.
but since they spent the first six episodes being an idiot and they’re running out of time to end off the season
They made that choice, it didn’t just happen! Going by last season and the Equalists, it was because they decided they wouldn’t bother with Korra, therefore they had extra space so they had to make up stupid Meelo and lemur filler. Seasons are plotted out in advance!
Obligatory outdated reply for argument’s sake.
I didn’t see her watching Wan as a way to get her Avatar state back, nor a way for her to recover her connection with her past lives. Watching Wan gave her nothing besides the knowledge that Rava exists, but it doesn’t serve as some miraculous cure-all band-aid of glory sent from apparently flawless man.
[And the fact they’d rather deal with Wan than Korra, and rather deal with Mako than Korra when they have any excuse, is the thing I’m complaining about.]
Still lost here, sorry.
Aang couldn’t earthbend properly because he couldn’t find a way to make it suit him until his friends were about to die, if I recall correctly. Korra couldn’t airbend properly because she couldn’t find a way to make it suit him until her friend(s) were about to die as well. Aang still spent a good deal of time not earthbending the proper way, from what I remember, and it takes him several episodes to get it down properly. Korra’s use of airbending is still remarkably more attack-oriented than traditional airbending, but she doesn’t have time to hone her skills because civil war dark spirits armageddon?
Korra was bending three elements at the age of five. She then spends the next twelve or so years of her life mastering (and actually mastering, not just learning on the fly so that the Firelord doesn’t kill us) the elements to the point that the most-bestest benders of each element declare her proficient.
But I think Korra wins the fights that actually matters? Yes, she loses pro-bending, but that’s a sport with rules that she doesn’t understand; yes, she almost loses to kids in an airbending race (the element that she has the least control over, while racing the grandchildren of the Avatar who have been mastering airbending since basically birth). She can’t purify spirits because she was never taught to, and she literally picked up purification from watching evil uncle do it. Unlike Aang, no one ever sat her down for lessons and said “this is how you purify dark spirit; let’s practice for a week or five.” She picked it up on her own, and she failed doing it the first few times because that’s what people do.
[Korra is currently a weak bender despite her whole life spent learning it with no spirituality powers]
Gonna go ahead and shoot myself in the foot, but I see no evidence that Korra’s a weak bender. See above paragraph.
Also, if we’re going to keep comparing Aang as most specialist to Korra as apparently useless, fine. AtLA was written for a younger audience; as such, its entire cast was several years younger than the cast of LoK. Everyone in that series had prodigious skills for their ages–Azula was fourteen years old when she took down the entirety of the earth kingdom using two friends and her wits. In contrast, LoK has an older cast, so even if they’re doing things that are just as accomplished as their AtLA counterparts, there’s always going to be that age gap.
[And yet the past avatars who have shown up are now four men, one woman.]
And all of the past male avatars, barring Aang, are notable for screwing up the world somehow. Roku was too afraid to act against his friend and as a result let the fire nation kill everyone. That waterbending guy whose name no one cares about is basically known as the guy who was completely useless at being anything. Wan, for all of the favoritism that the writers gave him, released the root of all evil into the world, disrupted the balance between the spirits and the humans, and generally fucked up everything to a point that he can’t even fix it in his lifetime, or in his next lifetime or in ten thousand years of atonement.
Kyoshi lived for two hundred thirty years, destroyed a dictator, founded the Earth Kingdom as it is today, created an island, and inspired a group of all female warriors who do nothing but kick ass.
I feel like if any of the roles that the previous male Avatars (short of Wan, I guess, but you hate him too) were replaced with women, the criticism would just be that the women only fuck up things.
…I’m not going to defend the gender ratios to my dying breath, but I honestly don’t see it as mattering as much as you do. Yes, it’s unfair that the Avatar cast isn’t balanced (and in actuality, one out of three is basically how all young adult works are going these days, so let’s just apply the blanket hate on cast ratios to everyone), but I don’t feel like that discrepancy is enough to turn me away from a series/concept/arc entirely.
Also, not sure where this ties in, but Aang definitely spent time watching his past lives. There was that whole episode for Roku that taught him how he needs to be ruthless, and the time he spent accessing Kyoshi’s memories taught him how the Avatar state actually worked. The two-episode Wan interlude is more noticeable given that the LoK seasons are half as long as the AtLA ones, but it’s not an unprecedented tangent.
and in actuality, one out of three is basically how all young adult works are going these days
It’s almost as if what I’m complaining about is based on some sort of common problem that manifests across all media due to some sort of bias, causing it to matter because it’s not some random coincidence but part of a larger pattern where women don’t matter, are ignored, and ends with up someone saying that throughout history no women accomplished anything therefore we should keep not seeing any women in our media because it’s historically accurate that way.
It’s almost as if I’m agreeing with you.
Hopefully clarified my position in the previous post.
If not, please keep telling me what it’s like to be oppressed in the media. I certainly have no idea what it’s like.
That’s definitely not what you’ve been doing. Try reading it again.
Somehow I feel like these debates would be much more wholesome and productive for everyone if you didn’t insist on cutting down every idea that registers as not-yours.
Saying it the first time was not good enough, reiterating it a second time was clearly not good enough, and I don’t know why I should bother with a third since no one is going to change their opinion. However, in the spirit of actual discussion, why not.
I’m literally only applying the justification of “it happened in history so it’s okay if it happens here” to this specific crowd in this specific pair of episodes. Not any other crowd, not any other episodes, and most notably, not any other time period. It made sense to me that the crowd of monks ten thousand years in the past would be primarily men because men were, to my understanding, the primary demographic at that time. Especially of monks. The universe had an episode about overcoming sexism toward women, implying that these issues had existed a hundred years ago and surely ten thousand years ago, and so when they showed their unbalanced world with bad spirit, economic, and gender relations, I bought it. That’s all. It would’ve been great to have a girl actually bring this up, but I’m not willing to denounce the episode simply because of this fact.
You’ll notice that I didn’t bother defending the “all the episodes are about Mako/Tenzin” or “why are all of the rebels guys” “Korra’s been pretty useless this season” or “Asami does nothing to protect her goods because glove conveniently gone” because I think those are valid points. I was cynical toward the 1:2 female:male gender ratio in current media because I think it’s ridiculous. I’m not using the historical accuracy clause to justify any more than the in-universe historical accuracy of these two episodes. That is all.
I’m literally only applying the justification of “it happened in history so it’s okay if it happens here”
And I’m literally saying that is bullshit, both as an excuse and as a description of history in the first place.
These are not actually those people, and those people did in fact have women who did something other than wash clothes and scream when they were attacked. Whether or not people gave a fuck or remembered it or punished the women for it is a matter of societal sexism. It doesn’t mean women didn’t exist in the first place.
Moreover, if all societies we see are of men as seen by our viewpoint character of a man after being kicked out by men because he led the impoverished men on an attack on some other men because he wanted to get food for yet other men, then yes, it’s complete bullshit to be saying Oh but right here they totally were showing sexism and not wallowing in it, as illustrated by the subtle method of only having men do anything in the idyllic society of pacifist vegetarians living in harmony with nature!
A historical society you’re basing your fantasy society on having been sexist isn’t just a catch-all defense against complaints about representation of women in your work, though. For one thing, if Mike and Bryan had wanted to portray airbender society as more egalitarian than the Tibetan society the air nomads are based on, they absolutely could have. This is a fantasy show; there is absolutely no reason anything in it has to be exactly like its historical basis unless the creators want it to be. They were not standing there thinking, “Oh, how we wish we could portray women being equal among the airbenders of the past, but alas, historical accuracy demands we don’t!” They made a conscious, free choice to portray a sexist society without dealing with that sexism or it otherwise contributing anything to the story, and that choice, even if it’s not hugely important, is detrimental to the already not-so-great representation of women on the show. When criticizing the show’s representation of women, this is one of the contributing factors, and as such it makes sense to bring it up. I would venture to guess that in a show where the representation of women is perfectly fine, Farla wouldn’t have a huge problem with it showing, among a variety of societies, a glimpse of a society that’s implied to be sexist. But in the context of a show whose treatment of female characters has a lot of problems, this is just one more way that women don’t get represented, and it’s illustrative of the wider problem even though it’s not in itself a hugely important aspect of it.
Also, it is perfectly possible to write about a sexist society without making the female characters invisible noncharacters who don’t do anything. Just because society is sexist and doesn’t as a rule give women a lot of opportunities doesn’t mean women in that society are inherently incapable of being strong, developed, interesting characters. Even when you have an entirely legitimate reason to be writing about a sexist society, that is not an excuse for making all the characters guys.
Nobody is saying the writers of Korra are horrible sexist people who hate women and want them to be subordinate or whatever. This is a common problem in media. People tend to internalize ideas like male being default and women not being important without realizing it and unconsciously perpetuate them in their own works unless they consciously work to avoid them. But these are still ideas that should be criticized where they pop up, no matter how well-meaning the creators, if only to encourage more people to consciously think about it and break out of the vicious cycle.