My Favourite Characters - Korra

Korra from the hit animated series Legend of Korra, is the Avatar, the one person who is able to manipulate all 4 elements to their will, and keep the balance in the worlds of mortals and spirits. Korra is an aggressive, dominant and powerful woman who over the course of 4 years of the show, goes through a lot of change, going from an arrogant protagonist to a respectable leader and one of my favourite characters. The first aspect that I would like to discuss is comparing her to Aang in the original series. Aang was a pacifist who only fought in self-defense, always preferred to use democracy as a method to achieve peace and always found his duty as the Avatar to be a burden that he never asked for. Korra is the complete opposite, she fully embraces being the Avatar, she loves the power and respect that comes with it, she enjoyed bettering herself and almost always sees violence as an answer...at least at first, as the series went on, she became much calmer and wiser. But nevertheless, her initial mindset was the complete opposite of Aang, and because she was more ruthless, she also had less fear and was tougher in a fight. Aang has the same mindset for the entire series and rather than he change, the world changes around him. Because of this I do have to say I feel like Korra is the more interesting character to watch, she goes through more development, is better in a fight and thinking about it, she does more as the Avatar than Aang or any other Avatar. Aang may have stopped a war, but Korra saved two worlds and finally brought the two of them together as one, actually achieving the goal of the Avatar, to bring balance to both worlds.

As I said, she does go through a lot of development in the show, being honest when the show first started, i didn't like Korra all that much. She was arrogant, a tad whiney and seemed rather selfish, but it was around season three she finally started to change, she began to accept that the role of the Avatar was more than a fancy title. She became responsible, diplomatic and fair, but she never lost that fire in her heart that made her an excellent fighter, her determination and fury made her an excellent Avatar in verbal debates and physical debates. My favourite Avatar will always be Toph, but the best Avatar and the best Korra character is Korra.

But more than that, think about what she means as an icon in the entertainment industry. For those of you who don't know, Nickelodeon was hesitant on making a series aimed at boys with a female in the lead, but of course, because the entertainment industry are idiots, they didn't realise boys don't care. Point in case: they did test audiences and the boys said they didn't care if it was a girl, just that she kicked butt. But then we take it one step further, if you weren't aware, it is revealed in the series finale that Korra is bi-sexual/lesbian (It's not confirmed which one) when her and her best friend Asami go on a vacation together, hand in hand and staring into each others eyes. This naturally caused debate amongst fans and was confirmed by series creators that the two were in a relationship together. Now if Nickelodeon has proved anything, it's that this is probably as far as they would have let them go with this, because Nickelodeon is full of idiots. But regardless, think about that, a children's TV show, aimed at boys has a lesbian lead character, I'm willing to bet that that's never happened before.

Korra I hope will one day go down as an iconic character for pushing the boundaries of representation, combine that with a great personality and she would make a damn good role model for any kid, and one of my favourite characters.

-Danny