Nickelodeon has confirmed the kick-off date of its upcoming animated television serial, The Legend of Korra.
Frankly, it’s much sooner than expected. As you may recall, the cable network has been rather coy about the air date for its first episdoe, so I was thinking it would likely be this fall, or perhaps as late as next spring. Instead, we’ll be seeing the show in just a few weeks: April 14, 2012.
For reference, here’s the trailer for the series:
I’m already a fan of this character. Of course, I’m a bit of a sucker for rebellious female heroes, which is all we really know about her so far. I feel confident enough in the team to trust that she and whatever friends she will have will be just as evocative as the characters in the original series, and possibly a bit more mature, since the creators now know that their audience is a bit older than originally intended. However, the final clip at the end of the trailer shows us that they haven’t removed every spark of goofiness from the series.
Especially interesting is the seeming skyscraper pagodas, seen in the distance in this trailer. It seems that the world has moved on a bit from bending, and we likely won’t see a world filled with people using the mystical forces in their everyday lives, like we saw in Avatar.
In the 70 years since Aang’s original adventures, the world has become less mystical and more technological, seemingly having gone through an industrial revolution of sorts, creating a really compelling combination of feudal Japanese with Victorianesque imagery.
Republic City looks like a sort-of dystopian, industrial revolution era city, with just a touch of steam-punk. However, it has retained that world-of-pagodas look that made the setting so visually exotic in the first series.
If you’re one of the few who completely missed Avatar: The Last Airbender, or if you only saw the M. Night Shyamalan movie, this is something you should remedy immediately.
Though seemingly constructed for children, it is certainly not too juvenile for an adult audience, and is, in fact, one of the best fantasy series, with one of the most interesting mythologies television has seen in a very long time.
The Legend of Korra begins April 14, 1012. You can check out the first Avatar series on Amazon instant video.
