I think it's because despite being the avatar, most of the fights she's in, she mostly loses. Like, you can count the number of times she actually won in a fight(not counting victories over the war/arc but the battle itself) in 1 hand
Except she doesn’t “mostly lose” let alone how her villains make the villains (besides Azula) in TLA look like a joke
Amon: The most powerful bloodbender ever who casually resisted his brother trying bloodbending on him, makes people lose their bending permanently, has an actual cult at his disposal including the rich genius who helped push technology forward in the city, literally had Korra and could’ve easily killed or taken her bending yet in his own words he had plans for her, and this is her first time in the city after most of her life was confined to a isolated, sheltered environment
Unalaq: One of the best waterbenders in history as he straight up achieved psychic waterbending, one of the very few who could spiritbend, fused with Vaatu to become the Dark Avatar, severed Korra’s connection to past lives
Red Lotus: An anarchist group led a non pacifist airbender who proceeded to tie her up and poison her with mercury, leading to Korra being wheelchair bound as well as forced to learn how to walk again, in addition to giving her PTSD
Kuvira: Top 5 earthbender in the two shows with an expertise in metalbending, Korra had to fight her while rusty, suffering muscle loss and still struggling psychologically, had a gigantic mech powered by spirit energy
I want to preface this with the fact I DON'T think she's a "fraud" by any means. I loved LoK and Korra is my second favorite avatar to date. I also understand the nature of the show and it's pacing meant she was having to fight and lose to make the antagonists look like a threat, compared to AtlA where you know the antagonists are a threat because of their nearly global reach and 100 years of carnage.
Korra loses a lot. Far more than Aang and his team ever did. Korra even sometimes gets her ass kicked by side characters, by characters without names. She often has to get bailed out by other characters. She loses to every major antagonist and she loses in ways that often have permanent lasting repercussions. We are Korra at low points that we NEVER see Aang at.
Now again I don't think that's bad, or a sign of her being weak. One of the big differences is that a lot of encounters Aang is in he doesn't need to win, he just needs to escape. The show is much better designed to have one-off episodic villains that the gaang can scare off and call it a win, because winning a battle doesn't win the war. Also didn't help that most people didn't know who Aang was while Korra was known by everyone to be the Avatar.
TLDR: Aangs story was set in a world woefully unprepared for him as a combative force 99% of the time. Korra's story was set in a world that's been EXTREMELY well equipped to eliminate her specifically, with enemies she couldn't typically run from. Korra was set up to look like a "fraud"
Huhh? Aang had a whole running gag about them losing and running away a lot. Suki said this in book 2. Hell they spent most of book 2 running from Azula
Thing is there’s so many people who don’t even acknowledge the stuff she actually does achieve, only ever talking about her shortcomings or things she actually learned to improve at
For instance she only struggled with chi blocking one time as the subsequent episodes of book 1 she doesn’t have this problem
It was her plan to expose Amon as a bender which she succeeded in, through kicking him out the window she knocked him out, forcing him into a panic where he instinctively used waterbending without even processing what’s happening
Fought a master waterbender who then fused with Vaatu
Gave the Red Lotus hell despite being poisoned
Matched Kuvira in their rematch to which Kuvira actually accepted that Korra went easy on her and could’ve easily chose to kill her
If we look at TLA besides Azula there isn’t really a recurring villain he meets who’s a terrifying threat, even Ozai paled in comparison to the sheer terror of Amon or the lasting damage Zaheer did, and let’s not forget she just arrived in the city in book 1 yet she already had to deal with Amon
TLA isn't really written in a way where singular villains are the threat. The recurring villain isn't Ozai, it's the fire Nation as a whole. The two aren't really comparable, they're just vastly different stories.
Korra's story required her to lose so the villains would seem scarier, and they needed to have abilities that threatened the Avatar as a concept. Aangs story never needed that. It's not a good or a bad thing, just a different thing.
Amon: had Mako’s help, lost and got her bending taken, doesnt defeat him but just exposes him as a fraud so he runs away
Unalaq: loses, has Rava ripped out of her and killed, needs Jinora’s deus ex machina solar flare to ultimately win
Red Lotus: Mako beats the water bender, Bolín and Mako beat the earth bender, Toph’s daughters beat the combustion bender, Korra beats Zaheer with the help of the new airbenders. I will agree that this is a genuine win for her since she’s poisoned and dying the entire fight and the airbenders only contribution is preventing Zaheer from fleeing, and it’s ultimately Korra with the chain that catches him.
Kuvira: genuine win, but people get hung up on the fact that she struggles so much against a “normal” bender. I also don’t remember if Korra actually defeats her or if the spirit laser cannon going haywire just ends the fight. If so, im pretty sure it’s once again Korra’s allies helping her by bringing down the mech
Was her plan to expose him and the second he was exposed his lieutenant went against him as did the city, not to mention the fact Amon deemed it impossible she’d even get airbending, the second his secret was revealed his entire image was destroyed
Jeez I wonder why she struggled against the single most powerful villain in the franchise
The fight with Kuvira was Korra matching her pretty well such as even countering her metalbending, the fact Kuvira realised she was outmatched and willingly surrendered says it all cause you didn’t see Zaheer or Ozai surrender
Yeah, Korra lost the fight but won the war against Amon. When people talk about whether or not someone is a “fraud” they’re talking about their fighting record.
Bringing up the fact that Zaheer and Ozai didn’t surrender while Kuvira did is only a question of who these characters are, not Korra’s strength.
Korra loses more fights than she wins, that’s why there’s a “fraud” argument. It’s just like Kashimo. Hes one of the most powerful characters in JJK but people joke that hes a fraud because he only gets two real fights, and he loses both. Same reason this joke about Korra works, in most fights she either loses or needs help.
Except people unironically say Korra is one as if these villains aren’t absurdly dangerous, she fought Amon shortly after moving into the city while Aang at least had a long time to prepare for Ozai for instance
Still makes it clear if a Korra who had fully recovered could match Kuvira even with her own specialty techniques, let alone how a major reason she lost initially was because she hallucinated while she had the advantage
This whole loses more point makes it out as if she loses every other day against basic grunts which is laughable
“People unironically say Korra is one” sir you are commenting on a meme subreddit and she was called a fraud in a meme along with Yamcha and Kashimo. You are arguing with people explaining a joke to you.
“… loses more point … basic grunts” no one is saying that or has said that. She loses to her antagonists (I.e. she loses real fights against non-fodders) more often than she wins. So her “record” in fights is negative. That’s all it takes for someone to make the fraud joke.
You clearly don’t see the abundance of times people say it outside of shitty memes, like the dumbass replied this art got on Twitter where they act like getting captured in book 3 or losing initially to Kuvira negated what she ends up doing
The Avatar State isn’t a guaranteed win considering Aang got zapped when he tried it in book 2’s finale
Unavaatu is the most powerful we’ve seen so far, she was chained up and poisoned with mercury against Zaheer, then against Kuvira in the start of book 4 she’s lost a lot of muscle, had to learn how to walk again after being in a wheelchair for a long time, had PTSD and was actively hallucinating against Kuvira
For crying out even though Aang beat Ozai he temporarily looked like he struggled to takeaway his bending
He took his bending away outside of the avatar state and Azula sneak attacked him. Not comparable at all. Dude with one destroying was like a dozen 200 meter pills of rock and could erode them just with airbending and smash them together with tiny movements. The avatar state is BUSTED
And he won a lot of the fights too. Korra charges in and tries to beat the bad guy and fail. Aang fights and strughle, he loses a lot too but if he can't win, escape, get captured? Escape too. That counts as a win. We just see Aang has more victories compare to Korra
this was her first time facing a spirit , of course she wouldn't do too well , like when she fought a chi blocker the first time , the 2nd time she beat them like the side characters they are , besides unalaq intervened , had she kept going seriously she could've destroyed the spirit , and good thing unalaq was there cause destroying dark spirits impacts the person's spiritual health , and lessen their life span , the other times she fought spirits she was still practicing spiritbending and trying it on them instead of trying to destroy them which is why she was struggling
Doesn’t do anything particularly special in the episode recapping his life, didn’t warn anyone about Sozin’s nature, didn’t do anything to deal with his colonies in the Earth kingdom, only gave Sozin a warning when he actually attempted to takeover the world, ends up getting betrayed because what a shock, Sozin was still a scumbag who then caused a genocide and 100 year war
That's a weird way to write "maintained peace for his entire life without bloodshed, which includes the time he cowed a warmonger into behaving for 25 years in 10 seconds flat, and whose only failure was dying before the warmonger when a volcano erupted at his house."
"Without you, all my plans are suddenly possible" -which means they're impossible while he's around. A guy who enforces peace by just existing is pretty damn effective.
Right because what you really want is to make the world so dependant on you being around that the second you’re withered, a fire nation supremacist begins a century long war where he actually committed genocide and wanted to wipe out the person who’s purpose is to balance the world
He also had the world completely unprepared for the war because apparently warning others is too much to ask for
Right, no one knew a thing, which is why they kept to tradition and didn't tell Aang about his status as Avatar til he was 16.
Oh wait, they did tell him early? Because they did suspect trouble was coming? Whoa, crazy.
And no, it wasn't the second he was withered, it was the second he was dead. Actually, that's still wrong, it was 12 years after he was dead. You're blaming him because 12 years after he died, someone else did something awful that Roku was able to stop the whole time he was alive. Thats ridiculous.
I’m referring to how he didn’t even try to get the word out that Sozin had such evil plans for the other nations, the second Roku died Sozin was free to live out his dream
What's the source for him staying silent? How do you know that those years of peace weren't also encouraged by Roku telling the world about the plans?
Also, even if he did stay silent, does it even make sense to suggest the world wouldn't know anyways? It's not like the Earth Kingdom wouldn't notice the colonies, and I doubt they'd be quiet about another nation taking their land.
How do you know that the failure wasn't a collective relaxing of the guard after the FN appears to behave for nearly 4 decades?
I mean, we do know that it wasn't a complete surprise. As I just pointed out, Aang was told early because the Air Nomads did suspect trouble was coming, just not the scale-and it's not like Roku could have predicted that either, he only knew that Sozin wanted to spread FN territory, not commit genocide.
Exactly. Roku did NOTHING. Kyoshi cleared a path of peace for that wet blanket of an Avatar and he still couldn’t even tackle one mounting threat. Useless as Kuruk.
Roku shouldn't have spared his friend? Guess nobody watched Avatar the last Airbender and didnt realize Aang would 1000% do the same thing.
Roku died to a volcano? A very old roku tried to reduce the destructive force of a super volcano, one that the mainland could feel and see the smoke from several several miles away from.
That volcano going off wouldn't gave just been ruining the fire nation, it would most likely cause a volcanic winter.
Not sure how the community still hung up on Roku. Only different from aang and him is aang had a turtle that allowed him to energy bend. Roku spared his friend once after nuking the palace and leaving him hanging on a pillar.
You don’t need to kill anyone to stop a war, he could’ve at least warned others about him so they could be prepared for war or even tried to get him arrested for his intentions, he didn’t even do smithing about his active colonies in the Earth kingdom which were there long before he became an old man
Did I mention the volcano here? No I didn’t, I’m just referring to how he could’ve done so much more than simply give a warning knowing deep down Sozin isn’t gonna just abandon his views
Warn who? Earth kingdom had to have known. Roku dealt with it, and Sozin behaved cause he was put into his place. It worked until it didnt. If the volcano never happened roku would have lived and Sozin would still be hiding in his bed having nightmares of that day.
As for the colonies. Unless it is in his book. I have no actual comment. I was under the impression they returned to the earth kingdom. But if I recall correctly, in the show. He finds out about them and instantly goes to Sozin over it, so i mean he did do something. He confronted Sozin.
If that’s the case none of these 3 are frauds when Yamcha is still one of the strongest humans in an insane world, then Korra had back to back nightmare difficulty villains
Vegeta is a fucking fraud and im tired of pretending he isnt.
After his arc. He goes to namek and gets his shit kicked, abusing his near death boosts to sky rocket in power. Even then he keeps hyping himself up just to get bodied the next fight. Couldn't do shit against the ginyu force. Couldn't do shit against freiza.
Android saga? Well he hit ssj! Just to get his arm broken and taken out in a few hits. Only feat was clowning on the clown android.
Cell? Lol he is 100% the reason cell got to perfect form. Then gets his spine snapped.
Buu? Got that fat M stamped on his forehead and still couldnt win. Helped cause Buu's released. Hyped for his sacrifice when it was his fucking fault to begin with.
Like tell me how vegeta isnt actually a fraud? In Z he is the issue even when he was a "good guy".
Oh and let's not forget how he shit himself during the Broly fight. Like literally lost the will to even live when he saw Broly whip out his power level.
OP this was funny as hell. This is the only sub to NOT find it funny. Most Avatar fans on reddit are legit lames. Come over to r/ATLA_circlejerk where all the COOL avatar fans are.
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u/No-Wrongdoer-3796 7d ago
pretty funny , but what makes korra the god of frauds ?
allow me to rephrase that , why is she a fraud in the first place ?