But, couldn't it be more likely for the water tribes to develop a hidraulic engine or so because of their bending, even if not instead of what Zuko and the Earth king proposed, maybe after the reconstruction, because even after the reconstruction I assume that there was still some people that refused to the change, or could it be developed after what we saw in in the legend of Korra? PD.- sorry for my broken English
It isn’t too far fetched. Aang was 12 at Sozin’s Comet and 66 when he died. We start Korra’s show when she’s 17. That’s 71 years between Sozin’s Comet and Korra’s pilot. That’s 71 years of peace (no world wars like real life) which is a lot of time for invention and discovery, especially for people who can bend. The Fire Nation already had combustion engines, cars and airships during the 100-year war. Not to mention Sokka invented the submarine, lol. 71 years is like going from 1849 to 1920. In 1849, most people were still using horses and messenger birds. By 1920, we had cars, telegraphs, and electricity.
Except we never reached the 300-400 years of musket usage. I suppose technology ages faster when people can ben metal and fire and etc but this was too fast imo
@@arshiaaghaei perhaps but still easier to throw rocks and burn things than making a metal tube that goes bang but I'm sure gun weren't a things cause it's a kids show and gun are a bit too much but we did see attempts to match bender powers with the shock gloves and planes made by Asami's father
The comment I was looking for. People can't wrap their mind around how fast the change was in the industrial revolution. In Europe city's went from 1000 citizens to 500.000 and more in less than 80 years. People were raised as dirt poor farmers and died in the citys of 1900.
Let me explain: I don't have a problem with the cars or the telegraph or even the radio I have a problem with platinum mechs which somehow despite being technically softer than pure iron,sustain great damage without issue. I have a problem with the bland pathetic excuse of a multicultural center that city is. I have a problem with the giant clone of the Statue of Liberty standing outside said city. I have a problem with the idea of spirituality being used as the equivalent of a NUKE,TIED TO ANOTHER GIANT MECH COVERED OF PLATINUM,THE DESIGN OF WHICH SEEMS SO RIDICULOUS I DON'T KNOW HOW IT'S STILL STANDING! I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THE USE OF THE MOST DEADLY TECHNIQUE OF FIREBENDING,WHICH TAKES YEARS TO MASTER,AS PART OF A POWER PLANT JOB FOR RANDOM SCHMUCKS! I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THE POLICE FORCE THAT HAS THE GALL TO WEAR METAL ARMOR WHILE CHASING SAID SCHMUCKS EVEN THOUGH THEY COULD COOK THEM ALIVE SEVERAL TIMES OVER WITHOUT LIGHTNING,OR EVEN CRUSH THEM WITH SAID METAL ARMOR! I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH HOW THE ONLY OPPRESSED MINORITY I SEE IN THAT CITY IS A STUPIDLY HAPPY HOMELESS GUY WITH NO ISSUES WITH HIS PREDICAMENT, HAPPILY MAKING FOOD FROM DUMPSTERS! I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THE IDEA THAT THERE WAS A LITERAL DOOR TO THE SPIRIT REALM,WHICH IS NOW ALICE IN WONDERLAND STYLE,MAKING SPIRITUALITY AND FAITH UTTERLY USELESS! Alright, I think I'll stop now. Edit: To future generations: This is partly a joke. It appears I should've explained that before.
@@alyseleem2692 I with you. Korra trashed the asain inspired world of avatar to add 1920 American vibes which is so out of place its jarring. It also ruined the whole ying yang idea of order chaos in balance for a western view on good vs evil. Honestly I dont know how same people who made masterpiece last air bender with its rich and diverse asain cultures and beliefs end up making dumpster fire that is korra, the show that somehow turn into some weird 1920 fanfic with gay baiting and all. Also physical spiritual world was just plain stupid.
I would actually consider Metalbending to be technology. It is a type of skill that can be used for industry and production. It is no different from pottery or the wheel.
Yes, the same as social technologies - like modern government systems, or even new social norms. Not that these are skills, but they are equally "intangible", but have a consistency in them that can be passed on and modified, or scrapped and reinvented - and have enormous effect on our material lives.
It should be noted that traditional forms of metal working already exist. A) because the fire nation had metal ships and other creations long before Toph discovered metal bending. And B) because they were able to work platinum. (Which could not be metal bended. )
The Fire Nation was advanced enough to build that giant drill. That’s a massive technological feat accomplished before Ozai’s defeat. It makes perfect sense for the all of advancements made between the two series.
Right, but that's the problem. The focus on the tech in Korra ducks the background anachronistic technology in AtLA. It pulls on a thread that unravels both series. I don't like the setting in the sequel and if I start to unpack that, I like the original series less.
@@KittSpiken The tech wasn't anachronistic, it was just imbalanced. Imagine having a show set in early to mid 1800s Japan. Technology and social structure is still largely medieval. You could be forgiven for thinking it was set 1000 years in the past. Then everything changes when America attacks. Now you have large gun ships, machine guns, factories, trains, a whole new modern education system and beaurocracy and so on. The Fire Nation was very advanced, that's why they were able to fuck with a nation 10 times their size, similar to what Europe and America did to the rest of the world.
@@Heligoland360 fair point, even still: they had the aforementioned drill, harpoon guns powerful enough to embed metal stakes in solid rock, cables with the tensile strength to bear the weight of a tank and winches strong enough to pull that weight up a sheer cliff. All before they figure out hot air balloons. Also zeppelins apparently saw a parallel development to the balloons (seems they weren't full of hydrogen), because they are deployed a few weeks after the balloons were first deployed. I understand why firearms had to be omitted (though imagine how cool it would be sparking gun powder with no firing pin, no trigger pull, just a subtle bit of firebending), but even within the Fire Nation what they managed to engineer and what is stuck in r&d is all over the place.
Also the fact that development went a bit faster than we had in our case could be explained by the planet in avatar being literally smaller than real Earth
“The Air Nomads didn’t advance at all in this period... because they were *dead* “ I laughed too hard at this. Edit: there’s a warzone down that away, I advise avoiding it👇🏻.
They didnt just Advance. Face it, people, the whole world got americanized, and that's sad, embrassing, even disturbing. What a Fail of a Cartoon, for the most Part.
Most people don’t realize how much of the world TODAY still lives in a rural/agricultural livelihood, untouched by much industrialization. It’s literally like taking a step back in time
I have a friend who still can't get more than dial up internet at his house. He's not in the middle of no where. He's in a suburb of a major city in Virginia.
@@MerkhVision Park City Utah can't get faster than 1mbps DSL. It's a luxury there. Mostly because there's only one provider in an area and if they don't want to run lines out there they dont have to since they have no competition. It's like that all over the US. They choke out competition then screw over entire swaths of people.
@KRYMauL most of the nations pull from multiple cultures. In addition to Japan and Britain, there are also cultural examples of mayan/aztec culture like the sun warriors and Southeast Asia in the beach episode. The earth kingdom has in addition to Chinese some aspects of middle eastern culture in the desert, and possibly early Mongols with that one tribe in the canyon episode Water tribe is inuit for the southern water tribe, southern US for the swamp, and the northern takes from inuit and other native American cultures with a Venetian city structure
I think its just so common for science fiction and fantasy settings to basically freeze in tech development that it is strange to see a setting actually develop. Most fantasy/science fiction settings have tounsands or even millions of years of backstorie in which they constantly use similar armor / vehicles / weapons /whatever.
i mean our societies similar, how big were the differences between the 16th century and the 1st century? and we really didnt learn that much in the flashbacks of past avatars or theyre worlds, so its not a fair judgement. plus by the time of atla the fire nation is in an industrial revolution, republic cities tech is definitley not fafr fetched based off of that.@@anfuro
@@andrewwoodger1180 we are talking about a 100 centuries time jump, and the clothing and architecture of the world looks pretty similar to the world in the last airbender. I agree that in the 70 year jump to Korra the tech makes sense. But the 10k year leap with almost no change in architecture and clothing seemed unlikely to me.
@@anfuro well considering its implied that in the 10000 years between Wan and Korra that Literal cultures and civilizations, entire parts of the history of the world were lost, we can safely assume that maybe at some point we had a regression of knowledge, its highly likely that technology was developted and lost
Remember one of the wright brother that creates airplane still alive when the first atomic bomb explode, let that sink in. Less than half a century, from a small paper airplane to metal plane carrying bomb that can level a city
It's always easier to build on the foundation then to create the foundation itself this has been shown in history very many times with your example being one of the very many examples
@@OnyxXThePunch its eronius to say either was easy, it was a rigorous application of scientific principles and practical engineering that led to success in both areas. While it is relatively easy to build a working plane today with all the fundamentals laid out in books and even online for those wil8to learn we still see people doing things the wrong way and failing exactly like those famous movies of failing aircraft designs from the early 20th century. The people who designed the B29 or the bombs they dropped didnt have a cakewalk either, because they were pushing for an incremental advance probably even greater than the Wrights going from their controlled gliders to that first powered flight. AMD just like the Wrights they had to put in the unglamorous work to make the things happen.
@Felipe Dumont first flew three years after the Wright Brothers, so no. He didn't invent the airplane. Though he is on the short list of people to make significant actual work in the field before the mechanics of powered flight were well understood.
I like how you break this down. It’s amazing how far our world came in terms of technology. For 100 years we went from barely able to get a wooden plane off the ground to putting a man on the moon. From being unable to get anywhere without an animal to cars, subways etc. Even to the Internet and phones, it’s amazing to look back and see how fast it all came
Pretty insane, humanity has existed for a blink of an eye relative to the earth, which means our advancement is travelling at the speed of light lol. We have probably done more in the last 200 years than we have done pretty much ever. Its completely bonkers
Technology didn't advance all that quickly. I mean, the fire nation was using steam powered ships from like the very first episode of The Last Airbender. It's like going from the 1850's to the 1920's.. well, right up until that final season of Korra anyway, where they just decided to go straight up Sci-Fi.
@@brunoss.3273 Mechs themselves are a point of contention. They were first made by nonbenders from an unbendable material. That somehow sustained damage despite being PLATINUM!
@@alyseleem2692 why would platinum machinery be immune to damage? Pure platinum is not a particularly hard metal, pure iron is harder. And why would nonbenders with access to industrial-era technology not be able to work platinum easily, when metals were worked without metalbending before the Hundred Year War?
@@ChewyPineapple I just said the opposite. It isn't supposed to take this amount of damage without issue, and yet it does. The Hundred Year War had firebenders work on such metals. As it was said,the industry of Avatar depends on bending,and therefore them having our equivalent of industrial level tech is questionable at best. Most importantly, WHY ARE THEY MECHS?!
Chow Yee Lee the longbow was as effective, perhaps even more effective, than the early musket. Only problem was that there weren’t too many people capable of competently operating the longbow, it was just more cost-effective to switch to the musket, just as it would have been with the earthbending-based system and the steam-based system
Omashu and Be Sing Se are basically the only places we see this because the rest of the Earth Kingdom is currently having to use benders in military positions, not industrial ones.
I would say BECAUSE of earthbending. A city powered by something the audience sees as magical yet almost has a "scientific" view of--we know how it works, just like the characters--makes a WAY more interesting city, compared to one run by something already considered old fashioned in our own time. :-)
I'd like to also point out that just because theres technology being used somewhere. That doesn't mean its widespread. My grandmother grew up during the depression. Cars existed in bigger cities(New York, Chicago, ect) but in the country side(Kentucky) where she lived they still used horse drawn carriages.
I'm Irish and until very recently we were always far behind other western countries in technology. Widespread electrification didn't come around until the 30s. My Dad grew up in the 70s/80s and they were the some of the only ones in the area with a (black and white) television.
lizard ledgend lot of european countries didn’t have running water before the 50’ if they lived in the countryside. There are even cases of village with no well in it where running water fountain were installed in the 30’
@@Luka1180 The Fire Nation(the most technologically advanced) was at war with literally every other nation. That shit doesn't spread without spies or some shit.
@@jacobbartlett331 also by that point we had seen the near extinction of the Air Nomads and the Southern Water Benders relying solely on bending to maintain your technology means that if the benders disappear or are killed off you lose that technology.
@@GamerBoyDevin Read the comics where the UR was even formed. Benders where attacking non benders because they were building a machine that basically took the benders job away, but made non benders less reliant on benders.
Korra's decision to keep the portals open would have eventually brought back the air benders. The air nuns and monks survived. Most of them were non benders. Air nation would still exist if Aang was infertile. But the chances are less because Aang was pre pubescent when he froze himself in the ice. Atleast that's what I understood.
@@g.h7657 Well if he couldn't have children then he would've thrown himself more into work and possible fixed issues non benders had. The while story of republic city would've completely changed three might not have been an anti bending movement or the movement could've happened sooner and kicked if not long after his death.
I mean to be fair when Toph invented metal bending it had to be a major step forward especially being now on the same team as the fire nation with their steam power. Also in a way Katara knowing blood bending, with her overall character, could turn that into a medical breakthrough to help with quality of life. Also you end up having their inventor friend getting to invent for peace instead of for war.
Finally someone who agrees with me that the progress wasn't so crazy. It made perfect sense to me. With all the stuff they already had, these things just seemed natural.
18:36 There is also the fact that people in the Avatar Universe can literally bend the elements, something that people in our world cannot do. I feel like that's the best reason as to why technology was developed quicker.
I think honestly that would have made it worse- humans survived as a species because we were worse than other human-like species but had bigger brains. We had to build weapons and tools so we built them to survive. Bending makes everything much easier- so why progress? "Necessity is the mother of invention after all" People are lazy and don't do things they don't have to do. They could've easily developed technology but take one look as Ba Sing Sae and you see why they didn't (at least until LOK)
I think thats stupid. even if you have a power to possibly make something you still need to come up with the idea for it and the blueprints in your mind. its not like having the power to bend elements makes you an automatic genius.
@@NetherTaker Old comment but I hate how people ignore the fact that lightning bending in itself was something that could cost the user their life yet in Korra its just an average job. That is never explained how lightning bending became so common with so many people having no issue with a bending style that you know could kill you and at best just blow up in your face like Zuko.
BraveHeartedHero1 The technique just became more wide-spread through schools. Before it was a technique that only royals and upper class Fire Benders learned. After the war Zuko spread the knowledge to the common citizens Also yeah it can cost the user their life if they don’t dispose of the lightning in time, but it shouldn’t be too hard. Most of the danger of lightning came with lightning redirection which involved passing the lighting through you. Plus in the factories we don’t see the benders building up a lot of electric energy. So they produce less lightning than you would in like a deadly fight.
Metal Bending probably played a huge role in advancing technology. I mean Toph built the statue of Aang, knowing that I'm sure metal bending was used to build alot of structures.
Yeah, and Toph was able to fix one of Satoru's machines when they were broken, and after that it's implied she was even able to repair them after they were sabotaged. Especially given her earthbending-sight abilities, she was able to see how it was supposed to fit together. Toph probably also taught earthbending-sight to her metalbending students, so those metalbenders would be able to repair and help construct some of those machines
@Alex Knauth: Yeeup. Imagine if an engineer could just lightly tap a complex mechanism with a finger to instantly pinpoint the fault in the system, and then concentrate for a bit to fix said fault without ever taking the device apart. :D
@@oddeyes9413considering there would be no need for weak points such as joints between bars since she could meld them together, it would be significantly stronger.
I also think of Sokka and Toph’s contributions. Sokka was a genius and there were certainly many others like him who could now dedicate their minds to advancing problems in homes and whatnot instead of the war, and Toph invented metalbending so obviously
@@Rammythelogophile I mean he invented submarines, pyrotechnics, helped create blimps, and planned the invasion on the day of the black sun. So I’d assume as much
I really like that Legend of Korra advanced technology the way it did. Too many fantasy worlds just keep technological development as a fixed state for centuries or even millenia.
@@ThereforeIAmHim I realized that. My second reply was me desperately grasping at straws, but fish won't bite in an empty lake, no matter how sparkly a lure you use.
Also I think that Korra’s decision to leave the Spirit Portals Open started another technological revolution, where the crazy Spirit Energy did some crazy shit.
The plot of nearly every final fantasy game is capitalists using the spirit energy and twisting it until the whole planet is twisted and at the brink of collapse. Nothing similar in real life at... /s
I think we just misjudge the time gap. Its easy to forget that we skipped a generation between Ang and Korra, because Katara and Zuko are still around (and they look damn healthy for 85-90 year olds). Its a huge time gap. And it feels very jarring, because we come to think of Korra as the "next" generation, while in fact she is the one after. The more ridiculous thing is Varrick randomly inventing stuff during the show without having any of the precursor technology present. Real inventions didn't start out in their final form. Inventions got better in tandem with our understanding of the underlying science. And oh, boy there were mistakes made during that journey.
The fire nation controlled and stifled everything for 80+ years. A technological boom made sense in legend of korra. The Metal bending phenomenon as well as lightening bending would have played a major role and helped further technology in a faster way.
11:00 The gunboat diplomacy was always seen that way from the American side, but the Japanese version was hilarious. They found the one guy in Japan who could speak English and sent him as their delegate- without at all explaining what their stance was. The Tokugawa wanted to remain isolationist, and were willing to fight a war to maintain that isolation. But the delegate didn’t know this, so he agreed to the opening. When he told this to the Emperor, he and the Shogun were FURIOUS. The biggest development in Japanese history came down to a misunderstanding that nobody outside the political structure understood the core principles of foreign policy. This, folks, is the importance of a well informed society.
I noticed that the Legend of Korra's world shares some characteristics with Dieselpunk, Steampunk (flying balloonships) and Techno-Magic (Kuvira controlling the energy of the vines from the Spirit World through the Mecha's cannons)
It's strange that they were so slow when they can literary control the elements stuff like terraforming or building huge buildings is so much easier in Avatar
I had a much harder time with the apparent cultural and technological stagnation during the 10,000 years between Wan and Aang. Wan's time should have been set in the stone age.
I like to imagine Zuko released the secrets of lightning bending to the public as an act of good faith to republic city, knowing that it could be a great power source for developed cities.
@@yabada7866 Acting as if bending as a whole couldn't be abused and exploited. As if a 2-ton rock or a blast of fire to your face isn't going to kill you just as easily as a lightning bolt.
@@K2niarDneK it's not like a book which anyone can access. You as a bender of any element would probably have a chance to defend yourself from a basic attack. Defending the lightning was not something everyone knew. Apart from that, I'd like to imagine some special subs like lightning, metal, flight should be special. Something that only special people can achieve. If anyone can achieve in that short amount of time period, then it's not special and it's something that can be invented by people who lived in the past. It kinda invalidates the value of the episodes we saw in ATLA, like the one Iroh teaches Zuko redirecting or the one Toph first metalbends. Somethings need to stay special, not common. But that's my opinion and you're free to disagree.
@@yabada7866 All sarcasm aside, and I am caffeinated now, so I apologize for being rude, I do think that avoiding death via lightning would eventually become the same as avoiding death via gunshot IRL. The first person, likely the first army, to die to a firearm-armed military would've been extremely surprised, having never encountered anything like that. But as time goes on, people learned how to avoid them (not getting in the shooter's line of sight). It would be the same with Lightning Benders. The first people to die from a rogue Lightning Bender would be surprised, but not nearly as much since the Royal Family have demonstrated the ability. Most of the _shock_ would be from someone other than the Royals doing it. But as it becomes more commonplace, strategies would form to avoid the bolts (non-Benders and Air Benders avoid lines of sight, Water Bender's can redirect it with trails of water, Earth and Metal Benders can just put up a barrier in front of them). That's just how humans work. We discover something or how to do something, we find a way to weaponize it, it kills one of us, we find a way to avoid dying from it, rinse and repeat.
@@K2niarDneK just to be clear, I'm 100% agreeing with you on as time goes on, people are more likely to be able to defend themselves. My point is, it shouldn't be a common thing, because it's something that is extraordinary from all other ordinary bendings. Try to think like the role of genetics in bodybuilding. Yes you can learn all about the technique and stuff, but you may never have perfect genetics like cbum or gigachad. If everyone look like those people, then there isn't anything that makes them special, they are ordinary people. Hope I made myself clear now.
I agree completely with this analysis. I never saw the problem of the apparent jump in technology, it's literally a mirror of our own history. Plus, having benders would be immensely useful for an industrialization process, easily being able to speed up many aspects.
Somewhat late to the party, since I wanted to actually get to see LoK myself before watching this video, but you've pretty much said what I would have. I think a large part of the "problem" comes from the different perspectives. Most of A:TLA is from the perspective of the relatively primitive cultures, while the most advanced culture in the world is the antagonist. With tanks and airships and ironclad cruisers, the Fire Nation was clearly sneaking into the 20th century, technologically speaking - but given that the REST of the world feels like a typical fantasy setting, it's easy for the casual viewer to overlook that and just see the Fire Nation stuff as being big and bad and evil and industrial without really registering just how advanced the Fire Nation really was. This is probably especially easy because we don't see conventional guns in TLA (or LoK, really - the 'guns' we see are essentially energy channels) - because bending is used instead. For a lot of people, presence or absence of guns is a shorthand for how advanced a setting is, and not having them makes a setting a medieval fantasy, even when the fantastical elements make it so that guns are much less likely to be developed. You can see additional signs of this when the gang infiltrate the Fire Nation - the Fire Nation school, for instance, probably wouldn't have been that out of place a century or so ago. One can think of how much of our world was still essentially agrarian (feudal agrarian, even) as late as the First World War. Heck, one could view the Hundred Year War as being comparable to what might have happened if the Europeans had actually tried to conquer China during the Opium Wars rather than just using their military superiority to extract concessions. So if you take the Fire Nation, which is at the very least on par with late 19th century technology, and advance that by seventy years... frankly, if anything, I'd expect LoK technology to be MORE advanced. Meanwhile, in LoK, most of the series is from the perspective of the most advanced or second most advanced (it's notable that we never really get to see the Fire Nation directly in that period) culture in the world, while in the rest of the world, technology has spread to multiple relatively high-tech 'hubs' rather than it all being centered in the Fire Nation. So the different perspectives make it look like there's a big gap in technology. In reality, those, the Fire Nation was around 1900s technology when it came to military vehicles (tanks probably could have been invented around then if there'd been a big enough war on to justify them, rigid dirigibles, heavier than air flight in its infancy) while Legend of Korra is... really, not THAT much more advanced when you think about it, possibly sitting around the 1920s or 30s at the latest. So the REAL question should probably actually be... why was it so slow? And the probable answer to that was that the Hundred Year War had suppressed technological development that didn't show the potential for an immediate military payoff, so while military vehicles were fairly advanced, this hadn't filtered into civilian vehicles and the 'blue sky' research that ultimately led to things like the radio wasn't being done. So much of the period between A:TLA was probably marked by civilian technologies catching up - and some of which, such as radio, would turn out to also have military applications. TL;DR: The technological advance was actually relatively SLOW compared to the real world, it just felt like a big jump because we switched from the perspective of the relatively low-tech cultures to focusing on a relatively high-tech city.
The city of Ba Sing Se and even the Lion Turtle city of the first Avatar were relatively modern. Katara and co lived in villages that were sheltered from the world.
@@oniricfantasy6687 So? What? She's a few hundred years ago. Her age's tech is reasonable. I don't mean age. Wan died ....Well. It's the tech. It's too good for a time like that. They're supposed to be still inventing agriculture!
Also, in avatar, a significant portion of the population can literally affect the bare elements at will. Imagine how much you could advance with metal benders, not to mention water, Earth, and fire? It would accelerate stuff so much. Xao Fu, a mega city entirely made of metal, practically surfaced overnight.
But i thought metal bending and lighting bending were supposed to be incredibly hard and only the absolute best could do it. Hell, Azula had to be a prodigy in order to lightning bend and toph had to be blind in order to "see" the flaws in metal that she could exploit.
@@alyseleem2692 thats literally the answer to every flaw in the legend of korra. Oh the airbenders are back, how? "Deal with it" Oh everyone can lightning and metalbend now, how? "Deal with it" Oh korra was able to bend fire, water and earth bend as a toddler when it took aang until he was a teen, how? "Deal with it" Oh korra got all her bending back after it was taken from her and she got the avatar state as well, how? "Deal with it"
To be fair, the fire nation had already built devices like that drill vehicle to pierce the wall at Ba Sing Se when Aang was still a teen. So roughly a hundred years took place between that and Korra being born. If they shared that kind of technology with the world, then it wouldn't be shocking that they'd advance that much in a century
The thing you've got to remember is that technological and scientific advancement is exponential. The more technology develops, the faster we tend to develop new ones, as each enables the process in various ways.
Not really, its certainly possible to an extent but we see technology rise and fall several times in our own history, steam power seemed to occur back in ancient Rome but never rose beyond table top doodad.
@@IkeOkerekeNews Korra had many many problems including this technology increase. Yes, Avatar had "high tech weapons" like gas operated vehicles and steel ships. But such things can be caused by the benefits coming from the "bending". We don't have bending in our world, so creating a parallel between the technology of our world breaks the immersion. First steam operated machines came out in 1698. And the Industrial Age happens between 1780-1840. But Korra skips all of them and teleports us into 1920s of New York. Look, technological improvement is not just about inventing a single thing. To achieve a "radio broadcasting era", you need to invent a lot of things and encounter a few of cultural revolutions. We can say most of the world lives around 900-1000s while Fire Nation lives in their 1400-1500s. Yes, a technology from 1698 can be count as "very high tech", but you still need to pass Industrial Age before reaching to 1920s New York. One of the many flaws of Korra was this unrealistic technology skip. They didn't really care about the background and just wanted to make a cartoon in 1920s New York. There is no other reason behind it.
My great grandfather was born in 1909 he died in 2005. When he was born there was no electricity in rural East Texas and only 10 years before cars came to Texas, but were so expensive that no one used them. So no car no electricity to the burgeoning information age in his lifetime. I'm actually surprised that the estimated 90 years from when ATLA takes place to the time LoK takes place there isn't more technological advancement.
Remember, the industrial revolution wasn't all about rising wealth and prosperity. Most people horribly suffered under inhumane conditions. Life in early industrial working-class communities meant sweat shop work, diseases, no hygene in a post-apocalyptical wasteland where the air was filled with soot and the sun was being blocked by smoke. This would make so much more sense as a basis for a anti-bender movement, than what is presented in the show.
You are ignoring the surrounding realities of the time period. People did suffer greatly but they mostly chose that over their old lives of subsistence farming. Dont imagine that things were just golden before the industrial revolution came along.
@@DrewLSsix When you study the period, you can see the huge resistance to industrialisation from farmers, craftsmen and workers. The Luddites in Britain, the Silesian Weaver Uprising in Germany and the Canut Revolt in France happened because most people lost their income due to cheaper industrial production and were starving or had to work in inhumane conditions and had to live in slums. Most of them had lives full of hard work before, true. But hey had houses, gardens and healthy air and water. Now they got ramshackeled huts, no fresh food, soothed air and cholera infested water.
No actually think about it. Benders would be hired over nonmembers for these industrial jobs. It kinda does make sense, but Korea didn’t execute it well.
@@sualtam9509 People living better prior the industrial revolution is not true at all. Industrial revolution didn't just start with the machines. There were several conditions prior that helped to bring the industrial revolution about. It started with the Columbian exchange and the improvements in farming efficiency that caused an explosion in population growth and less hands needed on farms. People were naturally moving into the cities as a result. This create a huge labor pool that fueled the growth of factories. In fact without the industrial revolution these people would have suffered under perpetual destitution and starvation. The productivity increase brought about by steam engines, machines is what saved civilization from perpetual cycles of malthusian trap
You missed a joke calling republic city “the big cabbage” instead of “the big orange.” Sorry just wanted to point that out. Love your content and love you! Keep up the great work.
Just started the episode, but wanted to mention this, in one of the Wii games which was seemingly pre-firelord’s defeat, we do see a steam-punk “mech” like machine similar to the equalist’s ones. It was powered by a fire bender, water bender, earth bender, and a nonbender working together, a group who essentially provided the groundwork that became the Equalists, but with benders among their members.
Well there's lots of airbenders now since season 3 so the likely hood is not very high, we see at least 20 new Airbenders in Tenzins group so assuming all them have children and they have children. In 3 generations it'll be a ton of air benders
@@brandonw6139 I understand your poin but Tenzins family tree is most likely gonna be bigger and then cause the chances to be again high but its not like that kid could talk to Aang so😐
most of those changes in the past 100 years are a result of war and conflict. There was no conflict whatsoever in the 70-80 years between ATLA and TLOK.
@@joshuarubenstein2298 Remember that the fire nation was already an industrial superpower of the time era 200 years before LoK and in that time they had only just developed the biplain it took us 150 years from the beginning of the industrial revolution to the development of the biplane
After the events of A:TLA, the Fire Nation shared its technology. Remember, the Fire Nation was very technologically advanced (it had tanks and airships) where most other cities were technologically void for the most part and functioned off of bending. We first get a glimpse of this in the last few episodes of the first Book, however this point is further driven home when we get to Ba Sing Se. Outside of their tram/train, the city's technology was pretty limited. For a more real-world application, look at the ORIGINAL Pokemon Blue/Red/Yellow era of Gameboy Classic graphics then look at the VR/AR we have today. Less than 50 years have passed but we have made AMAZING strides in that area. Now that's just 50 years. LOK takes place at least 50 years into the future because I think there's canon sayin that Aang lived to be in his 60's (the iceberg didn't HALT his aging, it merely slowed it) and that's assuming that as soon as the Avatar died, they're immediately reincarnated however this is not likely. There's a heavy Eastern presence in the show and reincarnation is part of most Eastern religions and it's generally agreed that reincarnation is not instantaneous. Using these facts, I posit that it's actually NOT too unbelievable.
@@Schlumbuo i always though that some of the subskills in some cases were hiden from the public knowledge you know the best things were always reserved for the high class, Iroh and azula knew lightnning bending and they are royalty so maybe once it was known by the population many people focus on learning specifically the subskill, sorry for the mistakes is been a while since i practice english
me: *rewatching avatar the last airbender with my family* my dad: *stares at the world map on the Atlab wiki* *episode ends* my dad: I STILL DON'T KNOW THE NAME OF THAT EARTH KINGDOM VILAGE
Very interesting video. One thing I've noticed with a lot of fantasy stories like The Last Airbender, is you never see technology going on past the 1920s, but never more. Meaning you never see late-20th, early-21st level technology in these kind of stories, and I always found that interesting
Very good video. It has always bothered me when people criticised the Legend of Korra for speeding up the technological development too fast. People seem to forget that even in the original show technology was speeding up very fast. The Fire Nation by the end of Book 2 had a fully powered and absolutely gigantic drill that they were able to transport thousands upon thousands of kilometers from its manufacturing origin. It also had the power to drill through the massive walls of Ba Sing Se. That feat of engineering would have been absolutely unheard of by the time us in the real world were using steam engines and coal. Here's another example, which I think is the biggest feat the Fire Nation pulled off during the whole war. In the span of only months, the Fire Nation were able to take the ideas of a small balloon prototype and mass produce it, which they then redesigned to the point where they had 12 large scale metal airships and an even larger sized flagship for the day of Sozin's Comet. Remember that the events of all three seasons of Avatar: The Last Airbender took place in the span of less than a year, so the Fire Nation were able to pull all of this off from the point they found the balloon up until a couple of days before Sozin's Comet. Also consider that this was done BEFORE metal bending, which is just crazy when you really think about it. The Avatar world has such a ridiculous advantage over us in the real world thanks to bending. Metal benders on their own are able to refine and shape metal at will without even needing to heat it up first. With fire bending and water bending in the mix, the process of working with metal would have sped up the entire industry tremendously. With those kinds of hacks available it would honestly be kind of shocking if technology was still only in the late stages of the industrial revolution after those 70 years had passed.
To be fair, Nazi Germany went from panzer 2s and 3s to tigers and Panthers within 3 years and that's with them working on other projects. Compare that to the fire nation which have the airships be the only new weapon in this period...
@@thebravegallade731 But that is still 3 years of development time, which is a long time for improving on designs and working on the production pipeline while teaching the personnel to use the tech (not to mention the supplies needed for supporting the tech). ATLA from book 1 to 3 only lasted less than a year if going by the amount of environmental seasons that passed during the show's run (you could also count the amount of months by all the times the full moon was shown in the show to get a better approximation). So you are comparing a time period that is more than 3 times as long. Considering the time span, the larger metal airships would have had a very small time frame for actual testing in a combat scenario, so Ozai was completely banking on this nearly untested technology to be able to pull off his scorched earth plan for Sozin's Comet. This was a massive war effort on their part and huge portions of their industrial war machine would have had to work around the clock to hit such a tight deadline. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that it would be impossible to pull all this off on the Fire Nation's part. All I am saying is that tech in the Avatar world is moving quite fast and that the war balloons are a prime example of this. Btw, you forgot about the drill and other tech that were shown off in the show like the water scooters. Pretty sure they were quite new inventions as well.
@@Frozen_Death_Knight I mean it WOULD go much faster in certain aspects of you have people who can control fire at will. Just looking at historical precidence: it took only a year for the first maus prototype to be finished, and this was WITH German industry being bombed from hell and back, Normandy and massive losses and supply shortages on the Eastern front, plus half a dozen other wonderwaffe being developed at the same time (me262, komet, V2 and so on) and all of them arguably much more complicated than a lighter than air blimp. The difference here is that FN was the obviously winning side if you put aside the avatar... The mainland was almost virtually untouched, and even most of the first colonies were fine. Meanwhile Germany did all these in the span of a couple of years while losing BADLY and being the weaker side the whole war. I do agree somewhat with what you are saying though, I think ATLA would have been better paced if it was 5 seasons across 2 years with FN actually losing some gound durng a S3 and S4 and then doing a hail Mary comet attack at the end of a fifth season.... But that's just me wanting more backstory and content on the world of ATLA.
It didn’t really bother me that the development of technology grew rapidly in a short amount of time because it makes sense. It bothered me more that the styling of it was sooo heavily based on the 1920’s and 30’s. It was a little too uncanny for me.
The question is actually very easy to answer: They would take materials with earthbending, then Model it with metal bending and Fire bending, make fuel with firebending, and make fabrics with earthbending
I’ve been trying to lay this out for people in a similar manor for YEARS. Thank you for explaining it in a way my short-tempered ass didn’t have the patience to. 💗
Come to think of it, it’s really interesting the level of technology they had in avatar without electricity. They had metallurgy, presumably figuring out how to insulate heat in furnaces and fire bending into them to smelt iron. Then someone started experimenting with heating and cooling water and realized that they could convert the heat from fire bending into kinetic energy by using a steam engine. Then someone must have figured out how to implement that into ships and tanks. The fire nation knew how to mine coal, so that became an effective fuel source for them. A fire bender presumably would get tired heating a ship for hours on end, but coal wouldn’t, not after it gets that initial heat to start burning. I wouldn’t be surprised if before the hundred year war, airbenders and earthbenders worked with fire benders to make steel.
The advancement in tech makes sense to me because i can see the other nations wanting to flatten the curve. The Fire Nation has had exclusive access to these advanced weapons, and even though the war is over they'll definitely still be on edge and want to use this time to catch up so they won't be at such a disadvantage again
I find the Fire Nation to be a bit like Britain in terms of industrialization. When you draw parallels with colonialism, saying "The Sun never sets on the Fire Nation" seems to provide a new meaning considering firebenders get power from the Sun.
Amanda Stevens Interesting... I’ve always thought it bore the closest resemblance to Imperialist Japan (militaristic naval power, engaged in a protracted land war against a massive, resource-rich land power)
and 2 major wars.... there were no wars after the end of LoA and before LoK so there would not be such development of planes and war ships. Those things only developed due to war.... without war it would be much much slower.
@@malyssaryan1987 Such a dumbed down argument that makes no sense, since there was no war between the equalists and benders there was a movemente followed by a failed coup, BUT THERE WAS NO WAR.
Korra had many many problems including this technology increase. Yes, Avatar had "high tech weapons" like gas operated vehicles and steel ships. But such things can be caused by the benefits coming from the "bending". We don't have bending in our world, so creating a parallel between the technology of our world breaks the immersion. First steam operated machines came out in 1698. And the Industrial Age happens between 1780-1840. But Korra skips all of them and teleports us into 1920s of New York. Look, technological improvement is not just about inventing a single thing. To achieve a "radio broadcasting era", you need to invent a lot of things and encounter a few of cultural revolutions. We can say most of the world lives around 900-1000s while Fire Nation lives in their 1400-1500s. Yes, a technology from 1698 can be count as "very high tech", but you still need to pass Industrial Age before reaching to 1920s New York. One of the many flaws of Korra was this unrealistic technology skip. They didn't really care about the background and just wanted to make a cartoon in 1920s New York. There is no other reason behind it.
I remember hearing that in Republic city was based off of Japan after the Meiji restoration. They didn’t have a industrial revolution. They were just caught up really quickly to the rest of the world.
@ Warriorbob07 07 , Ok yeah but for hundreds maybe a thousand years in the avatar universe it was like avatar the last airbender, and to advance like that so quickly and to get Americanized like that, I mean cans t consider it even Avatar
The Khans well I mean I’m sure republic city was more developed then than any other place. We didn’t really explore the world in LOK like we did in ATLA
@@thekhans2823 what are you talking about? There were multiple technological breakthroughs in The last airbender; book 1: fire nation were on top of the food chain because they had developed giant steel battleships, book 2: fire nation develops gigantic steel drill in order to break through the wall of ba sing sei, book 3: team avatar develops sub marines and tanks that could fit about 10 soldiers and the fire nation develops giant war blimps. All of these advancements took about a year
There’s 70years between them, plus Aang spent most of his life in rural communities while Korra lived in an urban environment. It’s like Aang lives in 1860 rural China and Korea in 1930 New York.
@@whenthedustfallsaway Excellent example. Some things just don't get invented. Thus why I'm not fond of Korra's worldbuilding because not only did they develop identical cars to what we had but even the design of their radios and their old New York accents. Such an enormous coincidence. lol
@@darken2417 not really, invention is driven by 2 things avaible resources and perceived need/advantages. The reason the wheel didn't really get big in the new world is simply because 1 in many areas it wouldn't have been much use due to the terrain and 2 even where it was useable it wouldn't have been that useful because of the lack of domesticateable species that could be used to pull them. The world of avatar has enough similarity to our world that it's not implausible for technology to go the same route. As for the accents, they are there to give the world a certain feel, as to why they exist in universe you could just as easily question everyone in this world speaking english.
The only issue with that is that 1920's America is in the European style. If one of the nations previously had European influence in their architecture it wouldn't stick out as much. But we can't model it after 1920's China because Eastern Asia at the time was building everything in the European style. Bit of a catch-22.
Basically 1850s tech vs 1920s tech. The original characters are senior citizens already. The next avatar after Korra would probably be a counter culture hippie tech wiz or angsty Millennial.
i feel if they do make another series it will take place in something close to the 1980's or early 00's. Imagining that this takes place in the year 1920, and we already know that Korra is 16, it would make sense for the next series to take place around that time cause she'd be in her mid 70's by 1980. would be cool to see that
@@Big_Homie_Al3x The next Avatar isn't born until the current one dies, so if they make another series, its setting will wholly depend on the time of Korra's death. Aang died in his (biological) 60s, which is why Legend of Korra doesn't take place in the equivalent of our world's 60s-80s already.
1840 wooden sailing ships are dominate the navies of the world 1870 it's all iron hulled steam ships. That's how fast tech can improve. Look at aircraft 1930 biplanes are dominant and in 1950 it's all jets. The heyday of the famous all metal piston engine monoplanes of WW2 was about a decade.
Or look at Queen Victoria as an example for the live span of a single person. She reigned the UK from 1837 up to 1901. In that period military naval technology developed from wooden sail powered ships using lots of relatively weak cannons up to steel made heavily armored steam powered ships. In that period over multiple iterations pretty much all military ships became obsolete multiple times. 5 years later in 1906 the HMS Dreadnaught entered into service. The first real “modern“ Battleship. Which once again made pretty much every other ship obsolete. In world war one (1914 - 1918) HMS Dreadnaught herself was obsolete again. And in World War 2 (1939 - 1945) the whole concept of Artillery based naval warfare was surpassed by Aircraft carriers and Submarines. Radio communication was also developed at the beginning of the 20th century. Cars were invented at the end of the 19th century. A lot can change in the life span of one person.
@@Brot1984 True, but most of the advanced technology that we have can be traced to one thing: War, we developed so much in the 20th century because of the race for resources, 2 world wars and 1 cold war, that's also the reason for the steampunk technology of the fire nation, because of their need to dominate the world so tell me how can a society develop more in 70 years of straight peace than a world ravaged by war for 100 years?
Well, Ba Sing Se is an old city, which is like 5000 years old if I recall correctly from one of your videos, and has walls... at least 2. So, let's explore the 2 reasons cars weren't common in Ba Sing Se (remember Lao Beifong was involved in the first joint venture in the world of Avatar, being the partner that came from the unindustrialized country, we musn't asume the nobles of the capital, were poorer than Lao, and couldn't afford it, or that they were poorer than high-class citizens or nobles from the other nations, remember that just as Future Industries developed from the fire nation, Cabbage Corp did from the earth kingdom, in TLA it was already explored how both were the most powerful entities in the world, one with their technology and the other with their size and resources, unable to outpower each other through their natural advantages, and this has translated to the time Korra is situated): 1). Ba Sing Se is a walled city. As shown with the vertical growth of the lower ring, the walls obstruct the growth of the city, and since growth in a city can be boosted with the resources that arrive by the roads, no being able to interconect your own city and connecting with others because of old infrastructure (and classist policies amongst other factors) means not being able or not needing modernization. In our world, the cities that had walls tore them down or built satellite cities or new quarters around the walls/ old city layout. mainly in cities inland (specially in Europe, eg. London tore down its walls, Paris has other "cities" that in the practie are still Paris but theorically Paris is only the jurisdiction of the older part of the city), coastal cities simply grew into the mainland and didn't tore them down (basically any spanish-built city in the caribbean is proof of it). An Extra: Ba Sing Se's advantage in human labour, resources and well-organized military over the other powers can only overpower technology because of the walls. The wall, accompanied by those other things, did quite well in the task of keeping the only industrialized nation in tho world, out. The Dragon of the West barely got through the outer wall and still had to pass that countryside that serves as buffer zone... then the other wall and then the palace which in itself is a fortress too... that can provide weapon material to its defenders. The drill didn't even manage to retreat and allow the soldiers an entrance, soon it had it's own wall. Twice Ba Sing Se has fallen and because of a coup d'état, therefore, the Dai Li (under Long Feng and Hou Ting) and the Kings of Earth Kingdom (or rather, Kings of Ba Sing Se and nominally the rest of it) have no interest in tearing it down. Also, because of the Mechanist and Cabbage corp, the military has it's own tanks, airfleet and much more. If I close the advantage my enemy has and retain mine, what do I loose? Also, in this aspect the avatar world is very different to ours, since bending is so important in war, this both hampers technological advancement but also makes it less necessary, therefore, bending as a factor in military makes old technology not only less outdated, but, even still useful, as happens with the wall, opposed to our world where new technology caused armour and castles to be outdated, and then the same thing happened with forts designed against artillery, then it happened to interconected systems of trenches, bunkers (not that they per se aren't useful today), forts, batteries, that emerged between the 2st and 2nd world war. 2. Ba Sing Se is an old city. And as the old cities in our own world, it's a city that ocurred mostly unintentionally, maybe it offered some benefits but that's it, settlement actually occured randomly, and the city has been built over itself for hundreds or even thousands of years. In our world most cities in Europe, most cities in Latin America and many cities in Asia are that old, and obviously there was property and infrastructure, people that owned it, that it was too late to remove to make way for cars, trains and all these things when they appeared 100-150 years ago. The Avatar world formerly entered industrial revolution 70 years ago. there was no way any of the nations could have planned everything, opposed to the Republic, which was composed of important towns but had plenty of potential to do that, it wasn't that big, was new, had a high influx of people and specially, lots of the skillful and valuable physical and intellectual material of the elites of the world were going to be born there or would migrate there, as the families of the original team avatar (Gaang), Sato, Cabbage man, etc... did, much like the US did in our world. Along with the classist policies and the wall I've mentioned before. Therefore, thinking that there are no cars there because it's underdeveloped is wrong. The appropiate transport policy for Ba Sing Se isn't the car, is the massive transport systems and bycycles, much like in our real world, where many European cities have succeeded with this, and many cities in Latin America are struggling with the implementation of the car model the US imposed in the region. I guess you're american and you're accustomed to that reality and that's probably why you didn't picked on this issue more accurately, anyways, I did enjoy the video. EXTRA: About the fast advancement of technology, technology in avatar, multiple times, is less complicated than ours (except for the equalist technology which is pretty much as if we did it) because they're not exactly there to do crazy things the humans cannot, they're mostly there to provide solutions for benders in the military to natural barriers, this way, technology isn't first and foremost to push humans to new boundaries never seen, technology, lots of the time, is there to provide a new way for benders to channel their power or do new things. To me, the best example of this were the tanks, benders were in charge of the firepower and their movility perks, in our world, they would have had to invent hydraulic and electrical systems, safe explosives, cannons and all those things, which, btw, are the complex thing of the machine they're missing from us, the other part they do have being the engines. The airships of Ozai are another good example. It's not until we see the equalist Biplanes that we're shown a piece of technology close to ours.
I've always found the thought of aliens coming to earth and learning about our history and either being amazed or amused how fast or slow we developed certain things fascinating
You didn’t even mention that although we had the concept for steam engine in the Library of Alexadria it was seen as a kids toy and was never used despite being copy hundreds of times
Well "steam engine" it was a ball of copper filled with water with a pair of tubes and a fire under it, it was an "engine" in the sence that it moved under it's own power but it was insanely primitive
Legend of Korra critics who whine about the "world building" always seem to be willfully ignorant of one fact. Korra lives in the world Aang and Zuko made for her. After the war ended the main characters got together and tried to build a utopian society where 3 of the 4 cultures could come together and exchange knowledge, culture, and resources. All while the handful of people in the 4th nation could lick their wounds on a nearby private island. Progress accelerated because the tech advances the fire nation made during the war were finally combined with the earth kingdoms vastly larger workforce. This is the same reason why niche bending schools are more prevalent in LOK. The firelord horded the secrets of lightning bending as part of the "divine right to rule" that Azula was always mouthing off about. When Zuko rose to power he couldn't use the knowledge himself so he made it publicly available along with the rest of the fire nation advancements the United Republic is built on.
For the World building that makes sense it needs to be consistent. How come guns don't exist? If they can make a giant energy canon then they could easily make energy guns or energy tanks or bunch of smaller mechs with their own smaller energy cannons.
@@mariobadia4553 When in the peace time there probably wasn't that big of a need for explosion pipes that you carry with you and may take your hands with you if there is a fault in it.
@@ZombboniZZ still doesn't explain how the Earth Kingdom didn't invent hand held energy guns when they were clearly preparing for war. Kurvia clearly could've had those made if they could make a giant one attached to a super expensive oversized mech.
@@mariobadia4553 Perhaps they need lot of space for the energy source. Or the mech designers or the ones in charge thought that bigger must mean better, even when that may not actually be the case. (Look at for example nazis and the very big tanks that were produced or were designed.) If they had won, they may have started inventing smaller weapons.
@@mariobadia4553 who needs that explosive pipe with that limited supply of things to shoot if you can just compess the nearest pebble and bend it at your enemy.. or throw fire.... or saw them in halve with your icesheet or poke them with your iceicle.... who needs nonbenders in a fighting force.... even the cops restrain you with their metal cables or use the ground around you.... the nonbenders employed are just there to put bodys out on the street and keep order, if there is trouble you have your baton and the next bender is an airshipdrop away.... so like 5 min at most...
![Avatar: A Study in Worldbuilding - the Fire Nation [ The Last Airbender ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Pa2BD13VzxY/mqdefault.jpg)
![Avatar: A Study in Worldbuilding — the Fire Nation [ The Last Airbender ]](/img/tr.png)
From swords to sharks with fricken laser beams on their heads, probably. Get ma book + please leave a review! tinyurl.com/y5mwpyyj
~ Tim
have you been able to sleep? are you ok?...........
What does BG stand for?
Before Gods? Lol
Yet no gun powder weapons such as firearms in legends of Korra.
11:48 as a finnish person I felt attacked xddd
But, couldn't it be more likely for the water tribes to develop a hidraulic engine or so because of their bending, even if not instead of what Zuko and the Earth king proposed, maybe after the reconstruction, because even after the reconstruction I assume that there was still some people that refused to the change, or could it be developed after what we saw in in the legend of Korra?
PD.- sorry for my broken English
So everything really did change when the fire nation attacked
Michael Gauthier Yep
Everything changed when the fire nation stopped attacking
@@sanjaysreejith973 yup
You mean when the fire nation stopped attacking.
The fire nation really did share their prosperity with the world, just not in a more peaceful and less genocidal way
Metal bending was a big part in how the technology seemed to “jump” in quality and quantity
you mean quality and quantity?
Quality and quality seems very accurate.
@@seanwaddell2659 yes that is what I meant, I will correct it
Yeah. Mix Metalbending with the advances the Fire Nation had made on their own, and naturally the world would advance very quickly
And lightening bending becoming more popular
Everything changed, when -the fire nation attacked- *steam power was made*
well... yes!
And metalbending
SunsetTwist and blood bending
N VL
They probably should have used Bloodbending in hospitals to help with surgeries and stuff, but they completely outlawed it instead.
@@thalmoragent9344 it's immoral and could be abused.
It isn’t too far fetched. Aang was 12 at Sozin’s Comet and 66 when he died. We start Korra’s show when she’s 17. That’s 71 years between Sozin’s Comet and Korra’s pilot.
That’s 71 years of peace (no world wars like real life) which is a lot of time for invention and discovery, especially for people who can bend. The Fire Nation already had combustion engines, cars and airships during the 100-year war. Not to mention Sokka invented the submarine, lol.
71 years is like going from 1849 to 1920. In 1849, most people were still using horses and messenger birds. By 1920, we had cars, telegraphs, and electricity.
Except we never reached the 300-400 years of musket usage.
I suppose technology ages faster when people can ben metal and fire and etc but this was too fast imo
@@arshiaaghaei who needs to shoot a gun when you can shoot fire out of your fingertips
@@elius1548 Bullets are still faster I reckon
@@arshiaaghaei perhaps but still easier to throw rocks and burn things than making a metal tube that goes bang but I'm sure gun weren't a things cause it's a kids show and gun are a bit too much but we did see attempts to match bender powers with the shock gloves and planes made by Asami's father
@@flagondragon1854 Korra isn't a kids show. Korra was made for teens
I mean to be fair, once our world entered the industrial revolution, our technology really skyrocketed.
The comment I was looking for. People can't wrap their mind around how fast the change was in the industrial revolution. In Europe city's went from 1000 citizens to 500.000 and more in less than 80 years. People were raised as dirt poor farmers and died in the citys of 1900.
a big part of this was literal skyrockets
In a couple hundred years we went from casting iron looms to 3D printing in space and fledglings of quantum computing
Let me explain:
I don't have a problem with the cars or the telegraph or even the radio
I have a problem with platinum mechs which somehow despite being technically softer than pure iron,sustain great damage without issue.
I have a problem with the bland pathetic excuse of a multicultural center that city is.
I have a problem with the giant clone of the Statue of Liberty standing outside said city.
I have a problem with the idea of spirituality being used as the equivalent of a NUKE,TIED TO ANOTHER GIANT MECH COVERED OF PLATINUM,THE DESIGN OF WHICH SEEMS SO RIDICULOUS I DON'T KNOW HOW IT'S STILL STANDING!
I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THE USE OF THE MOST DEADLY TECHNIQUE OF FIREBENDING,WHICH TAKES YEARS TO MASTER,AS PART OF A POWER PLANT JOB FOR RANDOM SCHMUCKS!
I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THE POLICE FORCE THAT HAS THE GALL TO WEAR METAL ARMOR WHILE CHASING SAID SCHMUCKS EVEN THOUGH THEY COULD COOK THEM ALIVE SEVERAL TIMES OVER WITHOUT LIGHTNING,OR EVEN CRUSH THEM WITH SAID METAL ARMOR!
I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH HOW THE ONLY OPPRESSED MINORITY I SEE IN THAT CITY IS A STUPIDLY HAPPY HOMELESS GUY WITH NO ISSUES WITH HIS PREDICAMENT, HAPPILY MAKING FOOD FROM DUMPSTERS!
I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THE IDEA THAT THERE WAS A LITERAL DOOR TO THE SPIRIT REALM,WHICH IS NOW ALICE IN WONDERLAND STYLE,MAKING SPIRITUALITY AND FAITH UTTERLY USELESS!
Alright, I think I'll stop now.
Edit:
To future generations:
This is partly a joke.
It appears I should've explained that before.
@@alyseleem2692 I with you. Korra trashed the asain inspired world of avatar to add 1920 American vibes which is so out of place its jarring.
It also ruined the whole ying yang idea of order chaos in balance for a western view on good vs evil.
Honestly I dont know how same people who made masterpiece last air bender with its rich and diverse asain cultures and beliefs end up making dumpster fire that is korra, the show that somehow turn into some weird 1920 fanfic with gay baiting and all.
Also physical spiritual world was just plain stupid.
I would actually consider Metalbending to be technology. It is a type of skill that can be used for industry and production. It is no different from pottery or the wheel.
Pottery and wheel are usable by everyone who tries to use them
And then there's the spread of Lightning generation.
Yes, the same as social technologies - like modern government systems, or even new social norms. Not that these are skills, but they are equally "intangible", but have a consistency in them that can be passed on and modified, or scrapped and reinvented - and have enormous effect on our material lives.
Well, it’s a liiiiiiittle different from pottery and the wheel
It should be noted that traditional forms of metal working already exist. A) because the fire nation had metal ships and other creations long before Toph discovered metal bending. And B) because they were able to work platinum. (Which could not be metal bended. )
As usual, I absolutely loved the video.
However I am incredibly disappointed that you didn't call Republic City the Big Cabbage.
This deserves more likes
Most underrated comment.
Can we start a petition to make this nickname cannon?
O.O
Damn, that's a good one....
This comment wins the internet today.
The Fire Nation was advanced enough to build that giant drill. That’s a massive technological feat accomplished before Ozai’s defeat. It makes perfect sense for the all of advancements made between the two series.
Right, but that's the problem. The focus on the tech in Korra ducks the background anachronistic technology in AtLA.
It pulls on a thread that unravels both series.
I don't like the setting in the sequel and if I start to unpack that, I like the original series less.
@@KittSpiken The tech wasn't anachronistic, it was just imbalanced.
Imagine having a show set in early to mid 1800s Japan. Technology and social structure is still largely medieval. You could be forgiven for thinking it was set 1000 years in the past.
Then everything changes when America attacks. Now you have large gun ships, machine guns, factories, trains, a whole new modern education system and beaurocracy and so on.
The Fire Nation was very advanced, that's why they were able to fuck with a nation 10 times their size, similar to what Europe and America did to the rest of the world.
@@Heligoland360 fair point, even still: they had the aforementioned drill, harpoon guns powerful enough to embed metal stakes in solid rock, cables with the tensile strength to bear the weight of a tank and winches strong enough to pull that weight up a sheer cliff. All before they figure out hot air balloons. Also zeppelins apparently saw a parallel development to the balloons (seems they weren't full of hydrogen), because they are deployed a few weeks after the balloons were first deployed.
I understand why firearms had to be omitted (though imagine how cool it would be sparking gun powder with no firing pin, no trigger pull, just a subtle bit of firebending), but even within the Fire Nation what they managed to engineer and what is stuck in r&d is all over the place.
@_Social.LiberalistI think you meant Japan during WW2? Fire Nation is pretty much that.
Also the fact that development went a bit faster than we had in our case could be explained by the planet in avatar being literally smaller than real Earth
“The Air Nomads didn’t advance at all in this period... because they were *dead* “
I laughed too hard at this.
Edit: there’s a warzone down that away, I advise avoiding it👇🏻.
They didnt just Advance. Face it, people, the whole world got americanized, and that's sad, embrassing, even disturbing.
What a Fail of a Cartoon, for the most Part.
Slevin Channel yeah... I disliked the changes too, so I agree.
@@slevinchannel7589 What is exactly that you find disturbing about Republic City being like New York?
@@Katwind ...Go figure...
@@Katwind ...Wow... Just Wow...
Most people don’t realize how much of the world TODAY still lives in a rural/agricultural livelihood, untouched by much industrialization. It’s literally like taking a step back in time
I have a friend who still can't get more than dial up internet at his house. He's not in the middle of no where. He's in a suburb of a major city in Virginia.
@@bboops23 wtf? What city? Lol most of Northern Virginia made the change to cable internet at least 12 years ago!
@@MerkhVision he's in an unincorporated part of Virginia in Powhatan County.
@@MerkhVision Park City Utah can't get faster than 1mbps DSL. It's a luxury there. Mostly because there's only one provider in an area and if they don't want to run lines out there they dont have to since they have no competition. It's like that all over the US. They choke out competition then screw over entire swaths of people.
Yup. Madison county NC is like that. Just got non dialup internet about 3 years ago. Of course that doesn’t come around until after I left lol
Fire nation: meiji restoration japan
Earth Kingdom: late qing china
Air nomads: tibet
Water tribes: inuits
@KRYMauL most of the nations pull from multiple cultures. In addition to Japan and Britain, there are also cultural examples of mayan/aztec culture like the sun warriors and Southeast Asia in the beach episode.
The earth kingdom has in addition to Chinese some aspects of middle eastern culture in the desert, and possibly early Mongols with that one tribe in the canyon episode
Water tribe is inuit for the southern water tribe, southern US for the swamp, and the northern takes from inuit and other native American cultures with a Venetian city structure
@KRYMauL well fundamentally it's definitely more Japan than Britain
Tibet was a feudal slave owning nation but theyre the good right cuz “yellow man bad”
Most of the words and names are in Hindi or Sanskrit or a blend of it. Guru Sanwhatshis name and Sparky Sparky boom boom guy are indians
@@tesoh5349 Slavery happens in china as well...but Tibet isn't invading other nations and neutering the majority of the men...Just saying.
I think its just so common for science fiction and fantasy settings to basically freeze in tech development that it is strange to see a setting actually develop.
Most fantasy/science fiction settings have tounsands or even millions of years of backstorie in which they constantly use similar armor / vehicles / weapons /whatever.
You should read Mistborn if you hate unchanging fantasy worlds
Yeah but when they show the first avatar setting its pretty much the same as in the last air bender. So in 10000 years almost no development at all
i mean our societies similar, how big were the differences between the 16th century and the 1st century? and we really didnt learn that much in the flashbacks of past avatars or theyre worlds, so its not a fair judgement. plus by the time of atla the fire nation is in an industrial revolution, republic cities tech is definitley not fafr fetched based off of that.@@anfuro
@@andrewwoodger1180 we are talking about a 100 centuries time jump, and the clothing and architecture of the world looks pretty similar to the world in the last airbender. I agree that in the 70 year jump to Korra the tech makes sense. But the 10k year leap with almost no change in architecture and clothing seemed unlikely to me.
@@anfuro well considering its implied that in the 10000 years between Wan and Korra that Literal cultures and civilizations, entire parts of the history of the world were lost, we can safely assume that maybe at some point we had a regression of knowledge, its highly likely that technology was developted and lost
The air nomads didn't change at all ..... Because they were dead 10:10
I couldn't stop laughing
I know right? I laughed more than I should have.
@@PainHarbinger my manly manperor
*because they were DIID*
I felt bad for laughing so hard. Now at least I'm not alone.
LMAO IKR xD
13:55
BG = Before Genocide (of Air Nomads)
Year 0 = Sozin wiped out the Air Temples
AG = After Genocide
Hit so hard, the calander felt it.
Thanks for this I was wondering what he meant by that
@@aiden_obj its supposed to be Glaciar, not Genocide
I think the Avatar wiki has something different; prewar and postwar instead
THANK YOU
Remember one of the wright brother that creates airplane still alive when the first atomic bomb explode, let that sink in. Less than half a century, from a small paper airplane to metal plane carrying bomb that can level a city
It's always easier to build on the foundation then to create the foundation itself this has been shown in history very many times with your example being one of the very many examples
@@OnyxXThePunch its eronius to say either was easy, it was a rigorous application of scientific principles and practical engineering that led to success in both areas.
While it is relatively easy to build a working plane today with all the fundamentals laid out in books and even online for those wil8to learn we still see people doing things the wrong way and failing exactly like those famous movies of failing aircraft designs from the early 20th century.
The people who designed the B29 or the bombs they dropped didnt have a cakewalk either, because they were pushing for an incremental advance probably even greater than the Wrights going from their controlled gliders to that first powered flight. AMD just like the Wrights they had to put in the unglamorous work to make the things happen.
“You may live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension.” - Nikola Tesla
@Felipe Dumont first flew three years after the Wright Brothers, so no. He didn't invent the airplane. Though he is on the short list of people to make significant actual work in the field before the mechanics of powered flight were well understood.
Felipe Your point?
I like how you break this down. It’s amazing how far our world came in terms of technology. For 100 years we went from barely able to get a wooden plane off the ground to putting a man on the moon. From being unable to get anywhere without an animal to cars, subways etc. Even to the Internet and phones, it’s amazing to look back and see how fast it all came
Actually the first flight to the first man on the moon was 66 years apart
@@IS-2_1944 Thank you. I was mainly speaking broadly of how far we came in the 20th century
Pretty insane, humanity has existed for a blink of an eye relative to the earth, which means our advancement is travelling at the speed of light lol. We have probably done more in the last 200 years than we have done pretty much ever. Its completely bonkers
A bit of an addendum. It took closer to 50 years to go from “barely able to fly” to “moon landing”.
@@IS-2_1944 and from aang ending the war and Korra as 17 years old, that'll be like 70+ years apart...
Technology didn't advance all that quickly. I mean, the fire nation was using steam powered ships from like the very first episode of The Last Airbender. It's like going from the 1850's to the 1920's.. well, right up until that final season of Korra anyway, where they just decided to go straight up Sci-Fi.
To be fair, they already had mechas in season 1, they simply made them bigger.... a lot bigger.
@@brunoss.3273 Then used an extremely potent fuel source which tends to be the one of the biggest limitations.
@@brunoss.3273 Mechs themselves are a point of contention. They were first made by nonbenders from an unbendable material. That somehow sustained damage despite being PLATINUM!
@@alyseleem2692 why would platinum machinery be immune to damage? Pure platinum is not a particularly hard metal, pure iron is harder. And why would nonbenders with access to industrial-era technology not be able to work platinum easily, when metals were worked without metalbending before the Hundred Year War?
@@ChewyPineapple I just said the opposite. It isn't supposed to take this amount of damage without issue, and yet it does.
The Hundred Year War had firebenders work on such metals. As it was said,the industry of Avatar depends on bending,and therefore them having our equivalent of industrial level tech is questionable at best.
Most importantly, WHY ARE THEY MECHS?!
Ba Seng Se did have a pretty effective public transportation system even if it was powered by Earthbending.
Chow Yee Lee the longbow was as effective, perhaps even more effective, than the early musket. Only problem was that there weren’t too many people capable of competently operating the longbow, it was just more cost-effective to switch to the musket, just as it would have been with the earthbending-based system and the steam-based system
Omashu and Be Sing Se are basically the only places we see this because the rest of the Earth Kingdom is currently having to use benders in military positions, not industrial ones.
M D or in mining/construction rather than in transportation and logistics
I would say BECAUSE of earthbending. A city powered by something the audience sees as magical yet almost has a "scientific" view of--we know how it works, just like the characters--makes a WAY more interesting city, compared to one run by something already considered old fashioned in our own time. :-)
That's why they didn't have cars. Also, we know the rich people would rather watch people struggle to pull them.
I'd like to also point out that just because theres technology being used somewhere. That doesn't mean its widespread. My grandmother grew up during the depression. Cars existed in bigger cities(New York, Chicago, ect) but in the country side(Kentucky) where she lived they still used horse drawn carriages.
I'm Irish and until very recently we were always far behind other western countries in technology. Widespread electrification didn't come around until the 30s. My Dad grew up in the 70s/80s and they were the some of the only ones in the area with a (black and white) television.
Definitely Not Michael he said that in the video
lizard ledgend lot of european countries didn’t have running water before the 50’ if they lived in the countryside. There are even cases of village with no well in it where running water fountain were installed in the 30’
This world is way smaller and more connected than ours though. It really makes no sense in my opinion at this point.
@@Luka1180 The Fire Nation(the most technologically advanced) was at war with literally every other nation. That shit doesn't spread without spies or some shit.
There were like, 60 years, between the first air plane and the moon landing. Tech advances pretty fast.
And everything changed when the Steam Engine attached.
Quick answer before watching: Benders can bend things into specific shapes instead, reducing the need to develop machinery that makes other machinery.
@GamerBoyDevin but why would they find the need to build that machinery at all if they have *benders?*
@@chancellorally8766 Because people are lazy and if you can build a machine to do something for you then you're probably going to do it
Chancellor Ally it’s also way more efficient because machines don’t really need food or time off,they can work day in day out
@@jacobbartlett331 also by that point we had seen the near extinction of the Air Nomads and the Southern Water Benders relying solely on bending to maintain your technology means that if the benders disappear or are killed off you lose that technology.
@@GamerBoyDevin Read the comics where the UR was even formed. Benders where attacking non benders because they were building a machine that basically took the benders job away, but made non benders less reliant on benders.
Imagine if Aang was infertile. Boom. End of airbending for real.
"Shit I guess being in ice for 100 years doesn't work wonders on your sperm"
Moreorlesser I have no idea how much hair there is down there for the sperm to somehow survive
Korra's decision to keep the portals open would have eventually brought back the air benders. The air nuns and monks survived. Most of them were non benders. Air nation would still exist if Aang was infertile.
But the chances are less because Aang was pre pubescent when he froze himself in the ice. Atleast that's what I understood.
@@islandsunset korras story would completely change without aang having kids. Society would go into ruin.
@@g.h7657 Well if he couldn't have children then he would've thrown himself more into work and possible fixed issues non benders had. The while story of republic city would've completely changed three might not have been an anti bending movement or the movement could've happened sooner and kicked if not long after his death.
I mean to be fair when Toph invented metal bending it had to be a major step forward especially being now on the same team as the fire nation with their steam power. Also in a way Katara knowing blood bending, with her overall character, could turn that into a medical breakthrough to help with quality of life. Also you end up having their inventor friend getting to invent for peace instead of for war.
Great points all around
Finally someone who agrees with me that the progress wasn't so crazy. It made perfect sense to me. With all the stuff they already had, these things just seemed natural.
I guess Technology advances fast when everyone can do literal magic
It’s NoT mAgIC
@@blitzencaliburn9072 its bending?
Coffee Grounds that’d be it, yeah.
How did our tech advanced so quickly in the 21s century compared to last 400 years?
@@dewhiterabbit1337 bending?
18:36 There is also the fact that people in the Avatar Universe can literally bend the elements, something that people in our world cannot do. I feel like that's the best reason as to why technology was developed quicker.
Yep. Not hard to harness electricity when you can just bend it. Building a lot fast is easy when you can manipulate the earth at will, too.
I think honestly that would have made it worse- humans survived as a species because we were worse than other human-like species but had bigger brains. We had to build weapons and tools so we built them to survive. Bending makes everything much easier- so why progress?
"Necessity is the mother of invention after all"
People are lazy and don't do things they don't have to do. They could've easily developed technology but take one look as Ba Sing Sae and you see why they didn't (at least until LOK)
I think thats stupid. even if you have a power to possibly make something you still need to come up with the idea for it and the blueprints in your mind. its not like having the power to bend elements makes you an automatic genius.
@@NetherTaker Old comment but I hate how people ignore the fact that lightning bending in itself was something that could cost the user their life yet in Korra its just an average job. That is never explained how lightning bending became so common with so many people having no issue with a bending style that you know could kill you and at best just blow up in your face like Zuko.
BraveHeartedHero1 The technique just became more wide-spread through schools. Before it was a technique that only royals and upper class Fire Benders learned. After the war Zuko spread the knowledge to the common citizens
Also yeah it can cost the user their life if they don’t dispose of the lightning in time, but it shouldn’t be too hard. Most of the danger of lightning came with lightning redirection which involved passing the lighting through you.
Plus in the factories we don’t see the benders building up a lot of electric energy. So they produce less lightning than you would in like a deadly fight.
Metal Bending probably played a huge role in advancing technology. I mean Toph built the statue of Aang, knowing that I'm sure metal bending was used to build alot of structures.
Yeah, and Toph was able to fix one of Satoru's machines when they were broken, and after that it's implied she was even able to repair them after they were sabotaged. Especially given her earthbending-sight abilities, she was able to see how it was supposed to fit together. Toph probably also taught earthbending-sight to her metalbending students, so those metalbenders would be able to repair and help construct some of those machines
Probably goes up quicker and much sturdier than what we can build.😑
Oh yeah, great point!
@Alex Knauth:
Yeeup. Imagine if an engineer could just lightly tap a complex mechanism with a finger to instantly pinpoint the fault in the system, and then concentrate for a bit to fix said fault without ever taking the device apart. :D
@@oddeyes9413considering there would be no need for weak points such as joints between bars since she could meld them together, it would be significantly stronger.
I also think of Sokka and Toph’s contributions. Sokka was a genius and there were certainly many others like him who could now dedicate their minds to advancing problems in homes and whatnot instead of the war, and Toph invented metalbending so obviously
sokka was a genius?
@@Rammythelogophile I mean he invented submarines, pyrotechnics, helped create blimps, and planned the invasion on the day of the black sun. So I’d assume as much
@@RammythelogophileSokka is basically a caveman in the Southpole yet easily understood the tech of other nations.
I really like that Legend of Korra advanced technology the way it did. Too many fantasy worlds just keep technological development as a fixed state for centuries or even millenia.
It was smart but I just preferd the world of atlab a lot more but it doesn't obv stay the same
You could really say everything changed
Rapid advancement into 20th century tech level is just as lazy as keeping it fixed.
@@chingizzhylkybayev8575
How?
@@IkeOkerekeNews by the virtue of being just as easy?
Huh, the ability to have INFINITE POWER and BEND METAL AND EARTH TO YOUR WILL makes industrial development faster. Who would have thought
Not "INFINITE". "UNLIMITED".
@@bluesbest1 not even "UNLIMITED" jut readily accessible.
@@yamiyomizuki "UNLIMITED POWER!!!!!"
Do you get it?
Dadycoool not everybody is of culture
@@ThereforeIAmHim I realized that. My second reply was me desperately grasping at straws, but fish won't bite in an empty lake, no matter how sparkly a lure you use.
Also I think that Korra’s decision to leave the Spirit Portals Open started another technological revolution, where the crazy Spirit Energy did some crazy shit.
It's basically nuclear energy, so yeah the avatar world is at the cusp of a nuclear age
The plot of nearly every final fantasy game is capitalists using the spirit energy and twisting it until the whole planet is twisted and at the brink of collapse.
Nothing similar in real life at... /s
@@aprilk141 thats just the plot of 7...
And that is why I pretty much hated it.
Spirituality doesn't work like that. Ever.
@@alyseleem2692 Yeahhhhh, they complicated it a bit too much
I think we just misjudge the time gap. Its easy to forget that we skipped a generation between Ang and Korra, because Katara and Zuko are still around (and they look damn healthy for 85-90 year olds). Its a huge time gap. And it feels very jarring, because we come to think of Korra as the "next" generation, while in fact she is the one after.
The more ridiculous thing is Varrick randomly inventing stuff during the show without having any of the precursor technology present. Real inventions didn't start out in their final form. Inventions got better in tandem with our understanding of the underlying science. And oh, boy there were mistakes made during that journey.
Varrick is just goofy like that
You are not listening to me
It's 70 years apart so it's more like it skipped three or four generations.
Varrick is like the Leonardo Da Vinci of the Avatar world dont put him together with basic inventors
It’s the fact that Zuko is older than Katara and looks younger than her💀💀💀
The fire nation controlled and stifled everything for 80+ years. A technological boom made sense in legend of korra. The Metal bending phenomenon as well as lightening bending would have played a major role and helped further technology in a faster way.
11:00
The gunboat diplomacy was always seen that way from the American side, but the Japanese version was hilarious.
They found the one guy in Japan who could speak English and sent him as their delegate- without at all explaining what their stance was.
The Tokugawa wanted to remain isolationist, and were willing to fight a war to maintain that isolation. But the delegate didn’t know this, so he agreed to the opening.
When he told this to the Emperor, he and the Shogun were FURIOUS. The biggest development in Japanese history came down to a misunderstanding that nobody outside the political structure understood the core principles of foreign policy.
This, folks, is the importance of a well informed society.
that’s actually really funny, haha! who exactly is this delegate, id love to know! :0
Prob commited Seppuku
I noticed that the Legend of Korra's world shares some characteristics with Dieselpunk, Steampunk (flying balloonships) and Techno-Magic (Kuvira controlling the energy of the vines from the Spirit World through the Mecha's cannons)
How is ships using coal diesel punk?
@@lukatomas9465 Got it confused, I was reffering mostly towards Industrialism and cars.
@@mariapazgonzalezlesme That's not really dieselpunk though. Dieselpunk is more like Mad Max.
@@trustinfaith9778 Like that scene in Korra with the motorcycle rebels/thieves?
@@trustinfaith9778 Deiselpunk is high-tech WW1/WW2 era. Mad Max is post-apocaplypse and not punk at all.
It's strange that they were so slow when they can literary control the elements stuff like terraforming or building huge buildings is so much easier in Avatar
Imagine being homeless, and an earthbender
Sony: *strikes all ATLA videos*
Tim: *makes ATLA video*
Sony: AM I JOKE TO YOU?
*yes*
Shoot me down, but I won't fall, I am VIBRANIUM!!!!
(I know it's bad😂)
Dejan/Дејан Kojić/Којић I have never seen TLA or LOK before and I have now bought all of TLA on DVD solely thanks to this channel!
radu nicolae
What does Sony even have to do with Avatar? Wouldn’t Nickelodeon be doing this instead?
Because copyright law and its enforcement are completely blinkered and ignore fair use entirely!
I had a much harder time with the apparent cultural and technological stagnation during the 10,000 years between Wan and Aang. Wan's time should have been set in the stone age.
Agreed, actually. It's been in stasis for 10000 years.
In that time we went from caves to this.
That probably happens because everyone was focused on war instead of building much of anything really.
Gforce2424 wow it’s almost like wans entire story was complete garbage
@@leaholiver9418 That's how our world was as well.
What made you think it was stagnant. Many nation's were built after the humans moved off the lion turtle.
I like to imagine Zuko released the secrets of lightning bending to the public as an act of good faith to republic city, knowing that it could be a great power source for developed cities.
and I like to imagine he didn't or wouldn't do that, thinking that it can be exploited.
@@yabada7866 Acting as if bending as a whole couldn't be abused and exploited. As if a 2-ton rock or a blast of fire to your face isn't going to kill you just as easily as a lightning bolt.
@@K2niarDneK it's not like a book which anyone can access. You as a bender of any element would probably have a chance to defend yourself from a basic attack. Defending the lightning was not something everyone knew.
Apart from that, I'd like to imagine some special subs like lightning, metal, flight should be special. Something that only special people can achieve. If anyone can achieve in that short amount of time period, then it's not special and it's something that can be invented by people who lived in the past. It kinda invalidates the value of the episodes we saw in ATLA, like the one Iroh teaches Zuko redirecting or the one Toph first metalbends.
Somethings need to stay special, not common. But that's my opinion and you're free to disagree.
@@yabada7866 All sarcasm aside, and I am caffeinated now, so I apologize for being rude, I do think that avoiding death via lightning would eventually become the same as avoiding death via gunshot IRL.
The first person, likely the first army, to die to a firearm-armed military would've been extremely surprised, having never encountered anything like that. But as time goes on, people learned how to avoid them (not getting in the shooter's line of sight).
It would be the same with Lightning Benders. The first people to die from a rogue Lightning Bender would be surprised, but not nearly as much since the Royal Family have demonstrated the ability. Most of the _shock_ would be from someone other than the Royals doing it. But as it becomes more commonplace, strategies would form to avoid the bolts (non-Benders and Air Benders avoid lines of sight, Water Bender's can redirect it with trails of water, Earth and Metal Benders can just put up a barrier in front of them).
That's just how humans work. We discover something or how to do something, we find a way to weaponize it, it kills one of us, we find a way to avoid dying from it, rinse and repeat.
@@K2niarDneK just to be clear, I'm 100% agreeing with you on as time goes on, people are more likely to be able to defend themselves. My point is, it shouldn't be a common thing, because it's something that is extraordinary from all other ordinary bendings.
Try to think like the role of genetics in bodybuilding. Yes you can learn all about the technique and stuff, but you may never have perfect genetics like cbum or gigachad. If everyone look like those people, then there isn't anything that makes them special, they are ordinary people.
Hope I made myself clear now.
I agree completely with this analysis. I never saw the problem of the apparent jump in technology, it's literally a mirror of our own history. Plus, having benders would be immensely useful for an industrialization process, easily being able to speed up many aspects.
Sony: Claims all of the avatar videos
Tim: Uploads another
Sony: *surprised pikachu*
since when does Sony own ATLA/TLOK ip? Isn't that all with Viacom?
Bolt+ Since when does Sony have claim to Avatar the last airbender?
F*cking savage
“Random earth kingdom village number 45” 😂😂😂
Aang stands for
A - after
A - Air
N - Nomad
G - Genocide
nice
Oh damn. That's good.
Except he was born before it?
@@rucs2 But he doesn't come into his own until after. Still works.
Nah bro it’s stands for and a ********** gay
Somewhat late to the party, since I wanted to actually get to see LoK myself before watching this video, but you've pretty much said what I would have.
I think a large part of the "problem" comes from the different perspectives. Most of A:TLA is from the perspective of the relatively primitive cultures, while the most advanced culture in the world is the antagonist. With tanks and airships and ironclad cruisers, the Fire Nation was clearly sneaking into the 20th century, technologically speaking - but given that the REST of the world feels like a typical fantasy setting, it's easy for the casual viewer to overlook that and just see the Fire Nation stuff as being big and bad and evil and industrial without really registering just how advanced the Fire Nation really was. This is probably especially easy because we don't see conventional guns in TLA (or LoK, really - the 'guns' we see are essentially energy channels) - because bending is used instead. For a lot of people, presence or absence of guns is a shorthand for how advanced a setting is, and not having them makes a setting a medieval fantasy, even when the fantastical elements make it so that guns are much less likely to be developed. You can see additional signs of this when the gang infiltrate the Fire Nation - the Fire Nation school, for instance, probably wouldn't have been that out of place a century or so ago.
One can think of how much of our world was still essentially agrarian (feudal agrarian, even) as late as the First World War. Heck, one could view the Hundred Year War as being comparable to what might have happened if the Europeans had actually tried to conquer China during the Opium Wars rather than just using their military superiority to extract concessions. So if you take the Fire Nation, which is at the very least on par with late 19th century technology, and advance that by seventy years... frankly, if anything, I'd expect LoK technology to be MORE advanced.
Meanwhile, in LoK, most of the series is from the perspective of the most advanced or second most advanced (it's notable that we never really get to see the Fire Nation directly in that period) culture in the world, while in the rest of the world, technology has spread to multiple relatively high-tech 'hubs' rather than it all being centered in the Fire Nation. So the different perspectives make it look like there's a big gap in technology. In reality, those, the Fire Nation was around 1900s technology when it came to military vehicles (tanks probably could have been invented around then if there'd been a big enough war on to justify them, rigid dirigibles, heavier than air flight in its infancy) while Legend of Korra is... really, not THAT much more advanced when you think about it, possibly sitting around the 1920s or 30s at the latest. So the REAL question should probably actually be... why was it so slow? And the probable answer to that was that the Hundred Year War had suppressed technological development that didn't show the potential for an immediate military payoff, so while military vehicles were fairly advanced, this hadn't filtered into civilian vehicles and the 'blue sky' research that ultimately led to things like the radio wasn't being done. So much of the period between A:TLA was probably marked by civilian technologies catching up - and some of which, such as radio, would turn out to also have military applications.
TL;DR: The technological advance was actually relatively SLOW compared to the real world, it just felt like a big jump because we switched from the perspective of the relatively low-tech cultures to focusing on a relatively high-tech city.
The city of Ba Sing Se and even the Lion Turtle city of the first Avatar were relatively modern. Katara and co lived in villages that were sheltered from the world.
That's another problem...
Wan lived ten thousand years ago. How does that work?
@@alyseleem2692 Bruh, you didn't hear about Kyoshi?
@@oniricfantasy6687 So? What? She's a few hundred years ago. Her age's tech is reasonable.
I don't mean age. Wan died ....Well.
It's the tech. It's too good for a time like that. They're supposed to be still inventing agriculture!
@@alyseleem2692 O, you meaned that
@@oniricfantasy6687 Yes.
"And the Air Benders didnt evolve at all in this period. BeCaUsE tHeY wErE dEaD!"
10:11
_We're not cavemen! We have technology... [proceeds to smash the computer]_
*~ Patrick Star*
11:12 I love how your American accent is just a stereotypical Italian gangster
Also, in avatar, a significant portion of the population can literally affect the bare elements at will. Imagine how much you could advance with metal benders, not to mention water, Earth, and fire? It would accelerate stuff so much. Xao Fu, a mega city entirely made of metal, practically surfaced overnight.
No problem with that...
Just the mechs. And lightning bending.
But i thought metal bending and lighting bending were supposed to be incredibly hard and only the absolute best could do it. Hell, Azula had to be a prodigy in order to lightning bend and toph had to be blind in order to "see" the flaws in metal that she could exploit.
@@joshuarubenstein2298 Exactly! They're not anymore.
Deal with it.
@@alyseleem2692 thats literally the answer to every flaw in the legend of korra.
Oh the airbenders are back, how?
"Deal with it"
Oh everyone can lightning and metalbend now, how?
"Deal with it"
Oh korra was able to bend fire, water and earth bend as a toddler when it took aang until he was a teen, how?
"Deal with it"
Oh korra got all her bending back after it was taken from her and she got the avatar state as well, how?
"Deal with it"
@@joshuarubenstein2298 Yep.
You have been enlightened!
Congratulations 👏.
This basically makes me want to see a follow up to Legend of Korra where the world has developed beyond ours
Imagine if by the time the next avatar is born, benders and non- benders have already colonized the moon.
@@deathrex007 or Mars
I hope they don't, the Avatar Universe is already ruined.
@@Robert-fc9xz nah it improved
Heck yeah! I want to see benders fighting aliens and explore space. It would be so cool.
To be fair, the fire nation had already built devices like that drill vehicle to pierce the wall at Ba Sing Se when Aang was still a teen. So roughly a hundred years took place between that and Korra being born. If they shared that kind of technology with the world, then it wouldn't be shocking that they'd advance that much in a century
“100 AG: Rise of the melon lord”
One of the many reasons I love this channel
The thing you've got to remember is that technological and scientific advancement is exponential. The more technology develops, the faster we tend to develop new ones, as each enables the process in various ways.
Not really, its certainly possible to an extent but we see technology rise and fall several times in our own history, steam power seemed to occur back in ancient Rome but never rose beyond table top doodad.
@@DrewLSsix
But did they have the energy output to use it? No.
@@DrewLSsix and also do they really need it at that time?
@@IkeOkerekeNews Korra had many many problems including this technology increase. Yes, Avatar had "high tech weapons" like gas operated vehicles and steel ships. But such things can be caused by the benefits coming from the "bending". We don't have bending in our world, so creating a parallel between the technology of our world breaks the immersion. First steam operated machines came out in 1698. And the Industrial Age happens between 1780-1840. But Korra skips all of them and teleports us into 1920s of New York.
Look, technological improvement is not just about inventing a single thing. To achieve a "radio broadcasting era", you need to invent a lot of things and encounter a few of cultural revolutions.
We can say most of the world lives around 900-1000s while Fire Nation lives in their 1400-1500s. Yes, a technology from 1698 can be count as "very high tech", but you still need to pass Industrial Age before reaching to 1920s New York.
One of the many flaws of Korra was this unrealistic technology skip. They didn't really care about the background and just wanted to make a cartoon in 1920s New York. There is no other reason behind it.
@@Qaosbringer
Yes, Korra skips through all of them. Because they are literally first seen in the Last Airbender.
11:07 "Knock Knock, it's the United States. Open up your country, stop having it be closed. "
No! proceeds to be bombarded from out side retaliation range. also it was not just the US that did that but the colonial powers as well.
@@seanrea550 r/woooosh my friend
r/unexpectedbillwurtz
r/RandomTitsAreFairAndBalanced
@@delgado.adrian160 bill wurtz is always expected
My great grandfather was born in 1909 he died in 2005. When he was born there was no electricity in rural East Texas and only 10 years before cars came to Texas, but were so expensive that no one used them. So no car no electricity to the burgeoning information age in his lifetime. I'm actually surprised that the estimated 90 years from when ATLA takes place to the time LoK takes place there isn't more technological advancement.
Remember, the industrial revolution wasn't all about rising wealth and prosperity. Most people horribly suffered under inhumane conditions.
Life in early industrial working-class communities meant sweat shop work, diseases, no hygene in a post-apocalyptical wasteland where the air was filled with soot and the sun was being blocked by smoke.
This would make so much more sense as a basis for a anti-bender movement, than what is presented in the show.
You are ignoring the surrounding realities of the time period.
People did suffer greatly but they mostly chose that over their old lives of subsistence farming.
Dont imagine that things were just golden before the industrial revolution came along.
@@DrewLSsix When you study the period, you can see the huge resistance to industrialisation from farmers, craftsmen and workers.
The Luddites in Britain, the Silesian Weaver Uprising in Germany and the Canut Revolt in France happened because most people lost their income due to cheaper industrial production and were starving or had to work in inhumane conditions and had to live in slums.
Most of them had lives full of hard work before, true. But hey had houses, gardens and healthy air and water.
Now they got ramshackeled huts, no fresh food, soothed air and cholera infested water.
No actually think about it. Benders would be hired over nonmembers for these industrial jobs. It kinda does make sense, but Korea didn’t execute it well.
And then, the Anti-Bending Manifesto was born
@@sualtam9509 People living better prior the industrial revolution is not true at all. Industrial revolution didn't just start with the machines. There were several conditions prior that helped to bring the industrial revolution about. It started with the Columbian exchange and the improvements in farming efficiency that caused an explosion in population growth and less hands needed on farms. People were naturally moving into the cities as a result. This create a huge labor pool that fueled the growth of factories. In fact without the industrial revolution these people would have suffered under perpetual destitution and starvation. The productivity increase brought about by steam engines, machines is what saved civilization from perpetual cycles of malthusian trap
You missed a joke calling republic city “the big cabbage” instead of “the big orange.” Sorry just wanted to point that out. Love your content and love you! Keep up the great work.
I feel like it wouldn't have worked that well as a joke
Ba Sing Se is the Big Cabbage lol
@@willowdove6703 All the layers?
Ba Sing Se is like a onion it has many layers
Or the Big Apple. Is the Big Orange specifically a reference to an Asian city?
"Yeah, I know from all the people you took to prison camps."
-"Now that's what I call established infrastructure. You're welcome."
Just started the episode, but wanted to mention this, in one of the Wii games which was seemingly pre-firelord’s defeat, we do see a steam-punk “mech” like machine similar to the equalist’s ones. It was powered by a fire bender, water bender, earth bender, and a nonbender working together, a group who essentially provided the groundwork that became the Equalists, but with benders among their members.
"and the air nomads didnt really advance during this time period, because theu were dead."
that really got to me
Have you ever thought about this there is a very high chance that when the avatar cicle goes to air again it will be in aangs family
Well there's lots of airbenders now since season 3 so the likely hood is not very high, we see at least 20 new Airbenders in Tenzins group so assuming all them have children and they have children. In 3 generations it'll be a ton of air benders
@@brandonw6139 I understand your poin but Tenzins family tree is most likely gonna be bigger and then cause the chances to be again high but its not like that kid could talk to Aang so😐
@@nomadplayz6429 hmm true he has 3 kids but compared to the dozens of others don't think it'll be more than 10%
@@brandonw6139 That'd be kind of funny though. Like "Here's my great-great grandpa Aang. He's also me, in a way."
Not anymore, tehe
I wasn’t surprised actually, since technology has changed so much in the past hundred years.
most of those changes in the past 100 years are a result of war and conflict. There was no conflict whatsoever in the 70-80 years between ATLA and TLOK.
@@joshuarubenstein2298 Remember that the fire nation was already an industrial superpower of the time era 200 years before LoK and in that time they had only just developed the biplain it took us 150 years from the beginning of the industrial revolution to the development of the biplane
@@johnwade7842 170 actually cause aang dies 70 years before the story
@@joshuarubenstein2298 Well, there was the fire Marion war and a Little revolution
@@impulsewraith3419 literally impossible. Korra was born the second aang died
After the events of A:TLA, the Fire Nation shared its technology. Remember, the Fire Nation was very technologically advanced (it had tanks and airships) where most other cities were technologically void for the most part and functioned off of bending. We first get a glimpse of this in the last few episodes of the first Book, however this point is further driven home when we get to Ba Sing Se. Outside of their tram/train, the city's technology was pretty limited.
For a more real-world application, look at the ORIGINAL Pokemon Blue/Red/Yellow era of Gameboy Classic graphics then look at the VR/AR we have today. Less than 50 years have passed but we have made AMAZING strides in that area.
Now that's just 50 years. LOK takes place at least 50 years into the future because I think there's canon sayin that Aang lived to be in his 60's (the iceberg didn't HALT his aging, it merely slowed it) and that's assuming that as soon as the Avatar died, they're immediately reincarnated however this is not likely. There's a heavy Eastern presence in the show and reincarnation is part of most Eastern religions and it's generally agreed that reincarnation is not instantaneous. Using these facts, I posit that it's actually NOT too unbelievable.
"And the air nomads didn't advance much during this period...because they're dead"
True.
Before I watch the video im going to guess fire nations technology + earth nations infrastructure = the advancement of all nations
Wow, that was a perfect assumption.
and bending, lightning bend helped a lot
Igor Porfiírio oh yes because everyone just one day was able to lightningbend
@@Schlumbuo because people cannot learn
@@Schlumbuo i always though that some of the subskills in some cases were hiden from the public knowledge you know the best things were always reserved for the high class, Iroh and azula knew lightnning bending and they are royalty so maybe once it was known by the population many people focus on learning specifically the subskill, sorry for the mistakes is been a while since i practice english
me: *rewatching avatar the last airbender with my family*
my dad: *stares at the world map on the Atlab wiki*
*episode ends*
my dad: I STILL DON'T KNOW THE NAME OF THAT EARTH KINGDOM VILAGE
I'm imagining one of those memes with a grandma trying to use a computer, haha.
Which village
"Vilage"
@@VolatileViolet I was imagining something more like this
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Churchill_War_Rooms_-_the_map_room.JPG
Very interesting video. One thing I've noticed with a lot of fantasy stories like The Last Airbender, is you never see technology going on past the 1920s, but never more. Meaning you never see late-20th, early-21st level technology in these kind of stories, and I always found that interesting
Very good video. It has always bothered me when people criticised the Legend of Korra for speeding up the technological development too fast. People seem to forget that even in the original show technology was speeding up very fast. The Fire Nation by the end of Book 2 had a fully powered and absolutely gigantic drill that they were able to transport thousands upon thousands of kilometers from its manufacturing origin. It also had the power to drill through the massive walls of Ba Sing Se. That feat of engineering would have been absolutely unheard of by the time us in the real world were using steam engines and coal.
Here's another example, which I think is the biggest feat the Fire Nation pulled off during the whole war. In the span of only months, the Fire Nation were able to take the ideas of a small balloon prototype and mass produce it, which they then redesigned to the point where they had 12 large scale metal airships and an even larger sized flagship for the day of Sozin's Comet. Remember that the events of all three seasons of Avatar: The Last Airbender took place in the span of less than a year, so the Fire Nation were able to pull all of this off from the point they found the balloon up until a couple of days before Sozin's Comet. Also consider that this was done BEFORE metal bending, which is just crazy when you really think about it.
The Avatar world has such a ridiculous advantage over us in the real world thanks to bending. Metal benders on their own are able to refine and shape metal at will without even needing to heat it up first. With fire bending and water bending in the mix, the process of working with metal would have sped up the entire industry tremendously. With those kinds of hacks available it would honestly be kind of shocking if technology was still only in the late stages of the industrial revolution after those 70 years had passed.
To be fair, Nazi Germany went from panzer 2s and 3s to tigers and Panthers within 3 years and that's with them working on other projects. Compare that to the fire nation which have the airships be the only new weapon in this period...
@@thebravegallade731 But that is still 3 years of development time, which is a long time for improving on designs and working on the production pipeline while teaching the personnel to use the tech (not to mention the supplies needed for supporting the tech). ATLA from book 1 to 3 only lasted less than a year if going by the amount of environmental seasons that passed during the show's run (you could also count the amount of months by all the times the full moon was shown in the show to get a better approximation). So you are comparing a time period that is more than 3 times as long.
Considering the time span, the larger metal airships would have had a very small time frame for actual testing in a combat scenario, so Ozai was completely banking on this nearly untested technology to be able to pull off his scorched earth plan for Sozin's Comet. This was a massive war effort on their part and huge portions of their industrial war machine would have had to work around the clock to hit such a tight deadline.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think that it would be impossible to pull all this off on the Fire Nation's part. All I am saying is that tech in the Avatar world is moving quite fast and that the war balloons are a prime example of this.
Btw, you forgot about the drill and other tech that were shown off in the show like the water scooters. Pretty sure they were quite new inventions as well.
@@Frozen_Death_Knight I mean it WOULD go much faster in certain aspects of you have people who can control fire at will.
Just looking at historical precidence: it took only a year for the first maus prototype to be finished, and this was WITH German industry being bombed from hell and back, Normandy and massive losses and supply shortages on the Eastern front, plus half a dozen other wonderwaffe being developed at the same time (me262, komet, V2 and so on) and all of them arguably much more complicated than a lighter than air blimp.
The difference here is that FN was the obviously winning side if you put aside the avatar... The mainland was almost virtually untouched, and even most of the first colonies were fine. Meanwhile Germany did all these in the span of a couple of years while losing BADLY and being the weaker side the whole war.
I do agree somewhat with what you are saying though, I think ATLA would have been better paced if it was 5 seasons across 2 years with FN actually losing some gound durng a S3 and S4 and then doing a hail Mary comet attack at the end of a fifth season.... But that's just me wanting more backstory and content on the world of ATLA.
It didn’t really bother me that the development of technology grew rapidly in a short amount of time because it makes sense. It bothered me more that the styling of it was sooo heavily based on the 1920’s and 30’s. It was a little too uncanny for me.
@@Jessi-44 YES, THIS.
Wow, EVERYTHING changed when the fire nation attacked
Damn now I wish Nikola Tesla could have been born at a point when he could make us mechs
Look at the iron harvest trailer, dare you to get jealous.
Cool profile pic. Nikola Tesla was awesome
Nikola Tesla is kinda overrated. Many of his ideas were based around long disproven ideas, like ether existing in space as opposed to a vacuum.
And Bluetooth and inalambric electricity
Then we wouldnt have electricity.
The question is actually very easy to answer:
They would take materials with earthbending, then Model it with metal bending and Fire bending, make fuel with firebending, and make fabrics with earthbending
I’ve been trying to lay this out for people in a similar manor for YEARS. Thank you for explaining it in a way my short-tempered ass didn’t have the patience to. 💗
I mean when people can literally bend metal, lightning, steam and coal. Technology I would imagine would advance quickly
Who needs technological advancements when you have magic
@@hueyfreeman6262 bending *
@@DecafCream lion turtle ex machina=magic
The "Rise of the Melon Lord" on the timeline lmao
Come to think of it, it’s really interesting the level of technology they had in avatar without electricity. They had metallurgy, presumably figuring out how to insulate heat in furnaces and fire bending into them to smelt iron. Then someone started experimenting with heating and cooling water and realized that they could convert the heat from fire bending into kinetic energy by using a steam engine. Then someone must have figured out how to implement that into ships and tanks. The fire nation knew how to mine coal, so that became an effective fuel source for them. A fire bender presumably would get tired heating a ship for hours on end, but coal wouldn’t, not after it gets that initial heat to start burning. I wouldn’t be surprised if before the hundred year war, airbenders and earthbenders worked with fire benders to make steel.
"Fire Lord Zuko and *Melon Lord* teach lightning and metal bending respectively"
🤣
Lmao the timeline at 100 AG “Rise of Melon Lord”
Avatar: using spark rocks to light stick fires
Also Avatar: GIANT FREAKING MECHANICAL DRILL THING
@johnnykap123 True, true.
@@calebdonaldson8770
If anyone's inventing fuel-fed lighters it's the Fire Nation and spark rocks are an Earth Kingdom thing.
The advancement in tech makes sense to me because i can see the other nations wanting to flatten the curve. The Fire Nation has had exclusive access to these advanced weapons, and even though the war is over they'll definitely still be on edge and want to use this time to catch up so they won't be at such a disadvantage again
I find the Fire Nation to be a bit like Britain in terms of industrialization. When you draw parallels with colonialism, saying "The Sun never sets on the Fire Nation" seems to provide a new meaning considering firebenders get power from the Sun.
Amanda Stevens Interesting... I’ve always thought it bore the closest resemblance to Imperialist Japan (militaristic naval power, engaged in a protracted land war against a massive, resource-rich land power)
Amanda Stevens I found it to be akin to Japan, which was called the empire of the Rising Sun. (Sounds a lot like the fire nation)
@@clickbait4408 Except the Fire Nation is in the relative west, which makes it the land of the setting sun.
Heir of Caelós unless in this world it’s the opposite...DAN DAN DAAAAN
@@theArab__ I was actually thinking exactly that when I made my original comment, "Well, wouldn't that be a kick in the head."
Just remember: sixty years between the wright brother’s first flight, till the 747 airplane.
and 2 major wars....
there were no wars after the end of LoA and before LoK so there would not be such development of planes and war ships.
Those things only developed due to war.... without war it would be much much slower.
@@tomasvrabec1845 the equalists made planes to fight their war against Benders, because airships were too slow.
@@malyssaryan1987 Such a dumbed down argument that makes no sense, since there was no war between the equalists and benders there was a movemente followed by a failed coup, BUT THERE WAS NO WAR.
@@junior-os7bt Right... Just like there was no war in Ba Sing Se. Gotcha Judee.
Korra had many many problems including this technology increase. Yes, Avatar had "high tech weapons" like gas operated vehicles and steel ships. But such things can be caused by the benefits coming from the "bending". We don't have bending in our world, so creating a parallel between the technology of our world breaks the immersion. First steam operated machines came out in 1698. And the Industrial Age happens between 1780-1840. But Korra skips all of them and teleports us into 1920s of New York.
Look, technological improvement is not just about inventing a single thing. To achieve a "radio broadcasting era", you need to invent a lot of things and encounter a few of cultural revolutions.
We can say most of the world lives around 900-1000s while Fire Nation lives in their 1400-1500s. Yes, a technology from 1698 can be count as "very high tech", but you still need to pass Industrial Age before reaching to 1920s New York.
One of the many flaws of Korra was this unrealistic technology skip. They didn't really care about the background and just wanted to make a cartoon in 1920s New York. There is no other reason behind it.
14:48 - 100 AG: Rise of the Melon Lord
Clearly the single most important event in the entire timeline.
I remember hearing that in Republic city was based off of Japan after the Meiji restoration. They didn’t have a industrial revolution. They were just caught up really quickly to the rest of the world.
I love your ATLA/TLOK videos. Have you ever thought about doing an in depth analysts of each of the comics?
Kora is the worst part of her own show I would say tho. Or at least the weakest.
@@1lobster You misspelled "best part".
Um, do you re realize how quickly technology progressed in the real world? In 75 years we went from horse and buggy to space exploration .
Exactly
@ Warriorbob07 07 , Ok yeah but for hundreds maybe a thousand years in the avatar universe it was like avatar the last airbender, and to advance like that so quickly and to get Americanized like that, I mean cans t consider it even Avatar
The Khans well I mean I’m sure republic city was more developed then than any other place. We didn’t really explore the world in LOK like we did in ATLA
@@thekhans2823 what are you talking about? There were multiple technological breakthroughs in The last airbender; book 1: fire nation were on top of the food chain because they had developed giant steel battleships, book 2: fire nation develops gigantic steel drill in order to break through the wall of ba sing sei, book 3: team avatar develops sub marines and tanks that could fit about 10 soldiers and the fire nation develops giant war blimps. All of these advancements took about a year
@ King Merck , Ok but Avatar the last airbender is like a LOT better then the legend of korra
Essentially the only problem I had with Korra's tech level was the mechs.
They where really low technollogycal, was More just a big armor
That and shooting lightning into a box is a really dumb way to power a city.
its not really if makes sence they would like how the di lee used their earthbending to push the monorails
I agree the mechs were a massive misstep on the part of the writers
The fire nation made a huge drill. I think mechs would be easy, and it was probably a big metal suit with joints that metal benders use
There’s 70years between them, plus Aang spent most of his life in rural communities while Korra lived in an urban environment. It’s like Aang lives in 1860 rural China and Korea in 1930 New York.
The Aztecs have yet to reach even steam power, because they're dead.
yet to reach the wheel
@@whenthedustfallsaway
Excellent example. Some things just don't get invented. Thus why I'm not fond of Korra's worldbuilding because not only did they develop identical cars to what we had but even the design of their radios and their old New York accents. Such an enormous coincidence. lol
@@darken2417 not really, invention is driven by 2 things avaible resources and perceived need/advantages. The reason the wheel didn't really get big in the new world is simply because 1 in many areas it wouldn't have been much use due to the terrain and 2 even where it was useable it wouldn't have been that useful because of the lack of domesticateable species that could be used to pull them. The world of avatar has enough similarity to our world that it's not implausible for technology to go the same route. As for the accents, they are there to give the world a certain feel, as to why they exist in universe you could just as easily question everyone in this world speaking english.
Yet they used solar power.
Well the Aztecs never vanished. Their descendants still exist, y'know
Short answer: the co-creators of the show thought that 1920s America meets steampunk China would look cool.
The actual truth 😂
(Western) elemental magic through eastern martial arts seemed cool as well.
"Yeah we didn't feel like using our imaginations to design the world this time."
The only issue with that is that 1920's America is in the European style. If one of the nations previously had European influence in their architecture it wouldn't stick out as much. But we can't model it after 1920's China because Eastern Asia at the time was building everything in the European style. Bit of a catch-22.
Actually any basic research can show you that it's based on 1920s Shanghai
Basically 1850s tech vs 1920s tech. The original characters are senior citizens already. The next avatar after Korra would probably be a counter culture hippie tech wiz or angsty Millennial.
i feel if they do make another series it will take place in something close to the 1980's or early 00's. Imagining that this takes place in the year 1920, and we already know that Korra is 16, it would make sense for the next series to take place around that time cause she'd be in her mid 70's by 1980. would be cool to see that
@@Big_Homie_Al3x The next Avatar isn't born until the current one dies, so if they make another series, its setting will wholly depend on the time of Korra's death. Aang died in his (biological) 60s, which is why Legend of Korra doesn't take place in the equivalent of our world's 60s-80s already.
@@Big_Homie_Al3x also remember that kyoshi lived to be like, 200 something
Not if she gets killed soon.
Aaang is dead
Katara is old
Troph is old
Zuko is still old and awkward
And sokka is missing in action
Yeah, never really understood people complaining about the tech jump aside from the skyscraper sized mech at the end.
Technology advanced faster in real life than it did in Avatar.
ironically yes.
Naturally yes since we didn’t have bending
1840 wooden sailing ships are dominate the navies of the world 1870 it's all iron hulled steam ships. That's how fast tech can improve. Look at aircraft 1930 biplanes are dominant and in 1950 it's all jets. The heyday of the famous all metal piston engine monoplanes of WW2 was about a decade.
Or look at Queen Victoria as an example for the live span of a single person. She reigned the UK from 1837 up to 1901. In that period military naval technology developed from wooden sail powered ships using lots of relatively weak cannons up to steel made heavily armored steam powered ships. In that period over multiple iterations pretty much all military ships became obsolete multiple times. 5 years later in 1906 the HMS Dreadnaught entered into service. The first real “modern“ Battleship. Which once again made pretty much every other ship obsolete. In world war one (1914 - 1918) HMS Dreadnaught herself was obsolete again. And in World War 2 (1939 - 1945) the whole concept of Artillery based naval warfare was surpassed by Aircraft carriers and Submarines.
Radio communication was also developed at the beginning of the 20th century. Cars were invented at the end of the 19th century. A lot can change in the life span of one person.
@@Brot1984 True, but most of the advanced technology that we have can be traced to one thing: War, we developed so much in the 20th century because of the race for resources, 2 world wars and 1 cold war, that's also the reason for the steampunk technology of the fire nation, because of their need to dominate the world so tell me how can a society develop more in 70 years of straight peace than a world ravaged by war for 100 years?
Well, Ba Sing Se is an old city, which is like 5000 years old if I recall correctly from one of your videos, and has walls... at least 2. So, let's explore the 2 reasons cars weren't common in Ba Sing Se (remember Lao Beifong was involved in the first joint venture in the world of Avatar, being the partner that came from the unindustrialized country, we musn't asume the nobles of the capital, were poorer than Lao, and couldn't afford it, or that they were poorer than high-class citizens or nobles from the other nations, remember that just as Future Industries developed from the fire nation, Cabbage Corp did from the earth kingdom, in TLA it was already explored how both were the most powerful entities in the world, one with their technology and the other with their size and resources, unable to outpower each other through their natural advantages, and this has translated to the time Korra is situated):
1). Ba Sing Se is a walled city. As shown with the vertical growth of the lower ring, the walls obstruct the growth of the city, and since growth in a city can be boosted with the resources that arrive by the roads, no being able to interconect your own city and connecting with others because of old infrastructure (and classist policies amongst other factors) means not being able or not needing modernization. In our world, the cities that had walls tore them down or built satellite cities or new quarters around the walls/ old city layout. mainly in cities inland (specially in Europe, eg. London tore down its walls, Paris has other "cities" that in the practie are still Paris but theorically Paris is only the jurisdiction of the older part of the city), coastal cities simply grew into the mainland and didn't tore them down (basically any spanish-built city in the caribbean is proof of it). An Extra: Ba Sing Se's advantage in human labour, resources and well-organized military over the other powers can only overpower technology because of the walls. The wall, accompanied by those other things, did quite well in the task of keeping the only industrialized nation in tho world, out. The Dragon of the West barely got through the outer wall and still had to pass that countryside that serves as buffer zone... then the other wall and then the palace which in itself is a fortress too... that can provide weapon material to its defenders. The drill didn't even manage to retreat and allow the soldiers an entrance, soon it had it's own wall. Twice Ba Sing Se has fallen and because of a coup d'état, therefore, the Dai Li (under Long Feng and Hou Ting) and the Kings of Earth Kingdom (or rather, Kings of Ba Sing Se and nominally the rest of it) have no interest in tearing it down. Also, because of the Mechanist and Cabbage corp, the military has it's own tanks, airfleet and much more. If I close the advantage my enemy has and retain mine, what do I loose? Also, in this aspect the avatar world is very different to ours, since bending is so important in war, this both hampers technological advancement but also makes it less necessary, therefore, bending as a factor in military makes old technology not only less outdated, but, even still useful, as happens with the wall, opposed to our world where new technology caused armour and castles to be outdated, and then the same thing happened with forts designed against artillery, then it happened to interconected systems of trenches, bunkers (not that they per se aren't useful today), forts, batteries, that emerged between the 2st and 2nd world war.
2. Ba Sing Se is an old city. And as the old cities in our own world, it's a city that ocurred mostly unintentionally, maybe it offered some benefits but that's it, settlement actually occured randomly, and the city has been built over itself for hundreds or even thousands of years. In our world most cities in Europe, most cities in Latin America and many cities in Asia are that old, and obviously there was property and infrastructure, people that owned it, that it was too late to remove to make way for cars, trains and all these things when they appeared 100-150 years ago. The Avatar world formerly entered industrial revolution 70 years ago. there was no way any of the nations could have planned everything, opposed to the Republic, which was composed of important towns but had plenty of potential to do that, it wasn't that big, was new, had a high influx of people and specially, lots of the skillful and valuable physical and intellectual material of the elites of the world were going to be born there or would migrate there, as the families of the original team avatar (Gaang), Sato, Cabbage man, etc... did, much like the US did in our world. Along with the classist policies and the wall I've mentioned before. Therefore, thinking that there are no cars there because it's underdeveloped is wrong. The appropiate transport policy for Ba Sing Se isn't the car, is the massive transport systems and bycycles, much like in our real world, where many European cities have succeeded with this, and many cities in Latin America are struggling with the implementation of the car model the US imposed in the region. I guess you're american and you're accustomed to that reality and that's probably why you didn't picked on this issue more accurately, anyways, I did enjoy the video.
EXTRA: About the fast advancement of technology, technology in avatar, multiple times, is less complicated than ours (except for the equalist technology which is pretty much as if we did it) because they're not exactly there to do crazy things the humans cannot, they're mostly there to provide solutions for benders in the military to natural barriers, this way, technology isn't first and foremost to push humans to new boundaries never seen, technology, lots of the time, is there to provide a new way for benders to channel their power or do new things. To me, the best example of this were the tanks, benders were in charge of the firepower and their movility perks, in our world, they would have had to invent hydraulic and electrical systems, safe explosives, cannons and all those things, which, btw, are the complex thing of the machine they're missing from us, the other part they do have being the engines. The airships of Ozai are another good example. It's not until we see the equalist Biplanes that we're shown a piece of technology close to ours.
Damn bro all that for two likes. Feels bad man. I appreciate you tho
This is too much effort for a fictional place lol
He's also British, not american xD
@@xasianxassassinx7838 lmaoo i know right xD i feel so bad lol.. its happened to me before
Way to long
I've always found the thought of aliens coming to earth and learning about our history and either being amazed or amused how fast or slow we developed certain things fascinating
Tim: And the Air Nomads didn't advance at all during this time....because they were dead."
Me: Too soon dude, too soon.
Too soon? I thought Aang was too late
@@regem9121: Yes but still.
At what point is it not too soon? It has been ~200 years.
@@emc246: For them in the series, it's only been about ten years for me!
Is it wrong that i laughed when he said that?
Next video : Are you a psychopath
You didn’t even mention that although we had the concept for steam engine in the Library of Alexadria it was seen as a kids toy and was never used despite being copy hundreds of times
Well "steam engine" it was a ball of copper filled with water with a pair of tubes and a fire under it, it was an "engine" in the sence that it moved under it's own power but it was insanely primitive
@@carso1500 Basically all it was missing was a secondary crank to keep the engine in place.
@@KRYMauL It was missing a lot more than that. But yeah it could be considered a prototype of sorts.
@@shadenox8164 Apparently the power of it was too little for it to be anything other than a toy. Because of this no one took advantage of it.
@@KRYMauL guess noone thought to just make it bigger
Legend of Korra critics who whine about the "world building" always seem to be willfully ignorant of one fact.
Korra lives in the world Aang and Zuko made for her.
After the war ended the main characters got together and tried to build a utopian society where 3 of the 4 cultures could come together and exchange knowledge, culture, and resources. All while the handful of people in the 4th nation could lick their wounds on a nearby private island.
Progress accelerated because the tech advances the fire nation made during the war were finally combined with the earth kingdoms vastly larger workforce.
This is the same reason why niche bending schools are more prevalent in LOK. The firelord horded the secrets of lightning bending as part of the "divine right to rule" that Azula was always mouthing off about. When Zuko rose to power he couldn't use the knowledge himself so he made it publicly available along with the rest of the fire nation advancements the United Republic is built on.
For the World building that makes sense it needs to be consistent. How come guns don't exist? If they can make a giant energy canon then they could easily make energy guns or energy tanks or bunch of smaller mechs with their own smaller energy cannons.
@@mariobadia4553 When in the peace time there probably wasn't that big of a need for explosion pipes that you carry with you and may take your hands with you if there is a fault in it.
@@ZombboniZZ still doesn't explain how the Earth Kingdom didn't invent hand held energy guns when they were clearly preparing for war. Kurvia clearly could've had those made if they could make a giant one attached to a super expensive oversized mech.
@@mariobadia4553 Perhaps they need lot of space for the energy source.
Or the mech designers or the ones in charge thought that bigger must mean better, even when that may not actually be the case. (Look at for example nazis and the very big tanks that were produced or were designed.)
If they had won, they may have started inventing smaller weapons.
@@mariobadia4553 who needs that explosive pipe with that limited supply of things to shoot if you can just compess the nearest pebble and bend it at your enemy.. or throw fire.... or saw them in halve with your icesheet or poke them with your iceicle.... who needs nonbenders in a fighting force.... even the cops restrain you with their metal cables or use the ground around you.... the nonbenders employed are just there to put bodys out on the street and keep order, if there is trouble you have your baton and the next bender is an airshipdrop away.... so like 5 min at most...
I love how we have such parallel analysis of the development of technology between the two shows.