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There's an appa for that

Our First Look At the Next Airbender

by Susana Polo | 10:28 am, March 7th

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Ever since that James Cameron movie quietly hit the box office, people who want to talk about Avatar: The Last Airbender have had to be specific. So: This is the first official look we’ve gotten at the face of Korra, the heroine of Avatar: The Legend of Korra, the greenlit miniseries and sequel to the Airbender series, which is happening despite the schlock and awe of M. Knight Shyamalan‘s The Last Airbender movie.

Seven major castmembers have been announced today, as well as the characters they will be playing.

While the cast is rounded out by some career voice actors like Lance Henriksen and David Faustino, Daniel Dae Kim of LOST and J.K. Simmons (who, after Law & Order and Spider-man we’ll watch or listen to in anything) are also on board. Kim has actually been involved in Airbender before, voicing Fong, the Earth Nation general who misguidedly attempts to teach Aang to purposefully trigger the Avatar State. J.K. Simmons has secured the role of Tenzin, Korra’s Airbending teacher and the son of the last Avatar Aang and waterbending master Katara.

So we’re glad the series is keeping its commitment to having utterly badass older characters in it.

Seychelle Gabriel will also tantalizingly be returning to the cast. Her role in the first series was that of Princess Yue, a character who concievably could appear in the new series.  As the Moon Spirit, she would A) still be alive in this sequel series, and B) have good reason to interact with a waterbender Avatar like Korra. Gabriel is listed as voicing a character named Asami, however, so we’ll have to wait to see if Yue actually puts in an appearance.

UPDATE: Never mind, Seychelle Gabriel was Yue in the movie, not the show. IMDB, Y U NO BE MORE OBVIOUSLY SPECIFIC?

Korra herself will be voiced by Janet Varney, and other cast members include child actress Kiernan Shipka as Jinora.

(The Wall Street Journal, via io9.)

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  • Anonymous

    No, not happening despite M. Night. I don’t think there’s anyone at Nickelodeon or in the original show’s audience who confused his shitty adaptation for the real thing.

  • Lionmml

    Dear Kinowolf: You just got an amen.

  • KPat

    Why is she so buff? One of the amazing things about the original series is that it had awesomely badass female characters… who were still unabashedly female. Katara, for example, and all of the Kyoshi warriors. And Azula, and her sidekicks. I could go on. There’s even a little storyline (in Tales of Ba Sing Se) where Toph learns that it doesn’t make her any less self-sufficient to enjoy girly things now and then.

    I guess it isn’t necessarily a bad thing if the strong female lead this time around happens to look a little… manly… I hope they just don’t imply that girls can’t be strong AND feminine. /rant

  • http://nympholepsy.tumblr.com nympholepsy

    Being muscular or athletic doesn’t make you inherently unfeminine (or “manly”), and having a muscular body type doesn’t mean you can’t also enjoy girly things; you can’t tell whether Korra does or doesn’t by her muscular biceps alone. Also, didn’t you kind of answer your own question? The original series had tons of kick-ass women and girl warriors with smaller, less muscular bodies. If anything, what the series needed was more body type diversity in the form of more muscular women — even when women are allowed to be strong physical fighters they’re usually portrayed as being much less muscular than their male counterparts. For every Chun-Li and Wonder Woman, we have a hundred improbably waifish figures. (Not that there’s anything wrong with being a waif, says this waif — but when it’s more or less the only body type that’s allowed to be considered feminine…)

    I’m sure there’ll be plenty of other women&girl characters with the same kind of body type as Katara and Toph, though; the Avatar crew are really good at including lots of prominent female characters.

  • Anonymous

    I came in here, drafted a five paragraph response to KPat, left it to stew a moment while I wrote a quick post, and came back to find my job done for me.

    I swear you guys never let me get a word in edgewise. :)

  • http://nympholepsy.tumblr.com nympholepsy

    Mwahaha, sniped!

  • Allij

    Princess Yue was voiced by Johanna Braddy in the animated series. Seychelle Gabriel played her in the live action movie.

  • KPat

    Very fair, and very true. And if this was more on the physical fighting side of things rather than the magical fighting, I’d be glad to see a more realistic level of muscles. I just see a lot of “you can’t be strong unless you’re built like a man,” and I worry that the new series will fall into that. I look forward to them proving me wrong :)

  • http://www.jejunecomic.com/ JT

    When it’s Avatar:TLAB, I have no doubt they’ll do it right. :)

  • http://handfulofhealth.com elaine!

    Why shouldn’t she be buff? She needs to kick some ass! I would love to see the idea of muscular women gain more acceptance. And I’m not talking, like, body building competitors. More like Xena. Women simply don’t put on mannish muscles naturally, and yet that’s the top reason most women refuse to life anything heaver than a 2lb weight, despite all the benefits in bone density and functional fitness — not to mention superior fat loss to hours of cardio.

    Yeah, I’m a fitness nerd. But still, show me the muscle! I’d go so far as to say that Mai, while tiny, was probably in the top 5 of all the Last Airbender characters when it comes to pure strength, though. Who would win if she and Iroh did a one-armed-handstand-pushup competition…?

  • http://handfulofhealth.com elaine!

    Why shouldn’t she be buff? She needs to kick some ass! I would love to see the idea of muscular women gain more acceptance. And I’m not talking, like, body building competitors. More like Xena. Women simply don’t put on mannish muscles naturally, and yet that’s the top reason most women refuse to life anything heaver than a 2lb weight, despite all the benefits in bone density and functional fitness — not to mention superior fat loss to hours of cardio.

    Yeah, I’m a fitness nerd. But still, show me the muscle! I’d go so far as to say that Mai, while tiny, was probably in the top 5 of all the Last Airbender characters when it comes to pure strength, though. Who would win if she and Iroh did a one-armed-handstand-pushup competition…?

  • BK201

    That’s a girl? The “bust” area look more like pecks.

  • http://twitter.com/FS3K F-Stormer

    That’s just because the water is in the way ;(