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Part: 1/2

Yoo Jae-myung, animation director of The Legend of Korra, discusses Nickelodeons initial hesitancy to accept Mike and Bryans proposal of the show… and Korra.

“The sequel focuses on the incarnation of the new Avatar, Korra, as she tries to save a city called the Republic City.”

“So, Korra is a young girl , not a boy. Heroes and protagonists are usually men.”

“That actually became a problem.

Nickelodeon was reluctant to produce this animated series at first because the protagonist was a girl.

I guess you could say that Americans are more conservative than Koreans.

The production was suspended just because the protagonist was a girl.

To compare this situation to a movie production, it’s as if the lead actor has already been cast, but the production agency decides to stop the filming because they don’t approve of the actor.”

Part 2: (x)

Full interview: (x)

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Fun fact: I did a research paper for an upper division course detailing how gender and gender roles affect movies and TV shows, and I used Bryan’s thoughts as evidence.

When I received feedback for the presentation on the topic, several classmates commented saying they didn’t even know Korra’s gender would have possibly stopped production.

And that pattern of skepticism from the studio end never went away either, which played into a lot of the production problems the series had, which in turn impacted the quality of the product (see: Book 2’s rushed scripting and the use of two studios with vastly different art qualities).

Those things, of course, impact the response to the show. And this creates a loop, where studio people can comfortably look at a property that they helped kneecap, show that it didn’t ‘perform to expectations,’ and blame whatever factor they like–in this case, Sexism, but queerness and race issues can play in too–as the reason for it.

Which is all another reason why Legend of Korra is my favorite damned show, because it’s kind of a miracle it even got made at all.

I have definite problems with Korra (season two was a disaster on every level, plain and simple) but yeah, every time we hear about the production it becomes clearer that making it about Korra was like pulling teeth.

It’s not just a problem at Nickelodeon, either. Lots of networks can be sexist like that. Need I bring up the time Cartoon Network cancelled its whole action block just because too many girls were watching it? At least Nick was smart enough to let Korra finish its story, regardless of how much they messed with it.