With the premiere of The Legend of Korra season 2 tonight, an interview with the creators detailing the creative process has been released!
Speaking with Vulture, co-creators Bryan Konietzko and Mike DiMartino recall the major influences that went into conceptualizing The Legend of Korra.
“I’m sure people will draw a lot of comparisons between Book Two and Princess Mononoke,” said DiMartino, “and there are definitely nods to that movie, which Bryan and I both love.” This draws comparisons to the article we wrote that compared the two series.
DiMartino continued, “There wasn’t a specific life event that made it into the show, but rather my own ongoing search to find that balance between living in a modern world with all its potential trappings and a more spiritually enriched existence. The Avatar world in general has been a rich place to explore those ideas.” This quote likely references the influences of both Western and Japanese animation in The Legend of Korra.
As fans may have noticed, the sequences with Wan, the first ever Avatar, have a new art style. “We wanted a distinctly different style for Wan’s story to help place it deep in the past from Korra’s time,” expained DiMartino. “We drew inspiration from ancient and traditional East Asian ink wash paintings and woodblock printing for the environments, color palettes, and stylizations of the elements.”
In speaking of the future of the series, Konietzko had this to say about his beloved characters: “But Korra and her friends don’t reset at the end of each arc. Their character arcs continue through the entire series, and the events and developments build on each other from book to book. It all feels organic to us, and completely in keeping with the continuous story line structure we established with Avatar, basically just with more bad guys.”
And to remind fans the length of each book, Konietzko states, “Book Two is fourteen episodes; Books Three is thirteen episodes; Book Four is thirteen episodes; and the series is 52 episodes total.”
The Legend of Korra season 2 premies TONIGHT at 7 pm on Nickelodeon.