Cereal:

Korra is back up on iTunes!

Star Wars Rebels has already been renewed for Season 2, but without Greg Wesiman.

The new Homestar Runner is up.

I could have sworn they said Studio Mir was animating Season 4. I didn't notice any real issues with the animation.

Hmm. Disappointing that Weisman is out. I wonder what the story behind that, is.

Cereal:

As for Korra itself, I didn't think the episode was that bad,. Obviously, some interesting stuff has gone down during the last several years and I'm curious to find out more about it.

I'm also curious to see where they're going with Korra. She's obviously not in the best mental or physical state (getting whomped on by a random prize fighter) and hiding it from her father.

I thought the animation was a little weak: that first scene with Asami and Mako, for instance.

But I didn't think the writing was too bad, although if Kuvira is being set up as the big bad for S4, they should have introduced her earlier than they did. (Although to be fair, the Big Bads for the other seasons were only introduced in their seasons too; it's just that the Final Season should be bigger and have more lead-up to it.)

All that said, I liked how fast they set up a complicated political situation with a lot of believable conflicts between the characters. And Wu reminded me of a Sokka gone terribly, terribly wrong.

As for Korra, well, it rather looks like the writers have been watching some Buffy. I loved that twist.

Watched the movie Akira last night. What a trippy film!

Someone on another site brought up an interesting point regarding Korra. The show seems to be about Korra figuring out who she is beyond The Avatar (since she grew up knowing and it forms the core of how she sees herself.) Each of the villains have taken aspects of that away from her.

Amon took away her bending (though she got it back.)

Unalaq tried to take away Raava and succeeded in taking away her connection to her past lives.

The Red Lotus nearly took her life and did take her strength. They also indirectly took away her role as the world's protector (since the Airbenders took over that role while she recovered.)

Now we find her on her own, separated from her friends and denying she is Avatar Korra. Who is she when you take everything away?

Very Buffy Season 2/Season 3, indeed.

The title of Book Four is "Balance".

Well, that was an interesting episode, although I don't know why we needed the recap 2/3 of the way through.

Also, TOPH! Yay!

I was glad to see Korra originally didn't set out to lie to her parents about what she was doing.

Hallucinatory Korra was freaky, especially in that fight in the swamp.

Happy to see Toph, though I wouldn't have expected her to be living in a cave under a swamp.

Given that we first "met" her in a swamp, I thought it was fitting. And she sounded just like old-ass Toph would sound, whereas Katara didn't sound as distinctive in her speech patterns. Then again, Toph is pretty...Toph.