Korra DVD Commentary Highlights

The Korra Book 1 DVD and Blu-ray are now out, featuring episode commentaries by Mike and Bryan, along with voice actors and other show crew. The DVD only features commentaries of the first two and last two episodes, while the Blu-ray features commentaries on all 12 episodes. There’s a ton of great stuff in these commentaries and I’d highly recommending getting the Blu-ray.

If you can’t get the Blu-ray or just want to see the highlights now, here are my notes from watching them, which you can see all 3800 words of after the “Read more”.

What got written here is mainly stuff that is “new” but I also included stuff I just found to be interesting. I bolded the especially important things, although all of this stuff is great. When it’s not specified who said a quote it’s either Mike or Bryan, although after a few episodes I specified everything. If I specify a speaker without quotes, it’s me paraphrasing what he or she said and not an exact quote.

My notes are pretty bad in the beginning in terms of readability but get much better as they go on. Bear with the early ones.

101: Mike, Bryan, Janet

- ‘Nick said you can do whatever you want for ATLA spinoff’

- Bryan: “Very conscious” of Korra, Katara scene mirroring Katara Gran-Gran scene

- Bryan: Ran into a battle making Korra a girl, some departments for silly economic data reasons said series with female leads don’t preform well.

Janet: “the sexism department!”

“People who were resistant to the idea…eventually said let’s let the two men do the girl thing” “Not a calculated thing, just an idea that felt right” “Always had strong female characters” “by the time it came out, just so happened Hunger Games…Brave… just this sort of blitz of all this stuff.. not like we were trying to be part of any movement.” “Strong female characters…why is this even an issue” “Glad we got away with it” “Satisfying moment was they tested with some kids…they had to pull that question out of the boys… ‘are you bothered that Korra is a girl’ ‘what?! No… she’s awesome’”

- One of biggest inspirations for avatar universe was Miyazaki. Mononoke…her seen as a villain but actually good. “Not good vs evil. Only good vs evil is inside of you”

- Mindy Sterling loves lin.

- “There was a point where everybody’s kid was a character and we settled on these two as the main ones” Confident people were gonna like Lin.” Lin and Tenzin weren’t initially dating. Eventually added.

- “DVD commentaries are kinda 90s”

- First outline had fight with Amon “in like 2nd scene”

102: Mike, Bryan, Janet, David

- “There’s no momentum in animation. Everything needs to be done” “Nothing just happens”

- “Always like to cast real kids for the real kid parts” Lots of talk about Logan who plays Meelo. “That happened with Zack…we wanted his voice to change.” “In book two [of Korra] we changed all their designs…subtle…made them all taller [the kids]”

- Came up with probending before Korra as a before the war, arena for bending sport. Decided to use that idea as team sport and show harmony of the time. “Harkening back to the old boxing matches”

- “Had so many character ideas for this series…had to space out their introductions” “Toza…had a bigger story for him. This was a guy who took Mako and Bolin under his wing and showed them the ropes”

- Mike: “Thankfully Bryan is good at coming up with rules for sports” Bryan watched lots of fighting on TV when living in Korea for ATLA pilot.

- Janet cried first time seeing animation for Korra. “Also not the last time Janet cried”

- David: “I’m never detached from my ego”

- Mike and Bryan split episodes in half writing, but went back over them a lot. Don’t remember who wrote what line. “Becomes its own thing” after animation.

103: Mike, Bryan, Joaquim, Steve Blum

- “Process” finding voice for Amon. Knew Steve from dub of Cowboy Bebop, maybe the initial influence for ATLA

- “Network note” saying ‘slow down’ to Amon fight scene right away.

- Hasook originally one who got taken by chi-blockers in this episode. Hasook had a whole backstory at some point. Had a family, was an adult.

- A lot of inspiration of Republic City from Shorpy.com

- Joaquim: Storyboarding a really big collaboration. Chi-blocker fight scene good example.

- Makorra was not just something like kataang. Not love at first sight. “Man, hated this person at first” “drove me crazy” “don’t like everything about them but…they light my fire”

- Bryan: Map solution “influenced by my slight involvement in rave culture” Maps so can’t disclose location outright

- Mike: Originally had much more involvement to intro of Amon in 103. Girl next to Korra originally “foaming mouth girl”. Super excited for Amon

- Steve had watched random ATLA episodes out of sequence before coming on for Korra

- Amon’s voice more crazy, then too subtle. Also originally a more deep voice.

- Bryan on taking bending away: blocking chi paths: Lightning to fire

- Bryan: Scene between Mako and Korra at rally: ‘beginning of their romance’

- Lieutenant fight done by Joaquim

- Wrap up scene for Mako, Bolin, and Korra in the park was originally in the episode. Korra was happy and then serious in this scene and it didn’t work.

104- Mike, Bryan, Janet, Seychelle,

- Bryan: “We’re gonna make up a fake story about how we met Seychelle” “Going to obscure the context…road on an airplane with Seychelle….she was wearing Katara boots. …Going to a wakeboarding event or something….Table read for wake boarding…were like I really like that actresses voice … when that wakeboarding competition didn’t work out…were like she was really good in that wakeboarding competition, had her read for this part.”

- “First idea for LoK.. politics!” “Could have been the animated version of Lincoln” Wanted to give 3 councilmembers more backstory and scenes, but not enough time. “Figured Tarrlok had something on them.”

- Janet loves Asami

- Bryan: Joaquim is “dude’s dude” but “loves desgining woman’s footwear”

- Mike: Challenge to come up with stories where Korra’s more vulnerable cause she’s already mastered 3 out of 4 elements

Bryan about Mike saying: Korra feels her bending is who she is.. losing her bending is her greatest fear because of that

- Seychelle initially wasn’t with everyone in LA to record

- Hiroshi Sato didn’t invent the automobile, was innovator of mass production.

- Council page is a he

- Bryan: parities hard to do in animation

- Mike and Bryan will write a lot of visual stuff into the script. Bryan writes very detailed action scenes.

- Bryan regrets how brutal initial slab of rock, person into wall was.

- Bryan hints at a romantic scene in Book 2 when talking about how particular he writes those scenes. No details given.

- Aang Island is a museum/memorial dedicated to Aang’s journey. Toph made the statue.

- Chi-blockers action scene here comes from old idea from ATLA for Aang Zuko fight scene in the dark.

- Bryan: Janet good at both real and fake crying.

105- Mike, Bryan, Janet, David

- Episode a personal favorite of Mike and Bryan’s

- Filler episodes are some of Mike and Bryan’s favorites. “This was out closest thing to a filler episode [in Korra Book 1]”

- Mike: “Can’t have Avatar without some shipping.” “I think this is the episode where everyone stated hating Mako.”

- Janet: “I get so excited whenever there’s food in any episode”

- Things on Ikki’s head called “snoods”

- Mike: most difficult thing from Book 1 was probending

- Bryan: subtle moment after match: Mako really does like Korra, but saying what he thinks he should say.

- Bolin hitting on Korra in this scene based on Mike and Bryan’s friend in college

- Bryan’s wife thinks Tahno is like Bryan

- Janet didn’t do Korra’s burps. Bryan did.

- Bryan: did get note from network about Bolin being drunk on noodles. Response was to forward an episode of Spongebob with a similar thing. Happened a lot on Avatar: where similar thing happened on spongebob, they found that out later after they had to change it. On drunk noodles: “that one worked, we got away with it.”

- No music over probending fights because would be too overwhelming.

- Bryan: was nightmare to draw probending arena. “Bit off more than we could chew”

106: Mike, Bryan, Ben Wynn, Jeremy Zuckerman

- Bryan: Mike always knows when do bring back the Avatar theme

- Jeremy: combination of character driven and mood driven themes for Korra. More flexible.

- Jeremy: “Bryan and Mike love to throw these impossible tasks in my face.” About doing jazz and big band music for the first time for Korra

They then go into chipmunk and distorted voices which is super annoying and I can’t tell who is who

- “More restrained musically this series” Full scenes without music

- Ben: 217 tracks used for 3 probending matches

Back to normal voices now. Phew.

- Music for the action in 3rd act of this episode is a variation of “The Rally” which will reoccur throughout the series.

- Jeremy and Ben have 2 weeks for each episode apparently

107: Mike, Bryan, Janet, David

- Mike: Only had 20 seconds for “previously on” so came up with the news reals idea.

- Bryan did Asami’s design. Worked hard at it.

- Bryan: “We’re not interested in characters that have no flaws.” (Dylan insert: no mention of Suki here)

- Hiroshi’s estate inspired by Hearst castle in California

- Bryan: “It’s not our planet, it’s a different one.” (December 5th, 2012) “That’s going on tumblr somewhere.”

- Bryan on Janet’s podcast: “It’s so weird that Korra has a podcast”

- Bryan: romance stuff in Korra a lot based on personal experience in art school. Was reluctant at first to include some stuff in 105 because thought people wouldn’t like Korra, but thought it was realistic

- Janet: “I would pick Bolin”

- Mike: originally Hiroshi and Asami both bad. Then “worked in Hiroshi thing” Bryan: Asami “seemed too good to be true” so knew people would think she’d be bad.

- Bryan: “In a writer’s room, most versions of every idea are put out there. Weigh the pros and cons”

- Bryan: About Mako: “This episode sealed the deal” on people not liking him.

- Bryan: mechatanks inspired by old diving suits.

- Janet: “Please let there be toys. I want a mechatank.”

- Bryan: “I love these episodes that go from bad to worse”

- Bryan: “We don’t” have to water the show down for Nickelodeon. Says if show was on “other network” (Dylan insert: Disney), everything would have to be ok in every episode.

- Mike: “For the most part we can mix the tones and it can all work together”

- Bryan: “We loved writing and storyboarding” when Asami doesn’t go with Hiroshi.

- Bryan: reaction shot of Asami lightning Hiroshi originally panned over to Bolin and he was like “woah!” but cut because it took out of the moment.

- David on Mako: “he’s not so bad guys”

- Bryan: normally on Avatar, after huge episode like 106, would have “goofy filler episode” but on this “we try to top it”

108: Mike, Bryan, Janet, Seychelle

- Bryan: “I am the Bry- part of Bryke"

- Janet: “I am the Jan- of Janchelle”

Bryan: “Somebody’s already set up a tumblr of that” [Dylan insert: they have. I tried to get it, but it’s already taken]

- Bryan: Mike didn’t intentionally reference this from Mad Men (about the boy asking for some of a woman’s hair). Then they mention Kiernan Shipka being on Mad Men and Janet loves her character on that.

- Bryan: “We did a lot more of that wacky anime stuff in the old series.” Mike: “In this episode it apparently kept happening”

- Bryan: “Mike and I are the buzzkillers…no bending can’t work that way… no, that can’t happen in the Avatar world.”

- Mike: “When they’re used sparingly, it adds more impact” (on the anime stuff)

- Bryan: Azula “was always five steps ahead of everyone, playing them like marionettes”

- Bryan: Korra’s “ego is so attached to her physical abilities”

- Bryan: Idea is lightning bending becoming common now is just the evolution of it. Similar to sports where much more complicated things being done now. “Once these things are pioneered they become more common.” Backstory idea that Mako learned lightning from Zolt. Picked it up on the streets. “We like this theme of good guys learning things from bad guys” Mike: “But using it for good.”

- Bryan: If Republic City is NYC, the part of RC they drive to is Queens. Low income, densely populated area that is just nonbenders. Service industry jobs in the city.

- Bryan: “Any sort of group can hold something over any other group…If they get out of balance can use these things to oppress people.” Metalbending is used for good by cops but then used to oppress people.

- Bryan: “The idea is Korra was left there with Asami’s car [when everyone else got arrested] but she doesn’t know how to drive….She somehow made it from Dragonflats burrow to the docks.” Seychelle: “Maybe the Avatar State knows how to drive.” Mike: “All the past Avatars are like, ‘what we don’t know’”.

- Bryan when talking about retakes: “Molly Ringwald, please understand that we can’t control every drawing.” [Dylan insert: I have no idea what this means. Maybe they know Molly and she watches? That or they’re making a reference I don’t get]

- Bryan: So happy with how end of this episode turned out.

Bryan: Sometimes we get notes from the network: ‘there’s not enough dialouge, they’re gonna get bored’ And we’re like this is tension

- Bryan has been a vegan for 2 years. “I had all these ideals but wasn’t living up to them” “I think as humans in society we have to at least try…The only thing I regret is not doing it earlier.” Relating it to the hypocrisies Tarrlok points out in this scene.

- Mike: “Had to be in a moment where Tarrlok would reveal his ability to bloodbend.” On why Korra had to be so intense here.

- Bryan on bloodbending: “There’s no lasting damage if it’s done right.”

109: Mike, Bryan, Janet, Seychelle

- Mike: We had a whole scene of Lin going in the station and being confronted by officers because she didn’t had the authority, she resigned. Scene got cut.

- Bryan: “Mako didn’t really know how he felt…he had these feelings he didn’t recognize yet…didn’t come to the surface until he thought he was gonna lose her.”

- Bryan: This was challenging, to see our old characters in these flashes. Very hard to cast the voices. Had to recast a few times.

- Bryan: “I am the feistier of the two in the Bryke partnership.”

- Mike: “We just need them to say it so they know where to go” about random guard saying that train goes to prison.

- Bryan: “We tend to play the stupid guards.” Mike: “Where quality acting is not necessarily required.” Bryan: “I’ve auditioned for a few roles.. but I don’t cast myself.”

- Bryan: Wanted to do trials on new series. (referring to trial of Yakone).

- Mike: psychic bloodbending

- Mike: “Without the council page who knows what could have happened”

- Bryan: “Janet are you tweeting?!” “Janet is live tweeting this commentary which will come out 9 months later”

- Bryan: Really liked Kate Higgins. Mike: “Still seemed like Toph, but as an adult…she has that youthful quality.”

- Bryan: About Yakone “We rarely have pure evil characters” Mike: “Sometimes you need them”

- Bryan: “He [Tarrlok] actually did bloodbend him a bit, but that’s showing that his [Amon] bloodbending is more powerful” About the show of Amon moving slightly in the window light.

- Bryan: When Amon says “I’ll take care of him” he is scared that they could find out (about him being his brother).

- Bryan: “I love that Korra strikes first…He can’t reveal that he’s a bender, and she’s a little bit out of range.” About Korra and Amon outside

- Bryan: “We’ve all done this, where we bulldoze over people’s feelings not meaning to”

“I’d say 25% of the commentaries on this book was us defending Mako’s honor”

110: Mike, Bryan, Joaquim, Steve Blum

- Mike: “the idea of air temple island being invaded by amon was something we had early on in the show’s development” Bryan: “we knew at some point the revolution would take over… but we slid it around, how early, how late”

- Pema being pregnant started as a random thing but they pegged it down.

- Mike: “It’s fun to write these relationship arguments…these scenes we definitely draw on our past experiences”

- Bryan: “We really shied away from potty humor” (on ATLA). Ryu wanted lots of potty humor on Korra

- Steve Blum did a few voices in Book 2. Some “of some creatures”

- Mike not used to doing action but took over the Asami fighting off guards, Tenzin bending the machines scene.

- Mike: Had even more action sequences in this episode in script stage that we had to cut out.

- Mike: I think there were even a couple more farts that they cut out. Mike had to negotiate with Ryu on how many farts got in.

- Bryan: Rohan is my nephew. One of eight nephews. Wanted his sister to find out by watching. Disappointed by reaction of kids, sister went back and watched and cried.

- Bryan: Have to spread out all the characters getting huge moments. Can’t just put them in the finale.

- Bryan talks about how he’s frustrated that fans think things like Lin getting her bending taken away is trolling. He thinks eliciting emotion from viewers is good.

- Battleships took Bryan “forever” to design

111: Mike, Bryan, Ben Wynn, Jeremy Zuckerman

The dumb voices are back. Oh no.

- Bryan: Mako looks like Ben. Asami looks like Ben’s wife.

- Jeremy (?): “My 3 year old daughter likes taking my bending away”

Voices are gone.

- Bryan: We kinda had to fight for (the big fight scene with the ships and planes) it with the network.

- Ben: Hard to differentiate all the different types of fire in this scene.

- Mike: (Scene with Mako and Asami talking) “This is supposed to be their breakup moment”. “Tried to play it more subtle where both Mako and Asami realized it wasn’t working out and said their goodbyes. It’s a moment where it’s not appropriate to have a big breakup argument or something….It might have been a little too subtle.”

Bryan: “Mike and I look at it like eh, that’s one we could George Lucas. We could hit it a little more on the nose.”

Mike: “For all of you who are still Mako haters out there…they had a breakup. He was good to go.”

- Mike: “We had a lot of old ideas where they were gonna find Tarrlok in Yakone’s old hideout in the mountains or something.”

- Bryan: “Mike and I get really excited about doing sad stuff.”

- Mike: “We knew it was going to be tied into Amon, and Tarrlok somehow, but we went through a few ideas before we got to this story.”

- Mike: “I like the story within a story format.”

- Jeremy: “Bryan had this idea..to make this whole act one musical cue. This is by far the longest musical cue I’ve done for Korra. It was a duet..the erhu would represent Tarrlok and the cello would represent Noatok.”

- Bryan: “This is something I wanted to be really careful about..you see at least through Tarrlok’s character that he did not enjoy this. He did not disregard the animal’s discomfort…it’s something they do to humans too.” (About the wolves being bloodbent)

112: Mike, Bryan, Joaquim, Steve Blum

- Bryan: “I remember very early in the writing, let’s not have a giant battle…let’s just make this one Korra versus the bad guy.”

- Mike: at some point had her unlock airbending as early as episode 8, but realized it needed to be in the final episode.

Bryan: This person that she cares for is in trouble, and that’s what it’s gonna take for her to learn this.

- Bryan: “The chi flowing through her body…you can use waterbending where they make it glow and they’re clearing out those pathways, they can open it up so the chi flows better. What Amon did is that he took that technique and he used it to hurt people, he used it to block those pathways…That’s a philosophy Mike and I believe in, anything can be u’sed for good or bad. Any philosophy or any ideology, it’s really in the person’s intentions in how it manifests. These things aren’t good or bad, it’s just there…So she hadn’t opened up that particular chi path, being the avatar she has crazy chi energy flowing, so he was able to close the ones he could detect, not the one she hadn’t opened up yet. He couldn’t feel it.

- Bryan: “There’s a whole storyline we don’t see. Tenzin and his kids going to find Pema and Rohan.”

- Bryan: “I know everyone hates on Mako…to me even if he had transgressions, what he does in this episode for Korra is really heroic and romance aside is really selfless and I really love that…Him just trying to defend Korra, I just love that stuff, even if they weren’t romantically tied in anyway.”

- Bryan: I would George Lucas the color and lightning of the building Asami and Hiroshi fight in. He says it was terrible.

- Mike about the scene where Korra airbends: “We were finishing this up until a couple days before it was supposed to go on TV.” Bryan: “We are down to the wire.”

- Bryan: Had a lot of ideas on how to force Amon to waterbend, had to do it as a second nature, response to drowning.

- Bryan: “Incredibly we got away with it, and that’s pretty much all we can say about that.”

Steve Blum: “I have to say it, Amon a boat.”

Bryan: “This guy was just a total jerk the whole season…he realizes the best thing for the whole world and society is they are not part of it.”

- Mike: Lots of scenes with Korra’s parents in later books.

- Scene with everyone in the south pole is the first storyboard Lauren Montgomery did on Korra. Came on for Book 2 but helped out with some Book 1 stuff.

Mike: “We had a whole scene…Iroh was here…Asami was like, I’m gonna join the United Forces, see you later. Lauren boarded that.”

- It was said as part of a joke pitch, but Bryan gave the impression that General Iroh is “like 36”.

- Mike: “There was some criticism that it was like a magic button got switches and Korra got all her powers back, but to me it’s way more than that, she had to reach this point of like total despair to be opened up to the idea of connecting to these other spirits and her spiritual side.