Just finished it. Fell in love with it pretty quick. The art design is phenomenal. Full of great character work, big setups for growth/mysteries to be solved across however many books they have planned/how many Netflix damn well better let them flesh out. Main characters are all interesting and their core dynamic works well. Also a huge surprise on how many interesting side characters there are. General Amaya is an instant favorite. Her design, her handicap and the strength that pours out of that, who she's a foil for, everything about her screams something original. Soren and Claudia are fun charismatic characters. Fairly interested in how those two will interact with the core group over time. Hell, even some of the episode centric characters you meet are seriously interesting like that moustache dude with the dagger. I could spend some time with just that dude for a bit. Concerning the antagonist, Viren gravitates too quickly between a very well worn villain trope to have a bit of nuance of reasoning for what he's doing. I hope they err on the latter over time. Also, the show's ratio of protagonists to antagonists is too far on one side. Definitely, need more interesting bad guys over time.
The world is detailed and the mythology leaves some gigantic story arcs that I hope to see. Political scene was detailed and set up quickly, and instantly provided a launching off point for the story to kick in quickly. There's some interesting world building underpinning mythos that parallels between the Last Airbender and this, with how magic is separated into different schools, versus how bending works with the different elements and they are slowly fleshing out the rules of how someone can begin to learn how the magic is used in this world via Callum.
Animation issues barely registered for me. Some of the action worked really well, some of it was just ok. But so much of this worked so well for me that it became negligible. I hope they manage to improve it as they go along because they have some fantastic character designs and capabilities and I'd love to see what they can do as they develop.
The final episode ended a bit flat for me, mostly because there are so many threads left hanging in the wind that I was disappointed that that was where it ended, but I guess that's a bit of a positive, and a bit negative. Wish they had tied up a bit more before moving to next book.
Anyway, for me, this definitely fits the description of being a spiritual successor to The Last Airbender. Its got a whole lot of heart, the art, the writing, the world building, and the earnestness of it all, all of it reminds me of TLA/Korra.
IN for whole lot more hopefully.
#sixbooksandamovie
