She is only seen wearing the coat during the second season.Īsami Sato as she appeared in season four three years older, a bit taller, and with a changed hairstyle. Her coat, which debuted in the season two (2013) episode " Rebel Spirit", was based on one Konietzko saw on a Japanese fashion website.
Asami is also seen during the first season wearing a suit whenever involved in actual combat, which she retains throughout the series and wears the most during the third season when journey with Team Avatar. In her introductory episode "The Voice in the Night", Asami is also seen wearing formal attire, two different dresses, one while on her initial date with Mako and the other while attending a gala with him. Throughout the first three seasons of The Legend of Korra, Asami consistently is seen wearing a dark red and gray jacket, red turtleneck dress, pink leggings and black boots. Club noted that "it turns out that Asami's not bad-she's just drawn that way." After it was revealed that she was not an Equalist spy, The A.V. Her design led viewers to speculate that the character would be a " femme fatale" when she first appeared. Īsami's initial character design, from when she was meant to be an Equalist spy, was left unchanged after co-creators DiMartino and Konietzko rewrote her to be an ally instead. Konietzko had previously had difficulty drawing women and chose to design Asami by himself, wanting a challenge. Konietzko wrote that Asami's resemblance to the character Lust from the 2009 anime series Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood was coincidental, as he had not seen the series at the time of Asami's design in 2010. Bryan Konietzko's design of Asami was based on the idea of an actress from the " Golden Age" of Hollywood in the world of Avatar, and her hair was inspired by that of Rita Hayworth, an American actress famous in the 1940s. The script was reworked sometime before the confirmation of the second season. Īn early script for the last episode of the first season, "Endgame", featured Asami joining the United Forces, a military in the universe of The Legend of Korra, at the end of the episode. This decision would be reversed after season two. Konietzko also floated the idea to the writing team that Asami might be bisexual "before the audience had ever laid eyes on" either her or Korra, but initially shelved the idea, assuming Nickelodeon would not allow it to be aired.
DiMartino remembered that he and Konietzko "knew" they needed "a character who wasn't a bender" after they decided on the nonbender revolution storyline. However, the character became so well-liked by co-creators DiMartino and Konietzko that they rewrote her to be a friend to Korra, and ignorant of her father's Equalist activities. Rita Hayworth's hair inspired Asami's design.Īsami was initially conceived to be a duplicitous spy for the Equalist movement - antagonists in the first season - embedded within Team Avatar. However, reception to her relationship with Korra was mostly positive. Many reviewers were content with her growth past being a love interest for Mako, and felt the relationship was not worth reviving.
Asami is a trained engineer, skilled pilot and driver and competent unarmed combatant.Īsami has been well-received with publications. She is the only child of the wealthy industrialist Hiroshi Sato, who invented the "Satomobile" and whose company, Future Industries, is headquartered in Republic City. Unlike many characters in the world of The Legend of Korra, Asami is not able to "bend", or telekinetically manipulate, one of the elements of water, earth, fire or air. The series' final scene, indicating the beginning of a romantic relationship between Asami and the female lead character, Korra, was unprecedented in its representation of LGBT persons in western children's television. The character and the series, a sequel to Avatar: The Last Airbender, were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. Asami SatoĪsami Sato ( Japanese: 佐藤麻美, Hepburn: Satō Asami) is a major character in the Nickelodeon animated television series The Legend of Korra, which aired from 2012 to 2014. Not to be confused with Asami Seto or Ayami Sato.