Anyone else bothered that they did this in the legend of korra? I actually think it is one of the stupidest things about it.
the entirety of ATLA established that bending must be done through martial arts body movements (mostly the arms and legs). they even hired sifu kisu to show them the movements.
in a majority of the fights they are frequently trying to trap or pin each others arms and legs. even remember in the great divide "without my arms, I got no bending". even when they are training it is all about getting the movements right.
bending is basically supposed to be martial arts with these fantasy powers.
when did they not use limbs in ATLA?
Bumi used his head, I think is ok. 1. YOU CAN USE YOUR HEAD in actual martial arts. headbutting is an actual movie AND he doesn't really do anything great with it. he doesn't really even fight with it, its just some basic stuff. he still needs to use his arms and legs to actually fight. 2. he is one of the best. toph uses her head and does even less than bumi. its ok for the same reasons above. so basically the head can be used very limitedly (just like real life), even by the best.
so air and fire benders can also use their mouth. yeah this really has no parallels in real life. well, I guess its kinda like biting. the bending really only comes out of their mouth. they cant do anything fancy with it. just shoot a stream out of their mouth. and the mouth is still something that can be covered (thus disabled, just like limbs).
oh yeah, I almost forget combustion man. he bends out of a hole in his head. and like the mouth, he cant really do anything fancy (powerful yes). it also comes with a HUGE weakness. a tiny hit disables him and a decent hit can kill him. his freakish advantage also comes with a huge weakness.
so this is why I see Ming Hua to be so stupid. she bends with nothing. she doesn't even use her legs or anything (which is rare in waterbending anyway but, would be better than nothing).
its also why I see amon and yakone to be stupid (on top of the anytime bloodbending thing).
what are these people's weaknesses?
if you don't need arms just chop em off! you'll be less of a target.
seriously, there are so many instances in ATLA showing the importance of limbs that it is really sheer stupidity of the writers to do this.
FYI: I probably wont come back to this thread so don't expect a response. I got bored of this discussion.