404

“This is what I miss… not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen.”

“I notice you, I want to say. Even when no one else does, I do. I will.”

“She was beautiful, but not like those girls in the magazines. She was beautiful, for the way she thought. She was beautiful, for the sparkle in her eyes when she talked about something she loved. She was beautiful, for her ability to make other people smile, even if she was sad. No, she wasn’t beautiful for something as temporary as her looks. She was beautiful, deep down to her soul.”

“A lot of people tell me I’m a bit dreamy. But I like the idea of that. Of being somewhere else.”

This was 2 years ago.

I think it’s important for people to know that Mako was the original voice actor of Uncle Iroh. He had esophageal cancer. Tales from Ba Sing Se was his last day of voice work for the show before he passed away. The drawing of Iroh’s son here in this episode was based on Mako himself when he was young, and the song Leaves from the Vine was written about him because he had also been a soldier. He never got to see the episode air. In Legend of Korra, Mako was named after him. Greg Baldwin took over for him after he passed, but refuses to sing Leaves from the Vine because “that’s Mako’s song.”

“I don’t believe in magic.” The young boy said. The old man smiled. “You will, when you see her.”

“I’m homesick all the time … I just don’t know where home is. There’s this promise of happiness out there. I know it. I even feel it sometimes. But it’s like chasing the moon - just when I think I have it, it disappears into the horizon.”

It's spring, you're young, you're lovely, you have a right to be happy. Come back into the world.

“It was good for a while, being empty. I didn’t hurt anymore. But as time went on, it was like I could hear myself from far away, begging for permission to come back.”