Animorphs

[t209]

So I read an old book "Weakness" from Animorphs series during my visit to Burma.
I read it and the story was pretty interesting. The second in command was hot blooded and focused on lightning tactics that one of their members was captured. The book also showed consequences of their actions, which an old man died from heart attack during their assault on the TV studio :smallfrown:.
I never understand why many of people advertised or described it as "Kid's transformation into animals to defeat evil," especially Archie Comics' parody, despite that fact the it's like Madoka/Evangelion of Saturday Morning Cartoon. In fact, the book even predated Madoka and Evangelion (I wonder what would happen if they formed into League of Extraordinary Gentlemen crossover, we won't be needing bandoliers for this).
So anybody who read or still reading the books.

[Jayngfet]

Great books. They really sell the "war is hell" bit pretty well.

Especially the later ones. God damn they could get dark. Especially when their families find out the sheer lengths they're willing to go to so they can fight the Yeerks.

[t209]

Great books. They really sell the "war is hell" bit pretty well.

Especially the later ones. God damn they could get dark. Especially when their families find out the sheer lengths they're willing to go to so they can fight the Yeerks.
And :smallfrown:
The way they use those kids to distract the enemies.
This books pretty much predates Spec Ops: The Line for shooters, Madoka for magical girl, and Evangelion for mecha)

[Reverent-One]

I certainly enjoyed the books growing up, but that ending though...:smallannoyed:

[The Glyphstone]

I like to pretend that the 'epilogue' chapter was never written, since it's utterly pointless. But almost the entire rest of the series is quite good.

[Math_Mage]

Animorphs was action horror for kids. It was very good at that. But "Kids transform into animals to defeat evil" is accurate, even though it undersells the horror of the evil involved.

[Jayngfet]

I like to pretend that the 'epilogue' chapter was never written, since it's utterly pointless. But almost the entire rest of the series is quite good.

Yeah, it was just kinda ...there.

I mean really what was the point? To kill everyone off? She could have written it like that several chapters ago.

[Seerow]

Yeah, it was just kinda ...there.

I mean really what was the point? To kill everyone off? She could have written it like that several chapters ago.

Agree. The whole thing with rushing off into space to deal with the Borg was ridiculous and completely out of left field. I feel like the whole second half of the last book could have been left out and the series would have been better for it. If she wanted to kill everyone, there has to be a more sensible way to make that happen.

[The Glyphstone]

The 'where are they now' bits weren't a problem, and helped drive in the point that all of them were basically PTSD-riddled child soldiers in a post-war world. Leaving it there would have been fine; but it took a nosedive by suddenly slapping on a kill-em-all ending/sequel series hook with a random BBEG out of nowhere...heck, if it had at least been Cryak, it would have been better.

[Math_Mage]

THANKS FOR SPOILING THE ENDING GUYS JEEZ

(I don't actually care since I never read Animorphs for the overarching plot, and never planned to finish the series.)

[The Glyphstone]

THANKS FOR SPOILING THE ENDING GUYS JEEZ

(I don't actually care since I never read Animorphs for the overarching plot, and never planned to finish the series.)

There are kids going through puberty who were not yet born when the series ending. The Spoiler Time Limit rule is definitely applicable here.:smallbiggrin:

[Seerow]

There are kids going through puberty who were not yet born when the series ending. The Spoiler Time Limit rule is definitely applicable here.:smallbiggrin:

Thanks for reminding me I have literally had my online username longer than some teenagers have been alive.

Gah.

[Nilehus]

There are kids going through puberty who were not yet born when the series ending. The Spoiler Time Limit rule is definitely applicable here.:smallbiggrin:


Thanks for reminding me I have literally had my online username longer than some teenagers have been alive.

Gah.

... I finished the series before I hit puberty.

-shuffles off to the old folk's home- Damn kids today, with their master chiefs, and their cods, and their hungry games...

On topic, I still love the series. Once I come back from BMT and have money, I'm getting the box set to read to my daughter. :) ... and of course, I'll have to explain to her why they didn't just call this person to fix the problem with their cell phone, or why they didn't Google it. ... Still, it'll be fun.

[The Glyphstone]

Thanks for reminding me I have literally had my online username longer than some teenagers have been alive.

Gah.


... I finished the series before I hit puberty.

-shuffles off to the old folk's home- Damn kids today, with their master chiefs, and their cods, and their hungry games...

On topic, I still love the series. Once I come back from BMT and have money, I'm getting the box set to read to my daughter. :) ... and of course, I'll have to explain to her why they didn't just call this person to fix the problem with their cell phone, or why they didn't Google it. ... Still, it'll be fun.

Them whippersnappers need to get off our lawn...:smallwink:

[Seerow]

... I finished the series before I hit puberty.

-shuffles off to the old folk's home- Damn kids today, with their master chiefs, and their cods, and their hungry games...

Going to date myself here and say I started using the name "Seerow" when I was in 7th grade (so around 12 years old), at that point the newest Animorphs book out that I had was #34 (The Prophecy), the book where Cassie gets possessed by Aldrea's spirit and they go to the Hork-Bajir homeworld. I remember this because I picked the name Seerow because I needed to create a Yahoo/Geocities account for a computer class (yeah, remember Geocities?), and flipped through the book until I found a name that sounded interesting.


On topic, I still love the series. Once I come back from BMT and have money, I'm getting the box set to read to my daughter. :) ... and of course, I'll have to explain to her why they didn't just call this person to fix the problem with their cell phone, or why they didn't Google it. ... Still, it'll be fun.

Good luck with that. I know I did a reread of Animorphs a couple years back, and found myself much more critical of it than when I was a kid (let's face it Applegate and her team of Ghostwriters are not masters of prose, and those books were churned out so fast there was basically no editing). But maybe sharing it with your daughter will help offset some of that when you're reading them.

[Balmas]

Oh, man, Animorphs. That brings me back. I remember I picked up my first one in Half Price Books, a copy of the first book that some would call, "well loved." (Personally, I'd call it, "Crap, I dropped it in the tub.") From there, I scrounged and scavenged each book until I had a line of battered paperbacks three-and-a-half feet long lined up on my desk. Then there came the months of waiting for the next book to come out.


So, who were your favorite characters? I was somewhat partial to books told from Tobias' and Ax's point of view.

[The Glyphstone]

I think I enjoyed Marco books the best. Ax was fun at first, but his 'I don't understand human culture/senses' gimmick got a bit Flanderized after a while.

[Seerow]

I think I enjoyed Marco books the best. Ax was fun at first, but his 'I don't understand human culture/senses' gimmick got a bit Flanderized after a while.

Especially with how intelligent he was, you'd think he'd have adapted a bit better after the first few years.

But yeah, Marco was my favorite as well. I can't quite put my finger on why, I want to say he had more growth than the other characters, but all of the characters grew and changed a lot over the series. I know the books involving him and Visser One were some of the most compelling, so that may have something to do with it. I also like that he managed to get his happy ending out of everything, before Jake went and ruined it all by dragging him on a suicide mission.

[Balmas]

I think I enjoyed Marco books the best. Ax was fun at first, but his 'I don't understand human culture/senses' gimmick got a bit Flanderized after a while.


Especially with how intelligent he was, you'd think he'd have adapted a bit better after the first few years.

True, true. Still, I found it refreshing to have an outside perspective, which Ax offered by default, and Tobias learned as he slowly became more animal.


But yeah, Marco was my favorite as well. I can't quite put my finger on why, I want to say he had more growth than the other characters, but all of the characters grew and changed a lot over the series. I know the books involving him and Visser One were some of the most compelling, so that may have something to do with it. I also like that he managed to get his happy ending out of everything, before Jake went and ruined it all by dragging him on a suicide mission.

Marco is probably the one whose attitude is closest to mine, I think, and probably the most resilient of the group.

[Starscream]

I read these in high school. The ending made me stare at the wall for a good long while.:smallfrown:

[t209]

So, who were your favorite characters? I was somewhat partial to books told from Tobias' and Ax's point of view.
To be fair, I only start reading novels during my High School year (not only projects but also borrowed sci fi novels from library) when I moved to US in 2009. Myanmar/Burma's education doesn't have any book reports or encouragement on reading outside books (Trust me, it's even worse than you imagine). I only read "The Weakness" on August of this year, which my sister read a lot of novels.
As a result, I don't know about many characters' trait. Though I like Marco, considering the fact that Rachel's pretty much John Umber of Animorphs (Both of them are reckless but John's trait came from his warrior nature).

[Balmas]

I read these in high school. The ending made me stare at the wall for a good long while.:smallfrown:

Yeah, it was a proper Gainax ending. :smallmad:

[Fan]

And :smallfrown:
The way they use those kids to distract the enemies.
This books pretty much predates Spec Ops: The Line for shooters, Madoka for magical girl, and Evangelion for mecha)

Evangelion ended before Animorphs first book was ever published.

Also Spec Ops: The Line wasn't the first interactive medium to convey that war was hell.

Aaand Madoka isn't the first dark magical girl series. (Though it did it best.)

Animorphs is good though, wish Applegate had put just a LITTLE more length into the books so that descriptions could be a bit more fleshed out but hey.

[Forum Explorer]

Agree. The whole thing with rushing off into space to deal with the Borg was ridiculous and completely out of left field. I feel like the whole second half of the last book could have been left out and the series would have been better for it. If she wanted to kill everyone, there has to be a more sensible way to make that happen.

I remember reading an author's comment or interview or something of it. And she said she wanted the ending to go out on the team going out and fighting some new threat. Didn't matter what, just fighting. Still pretty crappy, but she wasn't aiming for a kill everyone thing.


I did, and do really enjoy the series though. It was so brutal and graphically realistic of a guerrilla war in order to save Earth. I also really liked the solution of permanently transforming Yeerks and the hungry aliens into endangered animals in order to grant them a life they'd enjoy, while also neutralizing them as a threat.

[HamHam]

This was seriously the greatest series back in the day. And yes Marco was the best.

It really does hook you on the idea of YA monster of the week adventure... and then 50+ books later everyone has PTSD and everything is wrong forever.

[Balmas]

This was seriously the greatest series back in the day. And yes Marco was the best.

It really does hook you on the idea of YA monster of the week adventure... and then 50+ books later everyone has PTSD and everything is wrong forever.

Not everyone has PTSD. After all, Rachel is dead. :smalltongue:

[Manly Man]

Not everyone has PTSD. After all, Rachel is dead. :smalltongue:

All things considered, it might have been for the better that she didn't live through it, at least for her. Dying when she did, she gets to be remembered as a hero. If she survived the war, she would have likely ended up having the worst time of the group when it came to coping with the end of it, since with how bloodthirsty she had gotten long before then, and probably been either thrown in prison for life or executed by the time she was done; it makes me really glad that they didn't get to keep the dinosaur morphs from that one subseries book.

[Balmas]

All things considered, it might have been for the better that she didn't live through it, at least for her. Dying when she did, she gets to be remembered as a hero. If she survived the war, she would have likely ended up having the worst time of the group when it came to coping with the end of it, since with how bloodthirsty she had gotten long before then, and probably been either thrown in prison for life or executed by the time she was done; it makes me really glad that they didn't get to keep the dinosaur morphs from that one subseries book.

Good for Rachel, maybe, but terrible for Jake. That just made his PTSD and survivor's guilt that much more terrible. Personally, I fail to see how having a dinosaur morph would have been much worse than running around in her other morphs. More possibility of destruction as a T-rex, but I'm pretty sure she also had an elephant hanging around somewhere.

[Jayngfet]

Good for Rachel, maybe, but terrible for Jake. That just made his PTSD and survivor's guilt that much more terrible. Personally, I fail to see how having a dinosaur morph would have been much worse than running around in her other morphs. More possibility of destruction as a T-rex, but I'm pretty sure she also had an elephant hanging around somewhere.

She has elephants, bears, a Hork-Bajir, Sharks, and basically a hundred different methods of killing outpaced only by military ordinance.

Which reminds me of the book with her and the starfish Morph. It was a horrifying look at what she becomes when she's just totally unchained and loses that little voice that tells her to cut back.

She's probably the most dangerous character in the series. David may be a psychopath, Eric may be a literal killing machine, and Ax is at least partially a soldier from beyond our stars, but Rachel is just plain barely restrained fury and battle rage.

[Balmas]

She defines the word "Valkyrie." Or possibly Berserker.

[Soras Teva Gee]

I found these while they were still in the single digits I think and was moving well beyond their reading level since by then it was like 5th grade for me so would have been post-Thrawn Trilogy... but for a year or two they were a great 45 minutes every month or so before I got tired of them.

Never did finish the series, I think I picked up on how it was just ******* around never resolving the main plot to bilk more money out of book fairs. Or the ghostwriters... same difference really.


In fact, the book even predated Madoka and Evangelion

Point of order: The first book was published three months after NGE's final episode.

[The Glyphstone]

She defines the word "Valkyrie." Or possibly Berserker.

Which is probably the only reason why how she died works...at the end, she really did just go berserker. As a grizzly bear, to boot.

[Manly Man]

She defines the word "Valkyrie." Or possibly Berserker.

The latter seems to fit better, since one of my first thoughts was to compare her to a Gaul woman:


…a whole band of foreigners will be unable to cope with one [Gaul] in a fight, if he calls in his wife, stronger than he by far and with flashing eyes; least of all when she swells her neck and gnashes her teeth, and poising her huge white arms, begins to rain blows mingled with kicks, like shots discharged by the twisted cords of a catapult.

Just with bear hands, not bare hands.

...What? I read Horrible Histories before I read Animorphs.