Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: theyoungphoenix on April 03, 2013, 05:33:37 PM
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I hated the last book. Made me cry like a million billion times. :'(
I loved all of the different morphs that they used. :)
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I really disliked some of the ghostwriting (some of it I loved), the helmacrons, and the incredibly abrupt introduction of The One on the last book. Oh, and the lack of editing (KASUs anyone) bugged me, though I understand that particularly with later books, the production schedule was so fast that they just didn't have time.
I LOVED the character development and character-driven aspects, I loved the mechanics of the morphing and, well, all of the technology -- I loved the dream sequences, hell, I even usually love the filler (Cassie's Australian Adventure, anyone? I actually enjoyed the hell out of that book.) Oh, and I LOVE the Chronicles books, all of them. And the time travel. And the animal psyches. And MOST THINGS.
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Haha. I enjoyed the Australian adventure as well. What do you mean by MOST things??
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There were so many things I loved about the Animorphs.
I loved the sense of humor and fun, but how devastating brutal and harsh things could be as well. I loved all the characters and their individuality, and how they changed. Sadly I think one of the things this series missed out on through scholastic was the ability for the books rating to grow with the reader ie going from a child's book to a teenagers series much like Harry Potter. I also it would have worked better as a more continuous story format instead of an episodic format. Although the subtle brutality of the books sometimes was disturbing for me to read as an adult. Fact is I adored these books as a child and still do as an adult, which speaks for itself.
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Loved:
Almost everything. The alien species, the way morphs were handled, the shifting narratives from book to book, you name it.
Disliked:
Some of the plot devices used were very convenient, like the freak morphing accident that somehow put them right in the middle of the Yeerk-Leeran conflict, the loophole that allowed Cassie to demorph after becoming a butterfly nothlit, the existence of something that effectively brought Aldrea's personality back from the dead (that was a bad idea in general, actually), I could go on and on.
Sci-fi and fantasy authors are notorious for using their genre to create "easy" ways to make things happen, but I felt like new elements were brought in with weak explanations way too frequently.
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I really disliked some of the ghostwriting (some of it I loved), the helmacrons, and the incredibly abrupt introduction of The One on the last book.
I always saw that as KA giving fanfic writers something to work with when the series was gone. Like when your parents go away for the weekend but they leave you with some money to order pizza.
What I liked about Animorphs.
Getting to escape reality for a few hours on that one day of the month when I would come home with the new book.
What I disliked:
Having to wait a whole month between books. And that even longer period of wait between The Stranger and Megamorphs 1.
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I hated how the Animorphs pretended not to be friends. Who cared if they hung out with each other in a group? Hello, Jake is cousin to Rachel and Cassie is her best friend. That was the main thing that bugged me.
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^To expand on that, the secrecy thing always annoyed me a little bit in general.
I realize the "I can't tell you my last name" thing was just kind of a cute gimmick/hook to get you to read the books, but the whole thing as a way of keeping secrecy was just silly.
I can't tell you my last name, but I can give you enough information to determine where I live, I can tell you that one of us is Visser One's hosts' son, I can tell you that one of us is the sibling of a rapidly rising controller, and I can tell you that I go to a school where the Principal plays a central roll in the Yeerk invasion, and above all, I can tell you I'm human, which is ALSO supposed to be a secret!
It never bugged me that much of course, but it always seemed like a really cheesy hook that doesn't pass any level of scrutiny.
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Yeah the whole "not telling you my last name" is pretty silly when we know so much about the characters. V1's host's son. The daughter of the woman in charge of the zoo, the brother of an esteemed controller whose host was captured in a known way, and the daughter of an attorney that's a single mother, and who has two sibling. That's pretty specific. We know so much about them that even if their first names were fake, which they aren't, then we'd still have plenty of information to go on.
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Going even further with that, why is it we only ever learned Jake and (I'm assuming) Rachel's last names?
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Going even further with that, why is it we only ever learned Jake and (I'm assuming) Rachel's last names?
Yep, pretty much it, everyone else just makes them up.
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Oh yeah the thing that really gets me is how they start off nearly every book with explaining who the Animorphs are and the yeerks. It gets really annoying though I get why they did that, I skip the introduction part lol. Then again I'm only on book 14 so far, is it the same for the rest of the series?
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Oh yeah the thing that really gets me is how they start off nearly every book with explaining who the Animorphs are and the yeerks. It gets really annoying though I get why they did that, I skip the introduction part lol. Then again I'm only on book 14 so far, is it the same for the rest of the series?
Pretty much, except for, like, the last few I think.
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Liked:
Realism - Nothing is ever really "black & white" (apart from maybe Visser 3), and it doesn't hold back on realistic cruelty and difficulties
Alien species - So good that I named a song after one!
Concept - Morphing animals to defeat parasitic slugs? Genius!
Disliked:
Realism - Can be downright depressing at times! Example: an entire peaceful, tree-loving species brutalised and enslaved to near extinction in perhaps the cruelest possible way? Grim stuff!
Inaccesibility - The stuff listed above may have made it a little too much for a lot of the target age group. Maybe this is why it never caught on?
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The stuff listed above may have made it a little too much for a lot of the target age group. Maybe this is why it never caught on?
Could've been... We might never know...
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Liked
1. I loved how each book was narrated by a different character and seen through their own unique perspective. Every Animorph had his/her own unique personality, the books reflected that nicely.
2. The different alien speacies. So imaginitive and diverse.
3. The way the animal instincts/bodies were described. Applegate did a great job of conveying what it would feel like to actually BE a hawk, tiger, ect
4. The humor. I never get tired of Ax's antics.
Disliked
1. The last book. Yes applegate wanted the Animorphs to go out fighting, and I respect that, but I personally, was hoping for a conclusive, if not happy, ending.
2. The TV show....ugh
3. the ending of "The arrival" I felt pretty sorry for Ax :(
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Disliked
1. The last book. Yes applegate wanted the Animorphs to go out fighting, and I respect that, but I personally, was hoping for a conclusive, if not happy, ending.
2. The TV show....ugh
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I'm so glad someone understands where I'm coming from. The tv show was HORRIBLE! (Yes, that bad) I do respect Applegate's wishes, but, seriously, I would prefer if it were conclusive... Anyways, thanks for saying that so I know I'm not the only person to think that... :)
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I must admit that I was left rather disappointed with the TV series. I was so desperate to watch it as well!
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What I liked:
1) The David Trilogy. It's getting pretty specific (bordering on a whole other topic) but this was probably some of the best books in the series. I've given my reasons as to why in other threads, but I won't post them here unless someone is curious.
2) I am also a fan of having the books narrated by different characters--imagine an Animorphs series that was narrated solely by Jake, or Cassie.
3) The shade of gray morality--made the series what it was. And it was surprisingly adult for a 9-12 series.
4) The Animorphs created more Animorphs-- David and the Auxiliaries. I enjoyed this little experiment, though the fate of the Auxiliaries was more than tragic.
5) The cover art--mostly-- was great.
6) The Aliens.
7) The surprisingly adult themes that I didn't even notice until I was an adult! Cannibalism, genocide, slavery, war, etc.
8) Jake wasn't always a great leader, and that was OK.
9) The voluntary Controllers--and even the Yeerks-- were sympathetic.
10) The Animorphs is a 1990's book series-- I love this, and I wonder if I would hold it near and dear to my heart if it came in the 80's or mid-2000s.
11) Probably most important of all-- It appealed to outsiders.
What I disliked:
1) Agreed on the repetitive intro--though, paradoxically, it was a good way of getting people into the series. My first book was 23: The Predator, and I don't remember being confused as to what was going on. Mainly, though, it was just grating--especially when doing a re-read.
2) Some of the Megamorphs books and side adventures--like when the Animorphs go to Atlantis. Now, that's not to say that they weren't good books. But they mostly just felt pointless--especially with the Megamorphs, where time travel made most of the adventures either forgetful (for the characters) or entirely insignificant for the plot's purpose...Though, maybe that was the point?
3) The occasional conflict between Rachel and Jake in regards to leadership. I understand what they were doing with it, but it didn't feel natural...
4) The fact that most portrayals of Marco (the TV Series, fan fiction, fan videos, etc) emphasize his status as half-Latino, or Hispanic. I get equality. But really, the TV series especially put too much emphasis on this that Marco looked like a walking stereotype. You can hear it in some of the voice work for the video games, and some fan fiction makes a big deal of this as well. How often in the series do they ACTUALLY bring up the fact that Marco is half-Hispanic? I don't know, maybe it's a cultural thing? I'm from Canada, so I don't know if there's a huge importance on such things.
5) Animorphs 48: The Return--how David's return and departure was handled. And the fact that we don't get to hear David's side of the story.
6) We never find out more about the Ssstram, Nahara, or the Mak, aside from the fact that the Yeerks supposedly enslaved the entirety of their respective races. Sure, this gives us a chance to let our imaginations run, etc. But really, if they enslaved the whole race of any one of these creatures, how come we don't see any Mak-Controllers? I don't know. It just always bothered me, personally.
7) Tobias never uses his morphing powers for anything but reconnaissance. Yea, yea, we get that you're good at it. And we get how much you love your Hawk body. But I mean really-- you're just gonna fly around occasionally attacking some controllers while your buddies are in the heat of the battle? Come on, man, you have your powers back--USE THEM!
8) Cassie's overall character--more often than not, she's poorly handled.
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What I liked
I liked 13-26. I think that was the best part of series hands down. KA seemed to really get into the writing and story through that part. She was even foreshadowing and developing events several books in advance. I thought that was really cool.
I liked the character development. The ghostwriters dropped the ball with it, but until then it was excellent. I loved the way they struggled with some of the decisions they had to make, and how some of those decisions changed them. I liked that the characters had breakdowns during throughout the series from the stress.
The humor! I think that's what really hooked me into the series. I couldn't read through most of the books without breaking out laughing.
The development of the bad guys. Visser 3 didn't really get developed and always had a kind of stereotypical stupid badguy thing going on, but all the others were intelligent, had their own problems and power struggles.
Ax's awkwardness, cinnabunz bunzzzza
What I didn't like
Cassie :P The first part of the series she was annoying, but ok. Later she just got really whiney and had the attitude "we can't actually hurt the people who we're at war with". Later in the series she even refused to help destroy the yeerk pool because the yeerks would starve, even when she was ok with doing the same thing by destroying the kandrona earlier.
The ghostwriters, how they undid the character development. Especially with Rachel. Rachel was pretty intelligent, she loved battle, but she wasn't stupid about it. Then she turned into someone who's only personality traits were insulting Marco and wanting to fight.
There also seemed to be obvious things that should have been done by both sides, but especially the yeerks. Like, once Visser 3 knew about the peace movement and became concerned with it, there was an easy solution: swap hosts. All they had to do was put a new yeerk in the host and they'd know everything the other yeerk had done in that controller. The peace movement would have been stamped out pretty quickly. There seemed to be a lot of those type of things in the books.
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^Good point. You'd think he would have done SOMETHING.
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What I liked: Each book being narrated by a different character. I liked that I was able to learn about their life and personalities on a different level.
All the different alien species, very creative. I don't think my imagination would be able to come up with such elaborate descriptions of the different alien species.
What I disliked: How every book kind of gave you a walk-through of what was happening. Everyone was described again by the character "writing" the book, the taxxons, Hork-Bajir, Andalites (Ax and Visser 3.) The beginnings of the books were very repetitive.
The last books ending. I wish we would have known what happened after they rammed the Blade Ship.
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A lot of people don't like the repetitive nature of the books openings. And I admit, when Book 16 began differently I was shouting halleluja in my head, but if someone picked up the series in the middle of it, you'd need them to understand what they were reading.
That first few pages can keep new readers and make them want to go back to the beginning.