Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: sherrilina on June 05, 2008, 12:28:07 AM
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Well this a topic from the old board that I wanted to bring over here, beginning with this quote from ThermalRider:
I was never really bothered by the addition of the One right at the end. To me it just shows that it's never really over, there is always something else around the corner. There is no Harry Potter "All was well. period, end of story" That just doesn't happen. There is always something else. That being said, I didn't like what happened to Ax at all. That didn't feel right to me.
I agree, what happened to Ax was the worst part IMO of the last book, and the only thing that I really, really hated and wished were different. I mean, there's more than that sure--I was very sad/upset that C/J didn't happen (since they were my OTP of the series), that Jake and Tobias were so depressed, that Rachel had died, that it ended on a cliffhanger, etc when I first read it, and while they still sadden me, I have come to accept them now as I've re-read them while older, and can understand why they happened, and that it fits. But if they had to go out fighting (rather a la "Not Fade Away" on "Angel"), why did Ax have to be destroyed like that?! If not for that, I would have been much less disturbed about it all....:(
What do you guys think? And for those who read HP, how did you think the Ani ending compared to Deathly Hallows?
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omg dont even get me started on the deathly hallows ending, that whole thing was just awful, in pretty much every single way, i spent the next couple of hours pretending that it was the amazing life changing ending i had hoped for lol it took some time to admit it
animorphs however, was perfect, although i agree i wasnt a fan of how things ended for ax, it made for an excellent and emotional way for the team to be brought together again, really the only way for them to be brought together. Jake would have gone for any old reason, he had a death wish, but marco and tobias? no way, not for anything less than one of their own
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omg dont even get me started on the deathly hallows ending, that whole thing was just awful, in pretty much every single way, i spent the next couple of hours pretending that it was the amazing life changing ending i had hoped for lol it took some time to admit it
animorphs however, was perfect, although i agree i wasnt a fan of how things ended for ax, it made for an excellent and emotional way for the team to be brought together again, really the only way for them to be brought together. Jake would have gone for any old reason, he had a death wish, but marco and tobias? no way, not for anything less than one of their own
Lol, yeah, the ending of DH was a little weak, though it cracked me up when Hylian Dan said on the other forum
Would you have preferred, "Ax was happy to have avenged his brother by killing the Visser. Tobias was sad, but with his mom and his friends there for him, he was able to work his way through the pain. He led a human life and everyone idolized him. Jake and Cassie named their baby Rachel. All was well."
So true! :p Though if it were truly JK Rowling-esque the baby would be named Rachel Elfangor Berenson! ;)
And yeah, sure, it had to be Ax they were rescuing, but did he have to have his body taken over by that thing? Why couldn't he have just been kidnapped, or something less permanent, so there'd still be hope? That's all I ask....
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there is still hope, nobody said it was permanent, it leaves plenty for fanfic writers to sink their teeth into, the mystery of the one and his/her/its powers
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I think the Animorphs ending was waaaaayyyy above Harry Potter's ending. I mean in DH, they're walking around in the woods for the first half of the book, essentially not doing anything. Then you have a quick build up and then a huge climactic good vs. evil fight to end all others. And then it's over and "All is well." I mean that book has no falling action at all. And sure plenty of people died, but then everything is hunky-dorey. I don't think so. I love HP but still, Animorphs has it beat hands down.
I think that that's one of the things that really seperates the two books though. Harry Potter is all about Good vs. Evil and it basically describes it in black and white. Animorphs is all about shades of gray and how there is good and evil but it's a lot harder to define.
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I agree. The Beginning > Deathly Hallows.
Anyway, I liked the ending pretty much. It just goes straight to the fact that wars aren't pretty. Good and Evil aren't identified in shades of white and black. People die. Relationships get destroyed. People you love die. There is no climactic final battle. Everything is ruthless and bloody.
If Animorphs ended with Jake and Cassie together naming their twin children Rachel and Elfangor and All was well and they lived happily ever after..... :o
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I agree. If that would have been the case I think most people would have had a "That's it?" reaction.
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Then you have a quick build up and then a huge climactic good vs. evil fight to end all others.
...what climactic battle? all that ending up happening was voldy attacked, the curse rebounded and "with a flash, voldemort was dead." WTF!
but theres a time and a place for that kind of discussion
animorphs ending trumps all others, for its awesomeness in all areas of awesome
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I agree. The Beginning > Deathly Hallows.
definately.
The Harry Potter ending was too happy ever after. Didn't seem real.
The Animorphs ending was sooooooo much better. Much more realistic. Although I didn't much like it being left on a cliff hanger but it fit.
animorphs ending trumps all others, for its awesomeness in all areas of awesome
hehe true that
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When I first read the end I remember I was in the bathroom of a hotel. I hated the book's guts then >:(. I still wish it was less of a cliffhangar, she sorta owed it to the fans who stuck with the whole series. Still, I appreciate that she kept it true-true to the characters, true to the reality of war and its effects.
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The ending itself was imperfect, but the sentiment was dead on. I agree with a messy, bloody, anti-climatic ending that shows that the war is never truly over. I don't know how I feel about The One being used to show that, or about Ax being taken. That said, I do love that KA had the guts to not tie up the ending in the usual cookie-cutter way that is so tempting for authors (like JK).
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OT: Terenia, your signature scares me. :o
Anyway, yeah, K.A even addressed a letter to Anifans explaining why she made it end that way...
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...what climactic battle? all that ending up happening was voldy attacked, the curse rebounded and "with a flash, voldemort was dead." WTF!
I meant the whole battle at Hogwarts and such. I consider that whole thing to be part of the battle.
I remember that letter from K.A. It was nice that she sent it out that way and gave her side of the story, but I remember the first time I read that book, her letter didn't comfort me too much
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phst id name my kid after elfangor.
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phst id name my kid after elfangor.
You and me both. Well maybe not Elfangor. Maybe Alan Fangor. :P
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OT: Terenia, your signature scares me. :o
OT: Good! That's the point...sort of. :P
Yeah, I dunno. I think the ending would have been better served if the final battle had more to do with the Yeerks directly instead of the One. I mean yeah, there were Yeerks on the ship, but it was really about this "new evil" which we hadn't built up any animosity towards (besides it taking Ax). We had 59 previous books to draw an opinion about the Yeerks as a force. So it all ending in a final battle with the Yeerks and a complete Yeerk force may have made it better for me.
You know, maybe Earth was a win, but it didn't gut the Yeerk forces (I still find it hard to believe that they fell that hard after losing Earth when they had two other planets and many other species). Ax could still have been taken in some capacity so it was a rescue mission, but at least it would be against an enemy we know. Just a thought...
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OT: Terenia, your signature scares me. :o
OT: Good! That's the point...sort of. :P
Yeah, I dunno. I think the ending would have been better served if the final battle had more to do with the Yeerks directly instead of the One. I mean yeah, there were Yeerks on the ship, but it was really about this "new evil" which we hadn't built up any animosity towards (besides it taking Ax). We had 59 previous books to draw an opinion about the Yeerks as a force. So it all ending in a final battle with the Yeerks and a complete Yeerk force may have made it better for me.
You know, maybe Earth was a win, but it didn't gut the Yeerk forces (I still find it hard to believe that they fell that hard after losing Earth when they had two other planets and many other species). Ax could still have been taken in some capacity so it was a rescue mission, but at least it would be against an enemy we know. Just a thought...
I consider the final battle to be the one aboard the Pool ship--we never even saw the one with the One! And as far as final battles go, I think it was pretty awesome. They managed it using resources and skills/tricks that were realistic and long-established (no magical special clause pulled out of thin air to deus ex machina them to victory!), and it was very well-written and exciting/climactic....though obviously what follows was less so. But still necessary of course....
And why wouldn't it severely hurt the Yeerks when the Andalites themselves considered blowing up earth in a major measure against them? They not only lost an entire pool ship (over 17,000 Yeerks, not counting the others lost in fighting), but a coveted class five species....they don't have the HB planet (because it was all poisoned, remember? HB hosts were good but too rare/few), and the Taxxons aren't good hosts....so they were set back terribly by the loss of earth and humans as hosts (5 billion of them!), and more importantly humanity is free. That's what the Animorphs were most fighting for, so that you and me (lol) wouldn't have to be enslaved, to protect and save their friends and families, and they achieved it! The Andalites and the Yeerks can keep on fighting (though psychologically the Yeerks have suffered a major loss as well since many now see a way out of their parasitic existence), but earth is safe, and that's what mattered most of all....
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^ Agreed, for the most part
I think it's down played how much of the Yeerks invested in Earth, plus adding up all the damages we saw over the years.
Their top general is tapped in a box of cookies, whatever that system was that the first Visser One messed up, the events on Leera, plus the rebellion of on the Hork Bajir world that was bound to occur (the Yeerks did still have the plant remember, book 34) and their home world still on lock down
All these things added together and there Yeerks have been getting pretty roughed up of the years; but most importantly, earth was the HQ, once that went out everything else is kinda of the left overs, they may keep going, but the fact of the matter is they really don't have a chance with the small numbers of mostly unsuitable units still out there after such heavy losses.
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OT: Terenia, your signature scares me. :o
OT: Good! That's the point...sort of. :P
Yeah, I dunno. I think the ending would have been better served if the final battle had more to do with the Yeerks directly instead of the One. I mean yeah, there were Yeerks on the ship, but it was really about this "new evil" which we hadn't built up any animosity towards (besides it taking Ax). We had 59 previous books to draw an opinion about the Yeerks as a force. So it all ending in a final battle with the Yeerks and a complete Yeerk force may have made it better for me.
You know, maybe Earth was a win, but it didn't gut the Yeerk forces (I still find it hard to believe that they fell that hard after losing Earth when they had two other planets and many other species). Ax could still have been taken in some capacity so it was a rescue mission, but at least it would be against an enemy we know. Just a thought...
but that would end up being a different message than the one they were trying to get accross. It would be more of a wars never really end kinda message, which isnt too bad, but it would also add in a cliche bum bum bum yeerks are back and downplay the accomplishments they actually did
instead, it was a new threat, and the message wasnt about war, but about warriors, that warriors never truly put war behind them, and will always be fighting something, i much prefer that message
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Well, no, I don't think it would be a "the Yeerks are back" thing if it wasn't about Earth. Instead of the Yeerks being defeated in the war they were only defeated in the battle for Earth. The war continues on...and on....and on....kinda like Vietnam....
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Like Vietnam, the Animorphs were guerilla fighters who got most of their success by wearing out the enemy stealthily before all-out battle.
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Shouldn't have ended that way. Seriously...it's okay if you're going to have a sequel, but it would be like if Halo 2 ended how it did, and H3 was never made. Personally, I wanted to see what it was that had...possessed...A x, and more desciption of that massive space ship city thinger.
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Well, in my opinion, "The One" is K.A's gift to Fan Fic writers, so that Jake, Rachel(maybe not), Tobias, Cassie, Marco, and Aximili will live on. Not die with the ending.
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I thought the One was great, and I didn't mind that him and the Kelbrid weren't hinted at earlier in the series. It made last few chapters of the Beginning pretty scary, I thought. The scene where Ax finds the polar bear hair aboard the seemingly empty ship was seriously chilling. The One scared me, how he seemed so powerful and we knew nothing about him, and how he only appears in the last few pages of the series.
The confrontation with the One is the beginning the title probably refers to. I agree with sherrilina that the final battle was really the events aboard the Pool Ship and Blade Ship. All of that stuff I thought was so much more intense and interesting than the usual Hollywood-style final battle, with all the good and evil forces clearly marshalled against each other, and the side characters are pitted against each other and a few of them die while the main heroes fight the main bad guy and win and celebrate and mourn the fallen. Everything in The Answer was so intense and climactic and unexpected.
And KA did set up how the Yeerk Empire was weakening. Taylor summarized it nicely in book 43. The Andalite had finally launched their major fleet, and the Yeerks' strategy of luring it to the trap at Anati failed. The Hork-Bajir couldn't sustain the Yeerks, Leera and Anati and Earth were lost, the Taxxons were revolting, 17,000 Yeerks had just been slaughtered, and the two most reliable Vissers had both failed spectacularly. On top of that, the lower-ranking Yeerks were getting tired of the war and resentful of their leaders, who were picking and choosing those who got morphing power. And with morphing power, Yeerks didn't really have a desperate need for hosts anymore.
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I didn't notice this thread when I made mine yesterday.
I feel like I'm in the minority, as I just disliked the ending overall. I would have liked a more clear cut ending where Rachel and Tom lived, Cassie and Jake remained together, and Ax didn't get captured by The One.
But that's just me. Some people might like the more realistic ending, but I don't care for realistic endings in a nonrealistic book series. If KAA made a fictional series about a normal war, and had it end in a realistic fashion as wars don't end nice and pretty, then I wouldn't resent that. I would expect it from some WWII fiction story, but not Animorphs.
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Well, it would disappoint me a lot if it ended happily ever after just like that. Animorphs isn't a fairy tale. Animorphs is pretty realistic, those aliens were theoretically real, so it was as close to reality as possible. Not like HP, where magic is faaar from reality. At least the Animorphs had the technological explanation to what was happening. I guess it was pretty realistic.
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Well, it would disappoint me a lot if it ended happily ever after just like that. Animorphs isn't a fairy tale. Animorphs is pretty realistic, those aliens were theoretically real, so it was as close to reality as possible. Not like HP, where magic is faaar from reality. At least the Animorphs had the technological explanation to what was happening. I guess it was pretty realistic.
Not to argue with your post at all cause I agree with what your saying but I wouldnt really say there was a technological explanation to anything other than "It was a technology" Lol. sorry that was always something I found really comical about the whole series is that nothing every really even had a foundation it was just, yeah yeah, that technological stuff.
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Well, everytime Ax tried to explain how a device works... Marco just kind of interrupts... ;D
PLus, the Z-Space concept was vaguely explained...
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Z-space is just a void, between atoms I believe. Sorta an alternate dimension,
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forget everything else forget rachel wtf did they do to ax at the end after they captured him how the hell did he get a mouth ....... :sign0069: :sign0069:
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...uh...how to explain this. he was absorbed by the one, and was killed. and his body or parts of his body could be used however the one wanted. So the one used ax's body, and then stuck a mouth on him...at least I think. maybe I need to re-read that book again.
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kinda big leap.....i refuse 2 belive that ax is dead and when out like a chump...,.