Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: Fwahm on December 24, 2009, 03:45:49 PM
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I'm talking about their battle abilities. For example, in book 7, the Animorphs had an extremely close call, barely defeating 7 Hork-Bajir.
However, in book 41, the Animorphs all have 2-5 Hork-Bajir against them each, and they managed to survive, and Jake takes down four of them alone later in the book.
There are probably dozens more examples, but these were the books I reread recently.
Anyone else notice this?
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To some degree, I think that was part of the point of the series. It shows their transition from innocent, scared kids, to soldiers. Their first few missions were nearly always complete failures, not because they weren't good ideas or anything, but simply because they didn't know what they were doing. They just didn't have the experience to invade the Yeerk pool, spy on Chapman without getting caught, or steal a tank ship.
Their aptitude in battle is a part of that. At first, Hork-Bajir were these terrifyingly formidable enemies, but as the Animorphs got more and more experienced, they became better and more efficient at killing them.
Early in the series, they were just kids who were trying to play at war. Later in the series, they become warriors who have to pretend to still be kids.
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From a more cynical standpoint, you also just have to keep raising the stakes to keep things interesting, you know? After you see a Hork-Bajir x number of times, it's just not scary anymore. So have the kids fight THREE Hork-Bajir. When that's not scary, oh, well, now there's this ELITE team of Hork-Bajir called the BLUE BANDERS and they're even SCARIER.
But them just getting better at fighting is a fine enough explanation for me.
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Yeah . . . I always thought the Blue Bands were a bit ridiculous. They're supposed to be all elite and undefeatable, yet they seem to go down just as easily as the standard run-of-the-mill Hork-Bajir. I think it was just an intimidation device. "We're really scary and badass because we say so! And we have these special colored bands to prove it! Quiver in fear!" And the Animorphs are just like, "Bull," and kill them anyway.
I laugh out loud every time I read that part in book #45 where the leader of the Blue Bands introduces himself in the middle of battle, trying to be all dramatic and stuff, and then dies within a few pages.
But, I agree, that they did it in part to keep it interesting for the reader, after Hork-Bajir started getting boring. If you ask me, though, they should have either just kept increasing the numbers, or had some genetically-altered super-Horks or something. Not those lame armbands, I mean come on.
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lol ikrite, oh dear God not a blue band, brb running in panic
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aw, you guys. I loved the bb's, I always wished they'd been built on more.
What I'm going to go on about is how in 3 years the Yeerks fighting never improved.
Hundreds of times the fire fire dracons and guns, not on critical hit.
Least improved for sharp shooting goes to the Yeerk empire :P
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This was actually one of the things I hated about the series.
Yes. I understand we can't kill off the Animorphs early in the series. Yes, I also understand they improve with time. I also understand new controllers will not be skilled in battle.
What gets me is that how a wolf will take down multiple eight foot tall bladed reptiles that can easily recover from most impalement-type wounds (when we see Jara Hamee cut into his head to prove he is not a controller).
I don't care how skilled you are, or if the controllers are drunk on top of being new. Some earth animals are not taking down eight foot tall bladed lizards armed with particle weapons by the dozen. It just doesn't happen. I don't care HOW amazing you are, how organized you are, or how lucky you are. It just won't happen. You can see amazing last stands throughout history where small numbers did amazing things, defeating countless enemies, only to be defeated by the sheer number of enemies. Look at the Battle of Thermopylae.
I feel Hork-Bajir controllers suffered just as much decay as Visser Three. They go from incredibly terrifying where equal numbers are almost death, to killing them endlessly with ease. Even Jake's Tiger and Rachel's Bear, the strongest morphs, still have significantly less natural weaponry, not to mention they are two creatures, fighting a multitude - it doesn't help that grizzlies aren't exactly the fastest animals on earth. Marco's gorilla... Yes, gorillas are strong and heavy, but no more than a Hork Bajir. Not to mention gorillas have no natural weapons and yet Marco easily kills many of them, even when being shot at. A wolf is about 80 pounds and has teeth, and Cassie had a female wolf, which is about 20% smaller than the males and have narrower shoulders.
It was just irritating how giant reptile-like creatures covered in blades who probably weigh a few hundred pounds and are strong enough and fast enough to rapidly swing through trees can be taken down in such mass... by earth creatures who are smaller, weaker and have far less natural weapons.
Skill can make up for that, if they were evenly matched. Not when it's 30 to 6. That should be a massacre, and not the way it happens in the books.
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Yeah, that bugs me too. I don't know about their other morphs, but I always thought that the strength of the gorilla was grossly exaggerated to make it seem equal to the others. They've done everything from having a 'light tap' knock someone out, to throwing around furniture that weighs more than the gorilla itself. Come on, are gorillas really THAT strong?
To be quite honest, the only one of their battle morphs I can even see as having a fair fight with a SINGLE Hork-Bajir would be the grizzly bear, at least without loads of experience to even the playing field. Because its size gives it an advantage when it comes to taking injuries and dishing them out, even though it has fewer natural weapons. Even in the fight between a Hork-Bajir and a tiger, I can't hardly help but picture the Hork-Bajir winning most of the time.
And when they were fighting legions of Hork-Bajir at once, it just seemed like the Horks must have been massively incompetent to not be able to take the Animorphs down.
On the other hand, it is true that the Hork-Bajir are naturally herbivorous creatures, so they don't have much in the way of fighting experience for the Yeerks to draw upon, but that's not really much of an excuse.
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I can't help but feel my entire Ani-world view has been rocked this week as it seems more and more threads are putting our favorite sci-fi series into with real world perspective
So considering that, yes she probably exaggerated some animal skills (I've searched and found nothing that suggest a wolf can do a high speed for a 10 hour day. Plus all these morphs should probably exhausted if you're doing more than just a couple minutes of intensive do or die fighting)
But for whatever reason, now I must counter, could it be that in our heads the we, and probably her too, are exaggerating alien abilities as well? Hork-Bajir blades seem almost as likely to cut themselves as they are an opponent. Can they really move a few hundred pound body through the trees that quickly? Really the best tree climbers on earth don't max out near that, yet Horks are seen in trees in Yellowstone as if it's no big deal. Really, should they have been much quicker than gorillas?
Can't help but feel now that it's all a bit stretched out, to make it more interesting, to make it more thrilling by making all of it more inhuman- Animal strengths, alien abilities, all of which in our heads are so far above all our own, but which aren't truly as phenomenal as they are in the minds eye.
Don't get me wrong, they'd still be incredible, but maybe just not that incredible
Another not to strong alibi, but a possibility I believe
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From a more cynical standpoint, you also just have to keep raising the stakes to keep things interesting, you know? After you see a Hork-Bajir x number of times, it's just not scary anymore. So have the kids fight THREE Hork-Bajir. When that's not scary, oh, well, now there's this ELITE team of Hork-Bajir called the BLUE BANDERS and they're even SCARIER.
But them just getting better at fighting is a fine enough explanation for me.
yeah, i agree. fighting the same thing over and over again *cough* animorph PC game *cough* isn't very entertaining.
i do think that the animals seemed overpowered, though. jake taking down 4 horks seemed like a bit of an exaggeration.
while the subject is up, i've always been bugged about cassie and tobias's battle morphs.
i'm sure that cassie, being the animal expert, could have found a superior morph.
plus, it seemed like she was always doing the 'dirty fighting' (biting at throats) and getting injured more often than the others.
not saying she should have fought as a wolf differently, just that her character might have wanted to find a morph that packed more 'punch' than 'bite'.
tobias is a bit more understandable, since it's his natural form and he could scout, but there were plenty of better choices for him as well.
hork-bajir against bird? not exactly evenly matched.
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lol this thread is kind of reminding me that the premise itself is one of the lamer aspects of the series
"oh, animorphs, what's that about?"
"kids turn into animals to fight aliens."
"Animals?...oh"
"No wait, it's really good there's this time-shifting superdimensional being and it turns out the blond kid's dad is...where are you going I swear it's really good!!"
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yeah, it's funny how such a lame-sounding aspect can result in a great series.
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while the subject is up, i've always been bugged about cassie and tobias's battle morphs.
i'm sure that cassie, being the animal expert, could have found a superior morph.
plus, it seemed like she was always doing the 'dirty fighting' (biting at throats) and getting injured more often than the others.
not saying she should have fought as a wolf differently, just that her character might have wanted to find a morph that packed more 'punch' than 'bite'.
this is cassie though, i wouldnt be surprised if her battle morph was a horse like in the show.
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well when you are a 15 year old kids with not very many friends those exaggerations don't mater .. I didn't care i still loved it. even though there was a voice in the back of my head telling me OMG this is to much exaggerating...BUT ITS SO AWESOME
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As per wolf.org, wolves can easily travel 50 miles a day at a trot of about 5 mph over rough terrain. Not "high speed" per se, but definitely amazing endurance. Jake's tiger should have probably been exhausted after about 30 seconds of an intense fight, but Cassie's wolf could probably keep up that breakneck pace for a good 10 minutes or more. I've no idea how grizzly or gorilla endurance compares, but with as fast as Hork-Bajir are described as being, none of the Animorphs would have stood a chance in any morph.
My theory? Hork-Bajir have absolutely terrible reaction times. Sure, they can see a branch coming and anticipate grabbing it when they're leaping through the trees, but there's time to react in that scenario. Not so when you're fighting an unpredictable animal. Tigers and wolves are predators who must have incredible reaction times to be able to catch zig-zagging, fleeing prey. A wolf is probably a better battle morph than a gorilla for that reason alone- the gorilla, like the Hork-Bajir, is an herbivore, but even the gorilla is an herbivore that grew up in a neighborhood of predators. Andalites aren't a shining example of being able to react either- how many times did Tobias fly right in front of Visser 3's tail blade and rake his stalk eyes without being chopped in half? (Maybe the Visser was just afraid of embedding his tail blade in his own skull?).
That totally covers the increase in what the Animorphs could handle. At first, Hork-Bajir seem fast and terrifying, but as time goes on, you begin to realize that if you feint to the left the Hork-Bajir will stumble in that direction every damn time because they're physiologically incapable of keeping up with your morph.
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Jake always talks about how his tiger can fight at closer range than a Hork. So if he can get really close, the Hork can't use his blades very well. Although even with rachel being bigger and more powerful, she should probably still be mincemeat from the blades.
It may have been more realistic for them to fight more Humans than Horks, and for there to not me very many at all. They are stated as being low in number, and we know other Vissers needed Horks as well and in bigger numbers to fight more than half a dozen Andalites at a time.
Man, the longer I'm at this site, the more I realise all these inconsistencies. Animorphs was not as great as I thought it was beforehand.
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It may not be cohesive and logical, but it makes the right kinds of mistakes. Foundation is logical, cohesive sci-fi and is more boring than a trip to the dentist. IT IS FLAWED BUT I STILL LOVE IT.
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IT IS FLAWED BUT I STILL LOVE IT.
Amen ;)
Besides, perfectly coherent sci fi doesn't generate this kind of discussion, which I'm thoroughly enjoying :)
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KAA might be going for the view that human willpower, intelligence, and experience can give the animals abilities above and beyond their normal capabilities. In Visser, for example, Visser Three lashed out with his tail towards the wild tiger, and easily lopped it's head off, while he tried the same stunt on Jake, and Jake managed to dodge the swipe in time and retaliate.
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well when you are a 15 year old kids with not very many friends those exaggerations don't mater .. I didn't care i still loved it. even though there was a voice in the back of my head telling me OMG this is to much exaggerating...BUT ITS SO AWESOME
lol I don't know about the only having a few friends bit, but yeah it was too awesome and I didn't even have the voice in the back of my head for nearly the entire series because I was quite a bit younger when reading the series. In fact I'm pretty sure that I finished the series when I was fourteen.
anyways yes it probably has more to do with keeping the series interesting rather than getting more and more skilled at battle, but the latter is a perfectly good argument as to why the gang was able to keep up with the escallation in my mind.
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I just don't think KA thought about these things.
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Probably.
But honestly, neither did I before finding a forum of obsessive teens and young adults who were in love with the series. ;)
Much easier to be critical when there's multiple voices questioning every detail
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I agree. Different people think about different things, and when they get together whole new ideas start cropping up.
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I think the lame animal thing goes back to the gun shy ness of KA
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It's easy to nitpick anything to pieces. ::)
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Man, the longer I'm at this site, the more I realise all these inconsistencies. Animorphs was not as great as I thought it was beforehand.
They aren't inconsistencies, they are creative license, every piece of fiction takes some, especially a series about parasitic aliens fighting a secret war against animal morphing teenagers armed with alien technology. Like cerulean said you can nit pick anything.
I think its not so much that the animals were displayed as too powerful because its never 100% clear what the power and ability levels of the aliens are. I think gorilla, grizzly and tiger would definitely be able to take on a Hork each to start, and then as time went on their experience would allow them to take on multiple foes.
And someone mentioned how Hork-Bajir were needed on other planets by other vissers. Maybe all of the good hork-bajir warriors are sent to the serious battles and the ones sent to earth, which is a secret invasion where the yeerks so obviously outmatch us and they aren't actually fighting any battles, are just the crap bajirs no other yeerk army needed. And out of those **** hork-bajir sent to earth visser 3/1 used the best for individual important assignments so the ones actually assembled in large masses were even less skilled. So when the animorphs are facing 10-15 to 1 they are facing the absolute most pathetic hork-bajir controllers the universe could spit out.
But one thing that did always bug me was Tobias. He didnt go battle morph often but when he did he chose a flippin Hork-Bajir? At least with the others you can make a case that a different animal skill set gave them exploitable advantages over HB's but another HB really has nothing
Oh and by the end of the series the animorphs go into a battle with the experience of fighting hundreds of hork-bajir, the hork-bajir they are fighting have zero experience fighting animals.
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oh there are inconsistencies. You could file this under "creative license," but there are definitely inconsistencies.
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What I've always wondered is how the hork-bajir (assuming that inside there are Yeerks who have experienced with war) had trouble with a handful of kids who never went to war.
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The kids could turn into Earth animals. Apparently Earth is a tough neighborhood *shrugs*
Also, I'm still convinced that Hork-Bajir reaction times are crap.
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If it comes to the survivability of the Animorphs, it's much like any hero movie or story. The heroes have crazy odds stacked against them, and somehow they come on top with minimal casualties.
I was always irked that with all of Alloran's morphs, Esplin 9466 was not able to obliterate the Animorphs. Some of those morphs were crazy and their abilities, even more so.
As for the Hork-Bajir ... there did seem to be a semi-endless supply of them on Earth. Of course, the Yeerks did have their home world and probably bred them possibly with the Arn technology.
But I don't see a tiger being able to go against a warrior Hork-Bajir. Maybe on Earth it was the retard bunch.
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I think the most believable explanation is that the Yeerks and Hork-Bajir just aren't the cream of the crop. However the blue bands are supposed to be the best of the best and they didn't last much longer either.
I think there should have been more humans and less horks. Horks are supposed to be low in numbers, which is why they're a class three host species, so why are there that many horks stationed on earth at all? How many shock troops do you really need to conduct an infiltration?
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I agree with Aluminator and Duff... As far as the experience and reaction times ideas...
Also, Tobias? I mean, what are you thinking? (especially with all of his whining about not being able to be more involved with the team before he got his morphing power back...) He's still a hawk 90% of the time in battle, and when he's not, the best he can come up with is Hork Bajir, which they already know to be inferior to their own (exagerated or not) Earth animals...
Honestly, I understand that they each had to have their own animal, but couldn't he have gotten a tiger morph and done as much damage as Jake? or some other high powered morph?
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Or maybe the Ellimist could have stepped in to arbitrarily give Tobias a pterodactyl morph. Let's see a Hork-Bajir do something about that. ;D
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"Gafrash! What is that thing???"
"It looks kind of like you, with wings, Garval!"
Tobias: < It's butt-kicking time, boys and girls!>
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Maybe the blue bands were just a bluff. All the looks with none of the power ;D
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tobias loved flying and being a hawk too much to morph when he didnt absolutely need to. he was also probably paranoid about getting trapped in morph again.
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Tobias also didn't tend to **** about not being able to help fight, but rather not being able to INFILTRATE when everyone needed to be bugs or whatnot. When everyone needed to be one certain thing or size, he couldn't participate. That's what he mostly ****ed about, as far as that goes.
Also, you guys seem to be talking like the books would have been better if they had lost constantly throughout the series instead of gradually getting better. It's a fictional series, you're supposed to have SOME suspension of disbelief. ;)
Animals CAN be that powerful, try asking anyone who's actually been attacked by one or seen an attack. And the only advantage we as human's have is our ability to REASON and THINK, so give that ability to something with that power, and yes, I can see what happened.
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Yes, I've seen what animals can do. Never attacked by one thankfully.
Yet Hork-Bajir seem to out do most of all the animals on Earth. What we need to be able to do is get that simulator program that Animal Planet / or Discovery Channel used to simulate different animals against each other.
And I'm still a little irked about Esplin 9466 not being able to kill the Animorphs quicker in his viscous morphs that would annihilate anything else on Earth. Too much gloating. Not enough killing / wounding / maiming.
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V3 was a little... cliche villain... at times... But I think that a lot of times it made sense that they escaped him... I mean, some of his morphs were dangerous, to be sure... but many had limited capabilities, size and speed... which made it more likely for them to escape him... (if they never killed him...)
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A lot of the times Esplin 9466 had them in his clutches in one of his various morphs, and somehow he would act the cliche villain and they would escape.
While I know it was a teen series at the time, so reality was thrown out the window when it came to the Animorphs dying until the end of the series when the fans were growing up.
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Tobias' battle morphs actually makes sense. While the main action is happening on the ground, Tobias can just scan from the air and pick off HB's by raking their faces, thus allowing the animorphs to attack from 2 fronts.
I also used to think most of the morphs were really dumb, especially Cassie going Wolf. To some extent, I still do. But I can understand that a diversity of different combat skills is probably more effective if they are working as an effective team. There was that battle when they all went Polar and that didn't turn out so well.
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While I know it was a teen series at the time, so reality was thrown out the window when it came to the Animorphs dying until the end of the series when the fans were growing up.
I agree i am sure that it had to do with the fact it as teh series went along the characters became more fictional to us because we were growing up. yet at the same time. The situations became more realistic so that our growing minds can enjoy teh story more. but who knows i may just be saying random stuff. XD