Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: char486 on September 10, 2010, 06:51:47 PM
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Does anyone else feel like there is a certain chunk of the series that is classic is your mind. The books that you just always, always remember, and the rest of the series after that point isn't as clear or vivid to you. I suppose this kinda only goes to those of us who read the original run, waiting month after month.
For me, the epitome of Animorphs, my classics, are hands down 1-24.
Anyone else?
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I ended up reading them out of order, because I only had the opportunity to buy them two or four at a time at the school bookfairs, and I'd get whatever was available...
...so the 'classics' for me are actually 21-54. Excepting a small handful of the latest books, I read that chunk of them before I read the first 20.
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i guess the ones written by KA (not ghostwriters) would be classics for me.
except #54. :facepalm:
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I consider the Golden Age of Animorphs to be from 10-26. 1-10 were still a little wobbly in quality, and 26 was the best book in the series so that's where it starts going downhill in my mind.
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I agree about the whole "before the ghostwriters" being the "classic" Animorphs books for me. Although if you really want to get technical about the "classics" it'd be the first 7 books before the titles changed from the flat colored font to the metallic.
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Hum... I agree that the most classic are the first, before the ghostwriters, and some near the end... I'd say 1~26 and 49~54. 49~52 weren't translated in French, and I think they're really important for the story... So even if I read them only few time ago, they're classic for me.
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Hmm, my classics are all over the place in the series.
#1, #3, #4, #5, #6, #10, #13, #15, #18, #19, #20-22, #23... The Illusion, whatever one that was. The Chronicles and Megamorphs #4
I'm probably missing a few there. Oh, and #54 is classic by the default that it is the last book.
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Oh, I forgot the Chronicles. They're also in my classic list
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I think the first few, maybe up to 8. And then the David trilogy. I sorta stopped keeping up as much after the early 30's.
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I'd say 1-26, then 29, 30, 33, 35, 40, 45, the chronicles, and the megamorphs. After 45 I just sort of lump everything together into "Final Arc", so I'm not good with specifics. I guess late 30s and early 40s were what I found to be the weakest point of the series.
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Yeah, the early 30's were uneven with points of brilliance (30 and 33), and the late thirties and early forties were pretty terrible overall. Personally, I'd exclude 40 from that list because while I love Mertil and Gafinilan, the Anis themselves seem pretty out of character for most of it, especially Marco.
I'd agree that all the KA books, the final arc and 29, 30 and 33 are classics. 29 isn't a great book, but I think it captures a lot of the fun spirit of some of the earlier tomes. Personally, there's a lot in the early series I find weak (ahem, #11), but as a whole the early books do a lot of important set-up and character analysis.
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Yeah, some early books aren't so great. I don't really like #2 & 3 and prefer when Ax appears ^^'
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The first book was good but I never really understood the point of 2 and 3. I consider the books up to 33 to be the classics. The anti-morphing ray plot had to be one of my favorites, and I don't think it was ghost written.
By the way the ghost writters take far too much blame for that part of the series, I think Applegate was just trying to keep up with new plots, also remember she was having little Jake at the time. Plus do know what it would be like for an author to have to write a book every month?
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Personally, of my least favorite books in the series (41, 36, 44, 42, 39, 32, 11, MM3, 24 and 47), KA wrote 30% of them. I think it's fair to say that in general, the ghostwritten books were of lesser quality than the KA books on average. Whether that was the fault of KA or the ghostwriters or just circumstance isn't something we can know.
That said, my favorite book (#30) is ghostwritten, so yeah.
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In fact, KAA re-wrote the ghostwritten parts she didn't like.
Gallad, you have a point: writing a volume a week is really hard. Finding new ideas, new stories every month? Well, I understand why they aren't all awesome.
In #2 & 3 there is a point: In #2, to show how it is to live why your Controlled parents, and that some people can decide to be Controllers for a reason or another. In #3, it's to show the transition of life for Tobias. But they aren't really good. Hopefully, Ax appear in the new volume ^^ If Ax didn't show up, if there were no Ax, I think Animorphs would have been boring and I would have stopped reading them...
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I'm flabbergasted by all the hate for #3. It's one of my top five in the series! So much deliciously well-done Tobias angst. It was the first time, as a kid, I was exposed to an existential crisis in literature.
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Haha. No worries, Lisa, I loved #3 ^_^
To me, the "classic" books would have to be the first ten or so, and then the "golden age" of the series (I'm totally with Jen on this one) started around 12 or so and lasted through 26. After that, it starts to feel like a different series entirely, and before that, it's like Katherine and Michael were still getting their sea-legs.
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Embarrassingly for someone who has a BA in English Literature and is doing a MA in Creative Writing, I never picked up on any massive flaw in the writing. I was pretty happy just loving them unconditionally. That said, in hindsight some of the book were quite slow. I loved books where Tobias struggled with his indentity, and #19 with Cassie and.. Aftran(?) has to be one of my favourite in the series.
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19 was definitely the best Cassie book. It just shows how much Cassie is a deeper character than the others. The rest of the books portrayed her as a shallow and weak hypocrite. :(
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^I think there are plenty of other books where she doesn't come across as that, but #19 is definitely the book that makes Cassie.
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three through nineteen are really the "classic" books for me. Probably because those where the ones i read consistently growing up ( i skipped around after that, reading only a few here or there). Three started it because i was so intensely interested in Tobias's character development (he is really the first Animorph i felt gave me a lot of it) and nineteen because, even though twenty was the last one i read as a kid,, nineteen was the last good one before i went Ani AWOL. It was so intense. i remember having shivers.
There are tons of good ones after that, but those are my classics.
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I'd say the Chronicles books. The Andalite Chronicles really established the series for me.
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Agreed chronicles were awsome.
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I think 1-10 are classic.
- W
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Number 41, actually. It was so... moving?
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*brain 'asplodes*
Well, to each their own.
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*brain 'asplodes*
Well, to each their own.
Yeah. I know it isn't the most popular...
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I like 41 too. I'm actually surprised that everyone hates it just because it doesn't make logical sense. It's a dream! No sense happens in dreams! I think it was a good portrayal of Jake's subconscious. The Venber for instance, how each tiger bite tastes foul in his tongue. I could go on and on.... but sigh...
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I don't hate it because it doesn't make logical sense, I hate it because the payoff is massive character derailment for Jake and Cassie.
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Although if you really want to get technical about the "classics" it'd be the first 7 books before the titles changed from the flat colored font to the metallic.
This.
I have those books. I had started reading the series about the time book six was coming out.