I introduced Dino to these Opinionated Guides last week, so after watching some of the older videos I noticed I'd missed a couple of new ones. Great reviews as always, I think we've all been eagerly waiting for you to tear The Mutation apart for a long time now, lol. Glad to see you back from hiatus by the way.
Obviously #36 has a lot of flaws, but I'd completely forgotten about that nonsense with Jake implying the Orca's mind carried over into the morph. I could have accepted that kind of thing from Cassie, since she has a history of worrying about morphing intelligent creatures, but as you said it's been well established that such a thing isn't true. If it did happen, it would have made every instance of morphing a human, Hork-Bajir or even a Yeerk incredibly awkward.
#37 The Weakness has always been one of my least favourites, especially among Rachel books. I agree that the plot itself had a lot of potential, but for me it's completely ruined by the blatant screw up of Rachel's character. The talk of hubris at the start and self-analysis/doubt at the end sounded like her, but the rest is just bloody awful. I just can't get past the rapid emotional gear change from "don't get too ****y" to "I AM AWESOME AND CAN DO NO WRONG!" It's ridiculous and completely out of character for a Rachel narrated book.
Aside from the more obviously emotional Rachel at the tail end of the series, I always found it interesting that most of Rachel's recklessness and bravado is exaggerated when seen from the perspective of the other Animorphs. It's only books narrated by her that we get to see her hidden insecurities. A major chunk of this book totally ignores that and portrays her as the violent adrenaline junkie the other Animorphs see her as. On the other hand, the vast contradiction between psycho and cry baby certainly supports your theory from #32 Poparena.
