It amazes me how much the Animorphs improved over the series.

[Chad32]

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.

[anijen21]

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.

[Aluminator (Kit)]

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 

[Fwahm]

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.

[Serraph105]

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.

[EscafilDevice]

I just don't think KA thought about these things.

[RYTX]

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

[Chad32]

I agree. Different people think about different things, and when they get together whole new ideas start cropping up.

[voodooqueen126]

I think the lame animal thing goes back to the gun shy ness of KA

[Kitulean]

It's easy to nitpick anything to pieces. 

[Duff]

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.

[anijen21]

oh there are inconsistencies. You could file this under "creative license," but there are definitely inconsistencies.

[Uza-chan]

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.

[Aluminator (Kit)]

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.

[.: Asmo]

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.