I have to admit to being a little surprised because I agree a lot with the original post but at the same time I liked the ending, it was memorable in exactly the way most of the books I read at the time weren't.
For one thing Rachel's death was very well done, the road leading to the event was . . . not grand, I have many issues with the order Jake gave from a tactical and even a practical standpoint. To me it was clear right away that Rachel was going to die and I dreaded it, I hoped she'd been put in that situation for pure misdirection, but in the end it still happened. I was sad of course but as I've said before I've never really been quite so moved by a fictional death, so if nothing else that event will always be untouchably awesome in my mind and a testament to KA's skill. But had I been Jake she'd never have been on that Bladeship to begin with . . . and that's really sort of off topic so I appologize and will stop myself right there on that matter.
The truth is that like others I was a little put off by KA's letter, I felt it was overly agressive towards an audience that was mostly kids, I know I was a kid at the time the story ended, but I never saw her message before coming here (as an adult) so I wasn't exactly traumatized by her irritation so what can I say? Honestly I feel like she had every right to end her story how she wanted but I definately agree, that doesnt mean we have to like it at all, and not liking it doesnt make us immature it just means we have different beliefs, individual personalities, isn't that one of the things Animorphs was all about? Being individuals instead of cogs? Being free instead of Controllers? That people disliked her work just means that individuality wins again . . . might I add "w00t"
As for it not being a realistic war story, well I both agree and disagree, I know that shouldn't be possible but hear me out. It had fanciful themes and what more or less comes off as magic at times so I can see where it seemed unrealistic, and I won't pretend the atmosphere of the final arc didn't feel different than what led up to it. Different yes, but not exactly alien.
The presence of death and realism was always there. Background characters were killed, entire Andalite crews were slaughtered, Yeerk pools were boiled or shot off into deep space, even a few orcas got the axe if I recall, hard decisions were made time and again and not just by our main characters but by villains and supporting characters as well and though our main Animorphs didn't die (permanently) until the end many of us were always worried that they could even though we should have known they couldn't. We worried because that presence of death was there, it just didn't catch up to them until the ending. I mean during the whole David thing I really did expect death to jump out from some corner with a shotgun screaming "BOOM, HEADSHOT!" so in that sense it did feel like a realistic war story.
I think what I agree with is that it wasn't
just a war story though, there was more to it than that and towards the end it did feel like some of that was forgotten, or at least left behind.
I hate to make this post any longer but I actually think more than LOTR, Animorphs is similar to Exo-Squad. Exo-Squad, for those who don't know, was a TV show aimed at kids that still had a lot of underlying themes that viewers could either notice or ignore. It was violent, it was mankind's fight against extinction itself, towards the middle there was some episodic bits, and much like Animorphs it ended on an upsetting cliffhanger and it wasn't until the end that a major (good) character finally died . . . except they screwed that up by cloning him in that final episode, but that's neither here nor there, the point is that at no point did Exo-Squad not feel like a war story, and the same is true of Animorphs in my opinion.
Yes it's about a bunch of people doing impossible things and surviving, winning where they shouldn't, where it should be impossible, getting away just in time, that's part of the fun, we want to think that kind of stuff can happen, we want to pretend that, despite all evidence to the contrary, a single person can really make that much of a difference, but it doesnt mean it's not still a realistic story. It might seem like the ending was one without hope, but to me that hope was Rachel, it was Jake, the hope KA gave us with the ending was the Animorphs themselves.
On balance we humans want to believe there really are people like Jake, Marco, Tobias, Ax, Cassie and indeed most definately Rachel out there, some of us want to believe that we could, ourselves be that brave. Their existance fictional though it may be, is a sort of hope itself. That said that they died doesnt really mean that hope dies too because even dead their example remains and in fact creates a bar, a challenge even; sort of like saying "they gave up this much" and again, yes they're fictional characters in a children's book but they're a reminder to us all and indeed to children that in history we do have real people who've done similar deeds if only for their own countries or families and not for the earth itself.
Well . . . not much else to say at the moment except sorry for the length
