I have to say I agree with you, and to be honest that happens with many of the themes in Animorphs.
[spoiler]Ahem, for example: Jenny LINES (drug reference), weird host/Yeerk foursomes, the Animorphs raiding a crack den, Saddler being shoved down to rot at the bottom of an elevator shaft, Marco + a million poor Hork-Bajir controllers running around holding their insides in. David being trapped as a
rat, Tobias pooping himself when he's being tortured etc etc. [/spoiler]
Plenty of it made me think "wait...WHAT have I just read that's meant for kids!?" and I've only started to grasp that after re-reading the series 10 years later. Because of the action and the vocab/writing style of Animorphs it is easy to gloss over the more grotty details, and for them not to be terribly graphic. Forgive the comparison but it's sort of like a Disney film when the younger audience can understand and enjoy something on their level but the adults can on a more mature level. Once you start thinking about things it becomes more apparent when you have the age and maturity to do so.
Heh. I've heard that it's particularly American to censor sexuality more heavily than violence. Probably true here. Tobias and Rachel might hold hands (GASP!), but we won't have any issues with dismemberment and extended torture scenes.
I think I have to agree with that, although Animorphs was primary an action/sci-fi novel, sexuality is a hugee part of normal adolecent develpment and I really think more could have been written in exploring how the war etc really affected this part of the main characters which would made for some pretty deep and hefty character development. But we never got past the stage of "Cassie likes Jake. As in
likes Jake" which is incredibly two dimensional and boring. But I think the censorship/age appropriateness of these novels sadly put a sure barrier of unacceptability on any potential smexchyness.
(Edited for my lack of proper forum decorum)