Animorphs: The Reread

Inspired by The Animorphs Cookbook podcast, I've started rereading the 90's YA series Animorphs.

I was introduced to them around age 9 when, on a family trip to the UK, we stayed with of my father's friends in Wales. I was delighted to learn that the teenage son of the family (I think his name was Willie?) was also a big reader, and he happily showed me his collection which included many many Animorphs books.

I had never heard of them before and was instantly captivated by the colorful covers depicting the characters morphing into animals. I also loved the little flip-book morphing animation that you see when you flip the pages.

I'm not sure if Willie gave me the first book, or if my parents bought it for me when we returned home -- I do remember getting some at my school's Scholastic Book Fair -- but I became a huge fan. I never did read them all, but I read the ones I could get my hands on through my school library and the book fairs, and would end up picking up the final books a few years later as a teenager.

My memories of the series are pretty spotty. I remember the vague premise: teenagers who can turn into animals fight against an alien invasion by mind-controlling Yeerks. Tobias was my favorite character, and I loved how the authors depicted morphing, how the minds of all these different animals were portrayed.

What I didn't remember is just how dark this series is! Maybe it's that, as a kid, I didn't pick up on some things, or they didn't feel real in the way they do now as an adult, but my god. The viewpoint protagonist tries to commit suicide in the third book! Twice!

Additionally, at least in the first few books (I'm currently on book 7), the characters are really grappling with the ethical implications of their war and their powers. Tobias is struggling with being stuck in the body of a predator, and what it means to need to kill to live his best bird life. Cassie worries about how they're dominating the minds of the animals they turn into, Jake is worried that their successful operations will mean his brother (who has a Yeerk in his head) will be killed.

Marco is contantly trying to back out of the struggle, not because he's a coward like it might have gone in another YA book, but because his father is already lost in grief over the death of Marco's mother, and he's worried that if he were to die his father would never recover.

And I read this when I was 9! I don't think these books would have been published today, but in the 90's/00's they were in almost every public elementary school in America, thanks to the Scholastic kid book publishing empire. (See the first Animorphs Cookbook episode for more on Scholastic). It's mad.

To my adult tastes, these books still hold up. The prose and writing is a bit shallow, and the constant re-explanation of the setting (so that a kid could start reading at any point in the 60-odd long series) is tiring, but the characters, action, and themes still work for me today.

Below I'll write up some notes on each book as I read them. I hope to read all of the main series, though we'll see if I actually manage it! If you want to read them yourself, the authors have released ebook versions for free on their website (because they are the best!).

At time of writing I've read Books 1-6 but only the first three Animorphs Cookbook podcasts have come out. I'm going to try and keep ahead of them so they don't influence my reviews :)

Book-by-Book Review

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Book 1: The Invasion

• This is going to come up a lot, but even in the first chapter it's striking to me how much more freedom these latchkey kids had than I did as a kid in suburban America.
• RIP Elfangor
• The fact that Jake only escaped because the Controllers went after a random homeless guy instead is chilling. And something I had completely missed as a kid.
• The morphing is much more body horror-y than I'd remembered.
• The Sharing is a great depiction of a cult or a youth church group. Very well done, and a good vaccination for kids reading the series.
• Everything about the Yeerk Pool scene feels way too realistically awful. The people in cages yelling at their captors, the voluntary collaborators drinking beers and laughing... oof.
• That Tom was so close to safety is hard. It becomes the basis of Jake's motivation against the Yeerks. As we'll see, each of the first five books are really defining the radicalization/motivation of each of the Animorphs.
• Visser Three is an idiot. The Animorphs are a bunch of teenagers and act it sometimes -- their plans aren't very well thought out or rehearsed. They keep getting away with it because Visser Three is holding the Idiot Ball, and makes it easy for them. I thought this was going to require a lot of suspension of disbelief, but after living through the last year of American politics, I see that facist leaders really are just that stupid.
• Tobias getting stuck as a hawk is a really good way to raise the stakes in a kids story without having any of the main characters die. And as we'll see in Book 3, it's a real consequence...

Book 2: The Visitor

• Rachel is a badass. Definitely had a bit of a crush on her as a kid.
• From what I remember, flying remains an unadulterated good for the whole story, and I love that for them.
• Thermals! The amount of ink this series dedicates to thermals, my god.
• The creepy guy who's trying to get Rachel in an alley is fucked. Again one of those things that completely went over my head as a kid (especially since boys were never taught to fear that sort of thing). Her turning into a partial elephant to scare him off is really satisfying.
• The Animporphs Cookbook podcast makes the point that the infiltration of the Chapman house is very adventure game logic. Use the hawk to catch a shrew to lure the cat to sneak into the house. Makes me want to make an IF game about it...
• I think I missed on first read that Melissa's Mom had actually wanted to join the Yeerks, even before they held Melissa as hostage. I wonder what that sales pitch is like. The name of "The Sharing" is evocative enough, but do the Yeerks of voluntary controllers actually give their hosts a bit more leeway, to sell the lie?
• Everything about Melissa's situation is heartbreaking, and it's what radicalizes Rachel.
• We get some behind the scenes about internal Yeerk politics, which is interesting. Visser Three is not well-liked, only well-feared.
• I kinda love how much Visser Three admires cats (and later tigers). Serves to humanize him a bit, but still in a cartoonishly villainous kinda way.
• The Animorphs had no right to escape at the end, but, ya know, see above comment about idiot facists.

Book 3: The Encounter

• Tobias, my favorite! And thermals again.
• I love that one of the first purely human enemies the Animorphs have is a car dealer. Car dealers are part of the backbone of the GOP donor class IRL, and Applegate paints them as cruel and self-centered. Rachel stomping on the cars as an elephant is chefs kiss.
• The building of the relationship between Tobias and Rachel is sweet.
• The wolf morphing is fun, even though it relies on debunked "alpha" science.
• Tobias losing it over eating the mouse is relatable. All happy one moment, and then comes crashing down the next.
• Repeating myself from above, but Tobias's multiple suicide attempts were hard for me to read as an adult. Didn't register then at all as a kid, but I had to put the book down after that chapter in this read through. Rachel trying and failing to help him... whoof.
• The building of the relationship between Tobias and the female hawk is sweet.
• I like the dichotomy between predator and prey that the Animorphs uses to color a lot of the animal morphs. I doubt it's really true to animals inner lives, but it's a fun way to compare the animals and have the Animorphs build skills at handling the different "categories" of animal.
• The plan to break into the tanker ship is really silly. They get saved by fluke really, but Tobias using the Controllers unwillingness to damage the ship in front of Visser Three was good.
• The dracon beaming the ship's bridge was crazy. Just how powerful are those beams?? It feels like overkill for a handgun, to be able to destroy a spaceship.
• The poor female hawk getting killed 😭. This is Tobias's radicalization -- between the hawk and the earlier human being hunted by the Hork-Bajir controller, he wants to stand up for the oppressed. Echoes with him being the bullied character at the beginning of the first book.

Book 4: The Message

• Cassie! I feel like I relate to Cassie, her descalation priorites, and her love of the earth much more now than I did as a kid.
• Squirrel! I love squirrels in real life, it was cool to see the Animorphs take on them. Chill until PREDATORS RUN RUN RUN!
• From what I remember of later in the series, we'll get an extra explanation for why Tobias was able to hear the Andalite distress call, but Cassie hearing it just cuz she's empathetic and good at morphing is cool.
• We get our first look at Marco's homelife, and boy is it sad. Marco's Dad has just completely given up on life in his grief, in a way that, again, I didn't really notice as a kid.
• Dolphins! I was a bit sad that dolphin's didn't get a human level interior life, but it's cool that whales are these unfathomably wise beings. Love the whale.
• I really like the thematic connection that Cassie draws between the Yeerks controlling their hosts, and the Animorphs controlling the minds of the animals they turn into. I read part of a too-full-of-itself fanfiction a few years ago that makes the technology of morphing based on Yeerk biology, and that was my favorite part of it. I don't remember enough about the actual series to know if it comes up again past this book. Probably when they morph other sentient animals?
• The Andalite Dome ship is great, and really stylistically differentiates them from the Yeerks. The Dome ship is open, and green, and lets them carry part of their natural landscape with them, while the Yeerk ships are plain, metallic, and look like weapons. I'd live in a Dome ship instead of my apartment for sure for sure.
• Ax is introduced! He was my other favorite character as a kid.
• The giant fish blob creature that Visser Three turns into to chase the Animorphs is hilarious. Hundreds of fish tails and Gushin style water blasts propelling it through the water? Amazing.
• Cassie's radicalization is learning that, in addition to genocide, the Yeerks also ecocide and terraform the planets they take over. Like I said above, that hit me a lot more now than it did as a kid, especially after learning about the ecocide and terraforming that the US has done to the lands it's conquered.

Book 5: The Predator

• Marco! Marco was probably my least favorite character as a kid. He's meant to be the funny one, but I never found him that funny. I find myself relating much harder to his "cowardice" (i.e. fear that his death will break his father) as an adult now though than I did as a kid.
• Marco saving a man from a mugging and then immediately getting shot by that man feels like an escalation of tone, even though Applegate couches it in superhero jokes and good humor. It's also the first time one of the Animorphs is hit by a human bullet.
• The plan to steal a Yeerk spaceship to get Ax home is such a poor plan. If you have a FTL transponder, could you not send a message to the Andalite homeworld? Also, if you managed to capture the spaceship, you could do what you were trying to do in book 3, and prove to the world that aliens exist. Sigh.
• Ax going crazy in the mall and them running from the mall cops (and later, actual cops) was funny. Reminds me again of how impossible this story would be today, with the ubiquitous cameras and surveillance we have.
• The woman who bought the lobsters just to see them turn into teenage boys and a deer alien must've had such a hard time getting over it. Though it kinda shows that one of the main conceits of the series, that they can't talk to anybody cuz they could be controllers is a bit silly. They could definitely get some people on their side.
• Marco deciding to give up after the next mission is interesting. I don't think he could've lived with himself if one of the other Animorphs got killed later and he wasn't there. Would've been an interesting way to take the series.
• The ant morph scene is fascinating. The idea of the self just being completely erased, subservient to the pheremones and the hive. The ant zerg rushes here and later on in the book are suitably terrifying.
• The Yeerks cottoning on to the fake distress call is the first bit of competence we've seen them display. Doylistically, I know it was just a way to get the Animorphs onto the ship, but still, I like it.
• Here we learn that Visser One is controlling Marco's Mom, which re-radicalizes Marco to the fight. I didn't remember this twist (I remembered something was up with Marco's Mom's disappearance, but not that she was Visser One), and I enjoyed it. Curious to re-learn how this happened, and what it says about the broader Yeerk invasion.
• Visser One calling Three out for not knowing much about the planet he's invading was great. If he's going to hold the idiot ball, it's at least good to see other characters point it out. Visser Three is a DOGE nepo-baby confirmed.
• The internal politics between Visser 1 & 3 is crazy. Visser 1 letting the animorphs get away so that 3 looks bad seems kinda ridiculous. Surely 3 would have proof that 1 did the sabotage? Are there no cameras on the ship? And you'd think that 1 trying to infest the animorphs with their own loyal Yeerks would be the better move anyway?
• Nice scene with Marco and his Dad at Mom's gravesite at the end of the book. Neat bit of irony that Dad is finally starting to get over his grief at the same time as Marco learns that Mom is still alive.

Thoughts about Books 1-5

I think I'll have a little section like this after every arc (or every 5 books or so) talking about my overall conclusions.

Like I said above, these first five books are our introductions to each of the original viewpoint characters (I remember we'll get Ax chapters later) and their motivations, along with us seeing some event that radicalizes them to the fight, makes it so they won't walk away.

Again, I'm struck at how dark this story is, how little it shies away from the implications of what the characters are doing. This is no generic Good vs Evil fight like Batman or Harry Potter (the closest we get to this is Visser Three and Taxxons being described as capital-E Evil) but a nuanced depiction of the consequences of war. You could even make the stretch that the Yeerks are a metaphor for figurative brain worms, those ideals and narratives that get humans to subjugate and oppress one another. It's good stuff.

The 90's-ness of this story keeps standing out to me too, specifically the relative freedom and lack of surveillance the teenage protagonists have. There's no smart phones, no omni-present cameras, they're able to get around without a car. Makes me sad to realize how much has been lost on those fronts, and how myself and the generations after me had much less freedom.

Visser Three holding the idiot ball is a bit annoying, although, like I said above, makes more sense to me now in the era of Trump. The structure of these initial books is very video-gamey, with each level introducing some new problem, giving the characters new tools to solve it, and then culminiating in a boss fight against Visser Three at the end. From what I can remember, this eventually opens up some, which will be appreciated.

Additionally, it feels like the Animorphs could definitely communicate the truth of the invasion to other people/authorities, and try to get some support. Their ability to morph and do thought-speak would be proof of their story, not to mention Ax. And if the government or w/e were to threaten them, well, they've already managed to out-fight the Yeerks. Only main issue would be Yeerk retaliation against their families. It would make for a much more complicated story, so I get why they don't go there, but the in-story excuse of "we can't trust them, they could be Controllers" feels a bit weak to me.

Anyways, overall I really enjoyed this re-read. The prose is a bit bland, and the constant re-introduction of the setting (to enable new readers to jump in anywhere) is annoying, but otherwise these books really still work for me as an adult. Excited to read more!

Book 6: The Capture

• This is the book where Jake really grapples with what it means that his brother is a Controller, which, if I remember correctly is a throughline all the way to the end of the series.
• Roach morph is great. I want a roach rocket platformer.
• The Yeerks hospital plan is devious, and much more realistic than "create an MLM youth cult group and capture the Vice Principal of the local middle school". Maybe another sign that the books are dropping the flanderization of the Yeerks a bit, now that we're past the introduction.
• The dream sequences here, with Jake both being hunted by and hunting his brother in tiger morph don't quite work for me. I see what they were going for, but I was more confused reading it than captivated.
• Jake's fear that their success will doom Tom (because Visser Three kills anyone who fails him) is a really good way to complicate the Animorphs' mission, to make it less Good vs Evil. Also makes you more invested in the fact that Visser Three is a cartoon villain.
• I assume Visser Three's human morph is a result of his dressing down by Visser 1? A way for him to learn more about the planet? We'll learn later in the book that him Controlling a human would probably be a better way to do it, except that it means that his Andalite host would be free...

• <A White House? What does all this mean?> Ax asked.

  <It means that one of them could be the most powerful man in the most powerful nation on Earth,> I said.

  <And that would be the ball game,> Marco said.

  <Then . . . all would be lost?>

  <Yeah, Ax. All would be lost.>

  Oh no, what would that be like?

• The use of the word "destroyed" instead of "killed" keeps popping out at me. Maybe an age censoring thing?
• The joking around at the mall was a nice bit of levity before the hospital action. Help meeeeee.
• They find the Yeerk hottub very quickly, and then immediately try (and succeed?) at boiling hundreds of Yeerks alive. I'm surprised that the book didn't hold the weight of that action, and that Cassie didn't raise a protest about it. If I remember right, the ethics of killing Yeerk civilians does come up later, and these Yeerks are basically enemy combatants/settlers, but yeah, it's a heavy action that isn't remarked upon later :/
• Jake is taken over by a Yeerk! Oh no! This is one of the most interesting world-building parts of the series so far to me, in that we get to see how capable the Yeerks are from the inside. The speed at which they take over and can convincingly mimic their host is remarkable. They seem to instantly become their host, while still maintaining their sense of self outside of it. You see how the Yeerks have been so successful at the blending in part of their invasion.
• The fact that the Yeerks carry an imprint of the people they've Controlled is also interesting. Great way to get Jake to learn the horror of what it's been like for Tom. I wish he'd gotten to see some of the Hork-Bajir's memories too.
• The Animorphs realize that Jake has been captured and resort to the obvious plan: starve the Yeerk out by imprisoning Jake for a few days. I hope they'll realize that they could do this to Tom or the Chapmans too...
• The sequence where the Yeerk keeps trying to escape via morphs, only for the other Animorphs to out-manuever them was gold. I especially liked using them using the other wolf pack, turning a past problem into an advantage. Again, very video game/ttrpg-y.
• And now we get the sequence where the Yeerk, Temrash 114 (and isn't it interesting that they don't have names, only ranks), starts to starve and Jake can see some of 114's memories. I don't like that Applegate paints the Yeerks as unable to feel love -- I feel like that changes at some point in the series, but can't quite remember it.
• Again I'm surprised that, when Temrash dies, nobody comments on the weight of the death. Especially since Jake just got proof that the Yeerks do have emotions and interior lives beyond cartoon villainy.
• The message that Jake leaves Tom is touching, especially since Jake knows what Tom's going through. Maybe bad tactically but I would've done the same. Though I wish they would just kidnap him and the parents to the woods for a couple days...