Last night I finished volume 54, and aside from the Chronicle books, my dance with the Animorphs is over til 2015. So here's my top five favorites, and least favorite five. I'll even ramble why they suck and or are awesome. Lets start with number 5!
#5:
Volume 13 The Change: I've always felt bad for Tobias. He had a rough home life, no parents, and was shuffled between family members who couldn't give half a shit about him. Then he gets trapped as a hawk, and it seems an improvement for him, but he feels bad that he isn't able to morph and help the Animorphs in a fight. This volume changes that, Tobias leads a pair of Hork Bajir to freedom, and is given the ability to morph once more, and acquire his human body as a morph. The hawk as his main body, and the ability to morph a human probably is the best deal for Tobias. Now him and Rachel can have actual dates!
#4
Volume 13 The Solution: The conclusion of the David trilogy. Jake admits to Rachel that there is something dark inside of her, and she loves the battle more than she should, and Rachel herself begins to accept this about herself. The Animorphs give up trying to infiltrate a meeting of the World Leaders, and just destroy everything instead, forcing the event to be canceled, and finally they deal with David. Rachel, using Cassie's plan tricks him into being a nothlit, and watches him til the time limit is up, and he's stuck as a rat. This volume is amazing, Especially since it shows Jake being able to use people when he needs to, and channeling Rachel's psychopathic tendencies.
#3
Megamorphs 3 Back to the Before: This volumes is about what would happen if the group never became Animorphs. They all suffer death actually, with Tobias becoming a controller, and everyone else dying in the battle with the Yeerks. Still, ironically they end the war much faster, Jake and Ax hijack the Blade Ship and run it into The Pool Ship, making it much easier for the Andalites to come in and take over. It is also revealed that the Animoprhs, aside from Jake and Rachel were predestined to become the Animorphs, with Cassie's connection to animals, Tobias being Elfangor's son, and Marco being the son of Visser 3.Of course, everything goes back to normal at the end, but it's an interesting look at what could have been, in the line of Marvel's What if comics.
#2
Megamorphs 2: In the time of the Dinosaurs: An entire volume NOT about fighting Yeerks ? How good could that be ? It turns out to be freaking awesome! When a nuclear sub explodes, the Animoprhs are sent back into the time of the Dinos, and have to survive against Dinosaurs and a race of ant like aliens! They even morph T-Rexs, and help trigger the extinction of the Dinosaurs. It's such a cool volume, a shame they didn't make a better cover, hell the promo poster for it had better artwork.
#1
Volume 53: The Answer: The penultimate volume of the Animoprhs series. All the pieces fall into place, and Jake Berenson sees his victory. He has to ruin a few lives, and sacrifice many people, but he can win. The Taxxons join the Animoprhs, and Jake uses the Auxillary Animorphs and sacrifices, so they can take down the pool ship, and Visser three. Jake even sends Rachel to take care of Tom, without telling any of the others. He even manages to kill over 17,000 Yeerks, as a supposed distraction. Say what you will about the finale, this volume was perfect to me.
Now it's time for my least favorite! Everyone seems to hate the Helmacrons, so I decided it would be cheap to use them, plus there are worse books, at least to me. Now here's my bottom 5.
#5
Volume 14: The Unknown: I really don't like Cassie. Her morality grinds on my nerves, and I understand they needed a member of the group to ground them, but it doesn't mean I have to like her! This volume has Horse Controllers, yes Horses with Yeerks in their ears. The volume only gets worse from there. They decided instead of surveying the horse controllers as birds or something, they should morph horses. Now just flying by a farm with horses and acquiring them ? That makes too much sense, so let's all go to the Kentucky Derby, where people are everywhere, and acquire these famour horses! Brilliant! Then they break into a military faculty that regularly lets horse wander through their secret hall, and discover an Andalite toilet. Awesome.
#4
Volume 17: The Underground: The infamous oatmeal volume. The Animorphs discover that Yeerks become insane when exposed to Maple and Ginger instant oatmeal, so they of course load up on it, and decided to tunnel down to the Yeerk pool as moles. Thing go wrong, and they end up fighting their way out, and explode a barrel of oatmeal into the Yeerk pool. It's not only dumb, its too formulaic.
#3
Volume 28: The Experiment: The infamous meat is bad volume! Yes! This volume is probably what I would consider the worst written in the series. The Yeerks are doing something at a experimental lab plant, so they all morph to Chimpanzee to get in. Then things go wrong, so they have to get into another facility by morphing cows! After this they discover the Yeerks made some sort of mind control serum and are putting it in the burgers. It turns out the serum doesn't work, so the day is saved by default. Afterwards they all go to the mall and eat hamburgers. Apparently this was added as a screw you to the ghost writer.
#2
Volume 44: The Unexpected: Yes, another Cassie volume! When a mission goes wrong, Cassies ends up in the Outback, and must fight the Yeerks to get back home. It's awful because it really is a stupid volume. Cassies gets a crush on some random guy named Yami (it means Dark) and bounces around a a kangaroo before getting back home. She does surgery on some old guy too with a piece of a space ship in his leg. I hate this volume.
#1
Volume 19: The Departure: Cassie decides to quit the Animorphs, and what follows is stupid move after stupid move. A young girl is comes out of the woods getting chased by a bear for some reason, so Cassie saves her. The young girl is predictably a Yeerk, and knows Cassie is an Animorph, which raises the question of how a child could get out to her barn and stalk her repeatedly, but let's ignore that. Cassie then decides the ebst thing to do is to let the Yeerk in her head, letting it know all her secrets. The Yeerk leaves, since Cassie is always right and can make no wrong choices. The Yeerk convinces Cassie to morph to a Cattepillar, and stay as one for two hours. Then she becomes a butterfly,and her morph clock is reset, and Mary Sue Cassie joins the team once more. I hate this volume because Cassie, is apparently based on the author, and can do no wrong, so she's invincible and always makes the right choices. I really hate Cassie.
Now for a bonus round of my favorite charcters! The six Animorphs only, of course.
#6: Cassie. I wish I could put her lower, but out of the six Animoprhs, she can only go so low. She represents the morality of the group, and is a dirty hippie. I don't hate her because she's black, just that she's an annoying character, and I love the rest of the cast. She's a Mary Sue, an Author insert. Like when she stopped Jake from killing tom and getting the morphing cube back. It would have been a disaster if anyone else had done that, but good old Cassie knows what will happen, she sees all.
#5: Ax. I like Ax, don't get me wrong, but I prefer the rest of the cast over him, save Cassie. Ax is the resident Alien, super smart, dedicated to Jake, and brings some humor to the group due to his lack of knowledge of Earth cultures, and his love of Cinnabon. The man is always in the shadow of his famous brother Elfangor, til the end of the series. I do hope we get a resolution to it all someday, if i have to fucking write it myself, I will. It can be like those Dragonball AF comics, except not as awful.
#4: Rachel. The blood night herself. She's described as beautiful, smart, and fashionable, and trods dangerously close to Mary Sue territory, that is if she wasn't fucking crazy. She starts out normal enough, but as the series goes on, she learns to love the battle. She's violent, dangerous, and kind of a bitch, and she's in love with the Hawk boy. She makes the series even more interesting, and I love it. Her death was heartbreaking, especially to Jake.
#3: Tobias. When I was a kid, Tobias was my favorite, to the point where I copied his hair. Tobias is a boy from a screwed up home life, who lives as a Hawk, and can morph to his old human body. That's awesome! Tobias is a loner, but he adds to the group, and he seems to be the punching bag. Like the time he was captured and tortured. Or the time it's revealed Elfangor was his father, so he would never meet his dad. Eventually he finds his mother, but even she couldn't turn him to a normal life. When Rachel died, his only real link to the human world was severed, and he went to live as a Hawk. Til Ax needed him, that is.
#2: Marco. The character most like myself, of course he ranks high. I do look more like Jake though, no one ever accused me of being short! Marco is sarcastic, funny, and intelligent. He sees the line from A to Z, and is willing to kill his own mother to succeed. After the war, he is easily the most successful.
#1: Jake Berenson. How could anyone else be at the top of this list ? Jake is the leader, and not because he wants to. He makes the hard calls, and manages to keep everyone alive, aside from the final battle of course. Jake is somewhere between Batman and George Washington, and I'm glad he manages to pull himself out of his funk by the end of the series. I did want him and Cassie to get together, but sadly they didn't. Jake deserves all the happiness in the world, especially after sending his cousin to kill his brother, and losing both in the process.
Well, this will be my last Animorphs blog, it's back to the usual toys, bootlegs, anime and manga you've come to expect from this blog. Maybe in two years I'll do another one, though I plan to be in Japan at that point, so who knows. I leave you with this image and one question:
Why is Jake's cover model the prettiest one there? Seriously, he does not meet the book's description.
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