Heartwarming / Animorphs

• At the end of #6, having experienced first-hand what Tom's going through, Jake calls him to give him some words of encouragement.

Jake: Don't give up, Tom. Don't ever give up.

• The moment in #8 when Cassie comforts Ax.
  • The same book, when Ax wakes Tobias with the question, "Are you my friend?" and Tobias replies, "Ax, we are the two strangest creatures on this planet: a freaky, four-eyed, half-deer, half-scorpion, centaur-looking alien, and a bird with the mind of a person. We've fought side by side. We've been nearly killed several times. Of course I'm your friend."
    • Especially moving because the thing that really gets Ax is the "of course."
  • In the same book, Ax says in the narration that he thinks of Tobias as his shorm. Shorm is the Andalite term for best friend. The word shorm literally means "tail blade", the expression being that a shorm is someone who you would trust to hold their tail blade to your throat.
• That scene in #33 where Ax teaches Tobias about Andalites. D'awwwww. Finishing up with him teaching Tobias the words to the evening ritual. "From the rising of the sun to its setting, we place what is hard to endure with what is sweet to remember, and find peace." Pretty much sums up the whole rest of that book, in a very Tear Jerker way.
  • Ax is so eager to teach Tobias about his culture. Tobias is actually kind of surprised by it. The mission is just for him to morph Ax, to trick the Yeerks, but Ax finds a lot of significance and meaning in the fact that Tobias is going to acquire his DNA, because his brother was Tobias' father. Something that could have been a three minute "do it and be done with it" instead becomes a really important bonding experience.
    • One of the things Tobias discovers when morphing Ax is that Andalites are very, very optimistic. All of their ritual and serious self-discipline is implied to be practiced thing to keep their natural optimism in check.
    • After an incredibly traumatic experience for Tobias, Rachel holds him and comforts. Then she kisses him.
• Cassie holding Ax's hand at the end of #38, while he cries.
  • Earlier in the book, Ax's "date" with Estrid in human morph, culminating in the two sharing a human kiss, and for anyone who's ever had a first kiss with their crush, he describes it perfectly:
  It did not cause my lips to tingle, but it caused a fluttering sensation in my midriff. Small bumps broke out up and down my arms. I had only one heart now, but it thundered.
• How about Tobias being reunited with the mother he never knew. The heartwarming is taken up a notch when she gets the power to morph and regains her vision.
• While there wasn't much of an alternative Aldrea becoming a Hork-Bajir ''nothlit'' was so touching because after a whole book of Unresolved Sexual Tension she and Dak can finally be together.
• Aftran after giving up so much for the Yeerk Freedom Movement is allowed to become a whale nothlit and live a full life in the ocean. Awwww.
• Marco's parents finally being reunited after years apart.
• Alloran, temporarily abandoned by Visser Three and knowing that Ax won't kill him, begging Ax to get word to his family that he still loves them. Even after learning about some of the terrible things he did... it's a reminder that he's still had his life stolen away.
• Alloran moving his tail of his own free will and yelling, "I did! I did it!"
• The scene where Marco realizes that although it might be smart to let his father become a controller, he still can't go through with it. "This was the end of smart, and the beginning of right."
• The story of Essam and Edriss, and their infiltration of Earth. Over the years, both became influenced by their human hosts. Edriss (Visser One) even came to call her own host (Allison) something akin to a friend. Allison tempted Edriss with human emotion and feeling, and it created very human feelings within the Yeerk. And the two hosts, with the Yeerks, fell in love and had children together. At the very end, when Edriss wanted to return to the Yeerk Empire, Essam refused. He had become so much like a human that he had, in some ways, become human, entering into an effective symbiosis with his host. He was unwilling to surrender that humanity even at the cost of his own life, in order to protect the children. And Edriss, Visser One? Throughout all her invasion of Earth, one of the primary reasons that she railed against the very idea of an all-out war wasn't because it wouldn't work (though she didn't think it would). It was because she could not, would not allow her twin children to potentially be hurt.
  • And beyond even that, she learned and kept the secret of the "Andalite bandits" from Visser Three, despite all the damage they had done to the Yeerks. Partly because it opposed the other Visser. But also partly because if their identities were exposed, then it might threaten the children she had in her previous host. Edriss came close to allowing herself to die in order to avoid hurting one of her children (and was saved from that very situation by a timely interruption by the Animorphs). She was probably more human than Yeerk in the end even by her own admission, and even after she returned to the Yeerk Empire. More a human influenced by Yeerk ambition and desire to rule than anything else. And when Essam took her children from her, she didn't go after him for revenge. She went because she wanted her children back and because even then she thought of him as her friend. So much of what she did was coloured by the humanity she had unknowingly assumed. That humanity could so influence even a Yeerk (and the highest-ranking Yeerk beyond their ruling Council of Thirteen, at that) is a Heartwarming moment.
• When Visser One calls Marco for help while on trial in the Yeerk Pool, she tries to manipulate him by telling him what his mother is feeling. It doesn't work, but his response is still pretty moving - especially because of how proud Eva is of him afterwards:
  Marco: Mom, I know you're in there, and I know you can hear me. I don't know if I'm going to be able to save you. You understand that, don't you? I have to do what's right.
  Visser One: Your mother loves you, Marco.
  Marco: (very angrily) I know my mother loves me. And make no mistake, Yeerk, there isn't any peace between us. One day, soon, I'll kill you for what you've done to my family. (Phone slam).
• During The Ellimist Chronicles, we finally get a good look at the war between Crayak and the Ellimist. Before they became gods, anyway. Crayak ran around space, creating games and using the Sadistic Choice against the Ellimist as much as possible. The Ellimist rarely won, and even when he did, people still died. Eventually he gave up and settled on a distant planet, where the Andalites were still at pre-stone age technology levels. There he was reminded of the simple truth that every living species knows instinctively: If you can't stop the thing killing your children, compensate by making more children. He returns to the stars, seeding every world he comes across with primitive life, which means no radio or Z-space signals to attract Crayak. Then he created the Pemalites.
  The Ellimist: To the Pemalites I gave technology. They became an advanced species within a few decades of my creating them. As their creator, I gave them laws: They would never practice violence, and they would conceal their existence as long as possible.
  And I gave them a mission: to carry life everywhere.
• Jake and Cassie's kiss in The Attack, considering he previously believed her to have died.
  • And the memory of that kiss wins the day when Jake manages to inject it into the Howlers' racial memory, introducing what was formerly a race of childlike killers to the concept of love.
• The Departure, partly because of quotes like this:
  Cassie: No, I don't think we can make peace between all humans and all Yeerks and all Andalites. But you and I can have peace. One Yeerk, one human.
• Tobias morphing to human before Rachel's death, both for her and so that he could cry. Doubles as a Tear Jerker.
• Arbron staying behind on the Taxxon homeworld in The Andalite Chronicles leads to a pretty sweet scene between the three major Andalites of the book, each one getting his own CMOH: Elfangor doesn't want to leave his friend behind, but Arbron lets him know that he trusts Elfangor to save the day without him... and the arrogant Alloran, in his own way, lets them know that he honors and respects Arbron's choice:
  Elfangor: But you can't! Who's going to remind me not to be so stiff? Who's going to laugh at me when I start talking about being a great prince?
  Arbron: You go, Elfangor. Go save the galaxy.
  Alloran: Leave him. Aristh... I mean, Warrior Arbron is a casualty of war.
• Tobias and Ax watching TV together in Ax's scoop. A lot of their POV books focus on their isolation, with their day-to-day lives being difficult and lonely. Knowing they can hang out, be relatively safe, and watch bad TV together while the rest of the team is at school, is really comforting and sweet.
• Jake's adorably awkward attempts to flirt with Cassie:
  I would rather shovel manure with you, than do math homework without you.
  • That same book also reveals that Jake keeps a picture of Cassie trying to give a badger antibiotics next to his computer.
• In The Visitor, Jake stuck around as a flea on Rachel's back when Chapman took her onto the Blade Ship because he wasn't going to let her go alone.
• Way back in book one Rachel has a moment of characterization that really underlines what a good kid she was before the war consumed her.
  “Don’t look,” Rachel said to her. She put her arm around Cassie’s shoulder and held her close. Then she reached for Tobias and took his hand. I guess you never really know someone till you see them scared. And even scared to death, with tears running down her face, Rachel had strength to spare.
  • There's another in the second book, when Rachel (in the form of Melissa Chapman's cat) listens to Melissa cry and feel like her life is falling apart. Rachel obviously can't break cover, but she nuzzles Melissa and purrs and comforts her the best she can. It's another reminder that Rachel really was a good, kind person at the beginning.
• At the end of the war, the Taxxon-Controllers are granted the morphing ability and allowed to become wild snakes let loose in the Amazon rainforest, which mercifully frees them from the eternal Taxxon hunger.
• The whole of the Ellimist Chronicles, really. For that one book, he's no longer an ancient, godlike being of mind-boggling power, and really just a very lonely guy just trying to do the best he can to make the universe a little better.
  • It's revealed that he took the time to visit Rachel as she was dying, tell her his life story, and to reassure her that her life had had meaning.
    "Yes. You were brave. You were strong. You were good. You mattered."

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• The Encounter graphic novel is dedicated to everyone who sees themselves in Tobias.