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The Books
- Allegedly Optimistic Ending: Whenever a character chooses to trap themselves in the morph of a non-sapient animal, it's considered a satisfying happy ending for them, despite the gruesome lives wild animals lead being a recurring theme in the books, and Tobias's life in particular proving it's a pretty depressing way to live. For Aftran in Book 29, she morphs a humpback whale and travels out to sea all alone... no doubt to Go Mad from the Isolation. Whales in the Animorphs universe are borderline-sapient so at least she might find someone to "talk" to, but it still seems like a hollow life for a creature as intelligent as a Yeerk. At the end of the series itself, the Taxxons become giant snakes and live in the Amazon rainforest; they'll at least be able to speak to their fellow former Taxxons using thought-speak, but Taxxon culture might be extinct in a single generation as any descendants they may have will just be ordinary snakesNote Likewise the Yeerks at the end, if you take the interpretation that they followed Aftran's lead and became whales. The idea of these people integrating with human or Hork-Bajir culture instead, so they can at least remain in civilization and leave behind a legacy, is never posed.
- Alternate Aesop Interpretation: Some readers interpret Megamorphs #4 as saying that if the Animorphs just broke The Masquerade early and told everyone about the Yeerks, it'd be much more effective than secretly working to dismantle the invasion. Seems similar to criticism leveled against Pope Pius XII for secretly doing what he could to help Jews in World War II instead of coming out loudly decrying Hitler and Mussolini. Then again, the book also mentions millions of humans dying in protracted open war while casualties in the actual finale were much lower.
- Alternative Character Interpretation:
- Cassie. Is she The Empath who genuinely does not like to emotionally hurt people and persuades others to not hurt others as well, but did what she had to in a war where the stakes were humanity and Earth? Or is she a sadistic, hypocritical and manipulative bitch that will leap at the chance to put someone to the psychological thumbscrews if the opportunity arises? Or is she simply an insightful but naive teenager struggling through the war?
- Tobias: Emo with wings, or The Lancer who, as he spends the first books unable to morph, is the only one able to objectively see the risks and benefits of each morph?
- Rachel, valiant and skilled fighter who just struggles with PTSD or unhinged psychopath using the Yeerks as an outlet for her violent urges? A third interpretation is that she is mainly a perfectionist whose drive for success led her down dark paths during the war.
- Marco, The Lancer, tactical and strategic genius, or just a mean-spirited Dirty Coward who's only good for coming up with horrifyingly ruthless plans and complaining?
- Jake, skilled leader, hardened manipulator who use his friends as tools, or just some insecure jock who made everything up as he went along and led five child solders to their inevitable War-is-Hell mental breakdown? His decision to kill Tom is also open to interpretation: was it a Mercy Kill, was he putting aside his feelings for the greater good, or did he just want to get rid of his burden?
- David, a lost and confused boy who's had his life completely destroyed and doesn't know if he can trust his "saviors", or a ruthless sociopath who has no qualms about murder and doesn't give a damn about the human race as long as he's safe?
- And Taylor: Cold-hearted torture technician or mentally damaged Broken Bird who can only express her bizarre love for Tobias by breaking the bird? And where does the Yeerk end and the human begin?
- Erek: admirable pacifist or manipulative hypocrite?
- Visser Three (aka Esplin 9466): Andalite-hater who wants them dead both because they're enemies of the Yeerk empire and because he's jealous of their natural freedom, or secretly an Andalite-lover who sees Elfangor as the one he admires most, plus harbors a twisted crush on Aldrea? Or possibly all of the above? Is he an incompetent villain that was only promoted because he got lucky and managed to infest an Andalite, or do his actions in the Chronicles indicate that he was once The Chessmaster with just as much ability to plan ahead as Visser One only for the power he gained when he infested Alloran to drive him to madness (or at least complacency)? Or is he a genuinely competent character when in his element who just suffers from the fact that he was assigned a task requiring a set of skills he never got much opportunity to develop?
- How even was the war between the Yeerks and the Andalites? While most sources within the books claim them to be deadlocked and Earth as the keystone that will win the war, at least one article
has claimed that there's a lot of clues that the Andalites were beating the Yeerks handily and Earth is more like their only hope for victory—if true, it definitely doesn't cast the Andalites in a positive light. - Yeerk high command is a circus of failures, with Vissers seemingly given invasion plans diametrically opposed to their skillsets. Fans have joked that this is because the Emperor and the Council of Thirteen are just that Stupid Evil, but there's an argument to be made that this is deliberate. Yeerk politics are toxic and run on Klingon Promotion. Deliberately invoking The Peter Principle is a good way to keep hungry young vissers from getting too successful and threatening to replace the very people who promoted them. And even if it's ultimately detrimental to the Empire's long-term plans of conquest... well, that never stopped the real-life fascists and authoritarian empires that inspired them from politically interfering in military business, did it? Consider Vetinari Job Security and the Iron Law of Institutions described therein.
- Does Visser One have any genuine affection for humanity, or is it all a manipulation? She's not all that sure herself.
- Angst? What Angst?: In The Diversion, The Animorphs' identity is discovered, and they go to rescue their families and bring them to the Hork-Bajir valley. While Jake failing to rescue his family is a point of serious angst for him, Rachel also can't rescue her father with the rest of her family, since her parents are divorced and he's in another state, but is never shown to have any emotional reaction to this.
- Anti-Climax Boss: The final battle with Visser Three isn't even a battle. The Animorphs storm the Pool Ship and confront him on the bridge. Rather than fight, Esplin realizes the war is over, he's been undone by treachery and accepts it with rather sullen frustration before Ax simply knocks him unconscious and Jake orders him to vacate Alloran's body forever.
- Anvilicious: The final arc of Animorphs makes its War Is Hell message very clear, to the point where that moral was the entire point of the final book. When some readers complained that the ending wasn't "cool" enough, Applegate took them to task by saying that the whole point of the books was the war isn't something to venerate or find fun—it's something that tears families apart, kills innocents, and destroys lives forever. In it, Jake had gotten PTSD from his experiences, Rachel was dead, Tobias had shut himself off from the world, and while Marco and Cassie were better off, neither were really happy. What makes this particularly effective is that K.A. Applegate deliberately didn't have a grand, glorious final battle with the Animorphs finally triumphing—Rachel's death was done with a quick blow, the Yeerks surrender and peace is declared through negotiation, and Jake's PTSD results in his choosing to kill nearly 18,000 defenseless Yeerks.
- Arc Fatigue: The early books are loosely connected, but midway through most of them are the standalone adventures of the Animorphs (This was fairly standard practice for young-adult series at the time) and a few plot developments happen here and there, then get explained in another book. As a result, it can feel as if the overall Myth Arc doesn't really move a whole lot. Then later on, it turns into full on Continuity Lock-Out.
- Arc Fatigue: The series was never meant to go on as long as it did, and it really shows towards the end — other than a single Megamorphs and Visser, nothing between Books 35 and 45 contributed to the overarching plot at all, instead defaulting to filler books the entire time.
- Ass Pull:
- The Threat ends with the cliffhanger that Tobias has been killed, showing David gloating over a very dead red-tailed hawk. Cue the beginning of The Solution and it turns out that Tobias is very much alive, handwaved as just having 'gotten lost' looking for David in the dark, and the hawk David killed was just a random red-tailed hawk.
- In The Departure, we suddenly learn that metamorphosis resets the morphing clock, meaning that as soon as Cassie became a butterfly, she was no longer a nothlit. This was never mentioned before or after that book. Admittedly this one is somewhat justified, as there wasn't really a reason for it to come up prior to this book (any attempt at introducing it earlier would have come across as a painfully obvious Chekhov's Gun), but it's still pretty jarring to have the climax of the book rely on a rule the audience was never aware of.
- Audience-Alienating Ending: While it's bad enough that the (still living) main characters are just as, if not more, broken and traumatized despite defeating the Yeerks, the knife twist comes when they decide to initiate what is most likely a suicide attack against an extremely powerful enemy that had only been vaguely alluded to in the previous books and just sort of shows up out of nowhere.
- Awesome Art: Romas Kukalis' beautiful cover art on the Chronicles books.
- Awesome Ego: Marco, full throttle. He's been known to refer to himself as "Marco the Magnificent" and make other grandiose claims of his physical and mental prowess, annoying his friends. But he's likely the smartest and most tactically-minded Animorph. He often displays impressive feats of Awesomeness by Analysis that are riveting to read about and justify his ego. It also helps that his ego is largely a coping mechanism for his trauma from the loss of his mother and he actually likes when his friends poke fun at him for it, meaning that it rarely makes him unsympathetic.
- Base-Breaking Character:
- Cassie is practically the walking personification of this. Half of the fandom has practically taken up "Cassie is a moron" as a catchphrase, perceiving her as displaying numerous instances of poor judgment and being a Creator's Pet, while the other half sees her as the most human, kind, and relatable of the Animorphs. Much like anything involving David, this can lead to major backlash, so we'll just leave it at that.
- The Helmacrons are either stupid, pointless Filler Villains or manage to single-handedly provide some of the series' funniest Breather Episodes.
- The Ellimist and Crayak are contentious for a number of reasons. The main ones are because people feeling like Sufficiently Advanced Aliens don't really "fit" the setting, and that having the entire story being part of a Cosmic Chess Game played by the two makes the mortal character's actions less significant. There are also a fair amount of people (such as The Pop Arena) who think that, while the Ellimist is meant to be the Big Good, he's ultimately a pretty big jerk as well.
- Bizarro Episode: Has its own page.
- Broken Base:
- Some fans liked the secret-guerrilla-war aspect of the series, and thought the final story arc ruined the series. Others, conversely, see the final arc as ten shades of epic, and see it as the best-written and greatest part of the series.
- Similarly, some fans liked the open-ended conclusion, as it brought the series full circle and tied in well to the War Is Hell message of the series. Others thought it was just an easy (and lazy) way for Applegate to get out of writing a more conclusive ending.
- The Experiment gets a lot of flak for having anti-meat sentiments, which Applegate disliked. It's often remembered as being much more of an Anvilicious Author Tract than it really was, but it also has its fans for the genuinely funny comedy throughout.
- The second Megamorphs book. Fans either love it for the fanservicey premise (The Animorphs go back in time to fight dinosaurs!) and its fun action-movie pacing, or they absolutely hate it for its questionable logic, inconsistencies with the rest of the series, and a particularly character-derailing ending in which Tobias unilaterally decides to have the friendly Mercora, who took the Animorphs in, killed in order for humans to come about. It's almost like the Planet X of Animorphs books.
- Whether the Animorphs' actions, especially Jake's killing of 17,000 defenseless Yeerks, count as war crimes.note Not helping this is the fact that the phrase "war crimes" has been frequently overused and misused when talking about fictional works.
- Cargo Ship: Ax/Cinnamon Bun fanfic exists
. - Character Perception Evolution: When the books were released, Cassie was often considered The Scrappy. Many complained about her preachiness and considered her moralizing to be impractical and hypocritical at times. However, in the 2010s and 2020s, many fans positively reevaluated her, finding that her knowledge of animals made her a valuable team member and that her moral conviction was key to the development of the series's themes. It was also noted that she does get called out on her hypocrisy and darker moments at many points. Notably, in a retrospective video on his Animorphs reviews, The Pop Arena, who made "Cassie is a moron" a Running Gag, indicated that he'd been much too harsh to Cassie.
- Complete Monster: In a series full of shades of grey and with a theme of War Is Hell, a select few stand out as truly monstrous and evil individuals.
- Esplin 9466 Prime, better known to the cast as Visser Three, is the only Andalite-Controller in existence, and is the sole Yeerk with the power to morph. Cruelly scorning his weaker twin, Esplin 9466 Lesser, and eventually sentencing him to exile to die of agonizing starvation, Esplin begins his career in the Hork-Bajir war where he is responsible for untold war crimes in his attempt to seize an Andalite body. Later claiming Prince Alloran Semitur-Corass as his host, Esplin uses Alloran's knowledge to launch a series of nightmarish attacks, killing countless Andalites and civilians in a wave of conquest and enslavement. Serving under Visser One on Earth, Visser 3 finally ends his rivalry with Prince Elfangor by devouring him alive. Having acquired countless monstrous Morphs through Alloran, the Visser is keen to use them to kill and torture. Forsaking all subtlety to embrace his personal sadism and cruelty, the Visser slaughters his own subordinates by the shipful for any real or imagined failures, even morphing into a Yeerkbane, one of the few Yeerk natural predators to consume them in an ultimate taboo for his species. Behind the infestation and murder of numerous humans, Visser Three eventually arranges the downfall and agonizing execution by starvation of Visser One to seize control of her rank in order to lead the invasion and institute a fully armed assault to slaughter humanity into submission. Unwilling to be cowed, Esplin will sacrifice untold thousands of his own, planning the complete extinction or enslavement of the Andalites and countless others to satisfy his cruel ego and petty spite toward Elfangor.
- Crayak is an alien and member of The Highest Powers who acts as the series' God of Evil. A nearly omnipotent Social Darwinist, Crayak seeks to create a universe ruled by one species and one species alone. To that end, Crayak engineered the Howlers, a race of psychopathic child soldiers who think that killing is a game, and used them to gruesomely exterminate countless species, including the pacifistic Pemalites and Graffen's Children. In order to ensure that the Howlers' Hive Mind is never contaminated by memories of defeat, Crayak obliterates any Howlers who fail him; he also destroys any Howlers who realise that their victims are people too. Not content with having created one of the most feared races in the galaxy, Crayak also lends his godlike might to other vicious species, secretly backing the Yeerks and other would-be galactic conquerors; he plans, for example, to have the Yeerks enslave humanity, only to then be wiped out by the Howlers. In a series filled with shades of grey, Crayak was as close to pure, unadulterated evil as one was likely to get.
- Subvisser Fifty-one, also known by her host's name, "Taylor", is a cruel Yeerk. Infesting the mentally ill girl, Taylor becomes an angry monster who serves as Visser Three's Torture Technician. Using a device that tampers with the pain and pleasure centers of the brain, Taylor captures Tobias and makes him relive the worst moments of his life and inserts agony to the recollections of his best memories. Returning months later after Tobias is rescued, Taylor reveals she severed her mental link with her host, regaining her sanity but not an ounce of morality. Taylor manipulates the Animorphs into helping her kill Visser Three, taunting Tobias about the suffering she put him through, hoping to provoking him into attacking her so she has an excuse to hurt him more. Revealing that her actual plan is to kill thousands of her fellow Yeerks, Taylor intends to pin the blame of her attack on the Yeerk Peace Faction.
- Creepy Awesome: Despite appearing in only one book, Joe Bob Fenestre stands out as one of the series' most intriguing antagonists, possibly because he's the Animorphs equivalent of Hannibal Lecter.
- Designated Hero: Rachel in the Alternamorphs Gamebook The Next Passage. During the adventure on Iskoort, Cassie is shot and killed by a Howler. Rachel blames the narrator for responsibility and demands a promise from them. If they don't give it to her, she and the other Animorphs lure them into a trap, making them permanently a housefly. This is supposed to reflect the fate of David, who permanently became a rat; the narrator even has a very similar origin story to David. Unlike him, the narrator never intentionally attacked, betrayed, or even antagonized the Animorphs. They're just in the wrong place at the wrong time when Cassie is killed by a Howler. This act of the Animorphs makes them, especially Rachel, very questionable heroes in this moment.
- Diagnosed by the Audience: Ax's mannerisms (Spock Speak, being Literal-Minded, his obsession with human food and television, his use of random facts for "making conversation") are already heavily autistic-coded, but this may just be how Andalites react to having a human body and all these new experiences. Except no other Andalite acts like Ax does (the closest would be Estrid, but for her it was just the Sense Freak obsession with a particular food, and she got it under control fairly quickly), and he still acts like this after living on Earth for three years. Because of this, some fans have decided that he has whatever the Andalite equivalent of autism is.
- Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Toby Hamee gets a lot of love, for being generally smart and cool, co-starring with Tobias a lot, and being a walking reminder of The Hork-Bajir Chronicles, widely seen as one of the best books.
- In general, if you played a major part in a Chronicles book, you're probably one of these - most of the protagonists of those stories are at best supporting characters and at worst Posthumous Characters, but they're pretty much universally popular in the fandom.
- Tom only appears Yeerk-free once, but he's popular due to his tragic story and Heroic Sacrifice in the first book. Many a Fix Fic will give him a happier ending.
- Despite only appearing in one book (that isn't well-regarded), Mertil and Gafinilan stand out in fans' minds for being the series' closest thing to a gay couple, and because the concept of other Andalites living on Earth is fascinating.
- Escapist Character: Tobias counts as this for a lot of first-time readers. What kid doesn't want to just fly away from their problems?
- Ethnic Scrappy: Some of the one-off side characters like Derek the Inuit from #25 and Yami the Aboriginial boy from #44 dance on the edge of this due to having little characterization beyond their respective ethnic stereotypes. At least Derek gets to be a Trekkie and an Unfazed Everyman.
- Fan Nickname: Emohawk for Tobias. Hawkward for Rachel/Tobias moments. Visser Mom for Edriss/Eva. KASU for "Katherine Applegate Screws Up/Screw-Ups", or the mistakes between books by the author and her ghostwriters. Applegrant for the Applegate/Grant co-author duo.
- Fan-Preferred Couple: A lot of people think Rachel should have paired up with Marco instead of Tobias, as they are Vitriolic Best Buds, and definitely have a hint of Belligerent Sexual Tension, or, at least the Puppy Love version of it. They do date briefly in the alternate universe from Megamorphs 4.
- Fandom Rivalry: Though it's mostly an Unknown Rival situation on the other end, the Animorphs fandom has one with Harry Potter. There are several reasons: bitterness over the latter series displacing Animorphs as the most popular middle-grade children's book series, the perceived pro-status quo message in Harry Potter vs. the very deliberately anti-imperialist and War Is Hell messages of Animorphs, and most of all the authors' differing views on transgender people: K.A. Applegate and Michael Grant are strong supporters of trans rights, while J.K. Rowling is infamous for her opposition to them.
- Fandom-Specific Plot:
- There a lot of Elsewhere Fics that just focus on a random pair of human/Yeerk OCs.
- A common plot point in Alternate Universe Fics is Tom being freed partway through the series and helping the Animorphs.
- Many fics envisioned what would happen if Crayak restored David's morphing power, just as Ellimist had done for Tobias. Notably, these cropped up before #48 The Return, and continued since that book hinted at an alliance between the two but never actually followed through.
- Fanfic Magnet: You'll be hard-pressed to find an Alternate Universe Fic that doesn't give major roles to the real Tom, Melissa, and/or Loren. All three of them have a personal connection to one of the Animorphs, but the nature of their roles means they don't have much pagetime and they're difficult to fit into canon-compliant fanfics as a result; Tom only appears uninfested once, Melissa needs to be kept in the dark for her own safety, and Loren became a blind amnesiac between the events of The Andalite Chronicles and the series proper. Loren appears again later in the series and has a strong introduction but afterwards is so thoroughly out of focus, not showing the badassery or conviction she displayed either there or in the Chronicles, that she's barely present.
- Fanon:
- Marco is gay or bi, and the fact that he's pretty openly interested in girls is at least partly a front. In particular this is believed by fans who want to put him with Ax, both for Pair the Spares and because the two grow a bit closer near the end of the series, when they're temporarily forced to live together.
- Marco had long hair up until book #10, where he mentions cutting it short. The covers reflect this, or rather, the cover model cut his hair and kept it short and the books went with it. The fanart, however, is prone to showing him with long hair throughout the series. Ironically, the graphic novels went in the other direction and gave him short hair at the start, which grows longer each issue until in the fifth issue it's the same length as on the cover of the fifth book.
- The Yeerk hierarchy is called a Visserarchy. Note that, technically, the Vissers aren't even at the top, being subservient to the Council of Thirteen.
- Many fans assume that Tobias' surname is "Fangor," since that's what his biological father was using at the time. The fact that Tobias thought a different man was his father, however, seems to discount this.
- Near the end of the series, we learn that Jake's last name is Berenson. Technically the series never states that that's Rachel's name too, but they're cousins who seem to be related through their fathers, so it's what most fans assume.
- While we'll never know for sure how he felt, given that he longed for death as of book 6 it's a widely-accepted headcanon that the real Tom was okay with Rachel killing him.
- There are many fans who assume that Jake was chosen by the Ellimist as well since like Marco, Tobias, and Ax, he does have a stake in the war due to his brother being a Controller and his natural leadership has helped out the group many times.
- The idea that Tobias really could have benefited from corrective vision, given that he complains often and at great length about human eyes being useless, when human eyes are actually only somewhat less acute than hawk eyes and much better at vision in low light. The other Animorphs will bring up how much better bird of prey eyes are from time to time but Tobias really harps on it. If there's anyone whose guardians wouldn't take them to get glasses, it's him.
- Similarly, Rachel often mentions how poor the grizzly bear's vision is. Grizzly bears actually have vision about as good as humans do, so one fan theory is that the specific bear Rachel acquired was in the zoo because it had genetic vision problems making it less likely to survive in the wild.
- When the kids go through a Sario Rip and acquire animals - monkey and jaguar in 11, Tyrannosaur in the second Megamorphs - they can't use these morphs when they return home, as if they can only take back the memory. In 18 a bizarre accident sends the kids' minds out to inhabit their mass in Z-space and they're rescued and acquire telepathic Leerans; in 26 the Ellimist teleports them to the planet of the Iskoort where Jake acquires a Howler. They never use these morphs again, though Howlers are exceptionally capable fighters and there are many situations in which being able to read minds would have helped. Rather than believing that the kids forgot these unusual morphs some fans believe similar "rules" apply as with Sario Rips - they're just unavailable now.
- The female governor in Animorphs: The Absolute went on to become the female President three years post-war in Animorphs: The Beginning, who Cassie works for. There's No Name Given for either, but given the governor of California's Nerves of Steel and ability to roll with the punches when the Animorphs tell her what's going on and all hell breaks loose, it's a popular opinion that she rose higher in the aftermath of the invasion.
- The fate of the Yeerks at the end of the series is to become nothlits in order to have the senses and mobility they crave without enslaving anyone, but this is not elaborated on in the least. Unlike with the Taxxons, no prospects are discussed, and in the post-war Time Skips Yeerk nothlits are not mentioned at all. While some fans think Humanity Ensues, it's very common to believe they were made to become whales, as Aftran did. Regardless it's also generally assumed that Yeerks on their homeworld weren't scooped out of their Pools and brought to Earth.
- Fanon Discontinuity:
- A lot of fans simply gloss over some of the more awful ghostwritten books, though which books those are depends on the fan. The Separation actually was written by Applegate but is often lumped in with them given what a Bizarro Episode it was.
- The Experiment is the notorious for this due to it being badly ghostwritten by an author who turned it into a pro-vegetarianism rant.
- The Mutation is disliked due to introducing mutated humans and having little relevance to the plot.
- The Resistance is also disliked by many, mainly as the American Civil War flashback subplot was hard for non-Americans to connect with.
- The ending of the series (spread across several books) is this for many people, partly for the lack of a proper conclusion (featuring an infamous Bolivian Army Ending), partly for being much Darker and Edgier than the rest of the already fairly dark series, partly for making several protagonists extremely hard to root for, and partly for being full of Nightmare Fuel. Plenty of fans who do like the finale don't like the Bolivian Army Ending, since the new enemy comes out of nowhere.
- The fandom also tends to disregard the existence of the TV show (except maybe the opening theme) due to how sucky it was.
- The Transformers Animorphs tie-in action figures are disregarded by both Animorphs and TF fandoms because, like the TV series, they sucked, though the concept sounded pretty good on paper. It was the execution, specifically the Kibbles and Bits syndrome that hit the line hard (due to the fact that toys can't mimic the Animorph's transformation fluidly); that was the downfall. (The Mutant Beast Wars animal-to-animal toys that came out afterward were intended for this line; you can tell because one head is clearly an Andalite head.)
- A lot of fans simply gloss over some of the more awful ghostwritten books, though which books those are depends on the fan. The Separation actually was written by Applegate but is often lumped in with them given what a Bizarro Episode it was.
- Friendly Fandoms:
- There was one with Goosebumps, as both were at the height of their popularity at the time the books were being published.
- There's also one with Gone, since both involve kids getting superpowers by an alien force, and it was written by Applegate's husband and co-writer, Michael Grant.
- Genius Bonus: At the end of the series, the remaining Animorphs travel into outer space in a repurposed Yeerk cruiser to search for Ax after he goes missing in action, naming their ship the Rachel. In-universe, they choose the name as a tribute to their deceased fallen comrade—but the Rachel was also the name of the ship that rescued Ishmael at the end of Moby-Dick.
- Growing the Beard: Animorphs at first did it with the third book in the series; while the first two had helped to establish the core plot and the setting, the third book took a more unique turn, centering around Tobias, the most mysterious member of the group who in the previous books had been trapped in the form of a hawk. Book number 19, The Departure, coupled with books 20-22 ("the David Trilogy") are also noted for elevating Animorphs beyond usual middle reader books. Other points later in the series' 54-book run could also be considered growing the beard, depending who you ask. Perhaps when Marco's mother is revealed to be Visser One, when the conflict escalates to a full scale war in the later books, and more gradual as the characters grow more mature over time. There is also a very notable beard-growing for the companion books such as The Andalite Chronicles and The Hork-Bajir Chronicles, with much more mature and engaging storylines following on characters on exotic alien worlds.
- Hard-to-Adapt Work: While the television series adaptation had many problems, one key reason behind it failing as badly as it did and being viewed as the embarrassment that it is today is just how difficult the original books themselves are to adapt to any other medium outside literature. On the one hand, the series has a very youthful main cast (with the five founding members of the titular team all being 13 years old at the start of the series and 16 by the end) who live double-lives where they fight alien invaders by turning into animals; a premise that one could easily be forgiven for expecting to be for the same demographic as Power Rangers. But on the other hand, the series also contains incredibly violent fight scenes and heavy ruminations on the cost of war that would automatically reserve it for older audiences if depicted in a visual format. Further complicating matters is how the need to depict animals and multiple different types of incredibly bizarre and ostentatious alien designs would put the ability to faithfully adapt the series well beyond a typical live action television budgetnote , yet the largely episodic format of the majority of the books means that they don't quite work all that well as films either. All this combined resulted in the live action television series that broadcast in the 90s at around the same time as the books' initial run largely being doomed from the start.note
- Harsher in Hindsight:
- In book #12, Cassie morphs Rachel and complains about the morph being hard to control because Rachel's instincts keep trying to make her do stupid things. As the series progressed, readers started to see some of what those instincts were - extreme violence, recklessness, and so on. It gets even worse once you reach book #54 -Cassie's best friend is gone, and the closest she'll ever get to having her back is morphing her.
- The series was published in the late 90s through early 2001, and thus has several references to topics that become harder to stomach in the context of The War on Terror beginning roughly four months after the series' completion.
- In the alternate future Jake visits in #41, the only part of the New York skyline still recognizable is the World Trade Center.
- In book #37, Rachel deliberately crashes an airplane into a skyscraper.
- The last several books (published during Spring 2001) have a lot of musing about how America isn't ready to defend itself because it doesn't have any enemies, which quickly became a laughably naive perspective. For example, Marco gives a rant on the current state of events in book #46 and Tobias concurs with an unintentionally sad comment.Tobias: Marco has a point. Particularly Americans. I mean, we've got no enemies at sea, not many on land, and those aren't exactly real scary. The country's just not ready for war. Maybe it's arrogance, maybe a combination of things, but the average person on the street just doesn't think another World War is possible.
- In book #54, which was published in May 2001 but set in 2002 or thereabouts, Jake mentions that since the existence of aliens was revealed to the general public there's been a rise in terrorism, particularly religiously motivated terrorism.
- In Megamorphs #2, the Animorphs help rescue a nuclear submarine that has gone down. After they finish, Ax asks what the submarine is for, since he figures it’s too large to be an exploration vessel. Jake explains that it’s part of the navy, which leads to this conversation:<What enemy?>
<Well . . . okay, we don’t exactly have one right now,> [Jake] said, feeling fairly idiotic. <But we used to. And we may get one again.>
<We're shopping all the sales,> Marco said brightly. <Enemies "R" Us, EnemyMart, J.C. Enemy. Don't worry, we'll find one.> - Then there's Applegate's Dear Negative Reader letter she put out after concluding the series, where she underlines that War Is Hell and says that if readers don't like that Only the Leads Get a Downer Ending, they should remember that real wars cause immense pain and grief, that the end of one often seamlessly transitions into another, and that the readers themselves will soon be of voting and draft age, so they should remember not to be taken in by the idea that War Is Glorious and has no human cost. Remember, Animorphs ended in May of 2001.
- In book #22, Rachel mentions that the Yeerks could get human-Controllers to machine-gun them inside a Taco Bell and it would barely register as news to humans. For context, this book came out before Columbine, let alone before mass shootings became a regular occurrence.
- In Animorphs: Back to Before Jake is shocked and sickened at the idea that Tom has a gun, and thinks of people who own handguns as pathetic and imagining it will make them important.
- In book #2, Rachel thinks she's alone on the Blade Ship only to find Jake is in flea morph on her back because he wasn't going to let her go alone. Come book #54, Rachel is on the Blade Ship alone... except this time, no one is there with her.
- He's Just Hiding:
- A few people believe Jara and Ax survived, given that their (presumed) deaths happened off-page.
- Rachel. Technically she fulfilled a deal Crayak offered her MUCH earlier, in killing her cousin. This has led people to speculate that she might be Crayak's new warrior or something.
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- In book 9, The Secret, the gang fools Visser Three into taking a bath in grape juice to get rid of the smell of skunk, which dyes his fur purple. Later in the series, it is revealed that Andalite females are purple. He might actually like that, he'd been very into the idea of being Aldrea.
- More than a decade after the series ended, Applegate wrote another book featuring talking animals, specifically a gorilla and an elephant. Granted, Ivan and Ruby have no similarities to Marco and Rachel whatsoever, and since it was based of real events they had to be those animals, but it's still pretty funny.
- One Running Gag had Jake and Marco arguing whether Batman or Spider-Man would win in a fight. DEATH BATTLE! has since done a segment featuring the two (Spider-Man wins with a lack of prep-time on Batman's part), and later still, Spider-Man ends up fighting "Batman" in Spider-Man: Homecoming.
- Applegate apparently never watched the TV series past the second episode, yet later wrote Megamorphs #4, which has basically the same plot as one of the original episodes, except backwards: in the episode, Tobias still becomes an Animorph while the others are infested, but in the book, he gets infested while they fight the Yeerks.
- In "The Warning", Ax pokes fun at Marco's internet speed—56,000 bits per second, which Marco defends as being the fastest internet on the market at the time. While just another comment on Andalite tech superiority at the time, thanks to Technology Marches On the average low-end broadband today is an average of 11 Mbpsnote , or almost two hundred times faster than Marco's "high end" internet.
- The revelation that Hork-Bajir are actually herbivorous and use their massive blades to shear off tree bark became this for paleontology nerds when it was discovered that the infamous Therizinosaurus, notable for its gigantic bladed claws, was also a plant-eater. (Hell, with its long neck and birdlike head, it even looks a lot like a giant tubby Hork-Bajir.)
- On various occasions, Marco complains about how they aren't superheroes because they have to do things like look through the phone book to find people, protesting "Wolverine never has to look things up in the phone book!" X-Men: Days of Future Past does indeed feature Wolverine looking someone up in the phone book. It's also funny that he claims This Is Reality and he wishes it was a comic book because comic book characters don't die - Marco, you live in The '90s, have you read contemporary comics?
- Jerkass Woobie:
- David - lost his entire life through no fault of his own, was kidnapped by kids he didn't know and forcibly recruited into a war he wanted no part of and faced the threat of death from both sides of the conflict. His final fate just hammers the nail in.
- Taylor - lost her arm, leg, and face in a fire. Became a human-Controller in exchange for getting them back. Got infested by a psychotic Yeerk, whose fusion with her own unbalanced mind drove them both over the edge. She'd be pitiable if she weren't so evil (note that this only applies to the real Taylor, not Sub-Visser Fifty-One). In fact in her second appearance she's no longer a voluntary Controller and tries to warn Tobias not to trust her Yeerk.
- Alloran released a quantum virus on the Hork-Bajir homeworld in an attempt to prevent the Yeerks from using their bodies. His actions resulted in thousands of innocents dying painfully. At the same time, it's kind of hard to not feel bad for him. He spent years imprisoned in his own body, begging Ax to kill him when he was free momentarily. He had to watch, powerless, as his body was used to murder countless people and even eat them alive. He had a wife that he named his ship after and two children that he went decades without seeing. After he was freed in The Beginning, he was shouting in excitement because he could move out of his own volition. Given Visser Three's penchant for torturing those under his control, one can only imagine what additional torment Alloran was forced to endure as a captive mind in the brain controlled by the Visser. Alloran's exuberance when the Visser is defeated is palpable, as he swings his tail blade for the first time in decades on his own accord.Alloran: <Do you know who did that? Do you know who moved my tail? I did. I did. I did it.>
- LGBT+ Periphery Demographic: Big time, between one character being confirmed bi, a pair of gay-confirmed aliens, and the whole “shifting into another body, including opposite genders when applicable” thing. Both authors being outspoken allies with a transgender daughter also helps. Also helping this is the textual acknowledgement - there are a couple of direct uses of the word "gay" in a couple of books, albeit used in a general descriptive sense rather than for any individual, but still virtually unheard of for a book series aimed towards children in the late nineties.
- Magnificent Bastard: The Ellimist was once a mortal Ketran known to his friends as Toomin, who, through a series of cosmically unlikely events, ended up becoming a reality-warping being. As the Sole Survivor of his kind, Toomin's transformation into the Ellimist begins after breaking free of "Father". Toomin learns to steal the millions of assimilated minds from Father, then uses this near-limitless knowledge to integrate himself into a super advanced spacecraft, travelling the galaxy as a technological deity to help planets prosper. However, the Ellimist comes into conflict with Crayak, who seeks to eradicate all life. Unable to stop Crayak's trail of death, the Ellimist instead counters by spreading new life on uninhabited planets that outpaces Crayak's work. The two technological gods battle one another, wiping out a tenth of the galaxy in the crossfire, which ends in the Ellimist and later Crayak entering a black hole and merging with space-time to become true gods. Continuing to play a Cosmic Chess Game, Crayak is responsible for the Yeerk crisis ravaging the galaxy, while the Ellimist manipulates the formation of the Animorphs as his warriors. The Ellimist assists the Animorphs from the sidelines numerous times, often exploiting loopholes to give them help without technically breaking the rules of the game.
- Memetic Mutation:
- There are many spoof Animorph covers involving strange transformations. Sometimes not even between a human and an animal
◊.- There's a rather infamous spoof cover of Cassie morphing into a watermelon.
- And then there are those with celebrities with animal names morphing into their respective animals, e.g. Pitbull, Seal, Snoop Dogg (after he renamed himself Snoop Lion)... and even Sarah Jessica Parker morphing into a horse (because according to Memetic Mutation she looks like one).
- Thanks to some offhand comments from Visser Three in the early books about Jake's tiger morph and Rachel's cat morph, "Visser Three loves kittens!" has turned into one of the more enduring inside jokes of the fandom.
- This fanart
◊ extends that obsession to tigers, with the Visser demanding Zoobooks posters of them.
- This fanart
- "Dapsen", implied to be a vulgar word in the Yeerk's language, frequently shows up in humorous fanfics from Yeerk characters' points of view.
- "God is a gamer" due to the Ellimist originally being an alien who played video games. This has resulted in some hilarious
◊ memes associating him with stereotypical "gamer" things, like Doritos and Mountain Dew. - Andalites are monsterfuckers.Explanation
- There are many spoof Animorph covers involving strange transformations. Sometimes not even between a human and an animal
- Moral Event Horizon:
- David murdering Jake and Rachel's cousin Saddler is played this way. Previously given some sympathy due to his having lost his parents and been forcibly recruited by the Animorphs into a war he doesn't want to fight, David's attempts to kill Tobias and Jake were the start of a slide down the slope to straight up villainy. David's decision to unplug Saddler, stash the body, and replace him, is the point at which the characters and the narrative stop treating him with any sympathy, and the point at which the audience realizes that there is going to be no reconciliation.
- Some members of the fanbase—and Jake himself for that matter—view his execution of 17,000 defenseless Yeerks as one of these. While Jake clearly feels bad about it, it's an action from which there is indeed no going back.
- It's hard to say where exactly Rachel crosses it, due to #32 being a case of a Superpowered Evil Side run amok and #37 having some inconsistent writing, but by the time of #52 she's firmly in Sociopathic Soldier territory, chasing down a deserting Yeerk Mook For the Evulz and then nearly committing vehicular homicide on the mild-mannered Captain Olston. It's implied that even Rachel herself realizes that she's too far gone when she agrees to go on that last mission for Jake.
- Narm: Rachel threatening David with a plastic fork in the ear. It's both intensely disturbing and somehow hilarious in its simple and straightforward language."He stepped back, drew back his fist, and swung on me. I dodged the blow. I grabbed his head with one arm and jammed the fork against his ear. I fought a nauseating urge to twist the fork, to make him scream in pain."
- Older Than They Think: The obscure manga from The '80s Dark Cat features boys turning into telepathic animals (only cats in this case, though) to fight off an evil invasion of creatures that parasitize their victims. For bonus points, one of their schoolteachers is one of the baddies.
- Only the Creator Does It Right: Frequently invoked by the fans in response to the ghostwritten books. Scholastic themselves invoked it once, when K.A. did a last-minute rewrite of the end of #28: The Experiment. Amusingly, the much-maligned #32 The Separation is frequently cited as an example, when in fact that book was written by K.A. herself.
- One-Scene Wonder: The ant that gained the power to morph from the blue box and has a run-in with Cassie.
- Paranoia Fuel:
- Thanks to their fantastic capacity for imitating their hosts, Yeerks can be anywhere, even inside the people you know intimately. Yes, you could be talking to an alien parasite who's putting on an elaborate act and doesn't mean a word he/she says while your genuine best friend/close sibling/beloved parent/significant other is watching you be fooled, and is mentally sobbing because no one realizes they're a prisoner inside their own head, and you'd have no way of knowing. At all. The Yeerks make a few rare mistakes, due to having their own agendas and personalities, but aside from a couple isolated incidents the Yeerks are absolutely undectectable. Combined with the books' Literary Agent Hypothesis setup, this makes for some very creepy Mind Screw.
- Also because of the Literary Agent Hypothesis, you realize that the insect you just killed could have been one of the Animorphs.
- Even though the Chee are good guys, the concept of people around you being Nigh-Invulnerable, incredibly fast extraterrestrial robots using holograms to make themselves look human is rather unsettling.note
- Popular with Furries: Not surprising, really, with all the shifting into animal forms.
- Rainbow Lens: Tobias is often interpreted as a transgender allegory, transforming from a human body into a hawk's, in which he feels infinitely more free.note The authors have stated this was unintentional, but have given their blessing to readers who interpret it that way, and are outspoken allies of the trans community.
- Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Not hated per se, but in its heyday, Jake was the most criticized character of the group for lacking the depth that others like Marco, Tobias, and Rachel had. Character Development kicked into high gear during the second-half of the series, and these complaints disappeared.
- The Scrappy: The One is widely loathed for bringing about the Bolivian Army Ending.
- Scrappy Mechanic: The Sario Rip effect is a rare non-video game example. It's a thinly-veiled way to send the kids on fantastical journeys to the Amazon or the Cretaceous, and it comes with a built-in reset effect that makes anything that happens during it irrelevant. The kids get all kinds of cool morphs they don't get to keep because of it, and the books where it is featured are usually a lot less fun than they were meant to be.
- "Seinfeld" Is Unfunny: Despite many things aging well, in many ways these books were a product of their time. The fact the series even had a Myth Arc was uncommon in young adult literature back then. However, said Myth Arc moved very slowly, was full of the characters restating the series' premise and rules for the first 20 pages, and there are loads of one-shot adventures that are resolved within the span of one book.
- Signature Series Arc: The David trilogy is considered a defining arc that contains some of the best writing in the series, departs from the typical episodic structure, and demonstrates just how far the Animorphs have come since the first book.
- Slow-Paced Beginning: The beginning of each book is loaded with a different phrasing of the same exposition about the Yeerks and "I can't tell you my last name" and "We can't stay in a morph for more than two hours" and "You see, every three days they have to..." and so on. Some fans make it a habit to just skip the first few pages of each one, but that can backfire because several books instead open with action and hold off on the dose of exposition for a while.
- Spiritual Successor: To Ender's Game, another Kid Hero focused Space Opera that deconstructs Kid Hero focused space operas, though it should be noted that Animorphs, despite being geared toward a younger audience, is much bleaker.
- Also to Manimal, which had a very similar concept of a human who could transform at will into various animals to fight evil.
- Strangled by the Red String: Official Couple Rachel/Tobias is a curious case. Back when the series was originally being printed it was the Animorphs pairing of choice, to the point where the TV show reinvented Tobias into the resident badass to better mesh him up with her. But as the fandom's matured, a lot of the more uncomfortable aspects of their relationship have been acknowledged, such as Tobias' attraction to other females — namely the female red-tailed hawk — and especially his obsession with Taylor. Then on Rachel's side, she doesn't seem interested in Tobias himself so much as she is the idea of Tobias, to the point where when she was split in two during The Separation her "good" side had no interest in Tobias at all, and her bad side — while respecting him as a fellow warrior — was still perfectly willing to kill him if she needed to. Also, although real Rachel has said "I love you" to Tobias, he's never said it back. Not to mention, in alternate timelines, they both dated other people (Rachel was dating Marco in one timeline, Tobias was dating Melissa in another).
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Has its own page.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
- The Yeerk Peace Movement is underused, a demonstration that Yeerks are Not Always Evil. Some do have a sense of ethics and either go without hosts or try to befriend and be partners to their hosts, it's the Yeerk Empire itself that is evil and harshly punishes anyone caught having "host sympathy". The YPM only factors strongly into one book, #29, and after that is sometimes mentioned but never has a strong role. A recurring character (or rather, characters, given it would be both a host and a Yeerk) who served as the Animorphs' contact with the movement could have been interesting.
- The two Gamebooks, The Alternamorphs, have been criticized for leaning heavily on Do Not Do This Cool Thing. The first one for having no actual branching paths and the second for only having Downer Endings. It doesn't help that they largely recapitulated the plots of The Invasion, The Forgotten, The Attack, and In the Time of Dinosaurs, rather than having original plots. Worse yet, the last three are all Bizarro Episodes that were divisive in their own rights.
- Honestly, the plot of the second half of the first Alternamorphs isn't without merit. The situation from book 11 starts again and Jake remembers the last time he and the others crashed in the Amazon. Since they have to do it again he wants to do things differently and right this time but he only has partial information and the Visser is a canny opponent. That sounds like the introduction to a time loop story, something main series Animorphs never touched on. This book also ends with Visser Three trying to take advantage of time travel to kill Visser One before she's powerful enough to be an impediment to him - yes, meddling with the timeline could obviously go very wrong, but it's in character for him to be this petty.
- Megamorphs III, the book where Visser Four gets his hands on the Time Matrix and starts changing the timeline, is only concerned with human history, because the visser wants Earth to be easier to invade and also to stop his host from quoting Shakespeare's historical plays. There's a lot of good in that book, but it might seem odd that this high-ranking Yeerk isn't preventing his disgrace on Leera or doing anything with Yeerk history.
- The toyline is pretty dramatically disconnected from any version of the series, but the blurb about the Tri-Rex
mentions the Animorphs breaking into the Yeerks' "genetic experimentation lab", which invites the idea that one of the ways Visser Three gets his monster morphs is by cloning extinct beasts. A book dedicated to this sort of thing likely wouldn't be big on deeper themes but could have been fun, especially the prospect of Visser Three morphing a big dinosaur - Ax kills a Tyrannosaurus in MMII but he was lucky to manage it, and the kids knowing they can take out a particular morph but having to really work for it could have made a good fight. - Temrash's memories and emotions are released into Jake's mind when he dies in Jake's head in The Capture, but this apparently doesn't give Jake any deep knowledge of Yeerk society or technology that would come in handy in later books (or of the Hork-Bajir, as Jake knows as little about them as the others do in The Change, despite having experienced the memories and emotions of Temrash's former Hork-Bajir host). Not to mention that some angst, recurring nightmares or identity issues related to having a dead Yeerk's thoughts lodged at the bottom of his mind could have been interesting to explore. (While Jake does get a couple of recurring nightmares after this, they have more to do with Tom and Crayak, respectively, than with Temrash.)
- Cassie acquires a Yeerk morph in The Sickness but this is the only time the Animorphs infiltrate the Yeerk Pool using such a strategy, or indeed use Yeerk morphs at all. In the TV series Rachel morphs Yeerk and infests Tobias, something that could have been quite interesting in the more introspective style of the books.
- Trans Audience Interpretation: Tobias can be interpreted this way given several factors. In book 1 he's eager to use the morphing power to escape his daily life, being reluctant to demorph as he considers his human body to be like a prison. This leads to him being trapped in morph, and while he has tremendous angst about it and is let out of Shapeshifter Mode Lock pretty early in the series he's quite reluctant to assume human form again. When he is in human form he's very awkward and intensely uncomfortable... except when morphing Taylor in book 43. While appearing to be a beautiful girl Tobias is full of confidence and negotiates tricky social situations without a pause, even enjoying that people are watching him. That's also the book where he considers whether he stayed too long in morph to avoid the complicated or unpleasant parts of his life, and when listing them starts with "being a boy".
- Trapped by Mountain Lions: Rachel, of all people, is subjected to this in the first Megamorphs book, The Andalite's Gift. The first half of the book has her contracting an unfortunate case of Easy Amnesia and wandering around the woods while her friends are fighting for their lives... as well as fighting for her life when her friends are wandering around, admittedly.note
- Unexpected Character: Arbron and Loren, two minor characters who hadn't been seen in years and had little reason to return again, both made surprise reappearances in the final arc. Weirder still, while Arbron's fate was neatly tied up in the epilogue, Loren wasn't addressed at all, making her a weird case of this character type meeting What Happened to the Mouse?
- Unintentionally Sympathetic: K. A. Applegate all-but-admitted in a 1997 FAQ
that she wrote David to be a mixture of hateful and pathetic, describing him in a post-book FAQ as a "weak, rotten human being
◊". The problem with this example (at least for some) as compared to most other characters of this type is that David is a young teenager who loses his family in a single night and suddenly finds himself wrenched from his normal life, forcibly recruited into a guerrilla war, and surrounded by strangers who don't seem to care about him or even like him very much. He's bitterly indignant in saying none of the others have had to lose everything, brushing off the examples of Ax and Tobias because they're "not human"; regardless, he has to be put up in Cassie's barn for two nights as the others are too preoccupied by another crisis to find somewhere nicer. While his betrayal is unconscionable, there are plenty of people who see where he's coming from, even if they can't condone his actions, and it's not hard to sympathize with his desire to leave the conflict behind and try for some semblance of a normal life. He commits some of the darkest acts in a series full of them, but when you're talking about a series where one of the main heroes orders the summary execution of over ten thousand helpless sentient beings, there are some readers who fail to see what he does as deserving of special condemnation. - Unintentional Period Piece:
- Book 16 is one of these in several ways.
- Joe Bob Fenestre and Web Access America are blatant references to Ted Turner and AOL Online, lending themselves to a then-topical Take That! that AOL was an evil corporation with plans to take over the world. As of The New '10s and The New '20s, AOL has been completely merged into Yahoo! and those sorts of jokes are now lobbed at Disney and Amazon.
- There's the whole Technology Marches On aspect where Jake's using a dial-up modem that works at a whole 38 kilobits per second. Marco boasts that his, being the newest and fastest around, manages fifty-six thousand bits (56 kilobits) per second. Ax laughs at him and condescendingly says "Not millions, at least?" In the mid-2020s, Ax's measurement is closer to what users would consider reasonable as connection speeds of, indeed, hundreds of millions of bits/second is unremarkable.
- Part of this book is an Episode on a Plane and it's a very pre-9/11 view of airport and plane security. The Animorphs just walk right in to the terminal to look at the gates. An ashtray for guests is a plot point. When they morph, they roll up their outer clothing to stash behind the toilets with Jake thinking, unconcerned, that maybe these will still be there when they get back and if not, it's just an annoyance. A man who sees him mostly morphed to fly has a freak-out that summons a single bored staff member who brushes him off after finding nothing. Jake's able to demorph in the plane bathroom, emerge into the cabin, and take an unoccupied seat without anyone noticing or caring about an unaccompanied minor with no shoes and no ticket.
- The society it takes place in counts towards this too. The very premise of the series really only makes sense as-is in the context of its 1990s setting, that being a time when the US was enjoying a period of perceived peace and prosperity, with no real rivals. The plot of "The Deception" revolves around the idea that the United States has no serious military or economic rivals and is unprepared to enter another major war, something the characters outright point out. This was a major sentiment in the 1990s, but is all but forgotten today. Tellingly, the Yeerks don't seem to stand in for any particular foreign enemy or ideology.
- Book 16 is one of these in several ways.
- Values Dissonance: Book 28, the "cow book". It's the only book in the series that gives much thought to how humans treat animals that aren't pests, pets, or charismatic megafauna and has the Animorphs taking the forms of lab chimpanzees and beef cattle. Cassie isn't happy about the conditions these animals endure and Marco tears into her repeatedly for it like she's an Animal Wrongs Activist, claiming she thinks animals are more important than humans. The anti-meat message is honestly quite mild and open ended, but Applegate purportedly hated it, which is why the last chapter has the Animorphs all suffer immediate Aesop Amnesia and most of them have a burger. In the two decades plus since this book, animal welfare (including the idea that meat animals should be killed with as little pain and panic as possible) is considered more seriously, and Marco's comments seem needlessly vicious and mean, especially considering that only three books ago Cassie had snapped at the others for assuming she'd object to them eating a seal and said that animals killed for food should be dispatched humanely and she does value human lives more.
- Viewer Pronunciation Confusion:
- Some people pronounce Yeerk as "yerk", while others pronounce it as "year-k". The TV show went with the former, while the audiobooks went with the latter.
- Given that when Elfangor posed as human he called himself Al Fangor, many fans pronounced his name similar. The audiobooks consistently pronounce it "elfin gore".
- Villain Decay: During the first few books Visser Three is downright nightmarish, devouring Elfangor alive and forcing the Animorphs to retreat in every direct confrontation by morphing into horrific monsters. Then Cassie sprays him as a skunk, and he descends into Cartoonish Supervillainy and Stupid Evil. Esplin's Villain Decay becomes even worse when taking the Andalite and Hork-Bajir Chronicles prequel books into consideration. There, despite being physically weaker than he was in the main series, he was a thoughtful, competent Chessmaster who rose through the ranks by becoming the Yeerk's expert on Andalites and outmaneuvering the protagonists. A far cry from the Ax-Crazy Bad Boss he later became. Towards the end of the series he's scary again.
- Wangst:
- David, who never stops whining about how unfair it is that he's "lost everything" even as he tries to murder the other kids. He doesn't seem to have any perspective about the situation and when told that Ax and Tobias have also lost everything he completely brushes them off saying they aren't even human.
- Rachel's personal life problems come across as a bit of this compared to the other Animorphs. Sure, her parents getting divorced sucks, but that seems pretty tame compared to Marco and Jake finding out their mother and brother (respectively) are controllers (and in Marco's case, after believing his mom was dead for several years), Tobias living with his abusive aunt and uncle and being bullied all the time, and Ax having his brother eaten by Visser Three at the start of the series. She doesn't dwell on it in the same way, though, or ever bring it up to the others.
- What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Despite being intended for children, this was in many ways ahead of its time in terms of the content presented. In recent years, the books have had a relatively large following with adults who read the series as kids. Some adults are just now discovering it, without knowing that it was intended for children. It's not hard to see why — it's incredibly dark and violent, and there are some concepts (such as drug abuse) subtly (or not-so-subtly) presented in the text that a kid simply wouldn't get. It doesn't help that the TV series toned down the violence.
- In VISSER, there are several implicit references to drugs. Jenny Lines is heavily implied to be a drug addict when Edriss said in the narration, "The only thing she really cared about was a certain human substance." They couldn't actually say what the substance was...
- This also apples to Hildy in the same book; he was heavily implied to be an alcoholic. To get him to talk, Visser Three said he'd give him a "bottle", but Applegate couldn't exactly say what was in the bottle. This has spawned the popular fandom joke that K.A. told Scholastic it was a bottle of milk.
- And of course the various Questionable Consent issues brought up by Yeerks taking unwilling hosts and then having children through them.
- In VISSER, there are several implicit references to drugs. Jenny Lines is heavily implied to be a drug addict when Edriss said in the narration, "The only thing she really cared about was a certain human substance." They couldn't actually say what the substance was...
- The Woobie:
- Tobias starts the series out as a skinny, blond-haired loser Jake saves from bullies... and Jake is the closest thing he has to a friend, despite the fact Jake thinks he's weird. (Jake finds him strange and pities him, but tries to include him) His parents are dead, his only two relatives fight over which one of them HAS to have him. He then gets trapped as a hawk by the end of the first book. He then goes on to have an epic identity crisis, start a semi-Interspecies Romance with a girl who really wants him to drop the "interspecies" bit, realize that the alien who died saving them is his father, get captured and tortured, realize that his mother isn't dead — she's amnesiac and crippled, and watch Jake send the love of his life to certain death. About the only good things that happen to him are Rachel, his girlfriend, and Ax, his best friend and uncle. They both die. For a series as dark as this one, Tobias stands out for his Woobieness.
- In Animorphs: Back to Before, Tobias etc don't become Animorphs. Without that to bind him to them, Tobias feels Marco dislikes him and drifts back away and is easy prey for the Sharing. He has a terrible time in that book.
- Poor Tom made one stupid decision that led him to become a prisoner in his own body for over three years. Very early on in the series, he'd rather die because he can't see another way out. By the end, the Yeerks have turned him into a Human Weapon, and he's strongly implied to be an Empty Shell. Worst of all, unlike most of the major hosts, he doesn't get better.
- Tobias starts the series out as a skinny, blond-haired loser Jake saves from bullies... and Jake is the closest thing he has to a friend, despite the fact Jake thinks he's weird. (Jake finds him strange and pities him, but tries to include him) His parents are dead, his only two relatives fight over which one of them HAS to have him. He then gets trapped as a hawk by the end of the first book. He then goes on to have an epic identity crisis, start a semi-Interspecies Romance with a girl who really wants him to drop the "interspecies" bit, realize that the alien who died saving them is his father, get captured and tortured, realize that his mother isn't dead — she's amnesiac and crippled, and watch Jake send the love of his life to certain death. About the only good things that happen to him are Rachel, his girlfriend, and Ax, his best friend and uncle. They both die. For a series as dark as this one, Tobias stands out for his Woobieness.
- Woobie Species: Many aliens.
- The Yeerks are the misunderstood variety for the most part. They are blind, sentient slugs who only take hosts to compensate for their biology. Only those in power and those seeking power can be said to be really evil, as most of the footsoldiers are either swept up in the propaganda or afraid to challenge their superiors.
- The Taxxons suffer from terrible Horror Hunger. They're a race of terrified over-eaters, cannibalising one another out of a terror of starvation. The ones in the Yeerk invasion force have it particularly bad, as they've been removed from the Hive Mind that usually regulates their hunger.
- The Hork-Bajir are a race of dumb, friendly bark eaters who were nearly wiped out in an attempt to deprive the Yeerks of hosts. The kicker is that it didn't even work. Those few Hork-Bajir who weren't killed were successfully infested with Yeerks, who complain that they reproduce too slowly, inviting fridge horror.
The TV Show
- Ass Pull: The ending of part 3 of "Face Off" is really weird and comes out of nowhere: The Animorphs are stuck in the Yeerk Pool, and Marco finds what is said to be the control room for the pool, even though it just looks like some kind of boiler room or something. He picks up a plastic box and throws it at something offscreen, which causes the entire Yeerk Pool to self-destruct!
- Awesome Music: Many, even those who dislike the show, agree the theme song
was pretty damn awesome; it exemplifies the dark pathos of the series. The instrumental end credits theme is pretty good, too. - Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
- Tobias is shot dead at the end of an episode while miles underground. The characters have to escape the underground by morphing into ferrets so there's no way for Tobias('s corpse) to escape. Jake even examines his dead body. Despite this, Tobias is shown to be alive at the start of the next episode.
- That one time Marco had a dream about being chased by a stop motion T-Rex (stock footage from another movie). Presumably it was supposed to be a Hork-Bajir, because it makes the exact same noises.
- Bizarro Episode: Even for this show, the oatmeal weaponization episode was pretty ridiculous. To be fair, it was actually adapted from the novel's own Bizarro Episode.
- Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Interestingly, Ax is fairly well liked for his ridiculously naive yet heartfelt lines, despite being Demoted to Extra in this adaptation.
- The crazy anti-Yeerk Lady in "The Forgotten".
- Badass Teacher, wilderness survival expert, and one-man-Controller-freeing crusade Mr. Perkins from "The Release" is highly popular despite only having one appearance.
- Fan Nickname: The show is often referred to as "AniTV" for short.
- Fountain of Memes: AX. If you thought Ax's dialogue could be a bit goofy in the books, the show takes it to the next level.
- He Really Can Act: Aside from all the kids, the hawk playing Tobias is surprisingly good at it.
- Ho Yay: The final episode all but confirms Ax/Marco, with Marco asking Ax to slow-dance with him at the same time as the canon couples are doing the same thing. Especially with the way Marco looks at Ax.
- Memetic Badass:
- Tobias. The one thing fans tend to remember the most about him (whether they like it or not), is that he's MUCH more of a physical presence, is more attractive, and is Tall, Dark, and Snarky.
- Marco to a lesser extent, for a certain thing that happened in the season 1 finale.
- Jake is a Mutant! No wonder he leads the Animorphs!
- Crazy Anti-Yeerk Lady. But seriously, how did she kill her own Yeerk?
- Tobias. The one thing fans tend to remember the most about him (whether they like it or not), is that he's MUCH more of a physical presence, is more attractive, and is Tall, Dark, and Snarky.
- Narm: This show has this in spades.
- Generally the acting is pretty mixed. While the actors themselves are pretty good, some of the dialogue can be a bit... off.
- The main weapon of the Yeerks is reduced to laser flashlights.
- The fight scenes generally consist of Rachel morphing lion and the opponents running away.
- When the heroes find Elfangor, he sounds... a little TOO happy to see them.

- The Animorphs referring to being infested as being "Yeerked", a silly-sounding verb that's not used in the books.
- Retroactive Recognition:
- Shawn Ashmore (Jake) would go on to star in the X-Men Film Series as Bobby Drake aka Iceman.
- Paulo Costanzo (Ax) would later go onto Joey and Royal Pains.
- Nadia-Leigh Nascimento (Cassie) also played Molly's secretly immortal childhood best friend Rebecca in So Weird.
- Seasonal Rot: While the first season was not well liked, season 2 is seen as worse, as it got even sillier and didn't take itself as seriously as season 1 sometimes tried to.
- Special Effect Failure: The show is infamous for, among other things, particularly bad special effects. You can see the weave in Visser Three's tailscythe, and the Hork-Bajir model (they only had one) is memetically bad. The dracon beams were just flashlights. The morphing effects, (whenever they weren't cut away from) are also just as awful as you'd expect them to be.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Actually pretty common throughout the series.
- Tobias doesn't become a hawk until episode 3. This could open up the chance to explore who he was before the transformation. But instead he gets an odd subplot where he gets paranoid about the morphing and runs off for a while, leading the others to worry that he sold them out until he redeems himself.
- ...Which leads to another wasted plot. Tobias is the outsider of the group, so a few trust issues would be interesting to work with. Instead, the show focuses on whether he actually is trustworthy, which most people'd be able to guess.
- ...Leading into what happens next. When Tobias goes missing, they wait a few episodes to reveal what happened to him. Perhaps a little more reaction from the main cast would have been nice?
- Rachel morphs a Yeerk to help Tobias infiltrate the Yeerk Pool (something the novel characters are too disgusted to do). His infestation leads the others to believe he's been captured. This definitely could have been utilized for more than a brief confrontation scene.
- Hell, infiltrating the Yeerks using Yeerk morphs is an awesome idea, and no-one ever brings it up again.
- The resistance. To be fair to this one, they were introduced right when the show was abruptly cancelled.
- Infested Jake tries to sway Tobias into letting him go by saying the Yeerks have the tech know-how to change him back to human. He backs this up by saying that Tobias's crush Rachel really thinks of him as the Team Pet. To the show's credit Tobias (as a hawk, no less) actually manages to look rather torn about it, quickly leaving the second Rachel comes to take over his shift.
- Rachel gains amnesia. Unlike the novel the episode is adapted from, this is the only plot going on. During the episode a Yeerk takes advantage of her amnesia to try to get her infested, leading her friends to worry she's giving up. Sadly this is reduced to a find Rachel/restore her memory in seconds plot.
- In that episode it's revealed that the conspiracy theorist/previously infested woman from the cabin is stalking/watching them. More then a few viewers wish she'd returned, or even joined the team.
- Tobias doesn't become a hawk until episode 3. This could open up the chance to explore who he was before the transformation. But instead he gets an odd subplot where he gets paranoid about the morphing and runs off for a while, leading the others to worry that he sold them out until he redeems himself.
The games
- Anti-Climax Boss: There's only one boss in Shattered Reality — Visser Three, fighting in a kind of Golem morph. He's not very hard.
- The Problem with Licensed Games: None of these games are exactly classics of the genre — even fans of the books tend to stay away from these things, not in the least because on top of being bad games, they don't actually represent the home series very well at all.
- Visual Effects of Awesome: The cutscenes in Shattered Reality. It was a PS1 game and a Troubled Production and yet its three cinematics managed to look surprisingly good.
The graphic novels
- The Chris Carter Effect: So far the graphic novels are on a schedule of one per year, and have corresponded to a single book each. Chris Grines says he wants to cover everything, but considering the number of books in the original series, unless some major Adaptation Distillation is ahead the graphic novels will probably never finish the entire story.
- Continuity Lock-Out: The first graphic novel never establishes that Jake and Rachel are cousins, leading to some jokes by fans about how the new readers it's trying to reach might start shipping them only to later find out they're related.
- Improved Second Attempt:
- The adaptation of The Visitor re-writes some aspects of the scene where Rachel is harassed by an older man whom she scares off with her elephant morph, turning the older man into a younger teen that Rachel was more confident she could handle on her own and making it a humorous scene. Some readers prefer this, others regret losing the genuine fear Rachel had in that moment. Regardless, the adaptation also removed some of the Victim-Blaming that the other Animorphs did to her.
- In the original The Invasion Visser Three acts like he's meeting Elfangor for the first time, even though The Andalite Chronicles would establish that they have an extensive history together, including Elfangor being partially responsible for Visser Three getting an Andalite body in the first place. The graphic novel adaptation fixes this by having him instead comment that Elfangor has become "quite a legend" since they last met.
- Memetic Mutation:
- Visser Three is thicc.Explanation Also given the moniker "Visser Thicc" or "Thiccalite".
- Jake punching Marco and Temrash-as-Tom endorsing the Sharing in The Invasion have both become exploitable templates.
- There are a lot of jokes about how all the human characters look the same.
- Tobias will return with more disturbing facts!Explanation
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Many fans weren't happy with the removal of Marco's iconic "idiot teenagers with a death wish" line from The Invasion.
