Animorphs: The Grey Morality of 90s YA's Most Tragic Characters

I saw Jake in the hallway at school I pretended not to notice him I saw Rachel too she had a dark look in her eyes like she hadn't slept like something was really wrong even Cassie seemed grim it had gotten to all of us it's not so easy to just forget terror it's not easy to just ignore the memory of your leg being ripped off of being dismembered torn apart it was too much this wasn't how life was supposed to be let's talk about animorphs animorphs is a serialized collection of about 64 books published in the late 90s by scholastic in it you know you have a Wikipedia it's fine if you've heard about any Moore's at all it's either because you read it in the 90s and have not shut up about it since or you're one of the people who's had to listen to us and now that movies been announced you want to know what the fuss is about the thing is summarizing this book series is challenging it came out around the same time as the Goosebumps series and like goosebumps new books were published at a cadence of around once a month but unlike goosebumps Anna marks told a continuous story with the same characters and roughly the same setting every single book they also cycled out their narrator POV characters Jake narrates the first book Rachel the second to bias the third and so on which led to months long gaps for a character's story to pay off because it wasn't their turn to tell a story yet this also necessarily meant that they were going to be a lot of filler books with some pretty weird plot lines so on the one hand the basic premise is simple an alien in delft Angoor gives five children Jake rachel cassie tobias and marco the ability to morph into any animal they can touch for up to two hours the Andalites communicate using telepathy a power that the kids pick up whenever they're in morph and they eventually join forces with another Andalite named axe they use this power to fight an evil race of alien slugs called the Yerkes who squirm into people's ears wrap themselves around their brains and take over their bodies turning them into what they call controllers you're the good guy aliens called the Andalites who look like this except that's not true at all everything you believe about and elect is a lie they're the bad guy aliens called the Horde Bashir and Texans who look like this and their biggest bad of all is the only anti light controller called Visser 3 there's art being a rank not a name a lot of people get confused on that and otherwise it's a pretty simple good and evil kids kind of Power Ranger story right yeah except for the time travel and Atlantis and the androids god I kind of forgot about God yeah several plot lines involve a character called the Ellimist who's kind of like an immortal God except it used to be like a bird creature from a planet with flying crystals instead of continents and this is as good a time as any to introduce my I don't really have time to get into it right now counter anytime we come across a plot point that's too complicated to explain right now I'm gonna throw it up on the board on June 18th 2020 it was finally announced that in Amar's will be getting its own blockbuster Hollywood big-budget movie adaptation from Scholastic Entertainment and pictures start completely ruining the original script I had for this video other ka Applegate as well as Michael Grant her husband co-author and professional hype man announced the move on Twitter where they usually spend their time being absolute legends like to briefly give you a rundown on what makes these two so awesome in no particular order when the NMR series ended on a cliffhanger on the precipice of another war a lot of fans felt that ending was unsatisfying and complained to which ka app will get responded in an essay too [ __ ] bad Wars don't have happy endings that lives get ruined and if you don't like it maybe keep that in mind the next time you step into a voting booth oh she wrote this in June of 2001 so fun fact that bit just pulled the audio cable out of my microphone and I didn't figure it out for about two hours so I just lost all that footage and that's the take you're getting in December of 2019 just a couple days after JK Rowling was getting all turfy on Twitter for not the last time katherine applegate tweeted out in support of the trans community which includes her own daughter and solicited donations for some trans led charities just a couple of days before Christmas meanwhile the day that the movie was officially announced Michael grant spent some time on Twitter retweeting people calling for this kids movie to be gory dunking on the 90s adaptation on Nickelodeon and committing 100% to absolutely no whitewashing of their characters to be clear grant would not commit to what age the kids would be yet but promised that they weren't gonna accidentally write out the brown kids if their goal was to convince Studios that they were going to make a politically safe watered-down version of their movie that would be palatable to general audiences they utterly failed these two are uncompromising radicals who have spent their entire lives speaking out against war bigotry and hate now if you didn't read and wash as a kid you're only familiarity might be through Tumblr posts like this or articles like this that talk about all the crazy and dark things that happen in the series like the time that an ant gained the ability to morph into a human and being completely unable to handle the sensory overload just screamed until I died or the time that a pacifist and Roy - briefly rewrote its own programming to allow it to commit acts of violence only to be horrified by what it had done and being an Android incapable of forgetting but all of these are just moments they're good moments don't get me wrong but if that's all Animorphs had to offer then it's just the young adult equivalent of robot shark versus giant alien octopus instead for this video I want to go a little bit deeper in the series I want to introduce you to the main characters and explain why their stories are still worth telling all these years late so let's get started with part one Jake the York killer meeting for kids generally needs to simplify its plots or characters for a younger audience and what are the popular ways to do that throughout the 80s and 90s was to reduce a character down to a single personality trait often expressible as even just one word you'd get your nerd you get your hothead you get your comedian but every group had to have the leader this is the person who is arbitrarily dubbed in charge their plot usually revolves around the burden of leadership and they usually make the right call in the end these are your Leonardo's your Optimus Prime's your any given Red Ranger your friends in animorphs Jake is the leader or as Marco puts it in an amorous number one yes Jake you are our leader you are the one who can bring us all together and help us defeat the controllers we have the ability to be much more than we are to have the stealth of a cat and the eyes of eagles and the sense of smell of a dog and the speed of a horse or a cheetah we're going to need it all we have any hope of holding out against the controllers I wanted it not to be true I wanted none of it to be true but I knew that it was or as the TV show puts it since when am i doing you just are there's a reason we don't talk about you so Jake isn't super thrilled about being the leader type which is ironically a key trait of being the leader type when they pick up packs later on and we will come back to him packs refers to him as Prince Jake which is sort of like a captain in the Andalite military now Jake guests in to stop calling him Prince for what seemed like obvious reasons Prince has a very different connotation in human cultures but over time it becomes also clear that he just simply doesn't feel like he deserves the responsibility of a military leader I would be very afraid to meet the teenager that does will get to you not that Jake doesn't occasionally give us a reason to be afraid of him Jake lives with his brother Tom who we learned very early on has a year in his head this sets up sort of a invasion of the body snatchers style paranoia that permeates the entire series the kids can't speak too loudly at school and they have to speak in code whenever they use the house phone by the way I I know I mentioned that Animus has a lot of really bizarre and outlandish elements in it so a house phone in the 90s was a phone that lived inside your house so Jake living with his brother Tom creates an existential problem for the group if Tom ever gets suspicious but in book number 31 the conspiracy Tom and Jake both have to go out of town because a family member of theirs has died and they need to attend the funeral now york's need to leave their host ted every three days to feed so being out of town for four days is obviously deadly to Tom's York but their father isn't infested and he will not allow the kids to stay home so Tom either has to assassinate or infest Jake's father Jake can't allow this to happen for a number of reasons because having two York's in the house would make it harder for him to sneak out but also he's emotionally invested in keeping his family free he already can't stand that Tom is invested and allowing his father to be taken or worse killed would be unacceptable Tim so in order to prevent this jake starts forcing the team to do things they would never do otherwise like ordering acts to torture someone to strike the Yerkes from his father jake orders the team to kidnap their vice principal chapman who is also a known controller the Vice Principals make easy bad guys for kids while he walk this was the 90s hey hey hey what is going on here they kidnapped their vice-principal tie him up in the middle of nowhere and insinuate that he's going to be starved to death axes to put it mildly uncomfortable with this he's a warrior not a torturer Jake is making bad calls forcing his friends to compromise in ways they never would otherwise all because he has a personal connection to one year coast it's not until marko steps in and figures out a pragmatic way to keep Tom home by breaking his leg that Jake manages to start seeing things clearly from then on he pledges to listen to Marco and be a better leader it's a nice story but animorphs isn't a nice story that's not how war works and Anna Morse is above all else a war story Contini Jers forced to lead a war don't become Paragons of moral virtue I would have a hard time summarizing all of the harsh calls that jake has to make over the entire series but there's one that defines his character in the end towards the end of the series the crew is in a battle aboard a New York spaceship if they can get control of the ship then they stand a fighting chance but along the way they discover a pool filled with 17,000 york slugs with no hosts they're just helpless slugs swimming in a pool no threat but they could be later this is their chance to take out 17,000 enemies before they become a problem and they don't know if they're going to win this battle so Jake gives the order flush them what Jake did is genocide there's no ambiguity there's no technicality and the book is very clear to even call it a war crime Jake orders 17,000 helpless and sentient beings flushed into the void of space and he has to live with that for the rest of his life Jake is 16 you know when you watch Game of Thrones for the first time and you sort of think you know how it's gonna go but then the good and honorable Ned Stark gets his head cut off in the first season because he was too naive to see the evil plan coming and you go oh this isn't that kind of show animorphs it's a bit like that you want to believe that the good guys are good the bad guys are bad and you can win by just punching hard enough but that's not really how it works Animorphs forces the reader to confront the idea of what's right in a war what victory even means and how to live with yourself when it's over Jake doesn't walk away from the war a hero we empathize with him and we root for him a lot of the time but by the end he's been so transformed by the choices he has to make that he's essentially unrecognizable we see in real time how war corrupts even good people arguably even turning them into the villains by the end Oh am I saying the ka Apple gamer at a better version of the Mad Queen Daenerys storyline decades before grrrrrr Mart never finished his if he does it all yeah I think I am part to Rachel warrior princess Rachel is the pretty one the books mention this like a lot and if this were any other series her characterization might end there she's the kimberley type who loves shopping is great at gymnastics and even after a fight somehow manages to never have a hair out of place she's also Jake's cousin for what it's worth but she changes when she gets involved in the water for everyone else fighting in a war is understandably a burden it's exhausting it's traumatic but from the beginning Rachel was the most gung-ho about facing that challenge she's the first to sign up for a fight she's the least fazed by the violence she needs very little convincing to get on board with any mission for example in Rachel's first narrated book and the second book of the series she has to morphic at to sneak into the home of vice-principal Chapman vice-principal Chapman is a known high-ranking controller and his daughter Melissa is one of Rachel's best friends as rachel is infiltrating the Chapman house she sees how coldly Chapman treats his daughter and why should he have any affection for the yerk in his head doesn't care about human progeny only the mission except the little girl doesn't know that all she sees are what used to be loving parents who now no longer give her the time of day they're effectively abandoning her in her own home and she's too young to figure out why not that there's ever really an age where you would guess alien slugs have taken over someone's brain unless you grew up on this series throughout the story we learned that Chapman actually volunteered to be a host in exchange for keeping his daughter free at least for a while he loves her enough to sacrifice control over even his own body but as a result he's physically unable to even say the words Rachel comes across Melissa crying at her bedroom unable to figure out why her parents seemed to not love her anymore now rachel is running out of time if she stays more than two hours and more if she's going to be trapped in the form of a cat but she risks it so that she can cuddle up with Melissa just to spend a few moments comforting a crying girl and she finally gets out she tells Cassie I decided that I don't care what it takes or how many risks I have to run I don't care what happens to me I hate these Yorke's I hate them I hate them and I will find a way to stop them it's a good motivation and it never comes up again because that's not really why she signed up for this war and in fact in chapter three of this book before all of that heart-wrenching stuff with Chapman's daughter she gets to an argument with Marco about whether or not they should proceed she thinks they should Rachel doesn't show a moment's hesitation no one needs to talk her into it her catchphrase throughout the entire series is let's do it because she doesn't know anything else she can't not do it over time she becomes addicted to the adrenaline rush of combat and I mean literally addicted she openly acknowledges it in book number 27 the exposed when she says this is why we fight and to be honest I like a good fight the adrenaline spike of battle the rush the challenge and now that I've admitted that I'll admit something else lately it's been scaring me that I like it that I look forward to it so much and I'm afraid that if I keep giving in to the urge sooner or later I'll forget how to do anything else nowhere is this more drawn into focus than in the David trilogy the David trilogy is arguably one of the best most emotionally devastating stories of the entire series wait no that's not arguable at all like if you don't think the David trilogy is one of the best stories like what is on your list when they got sent back to dinosaur times when starfish Rachel gets split into a good and evil twin alterna morphs are you a fan of alterna morphs I'm making jokes because for as good as the story is it's also one of the hardest to talk about in the trio of books 20 21 and 22 a kid named David discovers the morphing cube it's the box that allows Andalites to give other people the ability to morph this instantly makes him York's most wanted his parents are immediately made into controllers his home is destroyed and the team has no choice but to make him into an Animorph David's a [ __ ] David uses his powers to steal things he almost immediately threatens to turn on the Animorphs as soon as things get tough and he eventually escalates to the point of killing a red-tailed hawk that everyone on the team including David believes is Tobias at the end of the second book in the trilogy just before he confronts David in a mall Jake gives axe an order get Rachel if David's killed Tobias we may have to do a terrible thing to get Rachel throughout the third book in the trilogy rachel has to wrestle with why Jake her cousin who's known her for years turn to her first when he thought they might need to kill someone not a controller not an enemy combatant a jerk free human teenager and a former ally Jake didn't ask for backup he didn't say get the team he said get Rachel because he just see her as an unstable weapon a cold-blooded killer a sick twisted maniac who wouldn't think twice about snuffing out a troubled teenager who just lost his friends his parents and his home even if he does Rachel concludes he's right I knew Jacob picked the right person see I cared for Tobias I don't think I even knew how much I cared till right then but if David had killed him I would have revenge I would make Tobias as a murderer pay don't worry she didn't kill him instead they tricked David into morphing a rat locked him in a small box and kept him there for two hours until he was trapped in a rat more forever then they abandoned him on a small deserted island just off the coast and every once in a while beachgoers swear they can hear someone screaming banging in the distance the book just ends there like that's it that's the David trilogy who's got next part three Tobias birdboy vice is quite possibly one of the most tragic characters and all of Animorphs which I know is a high bar but I admit my knowledge of Tobias is a little bit lacking at least in comparison to Zachary Vado in the 2017 fan-made and Applegate approved audiobook of megamorph number one Zach played Tobias because he's a boss so let me see if I can get him on the phone hey Zack you got a minute to talk about goddamnit Eric and it works again this day and every day man I need some L talking about Tobias you want to tag in thought you never asked my name is Zack I can't tell you my last name because Eric already did that I can tell you about Tobias though and how he is the prime example of purpose and cost in this series the first time that Jake tells us about Tobias it's about the time that he made some bullies stop giving him a swirly in the school toilet in fact Jake doesn't even consider Tobias a true friend at this point his exact words were I told the two creeps to step off and ever since then Tobias figured I was his friend so the story of five friends getting alien powers is actually the story of four friends and the one weird bully magnet that they just let tag along and that was Tobias his life up until he became an Animorph he was just kind of they're never actively wanted shuffled back and forth across the country between his aunt and his uncle siblings of his estranged mother who abused and neglected him in a constant cycle he was never around long enough to make friends which is why Jake doesn't have that attachment Tobias even has a crush on Rachel long before these books but he never acted on it which is outstandingly relatable and probably why I connected it to bias so much damn it Eric in spite of this Tobias is a dreamer detached from humanity but looking for more in life and he found it he was the first to seal fangore ship in the sky the first to engage with him when he landed and the last to leave a fangore side before the Yerkes arrived he's also the first to acquire and morph an animal his uncle's cat which he shows Jake the morning after getting their powers he fully embraces the freedom of morphing particularly the red-tailed hawk all of the kids like flying but Tobias loves it and he tells the reader this every chance he gets say the word thermals in public to spot an animal's fan in the wild it's kind of our code word being an animal fighting the Earth's making elf an Gore's death mean something this is the something more that Tobias needed and he finally found it so naturally the series rips it away from him in the very first book after their first attempt to strike at the irks Tobias finds himself pinned down and hides while the others escape which means that Tobias doesn't have the chance to morph out of his battle morph the hawk for more than two hours because of this he loses the ability to morph and the ability to return to human form the Andalites have a word for this not wit Tobias is now by default a red-tailed hawk the others continue to treat Tobias as one of the group regardless but there's a gallows humor to it and nicknames like bird boy Marcos ill-thought-out jokes about his condition at first Tobias lives in Jake's attic and eats leftovers at Jake's sneaks for him trying to hold on to some semblance of humanity while highly aware of the disconnect when Jake and Marco go to play video games for example tobias takes note it's kind of a shame he says with my eyesight and the reaction time I have I could probably be major competition in Doom but joysticks and control pads aren't made for talons the strain from this loss and depression is made worse by the instincts of the hawk because that's the fun part about morphing you get the whole animal the hawk brain is constantly fighting back to run on instinct do what Hawks do and eventually Tobias kills and eats his first prey before he gets a chance to process it and he snaps at this point he goes on a suicide run through the mall he tries to dive-bomb a glass door to snap himself out of it he plows through stores and people he panics the food court he tried to escape through the skylight which he only manages to do because Marco Chuck's a baseball at it and breaks it Tobias doesn't even know if he would have stopped before ramming the glass but at that point he doesn't care Tobias has lost himself entirely to the hawk for a few days he forgets what it means to be Tobias entirely he flies he hunts sheep set another Hawk until he sees the human being chased by a [ __ ] for sure controller in the woods for a brief second he loses himself in the moment of predator prey before the sight of the horse Bashir chasing the person floods his brain with human memories human connections and his purpose of fighting in this war the thing that reigns supreme for Tobias overall Humanity and Hawk is that sense of purpose and it brings him back to the Animorphs acting as their eye in the sky for missions and reconnaissance he stops trying to be human he lives in the woods develops a hunting pattern he experienced his the freedom of being a hawk while also not giving up his true nature entirely staying connected with the Animorphs he is truly now the bird boy existing is both and the craziest part everything that I just said battle goes down by book three three out of like sixty for the rest of the series tobias continues to stay true to that purpose the watchtower to the Animorphs team arrow still wrestling with the notion that he's lost humanity despite his split life even with his purpose and personal acceptance of the situation he never fully gets over the idea that he doesn't belong truly as human or as hawk no surprise that out of all the Animorphs Tobias is the poster child of the lgbtq+ community despite none of the animals being explicitly named as such though Kathryn and Michael actively support fans reading it the way that makes sense to them the 90s were a tough sell for that in the young adult market throughout the rest of the series he discovers some escaped torque Bashir and helps get them to freedom hiding them away from the irks where they can't be found helping them build a free heart for sure resistance colony and even becomes the namesake for the first Tork Bashir born out of captivity he gets his morphing powers back thanks to the Ellimist he acquires his own DNA from before he got the morphing power thanks to some elements time travel [ __ ] where he also tells his past self to get the group to go through the construction site to make sure that everything happens this way how is that for some terminator time loop by the way all three of those things that's also just one book he discovers that his sense of purpose and bond to a fan core is a whole lot deeper than he realized because a finger is Tobias his father yep more element stuff Tobias was always destined for this Wetherell Fangoria Tobias knew it or wanted it and there is so much more that Tobias goes through in this series he even kills Hitler no really book goes nuts with time-travel stuff over the series he bonds with Rachel a lot when Tobias did his suicide run in the mall he calls out to Rachel who is there because it's Rachel and it's a mall that he lost himself do you know what she tells them as long as you have me and the others you aren't lost Tobias emphasis on me she is his anchor to humanity constantly and their connection even becomes romantic they understand each other in terms of dedication to the cause and humanity slipping away she celebrates his birthday with him they fly together often they go on stupid missions to destroy a car dealerships together boy meets girl boy becomes Hawk girl becomes warrior classic love story surely this won't also go poorly for Tobias Tobias also bonds with axe since they connect deeply on the weird outsider in the group thing they live together in the woods both hiding away from humanity in their own ways eventually they also connect because axe is a fan Gore's kid brother which makes him by default Tobias his uncle but regardless of the family connection they are still Jake and Marco levels of clothes there's even an Andalite word for it erm it means something closer than a friend coming from the Andalite word for tail blade you would trust your Shoreham to put their tail blade to your throat because you know that they would always have your back and never betray you I don't review that ax is the best thing to happen at Tobias since everyone else had paired off with best friends in the group except for him up until acts and the team scholastic originally thought that kids wouldn't be able to connect it to bias and acts as much as the other kids due to their personal conditions a boy trapped as a hawk and an alien in the woods so the originally showed up as narrators every 10 books Jake Rachel Tobias Cassie Marco Jake Rachel axe Cassie Marco repeat by the second half of the series they were in regular rotation with the others because go figure the story of a kid who just doesn't feel like they belong in this life looking for a sense of purpose out there is shockingly the most relatable story of all now let's Sario rip back to Eric I'll make him explain that one to you come on man it's a time-travel thing that happens whenever there's a big explosion and just threw it on the counter part for Cassie killer with a conscience Cassie is an annoying hypocrite part 5 Marco the room okay okay okay okay I'm kidding not about her being a hypocrite though she's just a hypocrite with a purpose see Cassie is the tree-hugging horse girl who posts 20 times a day on Facebook because someone somewhere in the world did something wrong her role on the team is to ask our waste services applicable which makes her a hypocrite almost immediately I mean they've been recruited into a war if they do nothing the enemy will continue to infest and enslave everyone it's sort of like you're in the trolley problem except if you don't pull the lever the trolleys going to turn around and kill the one person anyway hop off the tracks and kill you drive to your house and kill your entire family and then scorch the very foundations of the earth killing every species that isn't explicitly useful for food so like maybe killing that one guy is preferable but Cassie doesn't see it that way she was raised by veterinarians and she spends her days caring for and treating sick or injured animals in book number 19 Ellen wolf more she rips the throat out of an enemy and feels nothing and she can't feel nothing she is too empathetic so she makes the difficult decision to leave the team the other end wars do not take it well marco makes condescending jokes jake acts disappointed but it's Rachel Cassie's best friend and first to jump into a fight mind you who tells her off the most Rachel we can still be No we can't she said cutting me off see you've just said the whole world can drop dead so long as you Cassie don't have to end up turning into me later in that same book Cassie gets lost in the woods with a much younger girl named Karen Karen has a year in her head two of them have to work together to get back to civilization but as they travel Cassie tries to make peace with the year named after a 942 after and explains that in their natural state jerks are helpless slugs that swim around in a dark featureless pool forever they can't help that they evolved to be parasites any more than humans can help that they evolved to be predators you're our meat EV trances throughout the entire book Cassie is wrestling with her conflicting beliefs on the one hand Europe's enslaving other races is wrong on the other hand killing Yerkes including their host bodies who are just innocent victims in all this is also wrong and on the other other hand asking york's to deny what they evolved into and live a dark depressing life in an ugly york pool forever maybe it feels the least wrong but it doesn't feel good she knows she can't make the warring factions stop fighting each other but maybe she can make peace between one human and one year not everywhere just right here for a start cuz yeah Cassie that'll fix everything have you tried putting the flower in the barrel of a Dracon beam but look it's easy to dunk on Cassie for hoping that we can all just hug it out and a lesser story probably would but this isn't a lesser story this is goddamn Anna Morse and ka Applegate isn't letting you off the hook that easy that's right I said sometimes in war you have to kill people is the easy way out see after and comes back later the two of them come to an agreement and AB Tran promises to never again take an unwilling host as a result about 10 books later in book number 29 the sickness the group discovers that there is now a growing York peace movement after an was just a start now there are hundreds of them hundreds of York's who believe that taking an unwilling host is wrong and amazingly some humans who are willing to be hosts in order to help them further that cause it's not nearly enough but it's a start so I know that I'm spoiling a lot of the story and it's technically your fault for not reading these books in the last 20 years like I've been telling you to do but I really encourage anyone who's interested to go back and read the series especially to see how Cassie's story plays into the endgame because she's not just annoying for Annoying sake this entire series is about tough questions and throughout it Cassie has to make a lot of hard choices it was technically her idea to trap David as a rat it was her idea to recruit disabled children to fight in the war actually let's talk about that for a second wait see towards the end of the series the kids need to recruit more people to help them fight the war they need people that the Yerkes have an infested and are unlikely to infest in the future and since york's are only after able bodies that are an improvement over the alien races they have already conquered they probably overlooked any children with physical disabilities so the Animorphs recruit a cadre of disabled children now if your first reaction to that is whoa you can't just send disabled children into war then I actually point out the word disabled isn't necessary in that sentence but that's also what Cassie says too it's her idea and she immediately should sit down even though they'd be giving the kids the ability to morph and to fight in animal bodies most of them would still be vulnerable in between morphs and they'd be more likely to be hurt or killed we're not doing this she says which is ablest as hell Jake points out that this is their war too and they're not incapable of making the decision about whether or not to fight okay to be clear they're not actually capable of making their own decisions but it's because they're children not because of any disability they're minors and minors can't consent to war but I admit were sort of past that point in the narrative but even though she knows Jake is right at the very least that she shouldn't decide for someone else what they can and can't do based on her preconceived ideas about a disability she's still never comfortable with this but that's the role she serves in the story she's a hypocrite she has to be a hypocrite the team needs a hypocrite on the battlefield only a hypocrite is going to ask is this wrong should we be doing this are we the bad guys the person who kills comfortably the person who never second guesses themselves the person who never has any doubts about wiping out an enemy is probably not a good person if there comes a time when you absolutely must resort to violence you at least want someone on your side that's going to feel bad about it Cassie doesn't let herself or anyone else off the hook for the immoral things they sometimes have to do as a result she's the reason there's a year capice movement at all her choices don't always work out and she very often alienates the people in her lives by sticking too closely to her beliefs but at the end of the day without her on the team it would be far too easy to become the evil they're trying to destroy part five Marco the ruthless in the first ain't no worse book Marco very nearly takes a punch for correctly pointing out that Jake's brother tom is a controller I like to think that he holds a grudge about that because he spends the entire rest of the series whining Marco was the designated comedy character who bothers the other animals by making jokes at opportune and inopportune times but more annoyingly constantly says that we shouldn't have to do this which to be fair he's right they're kids Marco doesn't get a turn as the narrator until book 5 and he's the last one to really emotionally resolve to fight in the war up until that point he insists we shouldn't be doing this we shouldn't have to risk our lives and someone else should handle it but since everyone else is going to do it anyway he decides that he should come along not because he likes to feel included but because he thinks they'd be caught or killed without him once again he's kinda right being kinda right is actually his entire brand see murga wasn't just the funny one he's the skeptical one he's the analytical one his mother died a couple years back his father fell into a deep depression and he turned to comedy as more of a coping mechanism he's more resistant to being emotional than the other characters and he's usually the first to figure out how something could go wrong because he's expecting it to I could spend a while getting into the complex psychological relationship between cynicism emotional damage and comedy but I sort of already did do that a bit after only a few missions marco has hit his limit he's done his father is already a wreck and mark was pretty sure that if he died too his father would not be able to handle it so he decides this last mission they're on right now is it after this he's walking but on that mission they get captured by Visser 3 who takes them into orbit into the heart of the Year coolship the most deadly isolated inescapable strong all the York's have and they come face to face with one of the few beings in the galaxy that outranks their greatest enemy this sir one and the host body miss Irwin occupies is Marcos mother she's alive now you might think at this point that Marcos motivation becomes clear save his mother at all costs even if it means staying in this deadly dangerous war and that's sort of what happens Marco does decide to stay in fight and a full half of his narrated books are either about or feature his mother but he isn't willing to save her at all costs Marco understands that winning the war is more important than getting what he wants if they lose the war he doesn't get what he wants anyway the Yerkes take over enslave or kill everybody and he doesn't get to go home with his mother gonna have a happy family so if it came down to saving his mother or defeating the enemy he's the one person on that team capable of making that decision in book number 30 the reunion marker learns that the yerk and his mother's head has been demoted and is on the run from the York Empire he realizes there's an opportunity to take out two of their greatest enemies in one move even though it would kill his mother its passage in this book that summarizes the way Marco thinks better than any other people don't understand the word ruthless they think it means mean it's not about being mean it's about seeing the bright clear line that leads from A to B the line that goes from motive to means beginning to end it's about seeing that bright clear line and not caring about anything but the beautiful fact that you can see the solution not caring about anything else but the perfection of it that's what had happened I saw the way to take both ficers down and that's all that mattered I couldn't do the story justice by trying to summarize it but the short version is forest horn is Marko fields he still goes through with his plan he leads his mother to her death even intentionally trying to knock her off a cliff no matter how much it tears him up inside internally he's aching just to hear her say his name say I love you one more time but he knows the York in her head can't be allowed to survive this so anyway she does yeah the serialized nature of these books kind of means that they have a lot of the same problems of TV shows have where you can't just write out a major villain halfway through the season but the Year coup was Visser one and his in Marcos mother's head is still wanted by the year empire markers next book the proposal intertwines with a standalone book called Visser that explores the origins of the infiltration of Earth through the lens of Visser ones trial during a break in the trial this one manages to get away and call marko whose identity she learned at the end of marquez last book Visser one begs Marco to get his friends to come attack the year cool to prove a point win a political battle with Visser three and in doing so save his mother's life and Marco tells her to blow off it's not a trap I whispered urgently I know like you said you know me if you wanted me dead it would be easy you could take me infest me and have all of my friends within a few hours so you need me this is about your little personality conflict with Visser three you're desperate but you won't give me up to Visser three because you hate him more than you hate us I almost choked from almost no information he had painted a very cogent picture of the situation then I almost laughed I once thought you are too soft too gentle yeah well things change she does eventually convince Marco to help and as a show of appreciation she allows a little bit of his real mother to come through and Marko tells her to eat [ __ ] again Marko your mother loves you I said but if I'd been expecting him to soften I got the opposite result I know my mother loves me Visser he said and let me make one thing clear there's no deal between us you and me York I'll kill you for what you've done to her into my dad count on that shortly after they storm the air-cool get Markos mother alone an order Visser 1 to leave her head when the yerk refuses marko orders axe to put his tail blade to his mother's throat either the yerk leaves now or he will remove her head from her shoulders this is a book for teenagers the irk refuses to believe that he would willingly kill his own mother to which Marko replies you know what it says on the New Hampshire license plates my mom knows we talked about it at the time we thought it was kind of corny but then the more we thought about it it wasn't corny at all it was inevitable I accessed the memories live free or die live free or die my mother walks out of here a free woman or she dies Jesus Christ Marco I related a lot to Marco growing up and it's not just because he's the funny one so it helped Marco understood something that I had never seen in a fictional character by that age he understood that ruthless and evil aren't always synonyms being willing to make hard choices in service of a worthwhile goal is not inherently wrong just because the phrase the ends don't justify the means exists Cassie's story might rightfully point out that no one is off the hook for the consequences of their compromised choices but Marcos story points out that they're not off the hook for inaction and moral feebleness either if the end result of not killing his mother in those circumstances is that she stays enslaved and kills and enslave countless others than what good was sparing her life if the end result of your moral choice is still injustice slavery and death then you have to ask yourself what's the point of making the moral choice in the first place the series never gives a concrete answer by the way it never fully signs with Cassie or Margo because life isn't that clean part 6x foolish Erised whoever gets to play axe is going to have a blast a joke I see I say that but there's a decent chance that whoever gets to play axe whose full name by the way is next Emily s current acts similar acts similar Ruth hey Zack how do you say his name again so I pronounced it axe Emily s Krystal the TV show says X similarly s Curtis Ville ka has yet to give an official translation though she also says elfin Gor instead of elf an Gor I'm on the fence with her about that one yeah that axe is what's known as an heiress or basically a cadet in the Andalite military he's the younger brother of a fangore and during the battle over earth he was left behind on the Andalite dome ship the dome ship crashes into the ocean where he's stranded for several books until the animals can come get him so there's a distinct possibility that if they don't choose to change that story that he might not end up in the movie at all which is a shame because we'll miss such great things as X creating a hybrid human morph out of the four remaining human animorphs that's weirdly attractive but also off-putting X going absolutely bonkers go nuts when he discovers the human sense of taste and starts stuffing his face with every type of food he can get his hands on and also cigarette butts and axe becoming uncontrollably fascinated with every sound the human mouth can make playing playing with each new sound like it's a toy I know animorphs has a reputation for being dark but I think axe brings a levity to the series that would be noticeably lacking with his absence for example X is uncontrollably addicted to Cinnabon once eating an entire tray of the things because he was quote not aware of the specifications for human stomachs and delights in general are so obsessed with the and sense of taste that many of them come to Earth's specifically to try Krispy Kreme Doughnuts no no no we are not doing that again Cinnabon or nothing my Andale I don't want none unless you got buns zacchara a fat joke I want to make that 100 percent clear Zach gets credit for that joke I do not good let's move on axis fish-out-of-water story which I think actually happens to them once it's not just played for Laughs early stories and even the Animorphs Bible used to pitch the story to scholastic describe the Andalites as the good guys of the galaxy and of course they are they fight the evil lurks abroad the galaxy liberating the country planets that they enslave why wouldn't they be the good guys did I mention this series was released in the 90s well most of the Animorphs go through a disillusionment phase when they start to figure out that the Andalites aren't going to swoop in and save the day at the last minute it's axe whose hit hardest by this because he grew up in Andalite society he joined the Andalite military was trained as a warrior and believes that fighting and even dying for his people is a noble cause his role is to serve his prince who he can always trust to do the right thing in fact you remember that earlier bit where I was talking about Jake giving ax orders that make him feel uncomfortable for a while ax believed that the problem was not that princes could be bad but that humans were the problem but andele culture is arrogant and isolationist one of their most somber laws is zeroes kindness which specifically prohibits Andalites from sharing technology or secrets with any other race named after Prince zero the first Dana liked to make contact with the year comb world he taught them about space travel he shared technology and secrets with them he trusted them and they betrayed him for it prince zero is the reason that the york empire is loose in the galaxy so ax cut off from his people but also aware of the dire consequences of sharing technology with another race keeps a lot of secrets from the Animorphs and they're not light secrets either for example during an early mission the Animorphs take out a device called the king drona which is a sci-fi thing that generates nourishing candrona raise that york's need to swim in every three days in order to survive while a few high-ranking controllers will be able to make a trip to the mothership in order to feed the Animorphs expect that most hosts are going to be free of their Yorke's in a short time free hosts would mean witnesses it means people telling the story it wouldn't be just one nutjob that we can all ignore the public would know the Animorphs wouldn't be alone in this fight anymore but then jaqen acts witness a known controller executes the host of a year that was on the brink of starvation so ex grudgingly revealed the truth rather than let a host go free when it's york dies the york's will execute the host by taking out the kandrona the Animorph signed the death sentences for an unknown number of human hosts and they had no idea it would happen but acts did Jake's brother Tom is a controller Jake didn't take too kindly to this information being withheld acts takes another opportunity to side with his people when they're briefly grouped with a crew of Andalites offworld for reasons we will throw on the counter finally back with his people hex hopes that he can once again belong he abandons the Animorphs to serve the Andalites that he's fallen in with the animals were good to him but these are his kind but ax has betrayed the leader of the Andalite group they found is a year kalae not infested or enslaved there's no York in his head he simply chooses to sabotage a spacecraft kill some Andalites and plans to hand the Animorphs over to Visser 3 nothing special about it just garden-variety betrayal ax doesn't expect this though it shatters the illusion in his mind that the Andalite military he's devoted his life to is incorruptible that some Andalites would side with the Yerkes killed their own kind not because they were enslaved because they chose to it's unthinkable to acts while the reader might come to this series distrustful of human authority figures the series gives us an alien race that we are repeatedly told is just inherently good that's the story we're kind of used to hearing elves are good orcs are bad Becky and even promised they'd stop doing that but through access story we get to feel that disillusion axe believed his people were good we were told his people are good they're just as corruptible as everyone else it's a lesson acts keeps in mind the next time Andalites visit earth a group of washed-up Andalites lam claiming they're on a mission to assassinate Visser three axe leaves the Animorphs once more following another unknown and alike captain but with a bit more suspicion this time after hacking their ships files he learns that they're all officially listed as dead they're not expected to return from this mission there's some kind of Suicide Squad their plan is not to assassinate one year they're here to release a virus that would kill all of them very likely humans to genocide raise one planet to save them all but like I said axe learns he never actually left the Animorphs and in fact snuck them in on his own body as fleas they're able to intercept and stop the genocide one of the analytes in that crew is shocked that axe wouldn't immediately trust them that he would disobey the Andalite military hierarchy it was all a deception he misled us you lied to your own people I shook my head no I have learned something estrogen these are my people anyone who believes in freedom anyone who resists tyranny anyone who pursues peace is my people and alight hork bashir or human it would be easy to simplify access story into a spa kyun learn what it means to be human tail and man I lean hard into that and that impression there but what makes his story special is the way he transforms from an ardent believer in the way things are to a person who is capable of thinking for himself by the end acts is able to form alliances not based on affiliation or race but by ideology common ground and the relationships he's built as a teenager I still had a lot of disillusionment phases to go through but having a template like this made it a little bit easier if you've ever heard someone say Animorphs radicalized me this is the kind of thing they mean it never shied away from telling morally gray stories representing the real nuanced ugly truth of the world even as it found a hope in it maybe the Andalites can't be trusted maybe no entire species can be trusted but there are some people who can epilogue okay but what about all that weird stuff okay so that was a lot but we got through it that wasn't so bad right yeah come on this was it was the bet so what's the counter at right now know what that doesn't seem like a lot anyway what am I missing oh that's right I forgot to mention the howlers a race of lava monsters that kill because it's fun the Helmick ron's a diminutive species that shrinks people down leer ins a race of mind reading in phibian creatures the Texans who are so ravenously cannibalistic we hungry that they will eat themselves the time that mr3 spend a lot of time and killed a lot of people because he wanted to secure an Andalite toilet fangore invented the Windows operating system crack the other evil immortal god creature that looks like an eyeball attached to a machine thing mr. Three's brother is a cannibal who survives by eating other Yorke's through his human host body the time they get a morphing disease and Rachel accidentally poops out a crocodile there's like a bunch of time travel I really can't explain how weird this series is how much stuff just comes out of nowhere and how some of it doesn't tie together at all like I seriously can't explain it wait yes I can I'm gonna do another one of these [Music] okay I know I just promised to take it one of these videos that I'm gonna do it but I'm gonna need a bit of a break this was a lot this is a lot bigger than what I expected it to be that's a lie I expected to talk money more for apples so I promised another an amorous video was coming eventually I will probably never shut up about this but I'm gonna try to not turn this into just the Animorphs channel but if you got to the end of this thank you that was way too much you should not have had to sit through all that and if you want to see the next one then away and I'm gonna say it subscribe okay but actually do though that's probably the best one what you know what can happen okay bye

Channel: Lord Ravenscraft

Views: 336,414

Keywords: animorphs, animorphs movie, scholastic, young adult, ya lit, 90s, video essay, k.a. applegate, animorphs series (literary series)

Id: nPRKzwgqvAA

Length: 55min 27sec (3327 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 14 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/lordravenscraft]

I've been working on this video essay for a WHILE with /u/cryofthebanshee. It's the first in a planned series of essays that we were already working on before the movie was announced, but man did that kick us in the ass to get these out. We wrote it with the intent that it would also help anyone who's unfamiliar with the series to get why the story resonates so much with people. I hope you all like it.

[u/Andalite_Warrior]

You totally gotta post part 2 when it’s out this was great

[u/TwentyNineDays]

55 minutes of Animorphs discussion? Hell yes please!

[u/Isiildur]

Thanks for making this. Really enjoyed watching it (and it gave me a lot of insight into Marco that I didn't pick up on when reading the books as a kid. Looking forward to the next video.

Rachel still takes the cake as my favorite though.

[u/AniMorphs63]

I started this, but it contains minor spoilers for plots I had not read. I read the beginning books til the end of the David story line and then the final 3 or so books. Currently reading thru series now. On book 14. Will definitely revisit this when I'm further along.

[u/ScorpionGlitch]

Waiting for part 2, watching joker video, just subbed

[u/GeshtiannaSG]

It's proof how complex these characters are, when the about 6 minutes detailed summary doesn't even begin to scratch the surface.