It's come to my attention that there's a podcast episode that goes over some of this same stuff I talk about here. Check it out: czcams.com/video/6zrE6m3xOoE/video.html
That 4 hour video was my introduction to the absolute fucking madness of Animorphs just last week. I remember seeing the books as a kid and thinking they were just some boring stories about animals lol
I've been binge watching a couple of your videos now since you popped up in my recommended, and I really like your reviews. It would be cool if you could read the Cal Leandros series by Rob Thurman and review it if you ever get the chance to. I like looking up reviews after I'm done with a book or series, but this one's kind of obscure so there's hardly any reviews floating around on the internet, let alone CZcams.
So, K. A. Applegate wanted to write a story about how cool animals are. Her husband wanted a story about aliens. The war crimes and PTSD just slipped in unnoticed, I guess.
It definitely wasn’t unnoticed. She talked about the themes of war and violence in her statement about the end of the book, and she also added in one interview that she sees animorphs as a “sugary snack filled with vitamins” (paraphrased) referring to the fact that the fun animal morphing adventures and alien hijinks are MEANT to keep kids invested while they end up *also* learning some important lessons about morality
KA Applegate: Oooh I like animals! Let's write a book! Michael Grant, the sick fuck who was about to write the _Gone_ books: ok but what if there was brutality and death and all that nice stuff KA: WhAt the fuck MG: and also aliens
The children's book series were children commit war crimes, one gets stuck as a bird for the rest of the series and another one let's a child die, morph into said child and replace them in their family. Y'know, for kid's!
Does anyone remember when the series ended and people were mad that the protagonists didn’t get a happy ending? And so KA Applegate wrote a letter saying that war isn’t heroic or glorious, and that you end up broken because of how horrible it is? And how you shouldn’t expect that from her fictional war either? Man, she didn’t fuck around
"So, you don't like the way our little fictional war came out? You don't like Rachel dead and Tobias shattered and Jake guilt-ridden? You don't like that one war simply led to another? Fine. Pretty soon you'll all be of voting age, and of draft age. So when someone proposes a war, remember that even the most necessary wars, even the rare wars where the lines of good and evil are clear and clean, end with a lot of people dead, a lot of people crippled, and a lot of orphans, widows and grieving parents. " That's some of the realest shit I've ever read
The opposite happens when the animorphs try being ants, and get drawn into the collective superorganism mind. After recovering from that, they decide that all social insects are now off-limits.
My school library had the first 6 books, some books in the middle, and the last couple of books. So I never fully knew what was going on at any point in the story.
Camper Todd Glitch Literally me. I always wanted to read the whole series, and there were some books in my elementary class, but there were only ever a few, so I only learned the story by reading out of order.
the books themselves are pretty short; probably about 1/3 of a regular novel. So, in terms of word count it's definitely shorter than say, Harry Potter even though it has way more books. EDIT: I stand corrected. Googled it and the 64 animorphs have a 1.4M word count while Harry Potter has a 1.1M word count. Still, the point is that even though there's a lot of books, it's not that much more actual content than other series that only have like 10 books.
Those covers alone were the reason my forbade me from reading them. He has no idea what the premise was, just took one look and said "nope!" My major act of rebellion was sneaking them from the public library. I was a fucking rebel.
I wouldn't say 80%, around the last 40% or so. One of the Yerks tortured Tobias so badly that it unlocked some of his andalite dna and he was able to tap into some kind of genetic memory sharing that kept him just sane enough to survive the ordeal.
@@Coolguy98765 yah, basically the very worst thing in HP is avada kadavra, which is just a fucking gun but even more boring from a literary standpoint. Come on, you can do better than that author!
@@safe-keeper1042 I don't remember the part in harry potter where a bunch of children watch an alien get literally torn apart limb from limb as it telepathically screams in agony and get PTSD from that for the rest of their lives. And if i'm not mistaken that's just the FIRST book.
I used to love these in school. I remember in one of the novels the character started ranting about government corruption and imperialism out of nowhere and as a kid that shook me to the bone. I remember that part so vividly.
@@arnowisp6244 I think the difference is that it was a children's book, and a tv show is made for adults who can understand the same themes without being explicitly told so. Its redundant in adult media, but not so much in children's.
That was an animorph pun btw, wasn't calling the ethnicity subhuman. I realize in retrospect that comment might be misinterpreted, so I wanted to clarify.
A bizzare masterpiece. But a masterpiece nonetheless. KA Applegate is still my favorite author, and her other series Everworld and Remnants are also pretty amazing.
@@glass7923 Alien gamer survives genocide caused by violent video games, gets captured by mind-absorbing tentacle monster, absorbs its mind instead, becomes god
Enter Crayak, and you have the intergalactic chess game that's integral to understanding the more relevant background conflict of the series-- Yeerks vs Andalites.
He didn't even meantion the mission that ended with it getting retconned in universe, or when they turned a villain into a rat permanently because "killing him would be wrong" Or the recurring PTSD nightmares from spending half an hour as ants. Or the time they found out about the alien underground railroad that they didn't realize they helped create. Or the alien team members extremely strange behavior while in human form(he speaks like someone with serious mental disabilities despite being extremely smart) Or when the evil god tries to make one of them his champion
Seriously, I never read any of the books despite how interesting the covers always looked. Then I heard the description he gave and I was wondering what the fuck they were on making it
My favorite moment is when an ant accidentally gets the power to transform, crawls on Cassie and starts morphing into her. The ant only gets about halfway before going insane because it can't comprehend the concept of free will.
I remember in roughly 2006-07 seeing a blurb about the TV series on the cover of one of these books. Being a huge fan of the books, I asked my parents if we had the channel that the series was airing on. My parents had to break the news to me that the series had been cancelled while I was still basically an infant.
"I would just like to point out that this is not the only time author K.A. Applegate had the characters of one of her books go back in time and send an asteroid to Earth." ...No, in "Remnants" they go back in time and crash a SPACESHIP into Earth. The asteroid happened on its own. Also if you did a "'Remnants' Was F******g Weird" video it would just be a summary of the series because WHAT THE HELL IS ANYTHING.
The asteroid didn't exactly happen on it's own though. It was going to miss Earth but the alien race they helped defeat (which were sentient colonies of ants) changed it's course out of spite.
@@bigfootstoe1332 That's how I interpreted it, I tried picking up the series once and it basically opened with a person being skinned alive for some reason and they were in space. I don't mind grim stories, but when being skinned is apparently a normal tuesday, it just makes the setting jarring. It also didn't help that there were hardly any books in the series available at the library at the time.
They are a bit ya, but if that's not an issue for you I recommend them. They get pretty insane and were a lot if fun considering it's a book about child soldiers with magic powers steadily being forced to make terrible decisions
Let's not forget the Alternamorphs Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books. The universe must seriously hate the prospect of you being the Seventh(?) Animorph. *Especially* in the second book. You don't play as Yourself, you instead play as the most hated character in the Fanbase: the traitorous rat himself, *David* not to mention it continues the Instakill choices from the first book and everyone, even the Ellemist himself, hates your very existence, plus neither of the endings are good (and trashy morphs to boot.) the first book was better for me, but I can't help but be haunted by what was an amazing, gold mine of an idea, have such a horrible execution.
I stopped reading the Alternamorphs after the first few pages because i realised it's a whole new timeline where some other kid happens to be there in addition. After that description of yours I'm even more happy that i didn't read them
According to the Wiki, they say that Alternamorphs is an alternative continuity, but is still canon to the series. If you have the first book, (And get past it's immersion breaking traits like being into extreme biking and having a little sister, and the fact you said "Feeb" at one point) it gives you unique morphs that you can utilize (Ferret, Dog, Hyena, Giraffe Parrot, Chameleon) However, your Morphing descriptions, (which can be the meat and potatoes for some) can be little to nonexistent in some parts. Another thing I wish they did was when you choose a Morph, any Morph, you'll get a bonus choice down the line where you pick an action that either leads to death or survival, then you move on. I hope if they ever remake this series they'll fix these issues and for the second book, they should completely reboot it so that it takes place during the David saga, but your character from the first book carries over. So yeah, first book is best book.
I was in the 2nd grade and was surprised about the number of deaths you could get and how easy. Surviving wasn't based on logic, but rather luck. I think one of the sets of morphs you can choose was insta death.
Yeah, the second "You-are-David" book had a Awesome set of morphs (Andalite, Komodo Dragon, Shark) that's insta-death no matter what! The right choice, (Hork Bajir, Hawk, and Fly) was strategic, but you never get to utilize the Hork bajir! (Not without dying, anyway) You're basically the useless screwup in the second book. One of my theories is that the Next Passage was a prequel to the David Saga, which would explain a lot.
I’m glad these books are getting attention. While there’s a ton of whacky nonsensical plot lines, there is also a really good (in my opinion) overarching story. Anyways, thanks for this video.
listen you're completely correct in saying that these books are a catastrophe in terms of plotline but i have to give them points for the main characters actually, like, being traumatized. a lot of middle grade/ya sci-fi fantasy stuff features characters going through horrific things and coming out mentally unscathed. whereas animorphs featured a bunch of teenagers fighting a horrific war and coming out broken and traumatized and fucked up. also didn't they all die crashing a spaceship into another spaceship at the end? and the plotline where one of the animorphs had a thing with the one who was stuck as a hawk.
Agreed. Animorphs was one of the few series I'd read as a child that actually had consequences for the characters. Despite all the near death situations, the thing that stood out to me so much that I still remember it almost 20 years later was Tobias reuniting with his mother and being angry that she didn't come back for him. And she had to explain to her son that she had such severe brain damage (from a car accident, I think) that she couldn't even take care of herself, much less a child. I can't ever forget her saying that she didn't just have to relearn how to brush her teeth, she had to be taught what those hard things in her mouth were. She couldn't feed herself, bathe herself- she was reduced to a child. It remains the only story I've read that treats TBIs as the horrifying, life-ruining things they are.
Only half of the original team dies, some getting a happy ending with others having horrible fates, and some just disapearing because they don't want to deal with the world anymore. Racheal sacrifices herself for the fate of the world, and the very last scene the book's epilogue closes out on is a timeskip to the earth becoming closer to the federation, making their own spaceworthy ship (the first of it's class, named Racheal in honor of the girl who died), and starting up a fight with some new cosmic horror that's taken over the corpse of their one andelite friend.
And Tobias gets turned into a hawk forever in like, the *first* book. That's the *starting point* for this series. Also wasn't there that one spinoff where the god keeps yeeting them through time to fight the agents of the other god who keeps yeeting his own dudes through time, and then one of them gets fucking shot and dies in World War 1.
I think that was the revolutionary war not ww1 they do go back to an alternate ww2 at some point and run into an alternate version of hitler who is just an ordinary truck driver and decide to kill him
Important note, The Ellimist and Crayak are actually working together in that storyline to help the animorphs hunt down a yeerk who's gained the ability to time travel
“The animorphs discover that one of their classmates is an *android dog* .” Hmmm pinnical of totally random, irrelevant, plot twists in writing EVER. Take notes Stephen King
Also, broccoli isn't from Earth. Anyway, I was a middle schooler when i read this and I remember being very invested in the romantic subplot between the 4 main characters. I might go back and read them if i can get them online, just to see what i remember.
I was about to say, “you could also probably find them at a library”. Then I remembered. Pandemic. But I think there are library apps out there too if you wanna look into that.
They can be found free online as well. I saved a copy a while back to share them with my daughter. This isn't the one i had saved but they can be found here as well: www.cnet.com/news/animorphs-books-now-free-read-about-kids-shapeshifting-into-rats-and-cats/
So, in other words, Animorphs is what happens when you apply Comic Book Logic to YA lit. Also, not gonna lie, loved this series as a kid even though it scared the shit out of me.
Don't worry my dude. As a 33 year old lady that found a digital copy of these books last week and read three in one night, I'm just enjoying the nostalgia ride. Maybe I'll finally finished the series before the world ends. Who knows?
The plotlines were absolutely bonkers for sure and especially hard to follow when your library doesnt have the full set and you have to fill in the gaps on your own. I remember the main characters quite vividly and enjoyed their interactions as friends very much, Ax's attempts at blending in with humans especially. All in all a crazy but very enjoyable series.
Although this book was cheesy at times, the character development and themes it explored were pretty interesting. And I liked how the author avoided the happy ending trope. The kids went through a violent war and it showed in the end
Finally someone on CZcams decided to expose Animorphs for the nonsensical, gory, and amazing series that it is. I freakin loved these books as a kid, if you don't mind a lot of 90s cheese I would really recommend them.
7:00 spaces out for a few seconds 7:10 glances up at subtitles “it turns out that crack is helping the Yerkes to conquer the galaxy” *confused screaming*
One part has stuck in my brain for years. One of the female characters in the middle of a fight by the slug pit thing morphs into a bear but gets her entire side ripped off from the hip, so she just morphs back and alls good. But these kids hadn't gotten hurt that bad yet so reading that much gore as a kid was shocking....now its just like whoops gotta learn to dodge honey
yo are we just gonna forget that beneath the weird and wild shit this series had to offer it also had major themes about the horrors of war and gave legitimate ptsd to the main leads who are also children because honestly this series is genuinely brilliant
Remember that time the leader goes on a vacation for a bit and, without him, things devolve so badly that by the end of the book the protagonists hijack a jet and fly it into a building?
I remember there was a book about the Elemist and his rise to power, and it started off where he was part of a race, they were all killed, he survived and got stuck on a water planet, ya da ya da music stuff and absorbs the power of the planet, becomes big enough to fight Cryak and fights him for billions of years. This is just from the top of my head l, and it was existential as all hell.
Because it was two married authors, and the animal one went off to do Ivan and Crenshaw and stuff, while the "crazy murderchildren" one went off to write the "Gone" series. :-)
This should have been #1 honestly. Get ready cause this shit is wild. The Helmacrons are a race of blue skinned aliens the size of fleas who can communicate with people through thought-speak. Their space ships look like toy ships to the protagonists. They're also hell-bent on conquering the universe. They get pissed at the Animorphs for some reason and manage to shrink them down to their size and take them captive. The Animorphs escape then team up with Visser 3 (who was also shrunk and finds the Helmacrons very annoying). Then they all become anteaters and slurp up the Helmacrons (when they're morphed they're not shrunk). The Helmacrons survive but now they're stuck to the tongues. Somehow the Animorphs force the Helmacrons to reverse what they've done, then everyone goes their seperate ways. Of course, not before Marco incites a Helmacron civil war between the male slave caste and the female governing caste because the females remind him too much of Rachel. Oh yeah, and the Helmacrons have a dead ruler because if he wasn't dead then he might make a wrong decision.
@@isaacbruner65 The dead ruler part doesn't sound too implausible, really. There are plenty of countries like my own, where we are 'ruled' by a monarch who has a great deal of power on paper, but is prevented from exercising it, while elected officials make decisions in the name of the figurehead. It only needs one step further - if the monarch were to die with no successor, the government could keep on going without them, and the last surviving monarch may come to be venerated as a symbol of the country.
Gen Z and Millennials have a big overlap, 10 year olds liked what they liked because they were 10. We in our 20s then liked what they liked because of weed.
Ha ha, that's an interesting way to put it. I always considered myself a millenial (b. 1997) because I had older siblings and neighbors, and thus grew up following their culture rather than whatever nonsense my peers who were the oldest in their families were doing.
@@armchairrocketscientist4934 I'm in my 30s now but I definitely noticed the pattern, Spongebob and Adventure Time for example when each show started had at least as many stoners in college watching as they did little kids. If I recall boomers were kinda weirded out by colleges having Spongebob viewing parties between 99 and the first few years of the 2000s, think there were news stories about it or something...
@@elizzzzzzzza Whoa! Random nonsense insult to own the libs! damn your buddy Dankula is going to be so proud of you, you're going to be his new little Nazi pug. I bet your brain has so many crevices not smooth at all.
@@elizzzzzzzza Oh, come now, just cause' I prefer to separate myself from Gen Z, doesn't mean I'm unhappy. No, I'm unhappy because I don't socialize with anyone! 😄😄😂😂😂 😑 😤 😑 😞 😓 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
I remember back in elementary me and my friend read these books as kids, but they were never in order in the school library so it was really frustrating. So one day I just got tired of having to read all the books and grabbed the last book in the series so I could see how it ended. Needless to say, I cried when Rachel died and it left me feeling very upset. To this day, my friend and I will forever be sad at Rachel's death and the unhappy ending.
I had the exact same experience I was like “well today only 1, 24, 8, and 52 are on the shelf, and I need 27, fuck this I’ll never finish this series I’ll just read the end”
Yeahhh I read a bunch of these as a kid because they were in my tiny schools library, however they didn’t have all of them and they weren’t in order so I read ones from random parts of the story. I honestly remember going from fun books to really upsetting parts. So i still have no clue what was going on in those books lmao
I vaguely remember Tobias being my favorite character because he helped his mom experience being not crippled or something like that- it was really sweet. (I honestly might be remembering this wrong since I havent read them since second grade.)
Weird as this series got, it was insanely entertaining. My father and I started reading the books together when I was in fourth grade and we finally finished the whole series just after I entered high school so I have fond memories of it. I still think it's a pretty good way to introduce young kids to sci-fi.
Applegate came to my school, and all my teachers were fangirling over this series while I sat there like you good. Then I read them, and I was sitting there thinking I am even more confused, but at the same time, I also kinda get it now.
2 things 1) Animorphs was deeply fucked up on occasion. Like how Marcus knew his mom was possessed by the 2nd in command Yerrk and spent most of the series desperately trying to save her. 2) K.A. Applegate also "wrote" Remnants which is equally fucked up and weird
I always really liked the time travel book where they're chasing a Yeerk agent through time. In particular actually showing the ton of side effects their involvement would cause human development; capped off with WW2 being a British/Canadian invasion of mainland Europe against a Franco-German alliance and none of the characters having the slightest clue whose even the "good guys".
My favorite parts of these books is that if you quickly flip all the pages, you’ll see a silhouette of the character on the cover transform into the animal on the cover.
He should have covered how one of the animorphs was perminantly turned into a hawk (with the shortened lifespans of a hawk that results it their implied death 20 years later) or how another animorph dies. Just straight up dies.
animorphs is a relic from a bygone age to me. they're the only book series I read in first and second grade that I remember. It is just, an amazing series.
Ok so without sounding too out there, the plot of animorphs lowkey sounds like the plot to the comic "Urban Animal" but instead of it being multiple people its one kid, and instead of the powers being given by aliens the one kid was given them via some spiritual reincarnation
I refrained from killing myself during my first bout with depression, because when I was contemplating what I had to live for, the one and only thing I cared about was the next Animorphs book, and what I might miss in the series.
Wasn't there a book in the animorph series where an entire alien civilization is wiped out because of a video game? (in a prologue, a misunderstanding ensues when a simulation game is somehow leaked to another alien race who then commits genocide.) Weird series tbh
Yup. The simulation game was broadcasted by the scientist caste of the extinct race cause they were experimenting with broadcasting technology, knowing full well there are other sentient beings in their galaxy, and didn't see how another species could take a footage of their people interfering with the development of another species and getting them to fight each other without somehow explaining it was a video game/fictional could be taken the wrong way. The alien race who killed the Ellimist's people thought they were saving the universe because they thought the Ellimist's people were actually fucking over other sentient races. And that's just the first act of the book since it was about how the Ellimist became a god.
Man these were weird... And sad. Like that one book about the...Hork Bajurrs(?), the foot soldiers of the Yeerks and how they were enslaved. We saw families get killed, entire towns in flames, and a whole civilization wiped out.
anyone else remember the episode of the show where Rachel morphs into a Yeerk and gets trapped in a jar? Did I dream that? I remember having a lot of nightmares about it.
I know that cassie morphs a yeerk at one point but I'm not sure about rachel, I'm on my own reread through of the books and if I find something like that I'll get back to ya
I've been looking for all 54 Animorphs books with the original covers . 2 or 3 years ago I went to this used book shop and they had a few of the original Animorphs books but I didn't bother to get them . Definitely regretting that now 😅 . I went on Amazon and all 54 books and 10 spinoff series is available for $545 , that is if no one else has ordered yet .
I vividly remember picking up one of the books in the 4th grade. I randomly opened a part of the book and read a part where a dude's dorsal fin was being ripped or cut off while in orca form. Needless to say, I never picked up any books in this series again. (Edit: 5:47 THAT"S THE BOOK OH GOD)
I remember reading part of the series when I was a kid. I was invested in the plot and the characters, but I never got a chance to get through the whole thing. So one of these days I'll see if I can get my hands on the books and read all 53 of them. There were some very engaging plotlines I remember. Lets see if they are as good as I remember them...
Remember how one of the main protagonists gets stuck in hawk form for a large portion of the series? Or how one of the other protagonists is the brother of the alien who gave the protagonists the shape changing abilities and was also obsessed with the concept of human tastebuds, food and specifically cotton candy? Yeah, weird is an understatement.
I vaguely remember this series now, how I asked a kid back when I was in primary school what it was about. He said something about aliens and I was completely lost. Having seen this now... I am still completely lost
I remember the part where we got to see Tom’s memories scaring me so much as a kid, just the concept of being aware of everything your body does but also being completely unable to stop it
It's come to my attention that there's a podcast episode that goes over some of this same stuff I talk about here. Check it out: czcams.com/video/6zrE6m3xOoE/video.html
The way you described The Underground was amazing
Came to this video after it got recommended from watching the Pro Crastinator's video. I had no idea Animorphs got this crazy in-depth.
Too late! The alarithem beat you to me. Lol
That 4 hour video was my introduction to the absolute fucking madness of Animorphs just last week. I remember seeing the books as a kid and thinking they were just some boring stories about animals lol
I've been binge watching a couple of your videos now since you popped up in my recommended, and I really like your reviews. It would be cool if you could read the Cal Leandros series by Rob Thurman and review it if you ever get the chance to. I like looking up reviews after I'm done with a book or series, but this one's kind of obscure so there's hardly any reviews floating around on the internet, let alone CZcams.
So, K. A. Applegate wanted to write a story about how cool animals are.
Her husband wanted a story about aliens.
The war crimes and PTSD just slipped in unnoticed, I guess.
Katherine and Michael were too honest to write a war story about child soldiers that didn't include brutality and crimes and PTSD.
It definitely wasn’t unnoticed. She talked about the themes of war and violence in her statement about the end of the book, and she also added in one interview that she sees animorphs as a “sugary snack filled with vitamins” (paraphrased) referring to the fact that the fun animal morphing adventures and alien hijinks are MEANT to keep kids invested while they end up *also* learning some important lessons about morality
KA Applegate: Oooh I like animals! Let's write a book!
Michael Grant, the sick fuck who was about to write the _Gone_ books: ok but what if there was brutality and death and all that nice stuff
KA: WhAt the fuck
MG: and also aliens
I actually appreciated that as a kid. It gave the characters in this wacky kids novel serious consequences for their actions.
@@zucchinibyday Gone was pretty good though.
The children's book series were children commit war crimes, one gets stuck as a bird for the rest of the series and another one let's a child die, morph into said child and replace them in their family.
Y'know, for kid's!
Yo Aliens didn't sign the Geneva accords
That actualy sounds cool
wait when was the replacement i know they turned one of them into a rat and abandoned him on an island but this is news to me
@@bzenga5981 I don't remember exactly but you can find out more from the PCP video that covers animorphs, that's how I learned about the series
Actually, that was a big part of the story. Read KA Applegate's letter to fans who were upset about the downer ending.
When the world is in danger, humanity turns the most capable humans of all, TEENAGERS WITH ATTITUDE.
Sounds like terrible writing advice
Unname Rmx you know what, we gotta suggest that as a new video title to him.
Alpha bring me five teenagers WITH ADDITUDE
Vanja Galović aiyiyiyiyiyi
More like teenagers with a death wish.
Does anyone remember when the series ended and people were mad that the protagonists didn’t get a happy ending? And so KA Applegate wrote a letter saying that war isn’t heroic or glorious, and that you end up broken because of how horrible it is? And how you shouldn’t expect that from her fictional war either? Man, she didn’t fuck around
The final few books were a fucking LSD trip
I do.
Damn straight.
"So, you don't like the way our little fictional war came out? You don't like Rachel dead and Tobias shattered and Jake guilt-ridden? You don't like that one war simply led to another? Fine. Pretty soon you'll all be of voting age, and of draft age. So when someone proposes a war, remember that even the most necessary wars, even the rare wars where the lines of good and evil are clear and clean, end with a lot of people dead, a lot of people crippled, and a lot of orphans, widows and grieving parents.
"
That's some of the realest shit I've ever read
AlphaetusPrime she really didn’t, but she’s right
You forgot to include the part where an ant morphs into one of the animorphs, gets horrified at sentience, morphs back, then gets killed immediately.
_ant becomes human. Realizes it is an individual_
*Telepathic screaming out to max range*
The opposite happens when the animorphs try being ants, and get drawn into the collective superorganism mind. After recovering from that, they decide that all social insects are now off-limits.
@@vylbird8014 I believe that was actually termites. The ants were a different horror scene
@@marvalice3455 That's right, cause there were countless of those.
@@WasatchWind these books were edgy af and i loved every second.
The 90s turned a lot of people into furries
a lot of time turned people into furries
The ancient egyptians also were furries, a lot of ancient civilizations were furries actually...
@@sebastiansuescum2186 and that's why they are *ancient civilizations*
There's furry art from the Paleolithic (Look up the bird man of L'ascaux)
So did the 80’s
My school library had the first 6 books, some books in the middle, and the last couple of books. So I never fully knew what was going on at any point in the story.
That only makes it better
Same
Camper Todd Glitch
Literally me. I always wanted to read the whole series, and there were some books in my elementary class, but there were only ever a few, so I only learned the story by reading out of order.
Animorphs out-of-order is absolutely hilarious.
Is there anyone who read the entire series in order? I doubt it. Besides, a lot of the middle books are pretty much interchangeable.
I thought this was a short series until he said "in book 32"
I think only magic tree house rivals it with its fifty + books.
your profile picture checks out.
awesome astronaut Animorphs has like 64 books in total, including spinoffs and the choose-your-own-adventure trash heaps.
did you miss the part of him saying there were 54 books and 10 spin-offs?
the books themselves are pretty short; probably about 1/3 of a regular novel. So, in terms of word count it's definitely shorter than say, Harry Potter even though it has way more books.
EDIT: I stand corrected. Googled it and the 64 animorphs have a 1.4M word count while Harry Potter has a 1.1M word count. Still, the point is that even though there's a lot of books, it's not that much more actual content than other series that only have like 10 books.
My favorite thing about 'the Animorphs killed the dinosaurs' is that that book reveals that broccoli is in fact an alien vegetable.
Does that also imply that all the other plants that are just broccoli bred to look different are also alien plants?
And thats true. Broccoli are evil
@@erlangga-fabian7040 broccoli is delicious
@@RabblesTheBinx nothing to spinach though
@@seankrkovich2869 nah broccoli is better😋
Animorphs Book 1:"I need to turn bird in order to stop these aliens"
Animorphs Book 54:"I dream of death so often it feels like a memory"
Also Animorphs Book 1: The group of kids get traumatized by screams of agony as they witness an alien being eaten alive by other alien.
Tbf, Tobias turning into a perpetual hawk was pretty integral to the plot (and also like one of the only things I remember)
I’m about at the end of the main 54 books, and knew as soon as I saw that it was a Tobias book that things were gonna get sad fast.
It was like the saddest part. I remember shamelessly sobbing my eyes out at it
"Who put that pillar there? I should have been an owl. Owls are cool!"
I thought he would mention it in this video
@@darylesells19 All of the Tobias books were tragic, the poor bird boy never got a break tbh
Everyone of the covers look like a meme format
It is, indeed a meme format
Looks like a bizarre fetish
the spider boy of the #6 photo kills me
Those covers alone were the reason my forbade me from reading them. He has no idea what the premise was, just took one look and said "nope!"
My major act of rebellion was sneaking them from the public library. I was a fucking rebel.
That's probably where the meme came from.
Wasn’t there a book where the bird was legit tortured, and 80% of the book was just sitting there watching it go down
There's one where he gets cooked and eaten, but then Weird Time Stuff happens so that timeline didn't happen.
That would be #33, and yeah, you described it pretty accurately. He's then completely screwed up by the experience for the rest of the series.
Yes
I wouldn't say 80%, around the last 40% or so. One of the Yerks tortured Tobias so badly that it unlocked some of his andalite dna and he was able to tap into some kind of genetic memory sharing that kept him just sane enough to survive the ordeal.
@@vylbird8014 Damn, I don't know how I forgot about that part. I remember being really freaked out by it too because Tobias was my favorite character.
Animorphs is F***ing dark. I can't believe this was a kid book series.
It was the Harry Potter of its age in that respect.
Harry Potter doesn't commit multiple war crimes though.
@@Coolguy98765 yah, basically the very worst thing in HP is avada kadavra, which is just a fucking gun but even more boring from a literary standpoint. Come on, you can do better than that author!
My favorite thing to do is to recap some small messed up part of Animorphs and then end it by saying, "you know, for kids!"
@@safe-keeper1042 I don't remember the part in harry potter where a bunch of children watch an alien get literally torn apart limb from limb as it telepathically screams in agony and get PTSD from that for the rest of their lives. And if i'm not mistaken that's just the FIRST book.
Instead of saying "first" I'll just say "Yep, agreed".
What a whacky ass series.
Gap between millenials and Gen-Z feels like it's own micro-generation.
Daegan Noel fr tho
You mean male 2000s and late 90s?
We're just gonna create generations for every month of every year huh?
@@WhaleManMan Generations are defined more by culture than exact age. Technology has accelerated cultural change exponentially.
millenimorph-z
I used to love these in school. I remember in one of the novels the character started ranting about government corruption and imperialism out of nowhere and as a kid that shook me to the bone. I remember that part so vividly.
And today that part would be considered forced if it had little plot reasons why.
@@arnowisp6244 I think the difference is that it was a children's book, and a tv show is made for adults who can understand the same themes without being explicitly told so. Its redundant in adult media, but not so much in children's.
The perils of ghostwriting.
If Lovecraft wrote books for teenagers
More like, 'A Children's Guide to the Yugoslav Wars, Unabridged'
That was an animorph pun btw, wasn't calling the ethnicity subhuman. I realize in retrospect that comment might be misinterpreted, so I wanted to clarify.
@@chewxieyang4677 "IZ TIME 4 BALKANS BIATCH"
If Lovecraft wrote it, it'd have way more overt and covert racism though.
Chew Xie Yang Hey kids, you like war crimes?
*_*Animorphs was a f*****g masterpiece._*
✊
Preach
Facts
Hella
A bizzare masterpiece. But a masterpiece nonetheless. KA Applegate is still my favorite author, and her other series Everworld and Remnants are also pretty amazing.
“These books got hardcore” bro the Ellimist chronicles book is literally a permanent fever dream from start to finish
They fucking SMACK
What was it about?
@@glass7923 Alien gamer survives genocide caused by violent video games, gets captured by mind-absorbing tentacle monster, absorbs its mind instead, becomes god
@@AlphaetusPrime yep prety mutch sums it upp, its got some other wierd shit like him fucking himself to tho
Enter Crayak, and you have the intergalactic chess game that's integral to understanding the more relevant background conflict of the series-- Yeerks vs Andalites.
No amount of wacky cover art could've prepared me for any of this
He didn't even meantion the mission that ended with it getting retconned in universe, or when they turned a villain into a rat permanently because "killing him would be wrong"
Or the recurring PTSD nightmares from spending half an hour as ants.
Or the time they found out about the alien underground railroad that they didn't realize they helped create.
Or the alien team members extremely strange behavior while in human form(he speaks like someone with serious mental disabilities despite being extremely smart)
Or when the evil god tries to make one of them his champion
MarvAlice
Or that time they invited a bunch of disabled kids to fight with them and they all died.
nine tbh I'd be willing to fight for a chance to be my real self for a while. Even just 2 hours at a time
MarvAlice yeah but it was kinda fucked how they sent them all on a suicide mission at the end
Seriously, I never read any of the books despite how interesting the covers always looked. Then I heard the description he gave and I was wondering what the fuck they were on making it
were these books absolutely insane? yes. did i love them dearly? also, yes.
Same
This is my stance, too. If I was to reread them I'd probably find lots of issues, and they weren't perfect, but gods, I loved them.
You misspelled do.
@@cyberdinedog2097 preach it
I read this series nonstop as a kid.
My favorite moment is when Cassie, the black girl, turns into a polar bear and attacks a white supremacist
Definitely cassie's most badass moment.
I'm sorry what
My favorite moment is when an ant accidentally gets the power to transform, crawls on Cassie and starts morphing into her. The ant only gets about halfway before going insane because it can't comprehend the concept of free will.
@@devyboo2 What
@@cyancyborg1477 It's a thing that happened, ask Applegate
"A bunch of aliens ruled by a corpse"
*40K fans screeching off in the distance*
YOU DARE SUGGEST MANKIND IS A FILTHY XENO SPECIES. LET ALONE CALL THE GOD EMPEROR OF MANKIND A CORPSE.
How you DARE compare the GOD-EMPEROR OF MANKIND to a fucking XENO
@@latarshahall7618 Shush now or chaos will get you
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!!
Yes you corpse worshipers!
Hail Abaddon!
I remember in roughly 2006-07 seeing a blurb about the TV series on the cover of one of these books. Being a huge fan of the books, I asked my parents if we had the channel that the series was airing on. My parents had to break the news to me that the series had been cancelled while I was still basically an infant.
It was for the best. The show was pretty trash
@@marvalice3455 tHe DiSk!!
@@E4439Qv5 oh god!
Though to be fair, execution aside 5ye disk made more sense than the psychic info dump that never got fully explained in the books
Oh yeah, the show had a pretty short run and was fucking weird and canadian af.
@@indumatipngtuber2790 canada is the hollywood of tv
"I would just like to point out that this is not the only time author K.A. Applegate had the characters of one of her books go back in time and send an asteroid to Earth."
...No, in "Remnants" they go back in time and crash a SPACESHIP into Earth. The asteroid happened on its own.
Also if you did a "'Remnants' Was F******g Weird" video it would just be a summary of the series because WHAT THE HELL IS ANYTHING.
I finished it.
Therapy was no help.
Poor billy. Poor two face
Mosteel was rad though
Fuck yago tho he's a bitch
What the hell was remnants... i thought it was trying to be artsy and ask deep questions but it was like no, too bad
The asteroid didn't exactly happen on it's own though. It was going to miss Earth but the alien race they helped defeat (which were sentient colonies of ants) changed it's course out of spite.
@@bigfootstoe1332 That's how I interpreted it, I tried picking up the series once and it basically opened with a person being skinned alive for some reason and they were in space. I don't mind grim stories, but when being skinned is apparently a normal tuesday, it just makes the setting jarring.
It also didn't help that there were hardly any books in the series available at the library at the time.
Those were everywhere in the library in my elementary school. I never read them.
DarkChocolate_ Kara same
PFFFT. I bet you cowards have never even cried about the PTSD of a red-tailed hawk.
I just remember staring at the covers lol
JoeMerl Tobias had it so bad :( like he never got to meet his dad or lkke live normally or have live godddf
They are a bit ya, but if that's not an issue for you I recommend them. They get pretty insane and were a lot if fun considering it's a book about child soldiers with magic powers steadily being forced to make terrible decisions
Let's not forget the Alternamorphs Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books. The universe must seriously hate the prospect of you being the Seventh(?) Animorph. *Especially* in the second book. You don't play as Yourself, you instead play as the most hated character in the Fanbase: the traitorous rat himself, *David* not to mention it continues the Instakill choices from the first book and everyone, even the Ellemist himself, hates your very existence, plus neither of the endings are good (and trashy morphs to boot.) the first book was better for me, but I can't help but be haunted by what was an amazing, gold mine of an idea, have such a horrible execution.
That honestly sounds hilarious.
I stopped reading the Alternamorphs after the first few pages because i realised it's a whole new timeline where some other kid happens to be there in addition. After that description of yours I'm even more happy that i didn't read them
According to the Wiki, they say that Alternamorphs is an alternative continuity, but is still canon to the series. If you have the first book, (And get past it's immersion breaking traits like being into extreme biking and having a little sister, and the fact you said "Feeb" at one point) it gives you unique morphs that you can utilize (Ferret, Dog, Hyena, Giraffe Parrot, Chameleon) However, your Morphing descriptions, (which can be the meat and potatoes for some) can be little to nonexistent in some parts. Another thing I wish they did was when you choose a Morph, any Morph, you'll get a bonus choice down the line where you pick an action that either leads to death or survival, then you move on. I hope if they ever remake this series they'll fix these issues and for the second book, they should completely reboot it so that it takes place during the David saga, but your character from the first book carries over. So yeah, first book is best book.
I was in the 2nd grade and was surprised about the number of deaths you could get and how easy. Surviving wasn't based on logic, but rather luck. I think one of the sets of morphs you can choose was insta death.
Yeah, the second "You-are-David" book had a Awesome set of morphs (Andalite, Komodo Dragon, Shark) that's insta-death no matter what! The right choice, (Hork Bajir, Hawk, and Fly) was strategic, but you never get to utilize the Hork bajir! (Not without dying, anyway) You're basically the useless screwup in the second book. One of my theories is that the Next Passage was a prequel to the David Saga, which would explain a lot.
Children's book series involving mind rape, genocide, body horror and none of the characters have happy endings. The author is an absolute gigachad.
I’m glad these books are getting attention. While there’s a ton of whacky nonsensical plot lines, there is also a really good (in my opinion) overarching story.
Anyways, thanks for this video.
Yeah overall it’s an excellent story arc
If they were ghostwritten, can we really known if they were even actually written by human beings?
Some of them weren't.
The one about cows was written by a Vegan.
@@E4439Qv5 yet it ended with them all ordering burgers
@@marvalice3455 Not 'vegan.' _Vegan._
As in, an alien originating from a planet in the Vega star system. Constellation of Lyra.
Funny enough, one of the fave GW's of the series has never written anything else, and nothing can be found about her online..... Miss Ellen Geroux.
@@E4439Qv5 fair enough.
listen you're completely correct in saying that these books are a catastrophe in terms of plotline but i have to give them points for the main characters actually, like, being traumatized. a lot of middle grade/ya sci-fi fantasy stuff features characters going through horrific things and coming out mentally unscathed. whereas animorphs featured a bunch of teenagers fighting a horrific war and coming out broken and traumatized and fucked up. also didn't they all die crashing a spaceship into another spaceship at the end?
and the plotline where one of the animorphs had a thing with the one who was stuck as a hawk.
Eh. It's just another case of a hot-blooded tomboy falling for an emotionally unavailable therian from a broken home.
They didn't die, there was a cliffhanger where they confront some One dude and they kind of prepare for a Leroy Jenkins
Agreed. Animorphs was one of the few series I'd read as a child that actually had consequences for the characters. Despite all the near death situations, the thing that stood out to me so much that I still remember it almost 20 years later was Tobias reuniting with his mother and being angry that she didn't come back for him. And she had to explain to her son that she had such severe brain damage (from a car accident, I think) that she couldn't even take care of herself, much less a child. I can't ever forget her saying that she didn't just have to relearn how to brush her teeth, she had to be taught what those hard things in her mouth were. She couldn't feed herself, bathe herself- she was reduced to a child.
It remains the only story I've read that treats TBIs as the horrifying, life-ruining things they are.
@@E4439Qv5 I mean, most things are boring/silly if you break them down to their most basic element
Only half of the original team dies, some getting a happy ending with others having horrible fates, and some just disapearing because they don't want to deal with the world anymore. Racheal sacrifices herself for the fate of the world, and the very last scene the book's epilogue closes out on is a timeskip to the earth becoming closer to the federation, making their own spaceworthy ship (the first of it's class, named Racheal in honor of the girl who died), and starting up a fight with some new cosmic horror that's taken over the corpse of their one andelite friend.
And Tobias gets turned into a hawk forever in like, the *first* book. That's the *starting point* for this series.
Also wasn't there that one spinoff where the god keeps yeeting them through time to fight the agents of the other god who keeps yeeting his own dudes through time, and then one of them gets fucking shot and dies in World War 1.
And Tobias tries to kill himself because he's trapped as a bird in the *third* book.
And i vaguely remember that one. Wasn't that a Megamorphs?
I think that was the revolutionary war not ww1 they do go back to an alternate ww2 at some point and run into an alternate version of hitler who is just an ordinary truck driver and decide to kill him
Important note, The Ellimist and Crayak are actually working together in that storyline to help the animorphs hunt down a yeerk who's gained the ability to time travel
One thing is for sure: You wouldn't get bored reading them.
Yep pretty much.
“The animorphs discover that one of their classmates is an *android dog* .”
Hmmm pinnical of totally random, irrelevant, plot twists in writing EVER.
Take notes Stephen King
Well, the android dogs were some of the most important characters of the series
* pinnacle
Also doggos were apparently aliens, cause f**k logic!!
Remember that time when Cassie had to perform brain surgery on an alien, in a barn?
And she purposely infested him with a Yeerk for guidance, scaring the living shit out of him when he regained consciousness?
Also, broccoli isn't from Earth.
Anyway, I was a middle schooler when i read this and I remember being very invested in the romantic subplot between the 4 main characters. I might go back and read them if i can get them online, just to see what i remember.
I was about to say, “you could also probably find them at a library”. Then I remembered. Pandemic. But I think there are library apps out there too if you wanna look into that.
Whoa, diary of a wimpy kid had it right...
They can be found free online as well. I saved a copy a while back to share them with my daughter. This isn't the one i had saved but they can be found here as well: www.cnet.com/news/animorphs-books-now-free-read-about-kids-shapeshifting-into-rats-and-cats/
I always remembered being warmed every time Rachel showed kindness to Tobias
So, in other words, Animorphs is what happens when you apply Comic Book Logic to YA lit.
Also, not gonna lie, loved this series as a kid even though it scared the shit out of me.
Oh the nostalgia is back. I loved these books when I read them in 4th grade
rafi sanders what the fuck
SAME
I was obsessed
Those book covers creeped me out so much I never read them...
i_heart_ymir ha, same, I always saw them at my local library and I was kinda intrigued, but also too scared to read them
I just didn't like books in elementary school. xD
Same
You missed out, Animorphs was an Experience
i_heart_ymir same
Fun fact: I'm writing my thesis on aliens. Yes, Animorphs is in it.
Edit: scroll down if you wanna read it! :)
Vita Jansen I'd like to read your essay lol. Do you have any contacts?
I want to read it :o
@@dandanthedandan7558 You can send me an email at 3musedays@gmail.com or follow me on Twitter at 3musedays and I'll send/DM it you once it's done! :)
@@marvalice3455 Same to you as to Dan: hmu on Twitter at 3musedays or send me an email at 3musedays@gmail.com and you'll get it when it's finished ^^
I would love to read it
Those people abused drugs harder than those who work in wall street
Instead of having hookers with them though they had animals and E. T. in the background.
I love everyone going on about Tobias being permahawk like that's not the least weird or messed up part of his story.
The weird part is him going back in time so that he could meet a version of himself, to allow him to transform into his old body as a morph.
@@Xanderj89 Thanks Ellimist.
as a 30 year old man who thought this was the coolest shit back in the day, i feel personally under attack here.
Don't worry my dude. As a 33 year old lady that found a digital copy of these books last week and read three in one night, I'm just enjoying the nostalgia ride. Maybe I'll finally finished the series before the world ends. Who knows?
@@sanityisrelative where did you find the audio books??
@@nazairking7112 not audio, just a free ebook download. The links stopped working months ago though. Sorry.
@@sanityisrelative ouch 🤕
The plotlines were absolutely bonkers for sure and especially hard to follow when your library doesnt have the full set and you have to fill in the gaps on your own. I remember the main characters quite vividly and enjoyed their interactions as friends very much, Ax's attempts at blending in with humans especially. All in all a crazy but very enjoyable series.
Although this book was cheesy at times, the character development and themes it explored were pretty interesting. And I liked how the author avoided the happy ending trope. The kids went through a violent war and it showed in the end
Bro I remember just going through my schools library and just looking at all the covers forever but never bothering with even remotely reading them
Same
Me too. The covers were disturbing.
Same. I thought they were really weird and creepy. lol
~ Tass
i thought the covers were creepy and also like a guide to evolution and was like nope.
@@nadeen6968 What's wrong with evolution?
Oh my god Animorphs was the greatest thing ever.
Finally someone on CZcams decided to expose Animorphs for the nonsensical, gory, and amazing series that it is. I freakin loved these books as a kid, if you don't mind a lot of 90s cheese I would really recommend them.
There's a whole 4 hour lecture on Animorphs posted recently as well
It’s sci fi what do you expect ?
7:00
spaces out for a few seconds
7:10
glances up at subtitles
“it turns out that crack is helping the Yerkes to conquer the galaxy”
*confused screaming*
One part has stuck in my brain for years. One of the female characters in the middle of a fight by the slug pit thing morphs into a bear but gets her entire side ripped off from the hip, so she just morphs back and alls good. But these kids hadn't gotten hurt that bad yet so reading that much gore as a kid was shocking....now its just like whoops gotta learn to dodge honey
yo are we just gonna forget that beneath the weird and wild shit this series had to offer it also had major themes about the horrors of war and gave legitimate ptsd to the main leads who are also children because honestly this series is genuinely brilliant
Remember that time the leader goes on a vacation for a bit and, without him, things devolve so badly that by the end of the book the protagonists hijack a jet and fly it into a building?
@@LeopardMask12 It was published in December 1999
*Well then.*
I remember there was a book about the Elemist and his rise to power, and it started off where he was part of a race, they were all killed, he survived and got stuck on a water planet, ya da ya da music stuff and absorbs the power of the planet, becomes big enough to fight Cryak and fights him for billions of years. This is just from the top of my head l, and it was existential as all hell.
How did this same author make Animorphs and then "The One and Only Ivan!?" How?
The Mean Frickeroni cool cat
@@ravenpotter3 Sounds about right. He changes people... especially kids...
Because it was two married authors, and the animal one went off to do Ivan and Crenshaw and stuff, while the "crazy murderchildren" one went off to write the "Gone" series. :-)
@@dzmcroy Huh. What a bizarre combination.
Drugs.
10:07 "Makes the Hiroshima bombing funnier"
Hold up, wait a minute, something ain't right.
okay but wasn't the radiation pool in the basement of a McDonalds? or did my preteen brain just imagine that?
One of them, to get in you had to order "a happy meal with extra happy"
kakashi66132 That sounds like it’s drugs, and it fits the whole well-written and plotted crackhead energy of the series
DUDE WASNT THAT IN THE OATMEAL BOOK
@@kage6613 I fucking vividly remember that part
aliens ruled by a corpse... Is this a 40K reference?
Yo the Emperor lives. Don't spout heresy, its not politically correct
This should have been #1 honestly. Get ready cause this shit is wild. The Helmacrons are a race of blue skinned aliens the size of fleas who can communicate with people through thought-speak. Their space ships look like toy ships to the protagonists. They're also hell-bent on conquering the universe. They get pissed at the Animorphs for some reason and manage to shrink them down to their size and take them captive. The Animorphs escape then team up with Visser 3 (who was also shrunk and finds the Helmacrons very annoying). Then they all become anteaters and slurp up the Helmacrons (when they're morphed they're not shrunk). The Helmacrons survive but now they're stuck to the tongues. Somehow the Animorphs force the Helmacrons to reverse what they've done, then everyone goes their seperate ways. Of course, not before Marco incites a Helmacron civil war between the male slave caste and the female governing caste because the females remind him too much of Rachel. Oh yeah, and the Helmacrons have a dead ruler because if he wasn't dead then he might make a wrong decision.
@@isaacbruner65 hard hitting political truth there.
@@isaacbruner65 The dead ruler part doesn't sound too implausible, really. There are plenty of countries like my own, where we are 'ruled' by a monarch who has a great deal of power on paper, but is prevented from exercising it, while elected officials make decisions in the name of the figurehead. It only needs one step further - if the monarch were to die with no successor, the government could keep on going without them, and the last surviving monarch may come to be venerated as a symbol of the country.
@@isaacbruner65 Holy fuck! Now I remember. Those Helmacrons also had the dumbest names for their ships. I mean "Galaxy Crusher". Give me a break🤦😂😂😂😂😂
I had the biggest crush on Tobias as a kid 😅
ok but same
Tobias gave me nightmares when I found out he was going to be a bird for the rest of his life
@@mistermiles3271 he got the ability to turn back into a human, but only for 2 hours at a time
@@Elena-gv5wi which is almost worse tbh
SAME OH MY GOSH my best friend still teases me about it😂
Gen Z and Millennials have a big overlap, 10 year olds liked what they liked because they were 10. We in our 20s then liked what they liked because of weed.
Ha ha, that's an interesting way to put it. I always considered myself a millenial (b. 1997) because I had older siblings and neighbors, and thus grew up following their culture rather than whatever nonsense my peers who were the oldest in their families were doing.
@@armchairrocketscientist4934 I'm in my 30s now but I definitely noticed the pattern, Spongebob and Adventure Time for example when each show started had at least as many stoners in college watching as they did little kids. If I recall boomers were kinda weirded out by colleges having Spongebob viewing parties between 99 and the first few years of the 2000s, think there were news stories about it or something...
awesome astronaut You seem like a very unhappy person to be around.
@@elizzzzzzzza Whoa! Random nonsense insult to own the libs! damn your buddy Dankula is going to be so proud of you, you're going to be his new little Nazi pug. I bet your brain has so many crevices not smooth at all.
@@elizzzzzzzza Oh, come now, just cause' I prefer to separate myself from Gen Z, doesn't mean I'm unhappy.
No, I'm unhappy because I don't socialize with anyone! 😄😄😂😂😂
😑
😤
😑
😞
😓
😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
I remember back in elementary me and my friend read these books as kids, but they were never in order in the school library so it was really frustrating. So one day I just got tired of having to read all the books and grabbed the last book in the series so I could see how it ended. Needless to say, I cried when Rachel died and it left me feeling very upset. To this day, my friend and I will forever be sad at Rachel's death and the unhappy ending.
I had the exact same experience I was like “well today only 1, 24, 8, and 52 are on the shelf, and I need 27, fuck this I’ll never finish this series I’ll just read the end”
Yeahhh I read a bunch of these as a kid because they were in my tiny schools library, however they didn’t have all of them and they weren’t in order so I read ones from random parts of the story. I honestly remember going from fun books to really upsetting parts. So i still have no clue what was going on in those books lmao
I vaguely remember Tobias being my favorite character because he helped his mom experience being not crippled or something like that- it was really sweet. (I honestly might be remembering this wrong since I havent read them since second grade.)
Hey! same
@@dr2brains_ You're not. It was close to the end of the series.
I remember these books. I never actually read them, I just watched the little flip book that was in the corner of each of the pages.
me too
Don’t forget about how another one of Elfangor’s human friends was Steve, as in Steve Jobs
And Steve jobs was ALSO a alien, who was also a cannibalistic internet predator
My favorite part is that before becoming a god, the Elemist was a regular alien who was really into video games.
Weird as this series got, it was insanely entertaining. My father and I started reading the books together when I was in fourth grade and we finally finished the whole series just after I entered high school so I have fond memories of it. I still think it's a pretty good way to introduce young kids to sci-fi.
I genuinely love the introduction song.
Applegate came to my school, and all my teachers were fangirling over this series while I sat there like you good. Then I read them, and I was sitting there thinking I am even more confused, but at the same time, I also kinda get it now.
2 things
1) Animorphs was deeply fucked up on occasion. Like how Marcus knew his mom was possessed by the 2nd in command Yerrk and spent most of the series desperately trying to save her.
2) K.A. Applegate also "wrote" Remnants which is equally fucked up and weird
I remember that Oatmeal book, essentially the oatmeal was their version of crack and cocaine, and the Yerks would insanely addicted to it.
And Jake was struggling with the moral dilemma of whether or not he would get his brother addicted to it.
I had dyslexia as a kid and trying to read these books was INSANE!
I always really liked the time travel book where they're chasing a Yeerk agent through time. In particular actually showing the ton of side effects their involvement would cause human development; capped off with WW2 being a British/Canadian invasion of mainland Europe against a Franco-German alliance and none of the characters having the slightest clue whose even the "good guys".
Ah yes when the Galaxy is at stakes, but everything takes place on earth
not everything, just most
I remember those books in my school library. I was terrified of those books then, and I think I might still be terrified of it now.
My favorite parts of these books is that if you quickly flip all the pages, you’ll see a silhouette of the character on the cover transform into the animal on the cover.
He should have covered how one of the animorphs was perminantly turned into a hawk (with the shortened lifespans of a hawk that results it their implied death 20 years later) or how another animorph dies. Just straight up dies.
I’m surprised I never read any of these books because my school libraries and teacher’s book collections all had a bunch available.
animorphs is a relic from a bygone age to me. they're the only book series I read in first and second grade that I remember. It is just, an amazing series.
Ok so without sounding too out there, the plot of animorphs lowkey sounds like the plot to the comic "Urban Animal" but instead of it being multiple people its one kid, and instead of the powers being given by aliens the one kid was given them via some spiritual reincarnation
m.webtoons.com/en/super-hero/urban-animal/list?title_no=1483
Glad to meet another member of the Chimera Crew!
Bro Urban Animal is awesome!! Don't know how I never connected the dots between it and Animrophs
The Pro Crastinators Podcast chanel made a 4 hour video about animorphs days ago.
It is amazing.
10:06 I know you were probably being sarcastic, but that _does_ make it funnier.
I refrained from killing myself during my first bout with depression, because when I was contemplating what I had to live for, the one and only thing I cared about was the next Animorphs book, and what I might miss in the series.
That’s actually amazing, glad you are still here. How are you doing now?
Wasn't there a book in the animorph series where an entire alien civilization is wiped out because of a video game?
(in a prologue, a misunderstanding ensues when a simulation game is somehow leaked to another alien race who then commits genocide.) Weird series tbh
Ellimist chronicles
Yup.
The simulation game was broadcasted by the scientist caste of the extinct race cause they were experimenting with broadcasting technology, knowing full well there are other sentient beings in their galaxy, and didn't see how another species could take a footage of their people interfering with the development of another species and getting them to fight each other without somehow explaining it was a video game/fictional could be taken the wrong way.
The alien race who killed the Ellimist's people thought they were saving the universe because they thought the Ellimist's people were actually fucking over other sentient races.
And that's just the first act of the book since it was about how the Ellimist became a god.
Man these were weird... And sad. Like that one book about the...Hork Bajurrs(?), the foot soldiers of the Yeerks and how they were enslaved. We saw families get killed, entire towns in flames, and a whole civilization wiped out.
I remember reading the android dog part on christmas eve and finding it really tragic or something. Generally I enjoyed these as a kid.
anyone else remember the episode of the show where Rachel morphs into a Yeerk and gets trapped in a jar? Did I dream that? I remember having a lot of nightmares about it.
I believe that was one of the books.
I know that cassie morphs a yeerk at one point but I'm not sure about rachel, I'm on my own reread through of the books and if I find something like that I'll get back to ya
I've been looking for all 54 Animorphs books with the original covers . 2 or 3 years ago I went to this used book shop and they had a few of the original Animorphs books but I didn't bother to get them . Definitely regretting that now 😅 . I went on Amazon and all 54 books and 10 spinoff series is available for $545 , that is if no one else has ordered yet .
I've got almost all of them. I picked up like 30 when my library gave them away.
I got the whole series for Christmas one year after I read most of the ones at our public library.
Any online sites where you can get them?
I vividly remember picking up one of the books in the 4th grade. I randomly opened a part of the book and read a part where a dude's dorsal fin was being ripped or cut off while in orca form. Needless to say, I never picked up any books in this series again.
(Edit: 5:47 THAT"S THE BOOK OH GOD)
I swear that this is what fueled DeviantArt with the whole “transformation fetishes”.
Animorphs has the most cursed book covers.
Sometimes you can't tell if it's a real book or a meme pic.
I remember reading part of the series when I was a kid. I was invested in the plot and the characters, but I never got a chance to get through the whole thing. So one of these days I'll see if I can get my hands on the books and read all 53 of them. There were some very engaging plotlines I remember. Lets see if they are as good as I remember them...
Remember how one of the main protagonists gets stuck in hawk form for a large portion of the series?
Or how one of the other protagonists is the brother of the alien who gave the protagonists the shape changing abilities and was also obsessed with the concept of human tastebuds, food and specifically cotton candy?
Yeah, weird is an understatement.
You didn't even mention that the latter is the former's uncle
@@AlphaetusPrime I don't know how I forgot that.
Ok but I freaking loved these books as a kid. I read maybe like 15, not in order, but I can never forget Animorphs.
Still my favorite childhood book series lol
Sure, it is weird and ranges from morbid to hilarious but the books are never boring that I remember.
"Ruled by a corpse"
You mean the God-Empe-
*BAM*
* gets shot in the face for Heresy *
I vaguely remember this series now, how I asked a kid back when I was in primary school what it was about. He said something about aliens and I was completely lost.
Having seen this now... I am still completely lost
I remember reading one of the spinoff and the mc didn't know that clothes were and thought the humans were taking off their skin lol
“...Crashes into a construction site...”
Uh....better than the twin towers.
I remember the part where we got to see Tom’s memories scaring me so much as a kid, just the concept of being aware of everything your body does but also being completely unable to stop it