Just how many people did the Animorphs kill?
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- čas přidán 5. 02. 2023
- Contains heavy spoilers for the entire Animorphs book series.
Kind of in the title, but TW for lengthy & flippant discussion of death in a sci-fi/war epic context.
Charts generated with Flourish, with some after-the-fact cleanup and manipulation by me. Special thanks to Andalite Armfight for the suggestion to use racing bars, which reinvigorated the project after it had stagnated for months.
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Some extra insights/things not discussed in the video:
CORRECTION: Rachel does not kill the Garatron; Marco does. The individual counts are right, but the "other species" circle chart near the end has it wrong.
- A couple team kills are assigned during MM1 and The Alien. Those are the Yeerks that are known to have starved after the Kandrona's destruction. We know the number is far higher; also, I realized after the fact that Rachel destroyed the Kandrona with her Grizzly morph so those should possibly be on Rachel's counter.
- The Arrival (38): I did not mention Arbat shooting his way into the Yeerk pool, leaving the Animorphs a trail of gruesome bread crumbs to follow, but they are on the chart. Related, the 4 Andalites are on the chart as "Apex Team"; I'm aware only Arbat & Estrid were actually affiliated with Apex
- The Deception (46): There are no kills associated with the US Navy for the action aboard the USS George Washington. There is some description (mostly of the sounds) of weapons firing but we have no context for what was done by un-infested sailors vs what was done by Controllers. No fatal combat between a sailor and a Controller takes place on-page.
- On the "Combat wounded" counter near the end of the video, if anyone is curious how we got two injured Taxxons: Rachel stuns one with a Dracon beam in The Underground (17), and a Taxxon Bug Fighter pilot in The Revelation (45) is thrown through the air and implied to be injured, but alive, in the forest. I was surprised too.
- Also on the combat wounded, there's a massive jump in "Humans" at the end, from the Sacrifice bombing. The number is not entirely arbitrary; it's from the same casualty estimates with the same modifiers used for the fatality discussion. - Zábava
![The Animorphs Iceberg [Viewer request]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/IMZnr4BPt8o/mqdefault.jpg)
Lmao I was like "Wow Rachel is waaaay lower than I would have... Oh there she goes"
She did a terrorism.
....a seagull has a kill count? Of two, no less...
Was wondering when someone would ask. End of The Hidden (#39), takes down a helicopter with human pilot + Yeerk. The seagull, unfortunately, doesn't make it.
@@torren5950 Noooooo :(
Never trust a seagull
Birds can totally rek many pitiful Earth flying vehicles
@@torren5950kill count of at minimum 3, then.
In order to fanwank here; Ax is the only member of the Animorphs who actually is a servicemember of a military. He may feel obligated to take on the massive casualty numbers in order to keep the blood off of the hands of the group of alien civilian children he finds himself with.
Doesn’t he very quickly promote Jake to the military rank of “prince”? It always sounded to me like Ax was pretty eager to be a Starship Troopers character.
I’ll defer to better-read opinions since I’m going off of summaries and never read that far into the series
That doesn't ever get mentioned in the books, and they're very open about the characters thoughts.
@@sideways5153calling him a starship troopers character is spot on, andalites are the same sort of nationalistic, militaristic, glory and honor sort of civ, and being a kid himself he ate the propaganda early
@@bryanalexander3184 Thank you, Bryan
I'd argue that the Animorphs establish and comprise a formal non-state armed force - a guerilla group - and are somewhere between willing and unwilling on the spectrum of choice regarding their participation.
You don't have to be a formal member of a military or a paramilitary authority or even a chain-of-command in order to be a combattant.
He may not have the highest kill count, but Marco tends to kill high-ranking Yeerks: Including both Visser One and Visser Four.
Quality over quantity
The first thing I thought of when that mention of no human controller casualties was, “That’s bullshit.”
In book three, after Tobias causes the Yeerk tanker to crash, it specifically states that it crushes one of the two helicopters that were flying around the airspace. And there was clearly at least one human on that chopper, so that’s a K.I.A. human right there.
Hence a big part of the influence for this project. Tobias vs. the truck ship was first on my mind too.
I had the same thought. But to be fair, she didn't say there were no human controller casualties, she said she couldn't recall any reported human controller casualties. It could be she just missed a few reports, or didn't read them all thoroughly. And with human casualties always being minimal, (especially compared to damages and yeerk deaths,) and happening due to rampant destruction instead of battle, they probably wouldn't be highlighted in the damage reports.
@@pirateraider1708It would also be the enormous lie so tempting to respond to if they were in fact humans. One must always be suspicious of information that Visser One provides.
Honestly something about Animorphs is that you can't talk about it for long without it turning into a grim discussion on the horrors of real life war, and I think that's the strength that makes the super fans love it, even if turns a lot of people away. Despite the weaknesses of the writing in some places, the theme of war stays front and center and it colors the whole thing with a tragedy that feels real: horrifying and futile and inevitable.
Saw a commentor in a forum give what might be the most succinct descriptor of what talking about these books is like. He was describing them to his girlfriend and she eventually went "Wait...These books are for kids?"
Speaking of Seagull kill count, if you play the GBC game, trying to get a Seagull morph is extremely difficult. Throw all you have at it, it will still beat you. So, add 6 to the kill count in that regard for that damn Seagull.
Long live Queen Rachel, 1st of Her Name!
"now let's lighten the mood a little... With the David trilogy!" I choked on my food lmaooo😂
narrative parallels with ax taking on the blame for elfangor's choice to give the animorphs morphing powers, and alloran telling elfangor to flush a bunch of harmless civilian yeerks and elfangor telling him point-blank to fuck off.... ax is simultaneously a scapegoat AND also completely encouraging people to order him to murder people huh
"I was just following orders... that I completely agree with and encouraged my superiors to give me!(especially if they had doubts)"
Was just rereading the Yeerk pool incident and yes, it is refreshing to see someone call out Ax for that bullshit
Speaking of people with more time than sense, a friend and I are doing a research paper applying the Geneva Conventions to select fictional conflicts, as an excersize to study the applications and limitations of International Law in times of Conflict. (It will help with our degrees)
I, perhaps foolishly, managed to convince my co-author to include the Earth Front of the Andalite-Yeerk War, as the Animorphs were a mainstay of my childhood. These numbers would make excellent contextual data, would you mind if I cite your calculations?
Best,
A fellow fool.
Only if you link me the final paper when it's done :)
That sounds awesome, and if it is foolish, it's the right kind of foolish. I hope it works out well.
Hork-Bajir come in packs of 12 made me cackle
I always thought (after I noticed it anyway) that Ax handling the execution and the possibility of torture/pointed execution (#53, to threaten the Chee) was uhm- a natural pattern the Animorphs fell into as a result of their codependency?
Being given orders + thinking of non andalites as less important = Ax is less traumatized than the others at doing the cold blooded stuff, so Jake and the others tend to leave it to him. This gives me the same vibes as people letting Rachel handle the immediately and graphically violent stuff and Jake handle the "this decision could kill us and mess everything up" stuff. They all tend to have specialities, some more disturbing than the others.
Anyway, I loved this video! Statistics!
I got a good laugh out of "the two Tabias maces in the face... no no, *maces* in the face" line.
*Tobias (taking a drag from a cigarette)*
*Marco:* “How the hell did you even light that you don’t have thumbs?!”
Rule #6 working overtime to keep Tobias's casualty count out of the billions.
@@torren5950 The Ellimist realizing that putting both Elfangor's kid and kid brother on the same team might just be overkill after seeing the casualty figures.
technically, tobias didn't cause the KT mass extinction. he just ensured it wasn't prevented. I'd say there's an argument for that kill count not going to him either way
I actually agree with this (in spite of my 'rule 6' comment above). Based on book 11, the way Sario Rips seem to work is that if the time-traveling version of yourself dies in the past, you just snap back to your present self shortly before the time travel event and none of it happened. Extrapolate this to Megamorphs 2 and the implication is, the Animorphs die during the impact, so they snap back to the present and don't time travel. That means they weren't in the past; the comet flew by the Earth as it originally would have and the real KT event happened probably several millennia later. A silly piece of evidence for this is that the Mercora's broccoli survived to present day.
One part of this I don't like is that Sario-Rip induced time travel is possibly the most boring take on time travel. All you have to do is die in the past and you snap back... you don't get to keep morphs or take objects with you but your brain retains any information you learned.
I fucking love Animorphs fans
they're a different breed
@@Romanticoutlaw they literally morph into fans
Slightly disappointing that Jake didn't live up to his nickname Yeerk Killer.
Over 10k in one go isn't enough for you?
@@MySerpentine He's American dammit, 10k are rookie numbers!
Jake smoked 10K Yeerks in one night. The only thing he didn't do was buy everyone marshmallows and ginger ale.
i like how animorphs explained why you were nuking the east coast
I watched this not caring for spoilers. Got mid way and went holy crap this series gets more tense then I thought. I'll be back in a few weeks
When i was reading through these books, i also did a kill count for each character, going up slowly until that one book they destroy the yeerk pool and it jumped by thousands. Hard to judge the numbers on that since it's not exactly clear
Yep, one has to make (and defend) a lot of assumptions starting as early as book 6. Hopefully I'm safe with the 'lower bound' argument... the exact number is unknowable but it's got to be at least this or higher.
@@torren5950 would be interesting if it was a more detailed kill count list as far as kills using each animal, although most characters main 1 or 2 animals. (Example Rachael 25 kills with elephant, 100 with bear etc)
Also each character has different alien numbers: 100 hork bajir kills, 40 taxxon etc etc although a total number is good too, might be too OCD to get too complicated like that
@@desertsn0wball I might one day share the Master Spreadsheet that has most (but not all) of these stats. For better or worse though, "Lear jet", "hot tub", "computer terminal", and "borrowed U.S. military bombs" easily outweigh every animal.
I like that we don't hear anything in the media about K.A. Applegate changing her mind or story canon about characters like other writers are doing.
Michael Grant didn't say that Marco and Ax were dating, he says "Oh, I WISH! Any future adaptation that wants to do that has our blessing." We respect that.
@Liam Anne Garner do you have a source for that?
I wanted to do this years ago, but gave up after Book 1. Fantastic, dedicated work you've done here. I salute you!
Disagree with you on Jake having no character arc in 36. If 37 hadn't completely dropped the ball, I think that would be more apparent.
Ax being the main tool for dispatching enemies fits his character very well. However, I would put the 17,000-Yeerk flush in Jake's hands. He directly gave an order.
Of course, if that's the case, then Jake is responsible for all enemy deaths that come as a consequence of his orders.
A leader always takes responsibility for the actions of his subordinates.
Surprised you didn't count Visser Three's kills! He probably rivalled the Animorphs for Yeerk kills. =P
Fantastic video.
Thanks for the kind words. Room for disagreement about how the bigger events are allocated is a feature, not a bug.
I actually wanted to track Visser 3's kills; it would have been hilarious to get to say something like "Turns out the 3rd most effective Animorph was... Visser 3!" I abandoned that early on because, honestly, they're so easy to miss. While the proper Animorphs battles run for several paragraphs at least, making it easy to skim to the relevant section, so often Visser 3 casually kills a Taxxon in a 5-word clause. I was convinced that unless I closely read every single scene the Visser is in for the whole series, I'd just miss too many. My guess? Somewhere between fifty to sixty on-page kills.
@@torren5950 That wouldn't surprise me, either!
Shame you've seen this already. Would've made a nice reaction vid.
@@torren5950 and that's only the ones we directly see on page. He's a violent psychopath all the time not just when we see him on the page so he's presumably spending his free time lancing taxxon controllers for breathing too loud and has been for decades. Outside of mass casualty events involving yeerk pools he probably kills more yeerk forces than the animorphs.
Sweet Christ, I did not realize Ax had such a huge body count.
The Animorphs dork in me really enjoyed this video.
Cassie killed one in book one, though it wasn't onscreen. 2 if you count the yerk and policeman seperately. I was shocked because I didn't remember haha
(Sorry I missed this comment for a month) This is my personal headcanon too. It's ambiguous in the text though, not confirmed by the authors. For the pursposes of the video I put him on the "team" counter, assuming that he's dead and that *some* Animorph had something to do with it. And yes, it counts for two.
@@torren5950 ah, gotcha! Thanks for replying
If Cassie actually did kill that guy in the first book, I think it's kind of weird that they never follow up on it. There's no point where she expresses regret, or shock, or any kind of extreme emotional reaction. And this is the same character who quit the team in book 19 because of how she felt after killing a Hork-Bajir. If Cassie did hurt somebody directly in that first battle, I have to believe there would have been some kind of follow-up with it. But since we never hear about it again, I don't think she did kill him.
All ax did at the pool flush scene was mention an option. They were in a battle and he shared the potential. Before he even asked for the order, he made sure jake knew it was 17000 non combatants.
I have not read any of these books. But after seeing this video. This is wild lol.
The fact that there's a person out there who hasn't read the books and yet sat through all of (or even half of) this video is beyond wild to me. Did the algorithm recommend it to you? Please, tell me everything.
@Torren I was recommending thru the almighty algorithm. When I was younger i saw the books. But I had reservations on reading. I seen this video an thought. Maybe a bunch of one on one fights. Maybe a group fight like x-men or something. But not MASS GENOCIDE! Lmao 🤣
@shadow3delta850 "Not mass genocide"
-- every Animorphs fan ever, at some point
"Yes mass genocide"
-- the books
@Torren You mean people out there lol. I have watched through all of the video and have not read any anamorph content.
@@bestaround3323 All I can is "dang" and "thanks"!
Just what I needed, more content to try to find time to consume. I am reading the series to my kids because I love the books.
I'm about 2 years away from (trying) starting them with my kids. Best of luck!
Somehow missed David's kill(s), which include at the very least, Jake and Rachel's other cousin
I thought about those. David never kills a controller. There is Saddler; the text is clear that he is medically expected to die soon; it's unclear if David does anything to accelerate his death, or merely hides the body. My own Last Touch rule means David is responsible if he "does" anything. But, Saddler isn't a Controller. Of course, neither are the Nartec, or the Howler, or the Veleek, and they're on here.
I suppose the very shaky, tenuous defense I can make is that, once David goes rogue and tries to kill Tobias, he is no longer an Animorph. I credited Animorphs for non-controller kills, and non-Animorphs for Controller kills, but not non-Animorphs for non-Controller kills. Make sense?
@@torren5950 entirely fair, and makes perfect sense!
@@torren5950 on another channel they point out that David threw saddler down an elevator shaft. So, yeah. To the parents of saddler: saddler is dying, David morphs saddler so it seems he's healthy, but in reality through the body down an elevator shaft, and David demorphs, and saddler is dead again.
13:55 If I had to chose between being an Imperial Guardsman on Cadia or a Yeerk without a host I'm going with being a Guardsman, I have a slightly higher chance of surviving.
This took an interesting and very real turn there at the end. For a project about data from an old book series, I appreciate that.
That’s the legacy of Animorphs, apparently
Unasked for data analysis, count me subscribed
When I was in second grade, I was at a below average reading level. Then my teacher put up a board with all the names of the kids in class on it and said we would get a sticker for each chapter book we read. I wanted to impress a girl named Maddie who I had a crush on by accumulating the most reading stickers, so I went to town on all the Animorphs books and blew by everyone else in class. Things didn't work out between me and Maddie, but that's okay because the whole incident kickstarted my love of reading, and my love for animals (plus she looked at me funny when I said I prefer my happy meals "with extra happy").
Oh boy, doing things in hopes of impressing a crush that don't work but also lead to a genuine life-long passion, THAT reminds me of some stuff that I will never be talking about in depth.
This is fantastic, thank you so much for the effort! I spent the whole video waiting for Jake to suddenly be credited with the Pool ship Yeerks and burst out ahead but...nope.
This was much more in-depth, fascinating and entertaining than I expected. Great analysis!
Thank you!
Watching this video made me realize that mayyyyybe I should go and read the insanity that is Animorphs all over again
I'm currently on book four 👾
I'm so glad I found this channel. Insane how small the Fandom is. Subbing!
Let's be honest just in the prequel with space, god, and space Satan both rack up planetary kill counts and that's before the hunker down for the real war.
Oddly enough, these were the books that got me into reading. Now I'm into 40k...
"In the name of the Emperor, suffer not the Yeerk to live! Destroy the Xenos!" -K.A. Applegate (probably)
The Animorphs couldn't possibly have killed the policeman. Cassie was the one to confirm his demise, but she'd morphed into a horse and was carrying people out. Rachel and Marco were too far away, we know Jake didn't attempt it, and Tobias couldn't have gotten a killing blow in. There was simply no way for them to do it. He must've been burned alive by Visser Three and his barrage of fireballs.
Obviously room for interpretation but I think there is a spot where it could happen. Ch 25, Jake & Tobias attack the Hork-Bajir dragging Cassie down the infestation pier. Cassie breaks free and runs into a dense crowd; Jake thought-speaks at her to morph, but he doesn't have eyes on her again until she emerges from the crowd, fully morphed to horse. The amount of time it takes to morph is wildly inconsistent, but we have "about 2 and a half minutes" from The Encounter as a benchmark for the early series. Two and a half minutes in a fire fight is an eternity... more than enough time for Cassie to lock eyes with the cop, and either out of rage or self-defense (he sees her morph), trample him just as her morph finishes.
This idea is NOT compatible with how Chris Grine drew it for the graphic novel; the crowd is thinner and we see Cassie morph... but it also looks like the morph only takes a few seconds, which is more like how the TV show handled it.
During this same period of time, Marco is near the cages with Tom; Rachel is in the same area but we have no knowledge of what she is doing. So she's my number two suspect.
I prefer the "poetic" angle of the first human kill going to Cassie, using a non-predatory animal that nonetheless is more than capable of killing a human. Her later reactions to killing, refusing to kill, and my personal favorite, trying to "order" Jake to kill Fenestre while she stands by (The Warning), all become more powerful if they're rooted in the trauma of that first event.
As to why I find it unsatisfying to assume the cop was a bystander to Visser 3's fireballs... the narration tells us about V3 hitting others, including one of the two riders on Cassie's back. Why would they obscure the gory details of him in particular when they're direct about the others?
There is another possibility that involves neither the Animorphs nor Visser 3: the crowd could have done it. Desperate, angry people temporarily freed from their cages (which bear no small resemblance to jails), who know better than to try to attack the Hork-Bajir, see a middle-aged police officer who serves as a symbol of their imprisonment? Yeah, that could get ugly.
Fantastic job! This video was incredible.
Thank you very much!
I really like how the casualties came in waves per character, it was oddly satisfying, even if the data was maybe not as accurate as it coulda been. There's just something so gratifying about looking at these huge jumps in numbers of deaths happen suddenly.
(As a sidenote/defense of the "bare minimum" death count, though, casualties are defined as both death *and* grievous wounding, so the casualty rate can still be extremely high without necessary any deaths, since I don't care if you're mind controlled trucker or a 7 foot tall lizard/bird man; Having your arm torn off by a grizzly bear will impede your ability to be an effective soldier, agent, or logistical support unit. So that bear rampage still assuredly caused well over 30+ casualties, don't you worry. Also the Schoolastic Approved(tm) eye gouging still contributed too.)
Also shout out to David's dad for killing 100% more invaders than David, very cool. Did a shit job of raising a son, though, kid couldn't even handle the lightest of war crimes, or the fact that he may never see his family and friends again, or that he was drafted into a war as a child soldier against his will.
Also also; I really like the 12-pack rule for Aliens, actually, it sounds like an alien variant of the rule of 3 or 10, which just adds to the immersion. Maybe the Yerts or Taxxon have a base 12 system, who knows?
This was well researched and impressively edited. Nice work!
5:40 Being a Yeerk must be a lot like being a member of Ignis Corp whenever the Animorphs show up... That is to say Mass Cas is to be expected and good luck to them on making it out alive.
Hell, the Yeerks have probably had 300% or more casualty rates from the Animorphs on some days... Like Provins was for Ignis.
The David Trilogy was dope! He was like a mad genius! I gotta collect the whole series, again!❤
Hey Torren! Idk if you remember me but I commented on the iceberg video about the two hours rounded down because andalites use base 14 thing but I'm back with another theory because of you! In this video you mention how there are always 12 (or, a dozen) hork bajir. I'm reading Visser now and in the first chapter while Visser one and three are meeting before the council, there is this quip:
“The two stalk eyes roamed here and there, checking the equipment, watching the ceremonial thirteen Hork-Bajir guards that stood at attention around our small, secure room.”
So I'm guessing either the animorphs always guesstimate a dozen in a panic while facing 13 hork bajir or more likely there is probably a hork bajir (with taxxon) on the bug fighter as a getaway driver. Just food for thought!
Either that or Erek showed up even earlier than we thought.
But seriously, my head-canon is that the Blade Ship is permanently crewed by 4 bridge Taxxons, + 2 TAxxon Bug Fighter pilots; similarly there are 2 standard Hork-Bajir commandos, plus Visser 3's Honor-Guard of 12 hand-picked Hark-Bajir. There's also a platoon of 12 standard battle Taxxons but they tend not to last too long. They're all killed in book 3 and most of their replacements are killed in book 4 (by dolphins, no less!)
Wow this dedication is amazing! Thank you!
I am just so... Lost, this is a kids book????? The fuck is a yeerk and why do they have a pool?. What in the hell is a hork bajir? I thought this was a book for furries or something what the hell
This is the kind of comment an Animorphs fan dreams of. It honestly never occurred to me that anyone not familiar with the series would watch more than 30s of the video, but it seems to have gotten a small but very present audience who watched despite having no idea what it's about.
So, at the tail end of the 1980s & 90s "Satantic Panic", while parents were afraid of things like D&D and trying to ban Goosebumps books, nobody paid any attention to Animorphs because they had boring two-word titles always starting with "The" and silly covers that, as you say, look like furry stuff. People expect its about girls magically transforming into horses and describing what it's like to run through a meadow. Because of that, parents and teachers and Congressmen etc who might have been 'concerned' about the content never bothered to even find out what it was.
It's actually a war story about a clandestine alien invasion, child soldiers "drafted" by another alien to fight back for Earth, and the morality and trauma involved with it. It's violent and bloody and by the end, every bit of moral highground has been stripped away and the only philosophy left is "Better them than us." The goofy morphing depicted (inaccurately) on the book covers is the only weapon the characters have, and its often a horrifying and always an ugly and exhausting process.
To answer your direct question, the Yeerks are the main antagonists; parasitic slugs that enter an organisms brain via the ear canal and take full control of the creature. (Brain slugs are a pretty common SciFi trope; see "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan", the Star Trek TNG episode "Conspiracy", the X-Files episode "Ice", and the Futurama brain slugs for a comedic version.) In their natural state, Yeerks swim around in large pools, which occur naturally on their home planet, absorbing nutrients. The Yeerks build huge, hidden, artificial pools wherever they stage a new invasion and it's the center of their lives; essentially their religion. They must return to the pool every 3 days to feed, making it a natural weakness and something you'd want to attack, but it's heavily guarded and also, whilst the Yeerks are feeding, their human (or other alien) "hosts" are kept imprisoned nearby awaiting re-infestation, so any large scale attack (like, for example, bombing it with stolen US military hardware) will result in hundreds or thousands of innocent deaths.
This has been a quick Animorphs primer. Hope you enjoyed it.
@@torren5950 i appreciate the in depth explanation. I can understand the video and terminology now. At least it makes sense, thank you
@Torren I would describe animorphs as the x files mytharc for kids with a good planned endgame. With copious amounts of gore, body horror and child soldiers.
This is an amazing video, nice job dude
How delightful
I used to read these in elementary school... now I'm starting to remember why they kinda messed me up emotionally. Especially the ending to the series.
My brother and I got a little obsessed with them, and you could say I developed a slightly unhealthy love-hate relationship with all the violence and death.
Also, remember that time when Marco literally had to KILL HIS MOM? (We find out in later books that she didn't die, but still) Why did they make these books available at elementary school libraries?😂😂
16:12 😂😂😂
honey dinner is getting cold
Away with you, woman ! Can’t you see I have other priorities?!
*Opens up CZcams in a new tab*
HOW DARE CZcams NOT RECOMMEND YOUR COMMENT TO ME SOONER. I joke that Animorphs is my religion, and it's only barely a joke 😂 loving this so far, watchlisting your other Animorphs-related stuff, subbed and belled
I've wanted to do a similar project for the show Get Smart to keep track of all of the running gags in a spreadsheet. Maybe this video will inspire me to finally start.
16:10 made me literally laugh out loud.
I just don't think Ax is responsible for the flushing of the pool ship. Jake is, as far as Ax is concerned, his military superior and he gave the order. He bears responsibility for it as the person in charge of the situation
Not only was it Ax's idea, the Last Touch rule makes Ax responsible for it. Maybe you'd have a case if it was purely Jake's idea and he forced Ax to do it, but Ax was the one who noticed that the Yeerks were there, and that they could flush them if they wanted.
And then every chart is turned into a speck after Crayak joins the chat in all caps. 😈
Cheekiness aside though great video. New point of view on a lot of things and may actually need to go reread the series now. Been awhile.
it feels like this video was made especially for me
22:27 Ax, probably:
Bro Rachel just popped to the top like nobody's business lol.
I tell you what though, after watching some videos about the series, I sincerely regret not reading it in school. I was one of the " what is that ugly cover" crowd.
Also, it is totally possible to make a "clean" nuke. I would assume Andalite nukes would be that way. Unless it was one of ours, then yeah, fallout.
I feel cheesy plugging my own stuff in the comments but if you want more on the perceptions of the series based on the covers vs. what actually happens, check out my Animorphs iceberg video. I have complex feelings about it because I think the bland titles and cheesy cover art simultaneously kept Animorphs off the radar of the book banning crowd, but also turned off some potential readers who might have been up for a space invaders war epic, which is closer to what Animorphs really is.
Re: the nuke thing... in the context of the book they're talking about a conventional weapons blast. I was trying to use nukemap to model likely casualties, but by default it includes fallout... I didn't want that. Basically I tuned nukemap to yield the smallest number possible over an area with 'x' population density.
4:28 20k Taxxons to 50k Hork-Bajir means that the group size is 70k with 28.5% of them being Taxxons, meaning it’s closer to 30% for a more accurate estimate
Here's the thing about the word "casualty". It doesn't just refer to kills, but injuries, captures and missing in actions. So of course the "barely any human casualties" thing is bs because of Ax's policy around disarming humans, literally.
Imagine what the teams kill count would be if he counted all the dinosaurs AND Mercora (and maybe Ness?) from the second megamorphs book lol
Awesome video, thanks for the hard work! Looking forward to anything else you might share. Was wondering if there was any chance of you sharing the spreadsheet with us?
Man, these Animorph books do not hold back, Rachel goes apeshit before Ax goes full any means necessary
Just reading the title made my day😅
No grand total total?
I didn't say it aloud but it's in the bottom right corner at 23:50
they def don't fit into your frame work but the two controller guards at the aquarium in The Escape had to have died right? they got complete full on looks of all the human animorphs standing right next to Ax and there's no consequences. I know there's a line where they dismiss the kids as uninvolved, but that's such questionable writing i'm going to pretend that didn't happen
I agree it's not the best written scene. My personal explanation for what happened: they both survived; the other (non-Controller) guard that was there was infested afterwards. The first guard eventually assumed they were all morphed Andalites except Ax, and didn't want to talk about it in detail too much for fear of being summarily executed by Visser 3. That mindset is more or less canon -- at the start of The Solution, Rachel overhears two Controller cops discussing the possibility that the "Andalite bandits" are in fact human but no one's willing to bring it up to Visser 3.
I appreciate your effort 😂
So something you said may change a lot of calculations.
Most taxons are NOT infested because of the hunger.
26:1 KD ratio is pretty good.
I appreciate that you did the math.
Youre like the only person ive heard blame the poolship flushing on Ax and he CLEARLY is responsible. It paralells his brother who refused to do it under strict orders and threats, meanwhile Ax suggests and encourages the flushing
I love him but #NormalizeBlamingAx! I've come to believe the differences between Ax's and Elfangor's personalities when they were the same age is that Ax was brought up completely steeped in the Andalite's "We're the good guys and our victory is inevitable and also not too many of us will die in the process" propaganda.
Yeah, but: the Yeerks were very, very bad, and fighting them was a moral good.
There is a very strong subtext of disapproval with all the bloodshed in the series in this video. In a way which seems more than a relatively neutral "Oh, the humanity!"-esque comment on the costs of conflict, but a criticism that the Animorphs were needlessly violent; that they somehow enjoyed all the killing, and/or chose it as a first resort - and that it's bad not because innocent lives were being lost as collateral, but that lives were being lost at all - from either side or none.
To the extent that is what you mean, I gotta point out: this was a war started against the entire Human race (and several other races) by a sinister, hard-to-fight enemy which invaded the bodies and minds of sentient beings and sought to enslave entire civilizations.
True that there's some harrowing things which happen in Animorphs, but I don't see how the end message - that it really was necessary to fight the Yeerk invasion with violence - doesn't end up being justified.
As great of a choice as I'm Afraid of Americans is for the end of the video, it would've been even better if you used the 1995 Showgirls version of the song where the chorus goes "I'm afraid of the animals"
You taught me something! I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I didn't even know about this version until today.
That all said, I've really grown attached to the borderline overwhelming mix on the version I used; it complements the heavy but also cheeky tone of the video. The "animals" mix is really sparse... as is the NIN cover of this song, else I'd have been tempted to use that version just because NIN is such a meme in the Animorphs fandom. Now if the "animals" lyrics existed over this mix...
Dude this rules
9:39 that's the Swarm Lord from The Magic Voyage
That's 2 now. There must be dozens of us... dozens!
We all had parents that bought us some poorly dubbed, budget 90s animated film that was cheaper than whatever Disney was releasing that month
In my case it was a grandparent... along with some ripoff version of Thumbelina and, strangely, Ace Venture Pet detective (keep in mind I was like, 6). My parents really resented her for that.
9:40
I HAVE seen that movie. Swarm Lord was a cool concept for such a dumb, unrelated sequence of events.
The Magic Voyage.
2:17 what is this music? I wanna search it up to listen on repeat its so good.
"When the War Came" by The Decemberists, from the album "The Crane Wife." The one in the video is actually a live version from... uh... well, this is embarrassing...
rachel did do a _lot_ of mauling...
does anybody know where to find the audiobooks? i've been listening to them on youtube but couldn't find good narration for later books
They're on Spotify with ads, or, if you have a U.S. library card, you can sign up for Hoopla with just an email address but library card info and they're available there ad-free.
Was buffahuman when Cassie goes to Australia?
No, Australia is book 44, "The Unexpected"; Buffahuman is book 39, "The Hidden".
Thank god for fraternity. I'd have died alone long ago. 16:35
I got a couple of kills. Wasn't there a CYOA book?
Two actually, but officially they're considered noncanon
5:30-So....do you think David is still alive?
Personally, no; he's dead in my headcanon and Rachel mercy killed him. But...
Two different ghostwriters chose to leave it ambiguous, through the voice of 2 different characters (Rachel obviously, but Cassie mentions it in The Ultimate and even she doesn't know if David is alive or dead).
Compare this to the cop in The Invasion, where even though we don't know "who" did it (hence the Team counter), I don't think there's any way to interpret it besides the fact that he's dead.
Wait hold on, why did you leave out David? That’s clearly a team kill, they left him out on a rock in the middle of the ocean. He’s gunna die from starvation.
Short answer: see book 48. There's a lot of ambiguity about how much, if any, of that book actually happens, but it seems David is definitely still alive at the start of that book. As to whether he's still alive at the END of the book, that's left intentionally ambiguous, so I didn't add him.
It's Nuke Map.
Indeed it is
As someone completely unfamilliar with the Animorphs except for those cursed book covers I have to ask: Is there something else in this series besides genocide?
Yes! Lots of themes of family and progeny (both biological and found). Several time travel and alternate reality stories, several zany romps. And I didn't talk much about book 19 in either this video or the iceberg (may get its own video at some point), but after a long introductory run of books where the main characters (and the readers) are primed to think of the invaders as nothing more than an enemy that must be destroyed (whether they do it themselves or hold out long enough for someone else to do it for them), they learn that there are conscientious objectors and, in fleeting instances, a truce may be found. Sadly I think the authors kind of lost the plot on that idea and it doesn't factor into the endgame like I wish it did.
@@torren5950 Ok After watching the Animorphs iceberg video it seems like the series really is one of those franchises that on the surface seems really shallow and just thrown together in a day but actually goes (or tries to go) much deeper than that. The original Star Wars triology or Gundam come to mind.
Maybe I'll try to "legally borrow" some audio books or look into the graphic novel just to experience it once. Thanks for introducing me to another piece of niche media and letting me know how my friends feel when i ramble about Metal Gear.
Much Love
Also, did you count the deaths in book 18.5 to Tobias or ax?
Time travel event, I get to ignore it, else it would go into the trillions.
There's some controversy in the fandom about how MM2 plays out. When we see our first Sario Rip in book 11, resolving it (via the Time-displaced copy of Jake dying) makes it so that Jake retains memory of the event but it didn't literally happen, as evidenced by the fact that he doesn't have the monkey or jaguar morph afterwards.
So in MM2, it seems pretty clear to me that the Animorphs couldn't have survived the impact. They snap back to the present as soon as the shockwave hits them, and they can't morph dinosaurs anymore. Also, there's the joke that the Mercora were raising broccoli; that should have been wiped out if their fields were ground zero for the KT event. So in my view, the prehistoric events of MM2 did not happen. Some other comet hit Earth a million or so years later, by which time he Mercora had spread out and started adapting to Earth by way of carcinization and their broccoli had become widespread enough that some could survive the impact. But plenty of people disagree with that take.
@@torren5950oh thanks
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Did you give Jake a last name
To put it more accurately, K.A. Applegate gave Jake a last name in the final two books, and yes, I used it.
Oddly enough, these were the books that got me into reading. Now I'm into 40k...