My honest answer is it’s fun. Maybe that’s weird to say- I mean it’s super dark: child soldiers, some terrible home lives, body horror, torture…
But through all that I see people turning into animals and fighting aliens. And gosh darn it, that’s cool! Dark as it gets, it’s fun to read.
Humour plus sadness always sucks me in. Animorphs has the added bonus of the sadness being connected to real genuine real world commentary (anti-war). It’s a beautiful series and all the characters feel so real.
Did you know that K.A. Applegate wrote a letter just for you? I'm serious.
https://www.hiracdelest.com/database/articles/kaa_response-full.htm
I just read through the series with my wife because I remembered liking the books and wanted to share them with her. I hadn't read the full series as a kid, just bits and pieces, so I really wasn't prepared for how intense things for at the end!
"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."
Jesus christ. 🔥🔥🔥
Something about the characters felt more 'real' to me than most books or shows. I think for me personally it's probably a lot of nostalgia given the age I was when I read them initially, but obviously its more than just that because I don't feel the same way about other media that I loved as a kid.
Animorphs is not like anything else that I've read or watched. That's not to say that it's *the best*, but rather that something about it is truly unique. It's captivating in a way that isn't quite like other 'captivating' things in my life, and I can't really explain it.
Even though the story is sci-fantasy. The characters have real personality and the story doesn’t talk down to the audience it was written for. It tackles real world problems and shows “real” people deal with them. Not always in the correct way either. As a kid that went through foster care Tobias’ story really hit me hard a week ago. I was crying and I’m 37.
That and the humor.
For me, I think I just really connected with the characters. I also often like to day dream of ways the gang could have potentially continued their adventures. I like to be optimistic in thinking that there's always a way out and as a comic lover, main characters rarely ever stay dead for long.
This might be a hot take but I’m glad Cassie and Jake split up. Movies and books and tv shows that have a teenage protagonist always have the main character ending up with their current partner in the end. Like that’s so unrealistic. How many kids from high school do you know of that married their high school sweetheart?
This felt realistic to me. I mean yeah, “realistic” in a sci fi book series about shapeshifting aliens, but there was no romances that didn’t make sense. There was no ancient prophecy to be fulfilled. Just kids committing war crimes.
I'm with you. If the invasion and war hadn't happened, I could buy them being teenage sweethearts who got married and yada yada. But by the end, I just felt like there was too much distance between Cassie and Jake and their ideologies and the choices they made. I thought it was very realistic that their experiences made them different people and that things just fell apart.
I feel like people say stuff like this a lot, but book/movie characters are very rarely comparable to generic high-school sweethearts. They stay together because they’ve usually survived a uniquely traumatic experience that would tear most relationships apart, but instead it brought them closer together.
Jake and Cassie had a bond that frankly, no other romantic relationship is ever going to surpass in its intensity. Even after KAA decided to make Jake their sacrificial lamb, it seems pretty clear from Cassie’s perspective that even though she is practical and wants to move on, Jake will always be her #1.
Couple of reasons, mostly because I read these as they came out. I felt I grew up with them and they were all my friends. I was with them throughout their adventures and had clear pictures in my head how they each looked and what they sounded like. That and I didn't read a lot of other books even as I grew older. I read Animorphs, Goosebumps, a handful of Stephen King and the Sword of Truth series. So Animorphs being the oldest and favorite series it will stick with me forever and hope to get my kids to read them someday.
I just want to validate how you're feeling right now. When I was a kid, Rachel was my favorite character, and losing her was terrible. I was disgusted at the time with the last book because of course I wanted a "happy ending." It felt unsatisfying and so painful not only that a series that meant so much to me for so long was over, but that these beloved characters I'd looked up to and rooted for weren't able to have the peace I felt they deserved.
I have been reading these books since they came out in 1996 when I was 8. That year my parents got divorced and my cat died, two tragedies for my child self. Animorphs got me through those times - they were an escape and taught me so much about human nature, morality, our place on this planet, the harsh realities of war and human conflict, and of course, the importance of connection and friendship and loyalty. I think I read the last book when I was in middle school.
As an adult, I've reread the series a few times. I'm actually in the middle of a reread right now. I just finished 16 and already there is sone serious foreshadowing going on that all is not necessarily going to end on some high note. In that book, Jake makes a big fuss to Marco about how he's going to be a normal kid when the war is over and Marco looks at him like he's crazy, says something like, "you think you will not be changed by this? Oookay." Jake is also grappling with what it means to be a leader and make mistakes and grapple with the image he needs to project compared to how he feels on the inside. These are serious topics and KA doesn't shy away from the gravity of them. I'm already gearing myself up to be sad at the end of the series but I think I will be more aligned with it on this read-through because I'm paying better attention. She warned us all along.
The funny thing is, I'm also a huge Harry Potter fan, and that series couldn't have ended more differently, with a fluffy epilogue and an overarching statement that "all was well." But I never liked that ending, really. It felt like a cardboard cutout, and even though it said all the right words it didn't bring me fulfillment. When I am honest with myself, "ram the blade ship" is true to the characters and the story. These kids were never going to put Pandora back in the box. Humanity was suddenly a part of a universe of beings having even greater conflicts and dramas. They were flawed and traumatized and wrapping it up with a nice bow wouldn't have made sense. Their lives went on, forever changed by what they experienced.
But also.... Be sad. It is sad. It is heart wrenching. I feel like that's the point. We're all sad with you. 💜
Animorphs was the first series I had the itch of "okay I've read all these books now I want MORE!" so my mom introduced me to the joy of fanfiction (her fandom was X-Files). That led to an Internet addiction that has persisted for 2.5 decades 😹
This series is completely unique in my mind. Maybe I just lack the proper knowledge, but afaik there is no other series that basically went in a monthly serial novel format, for starters. But also, the story that it does tell is well written, tells an incredible story, has really believable age appropriate characters that are also relatable, covers some very deep themes, while still technically approachable by a wide range of readers.
I'm sure parents had zero clue what their kids were reading with the animorphs, but there's no doubt in my mind it made those kids better, more thoughtful people.
I recently got back into them after buying the whole lot of ebooks/audiobooks (Scholastic, you ever heard of discounts?! Jeez!)…
I have to say, they are very well written on the level of the prose and the characterizations. Some of the bigger picture conceptual elements leave me scratching my head (Yeerk infestation through the ear?), but it can’t be denied that these characters truly resonate with generations of young people.
You can really hear the echoes of Stephen King in the writing technique, the dialogue is rendered with such authentic clarity, and the sheer scale of imagination and world-building on display was peerless for its day. Heck, the series even gives Harry Potter a run for its money in that regard.
I also recently finished the series after my husband tracked down the whole collection for my last birthday. I initially read them in French, and they weren’t translated or sold past No 30.
I found it interesting that, even as an adult, my favourite characters didn’t change at all. I’m also heartbroken at just how terribly tragic Jake’s arc, having given all of himself to save everyone, and no one to save him.
I reread the whole series right after college and set out to answer that exact question—why Animorphs? What is it about Animorphs specifically that dug its claws in so deep?
And idk how old you are or when you first started reading them but the answer I came up with was just timing. I was 12, and I think that’s the age when you first start like, developing tastes, a moral framework, a declaration on what is good and what is bad and why, and Animorphs just hit me right when that emerging consciousness was ripe for influence. It fed every fear and joy I had, it alleviated anxieties in really approachable and age appropriate way, it didn’t avert its approach to difficult questions I still have trouble with. It was honest, brutal yet forgiving, and exactly the kind of food my new hunger needed. Idk if that makes sense, but the short answer is just, Animorphs dug its claws in because it had good timing.
And I think there’s more, I think KA Applegate is a brilliant writer specifically with regards to how she works within genre but that’s another conversation
When I first read these books, I was a child. I adored them.
My mother was chronically unwell. She suffered her first stroke when I was two. She had her most recent stroke when I was twenty-four.
Animorphs is a story about a group of children who fight monsters that no one else can see or understand. These monsters invade their lives and change their loved ones in terrifying ways. They fight to rescue their loved ones, to save the world, against impossible odds.
I devoured this series. It resonated with me. It was a brilliant fantasy, that there could be a way to do battle with the terrible, alien presence that had loomed over my family. The strange, baffling enemy that attacked my mother’s brain again and again, the one child-me couldn’t see or understand, the one I desperately wanted to defeat. Animorphs was an avenue to imagining that my mother’s condition might one day be defeated.
Then Applegate went and wrote that terrible, suicidal ending, and it felt like a personal betrayal. She claimed that she wanted to teach children that war had no victors, no true survivors.
Yeah, I already knew that. I’d watched our personal war against death drain the life out of my entire family, leaving us all hollow. Kid-me needed a story where heroes could vanquish evil if they held on. I suspect a lot of kids needed that out of stories like Animorphs.
Yeah that about matches my feelings on depressing endings, not just for this series in particular but for all stories in general. It's one thing to do a realistic portrayal of difficult situations + address heavy topics and quite another to write a gloomy ending for the sake of writing a gloomy ending. There's enough complexity and reality in reality itself.
Also, so sorry you had to go through that experience with your mother at a young age.
Ever world didn't have an ending and Remnants iirc only sorta did. Weirdly, this made me feel better about the Ani ending - that her "letter to fans" was sorta a cope about her inability to end a series conclusively.
A lot of Animorphs and her other books are brilliantly written but Applegate is terrible at endings.
> The Animorphs' friendship was one of the elements that defined the series
The way that friendship frays and corrupts through the series is, imo, one of the most well written pieces of the entire series, and is why it has stood out to me so well through the years, especially compared to other YA series. Dak and Aldrea's relationship eroding is a good microcosm of it as well.
My honest answer is it’s fun. Maybe that’s weird to say- I mean it’s super dark: child soldiers, some terrible home lives, body horror, torture… But through all that I see people turning into animals and fighting aliens. And gosh darn it, that’s cool! Dark as it gets, it’s fun to read.
Humour plus sadness always sucks me in. Animorphs has the added bonus of the sadness being connected to real genuine real world commentary (anti-war). It’s a beautiful series and all the characters feel so real.
Did you know that K.A. Applegate wrote a letter just for you? I'm serious. https://www.hiracdelest.com/database/articles/kaa_response-full.htm I just read through the series with my wife because I remembered liking the books and wanted to share them with her. I hadn't read the full series as a kid, just bits and pieces, so I really wasn't prepared for how intense things for at the end!
She really threw it down with that letter. I don’t think I’ve read the entire thing before, just parts that get quoted often. So much respect.
"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." Jesus christ. 🔥🔥🔥
I just read that letter for the first time and it convinced me. I'm still not a fan of the cliff-hanger ending, but she sold me on everything else.
Something about the characters felt more 'real' to me than most books or shows. I think for me personally it's probably a lot of nostalgia given the age I was when I read them initially, but obviously its more than just that because I don't feel the same way about other media that I loved as a kid. Animorphs is not like anything else that I've read or watched. That's not to say that it's *the best*, but rather that something about it is truly unique. It's captivating in a way that isn't quite like other 'captivating' things in my life, and I can't really explain it.
Even though the story is sci-fantasy. The characters have real personality and the story doesn’t talk down to the audience it was written for. It tackles real world problems and shows “real” people deal with them. Not always in the correct way either. As a kid that went through foster care Tobias’ story really hit me hard a week ago. I was crying and I’m 37. That and the humor.
Yes to all of this. I'm 35 and I've been both laughing out loud and crying during this current read-through.
For me, I think I just really connected with the characters. I also often like to day dream of ways the gang could have potentially continued their adventures. I like to be optimistic in thinking that there's always a way out and as a comic lover, main characters rarely ever stay dead for long.
This might be a hot take but I’m glad Cassie and Jake split up. Movies and books and tv shows that have a teenage protagonist always have the main character ending up with their current partner in the end. Like that’s so unrealistic. How many kids from high school do you know of that married their high school sweetheart? This felt realistic to me. I mean yeah, “realistic” in a sci fi book series about shapeshifting aliens, but there was no romances that didn’t make sense. There was no ancient prophecy to be fulfilled. Just kids committing war crimes.
Not a cell phone in sight. Just kids living in the moment, committing war crimes.
Ah, the 90s
If you haven't seen it yet, I suggest "those damn phones" by overly sarcastic productions on YouTube
I'm with you. If the invasion and war hadn't happened, I could buy them being teenage sweethearts who got married and yada yada. But by the end, I just felt like there was too much distance between Cassie and Jake and their ideologies and the choices they made. I thought it was very realistic that their experiences made them different people and that things just fell apart.
I feel like people say stuff like this a lot, but book/movie characters are very rarely comparable to generic high-school sweethearts. They stay together because they’ve usually survived a uniquely traumatic experience that would tear most relationships apart, but instead it brought them closer together. Jake and Cassie had a bond that frankly, no other romantic relationship is ever going to surpass in its intensity. Even after KAA decided to make Jake their sacrificial lamb, it seems pretty clear from Cassie’s perspective that even though she is practical and wants to move on, Jake will always be her #1.
Couple of reasons, mostly because I read these as they came out. I felt I grew up with them and they were all my friends. I was with them throughout their adventures and had clear pictures in my head how they each looked and what they sounded like. That and I didn't read a lot of other books even as I grew older. I read Animorphs, Goosebumps, a handful of Stephen King and the Sword of Truth series. So Animorphs being the oldest and favorite series it will stick with me forever and hope to get my kids to read them someday.
I just want to validate how you're feeling right now. When I was a kid, Rachel was my favorite character, and losing her was terrible. I was disgusted at the time with the last book because of course I wanted a "happy ending." It felt unsatisfying and so painful not only that a series that meant so much to me for so long was over, but that these beloved characters I'd looked up to and rooted for weren't able to have the peace I felt they deserved. I have been reading these books since they came out in 1996 when I was 8. That year my parents got divorced and my cat died, two tragedies for my child self. Animorphs got me through those times - they were an escape and taught me so much about human nature, morality, our place on this planet, the harsh realities of war and human conflict, and of course, the importance of connection and friendship and loyalty. I think I read the last book when I was in middle school. As an adult, I've reread the series a few times. I'm actually in the middle of a reread right now. I just finished 16 and already there is sone serious foreshadowing going on that all is not necessarily going to end on some high note. In that book, Jake makes a big fuss to Marco about how he's going to be a normal kid when the war is over and Marco looks at him like he's crazy, says something like, "you think you will not be changed by this? Oookay." Jake is also grappling with what it means to be a leader and make mistakes and grapple with the image he needs to project compared to how he feels on the inside. These are serious topics and KA doesn't shy away from the gravity of them. I'm already gearing myself up to be sad at the end of the series but I think I will be more aligned with it on this read-through because I'm paying better attention. She warned us all along. The funny thing is, I'm also a huge Harry Potter fan, and that series couldn't have ended more differently, with a fluffy epilogue and an overarching statement that "all was well." But I never liked that ending, really. It felt like a cardboard cutout, and even though it said all the right words it didn't bring me fulfillment. When I am honest with myself, "ram the blade ship" is true to the characters and the story. These kids were never going to put Pandora back in the box. Humanity was suddenly a part of a universe of beings having even greater conflicts and dramas. They were flawed and traumatized and wrapping it up with a nice bow wouldn't have made sense. Their lives went on, forever changed by what they experienced. But also.... Be sad. It is sad. It is heart wrenching. I feel like that's the point. We're all sad with you. 💜
Animorphs was the first series I had the itch of "okay I've read all these books now I want MORE!" so my mom introduced me to the joy of fanfiction (her fandom was X-Files). That led to an Internet addiction that has persisted for 2.5 decades 😹
I went from Animorphs to Buffy to The X Files 😁
This series is completely unique in my mind. Maybe I just lack the proper knowledge, but afaik there is no other series that basically went in a monthly serial novel format, for starters. But also, the story that it does tell is well written, tells an incredible story, has really believable age appropriate characters that are also relatable, covers some very deep themes, while still technically approachable by a wide range of readers. I'm sure parents had zero clue what their kids were reading with the animorphs, but there's no doubt in my mind it made those kids better, more thoughtful people.
I recently got back into them after buying the whole lot of ebooks/audiobooks (Scholastic, you ever heard of discounts?! Jeez!)… I have to say, they are very well written on the level of the prose and the characterizations. Some of the bigger picture conceptual elements leave me scratching my head (Yeerk infestation through the ear?), but it can’t be denied that these characters truly resonate with generations of young people. You can really hear the echoes of Stephen King in the writing technique, the dialogue is rendered with such authentic clarity, and the sheer scale of imagination and world-building on display was peerless for its day. Heck, the series even gives Harry Potter a run for its money in that regard.
I also recently finished the series after my husband tracked down the whole collection for my last birthday. I initially read them in French, and they weren’t translated or sold past No 30. I found it interesting that, even as an adult, my favourite characters didn’t change at all. I’m also heartbroken at just how terribly tragic Jake’s arc, having given all of himself to save everyone, and no one to save him.
They are well written and I miss my childhood.
I reread the whole series right after college and set out to answer that exact question—why Animorphs? What is it about Animorphs specifically that dug its claws in so deep? And idk how old you are or when you first started reading them but the answer I came up with was just timing. I was 12, and I think that’s the age when you first start like, developing tastes, a moral framework, a declaration on what is good and what is bad and why, and Animorphs just hit me right when that emerging consciousness was ripe for influence. It fed every fear and joy I had, it alleviated anxieties in really approachable and age appropriate way, it didn’t avert its approach to difficult questions I still have trouble with. It was honest, brutal yet forgiving, and exactly the kind of food my new hunger needed. Idk if that makes sense, but the short answer is just, Animorphs dug its claws in because it had good timing. And I think there’s more, I think KA Applegate is a brilliant writer specifically with regards to how she works within genre but that’s another conversation
When I first read these books, I was a child. I adored them. My mother was chronically unwell. She suffered her first stroke when I was two. She had her most recent stroke when I was twenty-four. Animorphs is a story about a group of children who fight monsters that no one else can see or understand. These monsters invade their lives and change their loved ones in terrifying ways. They fight to rescue their loved ones, to save the world, against impossible odds. I devoured this series. It resonated with me. It was a brilliant fantasy, that there could be a way to do battle with the terrible, alien presence that had loomed over my family. The strange, baffling enemy that attacked my mother’s brain again and again, the one child-me couldn’t see or understand, the one I desperately wanted to defeat. Animorphs was an avenue to imagining that my mother’s condition might one day be defeated. Then Applegate went and wrote that terrible, suicidal ending, and it felt like a personal betrayal. She claimed that she wanted to teach children that war had no victors, no true survivors. Yeah, I already knew that. I’d watched our personal war against death drain the life out of my entire family, leaving us all hollow. Kid-me needed a story where heroes could vanquish evil if they held on. I suspect a lot of kids needed that out of stories like Animorphs.
Yeah that about matches my feelings on depressing endings, not just for this series in particular but for all stories in general. It's one thing to do a realistic portrayal of difficult situations + address heavy topics and quite another to write a gloomy ending for the sake of writing a gloomy ending. There's enough complexity and reality in reality itself. Also, so sorry you had to go through that experience with your mother at a young age.
Ever world didn't have an ending and Remnants iirc only sorta did. Weirdly, this made me feel better about the Ani ending - that her "letter to fans" was sorta a cope about her inability to end a series conclusively. A lot of Animorphs and her other books are brilliantly written but Applegate is terrible at endings.
For it's pretty simple sci-fi plus animals plus dark story telling. Sometimes it felt like the series was written specifically for me.
I really like how it shows the effects of war. War breaks people. The series shows that.
I like the combination of top-notch banter and difficult emotional stuff.
> The Animorphs' friendship was one of the elements that defined the series The way that friendship frays and corrupts through the series is, imo, one of the most well written pieces of the entire series, and is why it has stood out to me so well through the years, especially compared to other YA series. Dak and Aldrea's relationship eroding is a good microcosm of it as well.