ani sideblog

Seriously.  Was the last Animorphs episode a case of “we’re already cancelled, so let’s openly queer the protagonists”?  (See: Legend of Korra, The 100, Supernatural, Being Human, Gotham, The Owl House, Angel, etc.)

I was just rewatching AniTV, and all of a sudden I’m starting to think they made Ax/Marco canon.  Most of that last episode focuses on the kids getting ready for a school dance.  There’s a whole sequence where Marco convinces Ax to morph a rabbit, so that he can have a cute pet to attract girls — only as soon as a girl starts talking to Marco, Ax starts freaking out and scares her away.  Later, lizard-morphed-Marco gets grabbed by a teacher and stuck in a pet cage, and starts yelling for all of his friends in thought-speak.  Only Ax hears his cries, and rushes out of the dance to rescue Marco.  The school gym gets destroyed by yeerks (off-screen), but they relocate the dance to the mall.  The last shot of the show is all six of them slow-dancing: Tobias with Rachel, Jake with Cassie — and Marco with Ax.

[Image ID: Screenshot from AniTV showing 6 couples dancing in a room with a green floor, green tables, and gray chairs.  There are two couples of extras dancing in the background and one in the foreground, but the camera is focused on Tobias and Rachel (in a white jacket and a pink dress, respectively) while Jake and Cassie (in a black tuxedo and red dress) and Marco and Ax (in jeans and in a blue suit) dance on either side of them.  Marco and Ax are indicated with an orange circle.]

I’d always kind of dismissed that moment as being some combination of “pair the spares” and “lol so funniez when 2 boys together” (it is the 1990s, after all.)  However, on rewatching, several things stood out to me.

This is the last-ever episode of AniTV.  The one with yeerks in cell phones aired after, but was filmed before, and this ep was meant to be the finale.

It’s not just that Marco and Ax dance together; it’s that Marco sits down next to Ax (so close they’re touching), looks him in the eye, invites him to dance, holds his hand, and pulls their bodies together.  Not quite a silly friend dynamic.

They’re dancing in the same pose and manner as Rachel/Tobias and Cassie/Jake, both of whom are confirmed romantic couples.

The whole episode kinda has Ax/Marco undertones.  “Friend 1 tries to get various dates with Friend 2 as support, doesn’t realize until late in the story that Friend 2 was their love all along” is a classic teen-romance setup, and that’s basically Ax and Marco’s plot this episode.

It’s a weird choice to end the show on this note, given that this is Part 3 of a 3-part finale and yet the other two parts are about an animal-testing cosmetics company and a secret ex-controller group.  However, if the writers chose to have this be the focus of the last episode because it’s the last episode, arguably that makes more sense.

Just… this is more-romantic framing than I initially realized.

[Image ID: Screenshot from AniTV Marco (in a gray shirt) leaning close to Ax, who wears a powder-blue suit jacket and bright blue bow tie.  Marco is holding Ax’s hand in the foreground, and Ax’s other arm is wrapped around Marco’s shoulders.]

@acavatica #yes!!#axmarco#Animorphs#no lie the animorphs tv show was one of the biggest disappointments of my childhood and to this day I hate speculating about adaptations#but this?#this is the consolation prize I deserved

Yes, yes, yes, this whole episode is just AniTV in a nutshell.  Bad pacing and nonsensical edits aside, there’s also the Animorphs all sitting around mourning that their dance got canceled when… people died.  Like, multiple people.  Died.  In front of their eyes.  And some of the ones that didn’t die got ensalved by yeerks.  And Tobias accidentally destroyed an entire ex-host resistance movement like 20 minutes ago.  But they literally just talk about the dance, because apparently they’re all terrible human beings.

Growing up I did a lot of reading, as many kids in the 90s did, and thusly, much like many 90s kids, I was exposed to the wonderful world of Animorphs.

So OBVIOUSLY that meant I had to read the recent graphic novel adaptation. Which I honestly quite enjoyed for the most part.

It had some minor issues here and there, but it excelled in depicting the mid-morph process, (great job!) conversely it really struggled with it's basic character design, and because of this, nearly all the human characters had a terrible case of same face.

Everyone having the same chubby heads and big round noses, regardless of age, gender or race, and all of them constantly making that stupid DreamWorks eyebrow meme face that I found really unfitting for some characters. I was frustrated by it, because it really detracted from what I felt was otherwise a really solid adaptation.

So when I saw this piece of official art included in one of the later issues, I thought 'Wow, that's super cute, I just wish the characters looked a bit more like themselves.'

(Included here is the original image.)

So I decided to redraw it, using a mix of their book descriptions and their cover models. I really wanted to blend the aspects of both, as the covers are just so instantly recognizable to anyone even vaguely familiar with the series, I just felt I would be remiss not to.

Also I wanted to add Ax! Now the group is truly complete!

she tries to summon the strength to thunder through it again

sinks her teeth into a terrible rage, and plunges her fist into the darkness

It's time for that morph. Tobias morphing Taylor.

Rachel chose the outfit, so I was dressed to kill. And I would have looked great in rags... I was a cover girl who could give even Angelina Jolie a run for her money.

That is a lot of confidence Tobias has from this morph. And it's not like the confidence is a Taylor trait. What he finds in her instincts are "gentleness, fear, and joy. Very little cunning. Almost no hate." Nothing about the sudden confidence boost Tobias gets from morphing a girl.

The kid turned to take my order. I smiled and he almost fell over. It was crazy to have such power. I'd been on the receiving end before. I'd never been the source. Is this what Rachel experienced? Was this part of what made her so brave?

I fully agree. They come together, they shape each other, and they ultimately fall apart over the ethical questions raised by the war. Jake trusts Cassie more than he trusts himself to know what the right thing is. Cassie trusts Jake more than she trusts herself to know how to do that right thing when the time comes.