#anitv

Yes, yes, YES! Starting a new post, because this sums up so many of my frustrations with fan crit. Like, Animorphs clumsily attempts to tackle AIDS and slavery reparations and environmentalism and disability justice, and sometimes it works but sometimes it doesn't. But at least it tries. AniTV strips all of that out in favor of a far blander "yeerks bad, humans good, we ignore race here" story.

There's this fallacy, where it's easier to criticize a failed attempt than it is a total lack of trying. In the Heights (2021) got smacked up, down, and sideways by critics and fans for its failure to include more dark-skinned characters; meanwhile A Quiet Place II (2021), Venom II (2021), Free Guy (2021), and Black Widow (2021) get no such critiques because they each include Exactly One Black Actor. Scholomance gets review-bombed for "fake" "forced" "diversity" (X) for featuring kids from all over the world, while Mortal Instruments gets a total lack of criticism for its cast having Exactly One Asian Guy (who is half-white).

I vividly recall a media professor ca. 2013 mansplaining to me that, actually, Orange is the New Black is sexist because it shows male characters having power over female ones, and there's no onscreen sex between the Black lesbians. Somehow he didn't feel the need to say this about Breaking Bad, Supernatural, Peaky Blinders, or any other series that went entire YEARS without passing the Bechdel test. No wonder TV shows have again embraced colorblind racism.

https:// youtu. be/y7FlyhsmsZw?si=BhSigrrdXYmnxe1a

For those who haven't seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7FlyhsmsZw

Yes! It's so clearly riffing off AniTV, and made with love for the TV show — the opening credits are spot-on, and the set has clearly been recreated from the one used here and here, with the graffiti from here.

i think we might actually get it this time, Sol. i think we might actually get Good Animorphs Television

I am trying with all my might not to care about this news. Shows get canceled before a single episode is filmed, all the time. They get canceled after the pilot, all the time. Look at Batgirl, look at the new Buffy, look at the 100s of shows we don't know about.

So it's the Animorphs all playing themselves in a TV show? Oh lord.

Jake: would not know how to deliver lines with the correct level of sincerity, which would for some reason come out as constant California upspeak.

Cassie: would find the whole thing unbearably silly, especially the animal "facts" that she's asked to convey.

Rachel: incredibly variable, depending on the number of the take. In the first version of any given shot she's pretty good. In the 8th, she tends to sound like she's grinding the words between her teeth.

Ax: extremely committed to acting like human acting like an andalite acting like a human acting like an andalite. Committed ≠ talented.

Tobias: meant to have a flat affect. Nailing it.

Marco: carrying this team so hard, to the point where by Episode 10 it's 80% footage of him and 20% the other five combined.

Jake as Jake: [bursting into barn] Hey guys? I have terrible news? The yeerks killed the first lady? And now they're infesting the president?

Tobias as Tobias: Oh. No. Sounds terrible. Whatever shall. We do.

Cassie as Cassie: We should [suppressing giggles] we should morph [more giggles] morph cockroach because cockroaches are [rest is lost to giggling].

Rachel as Rachel: Gee willikers, what a splendiferous idea, gosh and whizz, how swell, my pal!*

Ax as Ax: [looking straight at camera, eyes extremely wide] That is an extremely normal suggestion, Cassie. And as a fellow normal person, I feel that it is correct. Correct being an extremely boring thing to say, with no associated mouth-sounds containing any delightful consonants.

Marco: [slinging an arm around Ax's shoulders] Well, I can tell we're all a little stressed by this news, but thankfully we've got you here to come through with ideas [flourishes at Cassie]. Glad you spotted this, Big Jake — lead us to the aliens!

If I had to sum up my opinion briefly: There are a handful of places where the writing is pretty good, and hint at a genuine love for the books. Which is a bummer, because. The casting sucks. The directing sucks. The storylines suck. The set design sucks. The pacing sucks. The acting sucks.* The special effects suck. The writing mostly sucks. The editing really REALLY sucks.

Anyway, my longer opinion is here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. But I also think — glancing through all those posts — the tl;dr is "it sucks, especially the editing, even if the script does have its moments."

Assuming that I don't get a new cast, a bigger budget, a longer timeline, or access to a ton of exotic animals, I think what I'd change in a remade Animorphs show comes down to one thing...

What I'd Change from AniTV: Editing.

This is a little harder to convey with just screenshots, but: the framing of shots, and the way they're put together, is easily the weakest part of the show. The writing is actually quite good in many places. The camera work has its moments. The storylines show a clear love for the books, and their biggest constraint seems to be budget. The acting varies, but most of the controller-actors are great. It's often funny, often scary, often sad, often heartbreakingly true to the books (Rachel longing to go to a school dance with Tobias), often delightfully original when it departs (Jake escargot scene, anyone?).

But the editing. Holy MOLY. Every episode comes off like they shot only half the footage they need, and then tried to stretch it into 30 minutes by showing some things way too fast, some things waaaay toooo slooooow, and some things not at all.

Like, take "My Name is Erek" (S2E2). The writing shows actual efforts to capture the characters and tone of the book, within a super-limited budget. We open in Marco having a nightmare about a hork-bajir, only to jerk awake and reveal he dozed off in Cassie's barn while watching Ax attempt to teach himself to cook. There's a bit with Ax cooking based only on the vague vibes he's gotten from TV, free from constraints like human stomach capacity or fatal food poisoning, and then Marco and Jake morph mice to sneak into a Sharing meeting.

Marco gets caught by a custodian and thrown away, Jake has to get him out of a dumpster, and then they see...

A dog standing in the road, and a car about half a mile away from said dog. There is fully time for Marco to announce there's a dog about to be hit by a car, and for Jake to say "oh no," as they slowly watch this disaster unfold and wish they had some popcorn right now:

And then they're like, "oh good, that kid is going to do something about it," which Erek does, again veeeery sllloooowly:

And like, I cannot emphasize enough how many times we cut back to Marco and Jake in the middle of this, or how it takes like a solid 30 seconds for them to go "Huh, a dog. Guess that dog's going to die. Shame. I wish there was something we could do, but since we are so very far away from this dog we can't help her. Oh look, there's Erek King. I guess he's... Oh huh, he's hugging the dog? Oh gosh, that's nice, at least they'll both get a hug in the time it takes for that car to get here... Maybe they should move at some point? Because that car's a little closer now...."

And then, approximately 0.0001 seconds after the reveal that holy crap, Erek King just Edward Cullened that dog, we cut to Cassie and Rachel sipping smoothies and talking about how they came to the mall to get machine parts for Ax.

From there we spend the rest of the episode on a discussion of who Erek is and who the chee are, and we never return to that mission Jake and Marco were in the middle of when the episode opened.

Like, there's so much potential here! Having Jake and Marco be in the middle of an unrelated mission when they witness Erek do something impossible — cool idea. Having it be dog-related — you read the books! you understand the character! Having this opening on an unrelated mission that takes a sudden left turn when they see Erek being all chee — makes sense. Most of the character beats are also either on point (Rachel dragging Cassie to the mall, Marco making jokes about how real superheroes don't get thrown in dumpsters) or else extrapolations that feel like they love and understand the books (Ax's weird food thing + Ax's weird TV thing = Ax trying to be Julia Child by dry-boiling four cucumbers and a shoe). But it's so so SO clumsily edited that the end result verges on being unwatchable.