I plan to start a re-read of the Animorphs series for the first time in about 10 years. Since I’m sure there are plenty of things I won’t remember, I’ll be sharing my thoughts here. Wish me luck.
As promised, I'm doing a re-read of the Animorphs series after ten years. I’ve read through it twice before, once in 2008 and once in 2013. Follow along for my commentary/thoughts as I delve back into them. There's really a lot from these books that I'm sure I don't remember.
Of course, a big SPOILER WARNING if you've never read the books!
Book One: The Invasion (Chapters 1-5)
Chapter One:
It starts with a nostalgic introduction, as always.
Then we have…
The story of how Jake and Tobias met. I always felt so bad for Tobias:
I actually met Tobias when he had his head in a toilet. There were these two big guys holding him down and laughing while they flushed, sending Tobias's straggly blond hair swirling around the bowl. I told the two creeps to step off, and ever since then, Tobias figured I was his friend.
Poor kid. I actually have some mild respect for Jake here, helping out Tobias, if you don’t look into the obvious reluctance of how Jake feels about things, re: Tobias’s friendship in the last line of that. If you do pay attention to that though, it does make Jake seem like at least a bit of an asshole at the end of that paragraph.
The next part to stand out to me:
So, there we were. The five of us - Marco, Tobias, Rachel, Cassie, and me. Five normal mall rats heading home. Sometimes I think about that one, last moment when we were still just normal kids. It's like it was a million years ago, like it was some totally different group of kids. You know what I was afraid of right then? I was afraid of admitting to Tom that I hadn't made the team. That was as scary as life got back then. Five minutes later, life got a lot scarier.
I love the blatant reality of this. It shows how life can seem so normal. How life’s scariest things can be really simple, until they aren’t; until you get smacked in the face with trauma. Holy shit.
Also, the goofy shit the Animorphs say sometimes without probably even meaning to say goofy shit?? It just GETS ME. The nonchalant unhinged comments, like right here:
My mom and dad have sworn to ground me until I'm twenty if they ever find out I've cut through the construction site. So anyway, we crossed the road and headed into the abandoned construction site.
Oh, and right here:
Suddenly Tobias stopped. He was pointing. Pointing almost straight up. "Look," he said. "What?" I didn't want to be distracted because I was pretty sure I'd heard the sound of a chainsaw killer creeping up behind us.
Chapter Two:
Shortly thereafter, we have my queer awakening.
"No, it's coming this way," Rachel said. She has a very definite way of talking. Like she's totally sure of everything she says.
I’m 110% realizing that the reason Rachel was my favorite Animorph as a teenager (during my 2013 read through) is because I had a crush on her. Confident women were my queer awakening.
After that, we have one line that sticks with me for sure.
<I am not the first. There are many, many others.> "Other aliens? Like you?" Tobias demanded. The alien shook his big head slowly, side to side. <Not like me.> Then he cried out in pain, a silent sound that echoed horribly inside my mind. For a moment, I had actually felt him dying. <Not like me,> he repeated. <They are different.> "Different? How?" I said. I will remember his answer forever. He said, <They have come to destroy you.>
That last line. It was so damn well-executed in the books and surprisingly also in the show. Almost gives me chills.
Chapter Three:
Then we have this damned description of the Yeerks:
Suddenly a bright picture popped into my head. I saw a gray-green, slimy thing like a snail without its shell, only bigger, the size of a rat, maybe. It wasn't a pretty picture.
This threw me off. The size of a RAT?? I always forget they’re supposed to be that big. Like, they’re not just normally-sized slugs.
Next we have this. This gives me EMOTIONS that I didn’t ask for:
It was a small, three-dimensional picture - four Andalites, standing all together, looking like a strange gathering of deer with solemn faces. Two of them looked very small kids. I realized that this was a picture of the Andalite's family. It filled me with sadness to think that here he was, dying, a million miles from his family.
It's just NOT FAIR to give me emotions this early on.
Then we've got:
"I'll do it," Cassie said. That surprised me. Cassie isn't usually so quick to decide. But I guess, like Tobias, she felt the truth of what the Andalite was saying.
This is while they’re being offered the morphing power by Elfangor, and I don’t know exactly why, but Cassie taking initiative with anything related to the war makes me so viscerally happy.
Chapter Four:
I hugged the dirt like it was my last hope. I wished I could dig a hole. I saw a flash of Marco's face. His eyes were huge. His lips were drawn back in what could have been a grin, except that I knew it was an expression of pure terror.
This is one of the first descriptions of the Animorphs’ feelings or terror and it’s spot-on, and I’d say it’s able to be understood as to what the Animorphs (especially Marco in particular) are feeling right then. Applegate's writing is -chef's kiss- for real.
Chapter Five:
After that there's:
If you've never been really afraid, let me tell you - it does things to you. It takes over your mind and your body. You want to scream. You want to run. You want to wet your pants. You want to throw yourself down on the ground and cry and beg please, please, please, please don't kill me!
Which is an accurate description: also probably how I would’ve felt with a Hork-Bajir standing 6 feet away from me with a dracon beam.
Followed by:
But then the Andalite's voice was in my head again. <Courage, my friends.> And this . . . this warm . . . this . . . I don't have any words to explain it. It was just this warmth that spread all through me. It was like when you're a little kid and you've had a terrible nightmare and you've woken up screaming. You know how you used to feel better when your mom or dad would turn on the light and come in and sit beside you in bed? That's what it was like.
This is wholesome. I’m not sure why, but it just is. Getting comforted by a dying Andalite? Makes me feel some things.
Okay, and I don't have specific parts that I'm quoting for Elfangor's demise, but: it's always emotional to read for me anyway.
So, I didn't realize how many notes I'd be making in just the first five chapters, meaning I'm going to leave it here for now and continue with my commentary later. I hope this was enjoyable for everyone, and I plan to post my next batch of Animorphs re-read commentary soon.
Continuing from last time, here's more of my commentary on my Animorphs re-read! We're on book one right now.
Of course, a SPOILER WARNING for anyone who hasn't read the series.
Let's get into it.
Book One: The Invasion (Chapters 6-14)
I don't know what came over me right then. I had been so afraid. So terrified. But it was like something just snapped in my head. I couldn't just hide and watch, I couldn't. "You filthy - " I jumped to my feet. I snatched up a piece of rusted iron pipe from the ground and started to climb over that wall. I guess I just went crazy or something. It had to be craziness, because there was no way that I, alone, armed with a piece of pipe, was going to accomplish anything. The Andalite's silent cry made me hesitate. I felt Marco's hands grabbing at my shirt and pulling me back. Tobias and Marco held me down. Rachel put her hand over my mouth. I was trying to scream, or curse, or something. "Shut up, you idiot!" Marco hissed. "You're just going to get us all killed." "Jake, don't." Cassie put her hand on my cheek. "He doesn't want you to die for him. Don't you realize? He's dying for us." I shoved Marco and Tobias away angrily. But I was in control of myself again.
Okay, so it's a long part to be highlighting but this whole section makes me actually feel like I can relate to Jake on something, which I feel like won’t happen super often in this series from what I can remember, but I could be wrong. The anger of seeing something terrible happening that you can't stop? That's exactly what's going on here.
Then we have this, which felt necessary to share:
At the very end, he cried out. His cry of despair was in our heads. His cry will always be in our heads.
Okay, when I said last time I wasn’t going to highlight anything specific from Elfangor’s death? This. This I’m highlighting because it’s a major starting point in the Animorphs’ PTSD development and it would actually be really terrifying in real life.
And just a little more of Elfangor’s death, as a treat.
Okay not really a treat, more of a punishment I suppose:
The Taxxon-Controllers rushed forward and crowded around Visser Three. They seemed to be stretching up toward him, and then I saw why - a piece of the Andalite fell from the Visser's jaws and the nearest Taxxon greedily gobbled it up.
A second instance of Andalite-eating in the series already. That was fast.
Ready for something else that really gets my attention?
I heard a sound that was strange because it was so normal. It was laughter. Human laughter. The humans . . . the Human-Controllers - because that's what they were - were laughing, like they were at some kind of a show.
I know they’re human-controllers, so it’s the Yeerks making them laugh, but it still feels just as fucked up, and for some reason more fucked-up than the Hork-Bajir-controller laughter. There will be so many substantially more fucked-up things in this series though, and I think I’m ready.
Now for some slightly more random notes:
She slowed down just a little and began yelling and waving her arms. "Come on, come on, you - " And then she said some words I didn't realize Rachel even knew.
Rachel got that fancy swearing going on.
And on the topic of language:
Even in my panic it surprised me. They were talking some mix of their own alien language and ours. "Ghafrash fit nahar! I get! I kill!"
I want a Hork-Bajir-to-English dictionary, please. Can this be my next Duolingo language?
The two Hork-Bajir were coming after us, bounding like some devil kangaroos.
I just love this imagery. It’s hilarious to me for some reason.
Then we get back into some more serious stuff:
"Just save the head," the human told the Hork-Bajir. "Bring that to me and we can identify it."
This would be so damn petrifying to hear, especially when you know they’re talking about you.
Then we jump to later, after the construction site, at Jake's house. Jake and Tobias are there.
He was glowing. I swear, he was glowing. Not like he was radioactive or anything, I don't mean that. It's just that his eyes were shining bright, and his face was one big grin, and he seemed to be tingling with energy, bouncing like he couldn't standstill.
I love happy Tobias, and I hate how rare I know that becomes.
He nodded his cat head up and down. Very weird to see, I can tell you - a cat nodding yes in a thoughtful, normal way.
The thought of seeing this is just really entertaining to me.
He just looked at me with those deep, troubled eyes - eyes I can now see only in my memory.
Ahhh! HOW did I never catch this foreshadowing before?
"Jake, listen to me," Tobias said. "It's just what happened to me when I morphed into a cat. The dog brain is part of your brain now. You have to deal with it." <But . . . there's a dog in MY yard.> "That's Homer, Jake. You are Jake. You're just in a body copied from Homer's DNA. That's the real Homer out there. You put him out there. Focus. You are Jake. Jake."
A dog in MY yard. Early stages of learning to control the morphs are kind of hilarious.
"Bad dog," Tom said to me. "You keep quiet. Bad dog." And then he left. I was devastated. I wasn't a bad dog. Not really. I was just barking because some other dog was in MY yard. Bad dog? I was a bad dog? No, I wanted to be a good dog. I crept into the corner, utterly miserable. Tobias knelt down and patted my head. When he scratched me behind the ears, I felt a little better.
Jake’s reaction to being scolded as a dog is actually somewhat precious. Not sure why.
But as I was sitting there watching him munch toast, I just had this feeling. This feeling that said No, this has to be a secret. Even from Tom.
Why does this HURT??
A thing that was part horse and part Cassie smiled at us with big horse teeth and said, "Hey, kids."
Petrifying. Certainly nowhere near the worst of what I’ll read in this series, I know, but it would be petrifying to see.
"Let's take a vote," Rachel said. "I vote we try to live long enough to get driver's licenses," Marco said. "I vote we do what the Andalite said - fight," Tobias said. "You've never even been in a fight," Marco sneered. "You can't handle the punks at school. Suddenly now you want to kick butt on that Visser Three freakazoid?" Tobias said nothing, but a blush spread up his neck. "I vote with Tobias," Rachel said, giving Marco a dirty look.
This is the start of me being mad at Marco frequently, isn’t it?
Marco looked at me. "Jake. He's one of them." "What?" "Tom. Tom is one of them. Your brother is a Controller." I swung my fist and caught Marco in the side of the head. He jumped back and I swung again. But Marco was quick. He dodged my second swing, and I slipped and went down. Marco snatched the bedspread off my bed, threw it over me to tangle up my arms, and sat on me. "Jake, quit acting like a stupid jerk," he said. I was trying to grab him, but he had me pretty good. "Take that back!" I yelled.
Ahhhh! Not only can I 100% picture this scene; but this gives me all sorts of feelings. Marco’s intuition is on point but like, I’d probably be like Jake on this, which is to say, angry and in denial. It’d be a pretty hard hit to hear that someone you care about is the enemy.
"That was the coolest thing I've ever done in my life," Tobias said. His whole face was glowing. "I was riding the thermals." "What's a thermal?" I asked. "That's when there's warm air rising up from the ground. It forms this cushion under your wings. You can just float up there. Like a mile up! You just surf the thermals. You guys have got to do it! It is the best thing ever."
Oh, you asked Tobias about thermals? You’re about to LEARN.
Tobias's eyes darkened. "It's terrible when birds have to be locked up in cages. They should be free." "Yeah, free the birds," Marco commented sarcastically. "I'll get the bumper stickers printed up."
If I had a car, I’d want this bumper sticker for Animorphs reasons.
"Suddenly the wimp is a hero," Marco sneered.
Marco is an asshole, plain and simple. I would’ve punched him by now.
This time Tobias didn't blush. "Maybe I just found something worth fighting for, Marco."
I want to give Tobias a hug.
"It's not exactly some video game, is it?" Marco said. "This is reality. You don't know anything about reality, Jake. Nothing bad has ever really happened to you. You have this perfect family. Like I used to have." His voice cracked a little. He never talked about his mom's death.
Okay yes, Marco is an asshole, but I still feel bad for him sometimes.
At that moment, something weird happened. I was looking at Tom, and he was smiling at me. But then his face kind of twitched. His head started to pull to one side, like he was trying to shake his head only he couldn't quite do it. For just a split second there was a look in his eyes - scared or . . . or something. He was looking right at me, and it was like some different person, some scared person, was looking out of those same eyes. Then he was back to normal. Or what looked like normal.
Ahhhh too many emotions! Tom has always been one of my favorite characters and I get all too many feelings reading this.
"It could have been anyone," Tom said. "But it might be the one who's my brother, Jake. I know he goes through the construction site sometimes. That's why I brought him here tonight. So we could either make him ours . . . or kill him."
Yikes. Okay, that's part two of book one! Sorry to take so long to write up the commentary. I'll try to be a little quicker with the next part! The next part should be chapters 15 through the end.
