Introduction to Animorphs

Okay, so you're wondering about the Animorphs. What could be so interesting about a corny kid's book series, you ask. Here is an introduction, from the characters and people, background information (the preliminary situations that are revealed in the Chronicles and later in the series) and some insights. As with most of the content of this page, they may contain minor spoilers for people who haven't read that many books, but no major revelations will be disclosed.

Basic Story:

The series starts off with an ordinary kid named Jake. He's walking home with his best friend, Marco, Tobias, who has taken to hanging around him since Jake stood up for him to some other kids at school, Rachel, his cousin, and Cassie, Rachel's friend and Jake's crush. So they were already at least loosely connected. They cut through an abandoned construction site, and because of it collided head-on with destiny. It turned out that an alien spaceship landed there, the craft of the Andalite prince Elfangor. He was dying, mortally wounded from battle, and had just come to Earth to do one thing. He told the youths about the oncoming invasion of the Yeerks, and as his final act gave them all the Andalite morphing ability: to be able to acquire the DNA and morph whatever creature they touched. That would be their one weapon against the Yeerks. Soon after the Yeerk ships, which had been tracking Elfangor down, landed. Hiding nearby, the kids saw the Yeerks in their various forms: Taxxon, Hork-Bajir. Human. And their leader, the only Yeerk with an Andalite host: Visser Three. Visser Three mocked Elfangor, and after morphing into a monstrous creature from some far-off planet, eats him.

They find that the Yeerks are everywhere; anyone could be a Controller. Jake finds that his brother is one, and others include their Vice-Principal Chapman and Visser One. In this new world that they have been plunged in, one of battle and paranoia, they are the only ones left to keep Earth free. 

So begins the Animorphs story.

Each book is a different episode, narrated by a different member of the Animorphs. They aren't all the same, as it might seem. Each one is a step further in the "big picture," the story as a whole. Sometimes a book can be a turning point for the series, whether in plot or psychologically, while others are a build-up to a later event, while yet others are more comedic.

Opinions:
Admittedly, the initial story sounds a little corny. In fact, one review compared it to one of the bad horror movies from the 1950's. But the motif of an entire alien species exploiting humans, in various ways, to support their way of life, is used in popular sci-fi shows, books and movies from The War of the Worlds to the Invasion of the Body-Snatchers movies to the more recent Independence Day and shows like Earth: Final Conflict and Babylon 5, though in the modern shows you tend to find more sympathy for many of the aliens. But so it is for Animorphs. Although it is a little awkward to begin with, eventually there is a building up of not only five (later six) kids' struggle to save the planet on which they live, but also the intense saga of the various alien races that abound throughout the galaxy.

They all have their own quirks and characteristics, like many of the Yeerks are obsessed with conquering everything, the Andalites are supposedly advanced to the point that you start to wonder why they're still corporal beings, but they strongly cling to tradition and obsolete laws, the Hork-Bajir have killing machine bodies yet are bark-eating pacifists, the Helmacrons are a female-ruled people roughly the size of ants also intent on ruling the universe . . . sometimes it's fascinating, but other times you just have to take it tongue in cheek. But in the end they all have the perfect balance between making you believe they are an actual alien race while at the same time portraying a facet of our own faulty human one.

In closing, I'd just like to say that Animorphs are not just kid's books. In the words of the author K.A. Applegate, in answer to the question: If it's all real, then why don't the Yeerks simply read the books and track down the troublesome "Andalites"?:

"Because we have cleverly hidden the books in the middle reader section of bookstores where adult Controllers seldom go. "

<Hah. Tell that to my host's mother. I've lost track of how many times she had to ask "where the Animorphs books were" to find me in a bookstore.>

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