The Lazy Game Reviewer, YouTube's favorite guide to retrotech, Sims reviews, and computer oddities, finds the program used for the covers and tries his hand at it. Pretty cool if you were into Animorphs like me!
I made it most of the way through the series, and then cheated by jumping to the...very dark ending. It's definitely meatier than the usual teen stuff -- though the colorful covers disguise that. When you have young high school kids fighting for their lives every week, they grow up pretty fast.
Ooh, I can give you an elevator speech version of the series. Five friends encounter a crash-landed and dying alien, and Andalite named Elfangor, who warns them that evil slugs who can take over people's brains have infiltrated Earth, and it will be years before any help can from from his people, who are fighting these slugs and their hosts across the universe. He gives the kids the power to touch any animal and acquire its DNA, so they can turn into the creature. The children don't believe it, but little by little they realize what was said is true, and they go into action. The Yeerks don't realize they're up against human tweens, and refer to the group as "Andalite bandits". The teens spend most of the series engaged in savage war, becoming psychologically frazzled as a result, and when the Andalite DO show up it's to say "...wow, the Yeerks have taken over this planet. Only thing we can do is destroy the entire planets. Sorry." The kids come up with a last desperate plan to damage the Yeerks enough to convince the Andalites Earth can be saved, but it comes at a cost of one if their own lives.
The series gets REALLY deep at times, for tween lit.
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I never got into the series but I always thought those covers were so cool. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteI made it most of the way through the series, and then cheated by jumping to the...very dark ending. It's definitely meatier than the usual teen stuff -- though the colorful covers disguise that. When you have young high school kids fighting for their lives every week, they grow up pretty fast.
DeleteGood assessment of the series, I never even knew what it was about.
DeleteOoh, I can give you an elevator speech version of the series. Five friends encounter a crash-landed and dying alien, and Andalite named Elfangor, who warns them that evil slugs who can take over people's brains have infiltrated Earth, and it will be years before any help can from from his people, who are fighting these slugs and their hosts across the universe. He gives the kids the power to touch any animal and acquire its DNA, so they can turn into the creature. The children don't believe it, but little by little they realize what was said is true, and they go into action. The Yeerks don't realize they're up against human tweens, and refer to the group as "Andalite bandits". The teens spend most of the series engaged in savage war, becoming psychologically frazzled as a result, and when the Andalite DO show up it's to say "...wow, the Yeerks have taken over this planet. Only thing we can do is destroy the entire planets. Sorry." The kids come up with a last desperate plan to damage the Yeerks enough to convince the Andalites Earth can be saved, but it comes at a cost of one if their own lives.
DeleteThe series gets REALLY deep at times, for tween lit.
Like Sarah I never read them, but I remember being haunted by those covers. :D Really cool to see the software they used!
ReplyDeleteThey had another "morph" inside, too...as you flipped the pages, a little picture of the character morphed into their animal on the cover.
DeleteThat's awesome... sometimes I really miss the 90s.
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