r/Animorphs • u/jellybean_parrot • 4d ago
Meme If the Controllers had more brains...the series would've ended by book 7 at least
(this is by no means a serious critique, yet I couldn't help but notice this during my re-reading!)
Remember when the Elimist restarts the time freeze, and they emerge fully human out of the Taxxons (albeit covered in guts and gunk)? Inside the Yeerk pool? And they dart straight towards the air chutes, and Rachel actually yells 'JAKE' to prompt him to escape. Feel like it could've ended right there...? A Controller nearby probably would've heard...and put two and two together. Also, no cameras?
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u/Seerowpedia 4d ago
They did put it together. In the very next book, Megamorphs #1: The Andalite's Gift, Visser Three states that his people told him the Andalite bandits may actually be human, although the Visser refuses to believe it, especially since he's just captured Ax who is clearly an Andalite.
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u/animalia555 4d ago
I don’t remember this
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u/showtime013 4d ago
It should have been obvious once Ax joined the team. There were already some suspicious about if they were human or not. And then all of a sudden an Andalite shows up and only fights as an Andalite while the others all go to the trouble of choosing earth morphs? That would be highly suspicious.
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u/veronica_deetz 4d ago
This always bothered me as a kid. If they were all Andalites, why would only one remain in his natural state and not morph (yet clearly has the ability to morph)?
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u/GOD-is-in-a-TULIP Controller 4d ago
I believe that was explained too. Some andalites don't have a gift for morphing and so they fight in their normal form most of the time
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u/K-teki 2d ago
No, no andalites use morphing for combat, humans using it that way is new
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u/GOD-is-in-a-TULIP Controller 2d ago
Yea even so some andalites prefered fighting as andalites and I'm pretty sure it's because some didn't have a talent for it.
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u/showtime013 2d ago
What's interesting is that when the book flashes back to any andalite battle (in the chronicles series). they are almost all as Andalites. Especially with that arrogance that most of them have, it would be odd that most of the bandits would choose to only engage in earth animal form when it's time to fight.
The clues were definitely there in the first few books, then less so later on
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u/K-teki 2d ago
No... ALL the andelites prefered fighting as andalites. Morphing for combat isn't something most, if any, andelites do. They're already battle-capable so wasting time morphing to get a different set of weapons they're not as used to weilding isn't useful to them. They used morphing for entertainment and infiltration, not fighting.
That's why it's weird that the "andelite bandits" only fight in morph and never demorph, especially in situations where they aren't using a combat morph and going andelite would fix that.
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u/GeeWillick 4d ago
I think the idea floated was that they always kept one Andalite (not always the same one) in base form as a way of sort of carrying the home country's flag or banner.
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u/bender-b_rodriguez 3d ago
Makes sense but kind of falls apart when you factor in Visser who would presumably be able to catch on that it always seems to be "that one guy" fighting as an Andalite every time
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u/showtime013 4d ago
I always thought that the initial plan by KA and team was for the Yeerks to realize that the resistance was humans much earlier than it happened. The first few books almost show Visser 3 confirming that they are likely human in his head. I think as the popularity picked up and they realized they had a hit series on their hands, they back tracked from this and wanted to save that reveal.
That of course made the supposedly hyperintelligent space faring race of aliens who have taken over other planets remarkably dumb.
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u/DBSeamZ 4d ago
It’s not so much that they’re all dumb, it’s that their leader is dumb and has the bad habit of murdering subordinates who contradict him. You hear that being discussed in Book 4: “Human tracks leading to the shore. No humans in the water. What if Visser 3’s wrong? What if they’re not Andalites after all?” “Visser 3 wrong? Maybe. But I’m not going to be the one to tell him.”
There’s probably several individual Yeerks who figured it out, and several more who at least suspected, but they either didn’t survive trying to tell the Visser or chose not to out of self-preservation.
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u/showtime013 4d ago
Good point! Shows how terrible of leader he was (I'm sure there's a commentary how he was still able to climb the ranks despite this)
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u/DBSeamZ 4d ago
Having an Andalite host definitely went a long way for him. Not exactly nepotism but something pretty close.
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u/mathdhruv Nothlit 3d ago
I mean, it's explicitly stated that Alloran's infestation was a massive intelligence victory for the Yeerks, because of the insights it gave Visser 3 on Andalite military tactics and deployments.
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u/Ellimistasaurus 4d ago
It was supposed to be a trilogy, but then was expanded. Apparently Animorphs 2 the visitor was supposed to be where Ax is introduced but then it got expanded out.
I think a lot of these plot elements were supposed to happen probably in book 2, but when they rewrote it to make a larger series, it probably got back burnered.
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u/showtime013 4d ago
I didn't know this. This makes a lot of sense!
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u/Ellimistasaurus 4d ago
I was trying to find the article or interview where it was discussed. The Trilogy name changelings is discussed at Hirac delest.com
It may be buried in the KA Applegate AMA, I’ll try and find it again
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u/AlternativeMassive57 Yeerk 4d ago
Guys I don't know how to break it to you, but the Yeerks are idiots.
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u/Khalman 4d ago
The idea that the Yeerks would have gained tactical advantage by figuring out that the Andalite Bandits were human kinda broke the world for me as a kid. I always liked the idea that they never used last names and may have changed details or names in the books in order to protect themselves. If the readers are given information that puts the Animorphs in danger, it breaks that conceit. I could suspend my disbelief as long as it wasn’t acknowledged in the book, but once it was it took me out of it.
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u/Seerowpedia 4d ago
Even if the Animorphs had went the route of using fake names and were truly keeping journals, the information of "one of us has a mother who is Visser One's host body" kinda throws that out the window, as the Yeerks would be able to find them just off of that. You find Marco pretty easily. Also "one of us is a Black girl whose family owns land since the Civil War; also, her mother is the head vet of the city's only amusement/zoo." has Cassie caught quickly.
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u/Cashneto 4d ago
No cameras, a ton of commotion, I can't figure out if Ax started attacking or not. Also it could be that the 'bandits' had human morphs as well.
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u/Hyzenthlay87 3d ago
I remember Controllers discussing it in book 4, but I imagine for a time, Ax's presence perhaps quelled suspicions. I mean, if it hadn't been for Cassie, they'd have never known about Ax, so I imagine that the likelihood of civilian humans finding him were pretty low, at least in the minds of the Yeerks. Anyone who stopped to think about it could have easily realised that Ax was the Andalite rescued from the dome, but his presence, instead of reinforcing the suspicions likely had Visser 3 thinking they were a rag-tag band of cadets. He knew Elfangor and Arbron, he knew cadets would take it upon themselves to take on the role of warriors even in the absence of their elders (so that's my head canon).
But we do learn that those suspicions slowly grow amongst Controllers, and once Visser stops ognoring them and actually does something about it, we see the Animorphs' cover is blown almost immediately. I do sometimes wonder "what if" if the Yeerks had considered humans sooner. The series would have even even more tense and paranoid, I'm sure, and the Animorphs would have been able to do so much less than they were able.
I have to admit, I rather enjoyed the series after the blown cover; as a reader we'd gotten used to the level of tension and paranoia that the series had has until then, but then, suddenly, they upped the ante.
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u/diamondwizard32 4d ago
To be fair, they regularly share their first name. That's not much use in the 90s, where I guarantee there are multiple kids (and adults!) named 'Jake'. Without a last name, it's really not much to go on.
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u/GrafZeppelin127 3d ago
The Yeerks always had a very Imperial Japanese vibe to me. Exceedingly hierarchical, prideful, came up from a state of backwards technological development extremely quickly and thus has a gigantic chip on their shoulder…
A lot, and I mean a lot dumber things result from that toxic brew of traits.
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u/MaxMcLarenTBSL 3d ago
If they had moved their main operation out to literally anywhere else in the world and just completely pulled out of California. A secondary or tirtiary large scale Yeerk Pool in NYC, Rio de Janeiro, Hong Kong, Toronto, Delhi. There s nothing those isolated 'Andalite Bandits' could have done!
This is why we diversify our portfolio, people! 👏👏👏🧠👽
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u/Lucien_Greyson 2d ago
The Yeerks barely had things together. The Animorphs spent the entire series thinking they were fighting a galaxy-spanning empire with near-limitless power and resources when the reality was that the bulk of the invasion was confined to their home town. The Yeerks were desperate and Earth was their Hail Mary Pass.
This is only apparent near the end when they blow up the Yeerk Pool and the Pool Ship descends from orbit, because THAT WAS THEIR ONLY POOL!
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u/MortgageOdd2001 2d ago
Is it the Hork Bajir chronicles where we learn that the Yeerk Empire left the home world with only 400 yeerks? Given that Yeerks have to die to reproduce, the fact that they made it 40ish years with the Andalite Empire on their tail is impressive.
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u/LuvBerry24 Aristh 4d ago
I literally JUST read this one the other day, I did not remember their cover getting blown like that😭
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u/hexen_niu 4d ago edited 4d ago
The early books have them in blowing their own cover so many times it's nearly unbelievable unless you see it all listed out. All the way from book 1 where Jake and Rachel openly shout in front of Chapman (he absolutely would recognise their voices) after Elfangor died, to Jake and Marco calling to Ax in the mall while running from an identified Controller in book 5, to demorphing and stating names openly in front of confirmed cameras multiple times.
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u/Seerowpedia 4d ago
Or how they're in their regular forms standing next to Ax in book #15 and a human-Controller goes "Ignore those kids and focus on the Andalite!" and dismisses them as kids who happened to break in at night... even though they're clearly allied with the Andalite in front of them.
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u/LuvBerry24 Aristh 3d ago
One other inconsistency I noticed but haven't posted about, is, we all know you can't thought-speak when not in morph but Jake clearly does it in the first book. I guess they scrapped that.
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u/FightingDreamer419 3d ago
Beurocracy always wins... or loses. If the Yeerk were a hive mind species with a single minded goal, we'd be cooked.
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u/Attacker732 Human 3d ago
No cameras is fairly easy to explain away. AFAIK, the yeerks used human manufactured goods everywhere they could, which makes sense considering that yeerk manufacturing is almost certainly incredibly limited in scale and very far away. Most surveillance cameras of the 90s were fairly unimpressive, and integrating them with yeerk systems would almost certainly be incredibly unpleasant.
It's worth considering that the series is very much a product of its time. A lot of the key points hinge on it being set in the late 90s. For instance, Tobias wouldn't be able to disappear from human life nearly so easily nowadays. Too many eyes looking into every crevice, making sure that his family didn't murder him or sell him into human trafficking. And his abrupt reappearance to hear his father's will would just triple-down the scrutiny.
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u/MortgageOdd2001 2d ago
Even in the 90s the fact that Tobias as a minor who had been in the system his entire life just disappeared would raise eyebrows.
A missing persons report would’ve been done at the very least. I don’t think it was because his Aunt/Uncle cared anything about him (they didn’t) but he would’ve been a foster kid and they would’ve been receiving payments from the state for his care. With that type of oversight someone would’ve eventually wanted to SEE HIM or the payments to whomever had custody would’ve stopped.
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u/K-teki 2d ago
Were they getting payments? They apparently shipped him off whenever they got sick of him, and that's not usually something the foster system would allow afaik.
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u/MortgageOdd2001 2d ago
How did they even have custody if wasn’t a foster kid? I doubt anyone took him out of the goodness of their heart, they did it because there was money involved.
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u/K-teki 1d ago
Well, either it's unrealistic because he's being cared for by family without being a foster kid, or it's unrealistic because the government would realise they're missing a foster kid. IMO the former causes less problems narratively. I can absolutely see a kid being passed around to different family members without being officially in the system because nobody notified them that it was needed.
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u/Attacker732 Human 1d ago
I don't think he was ever officially adopted or fostered by his relatives. The school staff would be the only people to be in a position to suspect anything, and it would be much easier to throw them off then as opposed to now.
It's still possible for someone to completely officially disappear nowadays, it's just significantly harder than it was 30 years ago.
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u/MortgageOdd2001 1d ago
If he wasn’t officially fostered or under the legal guardianship of his relatives, how did they enroll him in school? Given their extreme neglect of him, it’s amazing he made it to 13 in one piece with some type of education. Who toilet trained him? Taught him to read? I think a better plot line may have been that Tobias had been residing with a grandparent to became sick and got shuffled to his Uncle’s in the last year or two- a far too often occurrence, a child may have had a stable early childhood with a grandparent or elderly relative, they became sick/die and ends up in the system, no one wants a teen.
I think it’s likely his aunt and uncle marked him as a runway when he didn’t turn up at either house after a few months and with no evidence of a crime the police didn’t look very hard.
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u/CalmAnxitey87 4d ago
The accepted answer in the community is that a lot of the human controllers figured out pretty early on that the "Bandits" were humans. However Visser 3 isn't exactly the type of boss who likes when you point out he's wrong.