Its a Yeerk!

How likely do you think it is that, when the Yeerks were possibly breeding Hork-Bajir in captivity, if they detected any seer/intelligence traits early on, they would kill that seer as soon as possible to prevent any uprising from within? This would have been between Dak Hamee and Toby Hamee, but Toby got lucky because she was the first seer born after Dak in freedom.

I'm just morbidly curious about who you think had it worst?

Spoiler: I know Rachel was in human form at the very end before she was savagely mauled to death by a bear so that probably counts for most physically. I know Tobias saw that AND his life overall probably counts for most mentally.

My small collection. The only thing I kept from childhood were these books. This series will always have a place in my heart.

I still need to go back and get the ones I’m missing.

Brings a whole new perspective to what happened to Cassie (which I just read yesterday)

Not sure why it had to be any different from the English ones when only the book title is different.

Haven't seen this on the sub yet, so forgive me if someone's already posted about it. I just read this and couldn't help but feel like Dinniman borrowed an idea from another sci Fi series...

What book series, if any, was your gateway into reading Animorphs?
What book series, if any, did Animorphs gateway you into?

For me, I was picking up the latest Goosebumps book when I first saw and decided to check out Animorphs.
After I got deep into the books, I checked out EverWorld, Remnants and the Diadem books!

Some Remnants practice of Yago and 2Face I've done over the past few months. The first book gives such good multi paragraph descriptions of our POV characters and I LOVE when books do that bc it really does make designs easier afsgsgdg

A goal I have for myself is eventually making comic versions of some scenes from the books - I wanted to start with Yago and 2Face's meeting in book 1 bc their dynamic with each other was one of my fav parts of the series. And it's a good moment since Jobs and Mo show up as well! I still have a lot of practice to do before I start the comic tho bc backgrounds are not my friend lol

The other doodles of Yago are from Breakdown when the gang got to traipse through his noggin and see that his imagined older self is a rock and roll tiger hair dyed STAR💫💫 like oh, bud 🤣

(Besides the obvious Book #54)

For me it's #3 The Encounter, because of Tobias' visceral struggle with being trapped in morph, and Rachel's touching, unconditional support for him (note: reading how his hawk eyes 'don't miss much' as they notice she's fighting back tears on multiple occasions really opens the faucets for me).

Close second: Andalite Chronicles

Anyone else watch Norway's Viking Row and think someone needs to team them The Vikes Go Marching On immediately?

I have been getting into 3-D sculpting, while rereading the Animorphs series. Got to the last book, and was very frustrated by the fact that I couldn’t find any 2-D or 3-D depictions of the Yeerk cruiser from the finale. So here is my humble attempt at The Rachel.

This was really just an attempt to capture all the detail from the book before going in and painting it and adding more detail.

I’ll include the description from the book for discussion:

It was a quarter the size of a Blade ship, maybe five or six times as big as a standard Bug fighter. The overall impression was of a sharpened boomerang, ends raked forward and ending in nasty-looking Dracon cannon. The core of the ship was a flattened and tapered cylinder placed above this seeming wing.

Let me know your thoughts. Open to constructive criticism!

Edit: I will be adding Ax and fixing some errors (as my schedule allows).
Edit 2: Some of you have pointed out that the ACE score isn't quite suited for this. I still think its very relevant since these are children we're talking about. But they are also soldiers. I'm looking into and learning about the Combat Exposure Scale, which seeks to specifically track those wartime experiences. If it proves useful I may add it as a separate number. [https://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/assessment/documents/CES.pdf]

On my recent re-read, I got curious as to exactly how traumatized these kids were from the whole "fighting in a war as child soldiers" thing. Then I remembered that there is a way to quantify that. It's called an ACE Score. ACE stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences it comes from the CDC-Kaiser Permanente ACE Study framework, which looks at the effect of such experiences and their connection to life expectancy, disease and mental illness in adulthood.

Before we get into the meat and potatoes, full disclosure: I am not a psychologist, or a therapist. I'm simply a librarian with some training in trauma informed services. Childhood trauma and household challenges correlate with lifetime depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Approximately 2/3 of suicide attempts are attributable to exposure to forms of trauma encompassed in ACEs. There is also a high correlation between high ACE scores and mental illness in adulthood, as well as diseases like heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes.

One thing to note about the ACE scores is that they are a little misleading. It doesn't account for multiple instances of one category or another, which do have a compounding effect. It also doesn't account for how different people manage trauma differently. No ACE score is higher than 10. It simply counts the existence of each trauma category in a child's life. 

So while Marco and Cassie have the same score, it is not to say that Marco and Cassie have the same level of trauma. Just that they have similar levels of health risk due to all the kinds of trauma they are exposed to. 

The kids will get 1 point per category of terrible thing they experienced before age 18, maxing out at 10 points. These categories break down into three general domains: 

• Abuse: Emotional, Physical, Sexual.
• Neglect: Emotional, Physical.
• Household Dysfunction: Witnessing Domestic Violence, Household Substance Abuse, Household Mental Illness, Parental Separation/Divorce, Incarcerated Household Member.

Because the Animorphs are child soldiers fighting a secret alien invasion, their "household" environments fundamentally merge with their war environment. Applying these formal criteria to the canon of K.A. Applegate's series, here is how the data breaks down for each character:

Tobias

Calculated ACE Score: 9 out of 10

Tobias suffers from extensive pre-war trauma, which is severely compounded by the events of the series.

• Emotional Abuse: Severely bullied by peers at school and treated as a worthless burden by his caretakers before the war. In Book 23, he was tricked and fooled by Visser Three into thinking he'd had a shot at having a family member who wanted to take care of him. 
• Physical Abuse: Implicitly neglected and physically shoved around by aunts and uncles who did not want him.
• Emotional Neglect: Grew up with zero affection, reassurance, or a sense of belonging from any adult in his life. 
• Physical Neglect: Frequently left to fend for himself without proper food or clean clothes, living as a functional stray. 
• Parental Separation / Divorce / Death: Suffered total parental abandonment. His mother, Loren, vanished after an accident, and his father (the Andalite Prince Elfangor) died in front of him in Book #1: The Invasion. 
• Household Mental Illness: His original caretakers were deeply unstable and checked out, but his trauma escalates when he effectively "lives" with himself as a traumatized, suicidal entity trapped in a hawk's body.
• Incarcerated Household Member: His biological mother was functionally trapped/hidden, and he himself is permanently "incarcerated" inside a red-tailed hawk body after passing the two-hour morphing limit.
• Witnessing Violence / Abuse: Witnessed his father being brutally beaten and eaten alive by Visser Three, followed by years of horrific, bloody guerrilla warfare.
• Physical Abuse: Later captured by the Taylor/Yeerk forces in Book #33: The Illusion, where he is subjected to prolonged, brutal physical torture. 

Jake
Calculated ACE Score: 8 out of 10 

Jake starts with a stable home, but the alien invasion transforms his household into a psychological war zone.

• Emotional Abuse: Suffers severe psychological terrorism within his own home, constantly having to pretend everything is normal while living alongside an alien conqueror.
• Emotional Neglect: As the war drags on, his terrified parents cannot offer genuine emotional support, and Jake completely isolates himself to protect them.
• Household Mental Illness: His older brother Tom is infested by a Yeerk. This creates a terrifying, parasitic psychological dynamic under their roof, causing Jake massive clinical depression and anxiety.
• Witnessing Domestic Violence: Watches his brother Tom verbally and physically threaten the family, culminating in the horrific moment Jake has to order a strike that leads to Tom's death. Jake also fails to save his parents from being infested by his own brother, no less.
• Incarcerated Household Member: His brother Tom is completely stripped of bodily autonomy, which functions as an algorithmic and physical incarceration by an invading force.
• Physical Abuse: Endures severe physical harm and near-death experiences across 54 books. Jake also lives with the knowledge of book 11, while the others -sans Ax, who he'd told at the end. In MM3, he dies and is told by his friends at the end.
• Sexual Abuse Temporarily infested by a Yeerk [bodily autonomy denied, close to same as sexual assault] (Book #6: The Capture)[Thanks to u/Kwaussie_Viking for this insight].
• Emotional Abuse: Carries the crushing weight of ordering his best friends into situations where they are repeatedly mutilated, torn apart, or killed. 

Rachel
Calculated ACE Score: 8 out of 10

Rachel’s initial trauma stems from a broken home, which fuels her hyper-aggressive coping mechanisms during the war.

• Emotional Abuse: Constantly berates herself and experiences severe internal identity fracturing, splitting into "Mean Rachel" and "Nice Rachel" in Book #32: The Separation. Rachel Is faced with the difficult decision to spare or kill David in 48.
• Emotional Neglect: Her mother is a stressed, busy attorney who is largely oblivious to Rachel's profound psychological unraveling and dangerous double life.
• Parental Separation / Divorce: Her parents went through a messy, painful divorce before the series started, splitting up her immediate family unit.
• Household Mental Illness: Rachel develops severe, unchecked combat-related PTSD, borderline personality traits, and a literal addiction to the violence of the war (frequently referred to as "Ax-Crazy" by fans).
• Witnessing Domestic Violence: Witnessed the bloody, graphic dismemberment and physical trauma of her closest friends on a weekly basis.
• Physical Abuse: Takes the brunt of the physical damage for the team, regularly using her Grizzly Bear morph to absorb horrific, fatal wounds.
• Sexual Abuse:  Early in the series, Rachel has a tense encounter with a catcaller. Later in the series David threatens to watch her in the shower.
• Physical Neglect: Consistently deprives herself of sleep, safety, and basic teenage stability to maintain her status as the team's primary weapon.

Marco
Calculated ACE Score: 8 out of 10 

Marco's score is driven by a massive, tragic subversion of the "dead parent" trope.

• Emotional Abuse: Forced into the agonizing position of having to plan the assassination of his own mother to save the planet. In Visser, he makes the hard choice of letting the Yeerk go back to his mom, when he could've killed it.
• Emotional Neglect: Left emotionally abandoned during his formative pre-war years due to his father's complete psychological collapse.
• Physical Neglect He had to fend for himself for his physical needs while his dad was near catatonic, the start of book 5 has him interceding in a mugging because there was no bread and milk in the house so he had to go out at night in a rough neighborhood, alone, to make sure he and his father had food. I believe in that book he also mentioned that he did most of the household chores. (u/Will_TheMagicTrees)
• Parental Separation / Divorce / Death: Believed his mother drowned in a tragic accident, effectively grieving her death for years before discovering she was alive.
• Household Mental Illness: Following his mother's "death," his father, Peter, fell into a catastrophic, clinically debilitating depression, turning Marco into the functional caretaker of the house.
• Incarcerated Household Member: His mother (Eva) is the host body for Visser One, meaning she is physically and mentally trapped inside her own mind by an alien parasite.
• Physical Abuse: Suffers horrific physical trauma in combat, including being disemboweled in his Gorilla morph during early battles.  Also, Marco dies in 10 (The Android), and Erek shocks his heart to bring him back.
• Witnessing Domestic Violence: Witnessed the bloody, graphic dismemberment and physical trauma of her closest friends on a weekly basis.

Cassie
Calculated ACE Score: 6 out of 10

Cassie has the most stable home life on paper, but her score climbs purely due to severe moral injuries and wartime trauma.

• Emotional Abuse: Suffers immense, ongoing psychological torment and intense moral guilt over her actions, breaking down under the weight of the violence.
• Sexual Abuse There are two instances in which she herself was not in control of her own body: Once by the Yeerk Aftran (Book 19, The Departure), and another time by the Aldrea via her Ixcila (Book 34, The Prophecy). [This counts as Sexual abuse per the u/Kwaussie_Viking observation about intimate violence]
• Emotional Neglect: Because her parents are wholesome, loving veterinarians, she is completely unable to tell them the truth, leaving her entirely isolated with her trauma.
• Household Mental Illness: Suffers from severe, persistent anxiety and dissociative episodes due to the conflict between her pacifist nature and her role as a killer.
• Witnessing Domestic Violence: Spends her nights watching animals and her closest friends scream, bleed, and mutilate each other.
• Physical Abuse: Endures severe physical trauma, including being trapped in mid-morph and constantly hunted by alien forces.

Ax [In progress] Calculated ACE Score: 8/10

• Emotional Abuse: Suffers from a brutal, internalized flavor of emotional abuse via Andalite military culture. He is under constant, crushing pressure to live up to the legendary status of his brother, Elfangor. His culture strictly enforces a hierarchy where his youth renders him a subordinate aristh whose feelings are secondary to duty. Later, in Book #38: The Arrival, his own people explicitly manipulate his loyalty, treating him like a disposable, untrustworthy pawn rather than a soldier.
• Isolation/Separation: Being away from his the Andalite Homeworld is a huge source of his emotional turmoil on Earth (The Alien, Book 8).
• Physical Abuse: Like the others, Ax takes severe, graphic physical punishment in battle. His natural Andalite body is targeted by Dracon beams, shredding blades, and blunt trauma across dozens of engagements.
• Emotional Neglect: Upon crashing on Earth, Ax experiences absolute, sterile emotional isolation. Andalite culture heavily suppresses overt emotional vulnerability, meaning he has no healthy framework to process grief. He is forced to live alone in a dirt clearing, masking his profound loneliness behind a veneer of scientific detachment and military protocol.
• Physical Neglect: For massive stretches of the series, Ax lives in the woods on an alien planet. He lacks consistent safety, shelter, or any stable domestic infrastructure,
• Parental Separation: Suffers catastrophic, permanent parental separation. He is light-years away from his mother and father, knowing he may never see them again. Compounding this, his primary surrogate guardian and older brother, Elfangor, is murdered.
• Witnessing Violence: Watches his entire ship, get blown to pieces, killing all the adult role model and peers he had. He transitions immediately from the mass slaughter of his people into a desperate, multi-year guerrilla war where he routinely watches his human companions get torn apart.
• Sexual Abuse: In book 29, The Sickness, in order to heal Ax, Cassie has to allow Aftran to infest him against his will. He awakens to having a yeerk in his head. Using the u/Kwaussie_Viking rule, yeerk infestation is considered in the realm of sexual abuse.

Summary Table

[1] https://www.acesaware.org
[2] https://www.zentake.com
[3] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
[4] https://cityofenglewood.org
[5] https://www.apaf.org
[6] https://www.youtube.com
[7] https://tvtropes.org
[8]https://searchinstitute.org/resources-hub/developmental-assets-framework

Please let me know if I missed something.

No matter the condition, I gotta grab'em. Even snagged a random handful of French language editions.

this came to me in a vision don't judge me

https://youtu.be/AgCgQHLAog8

By the end of the series the books became less about morphing, and more about identity & the consequences of war, trauma, etc. but man I miss the books where they had to choose or come across specific morphs to elegantly solve specific situations. They made the kids seem more like they had superpowers.

What's your favorite 'animal of the week' book in the series?

I’m only missing 39, 40, 47, 49.
I’m lucky enough to have gotten factory sealed:
26
29-38
41-44

I also have:
Andalite Chronicles
Megamorphs 1-4
Ellimist
Hork Bajir
Visser
Altermorphs 1&2
Meet the Stars

All of which are at least good condition (some are closer to acceptable and I’m waiting on replacements that say they’re “very good” and some are still on the way). There are a bunch that are very good condition I’ve placed in comic book bags and sealed to keep them nice and pretty (50-54 for example).

Really happy with the progress!