LogFAQs > #926943516

Tonight I *finally* learned how Animorphs ended. I was glancing through some wikipedia pages and, through some mild wiki-walking, I stumbled onto the page of the actress who played Rachel in the Animorphs show (who is older now, but attractive). It was then that I realized I didn't know how the series ended and that always bugged me somewhat despite not being all that into the franchise. (I had seen at least part of the show and read a few of the books.)

Of course, the first kinda drawback is that I didn't remember who most of the characters were. I knew Tobias because he was trapped in the form of a bird from early on and Rachel because she was Toby's crush. Jake I barely remembered just from being the leader. And Visser-Three I remembered simply because he was the villain (and, to a lesser extent, I remembered Ax because he was adjusting to the human world).

The other mistake was just reading the entry for the last book, instead of the last few ones. Kinda robbed myself of context there. All things considered, the ending was... interesting. Rachel died a hero's death, which I hadn't expected but YA novels have a penchant for killing characters off to make stories more poignant. And her sacrifice was apparently in vain. The good guys win, Visser gets put on trial at the Hague (I lol'd at the detail) and sentenced to live hostless in a cube. Jake feels conflicted after Visser's lawyers point out that he's a war criminal as well, which was an interesting touch.

And then there's weird cliffhanger bullshit ending where they track down the escaped ship (that Rachel's death was intended to disable) which has merged with Ax and they ram their ship into it. I had wondered if it was the start to a new series, but couldn't find anything

Otherwise, I guess they had this weird subplot in a connected spinoff or soemthing where Elminister or Ellister -- or let's just call him Grandmaster -- became a godlike being and engaged in a conflict with another godlike being, where various beings worked on their sides. Why the fuck does the franchise need any of that shit?

Oh, plus the books were apparently heavily ghostwritten, which I've heard is kinda common for this sort of genre fiction.

I suppose all of that might have been interesting if the show continued although, as far as YA shows based on book series go, I was more bummed out to see Spooksville end (and I guess Goosebumps). The show had some promise and I liked the original book series's concept. I will say that the chick who played Sally on it (Katie Douglas) is super-cute now. She appeared in an episode of some really awful children's horror anthology in an episode about a traveling circus that also featured the guy who played Death on Supernatural (Julian something or other), where I didn't even recognize her other than thinking she looked a little familiar. I guess she's also on a show called Mary Kills People which I keep meaning to check out.

YA book series kinda seem a natural choice for adaptation into a show so I'm always a little surprised that we don't see it quite as often as we do. Granted, most have had a middling (or worse) reception, so that's probably part of it.
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