LogFAQs > #950087821

There were times where weird morphing sequences happened but this never happened and is just something you made up.

Animorphs was dark as fuck. What other kids series deals with brain controlling parasites, child soldiers, genocide, war crimes, and more?

Some things that happen in the series...

Jake is like 16 by the end of the series, and during the big final battle he is given the opportunity to flush 17000 defenseless Yeerks into the vacuum of space. See, the Yeerks are brain slugs that have to leave their host every three days to feed on radiation from their homeworld in a specialized pool, and they're completely helpless in that state. Jake does it with little hesitation and is later tried for war crimes.

The Taxxons. Holy shit the Taxxons. An alien centipede race with a driving hunger so strong that they will literally eat anything, and I mean anything. They eat each other, to the point where wounding one can be a sufficient distraction as the rest would immediately go into a feeding frenzy. They even eat themselves - I can think of at least one instance where one is cut in half and ends up dying as it tries to devour the detached lower half. The entire race is enslaved by the Yeerks, and they came to the Yeerks willingly hoping they could control the hunger. They could not, which leads to the Taxxons eventually turning on the Yeerks and siding with the Animorphs in exchange for the ability to morph into and stay as literally anything else. Most of them turn into anacondas and live peacefully in the Amazon by the end of the series.

David. Maybe the wildest three book arc in the series. Random kid finds the morphing cube that gives people the morphing powers. Tries to sell it online, the team notices, but so do the Yeerks. They manage to save him but not his family, and have to break the news of the invasion to him along with the fact that his parents are now slaves and he can't go home. He joins the team, but something seems off. Very quickly it's revealed that he's a cowardly sociopath. Things David does; kills a random red tailed hawk thinking it's Tobias, tries to sell out to the Yeerks, repeatedly attempts to murder all of the crew, acquires a lion morph and even before he goes nuts fantasizes about who would win between his lion and Jake's tiger.

Then Jake and Rachel's cousin Saddler is involved in an accident midway through the story. He's in a coma, being rushed to surgery, etc. Jake and Rachel show up at the hospital and to their surprise, Saddler is 100% fine. He's awake and fully healed and everyone is saying it's a miracle. They quickly realize it's David, morphed into Saddler, attempting to take over his life and put a stop to that. So from the perspective of Saddler's parents, their son was in a horrible accident, then suddenly miraculously recovered on the way to surgery, then disappeared soon after, until they find his dead body, still sustaining the injuries from the accident, in (IIRC) an elevator shaft.

So they decide they have to handle David, and they trick him into rat morph and lead him into a cage, then abandon him on an isolated island, with one of them staying there to make sure he doesn't demorph within the two hour limit, leaving him stuck as a rat on this island. Shit's fucked.

Leading out of that you have the auxiliary team. Once the team has the morphing cube they decide they need reinforcements. After some thought they decide to visit the sick kids ward at a hospital IIRC, and give the morphing power to a bunch of kids there in order to help out. After a heartwarming scene where these kids get to morph and fly, which for some of them is the most freedom of movement they've ever had, they return to the hospital to demorph. One kid was in due to an accident and had his arm amputated; due to the way morphing works when he morphed back his arm had grown back. This gave the other kids hope...but it only fixes injuries, so the kids with motor disabilities and whatnot morphed back and still had those disabilities.

Then this aux team is sacrificed entirely in the final arc fighting alongside the US military once the war goes open in a distraction so that the main team can make their very important move. They know they're going to die, too, as do the military dudes.

There's so much more than that, too.