While we're discussing the Ellimist picking the team, I'll just note that the two characters that weren't explicitly hand-picked by the Ellimist - Jake and Rachel - are also the only two characters who Crayak directly interferes with. He "sees" Jake in 6, sets up MM3 to try to kill him, and gives him the offer that starts MM4; while he offers Rachel a deal in 26, and the whole 48 is basically him trying to tempt her. No other characters are involved with Crayak. Also - my favorite fanon idea - that deal in 27 was for Rachel to kill "your cousin", not explicitly Jake. Well, she killed Tom, and if there's one thing I know about cosmic forces toying with mortals, it's that they pick their words VERY carefully.
I always liked that. Ellimist picks 4 people out of a team of 6 to fight the Yeerks and essentially be his "champions" against Crayak, and instead it's the 2 "randos" that the Ellimist didn't pick that end up carrying the charge and gaining Crayak's interest.
My friends have a running joke about me having a prepared 8 hour Animorphs lecture that comes with drawings and notecard. Thank you for adding 39 minutes and 38 seconds to the lecture
Really cool video. I like this especially because it fits into my headcanon that Crayak and the Ellimist did several more (offscreen) resets that don’t result in anything. This is what my rationale for what #43 The Familiar is, too. In your exploration of the timeline, Crayak does not see Jake, and for me, that’s a good explanation for why the Ellimist is able to undo this timeline. The Ellimist seems to tries not to show Crayak his hand (if it can be helped).
You know what? I hadn't even considered the ramifications of Crayak not "seeing" Jake, I was more focused on the fact that the Animorphs seem to be doing better with Melissa on the team right up until the moment they're not. But you're right, it does seem strange that the Ellimist apparently gets a reset button for certain timelines. You have successfully expanded my head canon, kudos.
You've truly elevated the quality of Animorphs videos, with a level of excellence reminiscent of Defunctland. As always, top-notch analysis, but now enhanced with 3D animation!
This video is incredible. It's a shame I can't show this to anyone who hasn't read through the series because I want to share it with everyone, at the very least for the one liners bit
*chef's kiss* Flawless. No notes. Okay one note: I remember the first time I ever read Elfangor's Secret; I'd read the books out of order (as you do when the series was long over and you could only find them in thrift shops) and had no idea when in the timeline ES was, so for a hot second I genuinely thought there was an arc I'd missed where Melissa joined the team. I got SO EXCITED it didn't even register that it was meant to be an alternate reality until Jake was... well, alternate reality Jake.
Long term I could see that playing out 2 ways -- it either leads to Tobias being more isolated and withdrawn, which wouldn't be good for anybody. Or, he actually might have been more keen to spend more time in human form (or even re-nothlit as human) assuming he made it that far. It doesn't make a big difference in this universe though because Tobias and Ax don't become shorms until the end of book 8 which is, give or take about a week, the end of the line in this universe.
@@torren5950I very much did enjoy the journey! I really liked how you walked through the different scenarios. Did you consider any other scenarios where the seventh animorph is someone else? Will we go across the Animorph-verse?
Glad you enjoyed it! I examined some other options but IMO they all fell apart pretty quickly. I felt like trying to use the Alternamorphs protagonist would sound too much like self-insert fanfic. And even if we have David move to town earlier than in the books, I can't think of an organic way that his presence either gets Ax killed or makes him go home before book 7. Melissa, on the other hand, worked so well it kind of wrote itself. Someone on Reddit came up with a good one involving David, but he's not really the catalyst. As for exploring the wider AniVerse: This script actually started off as an exploration of ALL the time travel events and alternate realities, but this one section got longer & longer and just turned into its own piece. I'm open to doing a piece about how time travel works in the AniVerse but it's not top of the list currently.
(originally a reply but i thought it was too unrelated to the comment so i deleted it and copied it here) I wish the alternate universes were utilized more but considering Cassie seemingly destroys any alternate timeline she's in for too long, maybe it's a good thing that it wasn't. Though now that I think about it, a full-on multiverse adventure where they can't stay in any universe for too long because of Cassie's anomalousness would be pretty cool, if not a little too similar to that one Megamorphs book.
Wait a second... awhile ago I was trying to think of an excuse for Cassie (and Ronnie and a Chee) to visit the pocket universe from TAC, assuming it just sat there empty for decades. The eyeless McDonalds guy is still making burgers for no one and Loren's fake-mom is just standing in her house. If Cassie actually proactively collapses universes, they could abandon her there in a plot twist and she escapes anyway (and finally puts the automatons out of their misery). This could work...
One issue with this: the Z-space transponder needed Ax to translate the messages. In #45 he took days for him interpret the information that Visser One was back on Earth, probably because of the mix of languages the Yeerks use between their hosts. Also one more wrinkle: I think Melissa would be likely to recognize her farther at the construction site, since Jake already recognize the voice as his vice principal. If so, I think she'd be likely to vote for fighting early on to free her father since she already knew something was wrong. Or maybe she just didn't hear him the way Jake did. This was such a well-made AU/theory. The use of the lion morph as the hanging sixth member morph was something I noticed as a kid too so it was cool lto see someone bring it up.
Man this video makes me want to re-read all my Animorphs books. Weirdly enough I swear I remember that detail about the other human Animorph and assumed it would be payoff at some point in the future where that person winds up being instrumental in helping them... but it never happened.
Michael Grant said in an interview (and I'm paraphrasing here) "Some writers are planners and some are planters, and I'm definitely a planter. Problem is, you plant some seeds that never end up getting harvested." There's definitely more than a few of those in Animorphs.
"I love how your brain works." You are not the first person to say this to me. "Everything makes so much sense." You are absolutely the first person to say this to me.
exquisite content. my spouse is similarly floored. you're doing incredible work, thank you for keeping this series in the cultural memory and even expanding on it, otherwise only 90s kids will remember
The editing for this one was off the charts (I love the card-backing, I remember seeing that on the subreddit)- I'll always look forward to your videos! You have such a pleasant conversational tone that doesn't feel like you're talking down to viewers who may not be through the whole series or even just to newcomers, which I really appreciate! I'm so glad other folks have been compelled to pick out favorite raptors as well- I can never see a red-tail without thinking of Tobias. I like the rusty coloration on Aplomado falcons, but they are comparatively quite tiny. The speckling on a Swainsons' are also cool as hell- they remind me of Short-Eared owls!
I love this! Im a big animorphs fan but I started reading them like 10 years after they finished so I kinda missed the boat on it so seeing animorphs discussion is so cool! This is also so well produced and thought out!
How have i just found this channel - I feel like we are sharing a brain 😂 i posted a whole deep dive into MC being the 'lost Animorph' on reddit ...I have never seen anyone dive this deep into it! Way to go dude
I just found the post. It was posted right around the time I joined Reddit. On the one hand, I have no memory of seeing it... I didn't comment and I hadn't already upvoted it. But the fact that you even used the phrase "part of the Ellimist's original deck" and the imagery I went with in this video... What I'm saying is, I really hope I didn't subconsciously rip this off from you. George Harrison got sued for less... One of these days I've got to crawl through all of Richard's Animorphs forum, the subreddit, and the top 10 or so Animorphs Tumblr's and try to determine, with attribution, where the earliest reference to common fan theories seem to come from. Actually, that on its own could make an interesting video...
@@torren5950 dude don't even worry about it, it's super cool. I think were just on the same page on Ani-sht which is dope (I even say that the titles of book 5 and 3 should be switched which is a crazy detail that I don't think I've ever even posted about - great minds think) Anyway the Animorphs stuff you're making is fantastic 👏🏾 it's great to see
Man this videos premise reminds me of the parting clouds fic where cassie is a rationalist and how the smallest changes affect the things but stays the same.
@@torren5950 it was actually made earlier than reckoning (what's your opinion on reckoning?) in 2014 i think? It has 32 parts (all cassie pow) and it's on a hiatus. But it ends at the David trilogy (Where's he's a more explored character instead of plot device). And many other things, Melissa also is a ''recurring'' characters (not in a sense that we see her often but she is mentioned and has a role in the story). Warning tho the early parts follow more of the canon so it can be a little bit samey, but i think it makes more unique when we see cassie question more of the war and her morality and the nitty-gritty of maintaining it also the Australia 🇦🇺 plot is actually relevant. Oh if you looking for it, it's [Animorphs the parting clouds] on ao3
Well this might cost me some credibility... I haven't read any of Reckoning (yet). I *have* read like 15% of Eleutherophobia and a bunch of one shots. When I stare at my PC and read I'm really biased towards starting stuff I know I can finish in one sitting.
Idk I like the idea that the Alternamorphs universe was so doomed from that start that it (or one similar) is genuinely what turned into the bad future. Considering picking one wrong morph gets the entire team killed in Alternamorphs, I don't think it's unlikely. /j
Man, the editing in this video is top-notch! I love how deep you dove with this. Also, for the _Independence Day_ bit, I half-expected you to show the clip of TV Jake & TV Marco mentioning the movie in... episode 1, I wanna say?
The ID4 reference is in episode 3 ("Underground"). I did a variation of that joke, along with all the other "tribute"/rip-off elements from movies in the final 2 minutes of this video: th-cam.com/video/eC0F0ysBV1k/w-d-xo.html
@@torren5950 Oh, nice! Also, does the "site" in the thumbnail refer to the abandoned construction site, or am I thinking too hard and it's just a typo meant to say 'sight'?
Oh... um... (glances nervously) yeah that's *totally* an obscure pun and not an embarrassing grade school-level typo. Now if you'll excuse me, for completely unrelated reasons I'm gonna stick my head in a pillow and scream. And if I happen to change the thumbnail soon, well that's just a coincidence. (OK but for real, thank you. And also I'm upset that TH-cam has a 2 mb limit on thumbnails, so the image is in 720p while the video is in 1080... I was wondering if I simplified the green felt design under the cards if I could get a higher-resolution image so I might be changing the thumbnail anyway. Also the text isn't centered... can you tell I treat the thumbnails as an after thought?)
OK, it is now properly centered, spelled correctly, higher res, and I got the "A" logo in. Amazing what an extra 10 minutes can do... thanks for pointing out the typo, seriously, it was the kick in the pants I needed to do it right.
![The Animorphs Iceberg [Viewer request]](/img/n.gif)
Ah, the siren call of animorphs fans, the word "thermals" and Torren's videos.
Dang, putting me up there with "thermals" is flattery I wasn't prepared for.
While we're discussing the Ellimist picking the team, I'll just note that the two characters that weren't explicitly hand-picked by the Ellimist - Jake and Rachel - are also the only two characters who Crayak directly interferes with. He "sees" Jake in 6, sets up MM3 to try to kill him, and gives him the offer that starts MM4; while he offers Rachel a deal in 26, and the whole 48 is basically him trying to tempt her. No other characters are involved with Crayak.
Also - my favorite fanon idea - that deal in 27 was for Rachel to kill "your cousin", not explicitly Jake. Well, she killed Tom, and if there's one thing I know about cosmic forces toying with mortals, it's that they pick their words VERY carefully.
I always liked that. Ellimist picks 4 people out of a team of 6 to fight the Yeerks and essentially be his "champions" against Crayak, and instead it's the 2 "randos" that the Ellimist didn't pick that end up carrying the charge and gaining Crayak's interest.
As soon as you posed the "who" question, my first thought was the Chapman child, though I had forgotten her first name.
The crazy Animorphs man has returned! Retrieve the corkboard and string immediately!
(Me, knowing you can't have watched the full video yet) If only you knew...
@@torren5950uh well about that...
My friends have a running joke about me having a prepared 8 hour Animorphs lecture that comes with drawings and notecard. Thank you for adding 39 minutes and 38 seconds to the lecture
Holy shit, the Animorphs Multiverse is real and it is magnificent
Really cool video. I like this especially because it fits into my headcanon that Crayak and the Ellimist did several more (offscreen) resets that don’t result in anything. This is what my rationale for what #43 The Familiar is, too. In your exploration of the timeline, Crayak does not see Jake, and for me, that’s a good explanation for why the Ellimist is able to undo this timeline. The Ellimist seems to tries not to show Crayak his hand (if it can be helped).
You know what? I hadn't even considered the ramifications of Crayak not "seeing" Jake, I was more focused on the fact that the Animorphs seem to be doing better with Melissa on the team right up until the moment they're not. But you're right, it does seem strange that the Ellimist apparently gets a reset button for certain timelines. You have successfully expanded my head canon, kudos.
You've truly elevated the quality of Animorphs videos, with a level of excellence reminiscent of Defunctland. As always, top-notch analysis, but now enhanced with 3D animation!
This video is incredible. It's a shame I can't show this to anyone who hasn't read through the series because I want to share it with everyone, at the very least for the one liners bit
Thanks! I think part of why I do these projects is that it gathers, ever so briefly, Animorphs fans who otherwise probably wouldn't cross paths.
*chef's kiss* Flawless. No notes.
Okay one note: I remember the first time I ever read Elfangor's Secret; I'd read the books out of order (as you do when the series was long over and you could only find them in thrift shops) and had no idea when in the timeline ES was, so for a hot second I genuinely thought there was an arc I'd missed where Melissa joined the team. I got SO EXCITED it didn't even register that it was meant to be an alternate reality until Jake was... well, alternate reality Jake.
I hadn't even considered what MM3 would do to someone reading out of order; it was trippy enough if you read it when it was new!
I wonder how much Ax leaving earth sooner would effect Tobias, considering how often they talked with each other in the woods.
Long term I could see that playing out 2 ways -- it either leads to Tobias being more isolated and withdrawn, which wouldn't be good for anybody. Or, he actually might have been more keen to spend more time in human form (or even re-nothlit as human) assuming he made it that far. It doesn't make a big difference in this universe though because Tobias and Ax don't become shorms until the end of book 8 which is, give or take about a week, the end of the line in this universe.
BILLY JO-
...fuck. Well played.
I got one!
What a good catch, and I am so excited to watch this. I’m going to put my guess in before watching:
.
.
Melissa Chapman.
Well, given that [the person who it is] is revealed at like the 3 minute mark... I hope you enjoyed the journey we took with them.
@@torren5950I very much did enjoy the journey! I really liked how you walked through the different scenarios. Did you consider any other scenarios where the seventh animorph is someone else? Will we go across the Animorph-verse?
Glad you enjoyed it!
I examined some other options but IMO they all fell apart pretty quickly. I felt like trying to use the Alternamorphs protagonist would sound too much like self-insert fanfic. And even if we have David move to town earlier than in the books, I can't think of an organic way that his presence either gets Ax killed or makes him go home before book 7. Melissa, on the other hand, worked so well it kind of wrote itself.
Someone on Reddit came up with a good one involving David, but he's not really the catalyst.
As for exploring the wider AniVerse: This script actually started off as an exploration of ALL the time travel events and alternate realities, but this one section got longer & longer and just turned into its own piece. I'm open to doing a piece about how time travel works in the AniVerse but it's not top of the list currently.
(originally a reply but i thought it was too unrelated to the comment so i deleted it and copied it here)
I wish the alternate universes were utilized more but considering Cassie seemingly destroys any alternate timeline she's in for too long, maybe it's a good thing that it wasn't. Though now that I think about it, a full-on multiverse adventure where they can't stay in any universe for too long because of Cassie's anomalousness would be pretty cool, if not a little too similar to that one Megamorphs book.
Wait a second... awhile ago I was trying to think of an excuse for Cassie (and Ronnie and a Chee) to visit the pocket universe from TAC, assuming it just sat there empty for decades. The eyeless McDonalds guy is still making burgers for no one and Loren's fake-mom is just standing in her house.
If Cassie actually proactively collapses universes, they could abandon her there in a plot twist and she escapes anyway (and finally puts the automatons out of their misery). This could work...
One issue with this: the Z-space transponder needed Ax to translate the messages. In #45 he took days for him interpret the information that Visser One was back on Earth, probably because of the mix of languages the Yeerks use between their hosts.
Also one more wrinkle: I think Melissa would be likely to recognize her farther at the construction site, since Jake already recognize the voice as his vice principal. If so, I think she'd be likely to vote for fighting early on to free her father since she already knew something was wrong. Or maybe she just didn't hear him the way Jake did.
This was such a well-made AU/theory. The use of the lion morph as the hanging sixth member morph was something I noticed as a kid too so it was cool lto see someone bring it up.
Wait... Is torren the Animorphs Matpat!?
Love the outthought scenario. There is no way the author thought about all of this when the line was added. Great video tho @Torren
Maybe it is a reference to the choose your own adventure animorphs?
This is fantastic work. I love that it takes into account not only what the characters would do but what narrative conventions make sense
Why does... why does this all make sense?
Great what if/multiverse scenario. And top notch editing. Very impressed with the 3d effects.
Is the secret animorph the book that always morphs its cover?
Man this video makes me want to re-read all my Animorphs books. Weirdly enough I swear I remember that detail about the other human Animorph and assumed it would be payoff at some point in the future where that person winds up being instrumental in helping them... but it never happened.
Michael Grant said in an interview (and I'm paraphrasing here) "Some writers are planners and some are planters, and I'm definitely a planter. Problem is, you plant some seeds that never end up getting harvested." There's definitely more than a few of those in Animorphs.
@@torren5950 I'd love to know more about other things planted that were never used.
I said “well, it’d have to be melissa chapman”
And then he just cuts to “It’s Melissa Chapman” lol
I love how your brain works. Everything make so much sense!!
"I love how your brain works." You are not the first person to say this to me.
"Everything makes so much sense." You are absolutely the first person to say this to me.
@@torren5950 LMAO. Mood.
exquisite content. my spouse is similarly floored. you're doing incredible work, thank you for keeping this series in the cultural memory and even expanding on it, otherwise only 90s kids will remember
but also op is a friend for trolling us so softly. you wouldn't get that from any other guy
I just want to tell people how I'm feeling about this incredible series. Got to make them understand...
as someone who has never read any animorph books, this is pretty interesting
The editing for this one was off the charts (I love the card-backing, I remember seeing that on the subreddit)- I'll always look forward to your videos! You have such a pleasant conversational tone that doesn't feel like you're talking down to viewers who may not be through the whole series or even just to newcomers, which I really appreciate!
I'm so glad other folks have been compelled to pick out favorite raptors as well- I can never see a red-tail without thinking of Tobias. I like the rusty coloration on Aplomado falcons, but they are comparatively quite tiny. The speckling on a Swainsons' are also cool as hell- they remind me of Short-Eared owls!
Thank you! I'm really glad the 3d stuff is being well-received, since learning how to do it delayed this video by several months.
I love this! Im a big animorphs fan but I started reading them like 10 years after they finished so I kinda missed the boat on it so seeing animorphs discussion is so cool! This is also so well produced and thought out!
Haven’t watched the video yet but I saw the card design the other day on Reddit and I quite liked it then, as I do now
Love the card and coin animations.
Thank you!
How have i just found this channel - I feel like we are sharing a brain 😂 i posted a whole deep dive into MC being the 'lost Animorph' on reddit ...I have never seen anyone dive this deep into it! Way to go dude
I just found the post. It was posted right around the time I joined Reddit.
On the one hand, I have no memory of seeing it... I didn't comment and I hadn't already upvoted it. But the fact that you even used the phrase "part of the Ellimist's original deck" and the imagery I went with in this video...
What I'm saying is, I really hope I didn't subconsciously rip this off from you. George Harrison got sued for less...
One of these days I've got to crawl through all of Richard's Animorphs forum, the subreddit, and the top 10 or so Animorphs Tumblr's and try to determine, with attribution, where the earliest reference to common fan theories seem to come from. Actually, that on its own could make an interesting video...
@@torren5950 dude don't even worry about it, it's super cool. I think were just on the same page on Ani-sht which is dope (I even say that the titles of book 5 and 3 should be switched which is a crazy detail that I don't think I've ever even posted about - great minds think) Anyway the Animorphs stuff you're making is fantastic 👏🏾 it's great to see
15:51 i would have done a reference like that if i was in your place.
This is absolutely brilliant!!!!!!
Man this videos premise reminds me of the parting clouds fic where cassie is a rationalist and how the smallest changes affect the things but stays the same.
I hadn't heard about that one! I knew about The Reckoning but I hadn't heard of any other rationalist rewrites.
@@torren5950 it was actually made earlier than reckoning (what's your opinion on reckoning?) in 2014 i think? It has 32 parts (all cassie pow) and it's on a hiatus. But it ends at the David trilogy (Where's he's a more explored character instead of plot device). And many other things, Melissa also is a ''recurring'' characters (not in a sense that we see her often but she is mentioned and has a role in the story). Warning tho the early parts follow more of the canon so it can be a little bit samey, but i think it makes more unique when we see cassie question more of the war and her morality and the nitty-gritty of maintaining it also the Australia 🇦🇺 plot is actually relevant. Oh if you looking for it, it's [Animorphs the parting clouds] on ao3
@@torren5950 yeah that fic isn't really talked about and i wonder why.
Well this might cost me some credibility... I haven't read any of Reckoning (yet). I *have* read like 15% of Eleutherophobia and a bunch of one shots. When I stare at my PC and read I'm really biased towards starting stuff I know I can finish in one sitting.
@@torren5950 well i can't judge you on that, but im more surprised than shocked...
Your videos are absolutely amazing
Thank you! This one especially was from the heart.
38:50 that is excellent! I love that explanation
Thanks!
Dang, this is an excellent analysis and theory
Idk I like the idea that the Alternamorphs universe was so doomed from that start that it (or one similar) is genuinely what turned into the bad future. Considering picking one wrong morph gets the entire team killed in Alternamorphs, I don't think it's unlikely. /j
Man, the editing in this video is top-notch! I love how deep you dove with this. Also, for the _Independence Day_ bit, I half-expected you to show the clip of TV Jake & TV Marco mentioning the movie in... episode 1, I wanna say?
The ID4 reference is in episode 3 ("Underground"). I did a variation of that joke, along with all the other "tribute"/rip-off elements from movies in the final 2 minutes of this video: th-cam.com/video/eC0F0ysBV1k/w-d-xo.html
@@torren5950 Oh, nice! Also, does the "site" in the thumbnail refer to the abandoned construction site, or am I thinking too hard and it's just a typo meant to say 'sight'?
Oh... um... (glances nervously) yeah that's *totally* an obscure pun and not an embarrassing grade school-level typo. Now if you'll excuse me, for completely unrelated reasons I'm gonna stick my head in a pillow and scream. And if I happen to change the thumbnail soon, well that's just a coincidence.
(OK but for real, thank you. And also I'm upset that TH-cam has a 2 mb limit on thumbnails, so the image is in 720p while the video is in 1080... I was wondering if I simplified the green felt design under the cards if I could get a higher-resolution image so I might be changing the thumbnail anyway. Also the text isn't centered... can you tell I treat the thumbnails as an after thought?)
@@torren5950 Ah don't worry about it, happens to the best of us.
OK, it is now properly centered, spelled correctly, higher res, and I got the "A" logo in. Amazing what an extra 10 minutes can do... thanks for pointing out the typo, seriously, it was the kick in the pants I needed to do it right.
Let's go, a Torren video drop!
Fantastic. It all fits. Just fantastic.
Would Marco quit if he hadn’t morphed ant?
Good, fun video!
This is unbelievably good
Excellent scholarship.
love this video!!
Hell Yeah
31:00 I think he broke
Never mess with SystemAdminisTorren. He's seen things...