Many fans have criticized this show for not being faithful to the books. While I can see where they're coming from realistically a more faithful adaptation of the book series simply wasn't possible back in 1998. Not just because it didn't have the budget. When looking at Animorphs you also have to look at the period surrounding it's airing as well as the network it was on at the time.
Animorphs first aired in 1998 and ended it's run in 2000. At the time the superhero movie was just starting to become popular and successful with movies like Blade (1998) and X-Men (2000) but the landscape of superhero movies was extremely small back then. Superheroes on TV was another story entirely. The most successful superhero property on TV in 1998 was Power Rangers. At least in live action. In animation Bruce Timm and Warner Bros. Animation were having a string of successes with Batman: The Animated Series (1992), Superman: The Animated Series (1996) and The New Batman Adventures (1997). While Marvel was having a string of successes with cartoons based on Spider-Man, the X-Men, Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, and the Fantastic Four. Sailor Moon was also pretty popular on the Anime side. So superheroes were dominating in animation.
As I said, in live action, it was only Power Rangers that we really had by 1998 as Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman had ended and nothing else was on the horizon from DC or Marvel. And with the Animorphs book series starting out as a superhero series, with the more horrifying war elements not entering into the series until the books reached book #30 or so, Nickelodeon was going to play it safe and take more influences from Power Rangers than from the books themselves. Which is ironic considering that Nickelodeon has been airing Power Rangers for the last ten years.
I rewatched a bunch of the show recently, and I'm okay with this. Not every superhero TV show has to be dark and gritty, even if it's based on something that is those things. Now that's not to say that every superhero TV show needs to be goofy and lighthearted either. But I felt at the time, and now going back and watching it as an adult, that Animorphs did very well at balancing the serious moments with the funnier ones. As much as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers did. Even if I can't take that show seriously anymore.
I don't remember if I started reading the books first or watching the show first, but I remember the first episode of Animorphs I ever saw was Episode 2, "My Name is Jake, Part 2". Here in Canada the show was on twice a week. On Sunday mornings on Global, right before Men in Black: The Animated Series and on either Thursday night or Friday night on YTV. I watched it both nights. I also remember taping the season 1 finale, "Face Off" and rewatching the scene where Tobias grabs the Andalite disk, gains his morphing powers back and morphs into his human form again. I realize now they only did that because season 2 had it's already low budget slashed and they couldn't afford to use the Hawk they were using for Tobias all the time anymore. But still, having Tobias back in his human form again was pretty cool (I hadn't read book #13 yet at this point).
I do wish we'd seen more of the Hork-Bajir and other alien races that were featured in the books. But with the budget that this show had I'm just glad we actually got to see Ax and Visser Three's Andalite forms, the one Hork-Bajir that we saw and the Yeerks outside of their host bodies that we saw. Not to mention we actually got to see the Animorphs morph.
The cast of this show is amazing. Though sadly, Shawn Ashmore (Jake) and Paul Costanzo (Ax) seem to be the only ones who are actually known for anything. Brooke Nevin (Rachel) has mostly been in independent films and smaller TV shows that don't garner much notice. Same goes with the rest of the cast pretty much. My favourite actor on this show is Christopher Ralph. The way he portrays Tobias is awesome. Tobias was always my favourite of the Animorphs with Ax coming in at a close second. I could always identify with Tobias and Ax more than I ever could Jake or Marco, or Cassie or Rachel. So to see an actor portray both characters really well on screen was awesome. Oh and Eugene Lipinski as Visser Three was amazing too. In fact when I first saw him on screen as Visser Three's human morph I recognized him from the 1996 movie Harriet the Spy. The last thing I saw him in was in three episodes of Arrow during that show's first two seasons as Oliver's contact with Bratva operations in Starling City.
I know fans of the books don't like this show and I understand why. Adaptation is a difficult line to walk, but honestly, I still love it. Not as much as I love the books, but it's still a fun show for me to watch. For years I've been watching crappy versions of the episodes on YouTube because there's no DVD release, only the four VHS releases. But the entire series is on iTunes now so I've bought a few episodes from there and watched the three episodes that are included on the first VHS release so far. It's still one of my favourite shows that aired on YTV in the late '90s and early 2000s.
Having said all that it would be interesting what a new TV adaptation of Animorphs would be like. Especially if the series was picked up by Netflix and given a much larger budget than the original TV show did. It could be more faithful to the books in terms of the direction the story went in the books. We could also see a much larger variety of animals that the kids could morph into. We could see more ships and open up the universe a lot more. I doubt it will ever happen though since as I said at the beginning of this post, Animorphs, both the book series and the TV show, is of it's time. It appeared long enough for people of my generation to latch onto it and then disappeared into the ether for us to remember fondly and revisit from time to time. Despite Science Fiction having a resurgence on TV right now and superheroes being popular, Animorphs doesn't have an appeal outside of the kids who read the books and watched the show in the mid-'90s to early 2000s. As was proven almost a decade ago when Scholastic tried to update and re-release the book series. Nobody bought it. At least we have 65 books to read and 26 episodes to watch. And that suits me just fine.
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0154147/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
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