Hey guys! How's it going? Happy Friday! I know I said I would be reviewing The Goonies today, but I finished reading Animorphs book #2, The Visitor last night and thought that review should get done first. So that's what we're going to do today. I'm going to have an announcement at the end of this review so stay tuned for that. Right now, let's get into the review.
Being as big a fan of Rachel as I am, I was really excited to revisit this book after so many years. Much to my relief, it didn't disappoint. It's still as good as I remember it being. While not as strong an entry as The Invasion, it's anything but a filler as we get some character development for Principal Chapman and some insight into Rachel as a character since she didn't have much screentime in the last book.
I can't call Chapman's reason for becoming a Controller in the first place a twist. Because it's really not. I never got the sense that Chapman was a garbage Human Being so when it was revealed in this book that he became a Controller to protect his daughter, Melissa, from the Yeerks, I honestly wasn't surprised at all when I first read this book back in 1999. I also knew that Marco just didn't like him because Chapman had given him detention multiple times due to things that Marco was at fault for. That's just who Marco was before becoming an Animorph.
These first five books are really about introducing each character and giving each of them personal reasons for wanting to fight the Yeerks. For Jake it's Tom, for Rachel it's Melissa Chapman, for Tobias it's Elfangor, Marco's reason will be discussed in my review for the fifth book of the series, The Predator, and Cassie doesn't have a personal reason for being involved. There isn't even one given in her first book as a narrator, The Message. She just doesn't have one like the other four do. I'll talk about that more in my review for The Message.
This book also does a great job at establishing the Rachel and Tobias relationship. The Invasion set up Rachel's feelings for Tobias, but, despite this being a Rachel book, it sets up Tobias's feelings for Rachel. Both times Rachel is about to enter the Chapman house in cat morph, Tobias sends her a private Thought Speech message, telling her that he's there for her if she needs him. Not her cousin Jake, not her best friend Cassie, not even Marco. Tobias tells this to her twice, even though he can't morph anymore.
Because of the first person POV used in this series, we get even less of the other Animorphs than we did in the previous book. Unlike with Jake, where he and Marco, and them and Tobias, hang out together, Rachel doesn't hang out with Cassie in this book. That's mainly because we get introduced to Melissa Chapman, and then shortly after the Animorphs go right into their recon mission at Chapman's house. So there's not enough time for Rachel to hang out with just Cassie. She hangs out with the other four Animorphs together, as mission planning for the most part, except for the opening of the book where they're flying in bird morph, which are pretty much the most iconic morphs in this whole series, aside from their battle morphs (tiger for Jake, gorilla for Marco, wolf for Cassie, and either elephant or bear for Rachel).
With it having been about fifteen years or so since I read this book last, I had completely forgotten that Sara was Rachel's youngest sister, while Jordan was the older of her two siblings. In the show it's just Sara, and so for some reason I kept thinking that Sara was the older one and Jordan was the youngest of the three girls.
Rachel says something on page 114 that really struck a chord with me that I didn't get the significance of when I read this as a kid. Marco is complaining about how he wished they had coordinated morphing outfits, and Jake teases him about him wanting them to be the Fantastic Four and Marco replies that he was thinking more like the X-Men. Rachel says, "We are not superheroes." As a kid I thought the Animorphs fit the superhero label since they had superpowers and fought to save Earth from an alien invasion like the Power Rangers, the Justice League, the Avengers, and the Green Lanterns do. But reading this line as an adult, I completely agree with what Rachel said. The Animorphs aren't superheroes and Animorphs isn't a superhero comic book series or TV show. It's a book series about five kids thrust into the horrors of war because they were doing something they shouldn't've been doing when they walked through the construction site in the previous book. Their powers are a gift on one hand, but a curse on the other because of what they had to go through in this series. Okay, I know that last part is like an important part of every Marvel superhero ever created, but it especially applies to the Animorphs and their lives as they struggle with fighting the Yeerks while trying to keep up at school and not act suspicious around their families in case they're Controllers, like Tom is.
The changes in this book aren't as bad as they were in the first book and what they might be in the next few books, but they're still a bit weird and arbitrary. For example, in the original version, when Rachel calls Jake to have him come over for the planning session they're going to have, she tells him that she got a new CD if he wants to listen to it. In the revised version, CD is replaced with album. Which is fine since it doesn't really clash with the 90s aesthetic of the series, since an album is placed on a CD. It's not a bad change, it's just weird because people still listen to CDs, music still comes out on CD. It also still comes out on vinyl records too, but whatever. The only other changes are little ones to update slang terms and outdated references. Which is fine.
Overall The Visitor is such an awesome book. It's great for Rachel as a character, as well as her first book as the narrator. Everything that they left untouched in the 2011 version outweighs the changes they did make and they aren't as agregious as they are in the first book and in some of the later ones. I would definitely recommend picking this book up and reading it if you're a fan of Animorphs and somehow managed to skip it when you read the series as a kid. Which is a very easy thing to happen since with 54 books in the main series, 4 Chronicles prequel books, 4 Megamorphs, and 2 choose your own adventure books, there was no possible way for us to have gotten every Animorphs book that was published, unless we started when the first book was published in 1996 and kept up with it monthly through the entire run of the series.
Before I go I have a bit of an announcement to make. After I review The Goonies this weekend, it probably won't be tomorrow, but I might fit it in there, I am switching gears and focusing on TV show reviews. Whatever seasons of TV that I have access to I'll be reviewing them. For the shows that I have on iTunes where I only have one episode, I'll be talking about that show through that episode, whether it's the pilot episode or some other episode. So I'll be starting this endeavour with the first episode of the 1936 Flash Gordon movie serial and then working my way forward through all the shows I have on DVD, Blu-ray, iTunes, YouTube, and Disney+.
Alright guys, that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back sometime this weekend with my review of The Goonies, I'm aiming to watch the movie tonight so I can do the review in the morning, but that will all depend on when Katie and I get finished our video chat dinner hangout tonight. If not I'll be watching the movie tomorrow night to do the review on Sunday. So until then have a great rest of your Friday and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
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