Hey guys! Yeah, I finished The Capture last night after I watched Punky Brewster and The Hardy Boys, so here I am to review it. This is also the last Animorphs book review that I'm going to be doing since it's the last Animorphs book that I own for the time being. However, I would still like to talk about the series, and I read a good chunk of it when I was in middle school and early high school so I'm going to do a book by book overview of the rest of the series, so stay tuned for that at some point. In the meantime let's get on with this book review.
The Capture is probably my favourite Animorphs book narrated by Jake. Not because it's a Jake book, but because of the events that take place in the book itself. We also learn more about the Yeerks in this book as well, which is neat, because so far, up to this point, we learn very little. Mainly because they didn't do a thing with the info dump that Elfangor gave Tobias in the first book after that book, and of course Ax knows stuff but for right now he's keeping it all to himself. But we'll get into that a little bit later.
So this book is kind of the Animorphs's first emergency situation. Up to this point the kids have been reacting as soon as they stumble upon a mission and that's it and none of it has really been anything of consequence aside from rescuing Ax in The Message. Even in the previous book with being captured by Visser Three and being taken up to Visser One, that was an accident, it wasn't supposed to go down that way. Here though, not only does Jake spy on Tom to get a mission but then they take the mission in stages. Like first they use the cockroach morph to gather intel on the situation and then once they know what's going on, then they go on the attack. And then, when the mission goes sideways and Jake becomes a Controller, the team is in emergency mode for the very first time in this series.
That's probably the scariest thing about this book. The fact that for a good chunk of the last half of the book, Jake is a Controller. He's got a Yeerk in his head. A Yeerk the Animorphs can't let get away because he knows who they all are just by the fact that he's in Jake's head so if he got back to his people, he could tell Visser Three everything and that would be it for the Animorphs. Which is as scary as things can get this early in the series, leaving aside all the insanity that happens later in the series.
What's crazier is that this Yeerk, who had once been in Tom's head, is arrogant enough to think that Visser Three would promote the Yeerk and let him keep Jake as a host. But knowing Visser Three, there is absolutely no way he would allow another Yeerk to be in control of a morph capable host. That would mean that that Yeerk would be equal to Visser Three and there's no chance that Visser Three would allow an underling to be his equal when, to him, it's bad enough that Visser One is above him in terms of rank. So I think rather than infest the captured Animorphs, Visser Three would kill most of the Animorphs. He'd probably kill Jake for sure, and then kill Tobias, Cassie and Ax. But I think he would make Rachel one of his lieutenants because of the fact that she's a warrior, in spirit anyway, and the Visser appreciates that. Mainly because his Andalite host was once a warrior too. And then I think he'd keep Marco alive because of Visser One.
Speaking of Tom I love that we find out why he joined the Sharing in the first place. It's for such a stupid reason too, but it works because Tom's a teenager and his reason for joining a club is the same reason we would all join a club. Tom joined the Sharing because the girl he liked was a member. She was already a Controller and Tom discovered her secret, and so he had to be infested too. Like I said, it's such a stupid reason, but c'mon, how many times have you done something like that because of someone you had a crush on in middle school or high school? Trust me I've done some pretty stupid things because of a girl I liked when I was in high school. That's what pre-teens and teenagers do. We're young, we're inexperienced and so we do stuff because we're figuring things out about ourselves. And sometimes we get into trouble for it. Like, I don't know how many times my parents said to me, "you should know better than do that!" when I've gotten into trouble for something. The thing is though, we don't necessarily know better. Especially if it's a situation we've never been in before. And in Tom's case the consequence of him joining the Sharing because of a girl is that he got a Yeerk in his head, which will lead to some very unpleasant things near the end of the series. We'll get there though.
The only changes made for the 2012 edition are both in chapter 12. In the 1997 edition, Jake says that Marco had helped him pick out an old copy of Spider-Man #3 (I'm assuming the third issue of Todd McFarlane's run, since that series was the first to just be called Spider-Man) for his mom's birthday one year, which is why he asked Cassie and Rachel to help him out this time around. In the 2012 edition, this is changed to Ultimate Spider-Man #3, which makes sense since at this point it had been ten years since Ultimate Spider-Man #3 had come out. The other one is that when referencing The Fly, they just refer to the 1958 version as the really old one, and the 1986 Jeff Goldblum version as the one with Jeff Goldbum. There are also other little changes made when referencing technology like Jake checks the calls on the phone, since modern phones have a Caller ID feature on them, in the 2012 edition but he redials the last number Tom called in the 1997 edition. The other is just Rachel programming the DVR to record two of her favourite shows and Cassie recorded the movie of the week, while in the 1997 edition, they simply set their VCRs to tape the shows and movie.
I know, I say this all the time with these books, but things are a bit wonky with these reference changes. I'm not sure about this, but even in 2012 they didn't have the Movie of the Week anymore. I mean Netflix was a thing by then so I think they got rid of that concept around that time. I honestly don't remember though. It's definitely not a thing now in 2021 with all the streaming services that we have these days with the Movie of the Week/TV movies being replaced by Netflix Original Movies, Disney+ Original Movies, Amazon Original Movies, and Hulu Original Movies, to name a few. If this concept was still around in 2012 that's fine. I just don't remember if it had died out by then or not. Even the Wikipedia article on it doesn't say when it went away.
The last thing I wanna talk about in this review is the ending scene. When the Yeerk in Jake's head is dying and transfers his essence (basically) to Jake, which doesn't come up again any more than Elfangor's info dump to Tobias in the first book does, Jake sees a Big Red Eye watching him. Initially people who first read this book in 1997 didn't really think anything of it. But then in book #26 The Attack we are introduced to Crayak, the enemy of the Ellimist, and Crayak is a Big Red Eye, so this was actually some foreshadowing on K.A. Applegate's part. And knowing what we know about the Ellimist, Crayak taking notice of Jake and seeing him as a threat, would've forced the Ellimist to reveal himself to the Animorphs and Ax in the very next book, The Stranger. So I thought that was a really cool setup when the payoff doesn't happen for 20 more books after this.
Overall, this is a decent book. I mainly like it because of the crisis situation the Animorphs find themselves in. Just because I just don't like Jake all that much. He's a pretty bland character at this point and I just can't relate to him like I can Tobias and Ax. But it's still a pretty important book for the series, because it does foreshadow Crayak, and it begins to open up the Yeerk lore a little bit more. Which is a process that began in the previous book, The Predator when we learned about the Yeerk political structure a little bit.
Alright guys that is going to be it for me for this week. It's a beautiful day out today so I am going to go have lunch and then I'll be heading outside to enjoy the sunshine and warm temperatures. I'll be back on Monday for my review of Beach Party at Walt Disney World. So until then have a wonderful rest of your weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
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