c_dmckinney's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
mysterious
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
Content Warnings
Moderate: Body horror, Emotional abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Gaslighting, Grief, Sexual harassment, War, Confinement, Abandonment, and Slavery
Minor: Death of parent, Kidnapping, Suicide attempt, Vomit, and Animal death
I tagged death of parent but her parents are technically alive just slaves trapped in their own mind and body by alien parasites. The parasites do not love their host's teenage daughter and she doesn't know why. Also an animal who is really a teenage girl is threatened with death but does not actually die. A shrew is focused on maggots and dead flesh.airclay3's review against another edition
4.0
Woah, that ending. I enjoyed finishing it today. Don't feel like reading more animorphs for now.
tallahasseefloyd's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
sarah_plemmons's review against another edition
adventurous
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
kaaaaaaaa's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
tense
fast-paced
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Slavery
Minor: Death, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Body horror, and Murder
geofroggatt's review against another edition
3.0
The second book in the series is very small and intimate compared to future storylines in the series. The mission is small, with Rachel’s goals even smaller. It is a very emotionally intimate plot. I loved Rachel’s POV. Seeing Melissa’s parents as controllers and Melissa subconsciously knowing that something is wrong with them was very sad and interesting. Rachel comforting Melissa in cat form was so kind and heartbreaking. Rachel is slowly becoming my favorite character out of all the main cast. The more intimate tone of this book shows the reader that this whole book series isn’t going to be just cool animal morphing fight sequences and will also examine the emotional consequences that a war like this has on all those involved. I didn’t enjoy this book as much as the first, but it was a pretty decent story and introduced some key themes and ideas.
booitsnathalie's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
5.0
jdglasgow's review
4.0
I was pretty disappointed with the first of these graphic novel adaptations of the ANIMORPHS series by Chris Grine. I was bothered by the cookie-cutter character design—Rachel and Tobias were practically identical except that Rachel had longer hair. I disliked the depiction of Andalites, which looked like fat cows with tail blades that were unnoticeable. I was also irritated by the fact that the Andalite eye-stalks don’t really scan as eyes and the fact that they were drawn with long, floppy ears… although, to be fair, when they were depicted on the covers of the original series these problems existed (perhaps not as glaringly, however). I thought Chris Grine relied too much on static shots, matching frames of one character looking to the right and another looking to the left as they talked with ‘Garfield’-style solid color backgrounds. Formally, though there were some instances where the visual enhanced the narrative, I felt that in many ways the missing internal monologue from the original books flattened the emotions of the story. I gave it 2 stars.
Because of my list of complaints about the first one, I hadn’t intended to read anymore of the graphic novel series. Because I follow a lot of Animorphs-centric Twitter accounts, though, Chris Grine’s tweets often show up in my feed and he shares stills of pages he’s working on. Some of those actually looked kind of impressive, so I thought perhaps I had been too hasty in writing his adaptations off. I decided to give THE VISITOR a chance.
Let me say up-front that a lot of the problems I had with the first are still in effect here. He hasn’t redesigned the characters, so their sameness is still striking. Tobias is a hawk now, so there no problem with him looking too similar to Rachel, but her friend Melissa who plays a pivotal role in this story *does* look identical to her, save that Melissa has freckles and slightly lighter hair. There are still instances of static images on blank backgrounds—I get the sense Grine just doesn’t know how to make dialogue scenes kinetic—although I noticed this less than in the first book, and often the presentation is unimaginative. I liken it to a high school yearbook in its layout, generic rectangles that images have been forced into rather than the context of the moment informing the design. One moment that sticks in my mind is when Rachel arrives at her gymnastics class: there’s an aerial shot of the classroom, inexplicably divided into two panels at the characters’ knees.
Maybe I’m being too forgiving, but though I noticed these things still I was less critical than before and part of the reason for that is that I felt the graphic novel did a better job of making a case for its existence. The first was *fine*, but there’s a lot of emotional depth to this entry in Rachel’s sympathy toward Melissa, whose parents are both Controllers and have therefore distanced themselves from her. Seeing Rachel’s concern visually, I think, works really well. The moment when she stays close to her two-hour morph limit to remain as Melissa’s cat to comfort her is very sweet. It was sweet in the original book, too, but I think more so here where you can see the girl crying and clutching her cat/friend close. The scenes in the basement when Chapman contacts Visser 3 are also far more chilling here than comes across in the book. The danger of the situation comes across well in this visual medium. Incidentally, Visser 3 is shown mostly from the torso up so the “fat cow” image is largely avoided, though the non-eye eye stalks problem remains.
Speaking of Chapman, when he appears at the start he’s almost comically villainous but it actually works to contrast with the reveal at the end that he volunteered as a Controller to save his daughter. Again, this is something that *does* work in the original book but there’s a certain gravitas added by the image of this father making a terrible choice for love, facing down an unspeakable horror in Visser 3, which just imagining it in your head doesn’t quite match. Additionally, and I think this is different from the first graphic novel, this one really relishes the body horror of the morphs. When the kids morph back from birds at the start, it takes three or four pages, just savoring the cracking bones and disturbing flesh monsters that they become on their way back to human. That imagery is fantastic.
Oh! Another thing I like about the graphic novel: it dispenses with the “We can’t tell you who we are, but here’s a summary of he premise” narration from the original books. Instead it just jumps right into the action and expects you to catch up. Thank you! On the other hand, I am still a little peeved that Grine didn’t retain the < brackets > for thought-speak from the books; that’s such an iconic part of Animorphs and it feels, frankly, kind of sacrilegious to excise them.
So let’s call this 3.5 stars, rounded up. There’s great things about it, but there’s things about it that grate, too. I can say that I liked it more than the first one and I will read the third. In the end, it *is* ANIMORPHS.
Because of my list of complaints about the first one, I hadn’t intended to read anymore of the graphic novel series. Because I follow a lot of Animorphs-centric Twitter accounts, though, Chris Grine’s tweets often show up in my feed and he shares stills of pages he’s working on. Some of those actually looked kind of impressive, so I thought perhaps I had been too hasty in writing his adaptations off. I decided to give THE VISITOR a chance.
Let me say up-front that a lot of the problems I had with the first are still in effect here. He hasn’t redesigned the characters, so their sameness is still striking. Tobias is a hawk now, so there no problem with him looking too similar to Rachel, but her friend Melissa who plays a pivotal role in this story *does* look identical to her, save that Melissa has freckles and slightly lighter hair. There are still instances of static images on blank backgrounds—I get the sense Grine just doesn’t know how to make dialogue scenes kinetic—although I noticed this less than in the first book, and often the presentation is unimaginative. I liken it to a high school yearbook in its layout, generic rectangles that images have been forced into rather than the context of the moment informing the design. One moment that sticks in my mind is when Rachel arrives at her gymnastics class: there’s an aerial shot of the classroom, inexplicably divided into two panels at the characters’ knees.
Maybe I’m being too forgiving, but though I noticed these things still I was less critical than before and part of the reason for that is that I felt the graphic novel did a better job of making a case for its existence. The first was *fine*, but there’s a lot of emotional depth to this entry in Rachel’s sympathy toward Melissa, whose parents are both Controllers and have therefore distanced themselves from her. Seeing Rachel’s concern visually, I think, works really well. The moment when she stays close to her two-hour morph limit to remain as Melissa’s cat to comfort her is very sweet. It was sweet in the original book, too, but I think more so here where you can see the girl crying and clutching her cat/friend close. The scenes in the basement when Chapman contacts Visser 3 are also far more chilling here than comes across in the book. The danger of the situation comes across well in this visual medium. Incidentally, Visser 3 is shown mostly from the torso up so the “fat cow” image is largely avoided, though the non-eye eye stalks problem remains.
Speaking of Chapman, when he appears at the start he’s almost comically villainous but it actually works to contrast with the reveal at the end that he volunteered as a Controller to save his daughter. Again, this is something that *does* work in the original book but there’s a certain gravitas added by the image of this father making a terrible choice for love, facing down an unspeakable horror in Visser 3, which just imagining it in your head doesn’t quite match. Additionally, and I think this is different from the first graphic novel, this one really relishes the body horror of the morphs. When the kids morph back from birds at the start, it takes three or four pages, just savoring the cracking bones and disturbing flesh monsters that they become on their way back to human. That imagery is fantastic.
Oh! Another thing I like about the graphic novel: it dispenses with the “We can’t tell you who we are, but here’s a summary of he premise” narration from the original books. Instead it just jumps right into the action and expects you to catch up. Thank you! On the other hand, I am still a little peeved that Grine didn’t retain the < brackets > for thought-speak from the books; that’s such an iconic part of Animorphs and it feels, frankly, kind of sacrilegious to excise them.
So let’s call this 3.5 stars, rounded up. There’s great things about it, but there’s things about it that grate, too. I can say that I liked it more than the first one and I will read the third. In the end, it *is* ANIMORPHS.