top of page
Writer's pictureJay

Jay's Chatterbox: Animorphs and Nostalgia

Helloooo my fiendish friends. I'm back again with a bit of a thought. I've been thinking a bit about nostalgia. How it affects the way we consume media and how it can dictate likes and dislikes even years later. It's a strange phenomenon and something that's easy to bank on when it comes to people. Some of which are looking at the way we stand in society today and long for a time before things became so complicated.


Anyway, I read Animorphs as a kid. Do you know what's being released in graphic novel form? Do you know who plans on collecting them now that they have access to adult money? And for the partial fact that they lost every single one of those books they had growing up? (take care of your things, kids. You might miss them one day.)


Anyway, the only two to be released so far are one and two. They follow the books prety faithfully from what I remember. But, for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about (for those of you weirded out by the covers) let me give you a rundown.


This group of five kids are going through an old construction site one night on their way home from the mall. At this time, an alien ship crash lands there and tells these children about a hidden galactic war the Earth has become apart of. This alien, an andalite named Elfangor, tells them about the Yeerks who are slug aliens who control people like fully-aware puppets. To help combat them, this alien gives these children the power to turn into any creature they touch. He then goes on to teach them thorought the whole series and helps guide them like the blue centaur version of Splinter.


Hah, no. I kid. He gets brutally murdered right in front of them by the Yeerk leader, Visser 3. Who also happens to be controlling an andalite with the same morphing powers. These are children's books!


Like I said, it's pretty faithful to the way the books read when I was a kid. And seeing them again was a dose of nostalgia I never thought I'd ever want. After all, these books were dark. Like, body horror, invasion of the body snatchers, child soldiers, you're-stuck-in-a-form-you-cannot-escape levels of dark.


Animorphs is baby's first sci-fi horror.


My point to this, though, is this was released mostly for someone like me in mind. It's not so much for the children of today; not that a kid can't relate to some of the things they go through. I related to it as a child, after all. But they really bank on the nostalgia factor. And I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing. The way anyone consumes entertainment is their own business so long as no one is getting hurt.


But, on the other hand, nostalgia in its current form can cut into and push away projects that are new. And that's something we all become starved for every once in a while. There's only so much we can do with nostalgia passed the “remember when” factor. All of us fall into it because it's comfortable. Its familiar. It's predictable and it's safe. And there's nothing wrong with that.


So long as you're not pushing something else aside for this. Because that is when things end up in a spiral.


So, this post ended up on a bit of a tangent. And next week I might be posting about something else that is nostalgia fueled. But it's been on my mind just like I know it's been on everyone else's. But, either way, thank you for tuning in. Until next time!


Fare Thee Well!

2 views0 comments

Commenti


bottom of page