The Encounter (Mini-Review)

Animorphs The Encounter is the third graphic novel adaption by Chris Grine of the Animorphs series. Previously Tobias had ended up trapped in his red-tailed hawk morph. Ever since then he has been flying and living in Jake's attic. His struggles with his identity of being either a human or hawk comes to a head. At the same time he found a Yeerk ship going towards the mountains and eventually the Animorphs form a plan to strike a blow to the Yeerk invasion of Earth.

While most of my Mini-Reviews are spoiler free, there will be a slight change this time. This due to the fact that some of my critique will be on the adaptation of the book.

I remember growing up and loving this series as it treated me like an adult. K.A.Applegate (author of the original series) trusted me to be able to tackle dark subjects and come out stronger. This book in particular has some dark themes to it. It is my belief that Tobias purposefully trapped himself in red-tailed hawk morph so that he could escape his abusive living situation. But now that plan is backfiring as he's having to deal with the hawk's instincts.

While I'm not one of those that believe Tobias is a transsexual, I do think his character arc throughout the series is a good metaphor for the trans/non-binary community. He has to deal with the fact that his mind and body aren't the same thing. His mind is human but his body isn't. Rachel at one point even says it doesn't matter what his body is.

There were changes made from the original book that were absolutely necessary. The original book is told in the First Person Point of View (POV) which wouldn't work for this graphic novel. One way Chris Grine adapts the internal struggle Tobias has with himself is having the hawk be like another person. He also tends to have different shading to also indicate this struggle.

Animorphs is a series where the main antagonists crawl up a person's ear to get to their brains. This is not physically possible. So since you have to suspend disbelief, the authors can get away with some of the more unrealistic elements. Such as in the original book I didn't mind that the term alpha wolf was used even though alpha wolves are a myth and the creator of the term doesn't like it. But in this graphic novel adaptation Cassie dismisses the term. Which wouldn't be bad but it makes Marco appear really stupid and the scene is awkward for a few panels.

In the original book Marco throws a baseball at the skylight so that Tobias doesn't die. But it's now changed to another object to be more believable. I admit this one is more of a nitpick on my part and won't bother new readers to the series.

One good change was when Tobias flew away to live as a hawk. This part is now told entirely by him recounting that time to Rachel. In the original it was told while Tobias was experiencing it and his conversation with Rachel came at the very end. The first person narration, which was impactful in the original book, wouldn't have worked in this adaptation.

I would highly recommend The Encounter by Chris Grine to Animorphs fans. I would also highly recommend The Encounter by Chris Grine to science fiction fans.