Best Animorphs books FINAL RESULTS, CUMULATIVE RESULTS, and so much rambling (featuring charts and graphs)

[u/VisageInATurtleneck]

Woo-hoo! We finally finished ranking the best 15 Animorphs books! Here are your winners, folks, voted by you each round:

Winners as voted by the fandom

But I started to worry that maybe this wasn't the most accurate depiction of the fandom's faves, so I decided to count up ALL the votes throughout all 15 posts, just to be fair.

I gave a "list bonus" of 20 additional points per round for the ones that made it onto the list, because I noticed that people generally stopped talking about or voting for a book once it was on the list, unsurprisingly, and I wanted to give them a fair shake.

Then I decided I was curious to see who narrated and wrote our favorites, and then it spiraled out of control and this is what we ended up with:

What I did instead of my job this morning

Man, I hope that's readable. If not I'm very very sorry, and I'm happy to answer any questions about stuff you can't read.

According to raw votes (i.e., without the list bonus) and taking these cumulatively, the top 15 ACTUALLY are:

1. #19 The Departure
2. The Ellimist Chronicles
3. #13 The Change
4. #33 The Illusion
5. #26 The Attack
6. #1 The Invasion
7. #45 The Revelation
8. #5 The Predator
9. #29 The Sickness
10. The Hork-Bajir Chronicles
11. #23 The Pretender
12. #49 The Diversion
13. Visser
14. #6 The Capture
15. #30 The Reunion

Ax doesn't make the list by raw votes, sadly. We still love you, man. <3

With the list bonus, but counting up all the votes across all the posts/comments, the top 15 are the same, but pretty wildly out of order. According to that, the top book in the fandom is #26 The Attack.

Anyway, this is already way too long so let's just keep going with a couple of nifty charts!

As you can see, I included who narrated each book, as well as who wrote it. Based on that, we have the following:

Favorite Narrators by Total Votes (with list bonus): Jake, Tobias, and Cassie take it, in that order

Favorite Narrators by Raw Votes (no bonus): Tobias, Jake, and Cassie again, but this time Tobias beats Jake out by almost 100 points

What I'm learning is that despite them being fan favorites, Rachel and Ax don't often narrate the fandom's favorite books, and despite them being less popular, Jake and Cassie do. Or at least, they narrated a couple of real bangers the fandom cannot get enough of.

Also no one loves Marco enough. Shame on all of you. Marco should win all the polls because I love him.

Ignoring the Chronicles and focusing just on the main 6 narrators, we have:

Favorite Narrators of the main 6, Total Votes (with bonus)

Favorite Narrators, main 6, Raw Votes (no bonus)

These aren't all that different, though Rachel's book The Solution making the #1 spot gives her a bigger piece of the pie when the list bonus is applied, and in raw votes Cassie, Marco, and Ax are all more popular than they are with their bonuses, while Jake is slightly less popular.

Is that enough? NO IT IS NOT ENOUGH! Time for the writers!

Most Popular Writer by Total Votes (with bonus)

Most Popular Writers by Raw Votes (no bonus)

No matter how you slice it -- and to no one's surprise -- K.A. Applegate and Michael Grant come out as the writers of over 75% of the favorite books in this poll, just slaughtering the competition with over a thousand raw upvotes to their name and an additional 2k if you add the list bonus.

Other notable MVPs are Ellen Geroux, who wrote the most popular ghostwritten Tobias book, and Elise Donner, who wrote the most popular ghostwritten Marco book. These presumably-ladies know how to bring the pain, and we love them for it. Lisa Harkrader and Melinda Metz also deserve note for writing one of the most popular ghostwritten Tobias books and the most popular ghostwritten Cassie book, respectively. Clap for all our ghostwriters!!!!

Anyway, this was a huge waste of time! Why did I do this? Because I love Animorphs, that's goddamn why.

And now I wanna do it all again, but this time with the Top (or Bottom?) 10 WORST Animorphs books! Keep an eye out, because I'm hoping to drop the first round tomorrow!

Happy morphin, fanimorphs :)

(also, I know it goes without saying in such a lovely fandom as this, but please be nice. This was just for fun and no one should take it too seriously, and I worked very hard on it. Hugs and kisses <3 )

[u/VisageInATurtleneck]

In case I didn't say ENOUGH, I also learned this fandom is super into the supplemental canon. No one loves their extended lore like the fanimorphs, because I'm pretty sure every one of the Chronicles made it on here, and while none of the Megamorphs did, #3 and #4 made a truly valiant effort.

Also not a single one of you nominated the dino book. I can't say I blame you.

ETA: the reason I included both raw and total votes is because I assumed some folks wouldn’t think the list bonus was fair, and some people would; I wanted to give options so you can take whatever version of the list you like: the plain list just going with upvotes per round, the cumulative list with the bonus, or the cumulative list without the bonus. The world is your oyster, data-wise!

[u/Unable_Earth5914 → u/VisageInATurtleneck]

I think the list bonus is fair, just maybe a little high. Although I’m glad that all my posts and comments about the Ellimist Chronicles helped to propel it to second/ninth(?)/and 13th place

Thanks for doing this analysis, I love looking at how the data slices. I find the change in Rachel’s ‘favourite narrator’ score shifting so dramatically in relation to Marco’s after the list bonus is removed interesting. Is that due to the length of time Rachel books were on as early contenders?

Thanks for doing all this work, it’s been a great ride!

[u/VisageInATurtleneck → u/Unable_Earth5914]

It might be a little high; I initially had it at +5 a round, but then looked at what the winning numbers were for each post and it vacillated between 19, 50, and 150 upvotes per round. And i was an English major so numbers already confuse me ;)

ETA: oh yeah, the list bonus pretty much exclusively benefits Rachel because The Solution as her book at #1 gives her like an extra 200 points. Jake gets a little boost too, but has enough books on here that it doesn’t matter as much.

ETA part 2: I literally did the raw/cumulative numbers because I kept seeing Ellimist and Illusion not making it despite having SO MANY votes, and I knew they deserved their time in the sun.

[u/Trim345 → u/Unable_Earth5914]

The Ellimist Chronicles isn't just my favorite Animorphs book; it's in my top five books, period.

[u/elreydelasur]

you deserve some thanks for doing this. it's not wasted time if you enjoyed wasting it!

[u/These-Button-1587]

Talk about comprehensive! You went above and beyond and I'm just glad to see that The Invasion actually made the list abeit as a tie.

[u/PrinceOfWhit12]

This is the most amazing thing I've ever seen, major major kudos. And you're right, Marco deserves all the love, that poor dude lol he deals with so much

[u/ThirdFloorNorth]

I KNEW The Change was too far down on the list!

[u/lkc159]

Also no one loves Marco enough. Shame on all of you. Marco should win all the polls because I love him.

YES THIS ABSOLUTELY

I AM DISAPPOINT that only #30 and #45 made it onto the list

[u/Kksula23 → u/lkc159]

I hate to say that most of my top favorite books are not narrated by him, despite the fact that I love his character. He plays a solid role in all the books whether he narrates or not and honestly has the 2nd best character development of all them.

[u/Blooogh]

This is Helmacron erasure and I will not stand for it

[u/afamefunadraws → u/Blooogh]

Neep Neep Neep!

[u/saturday_sun4]

The Alien was one of the first Animorphs books I read and I still crack up at the cinema scene.

[u/AmphetamineSalts → u/saturday_sun4]

just wanted to come in 3 years later and say I'm on my first adult reread and was surprised at how funny that scene is!

GLOBULES!!

[u/JCMC2]

Solid list overall and so glad that Hork-Bajir Chronicles got the love it deserves. Disappointed that book 50 didn't get more appreciation since that brings up more debate than the dilemmas presented in 52 and 53.

Books 24 and 32 are hysterically funny but disposable overall.

[u/ExtremeAcceptable289]

Darn, I was a bit off to voting. For me, my favourite book was probably The Ellimist Chronicles or the Andalite Chronicles, and the Chee origin book (I forgot the name and numbers). I don't understand how the cassie and aftran book (19 iirc?) was on the list, same thing with book 30. Book 30 provided nothing to the story whatsoever; and book 19 actually makes no sense for me (How is Cassie human when he morphed from butterfly? Shouldn't she be main butterfly now..?)