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Okay, I've probably gotten too into the series, but whatever. ^_^

Okay, so did anyone tihnk that these books were just so awsomely spectacular, that there's actually some depth and meaning in these books? 0_o?

First of all, this is totally a 90's book. It has so many cultural references that were actually, like, popular?
-Xena
-Friends
-Days of Our Lives
-Arnold Scharrzenegger
-Micheal Jordan & Shack
-low internet compared to now.
and many more. ^_^

Also, I thought it was really, like, cool, how we saw the group mature, and you know, lose their childish innocence?
-Like, they all started as kids into games and mall stuff, but they quickly had to deal with issues.
-to kill?
-to not kill?
-violence

Like, I felt bad for Jake, cause he was handed all this responsibilty, and really, I liked the 4th megamorph book because it shows how tired he is, how lucky they are to survive each day, and that they were meant to be together as a group from the start.
Also, I felt bad for Rachel, because she was the "embodiment of their darkness and sins." She took it upon herself to do what had to be done, to protect some of the other animorph's innocence. in a way, i thinkshe was the purest, cause she looked at herself truly and didn't lie to herself.
and i hate cassie. she's so hypocritical, really. XD i agree with the drode on getting rid of her. sure, she's cool sometimes, but seriously, so hypocritical and pacifist. XD
ax....well...andalites are stupid arrogant wastards. XD
tobias...hmmm...he was too much in agreement with cassie, but he was cool nonetheless. it was sad, cause at the end, he was neither human nore bird...
marco...hmm...i gotta admit he's funny.....but totally suffering from using laughter as a defense mechanism. i didn't like how he looked over rachel's death, but he was very smart and calculating. he was the most..normal out of all of them, i would think. i could sorta feel that he only cared about those he loved, and had blase relationships with other people.

all right, another thing that i thought was raised, was racism, or alienism. like, the andalites were so mean to any other aliens. ugh. XD

-necros-

I loved the books largely because of the depth hidden in them, so going to agree with you that there is a lot of meaning in them. I remember K.A. Applegate writing about how she wanted to show how a mother's love could deter evil in Visser. The way she writes the pain they go through is so well done, too, even if a lot of the books were written by ghostwriters. xD;

I love your interpretation of Rachel. I never thought of that side of her and why she acted that way. It certainly is a kinder view than what we usually see. It's nice reading about how the others view Rachel, and then how she views herself.

For Cassie.. the thing that stood out most about her was a quote Ax had. It wasn't the Rachels of the world that they had to be afraid of; it was the Cassies! Because they were more unpredictable~. I'm actually a fan of Cassie, because I think she was the most human out of the group, and I don't mean humane. Humans are a hypocritical species, so the fact that she struggled so much with difficult matters didn't bother me. She showed more than any other character that it wasn't just black and white, that there were so many more shades. I guess it's also because I identify with her and Tobias the most, too, so I can see where she's coming from. I probably wouldn't be able to make a lot of the same decisions though. xD I'm not as strong as her.

I totally think there is a lot of depth in these books! I can't think of any other children's books that talk about war in such a dark and realistic manner. In the first few books alone you have one of the "good guys" getting eaten alive, a suicide attempt...it's way beyond, say, Harry Potter. (Lol, I saw some thread randomly in GD that said "animorphs>harry potter>twilight" and I thought finally, someone else gets it!) It never felt like the violence was there for shock value either. There was always some meaning behind it.

I like your interpretation of Rachel too. I never thought about her that way. I feel sad for her character because I don't think any of the books after #22 got her right. At the end of that book she realized she didn't get so much of that thrill from violence anymore, like maybe she was doing it for the group and not for herself, like you said. But in her other books after, it's like that issue was never even addressed. :/
It's really too bad about the ghostwriters. I can only imagine how brilliant the series would have been if KA had had the time to write all the books herself...