I think the best part of Tobias/Rachel is that the whole is like a billion times shittier than the sum of its parts.
Tobias is the central tragic figure of the animorphs, even if he doesn't get as many books. He's literally so chosen one coded. He's a suicidal trans bird. He's full of hope for humanity. He is deeply alienated from his own humanity. He survived abuse and neglect. His dad's a fucking alien prince. He saved a different alien species from extinction, and became the namesake of their first free leader in like, three generations. God talks to him personally and doesn't do anything that he wants. He's the most character of all time. He's just like me for real. No one is doing it like him.
And Rachel!!!! Girl has the best character arc of the entire book series (outside the Hork Bajir Chronicles but I digress). She's a princess. She's a monster. She's the pretty one. She beat a man to death with her own severed arm. She sacrificed herself for humanity. She self-destructively followed orders to her own demise. She almost gave up her human life and became a cat forever just to comfort a crying friend. She's Satan's most specialist favorite teenager. And she was a Packard Award winning student to boot!
But together, they form the messiest, most dysfunctional situationship that any middle schooler ever read about. They love each other. They flirt with other people (or birds). Rachel cared about Tobias when everyone else thought he was some weirdo who would never amount to anything. She also wants him to stop living as his authentic self because it's inconvenient to her. Tobias thinks that Rachel is the most beautiful creature ever to grace the earth. He also enables her most self-destructive tendencies and romanticizes her for being the monster she doesn't want to become. He knows that she loves him no matter what. He was mortified that she saw him eating roadkill, and fears her judgement like death itself. She celebrates his birthday with him, even though he forgot when his birthday even was. She also, and I cannot stress this enough, thinks that he should leave the fight that gives him his only living purpose and stop living in the body that he's chosen for himself because she doesn't know how to be a bird's girlfriend (and like, fair. Not a normal situation tbh). They are doomed by the narrative. Together ❤️
Literally nobody is doing it like K A Applegate. Look at these two. What a goddamn mess.
