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Jake morphing Orca.jpg|Jake morphing into an [[Whale|orca]] (Swoosh) |
Jake morphing Orca.jpg|Jake morphing into an [[Whale|orca]] (Swoosh) |
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Jake & Older Jake (41).jpg|Jake morphing into his older self |
Jake & Older Jake (41).jpg|Jake morphing into his older self |
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| + | Jake (Beaver Morph).jpg|Jake morphing a [[beaver]] |
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| + | Jake morphing anaconda.jpg|Jake morphing an [[Snake|anaconda]] |
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Animorphs beginning book 54 cover image david mattingly.jpg|Jake on the cover of ''[[The Beginning]]'' |
Animorphs beginning book 54 cover image david mattingly.jpg|Jake on the cover of ''[[The Beginning]]'' |
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Jake book 36 cover morph.png|Jake from the cover of [[The Mutation]] |
Jake book 36 cover morph.png|Jake from the cover of [[The Mutation]] |
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Revision as of 10:08, 18 April 2018
Template:Infobox Animorph
- "He was a good guy, my dad. Not just because he was my dad. Because he was a good person. Because he did his work as well as he knew how and wasn’t a jerk to the people around him. That doesn’t make you a saint or anything, but I guess when I think about it, that’s what I hope I’ll do when I’m older: treat my family right, do my job well, not be a jerk to the people I meet. Maybe that’s not a huge, ambitious goal, but it would be enough for me. I’ve done the hero thing. You can have the hero thing. Me, I wanted a day when all I’d have to do was be a decent human being."
- ―Jake
Jake Berenson is the leader of the Animorphs.
Biography
History
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This section requires expansion |
To be added
Personality
- "I'm the unofficial leader of the Animorphs. I send us into battle. When things go wrong, when we get hurt or have to run for our lives, that's on me, too. I'm not complaining. Has to be done. You know? Someone has to make the calls. A good leader has to make tough, informed decisions. Recognize his soldiers' special strengths and use them accordingly. Fight to win with the knowledge that he may die trying. But most important, a leader won't ask anyone to do anything he wouldn't do himself."
- ―Jake
At the beginning of the Animorphs series, Tobias announces to the team that he thinks that Jake should be their leader. The other Animorphs quickly agree, and Jake reluctantly accepts the position. Few would disagree that he is naturally fit for the job, as he is brave, responsible, cool under pressure, and able to take charge during a crisis. He is described by his cousin Rachel as a person who can give orders without sounding overly bossy. At first, Jake doesn't view himself as a leader, and thus isn't willing to accept the role, but when he learns that his older brother Tom is a Controller, his desire to save his brother serves as the fuel to his unyielding determination in his fight against the Yeerks.
In the first book, Jake is the only character with pre-existing ties to each of the other Animorphs; Rachel is his cousin; there was a mutual attraction between him and Cassie; Marco is his best friend; Tobias was rescued by him from bullies sometime before the series began and had a mild case of hero-worship towards Jake. While Ax didn't appear until the fourth volume, The Message, Ax quickly accepts Jake as his "Prince" ("Prince" being a rank in the Andalite military hierarchy) and is deeply loyal to him. Jake's status as Ax's Prince led to a recurring joke between them:
One of Jake's more harrowing experiences occurs when he is infested by a Yeerk, Temrash 114. Fortunately Ax realizes something was wrong (because Jake's face momentarily twists into an expression of disgust when he sees Ax), and the Animorphs tie Jake up for three days until Temrash dies of Kandrona starvation. Jake gets his first glimpse of Crayak when Temrash died. He is also left with partial memory imprints of Temrash and his former hosts: a Gedd, a Hork-Bajir, and his brother Tom (who is now host to another Yeerk).
As the leader of the small band of guerrilla warriors, his leadership, his choices and mistakes, and the responsibility he assumes are recurring themes in the Animorphs series. Despite his best efforts, Jake never attains his main goal for joining the fight: saving his brother from Yeerk infestation. After he fails to save Tom from the Yeerks, he is left emotionally damaged and unable to lead. Before the final battle, Cassie manages to lift him out of it, but her success is short-lived.
After more than six months captaining the Rachel, a state-of-the-art Yeerk ship named by Tobias, Jake encounters a Blade ship—one containing the last fugitives from the Yeerk empire. Ax's captor, a monstrous being of unknown origin known only as "The One", makes its unsettling appearance through a communication channel between the Blade ship and the Rachel. Undaunted, Jake gives his final order, instructing the pilot to power up their engines and ram the larger ship. The command is an ironic one; decades ago, a young Elfangor had given the same order. It was this decision which rocketed him to prince status, and a place in Andalite legend.
Relations to the other Animorphs
Marco
- "Marco's strength is the ability to see the way to the goal, even when it means disregarding consequences and feelings and basic right and wrong."
- ―Jake
Jake and Marco had been best friends for years before the war, and generally maintained a close relationship throughout the series, despite several tests of their friendship. Towards the end of the war, Jake and Marco's friendship suffers. In the post-war period, Marco is concerned for his friend and makes a plan with Cassie to try to get through to him.
Cassie
Jake and Cassie were attracted to each other ever since the start of the series, and their relationship kept growing as the series progressed. They end up kissing in The Attack, and admit the depth of their feelings for each other. After they kiss, Rachel remarks, "It's about time.". However, they grow apart towards the end of the series due to Jake's depression and his distrust of Cassie after she allows Tom to escape with the Escafil device. They make up before the very end of the series, and Jake even asks Cassie to marry him in The Answer, but she declines, saying she wpuld marry him "a year after this is all over." At the time, Cassie correctly suspected that Jake had been changed by the war, and after it's over, he becomes too entrenched in depression and guilt to be able to pursue a romantic relationship.
Rachel
- "I worry about you, Rachel. More than any of the others except Tobias. I feel like this war is to you like booze is to an alcoholic. Like I don't know what will happen to you if it all ends someday."
- ―Jake to Rachel
Despite being cousins, Jake and Rachel weren't particularly close until they became Animorphs, with both of them eventually loving the other. As the series progressed, Jake became worried about Rachel's violent nature, and Rachel occasionally found herself wishing to challenge Jake's leadership, despite respecting him as her leader. Overall though, the two got along very well and were mostly on the same side of arguments.
Tobias
Before Jake became an Animorph, he helped Tobias escape from bullies, and because of this, Tobias looks up to Jake and has a deep respect for him, almost never questioning his decisions. But after the end of the series, Tobias is unable to forgive Jake for his part in Rachel's death.
Ax
Ax deeply respects Jake, and calls him his "Prince". This is a running joke between the two, as Jake is biologically younger than Ax, and holds no real rank. However, Ax does respect Jake's position as leader, and at times, Jake uses his "rank" to overrule Ax's objections. While Jake keeps a certain distance from Ax, as he is Ax's commander, there is a strong bond between the two. Jake is protective of Ax, believing him to be a soldier under his command, and therefore Jake's responsibility (when Ax is kidnapped in the final book, Jake describes him as "one of mine").
Morphs
Book Morphs
Television Show Morphs
| Morph | Episode Acquired |
|---|---|
| Golden Retriever (Homer) | My Name is Jake, Part 1 |
| Skink | The Underground |
| White Tiger | |
| Iguana | On the Run |
| Butterfly | The Message |
| Cockroach | The Escape |
| Ferret | |
| Horse (off-screen) | The Leader, Part 1 |
| Dog | The Release |
| Human (Tom) | Face Off, Part 2 |
| Mouse | My Name is Erek |
| White-headed Capuchin | Changes, Part 1 |
| Gecko | Changes, Part 2 |
| Hawk (off-screen) | The Front |
| Bat |
Jake has a total of 15 morphs in the TV show.
Books narrated by Jake
- #1 The Invasion
- #6 The Capture
- Megamorphs #1 The Andalite's Gift
- #11 The Forgotten
- Alternamorphs #1 The First Journey
- #16 The Warning
- Megamorphs #2 In the Time of Dinosaurs
- #19 The Departure
- #21 The Threat
- #26 The Attack
- Megamorphs #3 Elfangor's Secret
- #31 The Conspiracy
- #36 The Mutation
- Megamorphs #4 Back to Before
- #41 The Familiar
- #47 The Resistance
- #53 The Answer
- #54 The Beginning
Trivia
- Jake's real WAA username is close to being Bball24. It is a reference to his best basketball game, where he scored 24 points.
- In the Animorphs television series Jake's Siberian tiger battle morph was replaced with a White Bengal tiger.
- While inside Jake's mind, (in The Capture) Temrash taunts Jake about his lack of knowledge of the Andalites' arrogant history towards other species, which later books expand upon. We begin to see some development towards this in #8: The Alien when Ax finally explains the Law of Seerow's Kindness to the Animorphs. This revelation and others are explored further in other books such as #18: The Decision, #34: The Prophecy, #38: The Arrival, The Andalite Chronicles, and especially in the The Hork-Bajir Chronicles.
- In The Answer, Jake finally breaks the "I can't tell you my last name or where I live" tradition, and reveals that his last name is Berenson and that the Animorphs have been fighting the Yeerks in California for a total of 3 years. Marco reveals that Jake is 16, meaning that the Animorphs began the war at the age of 13.
- In the original idea for the series, Jake's name was going to be Matt and he was going to have a little brother named Joseph.
- Jake narrates a small portion of Cassie's book (The Departure) because Cassie was stuck in a chrysalis in butterfly morph.
- Jake has the most books in the series. He gets a part in narrating 17 books in total.
- Jake's first morph is his pet golden retriever Homer. Homer later appears as Jake's cover morph in The Threat.
- A running gag between him and Ax involves Ax calling him "Prince," and him objecting to the title. Amusingly inverted in the beginning in Megamorphs #3, where he objects to Ax calling him "Prince" to instead demand he be called "Supreme Leader."
- In the Anibase, K.A. Applegate had this to say about a very memorable scene in The Attack :
- "The Jake and Cassie kiss was not only something Ani-Fans had wanted for a long time, it was our small homage to the first interracial kiss on TV, the famous Captain Kirk, Lieutenant Uhura moment. That long-ago kiss ignited a storm of angry response. For us, we always got lots of fan mail, and not a single letter that we ever saw complained about the kiss between a black character and a white character. Mostly what readers said was, 'It's about time!'"
Gallery
Book Gallery
.jpg "Jake & Older Jake (41).jpg (96 KB)")
.jpg "Jake (Beaver Morph).jpg (103 KB)")
TV Gallery
Toy and Game Gallery
References
| Animorphs | ||
|---|---|---|
| Animorphs | Jake | Rachel | Tobias | Cassie | Marco | Ax | David | |
| Auxiliary Animorphs | James | Collette | Timmy | Kelly | Craig | Erica | Julio | Liam | Tricia | Jessie | Judy | Ray | |