It was the final days of The Summer of '93. Whitney Houston was topping the charts and the world was absolutely enamored with early-gen CG dinosaurs. Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers suddenly exploded onto our TVs and changed the lives of kids and amateur martial arts enthusiasts everywhere.

Fast forward 25 years. Four ordinary thirty-somethings do the unthinkable and conscript their favorite Mega Man bosses to fight off the impending kaiju menace. Yet another summer has passed since that day, and so it's time to conscript a whole new team of heroes to save us. A team of teenagers. A team of teenagers with ATTITUDE. A team of teenagers with attitude who also drive ten-story mechs shaped after our favorite cartoon tropes.

For more of SMJ's work, check out Did You Find This Helpful?, a podcast highlighting the darkest corners of the Amazon marketplace! You can also find them on Instagram at @smjwrites.

Debate This! is a dumb show where grown men yell at each other over video games and comics. Check out more of our incessant arguments at debatethiscast.com and keep the conversation going by following us on social media @debatethiscast.

It's 1996. You wake up, rip off your Space Jam bed sheets and get ready for school while Power Rangers plays in the background. Normally, this is a drag but today is special. Today is Scholastic Book Fair Day. You walk into your classroom with a ripe $5 bill that your mom handed you like it's a Get Out Of Jail Free card. You walk into the gymnasium to find a Moroccan street market of books and other brightly colored school supplies. One jewel in particular has caught your eye this month. You see a cover sporting some choice computer-illustrated animation (like in Beast Wars but even cooler) but of a boy your age transforming into a lizard!

Welcome to Animorphs, the mid-90s YA novel series about identity disorder, loss, clinical depression, and PTSD...all centered on a group of shape-shifting teens fighting a secret proxy war against invading alien parasites.

Link to images discussed in today's ep

Episode 61: Pirate Ships Don’t Have Feet (ft. SMJ)

FLAVOR TEXT: Animorphs