Arcee: Difference between revisions

Arcee is a fictional character in the Transformers universe.

Although a group of Female Autobots had already been featured in one episode of the cartoon series, Arcee quickly became the most famous due to her position as a recurring cast member following her introduction in Transformers: The Movie. In the movie it was implied that Arcee might have had feelings for Hot Rod, but since his transformation to Rodimus Prime she seemed to grow closer to Springer. In the U.S. continuity of the cartoon, she later became a Headmaster by binary-bonding to her friend Daniel Witwicky. Arcee was voiced by Susan Blu, and by Yoko Kawanami in Japan.

Like all the new characters in the movie (with the exception of Ultra Magnus), Arcee was designed for animation first, but while the other new characters inspired toys that saw final release, Arcee's design never passed early prototype stages. When she became a Headmaster, the Japanese dallied with the idea of repainting the Chromedome toy to represent her, but the suggestion was abandoned.

Arcee was absent from the US Marvel Comics (barring the adaptation of the movie), because the comics had established that in their continuity, Transformers did not possess sexes, thus Arcee's presence as a clearly female robot would have defied this. She did, however, feature in the UK Comics stories based in the future era, which made use of the movie's cast, supplemented with the tale of her creation to validate her existence - she was the result of an attempt by the Autobots to better understand the human concept of gender, and to appease human protesters.

In 2001, Arcee finally received a toy in the form of an exclusive for the 2001 Botcon convention. The toy itself was a recolored version of the previous year's TM2 Blackarachnia toy, and the packaging featured a new sound clip recorded by Susan Blu. In 2003, in the original Japanese version of Transformers: Armada, Arcee was the name given to the prominent Mini-Con known in America as Sureshock (leading to some debate on the Mini-con's gender - the Dreamwave Comics would later identify Sureshock as female).

In 2004 Arcee finally had a wide-release original mold made in homage to the original character. In the Energon storyline, the character Arcee was a female Omnicon who transformed into a motorcyle and used an energon crossbow. She was created to be a leader for the Omnicons and, as such, was the only Omnicon to have a unique name and body-type. In Japan the toy and character were named Ariel.