Female Transformer

This article is about female Transformers in general. For the Autobot resistance group led by Elita One, see Female Autobots.

“	Well, I remember bringing up that question early on with Hasbro, "are any of these female?" And then I think Hasbro's attitude was, 'this is a boy toy. We don't wanna have, you know, girl robots.' So, I said, "OK, just want to clarify that."	”
—Bob Budiansky, Rusting Carcass interview

File:ArceeManga1.jpg

Arcee, the most famous female Transformer, poses for the boys. Way to set an example there.

Despite being robotic lifeforms with generally non-sexual methods of reproduction, the Transformer species has almost always been shown to include both male and female gender analogues, at least mentally if not physically. Female Transformers are usually portrayed as comparatively rare, but are considered an official part of the Transformers brand in pretty much every continuity.

Click here for a List of female Transformers from all continuities.

Appearance

Our mechanics assure us this is a woman.

The appearance of female Transformers in most continuities would seem to suggest a level of "sexual" dimorphism is present in at least the more humanoid members of the Transformers species (the term sexual is used in a gender-based, rather than physical sense, see the reproduction link above for that whole kettle of robo-fish). In almost all cases female Transformers are portrayed as comparatively more graceful of form, and more rounded and curved in general, than their male counterparts. Often they have a more than passing resemblance to an attractive human female made of metal and wearing armor and kibble.

There are exceptions to this rule, and bulky, less overtly human-female-like characters have become more common, particularly among those who have toys. These are especially common in the Unicron Trilogy series and in latter expansions of the Generation 1 series out of Japan, when the characters are often assigned to pre-existing "masculine" toys. Perhaps the best counter-example of this type is Strika, who is female yet neither looks nor acts stereotypically feminine at all.

Romance

Despite their likely non-sexual means of reproduction, romance between Transformers is a well-established factor in pretty much every continuity. Given that Transformers are a social species, this is perhaps not as odd as might initially seem. Harder to explain (at least, in fiction) is why most of these romantic connections are between males and females, what with the ratio female:male being about 1:10 in its most charitable instances.

Regardless of the whys and wherefores many romantic male-female Transformer pairings have appeared over the years, including:

• Elita One (Ariel) - Optimus Prime (Orion Pax)

• Chromia - Ironhide

• Arcee - Hot Rod

• Arcee - Springer

• Arcee - Chromedome The Headmasters

• Arcee (she gets around) - Bumblebee G.I. Joe vs. the Transformers

• Nancy - Wreck-Gar

• Octane once tried to tune in an image of a disturbingly sexualized unnamed female robot. Make of that what you will. Starscream's Ghost

• Esmeral is the wife of Deszaras

• Clipper - Holi

• Ragé - Stampy

• Airazor - Tigatron

• Blackarachnia - Silverbolt

• Botanica - Rattrap

• Strika - Obsidian

• Downshift has a female "life partner" whose name has yet to be revealed.

• San D-Go once had plans to marry Discharge, apparently directly inspired by that aspect of human culture. Whether there was an actual romantic relationship involved is unknown.

• Crystal Widow had an unnamed lover before becoming stuck in the Axiom Nexus

• Shortround fancies Thunderblast. Naturally, she does not reciprocate.

• Thunderblast - Just about anybody who's big and powerful.

• Sentinel Prime used to date Elita-1 until, well...

• Grimlock, Snarl and Swoop each have a one-sided crush on Blackarachnia

• Strika is the consort of Lugnut

• Ratchet has an unnamed girlfriend from Crystal City.

Fandom and Terminology

Probably because of their rarity in official fiction and toylines, female Transformers are popular plot devices in fan fiction, where the term "femme" is often used to describe them, with "mech" likewise being applied to "male" Transformers. In official fiction, the term "fembot" has been used on at least two occasions and "mech" has been used as a gender-neutral common noun for Transformers in various stories.

Likewise, there is a fan term for romantic relationships between Transformers: "sparkmates". This has surprisingly been used in one official source—the end-of-game bio for Airazor (referring to her and Tigatron) in the Nintendo 64 version of the Beast Wars Transmetals video game.

Fiction

Generation 1 cartoon

A bunch of Female Autobots from the G1 toon and Alpha Trion. His pimp cane was removed in post-production.

Within this continuity, female Transformers are a rarity, but established to have been around from the species' start. A female named Beta existed back in the slave days under Quintesson rule, and thus it seems clear females were produced alongside the males as part of the Quintessons' product lines.

No females were explicitly shown to exist among the Decepticon ranks, although the introduction of Nightbird and implications of an eventual upgrade didn't raise any questions or remarks, suggesting that female Decepticons exist (or that the Decepticons royally don't care about a soldier's gender).

27 episodes after Nightbird's appearance, female Transformers were introduced formally through the Female Autobots. Shockwave at various points expresses surprise they aren't extinct, which would seem to imply females were thought to be no longer part of the Cybertronian race. While at the time a decent (though certainly not perfect) explanation for the scarce appearances of female Transformers, it didn't stop more females from showing up in the movie and season 3. Possibly Shockwave's "statement" could be considered as retconned and overwritten, or one of the following explanations applies:

1. They were all built/"discovered" after the events of "The Search for Alpha Trion".
2. Shockwave constantly calls them Autobots, never Transformers or Cybertronians. It is possible female Neutrals' (and the aforementioned female Decepticons') existence was never thought over... and that none of them changed allegiance any time recently.
3. "Female Autobot" is not used as a description, but as the team's name.
4. This is the Generation 1 cartoon. You're not watching it for the flawless storytelling.

Females can be seen here and there among the Junkion tribe, mostly sharing Arcee's model. Wreck-Gar has a "Junkion lady" companion according to "The Big Broadcast of 2006". Just how relationships function in this isolated, media-based Transformers society is unclear, although it's notable that Wreck-Gar and his lady friend "slept" sitting up next to each other on giant thrones between television broadcast cycles. The lady's character model is actually that of a female Lithone, another mechanical race, but whether this is meaningful in any way or simple model recycling is uncertain.

In the French dub of The Transformers: The Movie (but not in the TV series), both Starscream and Shrapnel were referred to as female, with Megatron calling Starscream "une imbecile" at one point (French articles are gendered), and Shrapnel referred to as "Mademoiselle". The reason for this gender-switch was never fully explained, though it presumably has something to do with both Starscream's and Shrapnel's rather high-pitched voices.

Generation 1 Marvel Comics continuity

And what will happen is like this.

No female Transformers are ever seen or referred to in the US stories, and when Cloudburst is pressured into a relationship with the beautiful First One of Femax, he explains that Transformers, as a species, have no gender. Recipe for Disaster! The UK stories corroborate this, and Arcee is intentionally created by the Autobots to be the sole female Transformer in an attempt to placate human feminists. Prime's Rib! (See her picture above for a hint of how well that went over.)

Despite this, the Marvel continuity was actually the first in introducing a female Cybertronian: Auntie, the onboard computer of the Ark, who was introduced in the very first issue. Theoretically, she is not that different from other Cybertronians and one can only guess how to combine her existence and the "no girls gender"-statements.

The letter pages mentioned another two females: Decepticon Clio and presumed Autobot Karmen. Provided they are real and Blaster didn't just make them up, they might have been built after Arcee's example.

BotCon's Classics fiction, while not including the UK material, introduced Elita One in a similar manner as UK Arcee. Games of Deception

Super-God Masterforce

A female Transformer was created through the introduction of Minerva to the ranks of the Headmaster Juniors. The transtector she was bonded to eventually evolved into a being of her own.

Meanwhile, the Godmaster Overlord existed out of two humans before becoming sapient: husband Giga and wife Mega. Despite the double gender, Overlord is regarded a "he".

Victory

File:Esmeryl-manga.jpg

This is an official Transformers character. No, really.

In the manga, Decepticon females make their first (yet still to this day very rare) appearance in official fiction as Esmeral (Deszaras's wife) and Lyzack (Leozack's sister). Both show up to show the Autobots just what it is Deszaras and his crew have been fighting for all this time: their poor families back home. This spares the Decepticons' lives in the final battle between the two forces. This certainly casts an odd light on the matter of Transformer reproduction (and on the manga author).

Meanwhile, in the animated series, the Micromaster Holi is shown to have a girlfriend on the planet Micro, Clipper.

Operation Combination

Operation Combination introduced a total of 24 Micromasters, none of which got a bio. Ten years later, Micromaster Collection did provide them, and the Micromasters Windy and Discharge were established as females.

Beast Wars

File:TM2 Blackarachnia.jpg

She was extremely popular with fans, I wonder why...

Female Transformers seem to be common here, with no one showing any surprise over their presence. Some of the Transformers also appear to have picked up human-style attitudes of women as a fairer and more vulnerable gender, with Silverbolt refusing to fight a female out of lust chivalry. Most of the other Transformers, however, seem unconcerned about this.

Blackarachnia and Airazor both engage in romances with male Maximals, the former blatantly and the latter far more subtly.

Over the course of the show Rattrap makes numerous innuendos, especially involving Silverbolt and Blackarachnia's relationship, that suggest that, at least by that era, there may have been something sex-like between Transformers. He also makes references to a bar on Cybertron where the wait-staff go "without their torso-plates on"... which frankly sounds like it'd be really messy.

In the spin-off comics, Manta Ray and Sonar were both established as female Transformers.

Beast Wars II

Scylla is the impetus for a big ridiculous love triangle of hilarity and embarrassment in both the animated and manga continuities. She is in love with the squid-bot Scuba, who wants nothing to do with her. Meanwhile, the Maximal Bighorn is in love with Scylla, who wants nothing to do with him.

The non-Transformer female robot Artemis harbors a crush on both Scuba (poor guy) and Starscream.

Beast Machines

Beast Machines' technorganic reformatting raises even further questions about what it means to be a "female transformer". It is possible that the technorganic female Transformers, being merged organic and technological life to a cellular level, might actually be physically female.

Rattrap and Botanica end up in a romantic relationship towards the end of Beast Machines ("So, I'm a tree-hugger!" Rattrap remarks). What this means for his bar-hopping days is never explored.

The Vehicon general Strika is referred to as the "consort" of Obsidian, and has been serving by his side, seemingly as an equal, for centuries. Some have taken this to mean the two have a romantic interest in each other, but the show itself does not offer any hints to this.

Dreamwave comic continuity

According to DK's Transformers: The Ultimate Guide, "Transformers are inherently non-gender specific, and only some quirk of their timelost origins can account for [female Transformers'] difference in appearance and attitude." Dreamwave was in the process of introducing more female Transformers and explicating their links to the Quintessons in this continuity when it went out of business.

Unicron Trilogy

File:Twirl-Baby.jpg

But she's got your altmode!

The existence of female Transformers throughout the Unicron Trilogy is portrayed as slightly uncommon (it is a fiction aimed at young boys, after all), but hardly remarkable. They just exist, as do "males", and no special attention is called to them. Quite a few appear in various places in "civilian" roles, as nurses, and even on colony worlds.

There are examples and hints of romantic interest between males and females in both Armada (Redline and Falcia in the Linkage comics, plus Nightscream's eagerness to appease and defend his bulk partner Airazor), and Cybertron stories (most obviously Thunderblast's intense infatuation with Megatron, Ransack's secret crush on Override, plus Downshift reportedly has an unnamed female "life partner" lost somewhere on Earth). This too is treated as a fairly common event.

There are female Transformers in positions of very high power as well: in the Energon cartoon, Arcee is the leader of the entire Omnicon race, while in Cybertron, Override is the leader of the planet Velocitron. So far, the Unicron Trilogy is the only Transformers continuity to explicitly give female Transformers that level of responsibility.

In the French version of the Energon cartoon, Arcee is dubbed by a man. Why she was is currently unknown.

IDW comic continuity

File:Spotlight Arcee b.jpg

Information: you are ALL going to DIE.

Originally Simon Furman stated that he would not use female Transformers in IDW continuity until he came up with a reason for them to exist that made logical sense to him. He did not rule out doing so, as he said he had found a similar justification for the Pretenders, which led to the Stormbringer miniseries.

Despite this, in Megatron Origin Alex Milne drew what are clearly intended to be female Transformers in a good number of "easter egg" cameo appearances. (Cameos included female Tonka GoBots character Crasher, Elita One, Chromia, and a number of generic background femmes.)

This was finally resolved in "Spotlight: Arcee", where it was revealed that the malevolent Golden Age Cybertronian scientist Jhiaxus introduced gender to the Cybertronian genome just to see what it'd do. Tampering with the CNA of the titular character at her creation to make her Female, he discarded his experiment once he was finished, only to find she had an inherent homing instinct for his creations. Arcee's systems were severely messed up by this experiment, causing her to become tremendously unstable to the point of psychosis and fixated on getting revenge on Jhiaxus.

While the story implies that she is something very rare and unique it does not say that she was the only female Transformer Jhiaxus created, merely the first, leaving it open for the cameos in Megatron Origin to remain in continuity.

Jhiaxus specifically alters Arcee's CNA to make her female and introduce gender to the species. Exactly how deep these alterations went, how closely her form was designed to match the females of organic species on which she was based (particularly in relation to reproduction) is unknown and will likely remain so.

2007 movie

Comic artists cry when they see this model sheet.

Arcee was originally going to be featured as part of the cast of the Transformers film, but was cut early on in the movie's development. The script writers felt they would need to explain the presence of a female in an entirely robotic race, and there was not enough time in the film to do so. Arcee was replaced in the movie by Ironhide. Even so, Arcee was featured in IDW's Movie Prequel comics and remains in the movie toyline as both Deluxe and Scout-class toys.

One other female Autobot is featured in the movie continuity family, another Scout-class toy, Elita-One. Both Elita and Arcee, however, are featured in Titan Magazine's alternate reality stories as regular characters, with Arcee getting more prominence. Both also appear in IDW's Movie Sequel comic series The Reign of Starscream, with Arcee playing quite a prominent leadership role. Surprisingly, Elita-One does not fair as well as her sister-in-arms, dying at the claws of Starscream himself. Although it is unusual for a female Transformer to die in fiction (compared to how often Transformer death happens in general), it has happened before.

As for Decepticons, Fracture, based off of the aforementioned Crasher, was recently added to the end of the movie toyline as a Wal-mart exclusive. She has been featured in Titan Magazine's comics, as of issue 18, and in IDW's Alliance series as of issue 3.

In all the comics where female Transformers do appear in the Movie continuality, their gender is never considered an issue. This raises questions about just how necessary "explaining" them would be in future movies.

Animated

Did you ever feel like the only original designs in a sea full of homages?

Female Transformers were present in Transformers Animated from the very beginning of the cartoon, starting with Blackarachnia. What this meant for the state of females in the continuity at large was not immediately apparent; in "Along Came a Spider", both Bulkhead and Bumblebee expressed confusion as to what Blackarachnia was. Though they could have been referring to her partially organic nature, Sari's comment ("Duh, she's a girl.") seems to imply that the two Autobots were confused about Blackarachnia's gender. The fact that no other characters familiar with Blackarachnia ever reacted to her in an unusual way, however, suggests it was more of a misunderstanding on Sari's part used for comedic effect.

As the series proceeded, multiple lady-bots were progressively introduced, among which were a female clone of Starscream, the obligatory Arcee and many more. Although they remain distinctly outnumbered by the male Transformers, this makes it clear that while female Transformers may be relatively uncommon, they aren't considered very remarkable or noteworthy—unless you're a young, male Autobot who's spent waaaaayy too much time fixing space bridges.

Despite Optimus's confusion over where organic babies come from in "Transform and Roll Out", implying that there is no Cybertronian equivalent to sexual reproduction in Animated, Transformer relationships are implied to be a possibility, as in "Along Came a Spider" and "Black Friday", respectively, Blackarachnia takes advantage of Bulkhead's and the Dinobots' obvious interest in her, especially Grimlock's.

Ratchet's role as the Autobot medical officer was originally supposed to be assigned to a character named Red Alert, who was originally designed as a female, but then turned male. When brought in at the start of Season 3, Red Alert was female once again as an homage to the original design.

Toys

Transmetal Airazor is the first Transformer toy featuring slight female mood, but it still doesn't look very female. The first truly female Transformers toy is Transmetal 2 Blackarachnia. Interestingly, these two monumental items in the history of The Transformers toyline are both from the Beast Wars toyline.