Elita One (G1)

The name or term "Elita One" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Elita One (disambiguation).

Elita One is an Autobot from the Generation 1 continuity family. She was once known as Ariel.

Elita YUM.

Elita One is the female counterpart to Optimus Prime; a powerful warrior, fearless in the face of her enemies, but compassionate to those who cannot defend themselves. She commands a squad of Female Autobots, and has their undying trust and support.

While a skilled martial artist and armed with a pistol capable of taking down the toughest of opponents, her greatest power is her ability to briefly stop time through the creation of a field with a fifty foot radius around her. Sadly, this ability drains all of her life force and is thus almost assuredly fatal, leaving her to only use it in the most dire of situations.

Fiction

Generation 1 Cartoon

Voice actress: Marlene Aragon (English), Samantha Newark (Ariel, English); Kazue Komiya (Japanese), Eiko Yamada (Ariel, Japanese)

Robots with plunging necklines and ponytails... somehow.

Nine million years ago, during the Golden Age of Cybertron, there lived a robot named Ariel, a dockworker. She had heard stories that the new "flying robots" that Orion Pax, her boyfriend, and Dion, their friend, admired had put together an army and attacked one of Cybertron's outer cities. Dion laughingly dismissed her as gullible, while Orion remarked that they had Guardian robots to protect them, so that it wasn't of their concern.

One of those "flying robots", Megatron, raided the energy storage facility Ariel worked at with his transport drones. While Megatron was in the midst of an assault on Orion, Ariel ignored Dion's plea to not intefere and tried to stop him, only to be gunned down herself by the Decepticon.

File:Elita one.jpg

Optimus Prime's sister from the same transistor.

Fortunately for her, the time-lost Aerialbots brought the deactivated Orion to Alpha Trion for repairs, who recreated the young robot as the first of Cybertron's new defenders — Optimus Prime. Optimus and the Aerialbots then asked Alpha Trion to try reconstructing Ariel too. After agreeing to send some droids for her, Alpha Trion mused to himself that "Elita One" would be a good name for a female warrior. War Dawn

Five million years later, Elita One, wanting to go with Optimus, tried to board the Autobot starship as it took off on its mission to search for energy, but she was seemingly destroyed while the ship was attacked during takeoff. The Search for Alpha Trion

In the original pilot, the Ark did not appear to be under attack as it launched. The Ark being attacked and Elita One's presence as it took off constitutes a retcon.

Waw chikka bow bow, chikka chikka...

But Elita One did not perish. About four million years later, she was in command of a team of six Autobots, who had been raiding Shockwave's energon supplies in secret for an unknown length of time. Their existence was revealed thanks to Moonracer's carelessness, which subsequently led to Elita One's capture by Starscream and the destruction of their secret base by Rumble.

Elita was then used as bait to lure Optimus Prime into a trap, where he too was captured and was soon on the block for execution in a vat of acid. Desperate to save her beloved, Elita triggered her time-stopping power, which allowed her to save Prime... but expended nearly all her life-force doing so.

After getting them both out of Decepticon Headquarters, Optimus was able to track Alpha Trion to his secret base. The ancient Autobot repaired Elita to the best of his ability, but revealed to Optimus Prime that only he could save Elita by interfacing to her with his power filter. An astonished Optimus Prime stated that only his CREATOR could know that!

Yeah, this is all you see.

Optimus Prime had apparently forgotten that Alpha Trion is his creator. He did seem to know that Alpha Trion created Elita One, making a subtle comment when Elita said that Alpha Trion was like a father to her, though it's unclear whether he had always known or only realized after his visit to Alpha Trion. Which is really kind of creepy when you think about it.

After Elita One was re-energized, she and Optimus Prime arrived in time to save both a group of Earth-stationed Autobots who had followed Optimus to Cybertron, plus Elita's own troops from certain death at the hands of the Decepticons. Notably, Elita shot Shockwave out of the air with a single blast from her pistol.

With their original secret base in ruins, Alpha Trion quickly set Elita's team up with a new one, full of advanced equipment.

Though regretful that they'd be apart again so soon, Elita One elected to stay behind on Cybertron and continue the fight at home while Optimus and the other Autobots returned to the war on Earth. Of course, this didn't prevent her from telling him not to stay away TOO long... The Search for Alpha Trion

MC Axis Kit mini-comic

Elita One and her team toppled a colossal Decepticon warrior. Though her team was jubilant at their victory, Elita knew that this one victory was far from enough to win the war, and longed for Prime to return so they could re-take their homeworld. MC Axis pack-in comic

Dreamwave comics continuity

Elita One and the other female Autobots were an elite squad of warriors under the command of the Quintessons, waiting for intel from their Autobot sleeper agent, Arcee.

Dreamwave filed for bankruptcy and stopped producing Transformers books right as the female Autobots arc was beginning.

Marvel Comics continuity

Classics

Elita WHAT?

Elita-1's existence was a surprise to everyone but Grimlock, who quietly added the female Autobot to the crew aboard the Graviton. Everyone has an idea about where she came from, but Grimlock keeps her origin a secret. Since the others know so little about her, Elita feels she has to work harder to gain their respect, and so she takes unnecessary risks. In battle, she carries a hyper-concussive missile launcher that converts into an EMP scrambler. She can blend into her surroundings due to her camouflaging skin made of mimetic alloy armor, which can also refract laser fire into blinding bursts of light.

After following Bug Bite's crew of Decepticons to Earth, she fought her way into the Decepticon base herself with radical martial arts. She was so totally awesome, what anyone else does wasn't really that important, apparently. Also, she could disassemble Alloygators with ease, supposedly. Games of Deception

IDW comics continuity

Aw, where's the ponytail?

Elita appeared with her boyfriend, their father, and a close friend/white clone of her boyfriend at Bumper and Fastback's funeral. Megatron Origin issue 3

Toys

BotCon 2009

Barbie dream boat!

• Elita-1 [sic] (BotCon attendee figure, 2009)
  • Accessories: Missile launcher, 2 missiles , Earth Cyber Planet Key

A redeco of Cybertron Thunderblast, Elita-1 transforms into a speedboat of undetermined model via shellforming. She has a small, rotating (non-firing) machine gun and a large missile rack on a rotating and elevating base in this mode. Inserting a Cyber Planet Key into the back of the missile rack opens it up to reveal a spring-loaded missile launcher, which uses the torpedoes mounted under her hydrofoils as ammunition. The rack becomes a hand-held weapon for her robot mode. She comes with a pink-bordered Cybertron-style key. Limited to 2000 sets, Elita-1 came bagged with Razorclaw. In contrast to the previous few years' worth of attendee sets, Elita and Razorclaw did not sell out at BotCon, and were available on the Official Transformers Collectors' Club online store for several months after the convention.

This mold was also used to make Chromia Minerva-Type.

• More information on Elita-1 at TFU.info
• custom essay

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Merchandise

MC Axis Kit

So that's how it's spelled!

• Elita One (1996)

This Japanese "garage kit", an unpainted resin model, was made by MC Axis, and was also the first official product made of Elita One. The packaging gave her Tech Spec numbers as well as an official spelling of her name. (The spelling/pronunciation was a point of contention in the early online fandom. See Trivia below.) It also included among the paperwork a single-page comic strip starring Elita One and the rest of her squad. It is not known for its exceptional quality control - numerous unsightly air bubbles in the plastic are not an uncommon thing to encounter.

• Fan review of the Hot Rod and Elita One model kits

Diamond Select Transformers

• Elita-One [sic] (2009)

And Optimus thought Elita One would be scared by his lack of feet.

Released by Diamond Select Toys in 2009, Elita-One was sculpted by Mark Wong of Art Asylum and limited to 600 pieces. It was exclusive to Big Bad Toystore.com. The sculpt is based upon her cartoon appearance, though some creative liberties have been taken, such as the fact she carries a large rifle that is similar in design to Optimus Prime's instead of the small pistol she was most commonly seen with. A schematic of her alt-mode can (FINALLY!) be seen on the back of the base of the bust. Elita-One is also given a tech spec for the second time, with numbers that drastically differ from the first set of numbers. Her attributes are as follows: Strength 8.5 Intelligence 9.0 Speed 8.0 Endurance 7.0 Rank 9.5 Courage 8.0 Firepower 9.0 Skill 9.0

Trivia

All hell breaks loose!

• Since her debut in 1985, the actual spelling of Elita One's name was the subject of much fandom debate for years to follow. With the release of the MC Axis kit, finally her name was given an official spelling, one later backed up by the episode scripts and the production bible. However, later canon apparently didn't get the memo, as Elita's name continues to appear in different forms, such as "Elita-One" and "Elita-1".
  • Elita One's intended name mirrors her male counterpart's, both in spelling and root meaning as "Best First". Furthermore, "Elita" is presumably derived from "elite", which comes from the Latin electa, meaning "chosen". So her name translates as Chosen One, which makes sense as she was the one Alpha Trion chose to gift the special power.
• A Cybertronian battle scene in TV Magazine (reprinted in Transformers Generations) depicts Elita One fighting the Decepticons alongside other pre-Earth Autobots.
• According to writer David Wise, he did not intend for Ariel to be rebuilt as Elita One when writing "War Dawn". In fact, he did not even know who Elita One was at that time! Ariel was originally supposed to die as a way of adding weight to the episode, her eventual survival being the result of other writers noticing the similarity between her and Elita One.
• Elita One's alternate mode was never depicted in its entirety during the original cartoon. As shown above, only the very front end was seen, as the rest was hidden by Optimus Prime's truck mode. It looked a little like a mish-mash of the alt-modes of Wheelie and Arcee. Her bust by Diamond Select Toys gave us our first glimpse of the entire vehicle.
• In "Five Faces of Darkness, Part 4", the dancers shown in the post-Quintesson peace era share Elita's model.

• In the The War Within graphic novel, Elita One's silhouette is depicted on Optimus's mudflap in vehicle mode, similar to the "naked lady" silhouette decal seen on modern vehicles. Additionally, he has a bobble-head of her inside his cab.
• If we think about it, since Optimus and Elita One have the same creator, they are, in some way, brother and sister, which just makes their relationship look plain weird. (Well, maybe not in Japan.) The events of "War Dawn" show that Orion Pax and Ariel existed as non-siblings before they were remade into Optimus Prime and Elita One, though Transformers has demonstrated somewhat puzzling definitions of siblings.