Arcee (Animated)

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This article is about . For other uses of "Arcee", see Arcee (disambiguation)|The name or term "Arcee" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Arcee (disambiguation).}}
Arcee is an Autobot from the Transformers Animated continuity family.
In Japan, I'm a go-fer!

Before the Great War, Teaching Unit RC-687-040—Arcee for short—was a teacher, giving young Autobots the knowledge to make their own decisions and spurring them to think for themselves. Once the conflict erupted, she became an intelligence officer for the Autobot war effort, serving under Highbrow in such risky endeavors as Project Omega.

Fiction

Animated cartoon

Voice actor: Susan Blu (English), Ayahi Takagaki (Japanese), Silvia Mißbach (German), Jessica Toledo (Latin American Spanish), Cecília Lemes (Portuguese)
"Hi, good-looking, get sick here often?"

Arcee was a teacher on Cybertron and an Autobot intelligence officer during the War. Originally intended to be the commander of Omega Supreme, she carried crucial access codes for his activation. TransWarped

At one point, Arcee was damaged in the line of duty. Ratchet repaired her and tried to take her to safety, but the two were attacked by Lockdown, who had been hired by the Decepticons to bring her in.

Held prisoner within Lockdown's ship, Arcee insisted that Ratchet use his electromagnetic pulse tool to wipe the codes from her head. Lockdown overheard this and tried to stop the pair, but in the struggle the device overloaded and sent out a powerful burst. In the confusion, Ratchet and Arcee were somehow able to escape... but Arcee no longer knew who or where she was. The EMP blast had wiped her memory clean. The Thrill of the Hunt

Well, this looks familiar.

Arcee was later taken to Cybertron, where Ultra Magnus made Ratchet perform open-processor surgery on her vivisected head in an attempt to obtain the access codes for Omega Supreme's activation. This triggered a failsafe which copied the codes to Ratchet's memory. TransWarped

Dames—always waking up at the worst possible moment!

Arcee never awoke from the open-processor surgery, and was stored for the subsequent four-million-plus years in the Cybertron Central Infirmary in a comatose state. When the Decepticons needed to acquire the command codes to "restart" Omega Supreme into a dreadnought loyal to them, both Shockwave and Ratchet reasoned that their best chance for this would be from Arcee herself. The two of them battled over Arcee and, thanks to the blundering interference of Sentinel Prime, Shockwave won—abducting Arcee and escaping with her onto Omega Supreme, which Megatron then commanded to transwarp back to Earth's solar system. Perceptor was certain that the damage to Arcee's circuitry was totally irreversible, and there was thus no way for the Decepticons to get the codes from her... but apparently he forgot to tell Arcee herself, who soon woke up on the Decepticon-controlled Omega Supreme, calling for Ratchet. This Is Why I Hate Machines

On Earth's Moon, Shockwave proceeded to rifle through Arcee's memories, initially putting her into a fugue state where she relived her days as "Teaching Unit R-C-687-040" with little awareness of what was going on around her. When Bumblebee transwarped onto the moon, he found her like this and—fearful of what would happen if he disconnected her from the cables plugged into her segmented head—merely opened her comm link before returning to Earth.

But is it art?

Eventually, Shockwave managed to access the data tracks from her time as an intel bot, making her aware and—transforming into Longarm Prime mode—asked her to confirm she had the activation codes from Project Omega. When she did so, he unplugged her from the cables, knocking her into stasis mode. Outside, with three purple Omega Supreme clones standing by, as well as the original, he took her fully online again, and ordered her to give them the codes. Given that Megatron himself was standing right in front of her, she refused, and instead Shockwave "had to extract it manually". The code transferred to Lugnut was "missing a security upgrade patch", however, meaning Lugnut had to be wired directly into Omega Supreme to get them online; while Shockwave worked further on Arcee to try and get the patch. Endgame, Part I

She's rather personable when she's not a prop.

As Shockwave rooted through her processor, most of the restoration work he had previously undertaken was undone, which left her once again as a fugue-state Teaching Unit, even as Shockwave still failed to get the codes. Instead, he used her as bait when Ratchet—accompanied by Bumblebee, Bulkhead and Sari Sumdac—transwarped to the Moon with the aim of retrieving her and Omega Supreme. While Bumblebee and Bulkhead fought off Shockwave, Ratchet and Sari took Arcee and fled to a lab inside Omega Supreme. There, as Ratchet bemoaned the damage the "Deceptiscum" had done to her, Sari was able to use her nascent technopathy to instruct Ratchet in how to restore Arcee, using the very EMP generator which had caused the original damage to her so long before. She came back online, recognizing Ratchet but remembering nothing since their capture by Lockdown. Ratchet promised to fill her in on the stellar cycles she'd missed, but said that first they would need to regain control of Omega Supreme.

Ratchet and Arcee traveled to Omega's head, and the field-tech lowered her using his magnetics to allow her to reactivate Omega Supreme. With this done, Omega ejected Lugnut, and Arcee joined the Earth residents in flying to Detroit aboard the shipbot so that Omega could confront his Decepticon clones. Soon afterward, with Megatron's crew all captured or dead, she presumably flew back to Cybertron with them aboard Omega, although she wasn't seen to join them in their triumphant disembarking. Endgame, Part II

Toys

Animated

Hey, remember the spider? Remember when you were content with that?
  • Arcee (Deluxe, 2010)
    • Japanese ID number: TA-12
    • Accessories: 2 swords
Arcee transforms from a magenta and white robot to a Cybertronic "rocket car," notable to fans as the first toy of Arcee that transforms from an approximation of the original Arcee's character model into a car. She comes with two wings, which can be attached at the rear of her vehicle mode (or her robot mode back), and two swords, which can be held in her hands or stored securely in shafts in the rear of her vehicle mode (or atop her shoulder kibble). Some have reported the swords fit loosely, though they are designed to click into place—albeit with a certain amount of fiddling in some cases.
There is a manufacturing error with many if not all figures. The more Arcee's swords are inserted into the hands, the more the thumbs weaken and will eventually snap off. This can be remedied by shaving down the two tabs on either side of the sword. Most Arcees have stress marks straight out of the package due to the way her thumbs peg onto her back fenders in vehicle mode. Additionally, the unfortunate placement of a tab on the back of her right knee (used to lock the front of her car mode together) prevents her lower leg from straightening out fully.
Originally intended to be part of a mass retail wave, Arcee and Cybertron Mode Ratchet were eventually released as Toys"R"Us exclusives. Arcee has been notably difficult to find for many fans, leading to accusations of mass toy scalping. Additionally, Arcee was subject to a running change. Original shipments had Arcee in a glossy deep magenta color plastic, whereas later shipments switched her plastic to a matte medium dark pink. The softer matte plastic means that one can now force her lower right leg into position over the tab. At least some later shipped figures had a remolded tab that further corrected the design flaw.
This mold was used as the model for the Japanese-card-reader-game-only Chromia, and redecoed for the BotCon 2011 exclusives Drag Strip and Minerva.

Notes

Slightly different wing sculpts. Anybody care? We do!
  • According to Derrick Wyatt, Arcee's swords and vehicle mode were designed by Eric Siebenaler rather than the Animated television staff.[1]
  • After Hasbro decided to make her into a toy, Arcee's character model grew some new vehicle kibble to match. Her shoulder kibble sprouted tiny wings and wheels, her shins sprouted wheels, and her vehicle mode's canopy sprouted on her butt.
  • Her stock photography features wings of a similar-but-different sculpt compared to the wings on the production version. They also attached at a point further from the rear of the vehicle.
  • Arcee is given a disproportionately active role in Animated's title sequence in Japan. She leaps into action on Earth with everyone else, fights Blackarachnia underwater, and is briefly seen brandishing her toy's swords.
  • Even though they're about the same age, Arcee appears to have not aged at all (while Ratchet .. well, look at him!), possibly due to her being given round-the-clock medical care while comatose.

Foreign names

  • Japanese: Arcee (アーシー Āshī)
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