Arcee (Animated)

Arcee is an Autobot from the Animated continuity family.

In Japan, I'm a secretary!

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, seasons 1 and 2), Nancy Cardozo (Latin-American Spanish, season 3), Antía Jiménez Álvarez (Castilian Spanish), Letícia Quinto (Portuguese), Minna Tasanto (Finnish), Anne Plumet (French)

"Hi, good-looking, get sick here often?"

Arcee was a teacher on Cybertron Endgame, Part I and an Autobot intelligence officer during the War. The Thrill of the Hunt She encountered the "Kremzeek" trojan horse virus and energy being at least once during her intel days. The Return of Blurr 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 the 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 commlink 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 they first 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

Following her return to Cybertron, Arcee's memories were fully restored by Sari. She also received a pair of laser swords from Ratchet, who had intended to build her pointers for her re-instated position as a teacher but had gotten carried away. She took a small group consisting of Sari, Hosehead, Nightbeat and Siren on a field-trip to Cybertron's Metroplex. During the trip, she noticed that Sari had gone missing, and thankfully found her down in the facility's recycling center just in time to save her from being crushed by the machinery there. Sari informed her that a Kremzeek had gotten loose, and Arcee was forced to fight against her own students as they became possessed by the creature. The Kremzeek eventually escaped, intent on making its way to Fortress Maximus, where it could do untold damage to Cybertron. Arcee and Sari pursued it, eventually containing it before it could do anyone serious harm. The Return of Blurr Arcee then attended the Stunt Convoy show in Kaon alongside her companions from Earth. The Stunti-Con Job She was later present when Optimus Prime used the AllSpark Matrix to restore Blurr to full working condition. She was pleased that her class had learned a valuable lesson about not judging individuals based on their appearances after their adventure together. The Return of Blurr

Prevenge

Voice actor: Susan Blu (English)

Arcee was about to learn all about Sari Sumdac's mysterious origins when she was abducted via a trans-dimensional portal. She then found herself in a metallic corridor where she met the Mini-Con Sureshock. The pair got off on a rough start at first due to their vastly different visual styles, but they quickly made amends. Next, Sureshock attempted to Powerlinx with Arcee, an act that Arcee found highly inappropriate. Finding a door before them, the pair stepped through and met six other 'bots who had been abducted from their home dimensions: Blades, Sonar, Ravage, Ultra Magnus, Ironhide, and Snarl.

The group's captor then made his presence known, and after rather embarrassingly trying to sic a sick Sharkticon on them, ordered the abductees to fight one another to the death. To force his captives into doing so, he threatened to detonate a Dark Energon bomb should they defy him. Arcee protested, stating that Autobots couldn't fight without first participating in the ancient tradition of a "pre-battle huddle." The group deduced that whoever had abducted them had purposely avoided bringing in a scientist. With this information, they were able to bluff their captor into admitting that there was no bomb. The Skuxxoid revealed himself as the architect behind the whole plot, tired of being continuously dismissed by the Transformers in his home universe. Arcee attempted to show the creature some compassion by asking it its name, but the Skuxxoid had forgotten it, having been referred to as "The Skuxxoid" for so long. Snarl then punted the villain over the horizon, leaving the group to figure out a way to get back home on their own. They eventually settled on all laughing together, as characters from a cheesy cartoon are prone to do when an episode comes to an end. Surprisingly enough, this worked, and everyone was sent back to their home dimensions. Prevenge

Toys

Animated

Hey, remember the spider? Remember when you were content with that?

• Arcee (Deluxe, 2010)

• Takara ID number: TA-12
• Takara release date: April 24, 2010
• Accessories: 2 swords, left & right wings
• Known designers: Alex Kubalsky (TakaraTomy)

Animated Arcee transforms into 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 Arcee 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.

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.

Originally intended to be part of a mass retail wave in the Hasbro line, Arcee and Cybertron Mode Ratchet were eventually released as Toys"R"Us exclusives. Arcee was notably difficult to find for many fans, leading to accusations of mass toy scalping.

Arcee was released at mass retail in Takara's Animated toyline, in its second wave of product. Her deco has been tweaked and expanded to make her more show-like (in theory): the most immediately-noticeable changes are that her midriff and biceps are now dark drown/burgundy, her toes have been painted white and magenta, and -like all the Takara Animated product- her faction symbols are now full-color with white outlines rather than the un-outlined metallics of the Hasbro release. Takara Arcee also sports a much brighter white plastic and lighter-pink face paint. (As to if this version has the later running changes to her legs, we don't know at the moment.)

This mold was used as the model for the Japanese-card-reader-game-only Chromia, was redecoed for the BotCon 2011 exclusives Drag Strip and Minerva, and served as the basis for Nightbeat in the illustrated portion of BotCon 2015's "The Return of Blurr".

Stock photography of the toy 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.

• More information on Arcee at TFU.info

Notes

• 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 grew wheels, and her vehicle mode's canopy popped out of her butt.
• Initial proposals for BotCon 2011 included redecoes of Animated Arcee into Animated versions of Flamewar, Nightracer, and Antagony.^[2]

Foreign names

• Japanese: Arcee (アーシー Āshī)

References