There’s a lot of collector discourse around Arcee these days, as a series of Generations, Masterpiece, and Third Party figures have tried some combination of a) replicating her G1 Cartoon design’s impossible transformation, to limited success (I’m on record as liking Earthrise Arcee, though), and/or b) deciding she needs to get a fanservice-focused design shift, for some reason (Thrilling 30, the official Masterpiece, some Third Parties that will not be named, etc.). Well, here’s one solution: An Arcee figure based on media that gave her a familiar, but much better redesign. One that’s, in my opinion, one of the best designs she’s ever had. And whod’ve thunk that this design would be one that was kitbashed together in a hurry for a quick cameo during movie reshoots?
Time for her closeup!
Yes, it’s Bumblebee Movie Arcee, who had one line (which, amusingly, the box paraphrases), fired a couple laser blasts, stood in the background, and quietly looked really cool.
Haha, she did say that.
And, because a lot of fans loved that prologue sequence (it’s me, I’m a lot of fans, I contain multitudes), she’s getting a Studio Series figure of the design, a part of what’s probably the last burst of Bumblebee movie figures before Rise of the Beasts becomes the new thing, unless they feel like throwing a few more Seekers at us. Somewhere along the way, I became an Arcee Variant Crank, so I’m eager to dig into this version on her own merits, not just to fill out my Bee Movie Shelf (though that’s happening, too).
Robot Mode
Absurdly cool.
Let me talk about why I like this design. On the surface, it’s doing what the rest of the Bee Movie Prologue People did: Homaging their G1 animation design, and filtering it through a Bayverse lens of greebling. And sure enough, that’s all present here. She’s got a lot of animation-model details, like the “pods” on her backpack, the specific shapes on her torso and knees, and it’s all been made curvier (not like *that*, I mean the respectable way) and more detailed.
She’s very Shaped.
And something about the way it synthesized on this figure does something else to the look, and makes it feel vaguely….Cyberpunk anime/manga of the vintage variety? Like, it makes me think of a mech you’d see in Ghost in the Shell, or Battle Angel Alita, or something like that.
“What if IDW1 Arcee had been written in the 90’s” is the vibe.
Either way, it’s an unusually cool look, and it’s been replicated here in immaculate screen-accuracy, save for a little bit more on her backpack (but, refreshingly, it’s a much smaller backpack than most other modern Arcees, save for maybe the Earthrise one after you pop the car parts off.) Even posed neutrally, she just looks like something you’d see on the cover of a vintage sci-fi manga, or DVD.
This is on the cover of a Manga Entertainment DVD with a blurb proclaiming this ain’t no Loony Tunes.
Her headsculpt’s got the same thing going on, taking her G1 helmeted head, and giving it a face made up of segmented panels that creeped some people out, but to me, just completes the look (along with the little antenna on her left side). Funny enough, her sculpt is so accurate that it pulls the same trick as Studio Series Brawn and Wheeljack, where, despite having her own unique tooling, you can see that her CGI model was modified from Shatter, because down below, she’s got Shatter’s feet.
They may be enemies, but they shop at the same shoe store.
Oh, and adding to the vintage 90’s sci-fi anime of it all, she’s got a big, circular wheel behind each foot, like a Motorball player from Alita. Speaking of those feet, she’s a little bit mistransformed in the package, you’re meant to detach the backs of her shins and flare them out. Doing so makes her more stable, and makes her silhouette even more interesting.
I didn’t just want to take a picture of her feet, so have this crossover.
For colors, they didn’t reinvent the wheel nearly as much, not that they needed to. She’s her standard white (Well, kinda off-white this time around) and pink, with tasteful black accents (that make me recall the Thrilling 30 version), and a little bit of silver and gray. Again, it’s all specifically laid out in a way that recalls the cartoon design. Funny enough, there’s a bit of deco missing underneath her arms, only obvious due to her one clear shot in the movie showing them off.
Cliffjumper: “Boy, this isn’t going well. At least we still have contact with the Capital, right, Arcee?”
I wouldn’t have noticed if I wasn’t checking screenshots, though and she’s otherwise both hyper-accurate, and good-looking. I’m particularly impressed that they found the budget for so many little pops of color on and around her head.
Those spinning wheel feet probably hurt.
Despite the backpack, Arcee’s nice and stable due to those back wheels, but there’s some other, minor build quality issues on her, at least on my copy. Her feet are meant to slide in and out of specific slots on her ankles, but don’t feel as secure as they should be, leading them to sometimes come out of place as I pose them (though there’s another easily-missed transformation step when putting them back in this mode, more on that later). Uptop, her torso similarly doesn’t like to stay pegged together, and sometimes gruesomely splits along the armpit axis as I pose her. Finally, her double-elbows have odd tolerances that make the “upper” joint move easier than the more correct-looking “lower” joint. Still, none of these are really figure-killers, and they’re all milder than they seem when recounted like this.
“Primus help me, it’s time to go back to the old me.”
On the flip side, she’s extremely poseable. Those undoable feet are only noticeable because she’s got impressive ankle tilts, and, odd tolerances or not, she’s got double elbows. I do wish she had double knees to go with them, but that’s only because her design makes me want to put her in crouching poses (which I can still do, they’re just hard to stabilize). Outside of that, she’s got all the expected joints, including a waist, dipping wrists, a balljointed head, and most interestingly, the “pods”on her back are balljointed, giving you options for how you display them, which is good, since they remind me of thrusters.
Threat Display.
Her accessories are great.
Like so.
What’s better than one gun? Two pistols, which further fits her “late 90’s/turn of the Millenium mecha” aesthetic, especially since she only used one in the film.
*Matrix whooshing noises*
Between her looks, her extremely poseable arms, it’s just really easy and fun to pose her in the middle of dramatic gunfights, or just being extra-broody with her two pistols. There’s a whole personality conveyed by how all three of these elements (sculpt, articulation, accessories) interact, and I’m here for it.
Angel of Death.
Oh, and there’s weapon storage, too! It’s a little hard to get them secured, but there’s tabs on her backpack-pods that can plug into the sides of her guns, letting her stash them in a ready-to-draw pose.
Transformation
This is one where the instructions were often no help, in the “I can’t understand what I’m looking at, let alone what they’re trying to tell me to do” sense, but I was able to figure it out by the non-scientific method of “ignoring the steps I don’t understand, doing the ones I can follow, and working the missing bits out as I go.”
I understand the main step, but that insert’s basically white noise.
Lucky for me, it’s a fairly intuitive transformation thanks to that lovely trick of pegs and holes existing to reassure you things are going into the right place.
How things look from below.
Speaking of that, when returning her to Robot mode, check the wheels on her feet carefully. The spinning sections of them contain grooves cut in them, and you need to rotate them into place to attach to pegs on her ankle, otherwise her feet won’t slide into place properly.
See those dents in the wheel just above the white bit? Those need to be spun into position to attach to the white bit.
As a final step, the instructions tell you to place her pistols in her folded-up robot-mode hands, but an alternate transformation is available, where you can peg them onto her robot-mode storage bits.
The instructions way.
The alternate way. I do a bit of both in the following photos.
On one hand, the recommended configuration sort of hides her hands better, but on the other hand, it’s less stable, and I think the alternate layout generally looks better.
Vehicle Mode
She travels exclusively by Akira Slide.
Like almost all of the Bee Prologuers, Arcee has a vehicle mode that was made up by the HasTak designers, due to her not having one in the film, and this is tied with Brawn for the most clever choice, turning her into a motorcycle, like her Energon, Bayverse, and Aligned interpretations.
Earth Bike to Cybertron Bike evolution timeline.
But in this Arcee’s case, the Vintage Cyberpunk Manga riff continues, because it’s a thick, two-wheeled motorcycle, like the Unrustables ones, or the Akira bike.
Different vehicle, but similar vibes.
It might not even actually be a motorcycle, come to think of it, since it’s got a double-wheel up front, and two small wheels in the back. So it’s a Cyberpunk Tricycle, or something. Either way, it looks really cool, is extremely characterful in the same way that the robot mode is, and there’s just enough vehicle-specific details (like a translucent blue windscreen uptop) to distract from the robot parts (like the legs beneath) and make it look like a proper vehicle. Well, unless you’re looking at it from the back, in which case her robot-mode torso and arms are kind of just out there, with the visibility of her hands depending on where you decided to mount the guns.
That’s why they’re in the back, to shoot people who notice her torso.
Still, it all works, and it all gels nicely.
Well, not for the Decepticons.
The one issue I actually have with this mode is that those two front tires don’t like to stay clipped together, and start to split pretty easily, though it varies from transformation to transformation, and is a little dependent on how I line up everything else.
It wasn’t too bad this time, but you can see the split starting to happen.
What’s impressive, though, is the way the spinning axis of the wheels isn’t tied to these clips in any way, so even when they’re slightly out of whack, the wheels still roll well. In fact, I’d say it’s a small miracle that the whole vehicle rolls really well, and actually has ground clearance, designs like this usually don’t fare that well.
“You’re such a good partner, Cliffjumper. I sure hope nothing happens to you in this continuity where I’m a motorcycle, too.”
Oh, and unlike the Legacy Arcee tooling, this bike’s wholly unsuited to accept any kind of rider.
His bike was in the shop.
But then again, Cybertronian vehicles aren’t generally known for that.
Daniel had better luck, though.
Overall
She seems the type to hold a grudge against this 90’s version of Jhiaxus.
If it isn’t obvious, I really, really like this take on Arcee on basically every level. It probably wasn’t intended, but the vibes of the thrown-together movie design already slap in a really specific way, and it’s faithfully replicated on this figure, with additions (two guns! That altmode!) that further add to an aesthetic that just rules.
When she’s not a 90’s Manga Mech, she moonlights as a Dark Horse Comics OC.
And it’s poseable and cleverly-engineered enough that I find myself messing with her just to stick her in cool poses, or change her into her rad bike mode.
Like so.
There’s definitely some flaws here, namely some tolerances in both modes, and the ropey back-end of the bike, but they’re all fairly minor. On a sheer quality level, Studio Series Brawn’s probably the better Bee Prologuer figure in terms of execution, but the sheer strength of the look and feel of this take on Arcee edge her past him, in my books. Everyone should pick this version of her up, especially if you’re not enamored with any of her G1 takes.
*Chef’s kiss*
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