Animated Blackarachnia!!

QuinJester · 07-01-2008, 10:24 PM

Yes, appropriate to her namesake and to her character art, she has quite a nice hourglass figure. Bonus!

Pravus Prime · 07-13-2008, 12:56 AM

Despite my earlier decision to pass on most of Animated, following being blown away by Leader Megatron, I picked her up today.

It's a bit of a mixed bag. I like her transformation for the most part, the robot mode hands showing doesn't bother me much, but I would've liked had there been a more locking action with her hips and less of a gap between her "cleavage" and her neck. I use her swing articulation on the midcalf to give her a kind of high heel effect but hinging it out slightly, and it allows for great balance.

Overall, she's worth the 10 bucks to me, and I like having a female TF who actually looks like a female TF without being absurd about it. (TMII BA, I'm looking at your boobs!) However, it's a testament to Lugnuts shortness that she's actually taller then he is.

Philister · 08-18-2008, 03:22 PM

My take on Black Arachnia:

Animated Black Arachnia
For more pics, click on the link above

Robot Mode: Female Transformers are few and far between and most of them seem to share two characteristics. They have slim, curved figures and high heels. Animated Black Arachnia leaves out the high heels, but her basic figure design leaves little doubt that she's supposed to be female. And if I may say so, possibly the best-shaped female Transformer I've seen as a toy so far.

Black Arachnia is pretty much spot on in terms of looks, resembling her animated counterpart pretty much perfectly. She's also a very posable robot, able to move both arms and legs freely. The four spider legs peeking out behind her back are also posable, two of them even have a 'knee joint' of sorts. Not quite enough to mimick the stabbing-attack Black Arachnia has used in the cartoon, but pretty nifty regardless. Also, despite her rather small feet, Black Arachnia manages to stand pretty well.

On the weapons front Black Arachnia can use the two spider-legs / stingers on her arms, the four spider legs on her back, and the grappling hook she carries. The wind-up mechanism for the grapple can be put on her back or in her 'spider-butt' (so to speak). She can also fasten it to the inside of her forearm, though it doesn't hold very tightly. She's got no ranged weapons, but I don't think she had any on the show, either.

There are only two very little things I don't like about this robot mode. One, the gold paint on her stingers and helmet isn't the most sturdy ever and has already started to peel in some spots. And second, if you look at her diretly from the front (and don't fasten her grapple on her back) you can look right through her. There is a hole in her chest where the head swings in during transformation. Both aren't big things, though, and don't really take anything away from an otherwise excellent robot mode.

Alternate Mode: Black Arachnia transforms into a mutant alien spider, the creatures we've seen in the Animated episode "Along Came a Spider". She has the symbol of a black widow spider on her back, otherwise I'm not really sure how close the resemblance to an actual spider is. She does look pretty scary in her beast mode, though.

But there are some problems to be found. Spider-Transformers are always left with two choices: Keep the spider legs and the robot limbs seperate, which means you'll have the spider legs hanging off the robot mode somewhere. Option two is to somehow transform the spider legs into the robot limbs and vice versa, with the downside that one or both modes will look somewhat misproportioned. Black Arachnia here goes the middle road. Four spider limbs are made from her robot limbs, the rest are hangers-on in robot mode. All in all it doesn't look too bad, but the four rear legs (the robot limbs) are a good deal bigger than the others. Then again, this is an alien spider. Maybe it's supposed to look like this. The one undeniable downside of this mode, though, is the fact that you can plainly see Black Arachnia's robot hands on one pair of spider legs.

Black Arachnia's grappling hook sits on her butt in this mode and can trail out a (relatively short) line behind her. You can actually fasten the grapple on something in order to let the spider dangle from it, but the line is too short to really do anything with it. Bottom line, though, a pretty good, though not quite perfect beast mode.

Remarks: Black Arachnia was originally a Beast Wars character, starting out as a Predacon, but defecting to the Maximals out of love. So it is interesting to see that the character has been resurrected for Animated with a rather similar, though reverse origin story. Black Arachnia was originally an Autobot called Elita-1 (quite a bit of history behind that name as well). An encounter with mutated spiders led to her being radically changed into a techno-organic creature that most Transformers seem to find repulsive. Furious at being left behind by Optimus and Sentinel Prime, she joined the Decepticons, though since then she's been doing her own thing mostly. Between trying to get rid of her organic half, she's manipulated both Optimus Prime and the Dinobots, though she often winds up needing to be rescued by Optimus as well.

In my mind Black Arachnia, the toy, is the best female Transformer so far. Not only does the robot mode look female, it looks good, too. The beast mode isn't perfect and the peeling golden paint is a bit of a bother, but apart from that I have no complaints here. Black Arachnia is an excellent Animated figure, able to pull off all sorts of interesting poses with her two honeys (Prime and Grimlock) and pulls off the femme fatale look perfectly. A definite recommendation.

Rating: A-

Omega Charge · 08-18-2008, 03:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Philister

all sorts of interesting poses

QFT.

I am very impressed with the figure. One of my favorites.

Dremare · 08-20-2008, 08:05 PM

Here's my review on Blackarachnia.

Quote:

Blackarachnia Review:

Vehicle/Beast/Alt. Mode:

Blackarachnia, as you can see, is a spider. A rather nice-looking spider, better than her old toy. Besides the blatant robot hands, this makes one convincing spider mode if she wasn't a size of a humanoid robot truck.

Now we move to the backside (Ba-dum Ching!). Notice the odd grapnel hook on her butt. Nothing like a grapnel hook on your butt.

If you're looking at Blackarachnia from the side, you can't tell if she's a robot or just a giant spider attraction for a museum.

From the top, Blackarachnia has a small hourglass-shape on a panel, which means the type of spider she is is a black widow. But it's rather small, so you may not notice if you don't pay attention to details like that. Also you can see her Decepticon symbol, which is gold unlike the purple in the show. But who am I to judge?

Robot Mode:

Here she is,in her robot mode. Notice that two of her spider eyes are, um.... Never mind. Her mandibles make up part of her stomach, which is nice, and that the extra spider legs fold up nicely behind her arms, instead of them just hanging there, hindering her shoulder articulation. On her um, pelvis, she has the same black widow markings, and some red vents beside the mark too. Her head also shares the black widow mark, plus four eyes to match her spider mode, and that the back of her head is entirely made of light piping. Her feet are high heeled, and her colors blend well together. But unlike her character depiction, her lips aren't a darker purple. Because of that, it appears that she has no mouth, and instead she has a mouth plate.

Side view. She has a curve to her back, like most of the Animated Transformers (I only have Soundwave besides her, but from all of the review I've seen of the Animated Transformers, they all have a curved stance).

Back view. She has a giant hole in her back, which you can see more from the front because of her double neck.

Now, I have something else to say about Blackarachnia. Her wrists are unable to move like normal hands, so when you bend her elbow, her hands look like this:

But you can't move her wrists anymore than moving a mountain. I wish that Hasbro had made her hands move like normal Transformer hands. But you can make her cross her arms.

"Hmph!"

Now, her arms are her middle spider legs, and to make her arms look like robot arms you swivel the spider leg part around. But you can make her spider leg parts arm blades, like this:

Nifty, isn't it?

Now, the extra spider legs can do this to imitate her power imitation abilities:

Now that's also cool.

Now, if you're wondering what to do to the grapnel hook? Well, you can do this:

Or this:

Now I prefer to not have Blackarachnia use her grapnel hook on her wrist because it's clunky-looking, and I think the grapnel hook on her back like that is silly looking, but it's better than it having it on the wrist. But when I'm not using the grapnel hook I put it on her back like this:

It covers the hole in her back well, and you can't see through her chest now.

My Final Thoughts:

I personally like this toy, but like everything else, I have some pro's and con's.

Pro's:

Great Spider mode
Nice colors
Nice way to place her extra spider legs
Agreeable price range
Better-looking than BW Blackarachnia

Con's:

Hands don't move like normal Transformer hands
Her high hells make it difficult to make her stand
If you don't like Animated
If you're a G1 purist

Overall, I think Blackarachnia is a fine buy for you.

Stars: 9.5 out of 10

You don't chose Blackarachnia, Blackarachnia doesn't chose you.

Ravenxl7 · 11-07-2008, 08:49 PM

Finally got a Blackarachnia today, along with a Ratchet, while at Target. Definitely better than I had thought, though not perfect. Some of her joints are a little tight, but I'd rather them be too tight than too loose. Her pincers are a bit annoying to get into position, but that's just a minor gripe. On a side note, just judging by her toy in alt-mode, I wouldn't be surprised if BA turned out to be lesbian (yeah, my mind wandered a bit when I saw the positioning of her head in spider-mode)...

Shark Jumper · 05-30-2009, 04:50 AM

I got BA for my birthday. I don't like how her fangs and pincers keep falling off... I already coated the ball joints and parts that connect with lots of nail polish.

Omega Charge · 05-30-2009, 08:18 AM

I lost one of the fangs a long time ago, never did find it.