Arcee....
The only female Transformer in Transformers: Prime
She's lost 2 of her partners/best friends in the Great War, first Tailgate and now Ciffjumper. Is her temper and overly-determined attitude (that sparked when she lost TG and CJ) a good character feature or annoying in a sense?

 

I feel like this topic was done before back when the show was airing/just concluded.

 

Idk, I've never seen this topic before so I decided to do it cause I thought Arcee's nature in Prime is interesting.

 

There is a search bar for this exact reason.

 

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Lol, I'm new to this site so I might not be familiar with all the features. Anyways, I searched it up and I didn't see any similar topics

 

Actually, no. There was Airachnid also. But regardless, I absolutely loved Prime's version of Arcee. I loved the voice, design, and personality.

 

Considering what happened to Tailgate and Cliffjumper it seems like Arcee has a form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Turns out in real life not only do people have it but animals can too.

 

Yep. The way she handled demons from her past was interesting to say that least. Sometimes it gets annoying to me when her anger drives her to do impulsive things.

 

Yeah, but anger can override reasoning and self control typically a person doesn't realize it until after the fact.

 

I thought she was a fantastic character. She was the most headstrong and action-oriented member of Team Prime, but she also suffered from grief and desire for revenge over her deceased partners. I'd say she's probably my favorite female Transformers character of all time.

 

I made a thread on this when the show was airing, but yeah. People hate Miko, but Arcee is way worse. She never listens to orders and does whatever the fk she wants to anyway. She's like constantly wanting revenge except for that one scene with Starscream. She's legit annoying as all hell, with an awful attitude. She tries to make everyone else feel bad and blames her own teammates for things they have done, when she does the same things over and over.


Prime: "Arcee stand down" Usual Arcee answer: 1."No, I've got this" 2."I'm so close" 3. "But, we need this energon" 4. "I'm not lettting (insert name) get away after what they did!"

Prime: "Arcee enough, [insert name:Bulkhead, Smokescreen, Ratchet, Bumblebee] understand they made a mistake, drop it" Usual Arcee answer: "No" 1. "It's there fault we're in this mess..." 2. "if they just listened..." 3. "they try to do things on their own..."

 

She would've been far more tolerable if her angst wasn't split between two indentical backstory subplots.

See, the problem with Arcee, is that we were supposed to care about her grief over the lose of her partners, and her hatred towards their murderers. But the problem was the partner we saw die first, and the grief and anger we saw first hand was over Cliffjumper. But the character she had the greater rivalry and trauma from was Airachnid, who killed the nobody tailgate that we never even knew a thing about. So we can't reconcile her grief between her hatred because they're over two different people. Likewise, her hatred towards Starscream feels secondary, almost tacked on, compared to her disdain for Airachnid who, in addition to killing her partner, traumatized her as well. Except again, Cliffjumper is the one who's bought up most, and was the one we saw die first.

This really ruins the character when her backstory is so redundant and needlessly overdone when a single dead partner would've been enough. It also meant her grief over Cliffjumper's death/hatred of Starscream was virtually unresolved, because obviously Starscream couldn't be killed or captured forever. As such, it meant she could never really grow or evolve as a character because she had to stay stuck in this angsty state as long as he was around. Which she didn't. They wanted to have their cake and eat it, and it's probably the best example of Prime just trying too hard. Grief over one dead friend wasn't enough, they had to pile it on, add another dead friend, physical trauma, and an aggressor, when all it did was trip over itself and made the character seem inconsistent. Like it seemed even Arcee couldn't keep straight who she hated and for what sometimes.

Plus, she was pretty damn hypocritical on more than one occassion, which the show never called her out for, and indeed made it seem as though we were supposed to side with her on both sides of the issue she played. Weirdly only she was ever quite like this, though Optimus had some backwards morals as well.

 

That always annoyed me about Arcee. When Prime orders her to stand her ass down, she never does and continues which almost ALWAYS gets her into some trouble that her team has to get her out off.

 

I agree. Arcee is a complicated bunch, but I would've like to see her in the process of getting over Cliffjumper and Tailgate's death but she never got over it and stay in a state of anger.

 

So Arachnid doesn't exist? =p

 

Arcee is awesome. Best female character in all transformers. Well she had allot of story line.

 

Yeah, i forgot to add her lol

 

To me Arcee is like Sabine in Star Wars Rebels: they have the potential to be an interesting character but the writers and show-runners are/were never quite sure what to do with them. We know that Arcee is headstrong and rushes into things and has lost two partners. Episodes like Partners demonstrate that she could be interesting if the writers knew where they were going to take her character in the long run.

 

Agreed

 

I think it was frustrating to see her subordinate behavior, yet without it she wouldn't have had as strong of a will. It humanized her character. I wish the team who made TFP did a Transformers/GIJoe crossover next