Tigerhawk


 * Tigerhawk is a Maximal and emissary of the Vok from the Beast Wars era of the Generation 1 continuity family.



In the fires of an unknown place between time and space, the Vok aliens de-Sparked and fused the bodies of Tigatron and Airazor together to form Tigerhawk, a Vok-controlled super warrior intended to bring justice to the time-disrupting Transformers on prehistoric Earth. But when the two extracted Sparks unite and re-enter Tigerhawk's body, a different purpose and personality seems to emerge.

Tigerhawk is by far the most powerful Transformers in the Beast Wars. In robot mode, Tigerhawk can fly, has missile launchers under each arm, his wings double as shields, and he has wrist-mounted electricity cannons. His beast mode contains razor sharp claws and teeth, as well as a pair of chainguns on his forearms. However, these outstanding powers are nothing compared to his uncanny shamanic abilities to control the weather and terrain of Earth almost at whim.


 * Japanese name: Tigerfalcon

Beast Wars

 * Voice actor: Blu Mankuma (English), Kōichi Tōchika (Japanese)



Concerned with Megatron's constant futzing with the timestream, the Vok extracted the Sparks of the inert, captive Maximals Tigatron and Airazor. Their bodies were merged together to form the staggeringly powerful Tigerhawk. Inhabited by two members of the Vok species, Tigerhawk travelled to Earth as a blindingly powerful energy comet.

Tigerhawk's energy-ball plunged to Earth, impacting and utterly destroying the Darksyde. Declaring himself the emissary of the Vok, he charged Megatron with "the willful disruption of time and space", and demanded Megatron's immediate surrender. Megatron was not so keen on this idea, and ordered a Predacon attack instead. Tigerhawk engaged and effortlessly defeated the entire Predacon force, then shot down Megatron. Optimus Primal arrived at that point, concerned that if Megatron was killed, the Spark of the original Megatron would also be destroyed, thus worsening the damage to the time stream. Tigerhawk dismissed Primal's concerns as intolerable interference, and buried him in the ground with a wave of his hand. Tigerhawk was seconds away from executing the unconscious Predacon leader when Tarantulas disabled him with specialized versions of his arachnoid helper-drones.



Tigerhawk awoke to find himself a captive in Tarantulas' lair. The spider attempted to destroy Tigerhawk's mind by forcefully removing the Vok presence inhabiting it. Due to a fluke coincidence, Tarantulas only succeeded in destroying himself, alongside the Vok who had controlled Tigerhawk. The Sparks of Airazor and Tigatron, which followed Tigerhawk to Earth, merged to become one and entered Tigerhawk's body.

Tigerhawk's memories appeared vagueat first he seemed not to remember being Tigatron or Airazor, yet after a moment he recognized Earth as "home". He remembered enough specifics of the Beast Wars to find surprising the appearance of Cheetor as a Transmetal 2 and Optimus Primal in his "Optimal" form.



Megatron, not long afterwards, discovered the Decepticon warship Nemesis, and attempted to use it to destroy the Ark itself. Tigerhawk attempted to single-handedly stop the Nemesis, and despite holding his own for quite some time against the legendary warship as well as simultaneously draining the ship of it's power just by holding it off, he was killed by the ship's main cannon.

Beast Wars Metals manga


At one point, Transmetal Airazor's spark became separated from her body, and her body was then possessed by a malevolent force. Airazor's body did battle with Tigatron, though Tigatron could not bring himself to hurt Airazor due to his affection for her. Desiring death over harming her, Tigatron gave her one of his katana and knelt down.

As evil Airazor struck his neck with the blade, the real Airazor's spark traveled through the katana and into Tigatron's body. Inside cyberspace, the two reunited Maximals embraced, vowing never to be apart again. As their sparks joined, Tigatron and Airazor were reborn as the powerful Tigerhawk! (How romantic!)

3H comics
Razorclaw was an alternate version of Tigerhawk. Unfortunately, one of the differences was his being evil and in league with Unicron.

Beast Wars

 * Tigerhawk (Transmetal 2 Ultra, 1999)
 * Japanese ID number: C-50




 * Tigerhawk transforms into half-robotic, half-technorganic, flying robot tiger-thing. Yes. In beast mode, he is armed with "feather" missiles very similar to the Fuzor Silverbolt's, with spring-loaded switches to flip the wings forward, and flip-out missile launchers which activate when a lever on Tigerhawk's back is pulled (which also moves the wings). Under his beast head is a small cockpit with a pilot's chair (see Trivia below).


 * Like Transmetal 2 Megatron, Tigerhawk features a somewhat aborted "third mode", which is just a minor rearrangement of his beast mode parts with his vacuum-metalized helmet covering his beast tiger head.


 * In robot mode, Tigerhawk has a decent level of articulation, though his elbow joints are designed in such a way as to be not particularly useful. Due to his heels being vacuum-metalized, they are especially susceptible to scratching, as owners are likely to reposition them frequently to cope better with the heavy wings and gimmicks on his back.


 * This mold was later used to make Universe Razorclaw.

Trivia



 * The extremely short duration of Tigerhawk's appearance on the show was the result of a strange confluence of factors. At the time, it was not at all certain that the Beast Wars franchise would be ending. However, at one point, after Tigerhawk had already been written into the show at Hasbro's explicit request, the company considered not releasing his toy at all. Thus he was ordered killed off immediately, and was. Hasbro eventually decided to release the toy regardless. Tigerhawk's toy did not appear on shelves until well after his death on the show.


 * In the Beast Wars Metals manga, Tigatron was interpreted as a samurai; the katana being their weapon of choice. Hence the whole samurai motif for Tigerhawk.


 * Originally, Tigerhawk, along with Optimal Optimus and Transmetal 2 Megatron were to have small driver-like figures sitting on control chairs located in cockpits on their bodies. These drivers were meant to represent their sparks. But Hasbro then later realized that kids might confuse these spark representations as drivers controlling the robots, so they were abandoned, but the cockpits remain. The spark pilot was eventually used in the Japanese release of Cryotek.


 * Even before they were combined into Tigerhawk, Airazor and Tigatron had a gender-ambiguous history. Tigatron was a male robot with a beast mode that seemed to be scanned from a female tiger, while Airazor was a female character in the English version of the show and male in the Japanese version.


 * Although often thought of as a Fuzor because of his two-combined-animals beast mode, Tigerhawk was never officially designated as such.


 * Tigerhawk's toy features a bird like helmet, which when placed over his tiger head, resembles Battle Cat.