Elita One


 * Elita One is an Autobot from the Generation 1 continuity family. She was once known as Ariel.



Elita One is the female counterpart to Optimus Prime; a powerful warrior, fearless in the face of her enemies, but compassionate to those who cannot defend themselves. She commands a squad of Female Autobots, and has their undying trust and support.

While her pistol is powerful enough to blast Shockwave out of the air in one shot, her greatest power is her ability to briefly stop time. Sadly, this ability drains all of her life force, and is almost assuredly fatal, and thus she only uses it in the direst of situations.

When the situation calls for it, she consults the wise Alpha Trion via a holographic message machine. Alpha Trion is her creator, though this fact is unknown to her.

Generation 1 Cartoon

 * Voice actress: Marlene Aragon (English), Samantha Newark (Ariel, English); Kazue Komiya (Japanese), Eiko Yamada (Ariel, Japanese)



Nine million years ago, during the Golden Age of Cybertron, there lived a robot named Ariel, a dockworker with a boyfriend called Orion Pax. She had heard stories that the new "flying robots" that Orion and their friend Dion admired had put together an army and attacked one of Cybertron's outer cities, but Dion laughingly dismissed her as gullible while Orion remarked that they had Guardian robots to protect them, so that it wasn't of their concern.

One of those "flying robots", Megatron, raided the energy storage facility Ariel worked at with his transport drones. While Megatron was in the midst of an assault on Orion, Ariel tried to stop him, ignoring Dion's plea not to, only to be gunned down herself by Megatron.



Fortunately for her, the time-lost Aerialbots brought the deactivated Orion to Alpha Trion for repairs, who recreated the young robot as the first of Cybertron's new defenders — Optimus Prime. Optimus and the Aerialbots then asked Alpha Trion to try reconstructing Ariel too. After agreeing to send some droids for her, Alpha Trion mused to himself that "Elita One" would be a good name for a female warrior.

Five million years later, Elita One, wanting to go with Optimus, tried to board the Autobot starship as it took off on its mission to search for energy, but she was seemingly destroyed while the ship was attacked during takeoff.



But Elita One did not perish. About four million years later, she was in command of a team of six Autobots, who had been raiding Shockwave's energon supplies in secret for an unknown length of time. Their existence was revealed thanks to Moonracer's carelessness, which subsequently led to Elita One's capture by Starscream and the destruction of their secret base by Rumble.

Elita was then used as bait to lure Optimus Prime into a trap, where he too was captured and was soon on the block for execution in a vat of acid. Desperate to save her beloved, Elita triggered her time-stopping power, which allowed her to save Prime... but expended nearly all her life-force doing so.

After getting them both out of Decepticon Headquarters, Optimus was able to track Alpha Trion to his secret base. The ancient Autobot repaired Elita to the best of his ability, but revealed to Optimus Prime that only he could save Elita by interfacing to her with his power filter. An astonished Optimus Prime stated that only his CREATOR could know that!

After Elita One was re-energized, she and Optimus Prime arrived in time to save both a group of Earth-stationed Autobots, who had followed Optimus to Cybertron, and Elita's own troops from certain death at the hands of the Decepticons. Notably, Elita shot Shockwave out of the air with a single blast from her pistol.

With their original secret base in ruins, Alpha Trion quickly set Elita's team up with a new one, full of advanced equipment.

Though regretful that they'd be apart again so soon, Elita One elected to stay behind on Cybertron and continue the fight at home while Optimus and the other Autobots returned to the war on Earth. Of course, this didn't prevent her from telling him not to stay away TOO long... Soon, she was captured by Starscream and was beheaded.

MC Axis Kit mini-comic
Elita One and her team toppled a colossal Decepticon warrior. Though her team was jubilant at their victory, Elita knew that this one victory was far from enough to win the war, and longed for Prime to return so they could re-take their homeworld.

Dreamwave comics continuity
Elita One and the other female Autobots were an elite squad of warriors under the command of the Quintessons, waiting for intel from their Autobot sleeper agent, Arcee.

Classics


Elita One is part of Grimlock's crew on the Graviton. After following Bug Bite's crew of Decepticons to Earth, she fights her way into the Decepticon base herself with radical martial arts. She is so totally awesome, what anyone else does isn't really that important, apparently.

IDW comics continuity
Elita appears with her boyfriend, their father, and a close friend/white clone of her boyfriend at Bumper and Fastback's funeral.

Timelines

 * Elita One (Botcon Exclusive, 2009)


 * Elita One is a redeco of the Cybertron Thunderblast toy.

Merchandise

 * Elita One (1996)


 * This Japanese "garage kit", an unpainted resin model, was made by MC Axis, and was also the first official product made of Elita One. It also included among the paperwork a comic strip starring Elita One and the rest of her squad.

Diamond Select Transformers

 * Elita One (2008)




 * Exclusive to Big Bad Toystore.com, this bust of Elita One is limited to 600 pieces worldwide. The sculpt is based upon her cartoon appearance, though some creative liberties have been taken, such as the fact she carries a large rifle that is similar in design to Optimus Prime's instead of the small pistol in her fictional appearances.

Trivia



 * Elita One's name shares the same root meaning as Optimus Prime's: "Best First". For many years, the actual spelling of her name was the subject of much fandom debate. The MC Axis kit finally gave her name the current spelling, and was later backed up by episode scripts. Elita is presumably derived from "elite", which comes from the Latin electa, meaning "chosen". So her name translates as Chosen One, which makes sense as she was the one Alpha Trion chose to gift the special power.


 * A Cybertronian battle scene in Comic Bom Bom (reprinted in Transformers Generations) depicts Elita One fighting the Decepticons alongside other pre-Earth Autobots.


 * According to writer David Wise, he did not intend for Ariel to be rebuilt as Elita One when writing "War Dawn". Whether Ariel was originally supposed to die or if she was supposed to be rebuilt into someone else is unknown.


 * Elita One's alt-mode has never been depicted in its entirety. As shown above, only the very front end is seen, as the rest is hidden by Optimus Prime's truck mode. It looks a little like a mish-mash of the alt modes of Wheelie and Arcee. Her alt-mode as Ariel is not depicted at all.


 * In the War Within graphic novel, Elita One's silhouette is depicted on Optimus's mudflap in vehicle mode, similar to the "naked lady" silhouette decal seen on modern vehicles.


 * If we think about it, since Optimus and Elita One have the same creator, they are, in some way, brother and sister, which just makes their relationship look plain weird. (Well, maybe not in Japan.) The events of "War Dawn" show that Orion Pax and Ariel existed as non-siblings before they were remade into Optimus Prime and Elita One, though Transformers has demonstrated somewhat puzzling definitions of siblings.


 * Her appearance in the Classics continuity is apparently designed with a redeco/retool of Thunderblast in mind.


 * Ariel's ponytailed appearance influenced the visual design of Elita-1 from Transformers Animated.


 * Elita One never appeared in Transformers: The Movie. Where was she when Optimus died?