Blackarachnia's beast mode is a technorganic spider. Unlike previous versions of Blackarachnia, despite the insistence that she's "technorganic", there's really nothing on her that doesn't look mechanical. Chalk it up to the "keep it simple" aesthetic of Animated or what have you, but she definitely looks like a robotic spider. In beast mode, Blackarachnia follows the general transformation of her Beast Machines version by having the legs made up of her robot appendages plus a few "beast-only" legs. Even accounting for Animated's exaggerated aesthetic, however, Blackarachnia's spider mode just doesn't fit the bill in terms of proportions. Her rear four legs are far too large, her front four legs too short. Her spider head also looks rather mashed and malformed, she only has four spider eyes when she should have far more, and her robot hands are incredibly obvious on the sides of two of her legs. Her abdomen is also way too small. Compared to the animation model in the show, Blackarachnia has one of the most-- if not THE most-- off-model alternate mode out of any mainline Animated toy. Her front four legs are also made out of the bendy kind of plastic, which makes me worried that they'll start to malform a little after a year or two. On the plus side, however, Blackarachnia's color scheme of black, gold, and purple is very cool-looking, with just the right amounts of each, and there's no particularly large, unbroken area of any kind of color. The red accents also look really good, as well. As far as gimmicks go, a claw is attached to Blackarachnia's abdomen, which you can pull out on a string. (The claw itself can open or close manually-- each of the three prongs is articulated.) Press on a small button at the base of the claw-string mechanism to have the claw quickly retract back into the base-- a pretty cool gimmick, overall. As far as articulation, Blackarachnia can move her fair share in this mode-- each leg can move at two points (the rear four legs have at least one ball joint each, in particular), and each of her four mandibles can move at one point.
    Blackarachnia's robot mode is considerably better than her beast mode-- in fact, it's a pretty solid mode all around, for the most part. Her proportions are near-perfect, fitting with the slightly exaggerated Animated style and having a sleek, slim figure. I like how the beast mode head becomes her chest, the abdomen comes up behind her rear, and the front four spider legs fold behind her upper back. It hearkens a bit back to some of the previous toys of Blackarachnia, but far from just looking like beast mode extras just hanging off of her, they add to and complement the look of this mode. I particularly like how her mandibles fold together to become her waist-- that's just an ingenious move, right there. Blackarachnia's head sculpt is very reminiscent of her original Beast Wars show model, but with four "optics" instead of two. That said, however, it's rather off-putting that only the front half of her head is painted, while the back half abruptly turns to translucent red plastic. It works for light piping, sure, but it makes her helmet look incomplete from any angle except a directly head-on view. Blackarachnia's articulation is fairly good-- she can move at the neck (at two places), shoulders, elbows, hips, knees, and a bit at the ankles and waist. However, she's a little unstable, due to her small feet. You can "spread out" her feet but then it looks like they're actually split in two (which they are), and that looks rather weird. Blackarachnia's grappling hook-weapon from her beast mode can fit into one of her lower arms in this mode, though it's rather off-putting by how large it is compared to her skinny arms. Heck, as a whole, Blackarachnia is VERY small for a deluxe, which of course isn't necessarily a good thing.
    Overall, Animated has a lot better to offer than Blackarachnia, whether you're a beast Transformers fan or not. Her robot mode is pretty good-- if small-- but her beast mode is just completely mis-proportioned in every way, and just looks bad. She's also one of the least show-accurate Animated toys in that mode, which isn't winning her any points, either.

Review by Beastbot

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