Daltanius

Future Robo Daltanius (未来ロボ ダルタニアス) was an anime series that aired from 1979 to 1980. There were 47 episodes. Alternate spellings include "Daltanious" (which was commonly used on the packaging boxes of toys), "Dartanius", "D'Artagnas", "Daltanias" and "Dartanias".

Story
It is the year 1995. Earth has been conquered by an alien army from the star cluster known as the Akron. The cities of Earth have been destroyed, and the remaining survivors live in harsh shanty towns and villages. Kento, a war orphan, hides within a cave along with his companions in order to escape some bandits.

In the cave, they find the secret base of Doctor Earl, who was an inhabitant of the planet Helios, a planet conquered by the Akron. Doctor Earl then fled to Earth, bringing with him the greatest achievement in Helian technology: the super robot Daltanius, whose power is increased when combined with the intelligent lion robot, Beralios. Doctor Earl entrusts the fight for Earth to Kento, who happens to be a descendant from the long disappeared Helian royal line.

Voice Actors

 * Kento Tate - Toshio Furukawa
 * Sanae Shiratori - Keiko Han
 * Tanosuke Hata - Tomomichi Nishimura
 * Danji Hiiragi - Yoshito Yasuhara
 * Manabu - You Inoue
 * Ochame - Yuko Mita

Staff

 * Additional Director - Norio Kabeshima, Akira Suzuki
 * Art Director - Tadao Nagahama
 * Character Design - Saburo Yatsude
 * Screenwriter - Fuyunori Gobu, Masaki Tsuji
 * Design - Yuki Hijiri, Ahehiro Kaneyama
 * Animation - Kojo Akino
 * Music - Hiroshi Tsutsui
 * Original Work - Saburo Hatte

Concept
Tadao Nagahama had a heavy influence in the artistic style and direction of the show. The style resembles that of Voltes V and Combattler V.

The main attraction super robot, Daltanius, was formed with 3 components: Atlaus (the main robot), Gunper (the space ship), and Beralios, the mechanical lion which was recovered after the first battle with Akron. The robot is named after the main hero of the Three Musketeers, D'Artagnan. Daltanius is 56 meters tall and weighs 678 tons. Daltanius was the first combining super robot to have an animal component, as well as the first to have a lion's head on its chest; the lion's head would be incorporated into several Brave Series robots, most notably GaoGaiGar.

Daltanius and Voltron
The Japanese Mirai Robo Daltanius series was originally planned to be adapted by World Events Productions as one act of the Voltron: Defender of the Universe series in the United States and abroad. Unlike the ill-fated Light Speed Electroid Albegas conversion (which never even materialized, due to the lower ratings of the Dairugger XV Voltron run), the pilot episode of Daltanius was actually translated and dubbed into English, and adapted to fit the Voltron mythos. This pilot episode was test-marketed by World Events in locals such as Hawaii (and, reportedly, San Francisco), but was never again re-broadcast after these airings.

One factor which led to the scrapping of these plans was the intention to have the 3-act Voltron trilogy (similar to Robotech's three-act adapted structure) consist of Daltanius (whose robot featured a lion-component on its chest), Dairugger XV (the "Vehicle Voltron"), and Albegas ("Gladiator Voltron"). When requesting master tapes from Toei Animation for translation purposes, the World Events producers mentioned that they should be sending "[The] ones with the lion." Mistakenly, Toei then proceeded to ship World Events copies of Beast King GoLion &mdash; another "combining-robot" anime featuring lion-shaped fighters. However in this case, the World Events producers greatly preferred the GoLion series over to Daltanius, and the GoLion episodes went on to become the most popular portion of the original Voltron run.

Video games
The series was introduced into Banpresto's Super Robot Wars series as part of Super Robot Wars Destiny's line-up in 2003. It was also featured in Super Robot Wars GC in 2004 and Super Robot Wars XO in 2006.