Voltron Middle Universe, Lightspeed Electroid Albegas and Mirai Robo Daltanious (Unmade Adaptation and Rare Anime)

One of the great, or infamous, depending on the fan's standpoint, anime adaptations of the past thirty years has been the enduring re-edit of Beast King Go Lion into the iconic Voltron, Defender Of The Universe, a series far more popular abroad than Go Lion ever was in Japan. Among many other firsts, it virtually created the combining giant mecha plot in America. At times notorious for its censorship (nearly every character who died in Go Lion was 'saved' in Voltron through often awkward bits of dubbed dialogue), the series not only showed all 52 re-edited episodes of Go Lion, but contracted out to Toei for 20 more original animations. When combined with the episodes of Vehicle Voltron (itself a re-dub of another anime, Armored Fleet Dairugger XV, with dubbed-over connections between the series), this led to 125 episodes, followed by an original animation special allowing both Voltrons and their teams to actually meet on-screen.

But Voltron was to have been a trilogy, with the Vehicles being Voltron 1, Defender Of The Near Universe, and the Lions being Voltron 3, Defender Of The Far Universe. A third series, featuring Voltron Of The Middle Universe, was to have been made, but the stellar success of the Lions combined with the middling success of the Vehicles quickly caused a shift in the focus of World Events Productions that scuttled these plans.

What might have been & what might exist
A third Japanese anime series, Lightspeed Electroid Albegas, also from Toei, was optioned to become the basis for this idea. It featured three robots who combined into one gigantic one. It is unknown what connection the heroes or villains of Albegas would have had to the other two teams, presuming the pattern from Lion and Vehicle Voltron was kept to (Both teams answered to Galaxy Garrison on Earth ; Pidge of the Lion Force was the twin brother of Chip from the Vehicle Force ; Zarkon, the villain of Lions, was very technically a vassal of the Drule Empire from Vehicles ). In keeping with a differing warrior theme, if Lion Voltron resembled a Knight, and Vehicle Voltron a Samurai, this third series would have kept with the look of Albegas' mecha as a Gladiator. Before the planned adaptation was cancelled, Matchbox, a holder of the Voltron toy license, produced Voltron 2, called a Gladiator and described as being the Defender Of The Middle Universe. Bumper video exists of Lion and Vehicle being described as Far and Near Defenders, but this footage contains talk of the Middle Universe only by implication, not by any direct reference or footage.

Despite cancelled plans, it remains possible that some audio of the voice actors first dubbing Albegas exists. In interviews on the Voltron Box Set DVD's, the surviving voice actors (except Peter Cullen, busy with Transformers projects) describe the frenzy of work that faced them as this series was re-edited and re-dubbed, with male actors even voicing incidental female characters, and five to six voice actors handling every single role on both Voltron series. If any voice or edit work was done on adapting Albegas to 'Middle Voltron', it could easily have been lost in this rush to production and just as easily forgotten when the cancellation came through. Each of the voice actors on their own have done enough characters that a few more done essentially as a test might not have stayed in their memories. So, if anything of this lost Defender Of The Universe exists anywhere, it may only be discovered by accident, if even then.

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