Watch The Voltron Series That Never Was

Albegas, the series that was once going to be “Gladiator Voltron,” is now available to watch!

Photo: Toei

Everyone remembers the original Voltron. The lions, the classic formation sequence, it’s iconic.  Adapted from the Japanese anime GoLion, this show has stood the rest of time and been remade three times now. Fewer people remember that there was also another companion Voltron series that’s now mostly referred to as Vehicle Voltron. It was made up of footage from an entirely different anime, Dairugger XV, and while not as popular as Lion Voltron it still has its fans.

However, there was also going to be a third Voltron. Yes, buried in the annals of American adapted anime history there’s been tales of another anime that was supposed to be adapted into Voltron. Lightspeed Electroid Albegas, which is now officially available to watch on YouTube!

But what’s the story behind Albegas and why was it lost to time? Basically, when World Events Productions was in the early stages of working on Voltron it was going to be made up of footage from three different shows. Albegas, Dairugger XV, and another series known as Daltanious. However, due to an error, they were sent footage from GoLion instead of Daltanious.

This would completely change the course of Voltron’s history and push Albegas to the side. When the series first aired they had episodes of Dairugger and GoLion dubbed but it was quickly apparent that the Lion episodes were by and large the most popular. Instead of working on adapting Albegas the producers of Voltron focused on the GoLion episodes and even commissioned brand new episodes for that series as well!

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This meant Albegas never got its time to shine. However it did get a toy release where it was referred to as “Voltron II” and “Gladiator.” This has lead to fans referring to the show as “Gladiator Voltron.” The series has had a few cameos throughout the years, including a small appearance in the Robotech/Voltron comic, but it was mostly forgotten and hadn’t revealed any kind of official release in America. The best fans had were a few unsubtitled clips uploaded by Worlds Events Productions years ago.

Until now.

Recently the Toei Tokusatsu World Official channel uploaded the first two episodes of Albegas subtitled. This is the first chance fans have gotten an easy look at the Voltron that never was and the channel plans to upload more in the future, although it isn’t clear if those will have subtitles or not. Still, if you want to get a look at what could have been and even imagine how a third Voltron series could have played out? Now’s your chance!