Rod

Rodロト (Roto)
Physical Characteristics
Gender	Male
Age	12-13 (Born in 2114)
Hair Color	Brown
Eye Color	Black
Affiliations
Family	Laura (sister) Dr. Z (adoptive grandfather) Ursula (adoptive aunt) Zander (adoptive uncle) Ed (adoptive uncle) Unnamed Parents
Uses
Attribute	Water Fire Earth
Dinosaurs	Terry Spiny Tank Ampelosaurus Megalosaurus Chasmosaurus (Arcade/DS game) Alpha Chasmosaurus (DS game)

Rod (ロトRoto) is Dr. Z's grandson and a member of Alpha Gang. Like his younger sister, he is quite intelligent and is more experienced in Dinosaur Battles than the A-Team. He is voiced by Zoe Martin (English) and Yuriko Fuchizaki (Japanese).

Character Design

Rod has brown skin, black hair and eyes along with large black eyebrows. His dressing style seems to be based upon that of a mechanic: he wears a mechanic jumpsuit over a mechanic shirt, glasses and a mechanic hat. In the anime, there's a belt with the Alpha Gang symbol around his waist, and in his card he is depicted using mechanic gloves.

In the arcade game he wears a bike helmet with a white tank top, a jacket tied around his waist and shorts and doll like shoes.

Name

Rod's name maybe an allusion to a lightning rod, as in video games Rod's main dinosaurs of choice are often from the Lightning Element.

Personality

Rod is an expert scientist, often helping Grandpa or Seth. Although he and Laura are much smarter and better with dinosaurs than the A-Team (only in the anime), they are often stuck on Zeta Point thanks to Helga. Rod is the same age as Rex. Laura reveals that they never knew what their grandfather did to Rex and his parents.

Rod, like most of the Alpha Gang, fears Helga, the caretaker.

Ancient's Time Travel

Before the events of Dinosaur King he and his sister, Laura leave their parents and along with their grandfather join the Ancient's mission to save all the dinosaurs from extinction. This eventually leads him and the rest of Alpha Gang to the present day in the D-Team's timeline.

As a member of the Alpha Gang

During the events of Dinosaur King, Rod is the expert scientist and helps his grandfather in his goal to capture all the dinosaurs to create his dinosaur kingdom. He serves as the mechanic and hijacker for Zeta Points machines and information on occasional times.

Anime

Dinosaur King

Rod is first seen with Laura on the beach of Zeta Point after his sister uses the Alpha Scanner to summon Terry, directing him to chase after Dr. Z and Ed.

Mesozoic Meltdown

In the second season, Rod comes back along with the others, but is accidentally left back in the present with Laura and Reese when Dr. Z starts the timeship without them aboard. After that, they occasionally contacted the others on the timeship. Later, the D-Team is forced to return to the present when they discovered that there was a plant invasion, where the plants lived and bugs were oversized. When Max, Rex and Zoe finally went into the D-Lab, they found Rod, Laura, Reese, Dr. Owen and Patrick tied up by the plants. After Max frees them by destroying the source of everything, he and Laura rejoin their Grandpa.

They help take care of the comatose Seth after returning home.

Manga

In the manga, Rod is the grandson of Dr. Z and the brother of Laura, and he has an Australian speech, saying words like "bloke" and "reckon". He also referred to Max's waistpack as a "spiffy pouch thingo". When Max was going to save King's mom with Rex, Rod battled Max, and when he summoned his Torosaurus, he and Max stopped battling and started saying cool things about his dinosaur and started acting like best friends, until Rod realizes they were not "cobbers". Although Rod was a tough battler, he still lost, and became more friendly. He also told Max to be on a lookout for his "ankle biter sister", Laura.

Rod wears a helmet with the alpha symbol on it and has his jacket tied around his waist. He also thought Max was cool, calling him "a real ripper", while Max called him "freakin' awesome".

Dinosaurs

Anime

In the anime, Rod doesn't own any dinosaurs until the end of season, but as the series progressed, he and his sister were given a bigger role in events in capturing dinosaurs, making use of Terry, Spiny, and Tank. They first use them during Carnival of Chaos, and in the first season finale arc, Rod temporarily used several captured wild dinosaurs as well, Ampelosaurus and Deinonychus. Unlike his manga/game counterpart, Rod mainly defaults to using Fire or Water Dinosaurs alongside Laura's respective Water or Earth.

DS Game

In the DS Game, Rod primarily uses Lightning Dinosaurs, such as Chasmosaurus, Torosaurus, Alpha Einiosaurus, and Styracosaurus. In some battles, he also uses a Saichania.

Trivia

• His Japanese name "Roto" is a reverse reading of the first part of "Torosaurus" when written in Japanese katakana: ト-ロ (to-ro) becomes ロ-ト (ro-to). This is probably a reference to how he frequently uses Torosaurus and other Lightning Dinosaurs in the DS game. He's also the supposed owner of the Alpha Lightning Dinosaurs.
• Rod is known to understand the names of rarer Move Cards, as shown when the Allosaurus used Mayfly on Spiny, probably because Dr. Z created the Move Cards and Rod paid more attention to his grandfather's work than the Alpha Trio did, and is also smarter than them.
• He and Laura seem to have more respect to Seth than to their grandpa or to any of the Alpha Trio members.
• Along with Zoe and Ursula, his outfit differs between the arcade and the anime.

Gallery

Rod on the official 4kids site

Rod's arcade card

Laura & Rod TCG card

Rod concept art