Rod

Rodロト (Roto)
First Appearance	Prehistory in the Making
Voiced By	Yuriko Fuchizaki (Japanese) Zoe Martin (English)
Physical Characteristics
Gender	Male
Age	11-12 (Born circa 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	Fire Water Earth
Dinosaurs	Terry Spiny Tank Ampelosaurus Deinonychus (briefly) Chasmosaurus (Arcade/DS game) Alpha Chasmosaurus (DS game) Torosaurus (manga)

Rod (ロトRoto) is Dr. Z's grandson and a member of Alpha Gang. Like his younger sister Laura, 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 slightly tanned skin, with 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, he instead seems to be wearing an aviator's leather helmet and goggles, and there's a belt with the Alpha Gang symbol around his waist.

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

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's name may be an allusion to a lightning rod, as in video games Rod's main dinosaurs of choice are often from the Lightning Element, and also sounds like his Japanese name. It may also refer to the machine part, as his arcade self is dressed like a mechanic.

Personality

Despite his age, Rod is an expert scientist, seemingly due to the high level of schooling in the future, often helping Grandpa or Seth. Although he and Laura are much smarter and better with dinosaurs than the Alpha Trio (only in the anime), they are often stuck on Zeta Point thanks to Helga. Rod is the same age as Rex. Rod, like most of the Alpha Gang, fears Helga, the caretaker, whose job it is to keep him and Laura doing their schoolwork (which includes general relativity).

The siblings defend and fight for Dr. Z's goals, even acting antagonistic towards the D-Team on their own, but it is indicated that they believe not having retrieved all of the dinosaur cards is what's keeping Dr. Z from repairing the time machine and them from going home, as they miss their parents deeply. However, Laura reveals that they never knew what their grandfather did to Rex and his parents that caused the timeship to crash in the present, and force him to cooperate with the D-Team upon finding out. They quickly become easy friends with the D-Team after this.

Anime

History

On Christmas Day in 2127, he and his sister Laura left their parents to join their grandfather Dr. Z, who was part of the Ancients' time travel mission on the Backlander to save all the dinosaurs from extinction. However, Dr. Z and Seth's sabotage of the mission (unknown to Rod) partway through caused the timeship to crash in the present day.

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 for fun. During the first season, Rod is primarily on Zeta Point, he and Laura stuck doing their future homework under the maid Helga's watchful eyes. Rod, however, occasionally offers advice and help to Dr. Z's plans or Seth's repairs, his input proving very helpful. When he uses a dinosaur later in the season, he typically summons Terry, but sometimes uses Spiny and even Tank once.

The two have their first significant spotlight in Alpha's Zeta Point, where Rod helps Dr. Z to find the D-Team in Zeta Point, luring Paris out with sound waves mimicking a Parasaurolophus. After the D-Team escape but get caught by Helga and forced to study with him and Laura, they accompany the D-Team as Max manages to break them out. They have a discussion, Rod and Laura telling the D-Team to leave Dr. Z's goals alone, until the Alpha Trio corner them, Rod having been stalling after sending their coordinates. Despite showing no sympathy for the D-Team themselves, however, Rod is impressed by Max's father after his efforts to rescue the D-Team.

The siblings step up again halfway through the season in Carnival of Chaos, with Rod and Laura summoning dinosaurs to fight the D-Team for the first time after sneaking out of Zeta Point, Rod using Terry, but are quickly forced to retreat upon Helga's return, not wanting to be caught.

Later starting in Dueling Dinos, Seth secretly recruits them to capture dinosaurs, giving them the Velociraptor Move card which they use all of once. They immediately score victories where the Alpha Trio had been without success for quite a while, but soon begin to slip, too. Despite being better fighters than the Alpha Trio, Rod only manages to defeat two dinosaurs, being defeated several times himself.

Santa Saurus! sees him and Laura being sent to Max's house to retrieve the remaining dinosaur cards, but before they can break in, Mrs. Taylor invites them inside because it's Christmas. They have been missing their own parents, and briefly relinquish their mission, but Rod grabs Zoe's Dino Holder and they flee, seeing dinosaur cards as their only way home. However, after a battle makes them drop everything, they ignore the Holder and instead pick up the picture books Mrs. Taylor had drawn for them.

In Full Scheme Ahead, Rod takes Laura and a severely weakened Terry to Dr. Drake, meeting with the D-Team and realizing Seth's intentions. He hacks through Zeta Point's force field and uses an Alpha Scanner to teleport back there with them, using Tank to join Dr. Z and Spiny in a battle with Seth during his betrayal, but their dinosaurs are defeated by Saurophaganax's Fire Scorcher. In the next episode, Rod summons Ampelosaurus to help Tank battle against Saurophaganax again, using Aqua Vortex, but are again defeated by Fire Scorcher. Escaping to the D-Lab, he and Laura force Dr. Z to cooperate with the D-Team to stop Seth together.

In the finale, he summons Spiny and Ampelosaurus in the battle against the Black T-Rex and, after Jonathan delivered the Secret Dinosaurs, he summons the Deinonychus trio, too. He has them combine Shockwave, Aqua Vortex, and Spinning Attack with a dozen other attacks into a Super Fusion Move, managing to defeat the Black T-Rex after three hits. After the Ancients return, they, Rex, and the Alpha Gang leave for the future…

Mesozoic Meltdown

…but are immediately forced back by the attacking Space Pirates. Rod and Laura head down to the D-Lab with Reese, but are accidentally left in the present when Dr. Z starts the half-fixed timeship without them aboard. After that, they and Reese occasionally manage to contact the others on the timeship through the D-Lab, neither sibling being seen without the other.

Late in the season, the D-Team is forced to return to the present to save them when they discover that altering time has caused a giant plant and bug invasion. Rod and the others have been grabbed by moving vines, but are freed when Chomp destroys the plant's main root with Lightning Strike. The siblings finally join the Backlander's crew, but only as observers until Seth takes over the ship, when they help Helga melt Seth's Gel Jarks with salt and retrieve six of the Cosmos Stones that were dropped in a struggle.

After the defeat of the Dark Pterosaur, Rod and Laura accompany the Ancients and Alpha Gang back to the future on the commandeered Space Pirate Ship with all the dinosaur cards.

Manga

In the manga, Rod is the grandson of Dr. Z and the brother of Laura, and he has an Australian accent, 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".

DS Game

Rod is one of the earlier Alpha Gang member boss battles.

Dinosaurs

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 counterparts who prefer Lightning, Rod mainly defaults to using Fire or Water Dinosaurs alongside Laura's respective Water or Earth.

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

• Rod's age is only given on NagoyaTV's website, where it is listed as 12 in the context of Mesozoic Meltdown. As Rex had a birthday in the first season and the passage of time isn't certain, Rod may have been 11 at some point during the series, but it isn't specified.
• 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 seemed to have more respect for Seth (before his betrayal) than to their grandpa or any of the Alpha Trio members, not telling Dr. Z about Seth's missions for them.
• 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