In one of their first forays into Anime Expo, Disney+ brought two of their properties to the 2026 convention, one of which was the magical sports series, Dragon Striker
Synopsis: “In a world where sports and magic combine, farm boy Key discovers his ultrapowerful natural talent and learns he could be the legendary Dragon Striker. Set at Kal Asterock, an elite school for students who possess extraordinary abilities, Key joins goalkeeper Ssyelle on a scrappy new team to challenge the school champions. As he struggles with the raging dragon inside him and Ssyelle fights to hold her team together, they learn dark secrets of the past and uncover an ancient evil that threatens them all.”
At the start of this year’s Anime Expo, Dragon Striker’s production team of Sylvain Dos Santos (creator/executive producer), Charles Lefevbe (creator/director), and Paul McKeown (head writer) sat down to talk about their popular series Dragon Striker: Where their inspiration came from, who their favorite characters are, and how they became interested in anime in the first place
“We’re pleasing ourselves (not only) to make a story, but also to be able to give this feeling of wonder we had when we were kids and watching anime and watching shows…to make sure we can pass the torch and give to a new generation.”
Dos Santos on the inspiration for Dragon Striker: “When I started thinking about this with Charles, the idea was…we are such fans of sports anime, like Captain Tsubasa, I think that’s my favorite, Inazuma Eleven also.”
“So, in all those shows, you have this crazy power, you have fire, you have dragons sometimes, you have ice. In Inazuma Eleven, you have penguins, but you never understand, you never know really, where those powers come from. So it’s like, does the people in the bleachers see it or not, or is it just us, the audience?”
“So we really wanted to create this mix with fantasy and sports, where the magic is at the center of the story and the universe. So that’s why, you know, when you see a dragon in Dragon Striker, everybody can see it, everybody can feel it. When Skadi freezes someone on the field, it’s really frozen. That’s why on the first episode, you see magic before the Gorotama game, so everybody understands that magic is all over the world, and that’s not just something you see in the film.”
“That was the first spark to create the show, and then we invented the Tama, and everything, but yeah, that was this desire to create a very original sports show.”
On growing up with anime, and bringing it to Walt Disney Animation:
Lefevbe: “For the anime, I mean, in France, we have a full generation of kids who are probably exactly like me, because on the first TV channel, we have a program called Club Dorothée, and they were just every morning having anime. So before we were going to school, we were watching anime, the weekend have anime…I mean, this program had so much power at this time. So all the kids–this is how the French were so into anime quite early in time.”
“I was watching from really high-standard anime to really low-standard anime, and I think that did build a lot of things for me…sometimes we don’t need to be explosive. You can also tell a story, and when you want to go full in, you can have that. So I always love to nourish myself from a lot of different types and different levels of types of anime.”
McKeown: “I always had this secret hope that like, we would get to do…Disney would do something that was anime-inspired because it makes perfect sense to me. So the fact that we got the opportunity to bring these two things together is like an absolute dream come true because I think, you know, the two things together could make something really awesome. So we did it and I’m really happy that Disney sort of trusted us to do that because I felt like it was like a long time, it’s long overdue, right? So, you know, it’s a bit of a secret dream. to put these two things together because we love it so much.”
Lefevbe: “Yeah, it’s important to add on this topic–at the beginning, I remember we were afraid, like we cannot push as far as we wanted to, and actually that was quite the opposite. I remember one reunion we had when Key activated his Tama, and Disney said, we have to talk about this sequence.
“And I was like, **** they’re going to just kill it. And actually, we had Sylvain kind of preparing the defense, like, ‘no, we have to,’ and then (they said) ‘no, it’s not the thing. It’s not going far enough. You have to push more, far bigger.’ So I was, okay, I think we will be able to do something because for me, that was one of the biggest surprises to be able to make and create a show like that inside the House of the Mouse.”
Lefevbe: “For me, it will be Skadi. Because she’s cool. I’ve got a lot of things I like in it, so she’s cool.”
McKeown: “I feel like they’re all our children, and I don’t think I can say we have a favorite child, but I think Ssyelle’s my favorite character. I think a lot of care went into making sure that she felt like a real person, so yeah
Dos Santos: “I would say it’s Milo, because he has for me the most interesting Tama, and he’s really at the center of what we want to do with Tama. It’s like, sometimes you can feel that your power is a bit lame because you are just creating jelly, but in fact, if you know how to play your card well, you can become a champion. Milo will gain confidence thanks to his friends, and he will have this great trajectory in terms of character, and he…has so much to tell, and this journey will be very, very powerful.
“So, yeah, that’s a message we also want to tell to the kids. You know, it’s not because you don’t have the best car at the beginning of your life that you need to give up. You need to find what you are good for, you need to find good friends, and the sky is the limit.”
Later on in the day, the filmmakers presided over the well-attended panel “Inside the World of Disney+’s Dragon Striker where they answered questions from fans and announced the good news that they have been picked up for a second season
Dragon Striker is currently streaming onDisney+
