As a cartoon-loving gent who may or may not be on the wrong side of 40, I love when a Disney original can catch both my eye and my full attention. (See: Gravity Falls, The Owl House, Darkwing Duck.) So I had pretty sizeable (though measured) expectations for the studio's first big push into anime-style storytelling with Dragon Striker hitting the 2026 TV schedule. Thankfully, those expectations were met and sated with ease.
DRAGON STRIKER RELEASE INFO
Premiere Date: June 9 (Disney XD), June 10 (via Disney+ subscription)
Cast: Ashkay Kumar, Rebecca LaChance, Yeukayi Ushe, Waylon Jacobs, Evanna Lynch
Creators: Sylvain Dos Santos (EP) & Charles Lefebvre (Director)
Dragon Striker's core story isn't so different from arcs that one might find in other shows like Owl House, in that it takes place within a special academy that advances its students skills with sports and magic, centering on a super-powerful protagonist who doesn't quite have what it takes to utilize his talents. At least until he's befriended by a group of underdogs who discover sinister secrets that go far beyond the playing field.
From top to bottom, Dragon Striker embodies anime's style and substance, though obviously within the scope of what would entertain Disney XD audiences. Animators and series co-creators Sylvain Dos Santos and Charles Lefebvre spoke with CinemaBlend ahead of the series' premiere to discuss how pleased and proud they are to bridge the gap between Disney animation and classic anime.
CINEMABLEND: The show finally brings Disney into the world of anime, and it looks amazing because of it. Can you both talk about that process, and whether any powers that be needed more convincing to go in this direction, or if it was sort of easygoing?
SYLVAIN DOS SANTOS: "The direction of anime was really easy for us, because we are fans of anime since forever, so it feels really natural. I mean, the project is meant to be an anime from the beginning, and that's the only type of project we really love, and put passion on it. So yeah, the main challenge was to convince Disney to create this anime with us, and they agreed in helping us to do that. That was interesting, because that's not the usual Disney show.
So they trusted us a lot on the artistic decision and point of view, because they are not used to doing that, so they were like, 'Okay, guys, we trust you to write.' [Laughs.] But yeah, anime is our DNA, we grew up with that, we love that at the studio. We are a big bunch of otakus, so anime is like the bloodline."
CHARLES LEFEBVRE: "Yeah, through all the projects we have done in the studio, we always try to push this line. The design was always mixed, but we always try to push the anime; if it's not completely in the design, it's going to be in the storytelling, in the storyboard. We have so many elements we love to push in it, and for sure, Dragon Striker was the first one we could go completely in on.
When we first developed the design, I was doing a little bit less fully on, and after, when we had the possibility to go on Disney+, we went completely on it to go for the detail. You know, the characters are quite complex to draw. They have elements with the armor and things, so first it was thinking, 'Is that not too much, is that not going to be?' And we went, 'Others are doing it, let's go. Why can't we do it?' We pushed all the parameters we could, sometimes too much. [Laughs.] But we went all in on it."
Dragon Striker truly is bringing worlds together, as both Lefebvre and Dos Santos are French animators bringing this Japanese-influenced series to U.S. audiences, voiced by British and Irish actors. Gotta love it. (To say nothing of the hundreds of people who worked on the show behind the scenes.
It doesn't sound like Disney balked at all at leaning harder into the anime style that Dragon Striker delivers, and instead wanted to make sure that the studio would be releasing the best looking version possible. To that end, Lefebvre told me that Disney execs were very specific about not letting the team get away with shortcuts commonly seen in anime, such as reusing pieces of animation.
CINEMABLEND: Speaking to the complications involved, how much did you use like real football as reference points for the animation, and how much is it just pureLY fantastical?
CHARLES LEFEBVRE: "I will say, honestly, really few real fútbol. [Laughs.] Because, yeah, it was was more spectacular type of fútbol, so it was really to enhance animation as much as we can, even in the run cycle. We wanted to have something that feels energetic. The way they play, it's more an arena with a gladiator and a ball in the middle. That's really the idea, is like they're fighting, and it's football, kind of.
Really at the storyboard stage, that was my briefing. We need to have something really action-packed, fast-paced, because it's what differs from the show we really love - like Inazuma Eleven for example, or Captain Tsubasa - when the match can stay for five episodes or even longer, it's way more diluted scripts. In Dragon Striker, the idea was to pack everything to have something really intense in a short period of time. Sometimes it's half an episode, and you have some episodes with more and longer, but the idea was to have something really energetic and striking for the action.
We had like really few chances to reuse animation. For example, Inazuma Eleven, that was the first idea for the project before it came to Disney+, that we would reuse more animation. When they shoot, you have a beautiful animation, and you have this animation again and again. But that was maybe the thing with Disney that was a no-go, that was like, 'We're going for animation.' So we went completely into that, and the animator and storyboarder had a lot of room to create the attack and action to be striking."
Anyone who watches Dragon Striker probably won't readily mistake the action happening in the show to any real-world fútbol (or soccer) games. But I still had to ask, since I'm sure there are some athletes in the audience who will have something to say about how Key plays.
Aside from that, though, it's actually great to hear that the execs from Disney didn't want to take half-measures with anything, and required the animators to deliver original footage with every shot. We've all made fun of cartoons from the '60s and '70s (and later) where repeated backgrounds and character animations are laughably obvious. None of that here.
The project was first announced back in the summer of 2022, so this release is the culmination of not just a four-year professional journey, but full lifetimes of fandoms within the creative team. And it wasn't solely anime series and movies that inspired Dragon Striker's creation, but also the stories and environments from video games.
CINEMABLEND: I've read a bit about the video games that inspired the show, and I wondered if both of you could talk about some of those specifics, and if you think that gamers and fans of those games will be taken by Dragon Striker.
CHARLES LEFEBVRE: "I'm a big gamer, you know. If you can see here above - [points to posters on wall behind him] - Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana. You have a little bit of Monster Hunter. It's like big game who make my creative universe. I love Vision of Escaflowne. I mean, those type of worlds with fantasy, it's really something I truly love. Like a Final Fantasy, for sure.
All those games, I think, in the universe is maybe more game than anime, because it's really the grandeur. It's what I love in those games, is you have this fantasy, but it's shiny still, you know, it's a colorful palette. So when I created the world, it was kind of to mix the big capital of fútbol so it's a mix with not capital, because you have a type of architecture mix with island, also Rio de Janeiro. All of that to have something colorful and strange in the same way, but like in a Secret of Mana, you know, you have the technology, even if it's medieval, you have this bit of technology. So that was really this type of world wanted to create, and yeah, it's really the first mix we went through to create the world."
Here's hoping this show is a big enough hit that we get a video game adaptation where the game is adapting the show, instead of the other way around. I'm picking Milo every time.
So for anyone out there in need of finding more family-friendly anime to compete with all of the adult-geared fare available, you can find all eight episodes of Dragon Striker Season 1 streaming on Disney+ starting on Wednesday, June 10. But if you have Disney XD, the episodes are already airing, so what are you doing still listening to me?
