Sylvain Dos Santos and Charles Lefebvre discuss the decade-long path behind their new series, an underdog hero’s journey that follows a farm boy named Key at a magical soccer academy shaped by Tama, dragons and buried secrets, all blending heroic fantasy, football and shonen influences; premieres June 9 on Disney XD, June 10 on Disney+ and Hulu, and June 12 on Disney Channel.
A lifetime of anime fandom and a decade of hard work have paid off for Sylvain Dos Santos and Charles Lefebvre, co-creators of the new Disney series, Dragon Striker.
“Charles and I are both fans of Final Fantasy and shonen anime like Naruto and Visions of Escaflowne,” says Dos Santos, who also serves as the series executive producer. “Our show is an interesting mix of tastes: heroic fantasy and football, or soccer. The idea was just to create a place where magic feels natural for everybody. Where you have these superpowers, but they are anchored in the world building.”
Dragon Striker, produced by Disney Television Animation and La Chouette Compagnie, premieres June 9 on Disney XD, June 10 on Disney+ and Hulu, and June 12 on Disney Channel.
The story follows a farm boy named Key who discovers his ultra-powerful talent and learns that he could be the legendary Dragon Striker. Set at Kal Asterock, an elite school for students who wield a magical energy called Tama, Key joins goalkeeper Ssyelle on a scrappy new fantastical soccer sports 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.
Check out the trailer:
The series blends European fantasy with Japanese animation influences and follows an underdog hero’s journey, brought to life through high-stakes battles, visually stunning action, and expansive mythology. Dragon Striker also embodies sports anime’s epic interpretations of everyday athleticism, much like Final Fantasy’s Blitzball.
“We talked a lot about how to make the architecture and visuals exciting for audiences watching the show,” says Lefebvre, who is also series director. “Anime does that a lot. They take some simple thing, like playing chess, and make it amazing and super exciting. I would have dreams about certain sequences, and we’d try to push the screenplay to reach the same level of intensity as what I was envisioning. This is mainly how we work. We have ideas, sometimes they’re strange, but we love the challenge.”
Dos Santos adds, “The beautiful thing about Charles is that you can give him an idea for a character and he’ll give you back something totally different, but even more awesome. That’s what I like about us working together. I’m always surprised.”
The biggest challenge for the co-creators and their team was blending the crisp 2D character animations with settings and backgrounds that have much more depth and a blended contrast of shadow and light. Dust particles and light rays abound in this series, but the beauty, animated with Clip Studio Paint (CSP) was a tall order and wasn’t planned.
“The compositing team had a lot of work on their hands,” says Lefebvre. “The first version we had was a bit different. We had a lot of line work in the background when we were first developing the world, and we decided to take that out because we wanted something more cinematic. But even the first pass looked a bit too flat, so we really had to double down on the compositing. We also went a bit heavy with it in the beginning because some of the initial work we got back from another animation studio wasn’t great. So, we used it a bit to hide some things we couldn’t fix. But it also helped to make the world work together better and focus the audience’s eyes on where we want them to be paying attention.”
The initial plan was to save all the heavy compositing for the action sequences, but then the crew realized how much they could push ambience and mood in quieter sequences with this new style and were pleasantly surprised by how much it upped the visual appeal.
“That mistake from that previous animation studio ended up leading us toward a compositing style that helped us create what became this world’s image and identity,” notes Dos Santos. “So, everything happens for a reason. Everything is useful.”
The series also took longer to make than planned, with production spanning over 10 years. But the timing turned out to be serendipitous.
“What’s cool is Disney greenlit this project before we started seeing anime become a common trend on streaming platforms and in animation projects outside of Japan,” says Dos Santos. “We’ve been fans of anime forever, and this was not in Disney’s comfort zone when we gave them the pitch. They trusted us before the hype, and gave us a lot of freedom. And now we’ve arrived in a really good place during the release, where everyone wants to see anime-inspired stories.”
Lefebvre says the production was “miraculous” in regard to the amount of support they received from Disney to be daring and experimental, especially for a TV series.
“We worried that some of our ideas were too much for Disney, but they were always like, ‘Let’s go for it!’” shares Lefebvre. “It’s kind of an impossible project. It’s the kind of project you dream of doing forever as an artist but think you’ll never get the chance. It went through a lot of different seasons and ups and downs, but now it’s coming out and it feels like a miracle. I’m happy it’s done, but I also hope we get to do many more seasons of dragons with Disney.”
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
