Mr Mouse is doing japanimation with soccer and dragons?
The Annecy Animation Festival is where a lot of global animation gets its formal debutante moment, and this year, Disney’s Dragon Striker crashed the party with magical cleats on. Created by Chouette Studios and set to debut on Disney+, Dragon Striker is a sports anime by way of anime lovers. Think: Blue Lock with more spectral dragons and less screaming about ego.
The show, co-created by Sylvain Dos Santos and Charles Lefebvre, isn’t coy about its influences—Japanese animation is in its DNA. The animation style, the pacing, the supernatural power-ups mid-match, even the opening credits montage all scream “shonen.” The team behind it includes artists who worked on My Hero Academia and One Piece, and the soundtrack comes courtesy of Made in Abyss composer Kevin Penkin, recorded with an 80-piece orchestra in Japan, just to really drive the point home.
Set in the fictional (and very anime-sounding) Kal Asterock, Dragon Striker follows Key, a newbie striker unaware of his latent magical ability—sorry, tama—and Ssyelle, a goalkeeper prodigy. They attend a prestigious academy for training kids in the show’s mystical, no-holds-barred version of five-a-side soccer, where clone techniques and time-warping forcefields are part of the playbook. The series kicks off with 22 episodes and the ambition of 15 seasons (yes, they said it out loud).
It’s not just the magic soccer that sells it. Dragon Striker wears its worldbuilding on its sleeve—literally, with costuming that spans ancient robes to streetwear, and cities inspired by both Chrono Trigger and Rio de Janeiro. Every stadium is unique, every character fully styled, and concept artist Claire Sun has already churned out so much unofficial fan art she was dubbed president of the show’s in-house fan club.
Originally envisioned as a rugby show in an Arthurian world (seriously), Dragon Striker has since dropped the knights and kept the chaos. What’s left is something stranger and more specific: a kids show with high-concept lore, anime swagger, and enough on-field explosions to fill a dozen Dragon Ball episodes.
If this is Disney’s first foray into original anime, it’s doing so with its whole heart—and both feet.
