Dragon Striker Creators Talk Anime Influences, Tease Future Plans & More

Dragon Striker is a new anime influenced series coming to Disney+ this week, and we got to talk with the creators behind it all about how they brought the soccer action series to life. Disney Television Animation has been making a comeback with lots of cool looking animated shows, and fun franchises making their return after many years away. With how much bigger anime has gotten in the last few years, Disney has also increased their reach in the world of anime with lots of fun new licenses and productions.

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With Dragon Striker coming to Disney+ on June 10th, ComicBook got the chance to speak with series creators Sylvain Dos Santos and Charles Lefebvre all about the new show. Diving into their many Shonen anime influences, changes from the original sport that was at the center of the show, power ups, teases for multiple season plans and much more, you can read on for our talk with Dos Santos and Lefebvre below (which has been edited for length and clarity) an exclusive clip.

Dragon Striker Creators Talk Making a Magical & Powerful World

NICK VALDEZ, COMICBOOK: I’ve been pretty excited to speak with you two because I fell into Dragon Striker pretty much immediately. It’s got a fantasy world, anime power-ups and [soccer]. Could you talk a bit about how everything came together for the idea? What was the initial spark that got the ball rolling?

SYLVAIN DOS SANTOS: The initial spark is that Charles and I are super fans of sports Shonen and Shonen in general. I’m a huge fan of Inazuma Eleven, Captain Tsubasa, Eyeshield 21, and in those shows you can already see some impressive attacks. Impressive combos with fire or with ice, sometimes even with penguins in Inazuma Eleven, but it’s never in universe. Visually you can see the dragon, but it’s like nobody cares about it. So we really wanted to create a show that when player starts to shoot fire, for example, it’s in the universe and everybody knows what they are doing. It’s magical and the universe itself is magical, so that was the first intuition and that’s why we created this power, the Tama.

With the Tama, I like how it’s a power system where everyone’s got their own individual one and they’re kind of born with them. What went into putting together a power system in general for the Tama? What went into the rules you set for yourselves in the show and how much they would impact the world?

CHARLES LEFEBVRE: I think the Tama, especially the one Key wields..I mean, they all have something for the moment. It’s like at their level, except Key when we can see it’s something bigger and stronger than the others. It’s something through this season, and what we hope in the future, is really develop this system and understand a little bit more of its intricacies. This world has so many things still to discover. Through the first episode we try to give the main thing to understand and how to play with it. But I think the system’s going way deeper than what we develop even just in Season One. It’s going way deeper, and that’s what’s going to be exciting to discover through the series.

DOS SANTOS: As a long time D&D Master, I think world building and systems of power, it’s like what I prefer to do, what I do first when I start working on a show. And in this case, the main engine is the feelings and the personality of the characters because all the Tamas are inspired..they come from deep inside the characters. So for example, Ssyelle, she wants to do a lot of stuff. She needs time all the time. She wants to control everything, so she developed this time control Tama. For Milo, he was a bit scared. He wanted something to protect him and also he likes jelly. So he developed a jelly Tama, which is interesting.

I think you have that on One Piece too, is that the importance is not the Tama you have, it’s how you use it. For example, Milo will start with a pretty lame Tama. Jelly is not super epic, but he will learn how to use it. And at the end of the first season, it’s going to be one of the most powerful ones. I think that’s super interesting. There is not so hard rules about the power system, but it’s always about your creativity that drives the way you will have a power-up.

Breaking Down Dragon Striker’s Sports Anime Influences

It is interesting that you mentioned One Piece and Eyeshield 21, because it does feel like you got your Shonen action hero with Key and his greater story developing through the course of the show. Was there a vibe you were particularly going for in terms of how you wanted the show to look and move in the Shonen action sphere? With shows like Inazuma Eleven and others, were you wanting to play in that same space or did you want to go for something else in particular?

LEFEBVRE: I think we had Inazuma Eleven, Captain Tsubasa were some of the sport shows for sure. I mean, it would be like a professional fault to not watch it, to not understand and love it. But what was interesting for us, because the show did evolve, was really to play those type of action that you can find sometimes in some compilation on YouTube really for high moving, impressive animation. That was really what we pushed through the storyboard. It’s to be super exciting, super intense, because it’s not like Captain Tsubasa, for example. Where you that’s going to be developed over three or four episodes and a shoot[on a goal] can stay half of an episode.

Through Dragon Striker, the story had to move at quite a fast pace. That’s why the action is so dense and has to be really fast and explosive. That’s really what drives the type of animation. Something like Inazuma Eleven was a little bit of the idea at the beginning, but the project really evolved when there was a possibility to go to Disney+. When you look at Inazuma Eleven, for example, they all mainly have one or two attacks, and it’s like you reuse the same animation over and over. That was a no-go for Disney. That wasn’t something we could go for. When it went to Disney+ as a program, we had the possibility to push this animation ambition we had.

It actually went quite wild, and I think more you’re going through the season, it’s getting worse or better. It’s depending how you view the thing, but yeah, it’s getting more and more intense through the episodes. Also the team finding the vocabulary was getting installed, the graphic vocabulary about action to develop more and more the style of the show. It’s really growing through the season, and I can’t wait for you guys to be able to see all of it because we put a lot of passion to be able to make that.

Dragon Striker Wasn’t Always About Soccer…

I could tell pretty much immediately, especially with the opening theme. I was like, “Whoa, it’s a full opening for a Disney show!” Was it important too when the show was developing to add stuff like that, an opening theme sequence to make it more in line with anime shows?

Yeah, definitely. Because for the other show, the previous show we’ve done, you don’t have always an opening and as true anime fans, that was super important for us. It’s been a little bit of a discussion with Disney because we were not going for this option at the very beginning, but yeah, it was super important and they realized very fast that this kind of stuff bring a lot for the audience, especially for the anime fans.

DOS SANTOS: Yeah, definitely. Because for the previous show we’ve done, you don’t have always an opening. As true anime fans, that was super important for us. It’s been a little bit of a discussion with Disney because we were not going for this option at the very beginning, but yeah, it was super important and they realized very fast that this kind of stuff brings a lot for the audience, especially for the anime fans.

Speaking to Dragon Striker’s core, was it always [soccer] when you were putting together the idea? Did you ever play with any potential other sports that you might’ve translated into this?

DOS SANTOS: Yeah, the first idea was rugby because it’s very big in France. But in discussing with Disney and everything, it was obvious that [soccer] was way more powerful. Not only powerful in terms of marketing, but also in terms of emotion and what the kids you will touch because you just need one ball and you can play [soccer]. Everybody in the world plays [soccer], so that was the way to make the show way more universal.

It probably would’ve meant a lot more contact too, right? A lot more aggression, and that was probably not going to work.

LEFEBVRE: Gorotama has enough contact already.

You do get around that a little bit with how much the powers hit one another!

LEFEBVRE: That was the good inbetweener, let’s say, to have the ball in between. Because to have direct contact is not something that can happen so much. So that was really good, and we could really play with that to put emphasis on the game. It’s like a soccer game, but in how it’s seen for the crowd and their mentality, it’s more like a gladiator arena with a ball. So that’s why I hope for the audience, I feel the people who love soccer can find something for them. People who love action can find something for them. And for those who are more story-driven can also find something for them. It’s the what we try to manage the balance of all those elements.

Dragon Striker Creators Tease Multi-Season Plan for Future

As a final question here, you two have dropped the words like “season” and have teased a potential future. So I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask, do you want to continue Dragon Striker with Season 2? Because it already seems like there’s so much that you can do, are there potential plans in place?

DOS SANTOS: The arc we have right now is like five seasons, but of course it will depend on the audience. If people like it, I think we’ll be able to do a second season and then a third. But yeah, we have in store like five seasons. Because the world of Asteria is really wide, and we worked with Charles a lot on making it consistent, we have like 10 other seasons ready if we need it.

LEFEBVRE: If we have to comment, I will say yes, for sure. But yeah, we first have to do the trial by fire to make sure the audience loves it the same as we do. If that goes well, we cannot wait to unfold this story and go deeper. We have so many things we want to tell and show, and have so many developments possible. We just hope the stars are going to align, and hopefully this project goes through so that we can tell a lot of the story. And make everybody happy.

Dragon Striker premieres with Disney+ and Hulu on June 10th. What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!