While series like Amphibia, The Owl House, and Gravity Falls don’t have any new animated episodes planned. this fact isn’t stopping Disney from creating wild new animated series to its roster. This year, Disney+ is planning to release the spiritual successor to the Mystery Shack’s misadventures in The Doomies, a spooky series that is weeks away from introducing its supernatural world. Unfortunately, a major new addition to the streaming service has recently sparked controversy following a strong start, as a major region has seemingly banned the show from airing.
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Dragon Striker debuted on The Disney Channel on June 9th earlier this month, though it appears as though there is one region where the animated soccer series did not. The Middle East has reportedly cancelled the series from airing in its countries for reasons that have yet to be revealed. At present, rumors are circulating that the reasoning behind the ban is a relationship between characters Odward Stonegarden and Casper Ferreiro. While neither Disney nor the Middle East has released official statements on the ban, this isn’t the first time that the latter has had a similar animated controversy this year. The Amazing Digital Circus: The Last Act was banned from the Middle East, unable to clear the region’s strict requirements for hitting theaters.
Update: Disney Television has confirmed that Dragon Striker will air in the Middle East at a later date, missing its premiere earlier this month.
Dragon Striker Kicks Back
Recently, we here at ComicBook.com had the opportunity to talk with series creators Sylvain Dos Santos and Charles Lefebvre on the creation of Dragon Striker. Dos Santos highlighted how the animated series was born thanks to the co-creators love of all things anime, “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.”
Ironically, the co-creators weren’t always planning for the animated series to focus on soccer, as Dos Santos explains that the original idea was to have the characters take part in wild games of rugby, “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.”
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