The upcoming Dragon Striker is a blending of different genres and styles. The sports fantasy animated seres comes from French creators Sylvain Dos Santos and Charles Lefebvre who are heavily influenced by Japanese anime, manga, and video games. We recently spoke with them to learn more.
Dos Santos shared how he and Lefebvre developed the concept of the show. “[W]e are huge fans of anime, sports anime and sports manga, like Inazuma Eleven, Eyeshield 21, Captain Tsubasa. On those shows, you have all these super combos, colorful attacks like fireballs, penguins for Inazuma Eleven and even some dragons sometimes, but it’s never in universe,” he said. “We wanted to create a show when you summon some fire, all the crowd notices it. That’s inside the universe because the universe is magic. It’s fantasy. There is a good reason. It’s grounded. That was the first spark and that’s how we came with the tama, the function of the tama and powers and everything, and the universe after that.”
The first aspect about Dragon Striker that stands out is the beautiful artwork. The Japanese influences are easy to detect. In addition, the line work for the art is clean, and there is the use of a bright color palette. Lefebvre described his process for developing the aesthetic.
“I think more for the visual look, like I said, I’m a huge fan of Monster Hunter, Final Fantasy. I mean I’m a big player. One of my big influences is [Vision of] Escaflowne, Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger. A lot of the things in the game or the manga before in fantasy have some things I really like. I try to bring all those different elements of those different influences to put inside this project because that was one of the…one in a decade or a little bit more to be able to put that. In the end, all my influences and what I used to draw, I did put it inside this show to give it the look.”
He continued, “For the clothes to mix medieval fantasy type of clothes with streetwear to play with this contrast to make the medieval look modern…You can see also some of the clothes of the students, with the uniform, we call that adi. It’s really a mix of the American teddy in the campus with the happi, traditional Japanese clothes. It was always to try to mix different influences with scenes of contemporary and scenes that come from more cultural or medieval. It always tries to mix up the things to give a special look to the project.”
Key is a compelling protagonist thanks to his backstory. Dos Santos teased what viewers can expect from him this season. “Key is coming from a place where he was just a fan and discovered that he has this dragon inside. Very shocking after that, the dragon is a heritage from his late mother, and she was actually a great champion…He comes to Cal Asterrock just to follow the steps of his mother.”
But things change once Key arrives at the academy. Dos Santos continued, “Finally, he can be the Dragon Striker without being a copy of his mother. He has his own journey. His journey will be forged by friendship and all the people he will find. It’s a coming of age story but it’s also about controlling the rage you got inside when you are a teenage. The dragon is a real dragon, but it’s also a metaphor about controlling your anger.”
Because of Dragon Striker’s close connection to football, it would be cool to have some famous players guest star and lend their voice. No surprise, the pair would select several past and current members of the French National Team.
Dos Santos said, “Yeah, I think it will be people from France. If we are thinking about people going to the world cup this year, [Ousmane] Dembélé, [Killian] Mbappé…[m]aybe Zinedine Zidane.
Lefebvre agreed about the choices saying they are the “most famous and give the most French flavor in the world. If we were to have some cameo, for sure it would be some of that big three to make sure it has some impact.”
Dragon Striker premieres June 9 on Disney XD and streams the next day on Disney+ and Hulu.
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