Disney’s Sports Epic Rockets to Top 10 on Disney+ In Under Three Days
Disney has a genuine hit on its hands. ‘Dragon Striker,’ the ambitious anime-inspired series from co-creators Sylvain Dos Santos and Charles Lefebvre, has shot right into the top 10 of the Disney+ trending chart in the United States. It managed that feat within just three days of its global streaming debut. With 11 more episodes still to come, the momentum could push the show even higher.
The series premiered on Disney XD on June 9 and became available to stream on Disney+ and Hulu on June 10, blending medieval fantasy, street-level modernity, and high-stakes magical sports into something critics are calling genuinely unlike anything else on television right now. The show is set in the world of Asteria and centers on a high-stakes magical sport called Gorotama, a five-a-side soccer-like game enhanced with fantastical powers.
The series follows farm boy Key as he discovers his extraordinary talent and enrolls at Kal Asterock, an elite school where competition is taken almost religiously. Struggling to fit in, he finds his people in goalkeeper Ssyelle and a band of fellow underdogs who form a team called the Knights, only to discover a conspiracy lurking in the shadows of the school.
One likely driver of the show’s rapid rise is its release timing alongside the start of the FIFA World Cup, which has shifted global attention toward soccer and given streaming boosts to a wave of sports-related content across platforms. But the show’s appeal clearly goes beyond timing. The animation was produced with the help of Japanese artists who previously worked on beloved classics like ‘One Piece’ and ‘My Hero Academia,’ lending the series an authentic visual language that fans of the genre have immediately responded to.
The musical score was composed by Kevin Penkin and recorded in Japan with an 80-piece orchestra, while the theme song was written and produced by Cash Callaway and performed by Sarah West. The production craft on display has been a major talking point among early viewers, with critics praising the show’s visual ambition and emotional storytelling.
Speaking to Animation World Network, co-creator Dos Santos noted that Disney greenlit the project before anime had become a common trend on streaming platforms, adding that the studio trusted the team before the hype arrived and gave them significant creative freedom.
Early reviews have drawn comparisons to Nickelodeon’s ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender,’ with critics calling it a potential cornerstone franchise for Disney outside of its Marvel and Lucasfilm properties. The co-creators have also stated they hope to run the series for five seasons, giving the world of Asteria plenty of room to grow if the audience continues to show up. Given how quickly ‘Dragon Striker’ has climbed the charts, that five-season vision is looking a lot less like wishful thinking and a lot more like a plan.
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