Anime Expo 2026: The Creative Minds Behind Disney’s ‘Dragon Striker’ Talk Moustaches, World Cup Magic, and the Stress of the Game

Ahead of their highly anticipated panel at Anime Expo earlier today, the creative team behind Disney’s upcoming anime series Dragon Striker sat down with journalists for an intimate pre-panel interview. The creators offered a delightful and passionate glimpse into what fans can expect from the series, tackling everything from the show’s surprisingly robust moustache game to the unique ways their personal relationships with sports shaped the fictional game at its heart.

Living Vicariously Through Moustaches

Before diving into the mechanics of the show’s lore, the interview kicked off with a lighthearted discussion about facial hair. When asked about the impressive array of moustaches featured in Dragon Striker, creator Sylvain Dos Santos admitted that the heavy presence of facial hair in the series comes from a place of deep personal yearning.

“I’m so happy [people notice them],” Dos Santos laughed, admitting he is living vicariously through his animated characters. “It’s physically impossible for me to grow a moustache! I can’t get one. So maybe that image of moustaches is strongly going into my land.” He joked that these design choices were “moustache pieces” meant to make up for what he can’t achieve in real life, turning a personal physical limitation into a recurring, stylish aesthetic for the show.

Balancing Fantasy and the Stress of Sports

The central challenge of Dragon Striker is combining the intense, grounded passion of sports with the limitless boundaries of a fantasy world. When asked how they went about creating a fictional sport that balances both worlds to appeal to both fantasy nerds and die-hard sports fans, the team revealed that their differing levels of fandom actually helped strike the perfect harmony.

Dragon Striker Creative Team: Charles Lefevbe (Creator/Director), Sylvain Dos Santos (Creator/Executive Producer), and Paul McKeown (Head Writer)

Director Charles Lefebvre opened up about his complicated relationship with real-world sports, admitting that while he enjoys soccer, he cannot handle the pressure of being a hardcore fan.

“I love soccer, but I’m not so much a big fan, also… it stresses me out too much,” Lefebvre confessed, explaining that he gets easily overwhelmed by the anxiety of competition. “It’s something I love to watch sometimes, but I just stay outside of the room because I feel if I’m watching it, I’m going to lose it. I have some strange relation with sports because I get easily pushed into them.”

However, Lefebvre utilized that intense anxiety as the ultimate creative fuel. For him, the goal of Dragon Striker was to capture the electric, overwhelming energy of being part of a stadium crowd. “What I want to bring to Dragon Striker is this feeling when you’re able to have a community when you’re watching a match, when the crowd is screaming… I want to make sure we can capture this energy, this vividness, and make the crowd just mix more inside of us.”

DRAGON STRIKER – “The Armorer of Mestras” (Disney) ODWARD, MILO, SSYELLE

Lefebvre relished the world-building process, taking elements of our reality and twisting them just enough to fit a fantasy landscape, exploring how characters feel and see a world where a sport is essentially the lifeblood of the universe.

The Perfect Combination: Passion, Drive, and the World Cup

Writer Paul McKeown brought a different perspective to the table, leaning heavily into his identity as a massive sports fan. For McKeown, the marriage of fantasy and soccer was completely natural, drawing parallels to real-world global events.

“I think sports and fantasy seem like the two coolest things you can combine, ever,” McKeown said enthusiastically. “I’m a huge soccer fan. Like, if you’re watching the World Cup right now, you realize that there’s a winner and a loser, and you see players doing these amazing feats. There are just naturally great stories there.”

DRAGON STRIKER – “The Awakening” (Disney) SSYELLE

McKeown noted that as “massive fantasy nerds,” the team realized that both genres share the exact same DNA: high stakes, unmatched passion, and relentless drive.

“To us, it made perfect sense,” McKeown explained. “In these stories, there’s so much passion and drive, and I think it really roots you. You get sucked in because the characters want to win. I think it’s just like a great combination.”

With a creative team that spans the spectrum from anxious casual observers to hardcore World Cup fanatics, plus a shared appreciation for top-tier animated facial hair, Dragon Striker is shaping up to be an energetic, high-stakes fusion of genres.

Fans attending the Dragon Striker panel later this afternoon will get a closer look at the fictional sport, but if this pre-panel interview is any indication, the series will have plenty of heart, stress, and a whole lot of style.