Published Jul 5, 2026, 8:00 PM EDT
A new fantasy series quietly premiered on Disney+ on June 10, with all eleven episodes. However, outside a small pocket of anime fans, almost nobody noticed. In fact, it’s so underseen that it doesn’t even have enough reviews yet to register a critic or audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. And that’s a shame, because it might be the closest thing Disney has ever produced to*** Avatar: The Last Airbender***, which still remains the gold standard for animated fantasy series.
This show pairs stunning anime-influenced western animation (just like Avatar) with a coming-of-age fantasy built around a magical sports drama. And that sport is basically soccer with superpowers. Given the timing, the series has also become an accidental companion piece to the current World Cup hype. It reportedly spent close to twelve years in production, and that level of care and attention to detail shows in every frame. All of that would be reason enough to check it out, but now, there’s an even bigger one.
The show is Dragon Striker, and it’s officially been **renewed for a second season. **During the 2026 Anime Expo, Disney announced that Dragon Striker will return for a second season in early 2027 on Disney XD and Disney+. So, now is the perfect time to catch up on the series, especially with a full 11-episode season already sitting on Disney+ and only a few months left before Season 2 releases.
Your answers point to the iconic universe your values, your instincts, and your particular way of seeing the world were built for. This is where you would find your people — and your purpose.
You believe in the cause — in the idea that freedom is worth fighting for even when the odds are impossible and the empire is vast.
You understand, in the deepest part of yourself, that the journey matters as much as the destination — and that the world’s beauty is worth protecting even at great cost.
You believe that love, loyalty, and doing what’s right are not naive sentiments — they are the most powerful forces in any world, magical or otherwise.
You see the world clearly — its power structures, its hypocrisies, its brutal arithmetic — and you are not paralysed by that clarity. You use it.
You believe the future is worth building — that curiosity, cooperation, and the expansion of understanding are not just ideals but the most practical path forward for any civilisation.
The series follows Key Nagatatsu, a farm boy chasing a spot at a sports academy built around gorotama, a magical sport that plays out like a supercharged version of soccer. Key soon discovers he might be the legendary Dragon Striker of prophecy, which is where the Avatar comparisons come in, and he ends up joining an abandoned group called the Knights (essentially his version of the Aang Gang). The series begins as a scrappy underdog sports story and then slowly widens into something much bigger, as old conspiracies and buried truths about Key’s family start surfacing.
According to details shared at Anime Expo, Season 2 will push the Knights through broken friendships and more buried secrets as an ancient evil resurfaces. The stakes escalate from there, as the Knights fight to reach the Banner’s Helm final. Key and the rest of the gang will all have to decide how much they are willing to sacrifice in pursuit of victory as everything gets put on the line.
*Dragon Striker *is available to stream on Disney+.
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Charles Lefebvre