A kid who is good at something walks away from the winning team to build one from nothing with his friends. That choice, rejecting easy victory for the harder, realer thing, is the entire show. Top Striker doesn't ask you to watch a prodigy dominate. It asks you to watch a team learn to want something together, failure after failure, until they actually become dangerous. The football is just the language it uses to say that.

Thirteen-year-old Hikaru has loved football since he was a baby, when a friend of his father handed him a ball he has barely put down since. He travels to Italy to learn the game and signs with a powerful club in Genova, but he soon leaves it for Columbus, a hopelessly weak side, together with his friend Anna. Through many setbacks the team slowly improves, eventually beating Margerita, one of the toughest clubs in the city. Then Genova announces its first soccer tournament, and Hikaru and his teammates face rival after rival while growing up along the way. An action-packed sports story about an underdog team fighting its way upward.