Rody Soul is a young man with charm, charisma, and a special bird that shares his soul. Denji is a young man who became the deranged Chainsaw Man after a brush with death. The two characters come from two very different worlds, with Rody appearing in My Hero Academia and Denji starring in Chainsaw Man. At first glance, these two characters might seem miles apart, but they are tied together by Ryan Colt Levy, their English dub actor.

During a panel at Florida Supercon, Levy spoke about how he sees himself in both of those characters. “Rody from My Hero Academia and Denji from Chainsaw Man have both really odd deep rooted personal connections to me in ways that I wasn’t expecting to ever find in a character,” Levy said.

In fact, both Denji and Rody are devoted family men. When we first meet Rody, we see how protective he is of his younger siblings. Denji’s origin story involves the character trying to pay off his father’s Yakuza debts. While Denji may be a bit more extreme than Rody, Levy finds pieces of himself in both characters. “Those two are definitely my boys. But I love them all.”

Levy went on to talk about other characters he’s voiced, and how he hasn’t always loved them. “It’s weird because it’s not a character any of you would have ever seen. It was a live-action dub, and it was this horrifically awful human being of a character that did really depraved and horrible things. It was one of the few times I’ve worked on something that I really felt gross afterwards. I don’t like feeling that way, because you have to find a way to make those moments believable, good or bad, or in between. It wasn’t the kind of thing where I was going to humanize this guy. That was really rough, and thankfully not a reccurring role.”

Levy did not specify who the character was, but it might be fun to go through his filmography and guess for ourselves. Do you have any theories?