Copyright Polygon
For a movie about a guy who can transform into a Devil with chainsaws where his head and hands should be, Chainsaw Man — The Movie: Reze Arc is a surprisingly horny story. Its protagonist, Denji, spends as much time fantasizing about the women in his life as he does fighting evil, especially in the first half of the anime film, before the stakes are raised and the action takes center stage. This may come as a surprise if you’re going into the movie with no prior knowledge, but fans of the series (or the manga that inspired it) already know Denji for the love-lorn, sex-obsessed character he truly is. And yet, even among the fandom, there’s an ongoing debate over whether Denji is a deplorable creep or a metaphor for an entire generation of young men trapped in a state of arrested development. For Ryan Coly Levy, the English voice actor who plays Denji in the Chainsaw Man dub, there’s no question about it. “Denji is one of the most important characters in modern storytelling,” Levy tells Polygon. “I think he's one of the most mischaracterized characters I've ever experienced,” the voice actor continues. “He is extraordinarily deep and layered in ways that he doesn't fully process. He's had zero education, he's been shown zero affection, he has an arrested development of a lost childhood that he never had, and he is feeling things that every human being feels, not just at a hormonal age, but all throughout their life.” While some viewers may consider Denji to be a “lecherous, weird idiot,” Levy points out that most of the character’s perverted teen-boy moments only take place in his head. “He is never outwardly saying anything like that,” Levy says, adding that more often than not, it’s Denji being manipulated by Chainsaw Man’s female characters — and frequently backs away when romantic situations get too serious. “What he wants is to be just seen and loved and valued as a person, and he doesn't even know how to ask for that, because he doesn't have the economy of words. He doesn't have the ability to express himself with the depth of what he actually has inside.” Levy adds that, during his time at conventions, he’s found that female fans understand Denji better than male fans do. “They don't just see him as this horny boy,” Levy says. “They see the soft, broken child who didn't have a chance, who is a mess, who doesn't always do the right thing or say the right thing. But there's an innocence to him that is so real and so raw and so pure and so honest.” Ultimately, Denji works as a character, not because of his Chainsaw Devil powers, but because of his extremely human emotions. Those emotions aren’t always pretty, but they allow the anime to tell a relatable story even against its absurdist fantasy backdrop. “He's just so genuine to the human experience,” Levy says. “He says the things that we feel that we don't often allow ourselves to say.” Then, the voice actor takes it one step further, making a bold claim that he admits some audiences may be quick to laugh off as hyperbole. "I really think Denji is one of the most universally relatable characters ever written," Levy says. “He's a person who feels essentially like an alien. The Devils don't want him, the humans don't want him. He's like an alien in this world who's just trying to figure out how to be a human in a world that is trying to eat everyone alive, and that’s what most of us feel like in this world, right?”
