It has been more than six months since WeGotThisCovered spoke to Chainsaw Man star, Ryan Colt Levy. Since the success of the anime’s first season back in 2022, anticipation has been high for the show’s second season. While there were reports that the series’ second installment might be in production, the voice actor has plenty to say about what’s to come once season two hopefully gets released.
Levy spoke to WeGotThisCovered during Oz Comic-Con in Melbourne, Australia last weekend, where he shared some excitement about what to expect once the second season comes out, and shared some moments during his time working on season one, as well. According to the voice actor, there had been one part during his voice-acting session for Denji that was seen as a challenge, and that was recording his battle against the Katana devil.
“A lot of it came down to some of the action-y stuff. The screams and stuff like that. There was one in particular when fighting the Katana devil, and I have to hold out a scream for like eight seconds. At first, you think ‘oh it’s eight seconds.’ But it’s really long when you hold out this scream and the emotion behind it and all of that. So that I remember being a little tricky because I can be all trashy and crazy but one long gigantic thing with all that emotion, that was actually quite challenging.”
When Levy had last spoken to WeGotThisCovered, he revealed that he was a manga reader and had a ton of hope when it came to this anime adaptation. Since the first season concluded, the voice actor’s thoughts have not changed, and he praised MAPPA for the amount of work that had been done to make the anime adaptation “the most faithful” to the source material.
“For me, personally, absolutely. I think, in general, the whole first season was one of the most faithful adaptations I’ve seen of any form of media. And as someone who’s deeply loved the manga, I thought the way they made the slight changes for cinematic choices were so brilliant. Going in for each session, I was just grinning ear to ear, being like ‘the’re doing it. They’re doing it!’”
At the moment, season two does not have an official release date. Levy remains hopeful that a second adaptation will happen, and makes bold claims that the events in season one were “tame” compared to season two. This could make sense, considering the next story arc might contain more emotion, action, and characters if it follows the manga’s story.
“If they follow it as fatefully as they do, I’m so so so excited for a lot of the other devils and fiends to get their time to shine because the show gets so much more weird and fun and strange and sad. There’s a lot. So many people are just finding this show through the anime and it’s going to take them on such a rollercoaster. And I’m just excited to see how people respond to it all […] Honestly, season one is tame compared to what’s to come next.”
So, what made Chainsaw Man a success? To Levy, it was the spirit of not only the show but also the production team behind it. He praised MAPPA’s creative and artistic choices in bringing this show to life and hopes that this continues once season two is officially announced.
“I think more importantly than worrying about ‘hey does this pannel look exactly the same?’ is ‘the spirit the right way?’ And to me, you can tell that everyone in MAPPA really deeply gets these characters and cares about them. And I personally love the choice of making it a more cinematic energy because to me, when I was reading it, it felt like I was reading a movie. And I think it needs that grounding for something that’s so big, it really keeps the heart together.”
As the wait for season two continues, viewers can still rewatch all the episodes of Chainsaw Man season one on Crunchyroll, both in Japanese and English.
