Paul Castro Jr. has a suspiciously cheerful relationship with failure. Most people treat rejection like a cursed item in an RPG — something to avoid, vendor, or bury in the inventory — but the voice behind Genshin Impact’s Freminet and NEO: The World Ends With You’s Rindo Kanade seems to collect difficult challenges like they are limited-time event rewards. In a 2026 interview with Naomi Kyle on Game Rant’s Character Select, Castro explained that acting’s greatest perk is not the victory lap; it is the obstacle course. 🎭
For a performer, that mindset is less a quirky preference and more a survival strategy. Acting is a career built on auditions, callbacks, rejection emails, self-tapes, and the occasional moment of triumph that arrives just often enough to keep the whole circus moving. Castro does not pretend the grind is glamorous. Instead, he frames it as the actual point. “Don’t we all [like a challenge] to some degree?” he said during the interview. “Maybe some people don’t; they like easy street. But for me, I just find it so rewarding when something is hard, and whether you succeed at it or not, the pursuit of success is very gratifying.” 🎮
That philosophy is admirably consistent, if slightly unhinged in the best way. Castro applies it to auditions, voice sessions, and — crucially for this story — video games that politely inform players they are underleveled before flattening them. While traveling, he found himself deep in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a game where timing, parries, and dodges can matter more than raw stats. Facing bosses clearly designed for a later chapter, he did not retreat, grind, or wait for the numbers to become friendly. He treated the encounter like an audition: show up, learn the rhythm, take the hit, and try again. Then he did it for eight hours. ✈️
“I was on the plane the other day, and I was playing Expedition 33,” Castro recalled. “And there are these boss fights that they present you with where you’re definitely not strong enough to do them that early in the game. But I was like, ‘If I parry or dodge every single attack, I think I could beat this right now.’ And so I spent an 8-hour plane ride doing that. And I wound up being an early boss.”
Yes, the sentence ends with a small grammatical gremlin, but the spirit is clear: persistence turned a doomed encounter into a victory. In Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, plenty of bosses lurk off the beaten path, waiting to humble explorers who wander in with optimistic equipment and main-character energy. Many of those fights can indeed be won through patient parrying and dodging, assuming the player has the reflexes of a caffeinated hummingbird and the stubbornness of a voice actor who has survived pilot season. 🛡️
What makes the story more than a funny travel anecdote is how neatly it mirrors Castro’s creative life. Acting and boss fights are both rhythm games wearing different costumes. One demands emotional timing; the other demands frame-perfect timing. Both punish impatience. Both reward repetition. And both can make a person question their life choices at approximately 3 a.m. 😅
| Acting Challenge | Expedition 33 Boss Fight |
|---|---|
| Endless auditions and rejections | Repeated wipes and retries |
| Learning a character’s voice | Learning an enemy’s attack pattern |
| Staying resilient after feedback | Staying calm after a party wipe |
| Booking the role | Landing the final parry |
| Celebrating briefly, then auditioning again | Celebrating briefly, then finding another boss |
Castro’s approach is refreshingly old-school: mastery over shortcuts, effort over optimum conditions. He is not waiting for the game to hand him a victory, and he is not waiting for the industry to hand him a perfect career. He is showing up, learning the pattern, and swinging again. In an era obsessed with tier lists, meta builds, and guaranteed outcomes, that is almost rebellious. Also, it is a terrible way to protect one’s sleep schedule. 🌙
For Genshin Impact fans, Castro remains best known as the voice of Freminet, the diver with the mechanical penguin and a personality drier than a desert puzzle. For NEO: The World Ends With You fans, he is Rindo Kanade, a protagonist who also spends a great deal of time dealing with impossible odds. The through-line is clear: Castro gravitates toward characters who survive through perseverance, and he plays games the same way. If a boss says “come back later,” he hears “challenge accepted.” If an audition says “no,” he hears “next attempt.”
In the end, Castro’s airplane saga is a tidy reminder that difficulty is not always an obstacle to fun. Sometimes it is the fun. Whether he is in a recording booth, an audition room, or trapped in a losing fight at 30,000 feet, he keeps pressing the same button: try again. The seatbelt sign may flicker. The party may wipe. The rejection email may arrive. But the pursuit itself, as Castro says, is very gratifying — and occasionally it even comes with an early boss victory and a story worth telling. 🏆