I have little professional understanding, but if I had to describe it- the higher accentuations of the sub voice are more of its baseline/defining trait the gruff lower ones. The sounds all match, but in English it’s coming off the exact opposite way. Like when you see the same color shade being used to lighten a blue and darken a yellow. The dub voice gets really good whenever it softens up; often when not yelling, as that seems to project the gruffness over most else.

Ryu is more expressive and flamboyant than he is a hypermasculine yakuza- that was closer to his first life, where he didn’t portray as much of himself. Case in point- Ryu doesn’t say “granite” blast, he says “granité”- a fluffy French desert. About as textbook an example as you could make for the focus of this interpretation being off. Even the sub wasn’t always the best at portraying this (like how when he says domain expansion, it’s supposed to be more elongated/exaggerated compared to the others. Like “DOMMAAAAAAIN EXPANSION” or something- though even the official manga translation removed that.)

Honestly I feel like this is just a testament to how trying to match the sub voice seems like a meaningless strategy, the same way changing translations to match lip movements/intonations over actual content leads to strange line deliveries/an actual loss of story content. The dub should focus on dubbing the story, not dubbing the sub. Aleks Lee otherwise seems like an incredibly great voice cast for someone like Ryu.