don’t know why people think genji’s the good guy and hanzos the bad guy?
genji was straight up abusing his status within the clan to playboy around and when asked to stop and be part of the family he just kept going so the elders ordered hanzo to do it.
hanzo either doesn’t do it and they send someone else or genji continues to shame the family with his excessive life style, and rage (mentioned by zenyatta in his talks with hanzo)
The shimada clan was a criminal empire though…
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I don’t like either of them.
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so they’re both bad guys?.. I can live with that
yakuza are special thing, they’re not just criminals
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Now if only the lore would ever progress so we could see some resolutions and get more answers instead of just more questions.
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Genji was the one who didn’t want to be part of the family business.
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I know right, I want more world building and fleshing out of characters, so many unanswered questions.
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Its like reading a book but at -200% and you can only turn the page if you enter in the konami code backwards with your eyes closed.
so much lore potential there but its just a slow crawl as of late.
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yet he still used the money, influence and hard work of others to pay for his playboy life style.
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Hard work of illegal activities, genji also looks down on his past lifestyle presently.
Being a playboy doesn’t make you a bad guy…it makes you a “bad boy.”
Genji was a bad boy, not a bad guy.
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As someone who’s Japanese, I can tell you that the Yakuza are nothing but criminal
But that’s a story for another time
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They are the sons of a Yakuza family. Hanzo was the heir and next in line to lead the family’s empire following Sojiro’s death, and was “groomed” as such (this is a term used in one of his young master skins) meaning he was affording little freedoms once he was of age.
Genji on the other hand was his father’s favorite, given the nickname of ‘Sparrow’ , and allowed to exercise the freedoms Hanzo was denied.
In HotS, which isn’t a canon extension of lore, but fun to think of - Genji has voice lines where he mentions he and Hanzo sneaking out together and getting caught by their father - it is a good memory.
Hanzo, in the Dragon’s short, mentions their father telling them ‘stories’ such as the dragon brothers story we get in the same short, which can imply that Sojiro was a doting father for many years when the boys were younger (Hanzo’s sprays that show him as a child show him to be happy and carefree) so it’s not until Hanzo had come of age did his ‘grooming’ to take the place of the heir came to be.
Genji was NOT the heir, as he was the younger brother, but he still had a part to play in the family, and his playboy lifestyle that his father allowed soon had to come to a halt once Sojiro died.
It is likely the elders of the Shimada-gumi, already having their claws in Hanzo’s psyche by the age of 28, ordered Hanzo to ‘rein in his brother’s bad attitude and habits, or end them’. Likely by now there was a wide rift between the brothers when they were separated as teens, and points of contention between them as well.
Genji probably failed to heed Hanzo’s warnings about his behavior, and in the end Hanzo struck him down.
From here it gets interesting, as Hanzo almost immediately fled from his home - either out of guilt for what he had done, or fear of some sort of retaliation from his family. Either way, he considered what he had done entirely unforgivable outside of death (which is why he tells the ‘attacker’ in the Dragon’s short to outright kill him once he’s been bested). This self-inflicted punishment for his crime is also why he breaks into the Shimada castle every year on children’s day to honor Genji because Hanzo needs to find something to get his honor back, even if he knows doing this will not help him, it’s a ritual he feels he must do.
Now that Hanzo has Genji’s forgiveness (which he doesn’t readily accept, because Hanzo does not see the journey Genji had gone through from a broken man “I just wanted to walk again” to getting revenge on his clan, to traveling the world seeking a sense of self, and then finally finding a master in Zenyatta to restore his soul and find peace within himself).
To Hanzo, Genji is just some stranger with his brother’s face come home after a decade telling him to let go of Everything that Hanzo’s been keeping close to his heart, and Hanzo cannot see what Genji himself had gone through to get there, so he pretty much rejects the idea of forgiveness. This is why he reacts so negatively in the short at the end.
So to answer your post OP, Hanzo and Genji come from a bad family. Hanzo did something he considers unforgivable, but has been forgiven by the very person he committed the crime against. Genji has changed his ways and lifestyle entirely since his youth, but looks back on some parts of it fondly. Hanzo is currently going through somewhat of a mid-life crisis and trying to find himself now that the one thing he built his adult personality on was shattered. Who is he without his guilt, self-hatred, and the need to restore his honor? Time will tell.
There’s a lot of nuance here, and really it’s left up to the audience to make that decision.
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Would you actually kill a family member for such thing ?
That alone is insane. Hanzo is honestly one of the worst personalities out there. I wonder how he is not arrested or something.
I think they are more like a fantasy ninja clan. So basically Genji is a nukenin(runaway ninja).
Maybe it comes from the fact that Hanzo killed his brother just because said brother was not sharing his point of view.
Being a playboy is not even a bad thing, especially when you are young. It was also never said he abuses his position to do pickup girls. It is said he liked an easy girlsand games life. he also was the preferred son from the father perspective. Genji was not living by his familly principles, which is understandable as the familly was stated as a criminal organisation.
As for the rage thing. If you got killed by your own brother you have some good incentive to be a bit upset about it.
I think that the story arc is that they both done each other wrong and they are currently both on separate redemption trajectories. Instead of facing one another and admitting their mistakes they are each trying to find peace within themselves in other ways. This is pretty good drama in my opinion. Eventually they are going to have to clash, or come together. Could work out either way.
I have popcorn ready.
So Hanzo was hired by the Shimada Clan to kill Genji his own brother, which he attempted and thought he accomplished if it wasn’t for Overwatch rescuing Genji.
When Genji had the opportunity to kill Hanzo he refused because he had shown Hanzo humility and compassion.
So you tell me who is bad and who is good?
The rage didn’t come until after he got turned into a Cyborg. 