It was originally intended in Tekken 5 to make Jinpachi Mishima someone who had the Devil Gene yet his transformation was anything but similar to Kazuya and Jin. The story got retconned which Katsuhiro Harada later said that Jinpachi was merely possessed by an angry ghost. Jinpachi was instead someone who came back to settle scores with his treacherous son Heihachi. He once had a loving relationship with his grandson Kazuya and later opened the King of Iron Fist Tournament 5 hoping someone could destroy him. He's the first neutral final boss in contrast to the other final bosses before him.
So why did the staff behind Tekken 7 decide that the Devil gene should be given to Kazumi's bloodline instead of the Mishima bloodline? It's revealed in Tekken 7 that Kazumi intends to finish Heihachi off to save the world from massive suffering. She hates her Devil Gene heritage. Heihachi ended her life in a life and death battle. Heihachi was later seen trying to end his own son's life and later grandson's life when he saw the Devil Gene manifest. He probably viewed it as a threat to whatever plans he had so he had to get rid of them both.
I think it does make sense to have the Devil Gene not from the Mishima bloodline. Lars Alexanderson appears in Tekken 6 as its main protagonist. He's also the illegitimate son of Heihachi by some unknown Swedish woman. The reason why neither he or Heihachi had the Devil Gene was because they have none of it. Kazumi herself was the host and not the Mishima bloodline.
My bizarre conclusion behind this plot twist is this. I think the people behind Tekken want to show the audience that Heihachi is evil by his own free will. He's probably still Tekken's most evil villain even if there were bigger threats such as Azazel or Ogre. I mean, what kind of person would use his own son or grandson for his schemes? Tekken 3 had Heihachi try to use Jin and later shoot his own grandson. He started the whole mess by overthrowing his own father and later having a conflict with his sons. He's the start of the whole bloodline curse and it didn't take the Devil Gene to do so.
What are your thoughts on this matter?
Harada is an idiot, he ruined Tekken by wanting to make Heihachi look like a "good guy" .
ReplyDeleteJinpachi was one of the big points, cementing the fact that the Mishima bloodline was cursed from long time and was inevitable that they would try to kill each other.
His dialogue doesn't match Harada's own "explanation", for one, Jinpachi has his own will, yet his sanity is clouded by the devil, proven by the in-game dialogue in Tekken 5 between him and Feng Wei.
Jinpachi:Shine! (Die!!)
Feng:Are you a Mishima?
Jinpachi: Ikanimo! (Indeed!)
Jinpachi indentifies himself as a Mishima without hesitation, so he's not possessed by something else, but rather changes his own personality when the devil gene is "active".
In his ending, the text says "Jinpachi's mind is consumed by the devil" , not "a stupid ass angry ghost takes full control of Jinpachi"
Devil Jin has the same strain that changes Jin's personality where Jin wants to get rid of the devil inside him while Devil Jin is proud of it and claims he has full control over the devil.
Heihachi himself said in his Tekken 5 interlude
"No matter if you have the devil's blood or not, you can't beat me!"
Kazumi is an afterthought done by Harada so that he could explain why Heihachi was clean by the Devil gene yet Kazuya has it, when the original explanation was the Jinpachi was the original source of it (that in turn got it from Azazel)
Kazumi was also set up as a shady and unlikeable b**** as she is an assassin coming from a family of demon cult assassins that was sent to kill Heihachi but ended up falling in love with him.
When previously the weight of the curse of the Mishima bloodline, sign of inevitable struggle, now it's a generic curse that happened to fall upon the latest generation of Mishimas.
Harada says "The team wants to mislead" when in reality he's blaming them for his shit writing.
Same thing he did about Kazuya (written to be a one dimensional evil monster that we're supposed to hate more than Heihachi) and Angel claiming that she wasn't Kazuya's good side despite not being the producer in the T2 Era but merely a VA for some characters.
He has a huge boner for Heihachi and has a hate boner for Kazuya, making him look like that he's more evil than a baby eating monster, forgetting everything Heihachi did before T7.
Harada should be fired to save Tekken
Hi Darkkiku96
DeleteI didn't see this one and you have a lot of good points. Harada surely undid himself like Frank Miller huh?
I always thought that Mishima bloodline was cursed (Devil Gene or not) so why was it eventually removed from them and transferred to Kazumi? Though Heihachi proved himself to be the most evil person even without the Devil Gene, right?
Also, I do agree Harada should get fired. For the good he did -- he undid himself.
Hello Sean Akizuki, thanks for replying.
DeleteHarada did much worse, since Tekken 4 where he first took charge of the series, unsurprisingly the worst tekken ever in terms of gameplay, then Namco stripped him of his role as producer in Tekken 5
(the old one returned to make the game like Tekken 3 and brought back the gameplay as it used to be, many old characters from T2 and reintroduced Mishima style Jin)
Unfortunately T6 had him back, so you can see his dirty paws signs all over the game.
Tekken 6's CG art book was written that Jinpachi did have the devil's blood and there's some connection between him, Azazel and the Mishima bloodline.
Originally only Kazuya had a demon that possessed him in the T1-T2 days, only in T3 for this demon to try to take over Jin, as Kazuya promised him his soul in exchange for his power.
Ogre also was another form of Devil's possession\corrupted god (same tattoo given to Jin by Devil, on their same arm)
In T4, when the old producers\directors went away, Harada was promoted to producer and he started this "Devil gene" trend, which was similar to George Lucas' attempt of giving a scientific explanation for the force, we all know that attempt was extremely bad received.
In T6 to make it obvious that Heihachi didn't have it, he made Lars a Mishima and of course introduced Alisa as he likes kawaii teenagers schoolgirls.
It was only after T6 but before TTT2 that Harada tweeted that Jinpachi had a "angry ghost" despite twitter not counting as official info in my book.
In Mass Effect 3, this was done for a character that was well received by fans and was confirmed to be brought back, only to be killed off on twitter, with no mention in the official game.
Kazumi as i've said before wasn't even meant to exist, she was supposed to be Kazuya's long dead mother that perished giving birth to Kazuya or shortly after, this leaving Heihachi to raise Kazuya alone, only that he resented him because he was a frail and gentle kid, not worthy of being a successor of the Mishima, that's why at first Heihachi adopted Lee, in a attempt of manning up Kazuya.
Heihachi was evil from Day 1, but Harada likes him so much that he thinks of him as the true hero and the "lesser of evils" , hiding in T7 all of his previous wrong actions and showing Kazuya to be the irrational and violent one.
Kazumi was there just to show
"see Heihachi wasn't evil, she was evil and ruined everything, it wasn't totally Heihachi causing all of this"
Come on it's so obvious that she was supposed to be a scapegoat, a female assassin coming from a family of demon worshipping assassins, perfect offender to blame for the Mishima mess.
Jinpachi who should have been in Tekken 7 has been axed for.... Akuma.....
.....
Also notice how Jin turned evil and became like Kazuya so that Heihachi would be still shown as good in comparison, and of course the sudden hatred between Kazuya and Jin despite him supposedly hating Heihachi a lot more than him.
Aside from the retcons and bad writing, he lied about the fact they wouldn't sell classic characters because they had morals (implied in the statement)
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dmcgtk7U0AAH-dJ.jpg
but in T7, They sold Armor King (from T1), Lei wulong (from T2), Anna Williams (from T1), Marduk (from T4) and Julia Chang (From T3, original character gameplay from T1)
Harada should be fired indeed, but now he has even been promoted.
Be ready for T8 as i have no idea how it will be, but considering there's Harada's lapdog working on it, it's not going to end well, i fear for Kazuya.
Hi once again!
DeleteYou made some good points. TBH, I think trying to whitewash Heihachi is a bad idea. Heihachi's actions led to the whole mess. Remember that Kazumi wouldn't even want to get rid of him if he wasn't going to become a threat to the world.
TBH with how Tekken 7 turned out -- I have every right to be negative.
Meanwhile, check this out:
How I Think Tekken's Devil Gene Plot Could've Been Done Better Than Tekken 7's Story