#// but goin thru the jin tag on tumblr last night was a nightmare and it's bc of the tk6 damages

[demonsfate]

An interesting theory someone posed on Reddit. I find it to be plausible. But honestly, I don’t think this is it. I don’t blame Kazuya, but instead I blame Lars (which I do enjoy Lars mind you, he can’t help what the writers did to Jin) because I’ve seen this pattern happen so many times in media - especially comics.

Jin suffered from Character Assassination™️ Think about it. This was the first game in which they introduced a brand spankin new protagonist since Jin’s debut. Obviously, Jin would be a protag that would easily be compared to Lars - and some fans may not like it, some fans may get into debates on why Jin’s the better protag. What best way to steer clear of this and hype the new MC up? By ruining the old MC. If the old MC is now a horrible, horrible person who lost all his compassion, and tells people to die constantly, and is the result of a million deaths - then no one’s going to like him anymore. Therefore, it’s no competition that Lars is the better MC for a fresh new start. I feel this is even more obvious with the eye-rolling Alisa “death” scene. The infamous one where I keep laughing at how unnecessarily, and uncharacteristically cruel Jin is about a frickin’ robot’s shut down. That scene was BLATANTLY written to get both Lars (our new MC) and the audience furious at Jin and his behavior. It was BLATANTLY trying to write Jin as hateable as they can - especially when the robot girl in question is this perfect waifu material girl who is very sweet, very pastel design, and agrees with everything MC does. It doesn’t matter how it makes no sense for Jin to behave this way, how much the fans know Jin wouldn’t behave this way because this goes against everything his character was, what mattered is Jin’s now an irredeemable asshole and we have a shiny new protagonist. Don’t think too much about it.

The only reason why they made Jin a “plot twist” anti-hero(? if you can even call him that) is because they realized they already did this shit with Kazuya. And Jin in this game was already far too much like Kazuya. Therefore, it makes him a little different. A little more “surprising.” (Except with Jin, it wasn’t surprising at all when the writing is pulled out of their asses and it falls apart once you really start analyzing Jin and what the character is supposed to be)

Character assassination is a common ploy and marketing trick by companies when it comes to media - a way to either trick the audience into loving a Brand New Character, or to get rid of a character they simply got bored of / no longer like. As I said above, it happens so often in comics, but it can happen to any long ongoing story regardless what type of media it is.

Of course, it’s safe to say they’ve realized their mistakes. While Jin was absent in TK7 for the most part, he was set up to be the main protagonist again in TK8, and many of his more antagonistic intros/win animations were removed in TK7. And Harada, recently, has even acknowledged that yeah, he noticed how most of the fans didn’t like Jin being an “almost” villain.

Now I don’t know if this is it or not - I could even go as far to say it is both, to make Jin feel more like Kazuya so they can get their sweet, sweet mishima asshole money because Heihachi and Kazuya do so well, and to also hype up new MC at the same time. But I strongly believe it was to hype up the new MCs (Alisa, and especially Lars) It just makes the most sense when you think about it.