Idk if this is just me, but has the lore this season been kind of very mid?
It’s like they’re just telling us the big plot points and ignoring all the slow stuff in the middle that BUILDS up the big stuff.
I don’t care about mizuki’s betrayal because we hardly got to know him before it and we got almost no relationship built between him and the people he’s betrayed. We’re told these people helped him move past his fear of leaving the Hashimoto and accept the consequences of his actions without seeing why he loves these people enough to leave them.
I don’t care about Hanzo and Genji’s reunion because we didn’t see Hanzo’s character grow to the point he able to hug his brother again. We don’t even see Genji acknowledge his brother almost getting shot on live television outside of a joke.
I don’t care about kiriko reuniting with her father because most of it happens offscreen.
Idk it might be just me tho. I have issues with Kiriko’s relationship with the Shimadas, as well as MANY issues with how Hanzo and the other Yokai were, but idk how to put it in a way that’s both succinct AND coherent.
Any way pls lmk if ANY of you have any thoughts. I need to see more people discussing lore.
as a hanzo fan and main who was so entirely hyped about this season, i agree and get ready cause this might be a long one folks i havent watched shion's newest lore tidbit but from what i've seen they (spoilers) show her without her human-augments (a guess that many people made, that she looks like any other omnic without the mask or whatever else). I thought I was going to love this season and while we got some pretty good skins, it didn't feel centered around either of the Shimada enough. The Hashimoto kidnapped Hanzo in his short story, which while Hanzo does mention, nobody says anything about that, or tries to comfort him where he could've been executed if not for kiriko. Hanzo being the former heir to the Shimada which in lore is the family that the Hashimoto fueded with for dare I say centuries.. (burning down their orchards, the assasination of hanzos father and so on). Why DIDN'T we get more about the brothers? I'm not hating entirely on the season as I did see some good in it, but for being an entirely lore-focused season only to not focus on what was really important irked at me. I don't like Mizuki and I don't like his behavior, I'm sorry I get what he does and why he does it but he's not thematically interesting enough. Why focus on the new era when the old era, still undescribed is right there? A short story practically gave us more in 17 pages than an entire season of Overwatch gave us with lore. Doesn't that sound a little crazy? If it does, that's cause it is. I'm all for Genji leaving to now finally be with Hanzo and Kiriko as 'family', would've loved to see more of Shion's relationship with characters like Hanzo because they clearly should've interacted one on one at least once because elder against former heir would've been such a cool targeted scene. Hanzo also doesn't act nearly as affected as I feel he should be. He's going back to the place where he was nearly executed, and they've could've done the exact same thing to him they did to Genji. He even got worse treatment because unlike Genji he was bound and tied before they attempted to do so. But nobody happens to bat an eye to Hanzo saying anything about it outside of a joke like op mentions, but we get zero clarification of if he's discussed this before with anyone which context clues say he hasn't until right now. Nobody thought to stop him and ask him if he was good because they were in the middle of getting Genji.. but we don't even get a scene of someone checking on Hanzo after. We did get the reveal he's been living in a loft and Kiriko takes notice of how Hanzo seems to be relatively lone when it comes to his furniture, since he's always moving all the time. I kind of wish we were able to see more build-up with the characters.. why are we just immediately skipping to character duos who people have waited to interact in lore for years (example, genji introducing hanzo to cassidy like 'hey this is the guy that i was in blackwatch with, cool right?') but we don't much of anything with any other characters either. the webtoon felt so rushed and uninteresting and out of everyone to get a story shion and mizuki get one, fair, but hanzo and genji don't even get a singular reading of a comic yet? we can only hope blizzard isn't tossing them to the side to make way for one of the final cinematics of this season being about kiriko and mizuki yet again
i hate to sound negative or too critical but as a writer myself for most of my life, semi-literate to literate, i don't understand why they have all of this potential to bring hype back to older characters and don't use it. it almost recently has felt like characters are being so tied into other characters that they lose their OWN originality or ways to do things, if that makes sense?
