What's the deal with Hanzo & Genji? || Character design & lore discussion

Channel:
Denmark T B Skyen
Subscribers:
304,000
Published on ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY1ze1rViOI


Overwatch 2 (formerly Overwatch)
Game:
Overwatch 2 (2023)
Category:
Discussion
Duration: 30:01
15,495 views
1,057

Join the channel discord: https://discord.gg/SWZ8zYv (25 uses only)
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SOMETHING I FORGOT TO BRING UP IN THE VIDEO:
Hanzo is named (presumably) for Hattori Hanzo, a famous samurai in the service of Oda Nobunaga. Genji is named for Hikaru Genji, the main character in The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki, a story generally considered to be the first modern novel, as well as an incredibly important piece of Japanese literary history.

Why are the names important? Well... Hattori Hanzo is traditionally associated with the ninja clans of Iga, and in pop culture is often conceptualized as a ninja or associated with them. Genji, on the other hand, is a nobleman and warrior, very much embodying the traditional values and storytelling of Japanese nobility in the middle ages.

So there's an interesting, ironic inversion of their relationships there - Hanzo's name associated with the ninja, while Genji's name points towards samurai tradition.
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So, here's me taking a bit of a risk. In this video we're going to be discussing a lot of real-world history and culture of Japan, and relating them back to the character pair of Hanzo and Genji and their relationship and interactions as a metaphor for the "soul" of Japan within the multicultural IP of Overwatch.

As I mention in the opening of the video, comments correcting my mistakes are EXTREMELY WELCOME. I've done my best to do my research, but the trouble with research is that the more research you do, the more aware you become of all the stuff you don't know about yet.

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Twitter: http://twitter.com/tbskyen
Patreon: http://patreon.com/castercomix



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Other Statistics

Overwatch 2 Statistics For T B Skyen

T B Skyen presently has 163,545 views for Overwatch 2 across 7 videos, with the game making up 4 hours of published video on his channel. This makes up less than 0.68% of the total overall content for Overwatch 2 on T B Skyen's YouTube channel.