wildforms:

So, Hanzo. I know it’s kind of a running gag in the fandom that Hanzo seems to do a complete 180° turn when Genji interrupts his annual honor/grief session at Shimada Castle to reveal that he is, in fact, not dead. This, while amusing as a joke, is a rather inaccurate account of things, to be honest.

Genji does not reveal who he is until after their fight. Hanzo never actually attacks once he knows who he is facing. The entire time he fights, he operates under the assumption that this is an assassin sent to kill him, and a cocky one at that since Genji’s words would be nothing short of cruel & taunting coming from an outsider; which Hanzo assumes he is at this point.

What Hanzo does do once he has seen Genji’s face is, first and foremost, question. Genji? What have you become? He is obviously off balance there. And he should be, this is an extraordinary, emotionally charged situation, especially if one subscribes to the idea of Hanzo having difficulties with social interaction outside formal settings.

As someone who definitely has those, and had them even more severely in the past, I can say that one coping attempt for this is the attempt to follow scripts for situations. The moment we cannot adapt a script to fit our current situation, we are left flailing. I tend to get anxiety attacks and go mute, but Hanzo, as we have seen, reacts with anger to cover perceived vulnerabilities, which includes just about any situation where he is not in control.

Now, there really is no script for meeting the brother you thought you killed, believed dead for ten years. Nor would it be easy to adapt a different script, much less make one up on the fly. Hanzo is left reeling – he looks aside, taking his eyes off someone who bested him in combat, leaving himself open – and once he regains even the smallest piece of control, he tries to cover that, by getting angry.

What I find especially interesting however, is his reaction to Genji telling him that he is forgiven. That is the moment where he turns his head, looks first incredulous, then angry. Eyebrows go down in a frown and all.

There are two aspects to this that I can see.

One, Genji says it so casually. Hanzo spent ten years berating himself, trying to atone or at least find some kind of redemption, and then there comes Genji. No two minutes after revealing himself, it’s almost as if he shrugs the entire thing off. Hanzo did not witness Genji’s struggle and growth, he only sees the final product, and without the context, it looks an awful lot like he just went “lol whatever I’m a cyborg now”, especially considering his younger self’s attitude.
The audience knows that that isn’t true, but Genji’s explanation to Hanzo is sparse at best, so Hanzo can’t draw the same conclusions. Depending on how you interpret the level and type of Hanzo’s grief, this could mean he either thinks that Genji should not forgive him, or that Genji is disregarding ten years of effort on Hanzo’s part. Both make him angry, and his anger only really has one target to be directed at.

Two, and this includes hints from in-game dialogue, Hanzo might be feeling that Genji is presuming entirely too much. If we analyze Hanzo’s dialogue, we find that while he clearly has both a very low opinion of himself (in contrast with his opinion of his skills) and continues to circle around the matter of Genji’s “death”, he never outright states that he regrets doing what he did, much less apologizes to Genji.
In fact, and correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t think there is any positive character-specific lines between Hanzo and Genji. All of it is either Hanzo being in denial – and who can blame him, after ten years of living with a solid fact – or hostile, plus that one where Genji is downright baiting him with the “What’s wrong, don’t you recognize me?” line.

Thing is, Genji indirectly ruined Hanzo’s life once when they were younger, their fight being just the final escalation of a longer conflict. (And I’m saying this without any sort of judgement or blame assignment, mind you.)
And now, when Hanzo has created a new life, a routine that, while not comfortable is at least familiar, he shows up to turn everything upside down again. Despite that, his words imply that Hanzo is the only one who needs to be forgiven. He presumes that Hanzo wants Genji’s forgiveness (which might well be true, but whether Hanzo will admit that to himself is a whole different story), and that he knows what Hanzo needs.
As an older sibling, I can definitely say… that grates on the nerves. “Hello here I am, I know everything better than you :)”

Again, that is very unlikely to be Genji’s intent, but it is probably what Hanzo gets. Even if we assume Hanzo does not have issues with reading social cues, Genji is a cyborg who lives with omnics. Things like facial expression, tone, even body language to a degree, are obscured or distorted. The non-verbal aspects of communication suffer from that.

In the end, the reason Hanzo cannot simply accept Genji’s forgiveness and move on to a fluffy reunion is two-fold. He does not believe he deserves it (“You are wrong, I am beyond redemption.”) and it simplifies a very complicated issue he has been dwelling on for ten entire years.

I fear if I go on now I will just repeat myself in an endless ramble, so, bottom line: Hanzo is struggling to deal with an extraordinary emotional situation, tends to use anger as a coping mechanism, and actually never outright attacked Genji when he knew it’s him.

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A very good observation, lots to think about here. Thank you for sharing!