Katsuhiro Harada, Bandai Namco's Tekken director, took to X to inform fans that series villain Heihachi Mishima might be even more wicked than originally thought. In addition to being a profoundly power-hungry maniac, Heihachi is also a terrible father.
OK, you probably already knew that. In Tekken 1, Heihachi tosses his five-year-old son Kazuya off a cliff, leading the child to make a pact with a demon and get strong. In Tekken 2, Heihachi gets rid of Kazuya again, this time, by dropping him into a volcano. He seems to be unfamiliar with "gentle parenting."
And he really is a scoundrel. In his X response to fan art of Kazuya's half-sister Reina calling Heihachi "father," Harada reminded fans that "Heihachi has numerous illegitimate children. I doubt if he remembers Reina very accurately."
- "I didn’t have a single ally": Tekken 4's negative reception put series boss Katsuhiro Harada under so much stress that he left Namco for a year
- Tekken lead Katsuhiro Harada says he's spent decades "mentally preparing" for AI to overtake humans, but it's not happening: "If AI had really advanced, we wouldn't be pouring 10, 20, 30 billion Yen into making games"
It may not be worse than punting your toddler off a precipice, but I think willfully forgetting who your own children are is still pretty lowly behavior.
In his defense, I guess, Heihachi really does seem to have enough children to fill out an entire branch of government. Harada told Tekken fans in 2011 that Heihachi has "about 18-25 [illegitimate children] (all over the world) or more," though he can only "confirm 9."
"Imagine a Tekken game where the entire roster is composed of Heihachi sons," reads a popular Reddit comment. Or, now that Heihachi has been added to Tekken 8, maybe a future patch could let him deploy his children like throwing knives.
"I didn’t have a single ally": Tekken 4's negative reception put series boss Katsuhiro Harada under so much stress that he left Namco for a year
Tekken lead Katsuhiro Harada says he's spent decades "mentally preparing" for AI to overtake humans, but it's not happening: "If AI had really advanced, we wouldn't be pouring 10, 20, 30 billion Yen into making games"
