@bugeyedbats replied to your photoset
I’m actually curious as to how you read into the scene of Kaz finding out his mother ordered him killed. Whenever he started laughing, I just thought, oh that wacky asshole, he doesn’t even care - I never thought that it might be denial, which puts an entirely different spin on things.
[The number of people Kazuya cares about is very low and the number of people he has relatively untainted good memories of is even lower. If we take the game’s conceit that Heihachi actually was not an abusive jackhole to Kazuya pre-Kazumi’s death (which personally I don’t but that’s a whole other can of monkeys) we can easily count her death at his hands as likely still one of the motivating factors in Kazuya’s hatred towards Heihachi and desire to kill him.
Kazuya has formed his entire identity around surpassing and killing his father but those things would mean nothing without the bedrock of what Heihachi did to him, and Kazumi is irrevocably intertwined with that bedrock. To lose his faith in her, to accept that his mother who he has no doubt lionized in his memory as One of Two Shining Lights in his Dark Life before Heihachi Snuffed Them Out™ not only was not perfect but wanted him dead would shatter Kazuya’s entire sense of who he is and why he’s done anything that he’s done.
And at this point in his life Kazuya cannot do that he has come too far he has gotten too close to finally getting what he’s always wanted that he can’t afford to question anything right now. And likely he never will.]
