Do you think Jin Kazama fucked up in Tekken 6 and activelly seek redemption in Tekken 8 ?
That's two opinions that diverge reguarding Jin's character, wether his war spreading action during Tekken 6 were justifiable or not, and whether he really protected the world from a bigger threat or if he committed atrocities for nothing in the end despite what we could beleive to have been noble intentions.
After reading those two opinions, I concluded two things :
First , Jin was truly convinced that he was committing short-term harm for long-term good, and most certainly hoped that he would be killed along with Azazel, and perhaps hoped that fighters of Lars Alexander's caliber would be enough to put an end to the threat that Kazuya represents if the latter decides to set out to conquer the world right after (which he will do from Tekken 7). But on top of that, Jin may have wanted to get rid of his devil gene unfortunately more than he truly cared about the loss of innocent lives in the process, probably due to the influcence of Devil.
Second, Jin's plan indeed failed, because Azazel's spirit survived, and is threatenign to resurect through Zafina's body who tried to have the demonic entity's spirit sealed into her left arm, only to realize that she is slowly, but surely losing control of it. Both Zafina and Jin didn't foresee this terrible outcome, yet it makes it will make it seem that all the sins Jin's comitted, in the hope that humanity would still be protected despite the death count, were for nothing.
And this is why Tekken 8 may be the chance for Jin to atone for his actions in Tekken 6, which he guenuinly regret according to his bio for the game : "Jin swore to end Kazuya's reign of terror in order to atone for the war and destruction he had caused"
Jin is even willing to die in order to stop Kazuya, which could be seen as Jin thinking that He himself also deserves to die for his crimes in Tekken 6
Yet I can't help but imagine Jin's reaction once Zafina manages to meet him again with Xiaoyou and Claudio's help, and she tells him that his fight against Azazel didn't killed the demonic entity, and thus that the crimes he had committed to protect the world from a bigger threat may actually have been for nothing.
I beleive Jin is gonna be devastated once he learns that, and focus even more and killing both Kazuya and himself in the process in order to "atone" (Although I personally beleives that living with what he did would a more efficient way for Jin to atone).
Overall, even though Jin's intentions are understandable, his logic is terribly flawed. Azazel wasn't a direct threat, with more time Jin could have and should have at least tried to seek another way to awake the entity and destroy it, and only use WW3 as a desperate last resort (the short time frame between Tekken 5 and Tekken 6 doesn't seem to indicate that Jin searched for others "solution" to get rid of Azazel and his Devil gene when he was the Mishima Zaibatsu's dirigeant).
And in Tekken 8, Jin is still focused on killing Kazuya, thinking that both himself and his father should not live, despite the fact that Jin's mother mother asked her son to "save himself and Kazuya" according to the trailers
In my opinion I think Jin blindly sees the Devil Gene as the cause of all the evil and tragedies in the world, yet I believe his judgement is clouded by his own trauma.
In Tekken Bloodline, Heihachi makes Jin thinks that Ogre attacked Jun and her son because the entity felt the power of the Devil gene inside of Jin (yet we know Ogre especially seeked strong powerfull opponents, and Jun was one of them). Who know if Jin weren't fed the same lies and semi-truth by his grand-father in canon ? And on top of that Tekken Bloodline also showed us Jin learning a lot of negative things about his father, from crimes Kazuya committed between Tekken 1 and Tekken 2 and which were listed, Kazuya being called a demon by Heihachi himself, and Paul Phoenix confirming to Jin that Kazuya was “a real bastard” for whom “winning wasn’t enough, he had to hurt”. again, who know if Jin hadn't learn those things during Tekken 3 and before Tekken 4.
And then in Tekken 5 after seeing Jinpachi possessed by an world threatening demonic evil entity, Jin once again came to the conclusion that the Mishima's blood was truly a world level dangerous curse that the world would be better off without. What Jin didn't know though, is that the demon who possessed Jinpachi had nothing to do with the same Devil gene that both Kazuya and Jin carry, and he was unaware that the devil gene wasn't actually a the Mishima's curse, but the Hachijo's curse.
And Jun made the mistake of never telling Jin about Kazuya. As a result, Jin developed the idea that his father was born monstrous, perhaps without knowing that it was Heihachi's horrible actions that led Kazuya to the path of evil, and that with more tim with Jun's influence, Kazuya may have been able to find salvation for his soul.
Jin thus cannot see that the true causes of all the tragedies surrounding his life don't specifically come from the existence of the devil gene, but rather from Heihachi's ambitions and own violent and abusive actions toward his own family.
Had Heihachi not weaponized the Zaibatsu mishima and imprisoned his own father to let him die, Kazumi would not have let her duty and mission trump her feelings towards her husband, who had indeed become a srious threat to the world through his actions (especially if the intro of Tekken 8 does indeed imply that The Zaibatsu Mishima may have been the origin to the loss of other exorcist clans which protected the world against demonic threats). Without Kazumi's death, Heihachi would not have thrown his son off a cliff, without which Kazuya would not have become the demon man that he is, without which Jin would not have been born in circumstances conducive to his development of the power and influence of the Devil gene within him.
