[2] He faced significant competition in the Japanese senior field, including Daisuke Takahashi, Nobunari Oda, Takahiko Kozuka, and Tatsuki Machida, who all had finished ahead of him at the previous Japan Figure Skating Championships.

[3] In that season, Hanyu landed his first successful quadruple jump, a quad toe loop,[4] and won his first medal at a main international senior competition at the 2011 Four Continents Championships, where he placed second behind Takahashi.

[15] Despite a knee injury and ankle sprain, he managed to finish fourth at the subsequent World Championships behind Patrick Chan (gold), Denis Ten (silver), and Javier Fernández (bronze), helping to secure three berths for the Japanese national team at the 2014 Winter Olympics.

[26] However, he switched from Armstrong's to Rota's soundtrack for the Olympic season as he thought it stood out the most among the different versions of Romeo and Juliet, and he had long wished to skate to that specific music piece.

[51] In the final standings, Hanyu finished first ahead of Patrick Chan (silver) and Denis Ten (bronze), capturing the first Olympic gold medal for Japan in the men's singles event.

Hanyu came back with a strong free skate, landing both planned quadruple jumps successfully, and claimed his first world title with a total score of 282.59, winning by one of the smallest margins of 0.33 points ahead of silver medalist Machida.

[67][68] In May 2015, the Madame Tussauds museum in Tokyo unveiled a life-size wax figure of Hanyu in the costume and ending pose of his Olympic short program "Parisienne Walkways".

[71] In memory of Hanyu's and Shizuka Arakawa's victories at the Winter Olympics, two monuments were installed in April 2017 in their hometown near the south exit of the International Center Station on the Sendai Subway Tozai Line.

"[74] The offensive strategy earned him back-to-back world records at the 2015 NHK Trophy and the Grand Prix Final, the latter remaining the highest score with 110.95 points until the Olympic season.

He also noted that the new layout resembled the original choreography of the program, with the opening jump entered and exited by a spread eagle, and a quadruple toe loop placed in the second half.

[90] Alongside the movies' storyline, which contains fantastical elements as well as energetic battle scenes, Hanyu wanted to illustrate the duality of sensitivity and strength, femininity and masculinity, that he believes to exist in every human being.

The ankle injury from November, which had led to a three-month hiatus from competing and a lowered technical difficulty of his Olympic programs, was more severe than anticipated,[125] and he would continue to take painkillers until the conclusion of the exhibition gala.

One of my coaches has called the Axel "the king of jumps" and while being grateful to the triple for all it's given me, I'd like to aim for a quad.On March 7, 2018, the Japan Skating Federation announced that Hanyu had decided to withdraw from the upcoming World Championships to allow his injured foot to recover.

[129] In April, the ice show Continues with Wings was held at Musashino Forest Sport Plaza in Tokyo to celebrate Hanyu's win of back-to-back Olympic titles.

Yoshihide Suga, who had served as Chief Cabinet Secretary of Japan at that time, stated that the award had been given to appreciate Hanyu's "historic achievement" that "gave dreams and thrills to the people and hope and courage to society".

[138] In 2019, Hanyu took part in a ceremony in Sendai to unveil the design of a new monument depicting the opening pose of his free skate program Seimei, performed at his second Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.

[72] After the introduction of the new +5/-5 judging system in 2018, Hanyu was the dominant skater in the men's short program, having scored above 100 points seven times in eleven international competitions,[139] including three world records.

[141][142] In the free skate segment, Hanyu set two world records in the 2018–19 season and landed five quadruple jumps in one program for the first time in his career at the 2019–20 Grand Prix Final.

[158] Hanyu had already skated to Kiyozuka's piano version of the Japanese song "Haru yo, koi [ja]" in various exhibition galas since 2018 and performed with him in a live show collaboration at the 2018 Fantasy on Ice.

The program reflects his memories and feelings from the time when he did not make any progress with the quadruple Axel, how he tried to push forward, and eventually caught something in his grasp as shown by the final pose.

Ito suggested a style that resembled the costume design of Hanyu's previous short program to "Otoñal" by Raúl Di Blasio from the 2019–20 season, and added some golden feathers at its finalization.

[165] In the program, Hanyu portrayed Uesugi Kenshin, a daimyō from the Sengoku period of Japan in the 16th century, who was said to be the most powerful warlord of his time and known for his belief in the Buddhist war god Bishamonten.

[165] The second part of the program shows Kenshin's reflection on the battle and his life until that point, including his inner conflict of no longer wanting to fight, but being forced to continue in order to protect his loved ones.

[157][179] The next day, Hanyu debuted his short program Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso with a clean performance, receiving maximum grades of execution for the step sequence and the final spin combination as well as a perfect 10.00 for the interpretation component.

[187] On February 6, two days prior to the competition, he arrived at Beijing airport being surrounded by officials in protective gear, who received criticism for the lack of social distancing amidst the corona pandemic.

[190] After the two mistakes, he delivered a clean performance, placing third in the free skate and fourth overall with a total score of 283.21 points, behind Nathan Chen (gold) and his Japanese compatriots Yuma Kagiyama (silver) and Shoma Uno (bronze).

[195] On February 14, he shared more details about his injury, stating that the sprain had been worse than initially assumed, and that if it had been a competition other than the Olympics, he might have withdrawn as his doctor had suggested him to rest his ankle for ten days.

[215] He recreated the setting of the Beijing Olympics with a preceding six-minute warm-up session and skated another clean performance with the same technical content, including a successful opening quad Salchow.

[215]: 4 Hanyu's achievements at the Olympics earned him spots in numerous prestigious lists and international athlete rankings, including Forbes' 30 Under 30 Asia (2018),[216] ESPN's World Fame 100 and The Dominant 20,[217][218] and Marca's 100 Best Male Sportsmen of the 21st Century.

[220] In 2022, Hanyu was the sixth most-searched athlete on Google Search worldwide behind Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Serena Williams (all tennis), Manti Te'o (American football), and Shaun White (snowboard).