Juna - Does anyone like her?

[Experiment1]

?

[Kurosu]

She is awesome. The game (like all trails) has a slow pace but there is some real character development.

[The Tempted Man]

everyone likes her outfits tho

[Shadow]

Short answer: Yes
Long answer: Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees

[Falzar]

She is an out going girl and a rare one at that. Girls are subtle with their display of emotions.
I find that the story time span is way too short for character development ( character go boom zip bam in a few days and go thru emotions like it's nothing ).
Typical bright girls in JRPG. Should brighten you in a bad day. She is annoying in some parts, but that's part of being human.

[Oostin]

She got the Alisa disease

[Koby]

She grows on you as the game goes on.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Juna is terrible and a hypocrite. She is going to college and goes on field exercises where she acts as a uniformed representative, and she is going way, way out of line and openly accusing and antagonizing every other person she comes across. She is disrespectful to her teacher and her fellow classmates. She praises Captain Claire (who directly helped annex Crossbell), who taught at the Police Academy, but then disrespects her teacher... not because he annexed Crossbell, but because he defended the new territory from Calvardian invasion.

If she is supposed to be fanservice for Crossbell, she is pretty patronizing fanservice. Retconning her into the Belheim apartments and having always been the SSS' number #1 fan aside, why on earth would the SSS divulge highly confidential information to her? Ao Why on earth would the SSS tell her who the Azure Testament was? Or tell her about the Gralsritter? Abbas explicitly told them NOT TO TELL ANYBODY ELSE! WTH?

Then there is the downright awful Crossbell apologism. Suddenly Juna and the people of Crossbell act like they were victims of an unwarranted invasion, when in Ao the vast majority of the NPCs either openly or implicitly supported Dieter's revolution. Juna and Crossbell NPCs act like they are enduring a brutal occupation when they are under the most care-free occupation I've ever seen. Real life occupied territories would be envious to be treated as well as Crossbell was!

Then there is the patronizing SSS fan wanking. Juna acts like the SSS were selfless heroes who are being persecuted... when anyone who played Ao would know that the SSS were given multiple chances to improve Crossbell's situation for the better, and declined every time. The SSS willingly allowed the occupation to happen. That's completely on them. If the SSS told Juna their highly classified secrets and told her about the plot of Ao, then Juna should damn well know what they did.

Juna's crying scene in chapter 2 only made me wish I could throw her off the tower. Or punch her face.

Otherwise, she has a bland character design and I hate looking at her.

[Kyle G]

I dunno, her character archetype is already similar to Estelle's: upbeat, outgoing tomboy with an optimistic outlook. But the difference here is Juna's arc heavily revolves around her pride to her home country, while Estelle's arc is more wanting to do good deeds in the memory of her dead mother.

I personally like Estelle better, because I understand caring about family and loved ones more than feelings of nationalism. At the same time, I sorta understand why people would feel grateful and indebted to be part of Crossbell. The place is a rich cultural melting pot that pioneered many of Zemuria's advances in technology. But from a narrative perspective, I found Estelle and her sense of purpose much more compelling. Sometimes when Juna was screaming about Crossbell's pride while antagonizing Rean, it grew annoying after a while.

Also, it felt like Juna's pride was a bit misplaced. She mostly seems to love it because she relates it to being the hometown of her heroes: Lloyd and the SSS. Whenever she reminisces a happy memory of Crossbell, it's usually related to tales of the SSS's heroic deeds that occured during Zero and Azure. Before the SSS intervened, an evil mafia organization had almost full control of the entire country. Along with corrupt politicians, demonic drugs being sold on the black market, and the Heiyue adding another layer of d*uchebaggery to the city's shady underbelly. Sure, the orbal net is great, but before Lloyd took action, Crossbell wasn't exactly the nicest place to be proud to live in.

At least you don't see Estelle bragging about how great Liberl is. Like if Estelle was constantly boasting about how airships originated in Liberl and not anywhere else, I wouldn't even thought of placing her as my favorite female JRPG protagonist because she would've been too annoying for me.

[stm8022]

Originally posted by Val the Moofia Boss:

Then there is the downright awful Crossbell apologism. Suddenly Juna and the people of Crossbell act like they were victims of an unwarranted invasion (..)

There's never a "warranted" invasion, simple as that. Whatever excuse the invader and their apologists might come up with, that's all it's ever going to be, an excuse.

Regardind Juna herself, she treads a bit too close to the "energetic girl" anime archetype, but i don't dislike her. And obviously yes, there is some people out there who do like her, to answer the OP's question.

[Trelares]

Originally posted by stm8022:

There's never a "warranted" invasion, simple as that. Whatever excuse the invader and their apologists might come up with, that's all it's ever going to be, an excuse.

Sorry to say but in this case Crossbell is not really a victim. They used a Weapon of Mass Destruction against Erebonia, in what scenario you expect the Erebonian Empire to just sit back and let them do whatever they want? Even after the weapon is seemingly gone its only logical to occupy the state.

[stm8022]

Originally posted by Trelares:

Sorry to say but in this case Crossbell is not really a victim. They used a Weapon of Mass Destruction against Erebonia, in what scenario you expect the Erebonian Empire to just sit back and let them do whatever they want? Even after the weapon is seemingly gone its only logical to occupy the state.

You're presenting facts backward and creating false justification as a result. It was Erebonia and Calvard who decided to invade Crossbell after its declaration of independence. In response to this unwarranted invasion Crossbell defended itself, which included destruction of Erebonian military base on its border, one housing actual "Weapons of Mass Destruction" capable of shelling Crossbell and turning it all into rubble in mere hours. The weapons which Erebonia actually fired at Crossbell, after invading Erebonian units were defeated.

In other words neither initial invasion nor the annexation that followed were justified -- it's like saying it's "logical" to make someone your slave because you've attacked them and they punched you in the face in self-defense.

[Citronvand]

Originally posted by stm8022:

It was Erebonia and Calvard who decided to invade Crossbell after its declaration of independence.

You said it yourself, Crossbell started it. They declared independence without the empire's and republic's approval. You can't just declare your independence from your ruler(s) unless both parties agree to it or you're planning for war. Crossbell rebelled and they paid for it.

Don't get me wrong, I don't blame Crossbell for doing it, they were in a pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥ situation, but that doesn't change the fact that they started it.

[stm8022]

Originally posted by Citronvand:

You said it yourself, Crossbell started it. They declared independence without the empire's and republic's approval. You can't just declare your independence from your ruler(s) unless both parties agree to it or you're planning for war. Crossbell rebelled and they paid for it.

You certainly can declare independence from your ruler -- they're only your ruler if you accept it and are willing to follow their lead. It's a voluntary agreement and if someone wants to cancel it, there's no requirement for the other party to agree -- because obviously someone willingly taking unfair advantage of the other party isn't really going to agree with cancelling such arrangement. Requiring it is a catch-22 setup.

Now, if said ruler is a tyrant who won't respect the wishes of people they're overseeing then yes, they might try to enslave people who don't want such rule over them. But don't ever claim such action is warranted. That's just a greedy prick throwing their weight around (and it's perfectly fine to resent them for it)

[NisseDood]

At least of all CS characters, Ash is probably my favorite because hes not so overaly formal 24/7.
Hes Pretty much a more rude Randy.

[butterbattle22]

I like her more than Alisa at least. Her attitude is not great when CS III starts, but she's a teenager living in the country that, in her eyes, invaded and overthrew her hometown. So while I agree with the substance of almost everything Val wrote.....I also feel like, I don't know, it's kinda unfair. I mean, I get that this is called the Legend of Heroes and not the rants of generic teenagers, but I also like following Falcom characters that have more issues when they're first introduced, but grow over time. It's hard to do character development on characters that were already perfect (e.g. Towa, Laura, <3 )

As for the issues in Crossbell, I really empathized with Dieter's revolution, definitely way more than Colonel Richard in Sky. Even when I first played Ao, even with all the shady stuff he did, I always felt like Crossbell was stuck in an impossible situation. Osborne said it himself, "How long do you think Crossbell can survive before it is crushed?" (paraphrasing)

So I would have to say that I disagree with some of the other posts on this subject as well. I wouldn't say that Crossbell "did nothing wrong" or anything so gratuitously ridiculous, but I definitely think that Erebonia was the aggressor (as it usually has been). Crossbell was already an independent territory and had never agreed to be part of Erebonia or Calvard; this is political and economic exploitation of two superpowers on a small neighbor. We can see parallels of this type of situation in the real world. If you think they're justified in swallowing up Crossbell because it wants to be independent, do you think the USSR was justified in annexing its small western neighbors? Furthermore, Crossbell used its super weapons in self defense after Erebonia already invaded, directly on the military fortress where the invasion was being organized, not on any civilian population. If anyone thinks Crossbell attacked first, you literally got fooled by Erebonian propaganda and probably haven't played the Crossbell arc.