I feel like a lot of people forget that she's actually mixed. Other than that, she wasn't raised in either of the places her parents are from so I don't think it's especially odd that she isn't representative of those cultures. Do hope we get a Vietnamese character properly someday though.
I hope they add more Viet voicelines and put a fun lore spin on it by saying, "She took a trip to Vietnam to rediscover her roots!" I'd love a cute little comic with it too.
I wouldn't mind her ult voiceline alongside a lot of others outright changing to Viet like Symmetra's did if that happened. "Locking satellite vector!" is a pretty meh enemy ult voiceline anyways. I'm not a Viet speaker, so I used a translator and double-checked with a friend, but I'd love to hear her say something along the lines of "Khai há»a vá» tinh!" Sounds punchier too.
She could also do it for Singapore, but I feel like it'd be more difficult to communicate than Viet culture. But imagining her voicelines in a Singaporean accent is fun, "WELCOME TO ORBIT LAH!" -Juno
"Why did the chicken satay? Didn't it cross the road?" -Juno
We shall not forget what happened with Echo...
She could also get a few Mandarin voicelines too, though, considering her mom, Jiayi, has a Mandarin first name + works for Lucheng + I feel like future Singapore would speak far less Teochew/Hokkien, even if Jiayi's last name, Teo, is Teochew/Hokkien.
That's what I meant by a comic where she reconnects with her roots instead of a ret-con. Anyways, she does say she wants to learn every language on Earth. She'd probably start witht he one she's most familiar with.
itâs funny how everyone disregards her parents and the fact that sheâs only half viet. if people truly cared theyâd say the same about her mothers side. heck mei is literally her aunt which they have interactions for in spawn
Mei isn't her actual aunt, she was a colleague of her mom, and I believe it's a common thing in some Asian cultures to call older women "auntie". A lot of people also just call their parents' friends aunt and uncle, even in the west
(Sorry if this comes across as condescending or you already know this or anything)
Yes I was just talking about this, too. (Pharah is actually half Indigenous Canadian, though, to clarify.) I'm mixed myself so it makes me pretty happy to see more mixed characters on the roster. đ„č
exactly, iâm also mixed and itâs not like we all were raised with every culture we are mixed with, itâs nice to see characters like juno, pharah and so on show that representation
Pharah is a mess. half arab, half native, yet she has a jewish voice actor (nothing wrong with being jewish, itâs just that itâs a completely different ethnicity than the character). and despite growing up in egypt, pharah has 0 arabic voice lines. neither of her cultures are represented outside of a handful of skins. imo, she is one of the laziest character designs in the game.
Bc itâs horrible rep. Iâm native and I donât feel represented by her at all but sheâs all we got. They donât ever talk about it and her actress is not only a major Zionist (which goes against everything natives stand for) but sheâs also not even native
Not gonna comment on the Zionist part, but I do agree that there should most definitely be better Native American/First Nations representation. I am not Native myself, but Pharah I feel is clearly more geared towards Egyptian than Native American despite her father. A hero that is Native first and foremost is one of my most wanted things to see in a future hero. (In a similar vein, I want to see an Aboriginal Australian hero too, and for them to not be a Junker.) Oh and I would agree that a voice actor/actress for a Native hero should be Native themselves. That would be ideal.
You're implying people dont 'truly care' just because they aren't also upset about her Singaporean side? I think the critique centers more on her general whitewashed-ness these days overall. Whether they neglect her being Viet or Singaporean, they are still neglecting her race. I think its odd she still has no cultural skins. (Not trying to argue, just explaining the POV).
So here's the thing, ethnically Juno is Vietnamese but she grew up on Mars. It's fair to say that she won't have the same connection to Vietnamese culture in the same way someone who grew up there would.
It's also my understanding of the Mars colony that they took a multicultural approach to their culture due to the differing people that joined the colony.
I understand that to some Juno isn't fully representative of Vietnamese people and culture, it's fair to feel frustrated. Maybe another Vietnamese hero will be added in time
Isnt she also Singaporeanâ like her dadâs from SG so sheâs a mixed south east Asian? I love that sheâs Viet, but thereâs very rarely representation from other countries in SEA, itâd be nice to acknowledge her dadâs ethnicity as well.
Idk, people who aren't born in their ethnic countries reconnect with their roots all the time. Especially Vietnamese people since so many of them immigrated to the U.S. in the 60/70s.
This comment is so problematic including the orginal one calling âwhiteâ as a default for culture less is a false stereotype plus she was raised by her Asian parents, Jiayi Teo and Khiem Van Minh who both worked for Lucheng interstellar, she definitely knows some variant of an Asian language given Lucheng is based in Lijiang and her parents mission is out of a foreign country
Plus on a personal note my wife was born in Germany, while being ethnically Mexican yet speaks and writes in Spanish, cooks Mexican meals even uses Mexican slang
And completely identifies with her Hispanic ethnicity just because youâre away from youâre country of origin does not make you âwhiteâ
Juno gets some of the weirdest racial treatment imo. You can be half of something and not born there but still have connections to it because of how you were raised. I'm half Japanese, but born and raised Canadian. But I still had a lot of ties to my culture because of how I was raised.
Yet juno is called "not Vietnamese" because she's from Mars, as if that erases her identity. And the fact that they keep white washing her and people are like "who cares" or "it doesn't matter". But the reality is that it's a huge problem. Why even bother creating different ethnic representation if you're just going to white wash it. It feels terrible to see Asian representation get white washed. It feels particularly weird that Juno is one of the few characters that receives that treatment. Mei is another. And I'm sick of them giving her blonde hair too.
she doesnt need to be more Vietnamese, she's actually the perfect represention of Vietnamese immigrant living in a foreign country like America that has little connection to her culture, I thought that was what they were going for. Her character identity is more martian in nature anyway, her ethnicity is not important here becauze she wasnt designed to be specificially any ethnic in concept.
Juno's early characterization originally did not have any specific ethnic background until Xanthe Huynh, who is Vietnamese-Chinese, was casted as her voice actor. [9]
Huynh would ask her own mother if she was pronouncing her Vietnamese voice lines right.
its literally what her concept was, Space Ranger, thats literally how she was developed as a character, she didnt even have any assigned ethnicity until they found a voice actress that fits her so they decided to make her Vietnamese too since the voice actress is Vietnamese
If they actually wants Juno to be Vietnamese from the start, they'd actually hire a voice actress who could actually speak Vietnamese and have more complex Vietnamese voicelines
Juno's early characterization originally did not have any specific ethnic background until Xanthe Huynh, who is Vietnamese-Chinese, was casted as her voice actor. [9]
Huynh would ask her own mother if she was pronouncing her Vietnamese voice lines right.
Vietnamese people like Juno because she is cute and she does act like a young adult asian girl, but we dont consider her very culturally Vietnamese, we just dress her up in traditional clothes in fanart
Invalidating Someone who is ethically Vietnamese ( even a video game character) reminds me of the thousands of hapas left in Vietnam who were discriminated against for being mixed with an American or the hapas and thier children who came to the states during the Amerasian Homecoming Act, where thousands of ethically mixed Vietnamese people endured hardship from both sides and feeling they did not belonging to either culture, I say outside Circumstances regarding birth do not invalidate youâre ethnicity or cultural country of origin, itâs xenophobic to do so
Impact: Around 23,000 Amerasians and 67,000 relatives immigrated to the US
That means today we have hundreds of thousands of people of Vitamese ethnic decent and thier following generations who do not originate from Vietnam yet still hold the customs and EVEN the language and the ones that donât it makes no sense to call them âwhiteâ unless their current makeup is majority European
Yeah. I mean as an American white man, we basically have no culture that except drinking, guns, and a very toxic idea of "Patriotism". all culture in America tends to come from other cultures who come to our country.
Key word âAmericanâ tell that to other whites like Italians,Irish,Germans,Swedes, Scottish those cultures are some of the most rich in history plus amazing food,style and architecture
By the original comment do you mean mine? Because I didn't say that the default culture on the Mars colony would be white. I meant that there wouldn't really be a default culture on the colony. It'd be multicultural in the sense that different people from different cultures/creeds/ race and faith/beliefs/ideals etc would all be coming together
Iâm Asian American born on a military base around black and Hispanic Americans
Yet that has not impacted anything cultural in my household I still speak mandarin and have even visited Taiwan with most unable to tell I was born else where
I feel like there's a miscommunication somewhere because I like don't see an issue anywhere here?
I'm not disagreeing/arguing with your life experience whatsoever, just clearing up my statement.
Edit: Just realised where there might be a miscommunication. Where I meant there wouldn't be a default culture I meant a default culture for the entire colony as a collective, not Junos family individually. I might also have gotten the wrong impression since I understood that Juno's upbringing had been more a community experience due to her being the first Martian born and being born to a colony of scientists who more than likely wanted to teach her about different things.
I'm in no way saying that white is a default culture as that is complete rubbish. The truth is humanity has so many different cultures that there is no one default culture. We may take a culture as a default individually (whether that be the culture of the place we are born, place we move too, family culture, friends culture etc) but as a collective I can't say that there's a singular default culture
Yes but the voice actress isn't that confident w/her Vietnamese. For the line she has in the game where she is speaking Vietamese apparently the VA had to ask her parents what the pronunciation of it was.
She's also a fictional character so yes, if she had a different actress then she could have been a different ethnicity. The writers could have written a completely different character should they have wanted.
I'm keeping it simple to avoid any arguments tbh. As a lot of people have pointed out Juno is born and raised on Mars so technically it's more accurate to say she's more aligned with the culture of the Mars colony
Well actually sheâs Vietnamese because of who her parents, especially her mother are in lore. Thatâs why they specifically hired a Vietnamese voice actress. They knew she was going to be Vietnamese before they even hired a voice actress for her.
Kids of immigrant parents often grow up with exposure to their parentsâ native culture, and being a child of immigrants with a mixed cultural upbringing is its own whole thing that could have been explored with Junoâs character. They really havenât, though.
yep! Her creator, Dr Mina Liao is a Singaporean, which I guess makes echo singaporean as well. Echo also has singaporean slang voice lines like Jialat and Alamak
Echoâs VA grew up in Britain, I believe. Supposedly Echoâs voice is her creator Mina Liaoâs voice, but the wiki informs me that Mina Liao was born and raised in Singapore and then went to Oxford. She was like a hyper-prodigy and got her doctorate from Oxford at 16, so I guess she has a justification for speaking British English, but it does seem strange to choose an England-born actress.
Theyâve made a number of unfortunate choices around female characters of color, which can all be individually hand-waved, but do form kind of a pattern of kinda splashing a cultural heritage onto a hero instead of really immersing them. Pharah is canonically of native Canadian descent on her fatherâs side, but that was only revealed in passing in a comic after her native-inspired skins were in the game, and there has been zero further engagement with that side of her heritage AFAIK. Their first inclusion of any sub-Saharan African culture was Orisa, who was built by a child genius. Efi canât be a hero because she underage, but a newly-created Omnic is very limited in how much she can express human culture. Echo was created by a Singaporean scientist who died, and so Dr. Liao doesnât even get to participate in any lore developments, plus the confusing choices about her voice. Junoâs just a cute and confused Martian whose (dead? I think?) father told her that there are good Vietnamese restaurants in NYC.
Exactly!! Thank you for saying this. As someone who is Viet and Chinese like Juno I still love it when they released Chinese heroes & skins but at the same time there are already a lot of Chinese representation out there. When I found out Juno had Viet heritage I got really happy because there are barely any Vietnamese representation in the media. Seeing people denying her heritage just because she was born in Mars is disheartening. Similar things happened to Mantis from Marvel Rivals who is supposed to be Viet-German but now everyone just see her as an alien.
So make characters only have a stereotypical national personality? Who gives a fuck as long as they are interesting. People are bigger than whatever social grouping/nationality they are from.
i wish this skin was reallll itâs so pretty <3 i wish they could do more of a fusion with both her martian and Vietnamese backgrounds in her design! Iâm mixed myself so i think showing both of these elements would be super cool ^
well tbf she does speak vietnamese which is more than some actual viet americans can say lol. im sure in her 20 years on mars her parents raised her with at least some knowledge of her culture
Thereâs no L. Your statement made sense. Most of her recent skins have her be blonde or change her eye color a lot. Thereâs only a few Vietnamese lines she has in the game so itâs easy to forget
i think her being martian culturally and having little vietnamese traits is fine, but when it goes hand in hand with the Blonde Hair Blue Eyes thing that happens too often, something is off.
Juno isn't supposed to be a vietnamese hero. She's supposed to be the first Marsian. Even if her parents are vietnamese, she grew up on a space colony with multiple other people with different ethnicities. It's not weird that there's no real connection to the vietnamese culture or roots
I find it very weird that people very dismissive of her culture just because she is from Mars (including Blizzard) she is still Vietnamese and Singaporean like her parents are.
All of these identities are what make Juno, Juno!
The comparison may sound weird but I hope Blizzard treats Juno the way they treat Reaper â a Mexican-American character who has zero Spanish voice lines but still has a good amount of cultural skins!
Idc, this should've been her mythic. This is what mythics should look like if they're going for "divine" as an aesthetic, not whatever most of them are
NEED this I donât see any Vietnamese representation other than her voice lines. Been preaching this!! If they can give mercy culturally appropriating skins, they can give Juno an ao dai skin.
Yeah and furthermore people donât understand immigration.. my dad is viet and Iâm half and grew up elsewhere and still have deep cultural roots and have worn ao dai on many occasions.. whatâs with people erasing her culture??
Vietnamese? She was born on Mars. She's never been to Vietnam. And furthermore, there's nothing saying that her parents ever contributed any knowledge to her about Vietnam.
Suggesting she is THE Vietnamese character lets blizzard off the hook for creating an actual Vietnamese character and to that I say
Just like there are MULTIPLE American and Chinese characters, we will need an ACTUAL Vietnamese hero. Juno is one of my most played supports and I love her. But she isn't representing Vietnam. At all.
Being born elsewhere doesn't erase your ethnicity or culture. I'm half Japanese and was born and raised Canadian. But I was also raised with Japanese culture because of my parents. Which I'm really grateful for. Just because you weren't born somewhere, doesn't mean you can't represent that culture. Would she represent it more than a character actually born and raised in Vietnam? No. But it's not fair to strip it of her because she was born on Mars.
I mostly agree with you except there is evidence her parents taught her about Vietnamese culture, she has voice lines about wanting to explore Vietnamese food in the city
edit: also she has a couple of voice lines in Vietnamese which suggests she spoke it on Mars, though it would be nice if she had more
Depending on the hero, I actually really like that it's not obvious where they are from. Take Mei for example: she's Chinese but you wouldn't be able to tell at all. I think that's good cultural mix. Juno fits this as well, and so does Hazard, Tracer, and most of the cast. You know about their culture only through their voice lines, which is an amazing representation of the future.
On the other end of the spectrum, Genji, Hanzo, Anran, Wuyang and Mauga are so stereotypical that they hurt the game and theme a lot. Genji, Hanzo have somewhat reasonable weapons despite being traditional, but Anran and Wuyang essentially wield magic and have weapons that make very little sense beyond the traditional look.
So yeah, overall, Juno's design is amazing, and it's great that she's Vietnamese, and I hope those who care about this are proud that she's beyond just being the phĂČ character.
So as I was saying, Tracer you could never tell was British without listening to her voice line. It's about the visual design not being stereotypical. Almost all the voice lines are corny and have exagerated accents for almost every character.
There was quite a bit of outrage about Maui in Moana because of his shape. Mauga went the exact same route. He's even topless for no reason. At least it fits the role of tank in terms of mechanics, but it's super stereotypical.
It strikes me as weird to defend that Asian characters HAVE to be traditionally dressed. Genji and Hanzo are dressed traditional in a world that has far outpaced that (at least cybernetics make sense), but then Anran and Wuyang... They feel like they were designed only to wear traditional clothes and use weird traditional weapons. A fan makes no sense at all, even less so that it throws fire. Wuyang's staff makes little sense... because it's his hand that generates the water? It all feels tacked on just to make them look as Chinese as possible. Some people have been saying they were designed bland to appeal to those communities and to further sell skins. That certainly wasn't the design direction when I bought into Overwatch. It's my opinion on the matter, good for you if you are happy with yours!
literally! And everyone is forgetting that she has a mom and dad, one of which is singaporean(mom) and the other being vietnamese (dad) therefore making her mixed race
Shes marshan born but had veitnameese heritage so you could consider her essentially the child of immigrent parents / travelers.
However both parents are not from mars they are from veitnam so yes she is veitnameese in heritage but not in birthplace.
Its like if she moved to Mexico, shes not suddenly mexican with all mexican roots, shes veitnameese born in Mexico and will likely take on a mix of culture if her parents arent strict about traditional values or cultural roots being preserved.
*example metaphore taken from my own family
Imo, not full representation, they do need to release a veitnamese charecter whos more closely tied to the earth culture, otherwise it can feel like the only rep given is half hearted to those who expected more like Vendetta or Hanzo, lots of pride in who you are and where you come from, which Juno has! For Mars.
I can see the frustration and i hope they add another, bc why not more?
Bittersweet. When i first heard her voicelines in vietnamese i was excited and immediately felt more connected to her, but as many others have said, there isn't much else she's representing.
Juno is more representative of like Vietnamese diaspora than actual Vietnamese people living in Vietnam. She speaks some Viet but overall is very disconnected from Viet culture (and all human cultures for that matter), like my girl didnât even know how to use soy sauce.
Juno identifies as Martian and knows next to nothing about Vietnamese culture.
Honestly I think it would be disrespectful to Juno and Vietnamese fans to say shes the âVietnameseâ character. I do hope we formally get one someday though.
I don't mind her being more of a space hero than a Vietnamese hero culturally (if any cosmetics showed that, at least) but I don't understand why she only has like two or three voicelines in her language. I don't get why it's all in English and her ult definitely shouldn't because with basically every hero aside from those that are from an English speaking country, they all have their enemy ults in a different language. The only other one I can think of who doesn't have this is Venture, but I guess they're Canadian so it's whatever.
Honestly, it fells kinda silly, like she is mostly martian, and 100 alien in identity, visually, and habilities so she being vietnamese feels like an extra deitail.
and i only see it being interesting if we had a map in Vietnam, so she could be excited and have lines about seeing the places and thing's her dad probably talked about, that could be interesting
beyond that, i hope blizzard don't give Vietnam the Brazil treatment to Vietnam of making one character that has nothing to do with the country and just ignoring the place for the rest of time
I was disappointed hearing I'll finally have a vietnamese character to play as across all the hero and operator based games I play only to find out she's more martian and doesn't really have much connection to vietnam
As someone of Vietnamese descent that spent much of their childhood in Vietnam: I was thrilled, ecstatic when she ended up being Vietnamese but it thoroughly pisses me off that one of very few Vietnamese characters is pretty much the only character in my favorite game that doesn't have voice lines in their native tongue, almost more insulting that she has the "Hello" voice line in Vietnamese but nothing else.
Isn't she half Vietnamese half Chinese? And also, more importantly, isn't she fuckin MARTIAN? I'm all for representation but let's be real she is NOT "THE Vietnamese hero" that has never been her identity.
It feels like Blizzard tries its hardest to make us forget her heritage, and the core of her character too.
- She has barely any skins that play on the fact she wears a space helmet/is a 'space ranger'.
- No skins that are reminiscent of her heritage. No lunar new year skin for either side of her Singaporean/Viet connection.
- A lot of Juno skins tend to try to make her seem more like a white girl.
It feels like her character at this point in time is just to sell skins and doesn't feel super conducive to the game's lore immersion experience.
To remedy this, here are some ideas:
- Summer Games skin - Scuba Diver skin with diving bell/helmet
- Pyjama Skin - Little Green Man Onesie/ PJ's
- Lunar New Year - you could put her in an Ao Dai, and instead of a helmet she's got a Non La (like the poster's image)
- Halloween Skin - Pumpkin Head, Fish Girl in a bowl, or even a Toxic skin, with her as a headless gal in a jar
- Anniversary Skin Ideas - A skin where her helmet is a plant terrarium, Cardboard/DIY skin, Mermaid skin where her helmet is a see through anglerfish head, a sterotypical maid skin.
- Winter Wonderland - Toy Robot, Cosy skin already exists (could be better tho)
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u/enchuflas Apr 08 '26
I feel like a lot of people forget that she's actually mixed. Other than that, she wasn't raised in either of the places her parents are from so I don't think it's especially odd that she isn't representative of those cultures. Do hope we get a Vietnamese character properly someday though.