Junichi

Fire Release

Yin Release

Junichi (ジュニチ) is a ninja from Soragakure. Acknowledged as one of the strongest shinobi of Sora of his generation, along with his former teammates Tsubasa Takemori and Tenmaru, he served as a mentor and adviser to Takashi Minamoto, and to a certain extent, to Kohaku Uzumaki. He would later become the master of their son, Katsumi Minamoto.

## Background

After graduating from the Academy a few days after turning seven years old, Junichi was placed on a team along with Tenmaru and Tsubasa under the tutelage of Shou Minami, who was already the Second Tsukikage, immediately taking an interest in Tsubasa. To develop their teamwork, Shou assigned the team an exercise where they would be tied to each other and blindfolded and had to find a way to free themselves alone. However, his plan failed, as Junichi started a small one-sided rivalry with Tenmaru and Tsubasa scolded Junichi for his stupidity.

As the years passed, Junichi's simple interest on Tsubasa evolved into true love, which was unfortunately unrequited. He also put himself through harsh training because of his friendly rivalry with Tenmaru, and also to impress Tsubasa and make her fall in love with him, something Shou encouraged him to do. He spent most of his time with Tsubasa and Tenmaru.

Junichi was the one who discovered about the existence of Naoto, Tsubasa's half-brother, and introduced the two of them. During the Second Shinobi World War, Junichi fought along with his two teammates, and seeing how much the deaths of Daichi and Naoto had affected Tsubasa, grew to hate war. After the war ended, Junichi considered himself to have changed and matured, and decided to take trips around the world, where he would help people and study his new views in the world. It's also heavily implied that the other purpose of those trips were so that he would stay away from Tsubasa to avoid seeing her suffer and fall out of love with her. This failed, as homesickness and his feelings for Tsubasa would take over him and make him return after some time.

At some point, Takashi Minamoto searched for him and begged for him to train him. Junichi accepted reluctantly at first, but as time passed, he started growing closer to Takashi and his future wife, Kohaku Uzumaki. Junichi was also the first one to realize their feelings from each other, and felt devastated after their deaths during the attack of the Four-Tails in Soragakure.

Junichi was overcome with guilt after Tenmaru deserted from Soragakure, as he blamed himself for letting him go and because he considered Tenmaru one his closest and best friend since childhood and wanted to help him. It has been noted that after this, Junichi's trips from away the village became even more frequent, as he had hopes he could find his friend and bring him back to the village.

## Personality

Junichi, especially during his childhood, was shown to be very light-hearted and boisterous: he loved to be the center of attention of everything, most of the time making exaggerated gestures and bragging about his own feats, and normally overstating them. Because of this, strangers normally find him arrogant, though Junichi is a very generous person, normally putting others first. He has had deep feelings for Tsubasa since childhood, and laments over the fact they are unrequited. Tsubasa is the person he cares for the most, loving her more than her own life; despite Tsubasa previously dating Daichi first devastated him, he claims that after a while, he got over it and accepted the fact that she was happier with someone else, putting her happiness over his. At first their relation was a little hostile, Tsubasa considering Junichi a "stupid idiot" and Junichi considering Tsubasa a "showoff know-it-all". Over the years, they developed a close friendship, each one still teasing the other.

Despite being considered a troublemaker during his childhood, Junichi's eccentricities amused most people around him, making them take a liking to him. Junichi himself referred to child him as "immature and childish, someone who complains every time someone disagrees with him, but surprisingly likeable". In fact, Junichi was quick to show his annoyance at Tsubasa when she corrected him by saying the word "bestest" is not a real word. He would frequently use it just to annoy her, but eventually it fell out of use. Junichi also cared a lot about Tenmaru, and had a friendly rivalry with him, always training so he could be as strong as him one day. While Tenmaru didn't care much, the fact that Junichi would push himself so hard just because of him amused him. Even though he would be frequently compared to Tenmaru and asked to be more like him, Junichi considered Tenmaru his greatest friend and was openly devastated about his desertion.

With his sensei, Shou Minami, Junichi shows a very familiar and close relationship, and is not afraid to call him "old man" openly. In the past, Shou used to help Junichi train for as long as he needed, despite his duties as Tsukikage, and encouraged his student's development. Junichi was at first reluctant on training Takashi Minamoto, but after the two grew closer, he finally understood what Shou felt while training him and his former teammates.

The Second Shinobi War left a heavy impression on Junichi. He grew to hate war, and when talking about such topics, assumed a very stern and serious personality, in contrast to his regular one. He claimed that only after experiencing something as horrible as a world war and suffering because of it, he was able to acknowledge true pain and know the problems of the world; but instead of becoming depressed or rebellious about that, Junichi decided to keep smiling and do what he could to try ease those problems, even if just a little, and decided to take periodical trips away from Sora to help as much people as he could and know more about the world. Tenmaru considered that act of his useless, saying that his help as useless and there would always be wars, but Junichi retorted with "Just a little help is enough. Compared to the rest of the world, I'm also very small, so it's only natural everything I gave would be small too. Even so, knowing I'm doing the best I can, even if it's considered to be nothing, makes me satisfied enough with myself".

Junichi was left extremely sorrowful after Tenmaru's betrayal of Soragakure, and during his next trip after his desertion, started writing an autobiography, but changed all the tragic events that happened in his life, making the book too utopian, making it receive bad reception. He would later rewrite the book alongside his new student Katsumi Minamoto, and the remake received really good reception throughout the whole world, Junichi even naming the protagonist Katsumi in his honor. He later admitted that the remake was indeed better than the first one he had written, and said he was too "affected by sorrow" during its writing, and now had finally understood once again that one can't rewrite the past, but they can write the upcoming future. Ever since that, Junichi valued his relation with Katsumi a lot, even considering him as a son, similar to how he did to Takashi.