Over a year ago, I wrote a profile on Chun-Li’s psyche, explaining her possible motivations as well as signs of her repressed sexuality. I had written that there was someone who pretty much knew what she was going through, as her own circumstances were identical: Juri. https://manestreet.home.blog/2019/02/20/a-complex-look-inside-chun-li-slightly-nsfw/
However, I’ve since realized that while Juri and Chun-Li have the same goal in mind, companionship, it’s what they want to do with it that makes them very different. Chun-Li wants companionship to feel fulfilled and fill the gap caused by the loss of her parents. Juri, on the other hand, has a more sensual motivation. Interestingly enough, Juri’s ultimate plan is similar to other characters in the game, but we have to look first at her canon story to understand what it is Juri actually wants.
The biggest personality trait Juri has is her vicious hedonism. She seeks out fights because she’s bored, and loves to fight because she can cause intense pain. Even more prevalent is her overt sexuality. She flirts with half the cast in the game, male or female, and makes double entendres every chance she gets. It’s pretty clear she sees sex and violence as two sides of the same coin, and has no qualms about swapping between both to either get her way or to just give herself pleasure. In one of her generic win quotes in Street Fighter V, she states, “I want to have extreme stimulation in everything I do.” She loves action, and she’ll get it any way she can.
One of those ways is manipulating people for her own ends. For example, in her own ending in Super Street Fighter IV, Juri reveals to Seth that she betrayed him to take over S.I.N. and Shadaloo: “Defeating you was nothing but an added bonus. I just wanted to pit you idiots against each other, while I took over.” Her plan at the time was to get Seth and Bison to fight each other so she could usurp power unnoticed. Based on the events of Street Fighter V, though, she failed.
She didn’t attempt to try again, instead joining the Illuminati to take Shadaloo out for good. This seems to be something of a case of “if you can’t join them, beat them.” However, this doesn’t quite seem to be Juri’s agenda, as she ends up spending more time with Cammy than actually doing anything the Illuminati wants.
“What if rescuing Cammy was part of the Illuminati’s plan?,” you ask. Unlikely, as at the end of the scene in SFV’s Cinematic Story Mode where Juri and Cammy fight Vega, Juri seems to be taken by surprise that Kolin is calling her. https://youtu.be/P6KKsSAbbaM?t=5007
Added to the fact that Kolin makes no acknowledgement towards Cammy whatsoever when Juri brings her back to the Illuminati’s hideout, it appears that Cammy played absolutely no role in Kolin’s or the Illuminati’s grand scheme. Quite simply, Juri wanted Cammy all to herself. https://youtu.be/P6KKsSAbbaM?t=5172
The big question is “why?” Yes, she’s obviously got her own agenda, but there must be something else going on here, right? I figured that maybe her actions were part of something internal, her hypersexuality a big red flag for me. I looked up the symptoms of both bipolar disorder and hypothymia, as well as hyperthymic temperament. She didn’t check out for bipolar disorder (as this would have required her to have shown signs of depression; she has never shown this), but she did for both hypo- and hyperthymia, symptoms of which include a strong libido, as well as extroversion, strong will, risk taking, love for attention, being easily distracted, and having a low threshold for boredom. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthymic_temperament
Unfortunately, these moods would require her to be very happy and greet people with warmth and joviality, and Juri is incapable of this. Futhermore, hyperthymia isn’t so much a disorder as a state of mind – it’s basically generalized elation. In other words, while Juri may be a sociopath, she’s a sociopath by choice – she’s otherwise fairly normal.
This leads me to the only possible reason why Juri went after Cammy in the first place – she’s trying to seduce her, and I mean that in every possible sense. There’s strong evidence that shows she’s not only trying to get into Cammy’s head, but in her panties as well, and there’s one particular scene in SFV that alludes to this – the conversation between Cammy and Juni in Cammy’s story. While this scene was obviously meant to be a tender, character-building moment, there is some eyebrow-raising subtext which implies that Cammy and Juni are closer than what they seem. https://youtu.be/EILswE-M0ck?t=401
The ending shot is a dead giveaway.
Juri’s presence is a wink to the audience. Basically, Juri is thinking the exact same thing the viewer is, and it’s piqued her interest because it aligns to what Juri wants. And yes, it could be argued that Juri made an off-hand comment and was simply interested in how events would transpire, but keep in mind Juri was spying on Cammy and Juni the entire time. In the context of the scene, she said nothing about Vega and only made the comment after the Cammy/Juni scene.
So, Juri is taking an active interest in Cammy’s personal life, but if she was just in it to satisfy her more carnal desires, she’d most likely just jump on her. There would be no point for the secrecy. There would be no point to rescue Cammy and Decapre from the cops.
There is one other thing I haven’t mentioned, and it’s a recurring theme throughout Street Fighter lore. Bison did it; Gill did it; Seth did it; Karin did it; Ed and Falke did it; and based on my research, a certain other guy is doing it too.
Everyone is building an army. There are multiple factions in Street Fighter, and Juri is trying to curry Cammy’s favor. Cammy wants nothing to do with Juri, but Juri wants Cammy on her side. Juri is manipulating Cammy to be obedient to her whims. Her sadistic style means she intends to pretty much break Cammy’s mind to get her loyalty, and she’s backing Cammy into a corner to where she’ll have no choice but to follow Juri’s orders no matter how much she doesn’t want to.
There is one other person Juri has tried to forcibly recruit as well: Seth. Since Juri was the who killed Seth originally, it made no sense for her to want to bring Seth back unless she wanted to control it. She revived Seth, putting its male brain into a female body, and because of the severe system errors this caused, Juri had to leave the newly reborn and newly crazy S.I.N. leader to their own devices. There are questions to ask regarding if Juri knew what she was doing all along and if it was her intention to use a female body for her former boss, but the only thing this would do is add more speculation to the “Juri likes women” theory, and does nothing for the theory I’m writing about now. https://youtu.be/PurzTxA67yo?t=10
Now that we know Juri has been recruiting people for her own means, we can finally understand what it would mean for her to have her own army. It would satisfy everything she would be looking to do. She would get the companionship she wanted so she wouldn’t be alone, she would have people to serve her agenda, and she would get the playthings she wanted as per her win quote to Elena in Ultra Street Fighter IV: “Unfortunately for you, I’m not here to make friends. I’m after playthings.”
She may not want friends, but with an army, she would be making a lot of enemies.
Street Fighter Game Lore Theories 