Juno Steel Season 5 - Tumblr Posts

*Kind of vague spoilers for the Juno Steel Finale*

I have way too many thoughts about the end of Juno Steel that it has to be split into 2 posts but you're all going to be subject to hearing them. To start off the development of Juno's attitude about his job and Hyperion City in general is literal art. The way he starts out believing that he's trapped in a city that doesn't care for him or anyone else and a job that never really helps anyone as much as he wants to and ends up realizing that he's not trapped there, in fact, he wants to go back desperately because that city is his home and through his job he can make it better if he tries. When he recites the oath from the PI registry again and he genuinely understands it the second time because he's changed so much as a person that those words actually mean something this time around even though they didn't twenty years ago. Finale Juno does away with the notion that he ruins things for everyone like he's been told all his life, he knows that he can help people and he knows how to do that, and he knows that improving the lives of others is what's important to him. He understands that he can have bad days and not be a bad person, that whatever issues his mother passed to him don't make him a monster the same way they never made her one she was just someone who was extremely ill and unable to get the help she needed in order to be the mother Juno and Benten deserved. Jet's voice in his comms saying "We may look backward only to ensure we have not walked this path before" and Juno navigating a new city with careful avoidance of side streets that would put him back on old roads. Pouring out a bottle of tequila with ease and refusing clients with ties to organized crime groups that only cause harm to others despite his own background in organized crime because it doesn't align with who he is anymore even though he needs the money that they could provide. Buddy's apologies about not getting him and Rita a housewarming gift for the office (even though everything from before was still in the office) except she did provide a gift. It's the confidence that allows Rita to speak up to Juno when he talks down to her, and it's Juno's confidence in himself, his sharpshooting skills, and his job. Vespa showing Juno that mental illness does not define who someone is and just because they struggle with mental health it doesn't mean that they're bad people, it just means that they have some setbacks other people might not have. Buddy and Vespa provide the knowledge that they have family and people who love them and just in case it doesn't work out they have people that they can turn to because Buddy and Vespa and the lighthouse will always be there whenever they're needed. His first case back as a PI being a girl he thinks looks so much like a young Sasha Wire, a friend who betrayed him and one he had to abandon, who Mick sees as looking like a young Juno, a memory from his past and a startling start to the future. A girl he offers encouragement and advice to that season one Juno wouldn't have because season one Juno wouldn't have felt himself wise enough. A girl he chooses to help much more than she hires him to do, and takes much less payment than he typically does because she needs the money to start her own future as well. The fact that Juno's life since his HCPD days has been so driven by romantic love that he never let himself fully experience platonic love and the type of familial love that he should have been given so easily by his mother and Benten was corrupted by mental illness and death, but the type of love the Aurinko's give to him so easily even without the crutch of a romantic connection to Nureyev.

A Juno that has made space for himself and the people he cares about without needing a romantic partner because he has so much love for them that maybe it doesn't matter if he loves someone romantically or not. Maybe he learned that from Rita who expresses her love for everyone and everything so regularly, or maybe from Jet who knows what he wants and knows that it isn't a romantic connection, who is content to live his life doing the things that he loves instead of searching for something he doesn’t need, or maybe from Buddy who spent time with him and trained him and made him feel like a person that was worth something, who despite her reformed connection to Vespa and subsequent engagement still makes time for him and everyone else because her wife may be her whole world but there are other things in that world too, or the Ruby 7 who's found a family and found love in people that are so different from itself but care for it all the same and who it cares for equally, or maybe even Mick who is so dedicated to finding out what he wants to do with his life and what he's good at that romance doesn't seem to matter much to him because he has friends to support him.

The finale provides a Juno Steel that has spent years of his life being driven by romantic love and being driven by Nureyev in particular yet Nureyev doesn't appear in the final chapter of his story, or maybe he does, but either way, it's fine. Juno who spent months chasing Nureyev to the farthest reaches of the galaxy and risking his life just to be there to support him but still sends him away so that Nureyev can spend time finding himself now that he doesn't have to worry about his debts. The way Mick delicately asks about Nureyev and Juno admits easily that he hasn't even thought about Nureyev that day and thar doesn't hurt the way it used to. Maybe Nureyev does show up in the end and they're able to live a life happily together (or like Juno suggests on the resort planet, together but not living together because the lives they created for themselves don't fit into the same space even though there is a space there for the other, visiting and traveling and lounging in Juno's new apartment) or maybe he takes another month or year or ten to discover what he wants to before he returns to Juno, or maybe he never does because it's just not possible for him with the new life he's built for himself but whatever happens it will be okay because Juno is okay and life is okay. Just the idea that you maybe don't have to have your entire life sorted as soon as you graduate, maybe you'll finally figure it out in your 40s after switching jobs multiple times, taking up a life of crime after dedicating your life to solving it, finding a family in the criminals you live with and your secretary of 20 years, traveling the galaxy in a car-shaped alien in search of your missing lover, and almost dying so many times that it's genuinely hard to keep track of. It's okay if you switch your major 10 times in college, or if you decide to change your career down the line, or if you break up with your partner even though you thought they were the one when you were 20. Eventually, you'll figure it all out and even then you'll keep learning from everything and that's okay because life would be boring if it's exactly what you expect it to be.

*Kind of vague spoilers for the Juno Steel Finale*

I have way too many thoughts about the end of Juno Steel that it has to be split into 2 posts but you're all going to be subject to hearing them. To start off the development of Juno's attitude about his job and Hyperion City in general is literal art. The way he starts out believing that he's trapped in a city that doesn't care for him or anyone else and a job that never really helps anyone as much as he wants to and ends up realizing that he's not trapped there, in fact, he wants to go back desperately because that city is his home and through his job he can make it better if he tries. When he recites the oath from the PI registry again and he genuinely understands it the second time because he's changed so much as a person that those words actually mean something this time around even though they didn't twenty years ago. Finale Juno does away with the notion that he ruins things for everyone like he's been told all his life, he knows that he can help people and he knows how to do that, and he knows that improving the lives of others is what's important to him. He understands that he can have bad days and not be a bad person, that whatever issues his mother passed to him don't make him a monster the same way they never made her one she was just someone who was extremely ill and unable to get the help she needed in order to be the mother Juno and Benten deserved. Jet's voice in his comms "We may look backward only to ensure we have not walked this path before" and Juno navigating a new city with careful avoidance of side streets that would put him back on old roads. Pouring out a bottle of tequila with ease and refusing clients with ties to organized crime groups that only cause harm to others despite his own background in organized crime because it doesn't align with who he is anymore even though he needs the money that they could provide. Buddy's apologies about not getting him and Rita a housewarming gift for the office (even though everything from before was still in the office) except she did provide a gift. It's the confidence that allows Rita to speak up to Juno when he talks down to her, and it's Juno's confidence in himself, his sharpshooting skills, and his job. Vespa showing Juno that mental illness does not define who someone is and just because they struggle with mental health it doesn't mean that they're bad people, it just means that they have some setbacks other people might not have. Buddy and Vespa provide the knowledge that they have family and people who love them and just in case it doesn't work out they have people that they can turn to because Buddy and Vespa and the lighthouse will always be there whenever they're needed. His first case back as a PI being a girl he thinks looks so much like a young Sasha Wire, a friend who betrayed him and one he had to abandon, who Mick sees as looking like a young Juno, a memory from his past and a startling start to the future. A girl he offers encouragement and advice to that season one Juno wouldn't have because season one Juno wouldn't have felt himself wise enough. A girl he chooses to help much more than she hires him to do, and takes much less payment than he typically does because she needs the money to start her own future as well. The fact that Juno's life since his HCPD days has been so driven by romantic love that he never let himself fully experience platonic love and the type of familial love that he should have been given so easily by his mother and Benten was corrupted by mental illness and death, but the type of love the Aurinko's give to him so easily even without the crutch of a romantic connection to Nureyev.