Up until Tekken 8, Jun Kazama’s only playable appearance in the mainline Tekken series (which excludes Tekken Tag Tournament) was Tekken 2. Indeed, it had been over 28 years since Jun was playable in Tekken.
After the Tekken 8 beta, the developers noted how surprised they were at Jun’s lack of popularity upon revealing information pertaining to the character usage stats during the test period. Despite being unpopular, it was apparently quietly noticed by members of the fighting game community that Jun had top tier potential.
As outlined by BoogardMG, Jun was perceived to be one of the strongest characters upon Tekken 8 being released. This was mostly due to her having ridiculous damage output and an insanely strong Heat Smash.
Of course, this resulted in Jun becoming more popular. Tournament players from around the world began to recognize Jun as being a strong character to use at competitive events.
However, the developers opted to nerf Jun’s damage shortly after the game was released. Along with this, players began experimenting with how to deal with Jun’s pressure tools in the lab.
Though players were beginning to understand the Jun match up, the developers ended up nerfing Jun a few more times. Since then, Jun has turned out to be one of the weaker characters in Tekken 8.
Unfortunately for Jun fans, she never truly recovered after being heavily nerfed. Needless to say, Jun is now one of the least popular characters in Tekken 8.
Check out BoogardMG’s video on the subject below: