This update is made possible by cerise888.  Thanks for the encouragement, darlin'.  ;)

 

So, Hyoga does not have a love interest, thus we move on to Shun's.  June is a really...sweet girl.  For someone who's lived on Andromeda most of her life, and who has spent a lot of time learning to fight with a whip so she can be a Saint, June is very normal.  I think what I like most about her, though, is that she and Shun are smart and healthy about the relationship between them.  No angst-angst-death like Ikki, no I'm-too-shy-to-say-anything like Shiryuu, and especially no do-I-like-her-or-not like Seiya. 

 

One of my favorite scenes from the anime is the one where June is trying to stop Shun from going to Sanctuary, and later the "pretty punk Saints" come along and fight with Shun.  At any rate, I really love when June's mask falls off, and Shun sees her face.  Now, this is after we find out from Shaina how the mask/love/death thing works.  So I totally expected both of them to have issues after her mask falls off.  But here's the amazing part.  Shun just smiles at her, and June says, "Shun..." and we the audience feel like they both understand how this works, but don't mind, and everything's ok. 

 

Shun is not at all dumb.  He can probably tell that June likes him more than a little.  But I think this fact doesn't bother Shun at all, because he's (out of all his friends) the most mature about handling affairs on his own.  He understands there is pain, there is suffering, but that doesn't mean the world is all bad.  He knows that love is a precious thing, and I think, he reciprocates the feelings June has, and thus knows that he is very lucky to have her.  He also is aware of a lot of other things, like his cosmo, and Hades inside him, which he doesn't show anyone until absolutely forced to.  So even if Shun doesn't make it super obvious that he is pining after June, he does make it obvious enough to her that he cares about her more than a little, and understands the consequences of seeing her face, and doesn't mind. 

 

June is pretty smart too.  I can see why Shun would get along with her.  Actually, I found out that June is a year older than Shun, which amuses me, because I think it's kind of cute when the girl is a little older...not that it's not cute otherwise, but still. 

 

Another thing I really like about the Shun and June dynamic is how June attempts to protect Shun while he's on Andromeda.  She sees this boy, who is younger than her, and a total sweetheart, who keeps getting beat up by the other trainees.  So she decides that she's going to protect him from getting hurt, by mediating the pretty punk saints in fights, by convincing Albior to go easy on Shun...and even though him winning the Andromeda cloth impressed her, I don't think she completely realized his power just yet.  From what she says, I think when she goes to stop him from leaving for Sanctuary...that's the moment when she sees that he really is very strong and self-sufficient, and when he ends up protecting her from the pretty punk saints, I think THEN June realizes that he never needed her protection all along. 

 

But Shun is the kind of person who will not make someone else feel bad.  So he conveys to her this idea of how much he appreciates everything she's done, and, really, nothing matters, not even the mask, so much as the fact that they've met in this chaotic world and have come this far alive and together. 

 

I am very sad that June never shows up again...