Juliana: The Heroine Whose Schooling Opened Up Paldea

Juliana doesn't leave home to chase adventure: she leaves to go to class. The playable female character of Scarlet and Violet, she moves with her mother to the village of Cabo Poco, learns that a regional school counts her among its students, and finds herself automatically signed up for an extracurricular project that doubles as her storyline. This school setting isn't mere backdrop: it's what makes possible the series' first truly open structure.

Contents

• A Heroine Who Gets Enrolled in School
• The Treasure Hunt: Three Quests, No Set Order
• A Uniform That Changes by Version, Not by Gender
• Seven Pokémon, a School Record and Contradictory Artwork
• Beyond the Main Games: Mobile and a First Card
• Juliana at a Glance
• Frequently Asked Questions

A Heroine Who Gets Enrolled in School

Juliana is the female protagonist of the ninth generation, and choosing her simply erases Florian from the story: the two never coexist in the same playthrough. Like every playable hero released since the sixth generation, she has no name imposed on her at the start — "Juliana" is the name official screenshots and trailers use for her, and her appearance can be customized to suit the player's taste.

The starting point is domestic rather than heroic. She has only just arrived in Cabo Poco, where she lives with her mother, and it's Director Clavell who informs her that she's been enrolled at Paldea's academy. Her neighbor Nemona, the student council president, takes it upon herself to teach her the basics of battling before she's even set foot on campus.

The trip to Mesagoza, home to the academy, works as a fast-forward prologue: a pack of Houndour pounces on her, a Pokémon she doesn't know gets her out of trouble, and right after that she runs into Arven, whose father or mother — depending on the version — serves as the Pokémon Professor. She has barely arrived on campus when she has to pull Penny out of Team Star's clutches. That's when Nemona explains Terastallization to her. Next come her assignment to Jacq's class and the download of the Pokédex app.

The Treasure Hunt: Three Quests, No Set Order

A few days after the start of the school year, Clavell launches the extracurricular project that shapes the entire game. What he calls the Treasure Hunt is officially an assignment supervised by a school director — a rare narrative justification for setting off alone across an entire region.

Three objectives sit under that label. You have to earn Champion rank, which means clearing the Gym tests and then the League's; get your hands on the Herba Mystica, guarded by Titan Pokémon; and take down Team Star, squad by squad. None of the three depends on the other two, and it's precisely this independence that makes her schooling the framework for a truly open game.

Her team starts out like everyone else's, with a regional starter chosen from three: Sprigatito for Grass, Fuecoco for Fire, Quaxly for Water. The Legendary, on the other hand, shows up almost immediately: Poco Path hands her Koraidon in Scarlet, Miraidon in Violet. It serves as her ride for the whole game, and you have to wait until the final hours of the main story to finally see it battle.

🔥 Her ride is no ordinary Pokémon: check out our Legendaries.

A Uniform That Changes by Version, Not by Gender

Together with her male counterpart, Juliana introduces the main series' first starting outfit that stays the same whichever gender is chosen — and, in the same stroke, an outfit that changes from one version to the other. The wardrobe no longer separates boys from girls: it separates Scarlet from Violet.

Both versions dress the student in the same pieces — panama hat, crested polo shirt, tie, shorts, backpack — and change only their colors. On the Scarlet side, Naranja Academy goes for white and pale blue with orange accents; on the Violet side, Uva Academy switches to light gray, purplish blue and a yellow trim on the socks. Without any tweaks from the player, she has fair skin, brown eyes and a brown braid.

The expansions mean a new school, and so a new wardrobe. In Kitakami, she trades the uniform for a green jinbei stitched in red, decorated with Fezandipiti, Okidogi and Munkidori motifs, and paired with wooden geta. The Blueberry Academy then switches her to white and indigo, with a hair clip shaped like half a Poké Ball. Beyond the uniforms, everything else about her appearance is left up to the player.

Seven Pokémon, a School Record and Contradictory Artwork

The final act, titled "The Way Home," bends a rule that's twenty-five years old. Koraidon or Miraidon steps in alongside the team built up to that point, joining it rather than replacing it, so that Juliana becomes, together with Florian, the first canonical protagonist able to field seven Pokémon.

Her status as a student links her to a class of Trainers you battle on the road, the Students — a protagonist filed, for once, under an already existing type of background character. The game goes so far as to give her a student record number: 805C393.

Her European name comes from the Spanish juvenil, which means "young"; in Japanese, she's called Aoi, a word that leans toward both blue and youth — and already the Japanese name of Buena, Johto's radio host. The promotional artwork, for its part, doesn't always match her character sheet: in the art for one expansion she has blue eyes instead of brown, and in The Indigo Disk illustration she's actually wearing Florian's uniform.

Beyond the Main Games: Mobile and a First Card

The mobile spin-off game welcomed her on February 17, 2025. She's playable there in her canonical Naranja Academy outfit, paired with Koraidon by default, and then in alternate pairings with Sprigatito and Chimecho.

A second, event-only version takes her out of the uniform and into a festival outfit, and gives her Terapagos, which can Terastallize into its Stellar Form. Her introduction text describes her as cheerful, quick to make friends and easily distracted: it's one of the rare official documents to explicitly give her a personality.

On the card side, she debuted in the Prismatic Evolutions expansion, released in France on January 17, 2025. So the character joined the card game before the mobile game, exactly one month apart.

Juliana at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• Who is Juliana in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet?
  She's the playable female character of the ninth generation. She has just arrived in Cabo Poco with her mother, enrolls at Paldea's academy, and takes part in the extracurricular project called the Treasure Hunt.
• What's the difference between Juliana and Florian?
  They're the two playable protagonists of the same game. Choosing Juliana makes Florian disappear from the story, and vice versa: they never coexist in the same playthrough.
• Which Pokémon does Juliana get?
  A Paldea starter chosen from Sprigatito, Fuecoco and Quaxly, then Koraidon in Scarlet or Miraidon in Violet, found at the edge of Poco Path.
• What is the Treasure Hunt?
  It's the extracurricular project supervised by Director Clavell. It brings together three independent objectives: earning Champion rank, collecting the Herba Mystica guarded by Titan Pokémon, and taking down Team Star.
• Why isn't her uniform the same from one game to the other?
  Because the school changes its name and colors depending on the version: Naranja Academy in Scarlet, Uva Academy in Violet. It's the first time a protagonist's outfit depends on the version rather than on the character's gender.

In short

Juliana isn't just one more heroine in the gallery of playable protagonists: her status as a student is the pretext that let the series break out of its linear corridor. A three-part school assignment, no set order, a legendary ride from the very first hours of play. The rest — the version-dependent uniform, the numbered student record, the seven Pokémon of the final act — is detail, but it's these details that give substance to a fully customizable character.