I think the problem with Chun is that her arc didn’t seem really well written and probably failed to convey the story the writers had in mind for her.
Her story starts off with her losing twice in a row, and that can’t give a good impression. Losing to Bison is fine, it feels a bit like Chun was the designed victim to show off Bison’s new strength but that’s still something fairly legitimate to happen (if she had a stronger role in the story after that no one would have complained). You can understand however that Chunners can’t feel good when Rashid strolls in and unintentionally adds insult to injury.
After that I remember Chun kinda falling into the same black hole of doing-nothing-impressive-because-Karin-is-stealing-the-show that Guile and Ken fell into and never crawled back (while Cammy fortunately escaped Karin’s hungry clutches thanks to Decapre’s interference and Juri’s cross-dimensional bike). She stands around while the events unfold around her, has some decent dialogue here and there but nothing to make up for the poor showing she started off with.
Only at the end she gets into Shadaloo base, very close to Bison, but now her story takes a different turn as Chun-Li focuses on saving Li-Fen.
I think that Chun-Li’s story in ASF was always supposed to be pretty focused on the little girl as she becomes a relatively important character in SFIII and it makes sense that in SFV we see how Chun-Li and Li-Fen came to know each others, it’s important to bridge current Chun with SFIII Chun. Even in her prologue Li-Fen has a big role, which makes me think that Chun’s story in SFV was always supposed to be about she giving up revenge for good to take care of others. However I don’t think the story highlighted this properly, I don’t recall Li-Fen and Chun-Li having any notable moment together during ASF that clearly made Chun-Li’s focus saving the girl rather than generic revenge on Shadaloo, and this makes Chun’s entire arc pretty unfocused (at least, I don’t remember any strong enough scene where Chun-Li made it clear that her goal was to save Li-Fen, but it’s been a lot of time since I watched ASF, so absolutely correct me on this if I’m wrong).
At the end of this we have Chun-Li beating F.A.N.G, which unfortunately doesn’t actually feel like an impressive victory because F.A.N.G is an established punching bag in SFV in spite of the fact that he’s probably supposed to be second only to Bison and a force to be reckoned with (he has too many elements of a joke character to be taken seriously, and that’s from someone that really like F.A.N.G), and on top of that he’s also shown as weakened in that fight. Chun-Li then escapes from Shadaloo Base together with Ryu and Guile (who I agree had an even worse representation in ASF), she has saved Li-Fen but overall it still feels like her story was unsatisfying all around.
If one tries to look closer and analyze things properly then one can see that what you’re saying is true: Chun-Li has actually no small role at all, she leads the fight against Shadaloo and comes out with her goals completely fulfilled (saving Li-Fen), but because the story doesn’t highlight her efforts very much and because the Li-Fen subplot is so underdeveloped Chun’s part in the story still feels pretty weak because of how poorly executed it is. What she accomplishes in the story feels less meaningful than what it actually is, while what she doesn’t accomplish sticks out like a sore thumb. One has to go against ASF writing to get what the writers probably wanted to do with Chun-Li, and this is why Chunners are disappointed with her role in the story, not because they wanted her to destroy Bison single-handedly (maybe some do, but whatever) but because anything she accomplishes doesn’t feel any good.
And this is coming from someone that is not particularly invested in Chun-Li’s character outside of her possible interactions with Cammy.
In fact, on second thought, just screw Chun-Li, she’s been obsolete since 1993. Time for her to retire and let Cammy handle the job. B)
