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I repotted because the previous pot that I bought it in didn't have any drainage holes (which I found a bit odd tbh) and I cleaned out and replaced pretty much all the soil. I did cut some of the outer roots but very very little, just a bit on the most outer ones.

BofhSkull wrote:

ZeroKelvin wrote: Hi guys!

[...]

I just wanted the opinion of some of you veterans and pros who I'm sure knows considerably more. This is my first bonsai, what do you guys think of it so far? And what do you recommend I do with it next? I must admit I feel a bit lost, despite the fact that I've been reading up on the topic for so long.

I agree with what others have said, but now what is done is done.
So how to move forward from here?

As you've already been told, first thing is not taking good care of the plant and making sure it survives, as it had it rough.
Now: as you probably realised already, at this point you don't have a bonsai, but a thick stick in a pot, with some very long branches and some foliage at the end of those.

Not the ideal place to start from, but may be a good learning experience to understand your plant and how it works and react.

What you want now is to promote backbudding as much as possible, in the attempt to get some foliage to grow closer to the trunk; once that is strong enough, you can cut those long branches back to the new growth.
Any other styling action will have to wait after that.

I suggest spending this time -while you take care of the plant and allow it to recover from what it already went through- to study and get the basics of how to obtain the backbudding above.
From the picture it looks like that's a needle juniper (rigida, maybe?), and despite junipers being in general quite forgiving, needle junipers tend to be the most finicky amongst them.
So don't be too upset if it doesn't work as well as you'd expect with this first plant.

Courses here on bonsai empire are a good start to learn what you need; several bonsai professionals run their own teaching platform too. Then there's the free knowledge you can find on the internet; just know that you'll also find a lot of wrong ones, tho, like for any other topic on the internet.

Try to build your knowledge the way you can and feel free to come back here whenever you're confused.

Also be aware that a lot (timing and type of care in particular) depends heavily on your local climate, so finding a local bonsai
club and learning from its members is usually helpful to understand how to decline the theory to your local environment.

And: learn to be patient. And I mean seriously patient.
Even assuming the plant responds wonderfully and starts backbudding ASAP, it will be a 3-5 years journey just to compact the tree, and a 5-10 years to start getting something really resembling a bonsai.

As you'll read in here many times, this is a marathon, not a sprint.

Thank you for taking the time to write this, I've been reading up on back budding all day. Thanks for all the great advice from all of you, hopefully this plant survives this and makes a good recovery.

Please give us an update in the peak of summer. No matter good or bad. Really useful for novice people anyway.

I will!

I suspect i'll be here quite a few more times during these upcoming years for more advice

Replacing all soil in one repotting session is a very bad idea for a juniper. It should be done slowly over a few repotting sessions.