Welcome to the second installment of my project to have a hot take about all 60 non-crossover cases in the Ace Attorney series! Let's get into it. Previous installment here.
Case 2-1: The Lost Turnabout
Hot take: I can't bring myself to hate it.
Look, I know this entire episode is a mess, but it's so gloriously goofy that I cannot manage to be mad. Banana-colored baseball gloves! Near-sighted con artists! Police so incompetent that they don't notice the victim misspelled his own fiancee's name! Shu Takumi could have picked any excuse for Phoenix to need the tutorial again, and he bypassed a dozen more reasonable options to settle on "short-term amnesia delivered by fire extinguisher." That's why we love him.
Case 2-2: Reunion and Turnabout
Hot take: More cases should have you meet the victim ahead of time.
It's not unheard of for cases to introduce living characters and make them the victims in the same episode, but this is the first and most effective use of that technique. Phoenix meets Turner Grey as a thoroughly unpleasant man, but one he has to stick by if he wants to reunite with Maya. This puts him (and the player by extension) in a situation not too dissimilar from Mimi's. When we later learn that Grey was a "slave driver" whose abusive management style led directly to Mimi's fatal mistakes, we can feel that a lot more viscerally than if we were just told about Grey after his death.
Ace Attorney should do this more often. Imagine if Juan Corrida got to charm the pants off the player before we learned what a scumbag he was. Or sympathizing with Glen Elg as he gets an impossible chance to turn his life around. It might get depressing if it started happening every single time, but it could be the antidote to a trend of forgettable victims of the Deid Mann flavor.
Case 2-3: Turnabout Big Top
Hot take: The silver lining isn't Acro. It's Russell.
Yeah, yeah, the hating on Turnabout Big Top, we've all seen it. The love triangle is weird, the cape is frustrating, and getting blamed for Moe's bad jokes sucks. It is never adequately explained why the bust is heavy enough to kill a man but light enough to be carried up two flights of stairs by a small monkey. I've got no interest in relitigating that.
However, I do take issue with the common argument that Acro is the saving grace. Now, I do like Acro as a character. It's refreshing to have a villain who never once twirls his moustache, who puts up a strong fight but admits when he's beaten. He's also got some depth, as an affable guy warped by grief into someone who could try to murder a teenager, who gets punished by instant karma while the object of his vengeance remains blithely oblivious. I disagree that Acro is the best character in Big Top, though; it's clearly the victim, Russell Berry.
Russell initially falls into a common trope of mystery fiction, the murder victim who was so universally beloved that the primary riddle is why anybody would want him dead. In this case, nobody did. But Russell's death is still the tragic outcome of his own inherent flaw: his inability to deny his daughter anything, and his wish to protect her from the entire world. This isn't a virtuous flaw. It's a serious mistake that Russell makes repeatedly, ending up responsible for every terrible thing that happens to Bat, to Acro, to Regina, and to himself. Outside of that, he's a thoroughly good person who seems to have earned the love of everyone at the circus -- yet he's also a strong candidate for the "villain" of the piece. I can't think of many other characters anywhere who fit that mold.
Case 2-4: Farewell, My Turnabout
Hot take: Shelly de Killer is terrible at his job.
Throughout all the world of fiction, there is a peculiarly common type of "assassin" who nobody in the real world would ever hire to actually assassinate somebody. This is the assassin who always looks the same no matter what disguise he's wearing, leaves obvious calling cards at the scene, and follows a "code of honor" that somehow makes it OK for him to murder for a living on behalf of rich people.
Shelly de Killer exemplifies this archetype. Every time he shows up in Ace Attorney, he's managed to botch a simple murder job so hard that it turns into an emotionally dramatic whirlwind involving no fewer than five bystanders. In this episode alone, he bungles the death of Juan Corrida deeply enough that his client -- who wasn't even in the room -- gets accused of the murder. He then chooses Phoenix Wright, a lawyer well-known for a strong sense of justice, to defend the obviously evil client de Killer landed in the shit. Instead of doing the reasonable thing and offering Wright $10 million of Matt Engarde's money to take the case, he jumps straight to kidnapping Phoenix's best friend, thereby ensuring Phoenix will fight against the situation with every ounce of his ingenuity. Over the next 48 hours, he also shoots a prosecutor and three cops, guaranteeing that he'll go straight to Forever Jail when one of his convoluted schemes inevitably goes even wronger in the near future. In fact, I'm positive that's exactly where he is starting with the Apollo trilogy, probably rooming with Dogen/Kanis.
A final note: the one thing de Killer does seem to be is a competent physical fighter, which makes it all the more badass that he gets beaten to a standstill by Dick "Motherfucker" Gumshoe.
Let's discuss all of these, and I'll see you soon for part three!
