Just a reminder before I get into this one: Starting from this week, I will be reverting to a biweekly schedule as I previously stated. The school semester has begun and is starting to pile on the assignments, and I want to make sure I graduate already. Don't be alarmed if my posts don't consistently appear on Tuesdays. I just decided to pick this day since I'd usually be working on them on the weekends when I have more time and adding them to queue.
Anyway, as I introduced (or reminded) you all in the previous post about the official Ace Attorney site blogs for DD, they came around again in late 2015 and into early 2016 leading up to the release of SoJ and then afterward, revealing hidden details behind all the hard work that led up to polishing the 3D models since DD's debut on the 3DS and all the overtime that the staff kept constantly complaining about.
Director Fuse got to be promoted to lead art director and scenario co-director with Yamazaki this game, and they couldn't be happier. And then they left all the tough work they previously handled last game to their neighborhood friendly Planning Supervisor Daigo & his programmer buddies. It's no wonder that Mr. Daigo would eventually lead a revolution against the tyranny of Yamazaki... wait a sec, this sounds familiar. And weren't they out for Eshiro's blood?
So, yeah. I find it rather cute that Daigo wrote up a blog entry suspiciously similar to Yamazaki's earlier entry when he was complaining about Eshiro's "maddening" control during the wild drafting of SoJ's premise. (Imagine if they actually went ahead with the idea of a courtroom in the clouds.) But while Eshiro was still the big bad producer, as I said, Yamazaki and Fuse got promoted, so they only had to focus on scenario planning. And then they and their scenario team went wild with ideas, thus putting even more burden on the programming schedules and other matters... Thus, Daigo tried throwing his own revolution. Unfortunately, Yamazaki showed up at the end and threatened to sue him for copyright infringement. Over a blog entry.
And then at the end of the blog, they threw in a disclaimer assuring their younger audiences that they were just acting and things weren't that bad. However, the moral of the story is that overtime can be and definitely was hell. So it was probably based on a real story.
I don't think Yamazaki even went into all the characters he wanted to bring back in SoJ but couldn't... So unfortunately to fans of a certain lovable detective, all he could get was an unnamed reference. Oh, and same goes for the other lovable detective who couldn't make it in for obvious reasons. But at least we got Ema's smile back and it is beautiful.
Welcome to the home base of the GSvsAA project. I've recently moved from Court-Records forums and tumblr to here. Things are currently in development.
Tuesday, February 12, 2019
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
DD Character Profiles
Happy Lunar New Year! Good blessings to the Year of the Pig.
Since this game and SoJ, the developer blogs are all still up on Capcom's official site, all in Japanese, of course. If you would like to revisit them, translations for some of them have been provided on gyakutensaibanlibrary.blogspot.com (you may need to search the entries by Japanese game title, as that's how they're tagged), namely the most important pieces of info. There are some extra details Ash left out, though, like how Eshiro was depicted as a slave driver or ghoulish nightmare who does nothing but eat all their staff-room snacks and bark at the workers and all that. Eventually things cycled back again by SoJ's production and shenanigans ensue, but that's another story for next time.
This poor game suffered for years through game development stasis, though. I believe it was initially green-lit as early as 2008, following the success of AJ, but along the way, the game was delayed while issues with staffing and reorganization held it back until it was green-lit again (for realsies!) by January 2012. In the meantime, there was one other branch to the GyakuSai groupies, the GyakuKen team, who worked on the AAI games in the meantime. While Takumi's side of the biz was being reallocated, it was up to the GK team to help keep the franchise moving. It was a time for new faces to arise to the challenge.
And then after release, there was the public backlash for introducing a then controversial character in Athena. Girl didn't deserve all the hate; but she did kinda overtake a game that was "supposed" to be a Phoenix Wright game, which was previously "supposed" to be an Apollo Justice game. But between all the "supposed"s, there would be way too much to put into a single game. Considering that Scenario Director Yamazaki and Art Director Fuse basically doubled their roles as overseers of various game aspects as well, it's no wonder that the finished product may have been a bit underwhelming in some ways.
All in all, though, lessons learned and it was still a largely successful sale. Rest assured these complications in the fanbase didn't affect sales for SoJ too much, as that game also reached expected sales marks.
But that's enough of my rants. In other news, I may bring the audio drama translations over to this blog too, since I did in fact give my original translation script a "localization" that I usually shortcut when I'm translating for Ace Attorney comics. Look forward to it!
Since this game and SoJ, the developer blogs are all still up on Capcom's official site, all in Japanese, of course. If you would like to revisit them, translations for some of them have been provided on gyakutensaibanlibrary.blogspot.com (you may need to search the entries by Japanese game title, as that's how they're tagged), namely the most important pieces of info. There are some extra details Ash left out, though, like how Eshiro was depicted as a slave driver or ghoulish nightmare who does nothing but eat all their staff-room snacks and bark at the workers and all that. Eventually things cycled back again by SoJ's production and shenanigans ensue, but that's another story for next time.
This poor game suffered for years through game development stasis, though. I believe it was initially green-lit as early as 2008, following the success of AJ, but along the way, the game was delayed while issues with staffing and reorganization held it back until it was green-lit again (for realsies!) by January 2012. In the meantime, there was one other branch to the GyakuSai groupies, the GyakuKen team, who worked on the AAI games in the meantime. While Takumi's side of the biz was being reallocated, it was up to the GK team to help keep the franchise moving. It was a time for new faces to arise to the challenge.
And then after release, there was the public backlash for introducing a then controversial character in Athena. Girl didn't deserve all the hate; but she did kinda overtake a game that was "supposed" to be a Phoenix Wright game, which was previously "supposed" to be an Apollo Justice game. But between all the "supposed"s, there would be way too much to put into a single game. Considering that Scenario Director Yamazaki and Art Director Fuse basically doubled their roles as overseers of various game aspects as well, it's no wonder that the finished product may have been a bit underwhelming in some ways.
All in all, though, lessons learned and it was still a largely successful sale. Rest assured these complications in the fanbase didn't affect sales for SoJ too much, as that game also reached expected sales marks.
But that's enough of my rants. In other news, I may bring the audio drama translations over to this blog too, since I did in fact give my original translation script a "localization" that I usually shortcut when I'm translating for Ace Attorney comics. Look forward to it!
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
AJ Character Profiles
Oh, boy. I'm running short on game-specific trivia...
If I recall correctly (from some source that I can't recall in my early senility), a 5th case was shortly considered during development for this game, however unlike with case 3-3, which was meant to be 2-5 and had gone through so much concept drafting before they realized the cartridge wouldn't fit it all, there has been no remaining evidence, drafts or otherwise, of this supposed case 4-5. Thus, we'll just have to stick with a certain fan-made game starring Apollo in the aftermath of AJ:AA.
Oh, yeah. I dunno how many of ya'll still remember the Breath of Fire series, but did you know that Kazuya Nuri used to work on the art of that series before he hopped onto the Ace Attorney train for RftA and subsequent titles? You might be able to find some traces of his art style in some of those characters. Just search up the main cast, really. That might have been the only time when he and Keiji Inafune (ya'll Capcom fans know who he is, right?) worked together on the same game. Sadly, Nuri was but a rookie artist at the time, so his name isn't listed among the most important staff, though it was his artwork that got featured in the artbooks.
And now, he's a permanent fixture in the Ace Attorney dept. of Capcom and arguably the best art designer in the series, barring some classic works from Iwamoto.
But I digress; onto the more important trivia.
If I recall correctly (from some source that I can't recall in my early senility), a 5th case was shortly considered during development for this game, however unlike with case 3-3, which was meant to be 2-5 and had gone through so much concept drafting before they realized the cartridge wouldn't fit it all, there has been no remaining evidence, drafts or otherwise, of this supposed case 4-5. Thus, we'll just have to stick with a certain fan-made game starring Apollo in the aftermath of AJ:AA.
Oh, yeah. I dunno how many of ya'll still remember the Breath of Fire series, but did you know that Kazuya Nuri used to work on the art of that series before he hopped onto the Ace Attorney train for RftA and subsequent titles? You might be able to find some traces of his art style in some of those characters. Just search up the main cast, really. That might have been the only time when he and Keiji Inafune (ya'll Capcom fans know who he is, right?) worked together on the same game. Sadly, Nuri was but a rookie artist at the time, so his name isn't listed among the most important staff, though it was his artwork that got featured in the artbooks.
And now, he's a permanent fixture in the Ace Attorney dept. of Capcom and arguably the best art designer in the series, barring some classic works from Iwamoto.
But I digress; onto the more important trivia.
Tuesday, January 22, 2019
T&T Character Profiles
Moving on into the third game. Finally, I don't need to edit as much because by the time I took on this game, I got used to working with Japanese more fluently.
Sorry, guys, I'm coming up short on game-specific trivia, but I do remember something that the character designer Iwamoto said in one of his old interviews way back, concerning his designs for Godot.
It was a conversation between him and Takumi regarding how they were supposed to work out his appearance, but there was some miscommunication between them, and several times some of Iwamoto's designs didn't really suit Takumi's original picture and were thus rejected. There wasn't any spite going on between them, but I think it was this or around this time that the running gag regarding Takumi and his whiskey drinking habits began. Takumi would often sometimes shut himself up in his office racking his head over his work and nonchalantly take a bottle of whiskey with him inside, and henceforth Iwamoto would always draw cartoon Takumi drunk with a bottle. It was no coincidence that at some point they considered Godot be a drunk too, but they ultimately decided it would be too inappropriate for their game rating. (Besides, the cardboard badge stunt was funnier to show how bad Japanifornian courts have become.)
Meanwhile, it's too bad some of his unused concept art went to waste. I sure hope eventually the other devs will pick up on some of them and reuse them. One of them sorta reminded me of a certain dude from Lupin III.
Sorry, guys, I'm coming up short on game-specific trivia, but I do remember something that the character designer Iwamoto said in one of his old interviews way back, concerning his designs for Godot.
It was a conversation between him and Takumi regarding how they were supposed to work out his appearance, but there was some miscommunication between them, and several times some of Iwamoto's designs didn't really suit Takumi's original picture and were thus rejected. There wasn't any spite going on between them, but I think it was this or around this time that the running gag regarding Takumi and his whiskey drinking habits began. Takumi would often sometimes shut himself up in his office racking his head over his work and nonchalantly take a bottle of whiskey with him inside, and henceforth Iwamoto would always draw cartoon Takumi drunk with a bottle. It was no coincidence that at some point they considered Godot be a drunk too, but they ultimately decided it would be too inappropriate for their game rating. (Besides, the cardboard badge stunt was funnier to show how bad Japanifornian courts have become.)
Meanwhile, it's too bad some of his unused concept art went to waste. I sure hope eventually the other devs will pick up on some of them and reuse them. One of them sorta reminded me of a certain dude from Lupin III.
Tuesday, January 15, 2019
JFA Character Profiles
Whoop, sorry for delays, I intended to post something earlier this week but I didn't realize my scheduler didn't post until I gave it the okay to publish it.
Moving on, I'm currently recollecting my stuff from my other blog for now and going through character profiles first. While I'm on it, I'll start working in AJ, DD, and SoJ profiles on here as well, so we have the full mainstream series right away. And then I'll start poking around in the actual script data, though as I mentioned before, DD & SoJ stuff will be limited in what I can find, so I encourage people to ask me on tumblr, on the forums, or on here if they want to know about a specific thing.
Now for some random trivia about Justice for All! In the wake of Gyakuten Saiban's surprising great success, Takumi & co. decided to try a sequel that covered a greater variety of themes and cobbled them all together into one game. It may have turned out to be the lesser appreciated of the original trilogy, being the one smack-dab in the middle and having less MC-dependent stories, but Turnabout Big Top was Takumi's long-time personal favorite case to write back in the day. I dunno if it's still his absolute favorite piece, since he came up with Ghost Trick down the line (which is my personal favorite, heh), but it was a story that was inspired by a real-life account from a few years (? I forget exactly when) prior to the game's release. I think it circled around a news story involving a circus act gone awry when one of its animals went wild due to supposedly unforeseen causes.
It's been a long time. I don't remember enough to pinpoint which news story it was. I just learned about this from an interview with Takumi way back, and it was translated by my friend Ash on gyakutensaibanlibrary.blogspot.com! Be sure to check out his stuff too. He's basically the encyclopedia of Ace Attorney-related archives.
As usual, character names are given last-first.
Moving on, I'm currently recollecting my stuff from my other blog for now and going through character profiles first. While I'm on it, I'll start working in AJ, DD, and SoJ profiles on here as well, so we have the full mainstream series right away. And then I'll start poking around in the actual script data, though as I mentioned before, DD & SoJ stuff will be limited in what I can find, so I encourage people to ask me on tumblr, on the forums, or on here if they want to know about a specific thing.
Now for some random trivia about Justice for All! In the wake of Gyakuten Saiban's surprising great success, Takumi & co. decided to try a sequel that covered a greater variety of themes and cobbled them all together into one game. It may have turned out to be the lesser appreciated of the original trilogy, being the one smack-dab in the middle and having less MC-dependent stories, but Turnabout Big Top was Takumi's long-time personal favorite case to write back in the day. I dunno if it's still his absolute favorite piece, since he came up with Ghost Trick down the line (which is my personal favorite, heh), but it was a story that was inspired by a real-life account from a few years (? I forget exactly when) prior to the game's release. I think it circled around a news story involving a circus act gone awry when one of its animals went wild due to supposedly unforeseen causes.
It's been a long time. I don't remember enough to pinpoint which news story it was. I just learned about this from an interview with Takumi way back, and it was translated by my friend Ash on gyakutensaibanlibrary.blogspot.com! Be sure to check out his stuff too. He's basically the encyclopedia of Ace Attorney-related archives.
As usual, character names are given last-first.
Tuesday, January 8, 2019
PW:AA Character Profiles
Following how I did for T&T and AAI, I'll stick all the character profiles in one post. Explanations of name puns and origins will be after the break. I've cleaned up some of them so they don't look so messy and corrected a few. As always, Japanese names are given in last-first order.
Anyway, have some filler before the break.
If it isn't common knowledge by now, the original Japanese GBA version was released back in 2001, so the technological marvels in this game are limited to what they knew at the time. It wasn't until "Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney" hit NA in 2005 (EU in 2006 and AUS in... 2009) that suddenly these characters were thrust 15 years into the future. Janet Hsu, who has consistently led the localization of these games to this day, figured at the time that they may alienate Americans who were not familiar with the Japanese legal system. But they couldn't replace it with the American system either (there's no jury for starters), so they pushed it into a weird dystopic near-future where a lot of changes were made to the legal system. Since the first Western release in NA was in 2005 (AU finally got it nearly a year late, sheesh), pushing ahead 10, 11 years would have been fair.
Even to this day, there are people who mistakenly believe the legal system in-game is accurate to the Japanese one. Right, um. It is technically more accurate, but aside from the physical layout of the courthouse and the lack of a jury*, and maybe the inspiration that goes into building some of these cases, the Japanese find the courts in Japanifornia to be as bonkers as the rest of us do. Did I mention how each incident only has three days of investigation and trial to solve a murder? I haven't even touched the wacky anime tropes and superpowers.
Little did anyone at the time know that this game would lead a major franchise of Capcom that is slowly dying (ok not really) as they keep spitting out ports of the first trilogy to various consoles. Just wait until it hits Steam.
* The current lay judge system in place in Japanese courts today is not the same as a jury in a Western court of law. These lay judges are not professional judges, but they are well-versed citizens who either volunteer or are summoned to be on duty for trials that require them. Not all cases that make it to trial require lay judges; many smaller district courts around Japan still stick with the inquisitory system with one primary judge and maybe one or two secondary judges who act as advisors during deliberations because the cases are usually so straightforward.
Anyway, have some filler before the break.
If it isn't common knowledge by now, the original Japanese GBA version was released back in 2001, so the technological marvels in this game are limited to what they knew at the time. It wasn't until "Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney" hit NA in 2005 (EU in 2006 and AUS in... 2009) that suddenly these characters were thrust 15 years into the future. Janet Hsu, who has consistently led the localization of these games to this day, figured at the time that they may alienate Americans who were not familiar with the Japanese legal system. But they couldn't replace it with the American system either (there's no jury for starters), so they pushed it into a weird dystopic near-future where a lot of changes were made to the legal system. Since the first Western release in NA was in 2005 (AU finally got it nearly a year late, sheesh), pushing ahead 10, 11 years would have been fair.
Even to this day, there are people who mistakenly believe the legal system in-game is accurate to the Japanese one. Right, um. It is technically more accurate, but aside from the physical layout of the courthouse and the lack of a jury*, and maybe the inspiration that goes into building some of these cases, the Japanese find the courts in Japanifornia to be as bonkers as the rest of us do. Did I mention how each incident only has three days of investigation and trial to solve a murder? I haven't even touched the wacky anime tropes and superpowers.
Little did anyone at the time know that this game would lead a major franchise of Capcom that is slowly dying (ok not really) as they keep spitting out ports of the first trilogy to various consoles. Just wait until it hits Steam.
* The current lay judge system in place in Japanese courts today is not the same as a jury in a Western court of law. These lay judges are not professional judges, but they are well-versed citizens who either volunteer or are summoned to be on duty for trials that require them. Not all cases that make it to trial require lay judges; many smaller district courts around Japan still stick with the inquisitory system with one primary judge and maybe one or two secondary judges who act as advisors during deliberations because the cases are usually so straightforward.
5/1/22 edit: It's been three years since I started this blog and it has aged well despite inactivity. Of course, bless Capcom for finally releasing TGAAC to the rest of the world. Never would I have imagined that Ace Attorney could reach even PS4. (When's Xbox getting it, lol?) Sooner or later, we're gonna get an AAI3, I just know it, and finally AAI2 will see an official localization. No better time than that.
I've updated this post with corrections and explanations, as well as English name origins to the best of my research capabilities. Feel free to comment and add anything if you have suggestions.
Important note: a lot of information I share is either derived through dictionary hopping, or in regards to the developers and mystery novel inspirations, sourced thanks to interview and news archives available at gyakutensaibanlibrary.blogspot.com. Thanks to my friend and mentor Ash for helping me here and there over the years, as well as this wealth of knowledge that has inspired me to build a blog of my own.
Wednesday, January 2, 2019
A New Year, A New Blog
Hello, everyone! Rubia Ryu the Royal Pomeranian here.
As I've mentioned on tumblr, I'm moving my GSvsAA project here because I don't like how much of a mess I've made of it. It used to be just a home page for my Ace Attorney trivia and translations, and then it became my reblog trash bin. (I also fell into Yakuza and later Smash hell, but that's another story.)
But never mind that! This time I'm running this blog purely for the sake of what it's meant to be. And that means I'm gonna run through the series once again, bringing you all script, dialogue, puns, and cultural context that didn't make it over to the West, as well as version differences between games. And I'll start with the first game as before because there are some things I definitely need to update.
As like before, I will be working with limited resources for these games, so don't expect nearly as expansive databases as with the earlier DS titles:
Regarding GK2 & DGS, if I do get to them, I will be referring to the fan translations. Because I don't have script rips of those games either, it's gonna be a maybe for now. Sadly, we won't ever see GK2 localized unless they somehow make a GK collection that can be ported to 3DS or Switch (or hell, even XBox because the trilogy has somehow made it on there for some reason). Hopefully DGS1-2 can eventually make it over to the West, but uh, it's been 3-coming-up-4 years that the 1st has been released and Capcom is always slow to respond when they initially run into jams. At this rate, the FF7 Remake will be ready first.
As I've mentioned on tumblr, I'm moving my GSvsAA project here because I don't like how much of a mess I've made of it. It used to be just a home page for my Ace Attorney trivia and translations, and then it became my reblog trash bin. (I also fell into Yakuza and later Smash hell, but that's another story.)
But never mind that! This time I'm running this blog purely for the sake of what it's meant to be. And that means I'm gonna run through the series once again, bringing you all script, dialogue, puns, and cultural context that didn't make it over to the West, as well as version differences between games. And I'll start with the first game as before because there are some things I definitely need to update.
As like before, I will be working with limited resources for these games, so don't expect nearly as expansive databases as with the earlier DS titles:
- Gyakuten Kenji 2 / Prosecutor's Path
- Gyakuten Saiban 6 / Spirit of Justice
- Professor Layton vs Ace Attorney
- Project X Zone 2
- Dai Gyakuten Saiban / The Great Ace Attorney
Regarding GK2 & DGS, if I do get to them, I will be referring to the fan translations. Because I don't have script rips of those games either, it's gonna be a maybe for now. Sadly, we won't ever see GK2 localized unless they somehow make a GK collection that can be ported to 3DS or Switch (or hell, even XBox because the trilogy has somehow made it on there for some reason). Hopefully DGS1-2 can eventually make it over to the West, but uh, it's been 3-coming-up-4 years that the 1st has been released and Capcom is always slow to respond when they initially run into jams. At this rate, the FF7 Remake will be ready first.
But complaints aside, I hope you guys look forward to more regular updates on here. I can manage something biweekly on average, so let's go with that. If I do have the time, I may release a double post on a given week, but most likely it will be because of a two-parter that's too long for one post or other blog-related updates.
I will stick around tumblr for those couple months while it's still open, but after that, I'm shutting it down. If you still wish to contact me through tumblr, I will keep @rubiaryutheroyal open. No spambot will ever take that name away from meee!
This has been Rubia Ryu. *͡͡͡ 〵(^o^)〳
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