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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

• 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