The Ace Attorney Iceberg Explained

Video Statistics and Information

Video
Captions Word Cloud
Reddit Comments

That was... interesting.

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/Coolest-Cat845 📅︎︎ May 26 2021 🗫︎ replies
Captions
I’m just going to save us a bit of time. I know what an iceberg meme is, and I’m going to assume that 95% or more of people watching this also know what an iceberg meme is. But if you don’t, it’s a way of visualizing trivia, theories, and more about a topic, with deeper parts getting progressively more obscure or unknown. Got it? Good. This one is about the Ace Attorney franchise. I will clarify that the origins of the iceberg I’m going through today are a teeny bit complicated. I found a couple icebergs on the internet, and was hoping to use them, but unfortunately for me they were mostly just memes and jokes. And that’s not a bad thing, and they still are enjoyable to read, but they aren’t really good material for a mostly serious video. So I decided to make my own iceberg, adopting some elements from already existing ones and adding some of my own. You can find links to the icebergs I adopted material from in the description, if you want to learn more, or just have a laugh. Also, because Ace Attorney is a Japanese franchise, I am going to have to pronounce a few Japanese words today. Apologies in advance if I don’t do a good job. And with that said, let’s dive in. [music] Japanifornia “Japanifornia” is essentially a jokey term created by Ace Attorney fans to describe the confusing setting of the Ace Attorney localization. You see, when translating the original Ace Attorney game to English, the localization team decided to change the setting of the game from Japan to California to better accommodate the game to a Western audience. And for the time, it worked. The first game takes place entirely in settings that could fit as either parts of Japan or California, due to the relatively ambiguous urban setting. The only real exception was Maya Fey’s outfit, but it didn’t make a huge difference. But after the first game, the Japanese influence really started taking over, and you started chilling out in rural spirit medium villages with very… Eastern architecture and talking to women in kimonos and overall the whole ambiguous setting disappeared. But for the sake of consistency, the localized games kept pretending to take place in America. Thus, the term “Japanifornia” was born. It’s a bit silly, but the game kind of embraces it. One of the localizers for the series, Janet Hsu, says she likes to imagine Ace Attorney as taking place in an alternate timeline where there were fewer anti-Japanese laws in the U.S. leading to more Japanese immigration, and in later localizations of the series, they kind of retroactively added that to the canon. Ace Attorney Anime There is an anime adaptation of the original Ace Attorney trilogy. The first season covers the original game and Justice for All, and the second season covers Trials and Tribulations. I haven’t actually seen much of the show, though. Layton vs. Wright Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is a 3DS game that features Phoenix Wright crossing over with the legendary puzzle game figure Professor Layton. In this game, Wright and Layton are transported to a weird fantasy world where people are being put on trial for being witches, and the two have to figure out what’s actually going on. It’s pretty good. Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Speaking of versus, I guess, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is a 2011 fighting game that combines properties from the Marvel comics with characters from the many Capcom games. And this time around, that includes our beloved Phoenix Wright, fighting against some of Earth’s mightiest heroes. His moveset is hilarious, and he sticks out in such a funny way among the rest of the cast. I just hope he one day can join Smash Bros. Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Path Ace Attorney Investigations 2 is the sequel to the 2009 spin-off Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth. Unfortunately for pretty much anyone outside of Japan, the game never got an international release, and to this day has not been officially translated to any other language. Officially. There’s a really well-made fan translation out there of the game that essentially makes it fully playable for anyone who speaks English, as long as they’re willing to sail the seas… if you catch my drift. Dai Gyakuten Saiban 1 & 2 Similar to Investigations 2, Dai Gyakuten Saiban 1 and 2 are games from the Ace Attorney series that we outside of Japan never had the pleasure of experiencing for ourselves, officially. If you like to live out on the seven seas, with no one out there able to control you, you are able to play the first game translated to English, and fans are currently in the process of translating the second game. It’s a shame that these games aren’t officially released worldwide, because they really are an awesome breath of fresh air for the series. You play as Ryunosuke Naruhodo, an ancestor of Phoenix Wright, right at the turn of the twentieth century. In the game, you travel to Great Britain and team up with Sherlock Holmes to solve crimes. It’s pretty awesome, and really unique. The first game of the two is also the first game that Shu Takumi, the creator of the Ace Attorney franchise, has directly written in the series since Apollo Justice, if you don’t count the Layton crossover. PAUSE! Well, good news, everybody: DGS is finally being given a worldwide release in the form of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles! I did not see that coming. Unfortunately for me though, this news was brought out literally less than an hour after I recorded the audio for this video. Very strange timing. That being said, this is very exciting. The only thing that bothers me is that unfortunately, they had to change Sherlock Holmes’s name to Herlock Sholmes, likely as to avoid licensing issues with the notoriously selective Conan Doyle estate. That being said, the name “Herlock Sholmes” actually has some history to it, as it was used in 1910 to use the character without dealing with legal issues in the Arsène Lupin series, which was a French series of stories about a thief. So that’s actually pretty cool. Pun names Ace Attorney writers tend to not take their characters’ names very seriously. It’s been pretty much standard in the series to make a lot of jokes when naming them, in all releases. For example, you have “Frank Sahwit”, the first witness you ever cross examine. Or, you have April May, and Redd White. Penny Nichols. It gets really obvious, especially in Spirit of Justice. Because they weren’t really making puns this time around, they were just making terms up and kind of making them sound like they originated in a foreign language. Ahlbi Ur'gaid? Pees'lubn Andistan'dhin? Talk about subtlety. Or lack thereof. Project X Zone 2 Project X Zone 2 is a crossover tactical RPG that features characters from all sorts of game franchises all coming together. It’s actually pretty overwhelming for me. It includes characters from series like Xenoblade, Fire Emblem, Street Fighter, Yakuza, Tekken, and even Phoenix and Maya from Ace Attorney are thrown into the mix. Very cool! Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is an awesome game directed by our homie Shu Takumi, where you play as a dead guy trying to uncover the secrets of your own mysterious death. And it’s great. Fantastic. It’s similar to Ace Attorney with the whole puzzle solving and crime thing, but it really is super unique and I’ve never really played anything quite like it. Definitely check it out. Steel Samurai The Steel Samurai is an in-universe tokusatsu franchise that is super huge. It stars Will Powers as the Steel Samurai and Jack Hammer as the villain, the Evil Magistrate. The whole franchise has been a very consistently reappearing concept of the series, being included in some form in a majority of the games, ever since the first. Maya Fey is a huge fan, and so is Miles Edgeworth. Eat Your Hamburgers, Apollo So you know how I talked about the “Japanifornia” joke in the community? Well, the “Eat your hamburgers, Apollo” line comes from a comic satirizing that, that came out in 2013. It is a comic where Phoenix brings attention to the lovely culture that surrounds him. The lovely culture of West Coast America. Apollo seems to be aware of how weird it all is, but he sits down for a traditional American meal. Phoenix eats what is obviously sushi but calls it hamburgers. The hamburger line is specifically a joke about how dubs of anime, especially dubs from the 80s and 90s, would often trade out the names of eastern snacks for western ones for ease of understanding among western audiences. I think the most infamous example for me is that one time in Pokémon where you see Ash, Misty, and Brock eating rice balls, but they seem to call them “doughnuts”. The mention of hamburgers specifically is a reference to how in the Japanese release of Ace Attorney, Maya’s favorite food is noodles, but in the American version, her favorite food is hamburgers. Even the Ace Attorney Twitter has participated in the joke. Ladder vs. Step-Ladder This refers to a recurring joke that appears in almost every single Ace Attorney game. Ever since the third case of the first game, almost every game has snuck in at least one conversation between two characters about the difference between a ladder and a step-ladder. It used to just be Phoenix and Maya, but a lot more characters have argued about it over the years. Almost Christmas This refers to a super famous line from the first Ace Attorney game. I don’t want to go super in-depth on the case surrounding it, but essentially the line comes from a realization in the fourth case that put to question the testimony of Larry Butz, who claimed to have heard the gunshot that killed someone. While he heard the gunshot, he was also listening to a radio host saying that it was almost Christmas. Which is confusing, because the time of death of the victim was Christmas morning. I don’t even know for sure why it’s such a good meme. There are tons of times where Phoenix points out a contradiction in a witness’s testimony, but for some reason this one is such a big deal. But to be fair, for whatever reason, it’s so memorable to me. I forgot a lot of details about the games over the years, but the almost Christmas scene still was so fresh in my mind. Maybe it’s because it’s a funny response when people wish you a Merry Christmas on Christmas Eve. But fans started posting the screenshot every December 24th, and it became a staple joke among the Ace Attorney community. So much so that the Ace Attorney Twitter does it now. AA1 Unused Sprites This refers to unused animations that were found in the data for Ace Attorney. For example, you can see here Miles Edgeworth giving a shocked, jumpy reaction. Or, you can see Larry Butz… making a weird face. I don’t know what that would be used for. You also have Phoenix Wright showing heart eyes. The accepted theory for this one is that it was intended to be used for his first reaction to meeting April May in the courtroom, but they must have changed the script so he would meet her during the investigation, so it was never used. Cadenza, Orchestra, and Jazz This refers to music albums that rearranged the music of the earlier Ace Attorney games. The Cadenza one is the one I’m least familiar with, and it has remixes of songs from the first game with some vocals. The Orchestra one has exclusively orchestrated arrangements, and the Jazz one is probably the most well-known, with its very popular rendition of Godot’s theme music. I actually listened to it while writing this video. You are not a clown. This refers to a meme among both Ace Attorney fans and non-fans alike. It’s a picture of Miles Edgeworth saying “You are not a clown. You are the entire circus.” Some of you might not know this, but it’s actually not an official line from the games or anything. Maybe the UI gives that away. It came from Twitter and quickly started being used as a reaction image all over the internet. The Ace Attorney Movie This refers to a Japanese full length feature-film adaptation of the first Ace Attorney game that came out in 2012. The film was pretty successful, and after reading about it I kind of want to watch it and see what is and isn’t different. But Jesus, two hours and fifteen minutes?! I’m lucky I’m a big fan of the series. Dual Destinies Rated M Every single game in the series that has been rated by the ESRB has been rated T for teens, with the exception of Dual Destinies, which was rated M for mature, and fans have always been confused why. It’s not like the game has inappropriate language. I mean, there’s no swear words anywhere in the series, except for the very rare “damn”. Where’s that damn chaos emerald?! It still deals with murders and stuff. But it has the M rating. The two biggest theories I’m familiar with is that the game was either rated M due to its use of explosives or because of some of its late-game imagery. The first one theorizes that because the first case of the game involves a courthouse being blown up with a bomb, that it had its rating brought up due to it being more gritty, or something. The Boston marathon bombing was still a recent event at the time, so perhaps the whole concept was deemed too controversial. The other theory is that it was due to some of the darker images used involving Athena and Simon Blackquill’s backstory, being a bit bloodier than usual for the series. Yeesh. I actually wasn’t able to play Dual Destinies for years as a kid, because it was a download-only game and the age I put on my Nintendo account barred me from purchasing it. Very sad. Original GBA versions Ace Attorney is probably most well-known for its releases on the Nintendo DS. In my mind, I tend to think of it as a DS franchise. But my mind is WRONG, because the original Ace Attorney trilogy actually was first made on the GameBoy Advance. However, those releases never made it out of Japan, and Phoenix Wright made his worldwide debut on the DS. The games were unchanged for the most part, except for some parts of the UI being put on the bottom screen and the ability to shout into your DS mic when you want to make an objection. Also, the case Rise from the Ashes was made from scratch and put on the first Ace Attorney DS game, with a bunch of new touchscreen mechanics. Sōseki Natsume is real In Dai Gyakuten Saiban 1 and 2, you have to defend a fellow Japanese man living abroad in Britain, named Sōseki Natsume. He is kind of an antisocial poet who was sent to Britain to study English literature but for the most part just hid away in his apartment and avoided interacting with other people, until he was accused of attempted murder a few times. Eventually he returned home, after all his British hijinx. I didn’t actually know this, I guess because I’m not very cultured, but this character is actually heavily based on a real person, the real Japanese author and poet Sōseki Natsume! In real life he also was an exchange student in Britain studying literature. He was never arrested on suspect of murder, though. I was so surprised when I found out about this. But in retrospect it makes sense because he was given a lot of attention in the DGS games. Fictional countries Ace Attorney actually has a lot of completely fictitious countries. Although the game takes place in either America or Japan depending on where you play it, a lot of the in-game politics involves countries that don’t actually exist. Now, the obvious one is Khura’in, given that you spend a whole game there, but in the Investigations games especially, there is a lot of focus given on countries that are unique to Ace Attorney. In Investigations you learn about countries including Zheng Fa, Allebahst, and Babahl. There’s also Borginia, where some characters in Apollo Justice come from. There’s also Wakanda. There’s no Wakanda. Third Case Syndrome This refers to a pattern in Ace Attorney games that a lot of fans talk about where the third case of an Ace Attorney game is very often the worst. This isn’t always true in my opinion, but I can definitely see where the sentiment tends to come from. Especially because the third cases tend to not be very important for the overarching story of the games, but still tend to be one of the longest in a game. So sometimes they tend to feel drawn out and kind of pointless. Turnabout Big Top is the biggest example, as it’s one of the least popular cases, and it happens to be the third in Justice for All. DL-6 and the Ace Attorney timeline You may occasionally hear about how the first Ace Attorney game takes place in 2016. Or how Dual Destinies takes place in 2027. And the first thing you might think is: why the hell is everyone still using flip phones? Well, the entirety of the Ace Attorney timeline is centered on one date: the only date that has ever been stated in the series. December 28th, 2001. Someone in the comments is going to say they were born that day. December 28, 2001 is the day of the murder of Gregory Edgeworth and the DL-6 incident. And in Turnabout Goodbyes, you find out the truth about the case and solve it on the last day before its statute of limitations runs out. And the in-universe statute of limitations lasts 15 years. This places the events of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney in the second half of 2016. The games have always let you know the month and date of the cases, so it’s pretty easy to piece together the timeline from that. The Ace Attorney legal system is awful No offense guys, but this really is true. The police essentially arrest and charge the first person they see at a crime scene, and like, every single time they’re wrong. The fact that trials need to end within three days is ridiculous, especially for cases as complex as Ace Attorney cases. Witnesses like Furio Tigre or Frank Sahwit seem to get away with knowingly lying to the court multiple times and almost evade the law without Phoenix Wright. The fact that Phoenix Wright literally has to solve a case in order to get his client the not guilty verdict is like, ridiculous. There’s no burden of proof on the prosecution, essentially. All they need is a witness testimony, pretty much, and then the defense literally has to find out and name the actual guilty party in order to get their client off. It’s almost dystopian, to be honest. Like the level of extremity of the legal system in this series is really out there. People have poked fun at it a lot, but one of my favorite examples is how Phoenix straight up picks up and takes evidence from crime scenes and presents them in court. It’s really funny partially because almost every time he’s being honest, but the court totally believes him when he could have so easily made a lot of it up. Of course, this all makes sense. Phoenix Wright heroically defending his client and finding out the true culprit of a case is much more entertaining than Phoenix Wright trying to convince the court and judge that his client only killed four people because he had a moment of insanity or something. Edgeworth in Rise from the Ashes Rise from the Ashes has always been a bit of a controversial case. If you’re not aware, the case is the fifth one in the first game, sort of. The original GBA release only had four cases. But for the DS re-release of the first Ace Attorney, Capcom decided to make a new case for the event, and also include a bunch of DS features in it, including 3D models and touchscreen minigames. That’s all well and good, but the controversy is that at this point in the series, the original trilogy had already been written, and they added this very complex case to the tail end of the first game. It was retroactively added to the timeline, and kind of messed some parts up. Most notably Edgeworth’s arc. Originally Edgeworth seemed to have stopped prosecuting after Turnabout Goodbyes, and left his country of origin to meditate on what it really meant to be a prosecutor. Turnabout Goodbyes had him on the defendant’s chair, and he really had to reconsider what the meaning for his job was. Now that’s all well and good, but Rise from the Ashes kind of puts his disappearance on hold for a few months so he can prosecute Lana Skye. This kind of messes with his dramatic arc in Justice and opens up some plot holes in the writing. In the HD rerelease of the trilogy they partially rewrote some scenes in the second game to make it make more sense, but the DS releases just kept the scripts as is. This just kinda confuses a lot of things, and I kind of wish Rise from the Ashes wasn’t really canon or something. It’s a fun case, with some awesome characters, but it does kind of stick out in the modern trilogy. However, I feel like the Ace Attorney devs made up for its lack of impact in the original trilogy by constantly referencing it in later DS games, with characters like Mike Meekins making several cameos and Ema Skye becoming a mainstay Ace Attorney character. So it just kind of exists as a bit of a weird patch in the Ace Attorney timeline. 3-3 was a JFA case Recipe for Turnabout was originally written for Justice for All, but was taken out and repurposed for Trials and Tribulations in order to save cartridge space. This is also why there is a white dove among the pigeons in Vitamin Square, because it’s a reference to the Turnabout Big Top case. GameBoy Color Ace Attorney was originally planned to be put on the GameBoy Color. However, the GameBoy Advance was already well into development, and the team decided to put it on the new hardware. Based on Gay Manga First of all, this thumbnail is a meme among Ace Attorney fans because of how weird it is out of context. The thumbnail is for a video about how some Ace Attorney games apparently were partially written with fan-service in mind for a lot of yaoi fangirls. When the first Ace Attorney came out, the staff were shocked at how popular Phoenix and Miles were as a fan pairing, and they took their huge yaoi fan base in mind when making the following games. I should note that I’m not totally sure how true this all is. The video itself says in the description that the whole story is at least partially dramatized, so I couldn’t tell you for sure. I mean, one of the original character designers for Ace Attorney was apparently a yaoi fan, and actually writes yaoi now. That kind of makes sense in my head, because the Ace Attorney art style always seemed to resemble yaoi a little bit. Most notably with a lot of the male characters, who had pretty small heads and broad shoulders by anime conventions, which kind of fits in with a lot of stereotypes about the artwork. Nickroll [music] Missile Missile refers to a shiba inu police dog you can borrow from Detective Gumshoe in Turnabout Goodbyes. He’s one of three items you can borrow in order to figure out the case, but he doesn’t end up helping you, and just ends up eating a bunch of Larry Butz’s food. What’s unique about him is that he’s actually named after a pomeranian Shu Takumi had, and ended up appearing in a couple other cases. There is also a pomeranian named Missile in Ghost Trick, also named after Shu’s dog. Godot’s Japanese Voice Actor Because Ace Attorney was a small project worked on by just a few people at its start, they never really seeked out serious voicework for the first three games, especially because all they really needed was like 4 or 5 people to just shout out a phrase or two. They usually just got people working on the project to lend their voices. Phoenix’s original Japanese voice actor was Shu Takumi, for example. One of the art guys voiced Miles Edgeworth. Most interestingly, Godot was voiced by Hideki Kamiya. You know, the Devil May Cry guy. The Bayonetta guy. The “blocks me on Twitter” guy. He and Shu Takumi joined Capcom around the same time and were good friends, and Kamiya wanted to voice one of the characters in Ace Attorney. And lucky for him, he got to be immortalized as the Japanese voice for one of the most popular characters in the franchise. Ema Skye: Investigations Early in the stages of planning for Miles Edgeworth Investigations, director Takeshi Yamazaki originally thought about making the game about Ema Skye as a detective. But upon getting feedback from other people working on the game, they decided to switch the focus to Miles Edgeworth, because he was a much more well-known character, and if they were going to do a spin-off, it would be best to focus on one of the series’ most popular. Taiko Drum Master cameo One of the many Taiko Drum Master games, Taiko no Tatsujin: Dokodon! Mystery Adventure features Phoenix Wright along with a few other characters you might recognize. It also features some music from the series. Black psyche-locks Black psyche-locks are a rare type of psyche-lock that represent secrets that are subconsciously kept. While normal, red, psyche-locks represent the secrets a person is knowingly keeping from you, black psyche-locks represent repressed memories and insecurities that the holder is unaware of. The only two characters ever shown to have it are Kristoph Gavin and Athena Cykes. Shoe the Cat Shoe the cat is an animal character in Ace Attorney. He is Matt Engarde’s pet cat, and plays a surprisingly important role in Farewell, My Turnabout. Matt Engarde asks Phoenix to feed Shoe while he is still in jail, and Phoenix does that. But when Phoenix is talking to Shelly de Killer over a transceiver about the safety of Maya Fey, who had been kidnapped previously in order to blackmail Phoenix into getting Matt a not guilty verdict, Shoe meows right at the end of their conversation, giving Phoenix insight at Maya’s whereabouts. I’ve always liked the Ace Attorney animal characters, and Shoe is one of my favorites. I vaguely remember there being some meme among some of my friends years ago about Shoe the Cat being the true mastermind of the case. Shoe is also named after Shu Takumi. Phoenix at Gatewater Land In case three of Miles Edgeworth: Ace Attorney Investigations, one can see Phoenix, Maya, and Pearl on a boat in the background of the main gate to Gatewater Land. You can also see the police chief of the Criminal Affairs Department there with his daughter. Ace Attorney is longer than most novels I’m not actually a very good reader, all things considered. I usually have trouble reading printed books and it’s something I always wish I could be better at. That’s why I was really surprised when I learned that the first Ace Attorney game has about 210,000 words of dialogue! And considering that your average adult fiction novel usually has about 70,000 to 120,000 words, I think it’s safe to say that I do more reading than I usually give myself credit for, as I can usually play an Ace Attorney game in full in just a few days. And if you’re in a position like me, pat yourself on the back, because you probably read more than you realize as well. “The miracle never happen.” This refers to an infamous typo that takes place in the bad ending of Justice for All, where Phoenix quits his job as an attorney after Matt Engarde is found not guilty. In the original DS localization of Justice for All, there is text that reads “The miracle never happen,” which is supposed to read “The miracle never happened”. It’s pretty well-known because of how much of a tone-breaker it is for such a heavy moment in the game. Phoenix acquitted Majima Apparently in Project X Zone 2, Phoenix and Goro Majima from the Yakuza games had met before the events of the game. Phoenix took on the defense of Majima and proved how quote on quote “pure and innocent” Majima was. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not actually sure if Phoenix found the truth that time around. Turnabout Spotlight This refers to an Ace Attorney stage show adaptation, where Phoenix and Maya have to defend Will Powers against the accusation of starting a theatre fire. Which if you don’t know, isn’t actually based on any existing source material from the games. I actually watched a little bit of it while doing research for this video, and it was really fun to see Ace Attorney being represented through the medium of theatre. Larry and Bikini One of the most interesting lines in the third game only shows up if you look for it. Early in Bridge to the Turnabout, you have the opportunity to talk to Larry Butz, or “Laurice Deauxnim”. If you present to him Bikini’s profile, he’ll tell you that Bikini… is his mother. But then he refuses to elaborate. It’s a weird moment for sure, and I couldn’t even tell you what it means. I mean, at face value, maybe he’s just being honest with you, and Bikini really is his mother. But given that they never interact like that and that’s the only line regarding it that appears, it’s really a questionable moment. It doesn’t help that she just seems to be a stranger to everyone else, including Phoenix, who has known Larry since they were little kids. Gyakuten Hanafuda and Gyakuten Saiban Poker Gyakuten Hanafuda and Gyakuten Saiban Poker are two obscure Ace Attorney mobile games that are based on tabletop card games. You probably know what Poker is, but Hanafuda is a Japanese type of playing card. There’s actually not much remaining evidence of these games’ existences besides a few screenshots, as they both had limited releases. I’m pretty sure they can be considered lost media, though there’s probably people still out there with copies. Henry Stickmin In the second Henry Stickmin game, Escaping the Prison, you can choose to call a lawyer to defend you in court. And whom else would you call but the legend himself, Phoenix Wright?! Renamed “Felix White” in a later version. To me this was just a cute reference, but given that I’m sure a lot of people played some of the Henry Stickmin games as kids, there’s probably a lot of people out there who were first exposed to the Ace Attorney series through this game, and that’s really cool. Gyakuten Puzzle Irekaeru Gyakuten This was a 2011 Ace Attorney mobile game that simulates a trial through the style of a matching puzzle game. There’s not much known about it, but one cool thing is that staple evidence items like the attorney’s badge and luminol fluid can be used as power ups. Gregory based on Atticus Finch From what I can tell, this is just a theory. If you don’t know who Atticus Finch is, he’s the defense lawyer that represents Tom Robinson in the classic American novel To Kill a Mockingbird. And his famous 1965 film adaptation strongly resembles the likeness of Gregory Edgeworth. I don’t know for sure if this is intended or not. But I can honestly see it being intentional. Ace Attorney Manga in a Law library This is referring to an older Tumblr thread where someone brings up how they have Ace Attorney manga in their law school’s library. However, the post was reblogged by someone questioning the legitimacy in the form of an objection mimicking the writing style of Ace Attorney. What ensued was an actual debate over whether the manga actually belonged to the library including Phoenix, the Judge, Edgeworth, and Gumshoe. It’s a hilarious read, and brings me back to Tumblr culture from that period. Godot Mug In a blog post by English localization team member Janet Hsu, she brought up how some of Godot’s original English names included Joseph Cuppa, Xavier Barstucks, and William Havamug. She then drew a mug inspired by the character Godot. Buddy Faith design based on Yamazaki Buddy Faith is a minor character in the first Miles Edgeworth game, and apparently his likeness was based on the appearance of the game’s director, Takeshi Yamazaki. And you can definitely see it. Fun detail. Boogie-Woogie Innocence Back when Ace Attorney was originally being conceptualized, there were several potential titles being thrown around for the game. These included “Naruhodo-kun’s Screaming Trials”, “The Beautiful Verdict”, “Boogie-Woogie Innocence”, and even “Let’s Raise Hamsters”. The hamster title existed because there was a point where they were considering making the game take place in a world of anthropomorphic hamsters. Cut Animations In the first Ace Attorney, Detective Gumshoe had this one animation where he kind of bashfully scratches the back of his head. For whatever reason, this was never used again in any following game. A similar example is this sprite of Larry looking kind of smug with his head cocked. This also was only used in the first game. These might be due to storage issues, maybe. We’re not actually sure. Danganronpa inspired Dual Destinies When doing research on this topic, I found people being really against the idea that Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies took inspiration from Danganronpa. It seemed like something that was a bit guarded against. I guess maybe it comes from a rivalry between Ace Attorney fans and Danganronpa fans. But honestly, I can totally see it happening. Dual Destinies saw the introduction of a few more visually dynamic parts of gameplay like the Mood Matrix and Revisualization that definitely do remind me of Danganronpa’s flashy minigames. And I don’t see it as a stretch that people working on Ace Attorney took a look at what Danganronpa was doing and decided to see how they could take inspiration from it. Gamers often seem to have this weird perception that game developers work in a vacuum and don’t take influence from each other. Like somehow people working on Ace Attorney and people working on Danganronpa don’t know anything about the other franchise. I don’t know why people think like this. It’s weird. And I’m not even calling either game a rip-off here. I’m just saying that it’s likely they’ve influenced each other. Turnabout Storm Some of you might be thinking back to all the Ace Attorney cases you’ve played and are having trouble remembering what Turnabout Storm is. But some of you might also know what this is and are still as dumbfounded as I am that it exists. Turnabout Storm is essentially a full-length fan made Ace Attorney case that crosses our beloved Phoenix Wright with… My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Jeez, bronies really are ambitious. Phoenix Wright is summoned to Equestria by Twilight Sparkle to help defend her good friend Rainbow Dash who has been wrongly accused of murder. It’s like 7 hours, about as long as Rise from the Ashes. It’s also fully voice acted. And I’m going to confess. This is what got me into Ace Attorney. I was like 12 at the time, and I was a big fan of The Mysterious Mr. Enter. He made a review of the crossover series, and I loved the idea. I liked My Little Pony at the time, and thought the whole concept of a game where you find the truth in court to be awesome. And the rest is history. This thing is turning 10 years old this year. Wow. And they’re making a sequel that’s still being worked on! If you want to watch it, you can find a link to it in the description. Gyakuten Saiban Jiten This refers to a Japanese-only Ace Attorney game. Well, it’s not really a game in the same way Apollo Justice is a game, for example. It’s essentially an encyclopedia for the Ace Attorney games, with music, character information, sprites, and more. It’s like a wiki in your hands. Unsurprisingly though, it never was released outside of Japan. Furio Tigre is Phoenix’s dad Get ready for a lot of joke theories. This theory suggests that Phoenix Wright and Furio Tigre, the character from Recipe for Turnabout, are related. I don’t think that’s true. They never recognize each other or anything, and they don’t really look much alike, save for their similar hairstyles. This is just a meme though, so perhaps I shouldn’t really think about it too much. ‘Fake’ Shu Takumi Interview This refers to an occasionally cited interview with the series director Shu Takumi about whether or not Phoenix and Miles were meant to be a couple. He said no, but he kind of playfully considered the idea. He also brought up how if he was to bring romance into Ace Attorney, he would likely pair Phoenix and Maya together. Apparently, the source for this interview isn’t known, and a lot of people question its legitimacy. But I’m sure it has caused a lot of rumors surrounding the intended shipping dynamics of the series or lack thereof regardless. Ace Attorney and Ghost Trick are in the same universe You know, I almost immediately discredited this theory, but there’s a bit more to it than you might think. Although Ace Attorney and Ghost Trick do share some elements and there are a couple Ace Attorney references in Ghost Trick, at face value they do seem like different games in different worlds. Shu Takumi himself says that. But, he did also say he wouldn’t be against the two series having a crossover. One idea he just came up with in an interview was Phoenix being killed and Sissel prosecuting his killer. That being said, if something like this did happen, it would very very likely be a Layton kind of situation. It’s not canon to the actual story of Ace Attorney. Real life cross-examination of parrots Now, the famous cross-examination of Polly in Turnabout Goodbyes is one of the most cited examples of Ace Attorney’s silly writing, but parrots being used as witnesses might not be as crazy as you think. It’s actually been done. It’s certainly rare, and I would imagine that the amount of credence a court of law can really give a parrot’s testimony would be up for a lot of debate, but there have been several news stories about it happening. Though we Ace Attorney fans obviously are quick to make ourselves known on those videos. Godot couldn’t see Redd White I’ll admit that I actually laughed audibly when I first read this. It’s a fantastic joke and callback. If you don’t know, Godot’s vision is messed up, and that’s why he wears the visor of his. But even with his visor, there are still things he cannot see. For example, he is incapable of seeing red on a white background. So when he submits a bloodstained apron in Recipe for Turnabout, he doesn’t even know there’s blood on it. And later on in the game, you realize how important that detail becomes. Redd White is one of the first villains in the Ace Attorney series and one of the more obvious early examples of a character with a pun name. The joke, if you haven’t caught up yet, is that if Godot and Redd White were to ever meet, Godot wouldn’t be able to see him because of his vision problems. Hot Clown Agenda I’m stumped on this one. Perhaps there is an agenda within Ace Attorney to make people like clowns more. Or maybe it refers to the strategy Geiru Toneido used when testifying in case 4 of Spirit of Justice, where she pretended to be a lovable attractive ditzy clown in order to avoid suspicion. That’s my best guess. It likely isn’t about Moe, because that guy is not really that attractive. Spirit of Justice is Imperialist propaganda This is just a meme theory. It pretty much just pokes fun at how in Ace Attorney 6 Phoenix Wright essentially flew to a foreign country and quickly interrupted one of their trials and started telling them that their way of doing things was all wrong, with no respect for their culture or practices. I don’t think that this should be really seen as that serious of a theory. I mean, first of all, the whole Defense Culpability Act thing, which would charge attorneys as well as defendants if they are found guilty, was highly controversial within the country, and there was already a major resistance movement going on. It’s not like he was really saying stuff everyone disagreed with by barging into their courts and acting as a defense attorney. But even with that being said, Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice isn’t really supposed to have a super-serious depiction of legal or political struggle. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s not like the creators made the game as a serious critique of the legal system of any country. I mean, all things considered, Khura’in’s legal system is awful, but it’s not like Japanifornia’s legal system is that good either. So yeah. Furry fangame It appears we’ve saved the best for last! This refers to Gyaku Shaun Sai Hanri, a mysterious, mostly lost Ace Attorney fan game that featured furry characters. Yeah, I know. And this wasn’t just like an extremely amateur project, either. It had original composed music and unique animations. The wolf version of Phoenix Wright honestly looks great. However, there are no copies of the game up for download, and it’s unclear if it was just a demo or not. It’s considered lost media. Interestingly enough, this was made in 2003. Like, pre-Trials and Tribulations. We’re dealing with ancient furry history. I really hope we one day find a way to play this game, because I am honestly so curious to learn more about it. It’s such a weird thing that exists, and I would love to play it. Hey, you made it to the end! Thank you so much for watching. This video was a ton of fun to write and do research on. It actually prompted me to get back into the series, and I ended up playing a whole bunch of games of Ace Attorney to get my inspiration flowing. Feel free to discuss other facts about Ace Attorney in the comments. It’s a huge awesome series with years of history and a lot of trivia, so I couldn’t go over everything. And with that said, I’ll see you guys around.
Info
Channel: switch1e
Views: 284,432
Rating: 4.95296 out of 5
Keywords: switch1e, gaming, video, games, switch, nintendo, nintendo switch, top 10 switch1e, switch1e top 10, iceberg explained, mario 64 iceberg, super mario 64 iceberg, ace attorney, phoenix wright, phoenix wright ace attorney, the great ace attorney, capcom, phoenix wright ace attorney trilogy, iceberg phoenix wright, ace attorney iceberg, the ace attorney iceberg explained, nintendo iceberg
Id: FAPpgHxuDA8
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 35min 51sec (2151 seconds)
Published: Sun Apr 25 2021
Related Videos
Note
Please note that this website is currently a work in progress! Lots of interesting data and statistics to come.