GYAKUTEN SAIBAN 5

This blog functions as both my LIVEBLOG and SPOILER BLOG for Gyakuten Saiban 5. Please note that this means there may be UNMARKED SPOILERS, so follow with caution. Extra links are above Bonus: AA Replay Blog

[aoidaichi]

This blog functions as both my LIVEBLOG and SPOILER BLOG for Dai Gyakuten Saiban. Please note that...

Helloooo friends who followed me on my GS5 liveblog.

Guess what I’m gonna be doing in well less than 24 hours o3o

[aoidaichi]

btw since you're replaying the cases, can you observe if the DD is especially rampant with villain persona switches and their breakdowns? I'm p sure the series starts pretty light on it, just simple expression or minor cosmetic changes, and progressively have gotten more ridiculous over the years as if the team is trying to boil the AA series down to its gimmicks. e.g. Aristotle might be intimidating but it was so hard to take the trial seriously after his mohawk getup reveal (Marlon was worse)

I think you’re right that the ‘persona’ switching has gotten more and more ridiculous, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just the team having fun with the higher memory capacity/3D gimmick. :’D It’s almost been a natural progression in the games, though. The villain reveals and breakdowns are some of the most memorable parts of each game, so it makes sense that they’d want each iteration to be more memorable than the last.

I still think the “final boss” of AAI2 has the most fucking ridiculous reveal and breakdown, though. Not even Marlon can beat that imo.

But anyway, a lot of things in these games have problems with being boiled down to their gimmicks. Even characters like Oldbag and Lotta were nowhere NEAR as bad in their first appearances as they would grow to be later, and you can argue that the Judge himself gets more and more outlandish (and dare I say, idiotic) with each game.

I think the only near-100%-positive example of this is with Apollo himself. His “I’m fine!” wasn’t that much of a thing in his first game, but it became one of his defining characteristics first outside of the series proper, and then inside it with DD. But instead of flattening his character, using that gimmick kinda expanded on it.

[aoidaichi]

CLAPOLLO GIVES ME LIFE. I can only recall two times when apollo was confronted with juniper's crushing, once when we were athena,once when we were apollo, but I don't recall the bracketed blue text of inner thoughts ever coming up so theres room to imagine apollo feinting obliviousness to not to lead the poor girl on CAUSE HE IS ALREADY IN A BROSHIP WITH SOMEONE ELSE also Aura saying their on the same boat (it's not japan to ever make mainstream media queer relationships so prob not canon)

I really do think Juniper’s crush is never gonna amount to anything more than a crush tbh. This series doesn’t like romantic entanglements that aren’t in the past, for one. For two, you’re right that Apollo never reacts to it. And for three, I think she was meant to be a character who FINALLY treats Apollo positively, rather than the weird backhanded compliments he’s used to getting; that it manifested in the writing as a crush is kind of an unfortunate consequence imo.

As for Aura’s “in the same boat”, it’s likely she was more referring to having lost someone precious to both of them (”at the hands of the little Princess” or whatever she was likely insinuating), but I definitely honestly think Aura’s romantic feelings are otherwise canon. The Japanese is just as insinuating as the English in that regard, which is quite interesting.

Like, Japanese female friendships are on this weird pseudo-romantic-but-not-really pedestal here, but I don’t actually think Aura and Metis fall into that weirdness, and I’d be more surprised if (at least from Aura’s end) it wasn’t romantic.

[aoidaichi]

An Ace Attorney replay Current Case: 1-4

Oh yeah!

This blog definitely exists, and I’ve been updating at a rate of one-phase-per-day so far (well, since coming back to it), so there’s lots of stuff.

It’s much more relaxed in pace, and generally more thinky from my end, so if that’s the kind of thing you’re into then o3o

[aoidaichi]

A whiplash that occurred was the difference between Countdown and Academy Juniper, I had a moment of confusion about case chronology when Academy Juniper was introduced, her lack of "my grandma said" made me consistently feel that this was an entirely different person, even if they tried to explain it away with "being school president"(and around high school friends) sick!juniper also felt like pandering to the sick sort of japanese fetish about protecting frail delicate girls

Juniper’s character is kinda weird as hell, isn’t it :”D

I think it’s possible to make an argument for something like circumstances? Like, Academy is the first time Juniper’s seen Athena in years iirc, and the first time she’s met Apollo at all.  It’d make sense that she was maybe a bit more...stand-off-ish, I suppose? Or that she was keeping secrets during Academy’s run.  But that’s about the only explanation I can give for the difference.

I dunno if I can say anything about the possible pandering, but I can certainly see that angle.  It probably came from a more benign position, what with it making her obviously innocent, and then also creating the whiplash when we see her first chronological appearance in Academy, but well...

[aoidaichi]

yoshimars replied to your post“I still absolutely love the game! I've given it quite a few replays...”

It did, though it makes case 1 awkward. Since characters that should be acting a certain way don't (Apollo comes off very cheery compared to his case 4 self, heck so does Athena. Not to mention Athena weirdly seems unconfident)

I was actually thinking about the case-split when I played through case 1 earlier, and honestly the only thing that felt right for the circumstances it was located in was that pause Apollo gave before deciding it was okay to hand the case over to Athena. Otherwise you’re right......it’s gotta feel almost like whiplash.

Either that, or he was trying to put on lighter airs intentionally for Juniper.

yoshimars replied to your post “I loved the new chars in DD but I gotta admit that I was really...”

About Apollo in DD: I absolutely want to see a game more focused on him. DD gave me a little but I know there's a much bigger story he's a part of. I'm really hoping that GS6 is focused on Apollo's story with Athena and Phoenix being supporting cast!

I THINK ABOUT THIS A LOT TBH

in a game that is presumably more focused on Apollo and/or AJ’s story threads, I always go back and forth on who would be the better POV/player character.

Apollo makes sense, because it’s his story, and seeing his thoughts about it wouLD BE SUPER INTERESTING

PHOENIX makes super sense, because he’s got a massive secret (or hundred, let’s be real) to divulge, and it’d be interesting to see his thought process while having to keep that hidden

but ATHENA could also be an interesting POV for some duration for this, exactly because she’s unrelated. These games have always used the POV character as a vehicle to introduce the player to the story of the people around them. They take part a bit themselves, but the bulk of it tends to go to other people. Athena sensing discord in Phoenix’s voice when he talks about certain things, or going back and forth between them after a falling out, or comforting a distraught Trucy who’s stuck between them....she provides a surprisingly interesting viewpoint to watch it play out in.

I think any game going back to AJ’s threads needs a playable Apollo, and I am actually not at all adverse to the multiple-playable-attorneys thing DD had going on, so I’m kinda hoping that we can do the switcheroo to much more interesting effect

....hopefully, we live in a perfect enough world, haha

[aoidaichi]

DUDE I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD cause I only found your blog and backtracked hella back after your liveblogging finished and there were no new posts. anyway I was pretty surprised when none of the characters in the DLC case seemed bad at first usually with AA's track record and animedia in general liking/treating animals well = not a villain so I didn't suspect Marlon at first given how he treats Rifle, and wasn't surprised when he was let off the villain hook by having plot-wrttien as innocent

NOPE DEF NOT DEAD, the spoiler blog just grew less and less pertinent as more time passed after the American/international release(s), but I decided to come here to talk DD stuff since a mutual friend on my personal is just going through the game for the first time, and I didn’t wanna deal with readmores o3o

Turnabout Reclaimed is a hell of a case. I’m kinda lazily playing through DD again atm on iOS (it looks SOOOO nice I’m so impressed), but I decided to do both DLC additions first so I could go through the main story last. Reclaimed feels....kinda really long, at some points? Almost to the point of dragged on. I will readily admit my biases have a lot to do with that, though, since the Agency is represented...kinda unevenly. I really appreciated some of the details, like Phoenix giving Apollo a case-related job to do in the background, but what I would have appreciated MORE was if they has split up the junior attorneys so that we were with one during one Investigation Phase, and with the other during the remaining Investigation Phase. I ESPECIALLY feel this because the only significant Nick-Apollo interaction we have is either towards the very end of the game during that brief moment it’s only those two at the defense, or during the quiz dlc which wasn’t localized how dare you.

still morbidly upset about the quiz dlc not being localized and i got to play it

Uh. *ahem*

Yes, Turnabout Reclaimed. I think it went on forever but I LOVE the resolution to the case. We do not often get a genuine, honest to god accident in this series. If memory serves the closest is 1-3, which was a case of self-defense. And you’re right about the characters, it was remarkably hard to pin who it might have been until the very end, and when it turned out to be no one at all it just....felt really natural.

[aoidaichi]

I loved the new chars in DD but I gotta admit that I was really disappointed by the lack of the jurist system introesd at the end of AJ. I guess it's cause Shu Takumi wasn't working on DD and on DGS instead...but... :( At times it almost felt like they disregarded AJ events like "It's ur time now Apollo~" "Jk Nick is back and hotter than ever!" (not that I mind...) And the whole, we're not going to put chars in for fanservice but here's Pearls and not Maya. I just wish DD connected to AJ better~

That particular point is interesting, because if I’m remembering an interview with Takumi correctly, even he was surprised that Eshiro and co. went back to Phoenix.

I feel like the connection to AJ is there, but they had to be...kinda careful about it. And honestly, they were pretty careful about their trilogy connections too. It was kind of a necessary evil, imo. With the first game in the main series on 3DS coming just over six years after the previous main title, we nearly have a whole gaming generation in the middle there.  It’s clear they were thinking about previous games (Edgeworth’s ENTIRE getup is a massive nod to his dad, and in the planning stages Apollo’s own father was going to be included in some way, not to mention the game being full of lowkey references to previous titles), but circumstances just kinda....denied them the chance to do anything with it without possibly alienating too many new possible players.

The series seems to have an even better foothold than ever since GS5′s release in Japan, and all the work put into promoting DGS is kinda proving that point for me.  I’m hoping that we’ll get news of GS6 as soon as is viable, business-wise, after DGS’s release, and that the shorter timespan and the same system will mean more concrete connections to previous games a la the trilogy. I also still wanna believe that Apollo ranking 1st and 2nd in the Character Popularity Poll and the on-the-spot Nico Live poll, respectively, will kinda....push the team to focus on him more.

[aoidaichi]

I still absolutely love the game! I've given it quite a few replays both in the given order and in chronological order, too. I loved Athena at the beginning and all this has only made me love her more. They really did a good job, I think. I find myself pining for another game post DD.

Hmmm, I don’t often get to see resoundingly positive opinions of Athena, haha.  I still kinda sit on the fence with how I think her arc was written, but I think a lot of that is still me fighting with pre-release news and preconceptions I had built up (and also the massive wait after AJ).

I’ve never thought to play the game in chronological order though, that’s interesting--and if you went all the way, that means you split case 4 in two. Did that change anything, like the atmosphere or something?

[aoidaichi]

There are nearly 450 of you still here and I don’t even know if you CARE but I have been bursting at the seems the past couple of days thinking about Dual Destinies and how fucking complicated my own thoughts on the game are so.

Nearly two years later, how does this game sit with you guys??? Send asks. Anon or not. I don’t really care I would just L O V E to converse with anyone and everyone about this because despite thinking I had it all sorted out, I was obviously wrong.

[aoidaichi]

about the "yes daddy" thing... i know where it can happen in the english version, it should be in the same place in jp right? o/ ---> case 5 > trial day 1 - memories of seven years ago > present: katana > select: "the blood was wiped off the weapon"

ahhhh that’s such a nice and easy place to get to thank god orz

Edgeworth: Fu.Phoenix: (He’s laughing at me through his nose.)Edgeworth: Are you really okay with that?　All that means is the accused wiped the blood off after killing her.Phoenix: Ah.Edgworth: You are synonymous with “answering at random.” From now on you should stop proposing these suggestions.Phoenix: P-Please let me answer one more time.

It’s, uh……it’s a lot more straight forward

That’s actually fairly representative of the Japanese original vs the English localized versions of the game as a whole, actually, haha

[aoidaichi]

H-how did the "yes daddy" exchange between Phoenix and Edgeworth go in the Japanese version? Is it any different?

It's been a while since I've played so I don't actually remember!  And I may have been using a walkthrough by that point of the game so it's possible I never saw it anyway

If you or anyone else knows when that particular penalty can come up, though, I'm more than happy to try and find it.  Otherwise it's a blind search orz

[aoidaichi]

Another request! This time for final Athena designs and a closer look at Jacketpollo.

[aoidaichi]

A request from anon for some closeups. I feel like this is about as close as you can get before the fuzzies start happening, but let me know if you want me to try something else!

[aoidaichi]

hi idk if you still do art book pics anymore but i was wondering if they had aura/cloncos sprites from the case five trial, like the thinking one and "breakdown" when their head detaches from their body u know?

I believe I have all of the sprites up, actually!  Just check the GS5 Artbook page and take a gander at the sprites section--all the sprites that are there are all there is

[aoidaichi]

Aaaaand the second one. This group image is adorable (and I appreciate the hobo)

[aoidaichi]

Got some new artbook requests!