Drawing & Ranking Every Ace Attorney Culprits

Ghozt draws and briefly rants about 65 murderers (+ some attempted murderers, accomplices and co-conspirators) from the quirky lawyer visual novel

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Ghozt Draws and Ranks Every Ace Attorney Culprit

G U I L T Y !

I love Ace Attorney, I love tierlists, and I love videogame villains ;

This was bound to happen.

For the next 33 days, this blog will be updated twice a day with a fullbody illustration of one wonderful murderous freak from the 'funny lawyer game' series we all know and love (Except PWvsPL), until none remain. Each post will also come with brief reasoning for their placement on my personal ranking, just as a bonus.

Semantics ;

- 'Every culprit' including ; the culprit of all playable cases (sans VS cases), the culprit of all background cases (ex ; DL-6), 3 accomplice/conspirators and 3 attempted murderers.

- All images will be posted under the cut, except for ; Sahwit, White, Wellington, Portsman, Tonate, L'Belle and Andistan'dhin, since they're revealed as the culprit in the intro to their case.

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# 1 / 65 - Simon Keyes (I2-5)

To no one's surprise. uvu

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THANK YOU to everyone who's been following along or just hanging around ! This is it for this account. If you want to download all 65 illustrations, they're on my Gumroad! 0+ / Pay what you want, of course. If you want to commision me, you can contact me on Instagram or here. You can also just follow my IG if you want more of my nonsense ! I post sometimes.

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#2 / 65 - Dahlia Hawthorne (3-1)

Well, all the cards are on the table now. You know who's left.

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#3 / 65 - Damon Gant (1-5)

The pinacle of 1 character making a case work, imo ! RFA is... ambitious, to say the least. I really don't think it would work with any other culprit.

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#4 / 65 - Matt Engarde (2-4)

Since this is a drawing blog, let me preface this with a life statement ; Matt Engarde is incredibly fun to draw, and I don't quite know why, but goddamn that piece of sh!t makes me giggle. Ergo, this is one of my favorite pieces in this thread :>

Farewell is so perfectly balanced. Adrian is exactly how she needed to be, believeable as a culprit and a person and incredibly endearing, Shelly is a great looming threat, the pacing is tense and investing - and Matt is such a ginormous asshole that you're just stuck with.

...okay, it's maybe a little bit much at times, so he is arguably my least favorite part of Farewell - but Farewell's just so good! that's really not saying much. The hairflip scene is just great, I especially love how it happens when you still have 2 locks left (gameplay 🤝 narrative). His sprites make me want to punch him so hard it's just fantastic really (the glass is a bit silly but again. the fact it doesn't quite break the immersion says something)

It's a little crazy to me how ridiculous and comedic Matt feels looking back, yet whenever I play through Farewell he fills me with such genuine salt. He works so well within it, even though he wouldn't work in any other final case, and that's so cool !

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#5 / 65 - Kristoph Gavin (4-1, 4-4)

I can't decide if I find him hilarious or dreadful. Either way, he has quite the impact. 4-1 is great of course, and I really like his dissonant personality. They really went all in with the surhuman threathning energy on Kris, which is... odd (it made sense with Dahlia because of the Fey connection, but here he's just kind of. a guy) but paid off imo. Plus, Black Psyche-Locks? Do you know how much fan content those must've spawned?

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#6 / 65 - Enoch Drebber (G2-3)

Finally the last non-final culprit falls! The last not-even-culprit too, really.

The lead up to Enoch immediately stood out to me - the immediate air of dread that his name inspires in the jurors, then progressively uncoverig more and more about him through investigating, down to the tense section in his worhshop (featuring one of the best Dances of Deduction to boot! It implies a lot about his personality, lol.)

And once he's actually on screen, he doesn't disappoint in the least. Again, there's more of 'the culprit and defendant are foils of each other' (guess I really do have a penchant for that setup), which actually stands out to me quite a bit - for the most part, he made sure his revenge plan affected only Asma and Courtney (returning the wax figure, timing the bombs to avoid uncecessary casualties) except for Albert, because Albert is to some extent Enoch before his backstory.

Speaking of, talk about 'all it takes is one bad day'! It does annoy me that G2-5 adds a plothole (why not shoot Enoch and let Genshin go?) but it's still great. It immediately shows just how large of an impact the Professor stree had on so many people's lives, before we even know how true that is. And hey, if I got cheated out on a perfectly fine life by pure traumatic infortune, I'd probably become a goth stage magician con artist too ! (This guy really is a supervillain... maybe that's part of why I like him too. wouldn't surprise me)

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#7 / 65 - Manfred von Karma (1-4)

What's there to say that hasn't already been said? Manfred is the series' golden stadard for big bads, that by which all the others are judged ; and he still holds up quite well. I particularly like the sheer depth of his revenge scheme, my god

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#8 / 65 - Calisto Yew (I-4)

Shih-na and the Yatagarasu are the best plot twists in AAI. Reminiscence is the best case in AAI. Calisto is the best culprit in AAI. She has the best laughing sprites in - anything ever, actually. Her theme's a bop, her personality's a treasure - she just breeds excellency, what can I say !

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Side note : We've breached the top 10 now! So I think I'll slow down posting speed to 1/day. Thank you to everyone who's been following along! <3

#9 / 65 - Luke Atmey (3-2)

Zvarri!

GOD I love Stolen. I love it, it's great. And it's in no small part thanks to Luke himself ! 3-2 have the best defendant / culprit parallel - I especially love that they both had the same idea in how to escape conviction of Kane's murder - though Luke of course gets more credit for actually setting up something that ambitious. His animations are great, his last testimony is a fun narrative-gameplay element, both of his breakdowns and how they echo each other...

I like duality, if you couldn't tell by all of these arguments until now. So here's more ; the contrast between his bragging and actual achievements, the Luke / Ron / DeMasque dynamic as a whole - though I guess it doesn't count as duality there...

Also, props for parodying yet revitalizing a 'the detective did it' plot ! And just being so damn entertaining.

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#10 / 65 - Mimi Miney (2-2)

There's something to be said about how powerfully tragic Mimi's plot is, and what an atmospheric case is allows for. While her personality for most of the case is grating, I do enjoy its devolution back to her actual self durin the trial.

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#11 / 65 - Roger Retinz (6-2)

Aw yeah! These 'brief rants' are starting to drag on in length now, but that's just a sign that we've reached the good stuff.

First off, I'm just endeared to illusionists and sleight of hand related tropes, so Reus gets a free head start. Second, he's an example of killer / defendant foil ; both Gramarye troupe magicians, one trying to just keep the troupe's tricks alive despite everything, the other too hellbent on revenge to just move on peacefully. Love it !

On stand transformation, another guilty pleasure. Bonus points for that banger of a theme. Plus, both of his personas are lots of fun, each 'love-to-hate' in the own way. I also quite enjoy the method and scale of the plan, even if it isn't toootally plausible. It's enough for AA.

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#12 / 65 - Ashley Graydon (G-5)

Ashley is such an odd final culprit, in that he really doesn't feel like one. He doesn't have the sheer judiciary and political power of AA1, SoJ, AAI' and DGS2s big bads, nor does he pose the same almost-supernatural threat TnT, AJ and DD's do - he even lacks the shock value of JFA and AAI2's final culprit reveals. Ashley's just... kinda there, really. And you don't even catch him for anything that elaborate ; Hatch's murder was, tragically a fluke. Sure, he bloody burnt blimmin McGilded to death - but he just admits to that out of the blue without you doing anything !

Honestly, a lot of that does weaken him in my opinion - that, plus him only being tangentially related to the overraching plot, and his lack of a breakdown (superficial, i know, but man! tgaa really held out on me on those good breakdown sprites...) but it does also serve to make him stand out. Plus, his character's quite good! I love his dynamic with the Skulkins, of course, and his stupid dancing, and that backstory rant.

Ultimately, Ash is a quirky but enjoyable final culprit, with a few things holding him back imo.

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#13 / 65 - Shelly de Killer (2-4)

When I actually sit down and think about it, everything about Shelly's character feels utterly ridiculous - and yet he still has such a chilling, elegant presence. He's just that cool.

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#14 / 65 - Tahrust Inmee (6-3)

Tahrust's whole deal is unlike any other culprit in the series ; being spirit channeled AND the Pool of Souls vessel (speaking of which, his Divination Séance is the best one), and the whole set up behind his suicide is both tragic and incredibly smart. He's pretty funny, too.

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#15 / 65 - Courtney Sithe (G2-3)

We ultimately don't know much about Courtney, yet she feels as fully realised as a main cast member ; her design purposefully looks that way of course, plus the implications about her personal life and professional career, her involvement in the Professor case, and the time we spend with Maria - she's great fun to think about.

Plus, I love the contradiction you pin her on. Not only is it one of the subtlest in the game, it's about the state of the body! Perfect dramatic irony, 10/10

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#16 / 65 - Marlon Rimes (5-DLC)

He definetely works the best of all the tragic/sympathetic culprit, plus his sprites and dialogue are real fun! A good time overall :>