Some (Slightly Yujin-Centric) Head Canons About the Original Study Exchange Characters
Warning!! The Great Ace Attorney 2 SPOILERS AHEAD
The grandma that raises Susato for the first five years is Ayame's mom. Yujin does NOT talk to his parents. but he does feel the need to quietly send them money out in the country. Helps him connect to Jigoku whose family straight up disowned him (the devil connotation in his name is too easy to not make his fam super puritanical and decide he isn't good enough for them), Genshin who lowkey wishes he could disown his parents but kinda needs them around cause of the whole teen dad thing and his wife being VERY poor so basically having no assets to bring to the table besides bastard child (made her a factory worker cause industrial revolution was growing at the time, women who needed to work were basically prostitutes or factory workers and the working conditions of both were shit, and Kazuma's speech in the original Japanese game is actually about the need to improve factory conditions and liberate those workers which was super progressive at the time so I think his mother being a former worker who had to go back to support them after Genshin died and that basically killing her would 100% radicalize him; sadly Japanese society would not have looked at her very kindly at the time, but I love her), and Kazuma's mom whose only family has been dead since she was younger than Kazuma was (helps him understand her better when Yujin comes back from England to discover his parents died while he was away and no one told him cause they just weren't in actual contact at all)
Ayame has a good relationship with her parents. They're great. They run the dojo Yujin and Jigoku (and later Susato) learn/practice judo at. It's pretty close to the university so they both decide to go their for it, which is how they meet Yujin ALSO meets Ayame there cause her mom insists he can come by to practice any time he wants cause his studies end up giving him weird hours of free time. So he decides to go in the middle of the night one time and Ayame Susato-Takedown style attacks him assuming he's an intruder. Her mom clarifies and leaves them alone. They talk and spar til they lose track of time and it's morning. blah blah love story. Her parents are also very supportive of women's rights so they encourage Ayame to have a career. So she's an writer under pen name (Yujn starts doing his journals in England in her honor since she was always jotting down notes like that to use later). Yujin's parents were much more conservative but he never really understood the point of their beliefs. Naturally questioned everything thank god.
Ayame is the one who applied for Yujin to do the study tour. He was too down on himself and sure they wouldn't pick him but she knows he's brilliant and forges the application for him (he doesn't know until he's accepted.) The plan was her pen name would take a trip to Britain independent of the study tour so she could keep writing and they could go together. Plans changed a little when they found out she was pregnant (they were already married but weren't really planning a timeline on when to have kids.) They decided to continue their careers in Japan instead so they could start their family and maybe they'll check England out when Susato's a little older. They were still cycling through candidates for the third spot when Tragedy Strikes, so Genshin and Seishoro convince them to let Yujin back on and depart the tour sooner than intended Yujin is not doing well in the wake of Ayame's death. He's truly trying his best but he can barely take care of himself and Susato cries anytime he holds her or feeds her or changes her to the point he's worried she might be colic before they actually knew what that was (really she can just sense how stressed he is and the looming despair of everyone around her grieving Ayame.) Thankfully Ayame's parents are there to help and she seems to do so much better with them that in his grief and dysfunction, he decides the best thing he can do for her is literally just to support her financially cause he's going to fuck her up if he keeps going like this. And making as much money as he can means going where pathology is the hottest right now, which the exchange trip is his ticket too
Seishoro and Genshin are friends from childhood (yeah I like Brutus by the Buttress for them too much not to be). Yujin and Genshin meet each other through Seishoro, Yujin meets Kazuma's mom through Genshin, and she meets Ayame through Yujin Important to me that they're ALL good friends, especially Yujin and Kazuma's mom cause I feel that relationship is very important in the year after he returns to Japan. It's what ultimately leads to him unofficially adopting Kazuma after her death.
Like mentioned above, she has to return to her factory job which she was thankfully safe from after becoming pregnant with Kazuma because Genshin's family has money from before the samurai abolition that could support them. But they never really liked her. They always thought she derailed Genshin's bright future (even though he's still very successful while he's alive) and they don't want much to do with Kazuma until he's of age because he's not much use to them as a child. So now it's up to her to support them. The options are pretty much the same after half a decade, so back to the factory she goes which escalates her painful but manageable health problems into life threatening ones. And she is VERY insistent that Kazuma does not get a job to try to take the load off. She had to start working as a child and it wrecked her body. She will not let the same happen to her son. He's a smart boy who is going to stay in school and focus on his grades and he'll find a good job to keep him out of this position even if it kills her. She will not let this horrible system take him the way it took her.
She also doesn't like Genshin's family. She saw the toll they took on him and she doesn't want that for Kazuma, especially since they only care about him when he's useful to them. Yujin is also trying to help her but he's already supporting himself, Susato, and Ayame's parents on the salary of a fresh out of school pathologist (he tries to continue on the coroner route but after watching Kazuma's mom fade away in front of him, unable to do anything for her, he loses his stomach for it and switches to research and academia.) He can only stretch it so much. So she begs him, her only real friend anymore (Jigoku gets distant from both of them during this time cause of killing Genshin. He warms back up to Yujin after a while but at that point it's too late for Kazuma's mom), to at least Kazuma in if something happens to her. The Asogis don't have his best interests at heart and he can't survive on his own. She doesn't ask him to go as far as he does, she mostly pleads with him to give him enough financial support to stay in school and out of the workforce. Yujin sees that he desperately needs emotional support too and decides to take him in as his own (he tries his best to respect that he's not his father but he can't help but come to see Kazuma like his son. Kazuma has very complicated feelings about the Mikotobas and loves them like family too but he creates an intentional wall between them (that Yujin can see but Susato doesn't until he comes back "from the dead" in the second game) because he feels like he's betraying his parents by loving anyone else like he loved them. Ryunosuke helps break that down a little and seeing him, Susato, Iris, and Sholmes kinda beats into his head the idea of found family, so he tries to let everyone in more post-canon.
I know the game literally only talks about Kazuma's dad. I'm pretty sure they don't even mention his mom once, maybe just to say the grief killed her or something. but I think Kazuma was 100% a mama's boy and at the time, losing her hit him much harder than losing his dad (tho it doesn't help that it stacked on top of that death) Genshin had already been gone for so many years that Kazuma was a little more detached from him than he'd care to admit. and they never had a chance to reconnect like Susato and Yujin did. vs. losing his mom who has been around the entire time and is literally killing herself trying to give him the best life she can I think over time, he hyperfixated on Genshin's death being the thing that "ruined his life," or at least tore his family apart and focuses on clearing his name as something tangible he can do to try to get justice since there's nothing he can do to bring either of them back, but even less he can do to avenge his mom
I think Genshin and his wife loved each other but they got married more out of circumstance than anything else. They provided an escape for each other when they met and all things being equal, they would've moved on with someone else and possibly never seen each other again. They came to appreciate each other more raising Kazuma together and their bond definitely strengthen over their shared love and devotion for him, but when they were on other sides of the world, they sort of fell out of "love". Don't get me wrong, they still very much care about each other. Genshin's death definitely devastates her and causes her health to deteriorate much quicker. I just think they both naturally feel an inclination to explore other relationships while apart but don't because they feel too guilty "cheating" on each other despite knowing on some level they both feel this way. Plus societal expectations of married couples still weighs on them. Even though a lot of people considered it no big deal for men to cheat, Genshin still struggled with acting on any of his feelings while in England (COUGH COUGH KLINT) I also kinda think they were both gay and were drawn to each other because of that but struggled with identifying their feelings because of comphet and their platonic affection for each other.
On the other hand, I think Klint and Lady B also started as a marriage of convenience. They're both the eldest living family members of their families and though Klint has Barok, they're both far from the perfect picture of nobility. So getting married is a good way to improve their social standing and preserve wealth and their family images. Plus they find each other charming enough to strike up a partnership and Barok likes her which is hard cause a sweetheart but kinda judgmental about the complexities of nobility and the way it shapes people (he's also very scandalized at the idea of marrying for anything short of love cause he's always been a hopeless romantic and that's what their parents did. He tries to get Genshin to side with him who then has to awkwardly explain he had a shotgun wedding.) Anyway all that to say they like each other enough but don't have any romantic feelings in the beginning. But I think they slowly fall in love over the next few years until they're genuinely very enamored with each other and want to start a family together. Which is a teensy bit of a struggle so the best day of Klint's life ends up coinciding with the worst. (His wife is pregnant and they're going to have a child together :D! But also Stronghart caught onto him taking justice into his own hands and blackmailed him into killing his mentor, who acted as a stand-in father after the death of his parents :/) 10. I think Yujin, Genshin, and Jigoku remain very close in London and get together quite often but they each have their own little corners of London they sort of keep to themselves. Great friends who are all somewhat acquainted with each other but only barely. Like at a party Klint hosts and wants to invite Genshin's friends and some Judiciary and Sholmes crashes it. Yujin has Sholmes and Mrs. Hudson (I can't fucking believe we never see or talk to her in-game by the way. They only mention her like once). Jigoku has Stronghart and some other dudes who are definitely kickstarting his villain arc. And Genshin has Klint and Lady B and Barok. and then they all kinda share Gregson cause he intersects with all their bullshit (much to his dismay) and Sholmes to an extent cause he NEEDS to know everything he can about Yujin's terrible taste in friends and he breaks into crime scenes and courthouses and offices a LOT
I don't know how accurate this is to ACD Watson, but: Yujin definitely thinks he's a good judge of character but he's actually shit cause he always wants to see the best in people So Sholmes 100% feels the need to investigate everyone in his circle to make sure he hasn't accidentally befriended Jack the Ripper. None of them are serial killers (yet) but he's keeping his eye on all of them.
OKAY NOW I'M DONE
Sorry for the stream of consciousness dump there but I wanted to get all my thoughts out about these freaks with barely any screentime besides Sholmes and Yujin.
And Would you believe I have all this head canon lore about Kazuma's mom/Mrs. Asogi but I STILL can't come up with a good name for her?? Same for Lady B but at least I have something to refer to her as besides Iris's mom or Klint's wife.
OMG I FORGOT TO MENTION WHY YUJIN'S PARENTS ARE IN THE COUNTRY
I imagine him as being from like the Japanese equivalent of the Midwest mostly because I think he's soo Nick Carraway coded that I just. Thought they should both be midwest dudes who move to big cities
His parents are farmers and never really forgave him for wanting to pursue medicine instead of taking up the family farm and "thinking he was too good for them." Especially his dad. I do in fact have Inutil from In The Heights on my playlist for him cause that sort of captures my vibe of their relationship and how he wanted to do better for Susato but ends up feeling like he failed her. So he tries to compensate by giving her as many opportunities as he can.
He does find good family in Ayame's parents and Mrs. Hudson, but he definitely understands the importance of found family which is a common theme that I think connects the original exchange trio and their spouses so much.
