Since I've managed to cool down from the last episode, I have to say this. Drdt excels in wonderfully written characters and their relationships, but less so when it comes to the murder mystery aspect. I found Teruko's line of reasoning incredibly weak, far fetched, and full of baseless conjecture with zero actual hard evidence. (How do you know he was trying to kill Eden? And the whole slingshot thing? Plausible at best, but where's your proof?) I'm not a fan of how his ED, literally described as his body falling apart, was only brought up once by Rose in a veeery understated way when it could potentially disprove the whole theory.
On a second watch with a less emotional approach, I can confidently say that's not just me being salty my blorbo is going to die. Still, I have trust in the dev to make his character arc satisfying with the post trial and bonus episode.
By the way, I wonder if just like with David, the author didn't expect Ace to have so many fans?
You say you don’t like the killer reveal, why? I actually think dev made some great choices and I’d love to talk to you about your perspective.
i don't want to get too deep into it because, like i mentioned in my previous post, i don't want my criticism to come off as negativity towards the series or discourage anyone involved in the production of the show because it's honestly not a huge deal. like, it in no way ruins the show or makes it less enjoyable for me. and i don't think the choice of who the culprit is is a bad one at all, i'm mostly unsatisfied with the way the chapter handles it.
[spoilers beneath the cut, obvi lol. and please remember this is just my opinion. me having and expressing my opinion is not hate towards the series. i'm nervous enough as it is posting just this and not a bigger essay on all my thoughts because i really don't want to have this be misconstrued, nor do i want any criticism i have to give, regardless of how innocent and respectful my intentions, to make drdtdev or anyone who works on the series feel bad.]
i think Ace being the killer DOES make sense. i have no qualms with him being the blackened, in theory. do i think he could've made for a great survivor, or have really interesting growth throughout the coming chapters? yeah! i would have loved for Ace to be kept around for much longer. but him being the killer this chapter isn’t inherently bad. it's now clear that there's a specific direction Ace's character was meant to go in this story and i think that's fine.
my problem is with what *didn't* happen with Ace's character up to this point.
the chapter hasn't concluded yet so there's still a chance for my thoughts to change, though i don't think it'll make much of a difference. but i'm still waiting to see if it can stick the landing. and even if it doesn't, that's okay. i've already accepted it, i'm just still disappointed by it all the same.
Ace, honestly, hasn't played much of an active role in the story. he's been a source of conflict and comedic relief, and that's okay, not every character has to be as important as Xander or David...but he hasn't really gotten to *do* anything. this series is very character-driven, and thus is very focused on the relationships between other characters. Ace has only had one notable relationship (outside of his feud with Nico, but i'm not really including that as a "relationship" for obvious reasons), and that was with Levi. and that didn't even stay positive for very long. and we also know now that Levi didn't even care about him to begin with because he doesn't care about people in general.
not only did Ace never really get to establish any other relationships, no one ever LIKED him. of course a good portion of the fandom likes him, but in the actual story, no one cares about him. no one will miss him. his death is honestly kind of meaningless character-wise. does it serve as a lesson to some of the other characters? sure. but he's going to be dying here with no one ever liking or caring about him.
Min's story wasn't just a cautionary tale. people did like her, people did care about her. she was friends with a lot of characters, she got to have an impact in the daily lives of others. we got to know her better, the things she liked, her deeper thoughts and opinions on things. she got to do stuff, and we got to learn about her. her death meant more to the characters beyond just being the first culprit. she died as a person, not just as a character.
most of the stuff we know about Ace is surface level or things confirmed in Q&As. he doesn't get to contribute much aside from the aforementioned conflict/comedic relief. i understand where the show is going with that idea, and why him not being liked by anyone is a specific part of what led him to murder, but that's not really what irks me. it's that Ace never got to really be a *person.* he's essentially a plot device, serving the greater "good person" theme going on this chapter, and filling in the smaller roles in the story when needed, like an antagonist in a scene or delivering a gag. yes, his admittance to killing Arei and eventual post-trial trauma dump will give him a bit more humanity and character...but that's not really enough.
we only get to see Ace how the other members of the cast see Ace: his loud, combative, aggressive side. the side that makes people think he's nothing more than an angry meathead who can't do anything right. we never got to see much of his other sides, of a much more somber, melancholic Ace. receiving even a hint of the Ace we see in his confession of guilt beforehand would have given him the depth we needed before this point.
to explain what i mean: imagine how unsatisfying it would have been if we never got to actually see Arei's breakdown in the playground. if Teruko had left before it happened, and we only get to learn what happened from a flashback from David's perspective. we already feel the weight and tragedy of Arei's death when her body is discovered because we knew beforehand why she behaved the way she did, how she never even liked being the way she is, and wishing she could be a good person like Eden. if we didn't get to see that happen beforehand, Arei's death would feel very flat and detached. her character growth would've happened entirely retroactively.
that's how i feel with Ace. it's not like he didn’t get enough spotlight this chapter, he certainly did. but every scene he was in really didn't really add anything new to him. the only thing that "progressed" with him was his hatred and paranoia. we just see him descend with no uplifting moments, no emotional hook to make us feel anything for him. the closest we get is the scene where he's arguing with Nico and Veronika at lunch, ranting about how poorly everyone thinks of him and that they all assume that he's for some reason happy to be the way he is. but it's really the barest of scrapes towards the deeper layers of his character.
a big problem is that there were a lot of chances for his character to actively be *explored*, but instead, the narrative perspective of him stays completely stagnant. the time we get with him this chapter doesn't give him any greater focus. and sure, you could say that that might be a big giveaway to him being the culprit, but i think if the time between character spotlight is distributed evenly, that would be easily circumvented. there was a lot more time that could've been spent building Ace's character beyond his animosity and self-loathing tendencies. we could have had someone actually attempting to bond with him, even if it doesn't turn out well. even if all the characters distrust each other to varying degrees, there's still a lot of characters that like each other or have unique bonds with each other that make them stand out and feel worth remembering, because those bonds contribute something to their characters. but with Ace? he truly gets the short end of the stick, because this isn't just the characters neglecting him, it's the story itself. if Ace got to have a moment like Arei, maybe someone to confide in, even if he wasn't really friends with them or liked them at all, him being vulnerable just once and having a moment with someone else would have rooted him in more as a person who fell victim to what the killing game wanted from him and not just a fictional character fulfilling the purpose required of them in the story.
honestly, it's a bit of a slap in the face, the way the show goes about it. because in hindsight, Ace's whole character is *meant* to be wasted potential. after all, his related phrase on Mai's bio page is "a girl who had a bright future".
he was set up to have the potential to change, the potential to add more to the story, the potential to show us more than what we were given. and i think the show kind of knows that and specifically perpetuates that. the scene where Teruko tells Levi to give up on trying to apologize to Ace almost reads as the show itself telling you to give up on Ace. that, why should we care about him? he's not going to amount to what we want from him. there's no use in investing our feelings in him.
whether or not any of that actually was intentionally doesn't matter, unfortunately, because rewatching so many scenes having this new context really makes it all seem like Despair Time doesn't want you to care about Ace. that Ace is meant to be a waste, that that's the core of his character. him being the epitome of wasted potential could have been great, actually, if they chose to use even a slight bit of that potential to build him up more before his inevitable demise. instead we watch him eat shit throughout the entire show thus far only for him to get royally fucked at the very end in the worst way possible. Ace's theme of wasted potential is only wasted potential because nothing is ever done with him. not actively, anyways. whatever his post-trial confessional is like won't really give us what we needed from the start. Ace didn't just deserve better in his life. he deserves better as a fictional character. he deserved to be a person and not *just* a character. he deserved to have deeper, emotional character moments outside of the trial, long before his murder confession and rapidly approaching demise. he deserved to be 3-dimensional.
again, this is all just my personal opinion, and there's still a chance the show can stick the landing and make Ace as the culprit feel a lot more natural and deserved. i'm not really confident in that happening, but drdt is full of surprises as well as a lot of great writing. that being said, even though i believe they kinda fumbled the bag with Ace here, i don't hate this turn of events. although he's a big favorite of mine, i still wanted Eden to be innocent over him, because she's also a great character and her killing Arei would not only be pretty huge character assassination, but would also make Arei's death meaningless. and i also think there were other characters who could have been better candidates as the chapter 2 killer (not just Hu, i think Levi, Arturo, and maybe even J also could've made for compelling culprits with the right reasons).
i'm content with this. i'm heartbroken he's going so early and i wish the execution of his guilt had been a lot better, but overall it's not terrible. he just deserved so much more in many different ways.
Like you can make a tragic character, but ace is given ZERO dignity throughout the series. It's not a satisfying end because there is never a moment of some emotional buildup to this payoff.
Especially with how drdt seems to show interest in the emotions of its characters no matter how cruel they can be, while ace is narratively (and literally) slapped across the face and not given a chance by either the other characters or the story itself
At least for now, who knows what they'll give him in the next episodes
Spoilers for Chapter 2 Episode 14 and discussion of the Eden Culprit theory below!
I completely understand why people don't like the Culprit!Eden theory, but I've seen a lot of people say that one of their main reasons is that Teruko would go back to square one of her arc, and that would be annoying, which I don't think is 100% accurate.
What I mean is, you can't convince me Eden would be the culprit and then not be like:
"T-teruko...Please...Don't give up because of me, okay? I know I really messed up, but I don't want my mistake to stop you from being happy. You can't go back, no matter how hard you try...But you can impact the future. So please, Teruko, keep moving forward. I know you can do it! You're so strong, stronger than me, stronger than anyone I've ever known! I'm not asking you to do it for me, but for your own sake. Even if I couldn't believe it before, there's hope. And don't let anyone tell you otherwise, okay?"
Cue MonoTV complaining about how boring this conversation is and whisking Eden away (Can you tell I was imagining what the end of the trial would look like for each culprit today?).
All this is to say that if Eden's the culprit, that doesn't completely 100% guarantee Teruko will regress to beginning of chapter 2 Teruko. It'll definitely make her have some sort of set-back, sure, but I doubt Eden would leave this trial a murderer and not have a super sweet, touching moment with Teruko about not losing hope and stuff.
Also--Teruko's whole thing is bad luck, and if she trusted one person, Eden, and really wanted Ace to be the one to murder Arei and not her...My guess is that her luck wouldn't be able to resist fucking her over again. Or maybe it'll go easy on her, just this once. You never know.
The reason for all this is because I heard someone say that everyone wanting it to be Ace so fucking badly in-universe but it just. Isn't. Was a fun idea, so I kinda took that and had a deep inner monologue about it I wanted to post. I'm not really expecting this to convince anyone or anything, but I still wanted to point it out.
wait a second. late night thoughts but hear me out
Although Arei was killed in the morning, her body wasn’t warm. This is because her body had been splashed with water and cooled off by the fans.
But Ace doesn’t know how sweat works. Therefore, he would have no reason to splash Arei with water, because he wouldn’t know that it would cool her down.
You could make the argument that the water got onto Arei by accident when the jugs broke, but then only half her body would be wet, and her hair in the BDA looks like it was wet then dried.
(Ace Markey believers rejoice… more evidence that he is not the culprit!)
Something I’ve been looking at recently is the mechanism behind old clocks.
I found it interesting that these old clocks would rely on a weight to be wound up and then dropped to continue working. These old clocks therefore include two notable mechanisms
- a heavy weight is moved up and then dropped down
- a mechanism is used to pull the weight, by spinning rope around a mechanical part.
If you compare this to Arei murder, I think you get an interesting parallel.
In Terukos own words, a “spinny thing” was used to hoist Arei up, and then suddenly stopped to cause her to drop. So to say, Arei is hoisted up, and dropped down, just like in a grandfather clock.
Maybe it isn’t so far fetched that Eden could discern Nico murder method, if it’s something she’s already worked with before?
Considering the Dev said chapter 2 will be quite long, and it been abouuutttt 1 and a half hours of new content so far, I’d so we’ve got time for a NEW culprit and for Ace to be innocent! : D
Luckily, we can ignore the following as him just being silly;
- Easedropping Arei and David conversation, which makes him look terribly suspicious if we believe someone other than Eden wrote the note to lure Arei out (and would therefore need to have listened in to Arturo, Eden and Arei convo)
- Also to add, Ace only reveals he overheard this conversation LATE into the trial, just to annoy David. Ace is set as someone who withholds evidence.
- following, some unknown person was apparently following Eden. Ace has been set up as quite sneaky, as per the above
- Aces stole Levi sports band just so Levi couldn’t use it. This makes him stealing the tape used in his attempted murder seem more plausible- he originally could have done it out of complete spite, as an impulsive “hey look thing on the ground, mine know screw Nico”. This helps get around how bloody odd it is that either Eden or Ace would, in the few seconds able, chose to steal a role of tape.
- As one of the four people involved with Nico attempt on… his own life… Ace could have been aware of the contraption used against it, and attempted to replicate it to frame Nico. To recap, the only people who COULD understand Nico murder method are: Nico, Ace, Eden, and Terko, as they are the only people who witnessed or were involved in Nico attempt on Ace’s life.
- Ace put himself forward for guard duty, which would have given him the opportunity to mess with evidence
- He is the last confirmed person, other than David, to see Arei alive
- He has the opportunity to steal the fish at any point, but particularly he could have done it immediately after Arei and David conversation - he was in the right place after all!
As much as I don't really like Ace, I can't help but feel sorry for poor guy. He's been almost murdered and almost no-one mentions it. If it wasn't important to the trial no-one would even bring it up. Every time he talks about it everyone dismisses it and tells him to shut up. No-one ever wondered if he's okay, how his neck's doing etc. And now he's being accused of fucking murder simply because he was at the previous scene of the crime in which he was the victim. Yes, he's a jerk, but he still deserves at least a bit of compassion for getting nearly killed and mildly injured.
As an aside, WHY in the Lord’s good name did Nico try to murder Ace via drop hanging??? It is quite frankly such a stupid idea. Strangle him!! Cut his throat!! Anything but these insane antics with ceiling fans and brooms!!!
Nico, Ace I love you both yet you are both somehow so so god damn stupid it hurts
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