While I've always passively been on the "siblings" side of Edgeworth and Franziska's relatively ambiguous relationship,
This is honestly the one and only time that Edgeworth has ever said things and actively taken part in a moment that genuinely feels romantic.
"You chased after me."
It's so easy to assume from his behavior in games 1 and 2 that Edgeworth is emotionally stunted, that he simply is incapable of understanding the feelings of other people the majority of the time.
But this conversation, and these lines in particular, show an emotional intelligence that is leaps and bounds greater than Edgeworth shows anywhere else, and for any other person, even including Phoenix.
And it's genuinely really sweet, especially after Franziska ranted for several panels straight about Miles being her enemy.
A now complete collection of high-quality sketches of all the Redesigns, Reimaginings, and original characters I've made for the various stories set in my alternative take of the Post-JFA Ace Attorney franchise.
Starting with the redesigns that would be used in the 2nd trilogy for the 4 returning 1st trilogy characters
The 3 central characters of the last 3 cases of my Trials and tribulations rewrite (not in correct order, 4->5->3.)
And 2 characters important to the sequel trilogy. (+Ema cause she didn't fit anywhere else but is mostly just in RFTA.)
I don't know how it's take me nearly 10 years of being an Ace Attorney fan to actually realize this, but I've been rewatching Justice for All recently, and I realized something.
Pearl has a much deeper understanding of the concept of death than most children her age would have.
Not only is she allowed this entire game to partake in murder investigations with little second thought, but during them, she pretty routinely talks about death as if it's something she's not even shocked by.
But I just realized the reason for this: her whole life revolves around spirit channeling. Spirits in the AA universe are exclusively dead people. So the entire religion/job Pearl has been raised since birth under/to fulfill revolves around people dying and being dead and others wanting to contact them after death.
There's even one scene in 2-4 after the discussion of Adrian Andrews' attempted suicide, where she compares it to the phrase "Following someone to the grave", as if that was a concept she had heard plenty about.
If Kurain village has anything resembling an apprenticeship system, where young acolytes are made to watch and learn from a spirit medium when they take a client and channel a spirit, than it's likely Pearls has heard the stories of numerous greiving loved-ones and whatnot about recently dead people and the circumstances of their deaths.
Death, Murder, Suicide, "Following to the grave", Pearl has seemingly, all throughout her childhood, either been taught about these concepts so she can handle the prospect of channeling a dead person, or has been exposed to the stories of dead people that were asked to be channeled.
Kris may be hesitant to hurt the Knight or stand up to it, but they're not working with it directly
Pictured: Kris dealing the critical blow at the end of the Knight fight
At least, not when it comes to the fight at the end of chapter 3. And they certainly weren't trying to signal to it to end the fight quickly
I'm not cracked enough to get a shot of it, but this oft-cited flavor text when you No Hit the Knight...
...gets misinterpreted by the fandom when they treat it like it's Kris signaling the Knight. Not only does this narration not read like a signal to the Knight—it literally calls the Knight "The enemy"—but its reaction seems more confused than understanding, especially with the ellipses. But there is someone they're signaling by coughing, and we were shown earlier who:
When they cough during the quizzes! And they're not just doing so you'd know the right answer
But also Susie and Ralsei! This is how they get their friends to guess correctly too (because they're a cheater!!) So, a cough has already been established in the same chapter as a way for Kris to help their friends
Furthermore, the idea that them coughing during the Knight fight is signaling the Knight to stop holding back fails because:
THIS is what the flavor text normally says before the final blow! (also again, referred to as The enemy). The Knight isn't about to wrap up anything, it actually opened itself up to get its shit rocked. And guess what
This same thing happens on a No Hit run. The Knight gets cocky, lowers its guard, and takes a critical hit that lets Susie chip its weapon
This was never intentional on the Knight's part
If Kris's cough was meant to be taken as a warning, a No Hit run should just end in a party wipe, not the same result as when the game makes it clear that the Knight let its guard down. So, on a No Hit, Kris is actually signaling Susie and Ralsei to attack! They WANT to fight back against the Knight
Because the point of this fight wasn't to cover for their collusion by "pretending" to fight. Kris was fighting for real in order to stall, because their backup plan to call Undyne as an alternate target almost failed. I think the simplest way to read this scene's intention is that the Knight WAS going to take Toriel, but Susie's interference didn't literally stop them, but made them hesitate. Only then did Undyne arrive in time to actively stop them (and become a better target in the process)
It's easy to get caught in the weeds of theorizing when you don't have all the information, and so people see the Knight slowly dragging Toriel towards it with a beam thing and think "well they're not seriously trying to take her then"
But ask yourself how well it would read if they did their "swoop in and grab her" routine? It wouldn't be clear that Susie's actively stopping them. It wouldn't read right to an audience (pictured above: my poor attempt to edit a screenshot with this hypothetical). Too much is happening at once. It's poor direction
Furthermore, let's say the Knight WAS faking at taking Toriel. If Undyne didn't show up RIGHT THEN, what was the plan? To stall further...? Stare at Susie some more for no reason? It doesn't make sense that the hesitation would be made so obvious unless it wasn't what the Knight meant to do originally
We already can see that Kris won't even initiate combat if they don't want to (or are too intimidated/scared/indecisive/whatever is going on here). You don't even get the option to fight at the top of the stair case in the church. And the difference is obvious. They're alone here
And the Knight will not hesitate to hurt them to further its own agenda, or to remind them of their place in all of this
So yeah, it's not so much that Kris is working with the Knight, certainly not in any way like they are allies with Susie and Ralsei. It's more like they know how and when to stay out of its way, to attempt their own efforts without showing outright betrayal
and if they prove capable enough, will at least receive token acknowledgement
... but still get beaten up about it (notice Kris is still at 1HP even after the Knighting)
Ini/Mimi Miney: Scars Etched by Flame (Warning: Artistic Nudity.)
Been rewatching Justice For All lately and felt like trying my hand on some artistic nudity in relation to depicting the burn-scars that Ini/Mimi Miney most likely has after her car crash.
Rewatching Rise from the Ashes and I came across yet ANOTHER piece of proof that Apollo Justice's Phoenix Disbarment plotline was utter bullshit.
I don't exactly like Rise from the Ashes either, but it's absolutely worth noting that when Phoenix was accused of submitting illegal evidence by the Chief of Police, one of the most trusted figures in LA's law enforcement, he was given the chance to explain that his evidence was not illegal using evidence law.
So why then, is an upstart prosecutor and a completely random artist that nobody has any reason whatsoever to trust, able to accuse Phoenix of evidence forgery that he is physically incapable of having ordered in-time for the trial, and the Judge doesn't even give him the chance to say anything?
I believe in Human Dess bc it's way more tragic for Kris to have someone like themselves before losing them unexpectedly and being left all alone in a town of people completely unlike themselves than to be the Token Human the whole time
Just got back from watching the Super Mario Galaxy Movie!
My thoughts are complex, especially since this is the movie adaptation of my FIRST Mario game, but ultimately boil down to; it was a good time but was somewhat disappointing.
Spoilers below the cut.
The movie was very enjoyable, I didn't go into it expecting anything deep or impactful (which may've been my mistake), but it was a blast of a time generally.
While it is true that standard for kids movies should be higher than it has been considered recently, this is a movie about the Mario series we're talking about here.
The Mario series, in general, is known for shallow, basic storytelling only to facilitate gameplay. Only rarely does a Mario game have a deep and meaningful story, and such times are exclusively reserved for spin-off series, so a fun and simple movie chock full of references is reasonable to be expected.
The only problem is that this is supposed to be a movie adaptation of Super Mario Galaxy. Super Mario Galaxy may not be any Super Paper Mario, but it still stands among the "More than the baseline" crowd due to one thing: Rosalina's Storybook.
Before I get into that, however;
As disappointed as I am in Rosalina having two scenes where she does something and being a mc-guffin for the rest of the movie, I can forgive it because Princess Peach's own protagonistic arc in this movie is deceptively well thought out.
Giving THE Princess Peach a backstory is the one promise of something truly interesting that these otherwise completely by-the-book movies provide, and it was actually really narratively substantial.
Peach starts the movie expressing her feelings as someone who doesn't fit in with the Toads that she rules over, and as soon as a Luma shows up crying that Princess Rosalina is in trouble, she takes the mission on herself like it's personal to her. You can really feel the anxiety and frustration that comes out as she tries to fight for someone she discovers to be her long lost family.
I've always been partial to the idea that Rosalina and Peach were familially connected.
The Devs confirmed that it had been intended, but that they couldn't figure out exactly how to implement it, and Matpat's theories about her being Peach's daughter from a future past do fit perfectly into the original game's weirdly existential narrative. But ultimately, that's exactly why the Devs scrapping the idea was an understandable call.
The choice to, instead, make Rosalina Peach's older sister was genuinely inspired though, because it fills a perfect narrative niche for this story that contextualizes Peach's arc even more as a hero's story.
Many stories will have younger siblings be put in peril and the older sibling fighting to save and/or protect them, but what ultimately has more narrative potential is the exact opposite.
When the hero of a story is a younger sibling, especially to an older sibling that is in some way gone or incapacitated, it contextualizes the scenario of the hero needing to learn how to navigate the situation without the safety net that once existed for them, and it often creates an undertone that the hero is trying to live up to their eldest sibling.
To give a currently prominent example: Asriel and Dess from Deltarune.
The entire narrative of Deltarune revolves around Dess's disappearance and the trauma it left on the protagonist, Kris, and almost everyone close to them. With her disappearance and Asriel going away to college, we pop into the story at a point where Kris is at their absolute most alone, and Kris is left figuring out how to navigate life without them.
Rosalina being kidnapped specifically for her strength especially fits well into this, because it establishes a greater hurdle for Peach to overcome, beating forces that bested her more powerful sister.
However. . .
As much as I love the choice to make Rosalina Peach's older sister, where this whole thing falters is actually in the backstory itself; Rosalina's Storybook.
Rosalina's Storybook was the thing that elevated Mario Galaxy above the majority of the games in the series because of how emotional and mature it actually was, and the backstory at play in the Mario Galaxy Movie completely lacks all of it.
The most memorable and emotionally impactful part of the storybook is the implication towards the end that Rosalina's mother was dead.
Not kidnapped, not missing, no Mario extra-lives bs;
"Sleeping under the tree on the hill."
Which especailly hurts to read with how the whole rest of the story consisted of her spanning the stars trying to find her, even though she already knows she's dead and is the one to reveal it to the readers; her whole story being about struggling to let go.
While Peach and Rosalina being "Made of Stardust" is certainly a novel interpretation of the "Star Child" concept from that one Yoshi game, the choice to have them flat out not HAVE parents robbed the backstory of what made it special, and it's especially weird when you realize that their shared title as Princesses would logically imply some kind of "Star King."
Add to that that the "evil forces" that apparently wanted to take Peach away, leading to their separation, are portrayed solely with a weird pink glow that isn't recognizable as anything from the Nintendo multiverse, and the fact that Rosalina is used as a weapon battery regardless of Peach not being present, making their separation completely pointless.
The story at play between Peach and Rosalina has its subtle brilliances, but it fails to get right the most important thing; their backstory. And that's easily the biggest problem with the movie.
I want to imagine a much deeper multi-part backstory where Peach and Rosalina are the Princesses of a Star Kingdom, with Rosalina being shown to be bitter about the recent death of her mother, perhaps pushing Peach away, and Peach being sent to the Mushroom Kingdom to escape some pure evil force like The Dark Star from Mario & Luigi.
But for that to mean anything I'd need to basically come up with my own rewrite for the entire Mario Movie series.
