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  • Full game spoilers — Ace Attorney (#1)

Main entry

  1. Ace Attorney (metaseries) -> I had no reason to add this until suddenly I was watching it just for context on 'cross-examine the parrot', and then was like, oh wait, this game is about logic. it's not actually about real court procedure as much as it's about an abstract concept of "reason". which... makes it surprisingly relevant to a wiki about logic. ok. time to code it.
  2. Ace Attorney -> field: fiction; field: Kantianism

Motifs

  1. lawyer of justice -> intuitive, because it's at least vaguely what their stated purpose is.
  2. lawyer of injustice -> it's rarer you see this in fiction and yet Homestuck catapulted the idea into popular consciousness.
  3. objection! (motif)
  4. objection! (motif) -> "objection maker": [1]
  5. narrative parallel
  6. Are narrative parallels admissible in court? (Ace Attorney; secular philosophy against religion) -> the answer should be no, but Phoenix, unbelievably, manages to use them in the only way that's acceptable.
  7. See through one lie, and their whole testimony falls apart / Lies always beget more lies. See through one, and their whole testimony falls apart (Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney tutorial) [2] -> you know what joke I'm going to make.
  8. The unpredictability of Subjects will save the world / you are the most unpredictable defense attorney ... I cannot deny the possibility of what you say / (9k) -> at this moment Phoenix is having a 'revelation' from a ghost who should be only as helpful as he is but is an undetectable inner experience.
    I'm not going to say this shouldn't be in there or deny this kind of thing makes stories more interesting, but I do have to say, we're getting into a sizable degree of unnecessary Kantianism here; the work is departing from reality on its 'realistic' society model before it departs from reality on fictional rules.
  9. Wendy Oldbag illustrates Idealism / Wendy Oldbag's debut is an example of Idealist reasoning / (9k) -> to be perfectly fair to these games, they use Idealism mostly for window dressing rather than the core logical problems of the game; the setting eschews supernatural forces (divine or magical) having a serious effect on the story and the court cases actually are built on a perhaps-somewhat-naïve Materialism. I really can't think of a moment where Idealism undermined the story or lessened it in any way and made me mad. this tiny, narrow little slice of the arts and writing would be one of the very few cases where Idealism has a positive effect on society. that said. the ways the characters are designed provide a nice window into what Idealism actually is, and can be something of a teaching moment.
    Oldbag's moment of appearing is slightly surprising. she is a roadblock. ... later into the case we see that the show being a "kids' show" is important, and Ms. Oldbag has to be there as this figurative and also literal obstacle to the kids having fun. that joke of "Old as the polar opposite of Kids' Shows" lands because it is not completely obvious, and yet it still comes out of a very basic contradiction between abstract concepts that are believed to be inherently opposed which then manifest in particular material ways — Oldbag literally running after the boy. this is what Idealism is: the use of abstract concepts to ostensibly explain material reality when something happens in material reality and you see it as two labeled ideas colliding after the fact. ...

Motifs (AA2)

  1. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice For All [vol. 2]
  2. One purpose of the bourgeoisie is to mediate international trade and make overseas products available locally -> it's always funny when a proposition about capitalism comes up in the middle of something not about it, but I'll take it.
  3. Edgeworth's dialectic / (9k) -> motif examined in Ace Attorney 2. [3] [4] Edgeworth collides with Wright. he has a particular way of thinking which is 'a problem' to Phoenix Wright. Wright continues to push on 'in authenticity'. after the incident where somebody tried to frame Edgeworth (following inside the recurring theme of behind-the-scenes fights between the criminals and the lawyers or detectives) and the Judge(?) reminded people of his actual violations of procedure, Edgeworth leaves. when he comes back, he gives Wright some very cryptic advice about 'knowing what it means to be the defense' after he 'discovered what it means to be the prosecution'. at the end it becomes clear Edgeworth did change. as much as he still seems reluctant to say it out loud he seems to have been jarred by his encounters with Phoenix and realized there was a need to to also collide the two of them together mentally and transform himself into something else.
    this motif is... a mixed bag. in some ways it's a good thing — it's always great to see a character re-evaluate themself. in some ways it's a little yucky because it reminds me of Fukuyama's dialectic but somehow applied to people. in Fukuyama's dialectic it's asserted that improvement and moderation are inherently tied together such that there's not really any such thing as change, only restoring the perfect. and here, you can almost see a nasty undertone that Edgeworth had to rethink himself because his personality was "not moderate" and "had to be moderated" while Phoenix, in being defined by authenticity and a kind of purity of character, is characterized not by actual striving for self-improvement but by inherent perfection. Franziska von Karma is obnoxious but like, as much as this isn't my favorite kind of 'character development', at the very least she did work hard to get where she is. meanwhile the game ultimately seems to knock that concept of improving through effort, and after thinking about it a while that's a little unsettling honestly. it's like Edgeworth didn't improve morally because he tried to do that — the form of effort that is relevant here and possibly more important — but because he regressed to the mean, he fell back to the Ideal. that concept is the thing that bothers me.
    Socratic dialectic + ?? = Edgeworth's dialectic. Fukuyama's dialectic + character development = Edgeworth's dialectic. Miles Edgeworth + authenticity (Lacanianism) = Edgeworth's dialectic. Miles Edgeworth + The unpredictability of Subjects will save the world = Edgeworth's dialectic.

Motifs (AA2)

  1. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations [vol. 3]
  2. There are two things I consider inexcusable — poisoning, and betrayal (Phoenix Wright, AA3) -> would this be evidence against or for Phoenix siding with the Trotskyite conspiracy? I'm not sure

Characters

  1. Phoenix Wright
  2. Miles Edgeworth -> I'll use the dark swatch because of the weird motif that came up for a bit of potraying prosecutors as horrifying killers.

Works

  1. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (2001) [vol. 1] [5]
  2. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice For All [vol. 2]

Theories / subjective themes

  1. Ace Attorney is a series about Liberal-republicans fighting brown anarchists -> there is a really solid theme of direct oppression running through the first game, where various people hire somebody to do harm to somebody that they think is violating the established local rules of their career or business — in effect, businesses or Artisanal practices acting like tiny governments.
    the moment the Steel Samurai came up I couldn't help but think, this character must be very thematic. he has a color timer on him for no reason, which connects him to Ultraman series. but Ultraman series is futuristic. while Steel Samurai is deliberately medieval; it's based in these principles of feudal orders with emperors, dukes or counts, and knights. I think that contrast is intentional and meant to frame Ace Attorney as feeling like it doesn't take place in 2001 because the characters' values are stuck hundreds of years before. now, you could have gotten that much from a magazine article; it's well known that the games are based on something called the ritsuryō system. [6] but when you get into the subtext of that is when things get really interesting. the ritsuryō system as a whole dates back to about the year 700; this places the characters' values approximately 1300 years before the game was made. 1300 years ago there was no United States. there was no global empire in its modern form (although Greek Egypt happened in about 300, so imperial colonies were already invented in more of a feudal form). Liberal-republicanism being an empire did not exist yet. Liberal-republicanism did not exist yet. we have to appreciate how different the world was in 300 — the whole dynamic of the United States and Japan and Germany and China fighting as powerful republics didn't yet exist. so then, what is the significance of Phoenix Wright and Edgeworth coming in and applying these very Kantian or Liberal-republican values to a world which is stuck in the 700s? it's a symbolic transition to Liberalism — they are taking feudalism and attempting to transition it to Liberal-republicanism. but more than that. because all the characters have to be superficially modern to make the setting truly feel shocking, all the peripheral characters live in capitalism. they exist within corporations and skilled practices and "Careerism". the peripheral characters may come out of something of a self-selected sample of people who have been near crimes, being detectives and witnesses and criminals, etc, but within them, you see a very clear theme pop up of almost all the lawbreakers suspect or not clearly trying to enforce particular rules themselves instead of letting the overarching republic do it. each lawbreaker, whether it's Redd White carrying out blackmail that is probably not legal or von Karma trying to get Hammond shot and Edgeworth in prison, always has a particular notion of what order and justice are; the most offensive thing to them is not getting to perform direct oppression and having someone else "hierarchically" meddle in their affairs. this weirdly positions the criminals of the Ace Attorney series as some kind of anarchism. definitely not one of the best kinds of anarchism, it goes without saying that most charcoal anarchists would hate it. but that by itself isn't to say it isn't an anarchism. blue anarchism almost certainly exists. orange anarchism may exist. brown anarchism may exist. so the only question that remains is what kind of anarchism Wright and Edgeworth are fighting.
  2. Ace Attorney is copaganda / (9k) -> ... I find it funny this would even be a concern when anybody with a brain can see that this game revolves around the lawyers. not the judge. not the detectives or the cops. ... the games really focus in on the concept of reasoning and the notion of law being a thing of effort and expertise, as much as medieval settings try to put similar qualities onto knights or occasionally onto nobility. these games are really actually "liberal-republic-aganda", if that were a word. they do subtly push an "agenda", but it's not an agenda of state force, it's an agenda that liberal republics are built on "reason" by hardworking people that if not necessarily good are at least complex and not bad. it's like.... these games are not defending killer cops but they are kind of defending Benjamin Franklin. ...
  3. lawyer modernism (fiction) / detective modernism; forensics department modernism (fiction) / police officer modernism (fiction; Zootopia etc.) / senator modernism (fiction; The West Wing etc.) -> the motif of creating a modernist setting in fiction but doing that specifically through the lens of occupations or trades, such that the work is very relatable to anyone who has ever experienced the occupations being depicted, but such that the work also effectively praises or defends what already is whether or not it is bad.
  4. lawyer postmodernism (fiction) -> this logically has to exist if lawyer modernism exists, but I don't really know what it would be.
  5. lawyer metamodernism (fiction) -> this logically has to exist too. I hate culture studies terms.
    but, when I reframed the definition of modernism maybe there would be something interesting within this one.

AUs

  1. hold it! you call that Leninism? / Ace Attorney but in the context of a Communist party or Communist International -> I was watching these games for other reasons, and in my mind, they had nothing to do with Communism. until Mia had to go and say 'once you see through one lie the whole thing falls apart'. that really got my mind gears turning because I started imagining a fictionalized version of the Moscow Trials which was in over-the-top Ace Attorney format. which is just, a vastly more historically accurate way to adapt that event than the ominous trial of doom trope you see in works like The Twilight Zone; Trotsky himself is almost as weird as an Ace Attorney character, and even among the people they actually dragged in, the arguments or narratives were just about as bad as some of the witnesses give in Ace Attorney games. like, Trotskyites are giving Larry Butz level of testimony, persuade me otherwise.
    then my mind started to wander to other possible angles, like a party meeting over an issue but being really divided on it and they start having a heated argument and banging on their desks. 'Left Opposition versus Right Opposition' kind of thing. that has so much comedy potential. and it could be a bit legitimately educational too. I kinda love the idea of these somewhat self-contained scenarios where a party is meeting over strategy on how to get through a particular problem in a particular country's revolution and there is a lot of tension because bad things happen to the working class when you get it wrong and they're going back and forth in these heated arguments to try to prove or disprove something. it almost sounds more interesting than Ace Attorney in some ways because like, you don't just have the fake opposition of the prosecutors and defense attorneys, you have more of a radial opposition of various factions and between different meetings the two sides could be anybody. it has a certain meta-Marxist appeal to it, in a weird way.
    Ace Attorney + Leninist variant of fictional place = this.
  2. hold it! you call that Leninism? -> though it's not very serious (and is not finished) I have a "demonstration" of this now
  3. class traitor from specific field (fiction) / (9k)
  4. lawyer characters becoming Lenin / characters that would be lawyers becoming Communist theorists / (9k)
    lawyer characters becoming Lenin + Ace Attorney = Franziska von Karma becomes Communist theorist.

  5. Ace Attorney without trials

    / Ace Attorney without lawyers / (9k) -> so. I said that "Ace Attorney is copaganda" was a stupid proposition ... but. as I wrote that down, I realized that if you tried to redesign the Ace Attorney universe around the constraint of what anarchists apparently want rather than what they literally want... it would actually be a weirdly fun challenge.

    ... I think the best place for this to start would be at the beginning, with the original two incidents. when Phoenix is a child lawyers exist and he sees the young Miles Edgeworth stand up for him, everything is the same at that point. then when he's in college he learns the law department is shutting down. ... I guess the vignette of Phoenix in college is quite literally just him trying to solve the mystery of what is going on with the law department and sort of mentally putting together a "corkboard" of everything for his own peace of mind. he runs into Mia as she is investigating the anarchist incident in order to defend it, in the traditional way lawyers always do in the games for some reason. and I guess because he wants to solve this thing he like, takes up the secretary / counsel role and decides to help her? we have the dynamic of Phoenix and Maya but literally reversed. ... Mia thinks there is going to be a trial but the commotion continues and it doesn't happen. ... so the two of them are having to figure out how to "defend" the anarchists in a new environment where the anarchists are sort of making all the rules now. ... at the end of this story arc Phoenix looks at a campus newspaper and learns that as he is graduating the law department really will be abolished. he is stunned. he looks back at the clipping he found about the 'demon prosecutor'. hoping he will not have to defeat his new enemy with violence, he vows to help bring Edgeworth down.

  6. Franziska von Karma becomes Communist theorist / (9k)
  7. phoenix wright stuck in lawsuit over whether trans people get to use a bathroom -> so today I found out they closed the extra toilet at the grocery store possibly for bigoted reasons. here is my revenge
    phoenix wright gets caught in a lawsuit over whether trans people get to use a bathroom. he is like, oh god, why is this a case, there's nothing to investigate, we're just arguing about whether the thing that happened is a violation or not, what are we doing
    there's something about how practically all the court cases in the games are murder cases and in comparison this kind of case seems like such small potatoes. and yet it's somehow something millions of people across an entire country can get endlessly fired up about

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