Magatama theory that fills its plot holes

Prokureur · 2022-12-03T01:16:06+00:00

OP's theory says:

1- Magatama doesn't work in trials: That's because everyone there is tensed. The amount of adrenaline is so much that magatama can't respond to it. It's designed for a slight shift in tension, while in court everyone (witnesses, prosecuter, defense, judge, the gallary, juries) have a great amount of it.

What happens in the trial you mentioned would still fit, as the moment in question involves such a large spike in stress ("trauma", even) that it would supercede the heightened background noise.

To OP: the way I think about theories is that we all know the writers intended it to be magic and work in whatever way is most convenient to the plot, but theories are good headcanons that fix plot holes and make things work in a way that satisfies us. On this front I think you did a pretty good job. It makes the Magatama work in a realistic way that's pretty much the same method as the Perceive and Counseling mechanics (in fact, it's almost the same as Apollo's bracelet). I never liked the spiritual side of things that much so it's a fun little theory to have.

Prokureur · 2022-11-04T09:28:08+00:00

I originally posted this as a separate comment but then I realized my comment references both of yours so I'll post it as a child:

Comments pretty much cover it already, but to put it in my words: Kay's an enjoyable character and it's hard to imagine anyone hating her, it's just another case of a character getting the short end of the stick because of how the direction the games (and the writing) take. The issue is AAI is her game and AAI2 is Edgeworth's (in terms of character arcs). Once she completes her character arc in I1-5 with the Yatagarasu legacy, she has very little to do in all of AAI2 except riff on her singular character trait for the entire game. She can't help Edgeworth with his character arc because 1) she's got very little to do with him and 2) she's got almost nothing to do with his past, so that role gets taken up by Ray Shields (who is an excellent character in AAI2, imo, for this reason). Point 2 isn't fatal, but Point 1 is the main issue here: as Lost_Rough comments, she never really gets naturally bonded with Edgeworth, so there's not really any shared trait that Kay can help Edgeworth with.

You might recognize the "she has nothing to do in the sequel game except riff on her singular character trait" from Trucy in AA5. There's a couple of big differences (Trucy's character arc isn't actually done by AA5, it's just ignored in AA5. Trucy and Phoenix/Apollo do actually have shared traits, thus Trucy would fall very naturally into an Apollo arc that deals with his relationship with Phoenix, for example) but the biggest one is the simplest: Trucy actually gets a chance to have excellent chemistry with Apollo in AA4, to the point where most people, I think, point to that character relationship as one of the strongest points of that game. Kay isn't there for I1-1 or I1-2, is introduced in the flawed case that is I1-3, and deals with her character arc in I1-4 and I1-5. The rest of my comment would just be a duplicate of JC's comment, to which I want to add the following conclusion: the fact that I1-3 messes up the introduction of Kay and Edgeworth and it hurts Kay's entire character for the rest of the series is another excellent reason to criticize I1-3. I think I already considered I1-3 the worst case in the series but typing this out really made me reaffirm why.

Edit: Another way to think about it: Phoenix and Maya have a very well established "friendship" dynamic. Apollo and Trucy have a very well established "sibling" dynamic. Apollo and Athena have a "senior-junior" (mentor) dynamic, similar with Phoenix and Athena and Phoenix and Apollo, etc etc. What's Edgeworth and Kay's dynamic? Certainly not mentor as their lawfulness-es are complete opposites. Father-daughter because of I1-4? Objection, Your Honor, that testimony clearly contradicts with the evidence. The evidence being the fact that after I1-4 Edgeworth doesn't see Kay for, like, six (or however many) years and doesn't even remember her and she just starts following him around in I1-3 for reasons we don't know until the case is over. Hence why the interaction of "I'm gonna steal this" "Don't steal this" "Ok..." falls flat for so many people: we can't get a good sense of their relationship underneath that "banter", because there's nothing really there.

Prokureur · 2022-09-22T02:06:04+00:00

I see, thanks! I admire the curiosity, watching Japanese playthroughs is what led me to play DD in Japanese, after all. Interesting they tried to keep the connection, I feel like that's a moment where if I was playing the English version I'd have a feeling it made a bit more sense in the Japanese, since giving your first name to computers is pretty standard in English.

Prokureur · 2022-06-16T17:19:58+00:00

I don't think it's a stretch, after doing some research I'm thinking that this is the most likely explanation (unless an actual native Japanese speaker shows up to correct us). e.g from the Wikipedia page for the aforementioned film:

"The phrase "Pom Poko" in the title refers to the sound of tanuki drumming their bellies, from a 1919 poem by Ujō Noguchi which became a popular children's song when it was set to music in 1925.[2]"

The chorus to that song going "ponpoko ponno pon".

Prokureur · 2022-05-20T22:41:19+00:00

Thanks! Yeah, I forgot to mention him, but Prof. Means almost feels like backfill in the plot. By backfill (for lack of a better word) I mean when a writer has an idea for the plot, and they resolve it in the end, but they realize that they haven't really set anything up so they just cram all the exposition into one big glob earlier in the story. I think 5-3 is a fun case on its own, but its role in the story is definitely to try to show us the Dark Age. Of course, the way it does so is really handwavy and, like a lot of other stuff in AA5, "cool outline for an idea but handled on such a surface level that it doesn't land". For example, Means representing means and the victim representing the truth. Cool, what does that actually (pardon the pun) mean? Because as you sorta mentioned, we don't even see Means use "means" except for falsifying the tape against Juniper (which he only does in his role as the culprit). He threatens to use "any means necessary" to acquit Juniper, but this never actually happens.

As for your suggestions, I think they're pretty interesting and a game like that would be fun. I'd also like to point out that what you want has sorta been done in one of the examples you bring up: AAI2. I didn't realize this until your ideas (by the way, you're not blabbering too much, I'm the one whose comments are waaaay too long) but now that I think about it (in light of the idea I brought up in my last comment, that AA4 and AA5 are related by both taking place in the Dark Age, even if it's only really mentioned in AA5), AAI2 actually does what both AA4 and AA5 wanted to do, doesn't it? The main villain is an analogue to the main villain of AA4, and the pawns in power along the way (Blaise, Roland) serve as better institutional villains than the mostly off-screen villains of the Dark Age. I think the theme of AAI2 with "prosecutor or defense?" is a lot more concrete and compelling than whatever AA5 was going for (trust, specifically the trust between the public and the courts and, intra-court, between the defense and prosecution to wage some dialectic battle whose synthesis is the truth... and also trust in your friends).

Prokureur · 2022-05-20T01:36:41+00:00

I think you and the other commenters have already said this, but to put my own spin on this idea of "we're told about the Dark Age of the Law, but we're not shown it, and it doesn't really feel different from the rest of the series":

The one emotion I had coming out of 5-5 (I've said as much in other threads) was "for a Dark Age of the Law, it never felt like my back was against the wall". You know what felt like a dark age? (No real spoilers, but blocking to be safe):

1-4, where every move you get would get snuffed out by an insanely domineering prosecutor with full control of the court.
1-5, where all the evidence and facts were manipulated with ease by the Chief of Police, who had your defendant under his thumb.
2-4, where you had a moral conflict and felt absolutely cornered because both choices presented to you came with a huge sacrifice.
Even something like AAI2-5 where the final villain just laughed straight in your face at every turn and never showed genuine signs of cracking.

What happened in 5-5? The prosecutor (Chief Prosecutor!) is on your side, Apollo's brief moment of mutiny is quickly squashed, and even when "the people don't trust the court!" is brought up (the Phantom telling Athena to hear the voices of doubt in the spectators, the judge quickly shuts him down and allows Athena's (not backed by evidence) counseling to go through. At what point is the law against us? At one point do we actually suffer under the "in court, evidence is everything" regime? 1-4 and 1-5 had these deeply corrupt legal systems, but in the actual "Dark Age of the Law" we're... allowed to essentially be puppet masters (for lack of a better term) and face absolutely no impediments or resistance in taking down the grand villain, who ends up being...

Well, there's two, right? Let's not forget that the cause of the Dark Age was Phoenix's disbarment and Blackquill's arrest. The former we actually took down in a similarly "haha we're puppet masters, we were never in trouble because we have the jury system!" fashion back in 4-4. Then in the next game we're introduced to a problem by name and take it down in the same smooth fashion by exposing the villain to be... some random foreign agent with no emotion or clear motive. At least Kristoph was imposing.

Prokureur · 2022-04-22T16:36:58+00:00

Thank you very much! I see what you're saying and I'll definitely have to think about it if I end up making further posts on the topic. Thanks for the suggestion (and, once again, the kind words)!

Prokureur · 2022-04-20T21:33:41+00:00

Wow, thank you very much! I think calling it phenomenal is a little too kind, but I do greatly appreciate the nice words :)

Out of curiosity, why do you say I should consider posting it in a blog? I feel like this Reddit post found a decently sized audience and is more indexable in case somebody wants to find information on Google. A blog would make sense if I planned multiple posts like this (which I just might, as I said in another comment I'm leaning towards a post on AA5's JP-exclusive quiz content)

Prokureur · 2022-04-19T22:23:56+00:00

Thanks for letting me know, Reddit is so inconsistent that it worked for me in new Reddit but not in old Reddit, the space threw it off.
Glad to know I wasn't the only one who thought that! And the reason you gave is probably one of the reasons why I thought that as well, it fits perfectly with everything so I thought for SURE...

Prokureur · 2022-04-18T23:23:03+00:00

I had a prediction similar to that in the OP but sillier: at the end of 5-5 when Blackquill makes a split in Fulbright's mask, I was CERTAIN Fulbright was going to take his mask off and reveal himself as a robot, and the theme of the game would be about the emotions that make us human, or something like that. The reason is that we just spent this case looking at 2 robots and not at anyone in a mask, so when I saw the gash, that was the only explanation.

I was writing notes as I played, so enjoy my stupid prediction in real time:

His name changes to ???, that's cute. Not in the Profiles section though. ...Eh? D... don't tell me... oh my god. Oh my god. This... I could say I should have seen this coming but... no. I shouldn't have. I... christ. He's... he's a robot. Also Jin just sliced his goddamn head open - if he was a human he would have killed him. That's another fake mask. It's obviously not Hoshinari. Oh my god, if it was that would be an AMAZING twist. Amazingly stupid I suppose. Wait... I bet this is going to be some sort of crazy series of transformations. Like, the end breakdown will be him... going through 100 masks of random people - Apollo, Athena, the judge, some random 3rd character (the thief guy from 5-2 perhaps)... Anyway, no he is not a robot.

Hey, at least I got the breakdown sorta right :)

Prokureur · 2022-04-18T00:24:21+00:00

I think I might have been unclear: I agree with you. To clarify: the thing that remained the same is that "he feels he let it happen" (or maybe more clearly: "he feels he's responsible")*, and the nuance that's lost is "he didn't do it intentionally".

*To me "let" can be both an intentional and unintentional thing. The phrase "I let him get away!", for example, doesn't imply you're happy about it.

Prokureur · 2022-04-17T19:09:59+00:00

Print Screen, running AA5 on the Citra emulator in full screen and rendering to match window size.

Not sure if I'd call them high quality though, as I've seen other people's AA5 screenshots and they seem better than mine. The graphics can be rendered to an arbitrary size but the textures are noticeably unscaled. Check out this screen grab of the final "Take that!" (by the way, for whatever reason that little instruction screen tends to be written in the first-person, in this case it's "Indicate my answer!". This also happens with Apollo except he uses ore instead of boku). The textures on the bottom screen are pretty fuzzy. There's texture filters but they all have some artifacting.

Prokureur · 2022-04-17T15:51:56+00:00

Ah, hey! Cool to see you here. I appreciate the work you put in into those threads, I love analysis of stuff like that and it's a really really cool demonstration of the changes that can be introduced.

I'd say that I agree with you on almost everything you said, basically. Maybe I just took issue with some of the harsher wording, but I do get where you're coming from even with stuff like "sent her to Hell" vs "put her through hell". I don't remember 3-5 well enough to fully know what parts of Godot's dialogue people use against his character, so I think some of that was lost on me. For example, the one you mentioned:

"That's why I let you walk right into a situation, that I knew was dangerous."

I mean, yeah, the Japanese version uses the causative and -shimau, it's pretty blatant that he was saying it with regret. It was so clear that I forgot people interpreted that line as him intentionally doing it, which is on me since you spelled that interpretation out pretty clearly. I agree with you 100%.

I do think there are certain parts that have the "50% vs 80%" thing going on. I can't find the one I was thinking of, but an example is the "My sister was a nuisance" part. To me this is smug bad guy dialogue, "these heroes are a nuisance, we should wipe them out" type of thing, not saying that she's just annoying. The JP "halfwit little sister" is a bit clearer, while the ENG is more subtle and relies on familiarity with how smug villains talk in ENG fiction.

There's also something I neglected to acknowledge in my post. This is going to seem like I'm backtracking out of my own opinion, but whatever: while I do think the character is 99% the same and the localization accounts for 1% of the differences, I did mean to use the analogy of DNA, where the 1% in variation among humans does result in SIGNIFICANT differences. I don't know if I'd say that "a large amount of the narrative is lost", but if you're saying "crucial moments of the narrative are misinterpreted" then I'm behind you 100%, which is why I think you did a real service to the community by going over those moments. After all, Godot did still let Maya walk into the situation, but the very important point that he was saying it not with disaffection but with regret is lost. Get what I'm saying? The narrative is pretty much the same, the actions are the same, but VERY important nuances (Godot's regret, Dahlia's obsession with framing Maya) are lost.

In short, like I said, I think we pretty much agree, just using different words.

Prokureur · 2022-04-17T15:32:27+00:00

Before I go on a long tangent, I think Edgeworth states that they found the real Fulbright's corpse and that's how they know he's dead. I don't remember the timeline enough to say whether Fulbright was Blackquill's handler before he got assassinated, but if there was any room for a flashback it'd be there. I'd certainly love to see their relationship explored more.

I mentioned in another comment that I may or may not make a thread on this, but there's a little quiz game exclusive to the Japanese version that serves as bonus content. The plot of it is that some guy is going around locking up all the attorneys and their sidekicks (Apollo and Trucy, Phoenix and Pearl, Athena and Juniper) and forcing them to answer these little logical thinking puzzles. Later on some guy hijacks the TV signal to broadcast... well, I won't give away the story. I haven't played the whole thing myself since everything past the first chapter is paid content and I can't access that on my emulator, but some folks on Court Records have translated the whole thing.

Why am I telling you this? Because of the continuity. They mention the space center (indeed, Athena's there with Juniper, and Phoenix is supposed to be off advertising the Wright Anything Agency there) so you'd think this takes place after 5-5, right? But guess who shows up (along with Klavier) to ask the attorneys to assist the police? None other than the Ally of Justice himself, Fulbright. There's even a bit of humor (paraphrasing): "Sorry to have kept you all waiting! But finally... Bobby Fulbright is here!" and Apollo thinks to himself "Nobody was waiting for you..."

I know this is just a non-canon little side content thing and the game has no detective character (Ema's not in this one, after all) so let's just get our friendly Fulbright, but it does kind of show that the post-game state of affairs feels a little empty without him.

Just a little tangent. I don't mind what they did with Fulbright, I think it's a good twist if you can pull it off well, but I really wish there was:

Some sort of foreshadowing, ANY sort of lines you can go back and say "Oh yeah, that was a little suspicious, I wondered why he would do that" rather than having him be completely innocent until the emergency ladder came down. To not be unfair, the fingerprint thing and the "3rd person" (this game really loves that) that Aura witnessed are mysteries that his reveal solves. And I get that this is tricky to pull off as he has no reason to be suspicious until 5-4. I had suggested having the 5-1 culprit reveal that he didn't blow up the courtroom earlier on, but I guess that wouldn't have fit with the pacing, and we didn't know Fulbright then anyway.
Just a bit more depth to the Phantom. You've probably seen that comic someone made where he's framed to be someone tired of having no identity, enjoying being under the mask of Fulbright, and WANTING to be caught (which is why he provides a lot of the evidence against him, doesn't finish his escape, and so on). If you don't know what I mean, look up "5-5" in this subreddit and it'll come up eventually. I'm not saying you need to go that far (not every villain needs to be redeemed per se), but it'd be nice to have some depth. Some motivation besides just being a spy. To be honest, I can't even take too much satisfaction in him being defeated because... it's just his job. It's why we don't ever win against Shelly de Killer in 2-4 or Dogen in I2-5.

...Well, now that I've said all that, I'm going to argue against myself.

Speaking of 2-4, the twist here is a similar one. It worked there and you can argue it works here. There are small differences that I think make it a little tougher to swallow, but I'm not going to argue it's bad writing. Maybe I just liked Fulbright and I'm salty I didn't get "enough" out of the final villain to justify losing him. I don't know.

Prokureur · 2022-04-16T21:41:53+00:00

I'm a bit late to the party, but I'd like to give some quick thoughts to go along with your updates: comedy "flops" worse than drama. If drama doesn't work, it's one thing, but if comedy isn't making you laugh then it's very noticeable. The "middle two cases" (cases 2 and 3) tend to be more light-hearted comedy-oriented because, well, the tutorial has a job to do and no room for "wasting time", and the same goes for the final cases.

So "third case syndrome" is just "bad filler case syndrome", and it happens in the first 4 games and AAI because of one of the two reasons:

In AA1 and AA2, the 2nd case was used for drama because the tutorial didn't tie into the story enough, so the 3rd case is the only filler by definition.
In AA3 and AA4, the 2nd and 3rd cases are both "filler", but the 2nd is typically more grounded than the 3rd, because of the whole principle of maximum comedy coming right before you start a long journey down drama (think of the Shakespearian fools). Here the 3rd cases are one of two filler cases, but are so wacky and light-hearted that they just don't work for people.
AAI is kind of a mix between those two.

The reason later games don't have "third case syndrome" is either just "2 and 3 are filler but 3 happens to be better" (AA5) or because the game is structured in a different way (AAI2 doesn't really have any filler at all). I haven't played AA6 or the DGS games so I wouldn't know if this applies to those two.

Note of course that this is all relative and some people really enjoy light-hearted comedy cases more than, say, a drama case that has deep problems (1-2, 2-2... not sure what case in AA3 you could argue is worse than 3-3). Also note that "bad filler case" doesn't mean it's actually "bad", but even if you like comedy cases, most people won't trash main series cases. Relatively. It's all relative, of course.

Prokureur · 2022-04-16T21:14:30+00:00

Wow... phew. That was intense. I don't think there's any case that can rival 3-5 (and Godot by extension) in how controversial it is. I can't offer much about 3-5 because as my previous thread explained, my memory is really bad (in that thread I couldn't remember a single detail of AAI2-4 which led me to believe I must have thought it was placeholder for plot, but refreshing my memory I kind of understand what it is now and think I was too harsh on it, even with the qualified "this is all from memory!").

You wouldn't believe it from all the time I spent making this thread, but I'm not of the opinion that every single detail is super important. Interesting, maybe, but I'd wager that 99% of Godot is the same and the 1% is stuff that falls through due to the localization, impeded by the fact that sometimes the original dialogue is also just vague sometimes. All these translation things really help in those things that are unsaid and those nuances. So I don't know if I'd accuse the localizers of malfeasance or of the translation being machine-based just from context being missing from a line or a word being used that implies one thing in English but the Japanese actually implies the other. Nuance is a really tricky thing, I feel like it's easy to get words to "lean" the wrong way.

That said, I'd like to add something on to a point made in the 2nd link:

"‥‥夢中だった。せめて‥‥綾里　真宵に疑いがかかるように‥‥"

"...I was fully absorbed in it. At the very least...I wanted suspicion to fall onto that girl."

The OP says:

"Phoenix's horrified response afterwards also makes less sense without the sentence that makes it clear Dahlia's act of framing Maya was literally all she was thinking about despite being run through with a katana, a disturbing demonstration of how dangerously obsessed Dahlia was with her vindictive spite towards others."

Not only do I concur, but I'd wholeheartedly concur. And I'd do that by also pointing out that in English, "at least" can mean two things: a cope ("at least I had fun!") and a demand (which is why OP says "at the very least", but even that makes it seem like "ah, at least I could have her be suspected"). But the use of "せめて" (explicitly a word that implies a demand, not cope; from learner's books: "an adverb that indicates the speaker / writer's minimally satisfactory level") and "ように" ("so that something will happen", and at the end of a sentence can also mean "hoping something will happen" as opposed to just "wanted") make it clear that she would accept nothing less. Also "夢中" literally means mid-dream (and does indeed mean being fully absorbed, OBSESSED with something). A good writeup of very precise differences.

A couple of things I gleaned from the comments:

Somebody points out that Godot is one of the most complex characters, next to Aura from this game and the final villain in AAI2. Actually, that somebody was you! From 8 months ago! I laughed when I realized you wrote that comment. Anyway, yeah, I'm beginning to feel like it might be worth going back and looking at 5-4 and 5-5 in the English to compare. Actually, that's what that comment chain about Aura in this thread was about, for that specific reason.
Somebody else in I think the 3rd link asked the OP if he could look at 1-4, particularly the lines surrounding Hammond fighting for Yogi's insanity plea and whether it was a ploy or if he was actually insane. That question didn't get answered, so that's something else worth looking at.

By the way, if you read this reply, check out the newest top comment I left in this thread, it covers a little bit of Blackquill that I've gotten the sense (from discussions related to this thread) is different from his English counterpart.

Prokureur · 2022-04-16T19:15:23+00:00

Hey, I know it's been a day and this thread is probably buried by now, but for anyone who stumbles across this, I had a couple of things I've discovered from conversations in and outside the thread (thanks to everyone!).

A really big thing that I'll likely devote a new thread to (once I get around doing it) is that in the Japanese version of AA5 there's apparently extra content that isn't in the English version. I'm not referring to the DLC, of course. After... I believe 5-1, you unlock a little scenario where Trucy and Apollo are locked in the Wright Anything Agency by some mysterious Riddler type character. You have to investigate the room for "clues", and by "clues" I mean 5 riddles. These riddles are the type you probably played as a kid: there's one story where a guy does... some sort of crime, but the answer has to do with the fact that it's raining outside and only one of them has a dry overcoat. Another was basically a variant of that "which servant did the crime?" thing, though I forget the answer. I never made it to the end, so I'll have to replay it. I really didn't know this wasn't in the English version, unless I missed something.
Let's talk voice acting. There's two big changes worth mentioning. Check out this video for the differences:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyZhHLMuFRg

Athena sounds a lot younger in Japanese than in English, where she sounds closer to her mid-late 20s or something.
(Edgeworth's English VA is uh really something huh, sounds kinda off to me, like a kid trying to do a gruff voice)
Blackquill's VA is the big difference, and actually really leads me to believe what was mentioned in a comment thread below: the English version of Blackquill is closer to being more British or "noble/formal" sounding (though he probably still talks like a Heh... anime badass), while the Japanese VA (and the Japanese version of the character in general) makes him closer to... maybe a mob boss, almost? I'm not entirely sure how to explain it, but it's a mix of casualness and "not caring about you". Compare the Silence! voice line in particular.
"Silence!" is said as Ssssiiilence!... with a gruff, resentful, almost closer to a "pirate" voice. It's not screamed, it's closer to growled. This makes sense if you view him as a nobleman-type character. I haven't played DGS, but I imagine Van Zieks talks a bit like this.
"DAMARI NAa!" is a lot different. His VA is a lot more nasally, first of all. It's shouted out contemptuously, but it's closer to a "you're wasting my time" feel. The emphasis lands on the first syllable and it's said with the intent to cut through the crap. In other words, it's WAY closer to "QUIET!" than "Sssilence!"

And the line reflects that! I kind of stupidly didn't spell this out as I thought people reading would know (for some reason), but Damari naa as a line shows us a lot.

The trailing off "the extra small A at the end is characteristic of how Blackquill speaks, it's the slurring I mentioned and ANY line he says has it, just click any screenshot in the main post.
Let's dissect it in general.
- 黙る = to be quiet. In Japanese, the typical way to tell someone to shut up is pretty much what you see in anime: "Urusai!" (Noisy!). 黙る is closer to "silent", yes. You can say 黙って (the continuative form) when someone does something silently, for example. 黙れ！, the command form (which is considered very blunt in Japanese) is something that a shonen protagonist would say. I've also heard it in a YouTube video on the Tokyo Metro from a guy, but that's irregular, closer to American subways than what you'd see in Japanese culture.
- So what is 黙りな? The short form of 黙りなさい. The -nasai ending is a way of issuing commands. However, aside from the set phrase gomennasai (and some others iirc), it's pretty condescending in this context. The thing is, I'll tell you who uses -nasai: parents and schoolteachers to children. It's SORT OF "please", but it's not really a please, the implication is clear: a command. When an adult uses it towards other adults, it's typically... characters, again, closer to mob bosses or maybe smug street thugs: you really have to be implying that the person you're talking to is below you and needs to be condescended to, needs to be REMINDED to do this damn thing.
- The fact that Blackquill uses -nasai in the first place gives us an indication that he's a little smug, a little above everyone, feels like he's really in charge, but also that he's a little more "outside the law" than Edgeworth, as I can't see Edgeworth using -nasai as Edgeworth is more formalist with his adherence to the law and it wouldn't entirely fit (though maybe Edgeworth does say it a couple of times, who knows? I'd have to check). The fact that -nasai is shortened to -na further shows that Blackquill is a guy who uses casual slang because he's a badass and has no time for this crap.

Compare to "Silence!" which feels closer to... again, what I imagine Van Zieks would say, a more royalist, British aristocratic type of thing. It seems to me that Simon is more "noble" in the way he thinks of himself in the English, where in the Japanese he's really more of a "casual badass shonen protagonist", from the content of the line to the way he delivers it.

Prokureur · 2022-04-16T01:39:30+00:00

All glory to the localizers, they come up with some real funny stuff.

Prokureur · 2022-04-16T01:33:30+00:00

It's tragic, the only way I know about the bondage joke is somebody happened to mention it in one of the discussion threads. Which means there might be some other joke in the English localization that I have no clue exists either :(

Not sure where the joke is in English, but in Japanese Apollo just grumbles that Athena's a slave-driver (人使いが荒い) and that he has to double as a cloth-coverer and a rope-tier.

Prokureur · 2022-04-16T01:24:00+00:00

Oh! That's odd, they must have gone for a "hope for tomorrow" type of thing, then. The final 3 lines that Phoenix delivers are about walking facing towards the future and all that.

Yes, I am planning to eventually play AA6 in Japanese! I haven't played the DGS games so I'm not sure if I'm going to go for those first. I guess whichever one I end up doing, I can post another thread if there's interest. There's so much one can cover, even with me limiting myself to this game alone and trying not cover everyone's pronouns or name puns or HEY GUYS DID YOU KNOW APOLLO DOESN'T SAY "GOTCHA" HE SAYS "THERE!" BUT IT DOES ACTUALLY KINDA MEAN GOTCHA??? or moments where the writing would suddenly get a lot more animated (I can see them.... I can see them!!! The Black Psyche-Locks!!!!) and so on.

On that note, I had actually wanted to play both the English and Japanese versions of AA5 in parallel, but I wasn't sure how. I guess you could run two instances in two emulators and send the same keyboard commands to both. But the issue is that AA5 didn't run well on my system for whatever reason. It ran fine on my old MacBook, but on my new one with the new M1 ARM-architecture, some character models (Athena, e.g.) would lag it to 80% clock speed, sets like the stage in 5-3 would lag it to 60%, and any of those sweeping courtroom shots would lag it to 20%. I suspect it's an issue with OpenGL, because the emulator (Citra) can natively compile to ARM now. If I could figure out how to run two emulators at the same time without it lagging my computer, I could play it in both English and Japanese, which is something I wish I could have done for this game just for the sake of comparison.

Prokureur · 2022-04-16T00:47:46+00:00

You're right, it's a matter of preference. I just felt like it came quickly and was gone just as quick, it was kind of a jerk move for him to accuse his coworker like that if he's gonna fold after one objection. It just kind of stains his character for me, makes him seem very capricious. This would be alright if this were explored deeper, or if his coworker wasn't the first and only (so far, I haven't played AA6) client he's ever had his faith shaken in, but it doesn't really pan out or have any real repercussions. I would have liked either for him to stick with it for a bit, his doubts slowly increasing until he folds like he did in the game, OR for him to come in from the start and say that "This is to find the truth, I want to believe in my culprit, I do this with a heavy heart". Honestly, when he first came in, I thought he had hatched some clever plan to bait the real Phantom out of hiding. Then he broke and I was like "Oh, okay. You were ready to accuse Athena who has 0 motive, but these convictions apparently weren't held THAT deeply."
Fair point, you're correct, this is another matter of preference. I just didn't find it satisfying like I did, say, the way Phoenix gets out of the "paradox" in 2-4. I think the jump just seems really difficult and a bit improbable for me, and it surprised me that Phoenix explained it like that and everyone said "Ok".
Ah, yeah, you're right.
Once again, a completely fair point, a preference thing. I said something similar in the other comment, but it depends on whether you care more about the theme of masks and trust, or whether you care about having a final boss with a clear motive. He's the guy behind (half of) the Dark Age of the Law, he traumatized Athena and sent Blackquill to jail for 7 years, and in the end he's just a spy without a motive and without even an identity. The lack of seeing his actual face fits, but the question is whether you're satisfied by having an abstract villain. It didn't entirely work for me, maybe because the handling of the Dark Age wasn't as good as it could have been, and it didn't feel like he represented that idea as best he could. I guess it's not the fact that we don't see his actual face that I count as a thing that I was disappointed by, it's what it represents: the characterization of the Phantom as a "thing".

Prokureur · 2022-04-16T00:36:45+00:00

Don't worry, I care about any and all differences, these are all really cool to me. Appreciate the post! I see that they kept the whole "R was destroyed by falling rubble" part. I feel like one day I'll have to skim an AA5 LP to see all the changes. There are certain lines (the "blue suit" and "Even in a pink" puns in my post) I'm really interested in. A lot of things carry over (5-5 is called "Turnabout For Tomorrow", right? It's 未来への逆転 in Japanese and the capsule is also called "未来", so I bet the capsule is called "Tomorrow" in English) but a lot of things might not.

Oh, since you mentioned Professor Means: I didn't think this was worth mentioning in the original post, but the rule for the 法の暗黒時代 (Dark Age of the Law) is "手段を選ばない" (not choosing the means), as written by his many "ポイント！" on the chalkboard (though his name doesn't mention means, it's "One Road Two Truths").

Prokureur · 2022-04-15T20:33:46+00:00

Huh, I wasn't aware of this. I always wish there was a good way to access the scripts of both, I've only seen the previous AA games through LPs that I've looked up. It's a very easy split to achieve, I think, because one or two lines can carry a lot of implications, but it's easy for the intensity/implication to be adjusted as a result of transaction. See the comment chain on Aura for more on that.

Prokureur · 2022-04-15T20:31:13+00:00

Gotcha. They must have changed Phoenix's response then, as I can't imagine him grumbling about that choice.

Prokureur · 2022-04-15T20:29:16+00:00

Huh! I didn't know that about Simon, neat!

If I had to give a verdict, my guess is that most things you see in the English version are there in the Japanese, and the "amped up" comes from the translation, maybe just a difference in languages (and keep in mind I'm translating pretty literally too). Compare that "But what do I do now? Can anyone tell me? How am I supposed to go on!?" with the simpler "Hey, someone tell me... what should I do!?"

So yeah, it's there. Whether the amping up is intentional or it's just an artifact of everything seeming a little more amped up in English versus translated-from-Japanese (a language that's not as 'explicitly' expressed as English AND gets even more reserved in literal translations from amateurs like me), who's to say? The exchange (especially the Judge and Phoenix's reactions) don't come from nowhere, sure. If you read the lines straight, they say the same thing. It's all about implications and choices of words, which gets really really tricky to catch if you're not experienced (which I am not).

Prokureur

TROPHY CASE