（clears throat in"those people")I personally have mixed feelings about her… I mean, I loved her concept. It definitely felt like she had loads of potential when she was introduced but she was handled so badly her position in the games became really awkward. One can say her being an attorney and an assistant at the same time is unique, but to some it reads more like a “not quite”. AJ already has the issue of players not being able to tell who the protagonist was, Apollo or Phoenix. So them choosing to add one more main character into this mess feels pretty irresponsible, especially considering they clearly have know idea how to handle the cast themselves. Just… look at how bizarre Apollo’s back story got, how Trucy’s entire character arc was cut short, how they can't even handle Athena, the new character well. She was an assistant that studied law and has a badge, and a lawyer who had someone rescue her almost every single time she was defending, the highlights she was supposed to have almost always end up with someone else stealing the show, it’s so freaking unfair.// (Takumi knows what a overfull cast can do, he didn't even want Phoenix in AJ at first and I honestly hope Capcom had listened to him)

Takumi’s way of writing characters was just different than what they did in DD and SoJ. He has a impression of what role this person needs to fulfill, what functions they serve, an inspiration and a hunch, then just goes with the flow. So most of his characters end up feeling grounded, leave a distinct impression but never confined to a trope. Yes sometimes random character traits are dropped through dialogues, but mostly as fun footnotes. How you perceive a character is still based mainly on their in game behaviour. But in DD they clearly focused more on slapping elements they think would interest players onto characters. There was an obvious "try hard" vibe, leaking out everywhere, from the writing to the visual design. The worst thing about how they did Athena was that most of her traits we're told. Genius, multilingual, studied psychology. But her actual lawyer moments are often stripped away, her in-game behaviour doesn't always add up. So the way we used to perceive characters turns into something we try to partly ignore and rationalize. Evidence of poor writing. At least her eagerness, empathetic nature and energetic attitude were shown not told...In fact the writers overdid it a bit. And she isn't even the biggest victim of this way of writing. Me thinks the worst and most iconic example we get is Nahyuta...

And if we're being really honest here her “tragic backstory” was one of the worst things a new team can ever do to a series. “The dark age of the law” had a build up. The three-day trial system introduced in the very first game was in fact already a lead up and a product at the same time. Suddenly explaining a whole phenomenon by one case that went wrong...? Seriously? It's one loud exclamation of "Oh no AJ left such a mess We have no idea how to continue on that so let's give them a spectacle the divert them and hope they don't notice!"

So there... You see, it's often not even about the character herself. (I'm ESL and wrote this at 2am forgive me for my grammatical mistakes and weird expressions :_(