English Dub Review: Ace Attorney “Bridge to the Turnabout-1st Trial”

This one’s a real bridge burner.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Maya, Pearl and Phoenix are headed up to a shrine up in the mountains called Hazakura Temple so Maya can go through some mystic training to strengthen her spiritual power. Once they arrive, cold and freezing, they meet a kindly, but eccentric acolyte named Sister Bikini. Bikini isn’t her actual name, of course, but her temple name she gave to herself. They also meet an old woman named Elise Deauxnim, Pearl’s favorite children’s book author, who spends some time with Pearl teaching he how to read.

Maya and Phoenix look around the temple and find the rickety bridge that the case of the last episode revolved around. In addition, they find the training center where Maya is to conduct her special training, inside a locked room within a cave. Who else should they find floating around there but Larry Butz, who’s trying to start his career as a children’s book artist working for Elise Deauxnim. In addition, Phoenix finds a strange woman named Iris at the temple, who looks an awful lot like Dahlia Hawthorne.

Later that evening, everyone spends a warm dinner together at the shrine, enjoying the mountains at their best. As everyone goes to bed, Phoenix speaks with Iris, and explains to her the strangeness of meeting someone who looks like her. Later that evening, Phoenix is awoken in the middle of the night and finds Elise dead in the Hazakura Temple. He meets up with Larry and finds the bridge is on fire as well. Knowing that Maya is across the river, he tries to run across it, but falls into the river below.

Phoenix wakes up in a hospital bed, having caught a bad case of pneumonia after falling in the river. With his ample time in the hospital, he reviews the case where Mia defended Terry Fawles and struggles to wrap his head around the extensive mysteries of this shrine. He needs help, and calls Miles Edgeworth to give him a hand. Once he arrives, Phoenix informs Edgeworth of what happened and gives him his attorney’s badge. He tells him to investigate the murder and defend Iris to the best of his ability. Edgeworth accepts, and goes to Iris who’s being held in jail. He asks for Iris’s account of the night in question, and makes it clear that she’ll need to tell the truth if she wants to get out of this.

Our Take:

We’re on to the final arc of the “Trials and Tribulations” saga of episodes, and hopefully the beginning of the end of this series. (Before the inevitable “Apollo Justice” anime that will surely find it’s way to my review pile) To that end, the quality meter has been kicked up a couple notches to try and make the show a little more visually appealing as it finishes itself out. Does that mean its any better? That remains to be seen, since the biggest problem of this show has always been the courtroom sequences and not the time of investigation. My feelings by the end of the episode are decidedly meh, of course, but at least this episode isn’t embarrassing to watch.

There is a sense of mystery that’s missing from this secret shrine up in the mountains. Given what’s to come, with this case being the dramatic high point of the series, there needs to be a foreboding sense of things about to go wrong. Instead, the tone gets bogged down into schmucky little jokes at a cute little snow shrine. Of course, it’s not easy to translate the emotions of a video game that are more malleable based on the perspective of the player, but this is time that can be used to tell a more deliberate, evocative version of the story. Instead, there’s a focus on economy and scooting the plot along, without taking the  time to relish in the moment. It was nice to see a few tears from Maya though over her missing mother.

From a plot perspective, most of the time is spent introducing the different characters and elements that are to be important later for the murder trial. That means you shouldn’t expect much in the way of tension or intrigue in the story. That is with the exception of Phoenix meeting Sister Iris, who he recognizes as being a dead ringer for Dahlia Hawthorne, his ex-girlfriend who tried to murder him. The scene of their confrontation was the best part of the episode, even if I think there was more in terms of direction that the show could have done to make it more emotionally resonant.

There isn’t much to say about this episode that hasn’t been said time and time before about this show. Without a strong visual style or a sense of direction that adds more to the story, this episode can’t do much to add more to a series that is best viewed through the screen of a Nintendo DS. Just another week in the humdrum world of Ace Attorney.