English Dub Review: Ace Attorney “Bridge to the Turnabout-2nd Trial”

Edgeworth is as cold as winter itself.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Edgeworth has been tasked by Phoenix Wright to defend Iris, the hapless shrine maiden accused of murdering Elise Deauxnim, the children’s book author, at the temple Maya and Phoenix were staying at. With Phoenix bedridden from pneumonia, it’s up to Edgeworth to gather the evidence necessary to mount a defense of Iris until the ace attorney can recover.

Edgeworth first speaks to Sister Bikini, accompanied by Detective Gumshoe, who is working the case. He asks Bikini about her witness account but finds her to have some contradictory information about the events of that evening. He eventually learns that Bikini believes to have seen Iris murder Elise before she passed out from shock. Bikini feels responsible for the murder because of her back problems, which caused her to head back up to the temple to try and get some proper rest.

After talking to Bikini, Edgeworth and Gumshoe check out the crime scene, where the statue of Misty Fey, wielding the Shichishito appeared to have stabbed Elise Deauxnim in the back while she lay on the ground. Following this, Edgeworth goes to see Larry Butz, who gives him a fallacious account of the night’s events.

The trial soon arrives, and who should be the prosecutor but Franziska von Karma, Edgeworth’s old rival in prosecution. He requested that she take this case, and she is more than happy to go at it with her old comrade. First Sister Bikini is called to the stand. Her testimony is fairly damning because it places Iris at the scene plunging the shishito into Elise. However, Edgeworth is able to turn things around by explaining that the sword only had blood on the tip, not the whole length of the sword. Sister Bikini is relieved to hear this because, despite her testimony, she doesn’t want to believe Iris could do such a thing.

Franziska isn’t done yet, though, she presents the snowmobile and its tracks that Iris used that night. Franziska claims Iris used this snowmobile to move the body, but when Edgeworth asks Iris if she did this, Iris says that she can’t actually tell the court if she did or not. The judge is just about ready to hand down the sentence, when Larry Butz flies into the courtroom as a surprise witness, ready to do what it takes to save his darling Iris.

Our Take:

As I continue to endure the Ace Attorney anime butchering one of my favorite cases in the series with its slapdash, corpse-like storytelling, I continue to wonder why this series doesn’t work week after week. After all, it stands to some logic that if the source material is quality, then the adaptation of that material should have an advantage of quality too. However, this isn’t the case, and it’s been something of a mystery as to why it isn’t. I think, though, by having Miles Edgeworth assume the role of the ace attorney this time around, I’ve gotten a fresh perspective that helps give me some clarity as to why everything about this show is so off-putting.

To sum it up, the major issue with this episode and the series as a whole is that the advancement of the plot in an “Ace Attorney” game is actually pretty uninteresting. Throughout the games, one simply goes from place to place, talks to people, gathers evidence, and then presents that evidence in court. From the perspective of someone playing the game, this is an exciting experience because the story doesn’t advance unless the player has enough sleuthing skill to find the next piece of the puzzle. So, even though the plot itself may be simple, there is the story of the player coinciding with that plot, the story of trying to figure out the mystery. When you do an anime, you shift that perspective from that of someone taking the role of the main character to someone watching the main character. The two are night and day. Watching Edgeworth discover inconsistencies in testimony isn’t at all interesting, but playing as Edgeworth and discovering them yourself is.

When such a crucial element of the story fails to launch, it falls to the accessory aspects of the show to pick up the slack. Things like visuals, sound design and dialogue are the engines you need running to get the show working. But, in that department too, this episode is found wanting. Though there are fewer shenanigans with Edgeworth that get in the way of the story, too much of the dialogue is just exposition, here to tell us the plot and nothing else. It doesn’t help that the tone of this episode is exceedingly dry when it needs to be intense. Playing as Edgeworth is a powerful moment in the original games, but that doesn’t translate at all here.

It’s way too late in the game for Ace Attorney to mend it’s an ailing story, so there’s very little to do now except wait for the series to end. It doesn’t seem likely to me that these last few episodes are going to bring their A-game. The Ace Attorney anime will no doubt end not with a cry of objection, but the whimper of a “Guilty” verdict.