English Dub Review: Ace Attorney “Recipe for Turnabout – 2nd Trial”

This episode is as foul as Armstrong’s cooking.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Phoenix continues his search for justice by returning to Tres Bien, where he finds Maia working as a waitress. Maia corrals Phoenix into ordering some terrible overpriced food, which he dutifully swallows down. By chance, he runs into Detective Gumshoe, who is listening to a lottery show called “Millionaire Radio.” Gumshoe joins in on the investigation, and together, the three of them find an odorless substance of some kind that Gumshoe promptly takes back to the lap for investigation.

Outside the restaurant, Phoenix and Maia come across Jean, who is getting shaken down by a woman working for the “Big City Tiger”, a guy that Jean owes money to. Later, Phoenix and Maia run into Victor Kudo, who’s bitter from the trial the other day. Maia tries to open him up, but Victor thinks she’s just a “little girl” and won’t give her the time of day. In response, Maia channels the spirit of her older sister, Mia, who’s quite a bit more endowed than she is. Viktor immediately opens up for Mia, and Viktor goes into more detail about his witness account. Turns out, Jean had sent Viktor away to go call the police, which took him away from the scene for about ten minutes.

From there, Phoenix and Maia go to Tender Lender, to find this “Big City Tiger” loan shark character. In the office, they find some suspicious materials: namely a mysterious CD entitled “MC Bomber”, and a suit jacket that looks an awful lot like Phoenix’s suit. Just then, they’re interrupted by Don Tigre, the office owner. Tigre is about to beat up Phoenix, when Viola Cadaverini, his girlfriend arrives and defuses the situation.

Later, Phoenix asks Gumshoe about Viola, and finds out she’s the only granddaughter of the Cadaverini crime family. Gumshoe also explains that the victim, Glen Elg, was in deep with Don Tigre and was going to sell a computer virus to make some money, a virus called MC Bomber. After that, Phoenix goes to meet with Maggey, drops off a special lunch Gumshoe made for her, and then returns to Tender Lender. There, they talk with Viola, who explains that Tigre had paid her medical bills after a severe car accident. Phoenix insists that Tigre doesn’t really love her. On their way out, Tigre corners Phoenix and Maia, but Gumshoe arrives just in time to save them.

Our Take:

Ace Attorney struggles to stay afloat this week as once again it enters a downturn where it pushes out an episode whose only redeeming quality is that it pushes the plot along so we can be done with this case. The episode doesn’t feel so much like a story is it does just a giant plot dump of information, moving at such a pace that the viewer doesn’t have time to enjoy what’s going on or, at times, even really process it. I don’t envy the people who have to make this show, needing to find a way to condense the massive amounts of investigative information that comes from the original games, but I can’t just let this episode go with a pass. It’s not very fun to watch, it doesn’t work on a dramatic level, and it’s not even very funny.

Right from the beginning, this episode leaves a bad impression by dumping this awkward, goofy sequence with Maia working as a waitress. There’s an acceptable of silliness that comes with the Ace Attorney franchise, but its tone is still supposed to be serious enough that it works as an adult drama. This is a series about murder, after all, levity is fine but we can’t get too crazy with it. Yet, when I started watching this episode, I got the feeling I was watching a Saturday morning kids cartoon. The nonstop puns and french accent jokes, along with Victor Kudo’s weird old man routine is just a bit much. And, once again, because of how quick the episode goes by, none of the jokes have any of the impacts that they need to have.

If there is a silver lining to this awkward mess of an episode, it’s the decent emotional moment that comes along in the last five minutes. Viola Cadaverini is actually a pretty sympathetic character, an unfortunate soul just wanting to find a little love in this world but constantly being used by another for her family’s reputation. It’s sad that we couldn’t get more time to bring focus to her story, because its the heart and soul of this episode, and it comes and goes too quick. Without a strong emotional core, this week’s iteration of Ace Attorney is just a strange, bumbling not-comedy, that needs at least three more rewrites before it can be considered acceptable storytelling.

If its any consolation, next week will bring us to the final trial of this arc, and hopefully bring an end to this sorry excuse for a mystery.