Ace Attorney Episode 14 [Daphne, come on!]

When video games are adapted into anime the one thing they must maintain to be successful is atmosphere. In the beginning of this review series Naruhodo proved himself as a separate entity by biking in the rain to find Mayoi a lawyer and showed the true charisma of a character we view from a first person perspective. Because of this I was hopeful the series would integrate a lot of the finer details. Instead A1 pictures has made me rather angry with this adaptation. They have begun covering the second game now and done so in an astonishingly sloppy manner. You see each case in a game gets a pretty decent introduction before throwing you into the case, making the investigation and defense roughly the same amount of time. So you know how long it takes before the giant mystery of the episode begins?

6 whole minutes. We get introduced to a vital new character, the premise, the set up, and reintroduced to Mayoi in 6 minutes. Does that seem abrupt to you? It should, because while it ‘covers’ it all it does not express the emotions and just makes it. . .sad. What do I mean? In this span of time we are introduced to Harumi / Pearl, cousin of Mayoi / Maya and a character so important she will be in the rest of the season as well as the next season (if somehow this anime gets there) and yet she gets none of the impact of her original appearance. Pearl didn’t have to say much of anything to make an impression, she simply stared at you and you were like ‘who is this girl?’ Pearl is a welcome addition to the show but . . .I’m not impressed.

Unfortunately the show has sucked life out of most of the concepts of the arc with its bland lifeless backgrounds for the sacred Kurain land. Nice wooden shack appearance for most of your simplistic yet heavily influential styles. Not to mention the big drama that happens with Mayoi lands her exactly where she was in season 1- as the Daphne. For those of you unfamiliar with Scooby Doo this is implying Mayoi is the female character who will constantly be kidnapped in order to engage the audience or confront the villain. In the games it worked and felt far less annoying because it happened once a game and you were able to feel the separation and difference.

So. . .the good points I guess are I enjoy the campy new opening. I also really like seeing new characters, and the glimpses of good animation are nice even though very rare. Harumi is so adorable and she does her fawning over Naruhodo and Mayoi like a pro, meanwhile my queen is coming- the new Prosecutor is bae and definitely a reason to look forward to the new arc.

But as for how it will be in terms of quality. . .I’m not holding my breath. We’re more likely to find out that loch ness monster was real and that’s the real reason ‘Lotta’ is here.

Oki