Ace Attorney Episode 16 [ A’ight I’m Out ]

16 Episodes into an Ace Attorney and all I can honestly say is this: I’m bored. I turn on my crunchyroll and

download my screencaps all so I can be bored. I don’t enjoy myself at all anymore and it’s become quite abundantly clear: I am watching Ace Attorney and hoping it will be better than it is going to be. Hearkening back to my last review I stated this anime is not necessarily bad but just ‘okay’. Let me tell you, when I started writing on this blog I was a 19 year old girl who really had no reason not to caps lock or watch a bunch of anime. Nowadays I’m an adult and I have to juggle anime with everything else an adult has to do: work, school, any other freetime I want, advancing my work, you name it. Even this blog uses precious resources of my time. My point here isn’t to talk about myself as an individual but to say I no longer have the time or energy to devote to something I don’t enjoy. Really, reading this blog, are you here to hear me talk about an anime that you don’t really enjoy or recommend heartily something you aren’t interested in?

So I can’t review this show anymore. Not because it’s hard to talk about or genuinely bad but because it’s just not a show that I feel is worth anyone’s time. The love and connection I have to this game is severed with every episode and reminds me that video game adaptations have to be done exactly right or not at all. Perhaps, to be devil’s advocate, this has something to do with my knowledge of the game. Afterall I generally enjoyed Danganronpa’s anime until I played the game and realized the context I was missing. But I do my best to be partial and so I will consider this my ‘final impression’ of the show unless someone else wants to take over. Here is what makes Ace Attorney a weak enough anime for me to warrant dropping it:

1. The Lighting: To start off this might seem very weird to you, but a major theme of art is the lighting. I don’t want to simply say the animation because with the proper lighting I feel the show might be capable of pulling off what it has if it just added some shading. The tension is often lost because a dark and tense moment is just as bright as a scene where Pearl is chipper and eating food. I don’t mind so much the errors in animation as I do the lighting and the angles. If those things were fixed, the art style wouldn’t be all that bad.
2. The Pacing: Under no circumstances should I feel a case is boring or uneventful. They’re using the game OST, for goodness sakes! Yet the atmosphere of each case is, okay, and? They introduce important characters in a boring way and once again, the lighting is terrible in almost every shot. Why don’t we have a black background with a glowing Maya / Pearl anytime they’re channeling, it would at least change the color palette.
3. I’m Bored. I am not interested. Nothing about the story is engaging, absorbing, or fun. I should be afraid for these characters but I know they’ll be fine. It took away the genuine concept of ‘Oh my gosh how did this happen’ and made it into ‘okay so whatever’.

Only three reasons? Honestly. . .they’re all encompassing. Can any story succeed without good animation, tension, or a well paced story? I don’t think so. Anyway, if you’re a die hard fan feel free to get into this anime. As for me. . .I have more important things to do than waste my time on an anime that is just ‘okay’. That being said, who knows, this episode had shading, so…there’s. . . hope?

Nah.

Oki