Review discussion: Ace Attorney

I just realized something you can put in. The actor who plays Phoenix, Hiroki Narimiya, does the goat in a sad anime movie called Arashi no Yoru ni, or One Stormy Night, which is based on a series of children's books by Yuichi Kimura

Julia W

Argh, I had formatting in that reply and everything! Stupid commenting system. Ugh, if you want to see my points laid out like they should just copy and paste my comment into a word processor and hit enter everywhere the space before you see an arrow.

AAAAaaaand I'm back. Man, what a ride that one was. Before I say anything let it be known that while I've been looking to get into Ace Attorney for a while now I've yet to play any of the games (blasted emulators don't work grumble grumble) so if anything's in the games that I'm weirded out by feel free to ignore it. > The sudden emphasis on this... virtual reality set in the courtroom is a bit odd considering that everything else in the story seems relatively similar to our world. Except maybe for that bloody ginormous Samurai balloon, how did they even inflate that big CGI mess with a single tank? Completely ridiculous, though to be fair everything revolving around Butz is ridiculous. >The flamboyantly dressed characters ported from the games seem just a teensy bit out of place compared to the commoners putzing around, though thankfully not by TOO large of a margin. The way all the kids looked when they were children was completely retarded though. >I thought it was just an anime joke to have everyone fall down when someone says something profoundly stupid? Or is that just a Japanese comedy thing in general? >As someone who's never played a game himself but has seen fanwork surrounding it (that one "Boot to the head" parody was one of my first viral videos...), I can clearly see that a lot of the directing went into telling the actors to portray many of the poses you'd see the character sprites doing in the games. >Dear God parts of this movie are dark. Yogi's in particular left me stricken with the feels, just seeing a broken man sitting on a shore, repeating to himself that he's sorry over and over again, very nearly broke ME. The fact that I realized he must have had to train the parrot to respond to him with "I love you" whenever he said that he was sorry was the only thing that kept me from breaking down entirely. >Isn't Maya supposed to be Pheonix's assistant or something? She as a character didn't really DO much, she just kind of acted emotional with the hippie and channeled her sister's encouraging spirit a few times and subsequently fainted.

Something else I just realized after thinking about this movie: I know that both the game and the movie mention that crime rates are up, like, WAY up. Hence the restrictions on how long trials take and what not. But in the game, you never really get a sense that the world has gone bottoms up because of how bright and goofy it is. And while the movie has its fair share of humor, it almost feels like black humor, and I feel like the darker color scheme of the movie reflects that sense of a not-quite-crapsack world--especially when the lake-centric case pops up.

Ashley Lau

It would be great if there was a cameo from Bennet the Sage because he is also Ace attorney fan.

Henry H.

Yep! Sorry I haven't replied yet, I'll get on that

Suede

We can discuss it but it won't be the main focus of the call.

Suede

Are we going to have a google plus call about this?

It pretty much adapts all of the cases of the first game (minus the DLC Emma Skye one) into a single, over-arching plotline. Some of the cases have been moved around for the sake of story, though, like the movie director one.

Ashley Lau

I wonder, is this a new original story or is this movie adapting one of the plotline of the games?

Wait, there's a MOVIE? My God, I need to see this... BRB, going to watch the entirety of the thing on Youtube, will make another post if I can think of anything to help you out.

Is it just me, or do you have a knack for picking directors who make odd career choices? XD I heard that Takeshi Miike did horror movies before this--certainly explains the creepy vibe of the opening and the birdcage ghost. DX Switching subjects, I thought his depiction of the afterlife was...interesting. ^^; It reminded me an awful lot of depictions of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings, though what that says about the afterlife is beyond me.

Ashley Lau