#10/10 series so long as we pretend Dual Destinies doesn't exist

[mayasaura]

I've finally finished the six games in the main Ace Attorney series! That's right!! It's time for my review!

I think it's fairly common knowledge that Ace Attorney is a political commentary on the Japanese legal system as it existed in 2001. I know I knew that going in.

What I didn't know was just how topical the games were. I didn't figure that out until I started looking into what the fuck was going on in Apollo Justice, and what I discovered makes Apollo Justice my favourite game in the series.

At the time the Phoenix Wright trilogy was first being released, Japan did not have any form of trial by jury, and boasted a conviction rate to make Edgeworth and Von Karma's records look almost credible. Four months after the release of the third game, the Japanese National Diet passed a piece of legislation implementing judicial reform with the explicit intention of “the promotion of the public’s understanding of the judicial system and … their confidence in it.”

The next installment of the series—Apollo Justice, released in April of 2007—builds the themes of legal corruption explored by the first trilogy into a passionate argument for reform by restoring judicial power to the citizens.

Phoenix Wright, seen through the eyes of the new protagonist, appears to be a jaded shell of his former self: retired from the legal profession, beaten down by trying to champion truth and justice from within a broken system. The circumstances leading to his forced retirement come to light in the game's climactic final case, hand in hand with the revelation that Phoenix never really gave up on his ideals. He just gave up on the system. Speaking directly to the player, he casts the player as one of a panel of six civilian judges in a new reformed system of trial he and Edgeworth developed together. At the end of the trial, the player directly casts the final vote to decide the verdict.

In May of 2009, two years after Phoenix Wright handed the player direct power over the outcome of a trial, the real Japanese legal system conducted its first trial utilising civilian lay judges under the newly reformed judicial system.

I don't know nearly enough about how the current Japanese system works to judge the accuracy of Apollo Justice's vision to the final real result of real Japanese lawyers and judges' efforts, but from my casual perspective, it's pretty close. Close enough for it to be clear the game developers were following the progress of the real reform. Perhaps the game was meant as a celebration, or maybe they hoped it could work as an educational tool to introduce the concept to the public. Either way, these games were made by someone or someones who cared deeply about criminal justice, and I love them for it.

I also love them for their fun and immersive mysteries, of course, and their ludicrously charming cast of characters. It's no wonder the series has withstood the test of time, thriving on their own solid merit as games even far removed by both time and distance from the context of their social commentary.