case by case: 1-2: white down to business
Welcome back to my probably-weekly-ish series going through every case in the Ace Attorney series (except Layton v. Wright). Last week was baby's first case, where we met Larry and freed him from jail. This week we have our second case, the first of many times Maya is accused of murder. (Originally I was going to screenshot all of these but that's more work than my brain wants to do right now, so.) Spoilers below.
One of the interesting things about this series is that, while there are supernatural elements present from as early as this case (the first "real" case), as far as I can recall, the supernatural is never used in the commission of a crime. It is used for gathering information and bringing about dramatic twists, but everything else operates under real world logic (even if there are a few cases where it is also moon logic). Not surprising, but interesting to note.
With this case we're plunging right into this game's overarching metaplot, the mysteries of the DL-6 incident, though at this point we have almost nothing to go by except that Maya's mother was brought in to do some spirit channeling and this ended up destroying her reputation. We learn that our old boss, Mia, the victim in this case (RIP), had some information being held by the killer, Mr. White, a guy who runs what appears to be an espionage and blackmail agency, but we're still too far out to understand any of what's going on there, except that it's a cold case, and some of the blackmail Mr. White has gathered comes from that case.
The extent to which Japanifornia is portrayed as a deeply corrupt place this early on is interesting. Already Phoenix is going toe to toe with a guy who, we are told, essentially owns the police, the judiciary (including most attorneys), and the politicians of at least the city and very possibly the nation. And Mia's ghost is able to essentially blackmail him into confessing; the implication is that without this, he probably would have walked free, and, this being Japanifornia's fucked up legal system, Phoenix would have been found guilty.
For all that, this one is pretty straightforward--it's our introduction to investigations, there's still only a few characters we need to concern ourselves with, none of the pieces of evidence we need to submit are particularly unexpected. But it lays important groundwork: this is where we meet our boyfriend and best frenemy Edgeworth, it sets up the not-final-anymore-but-originally-was-final case, we meet Gumshoe. It's a nice quick case which helps make the stakes feel high and gives us a little chance to get used to the systems and structure before it starts throwing the big twists and revelations on us later on.
And that about wraps up this installment. Stay tuned for next time, where there are costumes, a spear, and everyone's favorite security guard, Wendy Oldbag.