case by case: 3-3: mess with the tigre, you get the... laws? is this anything?
Welcome back to Case by Case, the series where we explore how the Ace Attorney series shows us the most depraved depths of the human soul, such as French cuisine. Last week we saved a thief from murder accusations; this week, we're hoping nothing bad happens to us when we go up against the mob. Let's dig in, with spoilers, after the cut, shall we?
The premise of this one is kind of clever, in its own silly way. A predatory moneylender does a murder and then badly masquerades as Phoenix Wright to defend the person he intends to frame for the murder, thereby securing her a guilty verdict. Fortunately for our crimesman, everyone is willing to believe that anyone with a blue suit and spikey hair is Phoenix Wright; unfortunately for him, his intended framee is one Maggey Byrde, and Gumshoe is not about to stand for her getting falsely convicted of murder, and Phoenix is pretty easily bullied into taking cases, which makes me feel like he maybe could have come up with a better plan.
The murder takes place at the French restaurant of one Jean Armstrong, who is portrayed as a deeply uncomfortable LGBT caricature, but, like . . . this game came out in 2004, it probably could have been worse. The whole narrative goes something like this: the victim is a leet haxxor with a severe gambling problem, he owes a huge debt to the mob, and as collateral for that debt he put up a computer virus that would, allegedly, fetch millions on the black market. But then he won the lottery, and the value of his debt was way less than the value of the collateral, and then the clock struck murder o'clock.
At the time this was released, CDs were the portable storage medium of the day, and everyone assumed the CD on which the virus was stored was a music CD. Now, of course, no one has used a CD player on purpose in over fifty years; my computer doesn't even have one, and even if it did it would probably mainly be used for DVDs and Blu-Rays, which are technically different from CDs despite sharing a form factor. I love little artifacts like this: at the time it was just a normal contemporary item, and now it marks it very clearly in a specific era of time. Fun times.
I like the twist here: all of the oddities of the case are resolved by revealing that the scene that our witness allegedly witnessed was actually a reenactment designed to generate a witness, rather than the actual murder. It works well with the whole theming of mirrors and doubles and impostors. It is also something that I remembered partway through doing the case, which is often what happens when I'm doing these repeat playthroughs; remembering the details but not what it felt like to get that big reveal.
Overall this case feels like it's meant to add a bit of levity to the game here in the middle bits; it is fundamentally a very silly premise (moreso than is usual in Japanifornia), and the stakes feel pretty low. Even Godot doesn't seem that invested here. And that works great here, I think; if memory serves the next two cases are devoted to wrapping up the metaplot.
Which does mean that's a wrap for this week's installment! Stick around next week where we go back in time once again to our late great mentor Mia's first ever case. It's bound to be an adventure.