case by case: 5-1: out of the woods
Welcome back once again to Case by Case, my Mondaily meditations on Ace Attorney, case by case, as it were. Last week we wrapped up Apollo Justice's solo game; this week we're into the wild world of 3DS adaptations. Spoilers after the cut.
This one starts with a bang, quite literally--a bomb goes off in courtroom no. 4, and the first trial we get is defending the random gallery member who is being accused of the bombing. At first Apollo is going to defend her, but he was injured in the blast and collapses and has to go recover, so then new attorney slash analytical psychologist Athena Cykes takes the case, but then she panics and then your friend and mine Phoenix Wright shows up to spearhead the defense, in his first trial since getting reinstated to the bar. Oh, and Apollo is wearing a star captain's jacket and has an eye bandage because of the injuries, so he is currently in his edgy and cool phase. (We'll find out more about that later. For now, just go with it.)
The bombed-out courtroom, if I recall correctly, will be used a lot in the future as a metaphor for the dark age of the law; and the opening cutscene suggests that Phoenix is back in action at least in part because he has a plan to illuminate the aforementioned dark age. Not a lot of indication what's going on with Apollo, though.
This is the case where we get introduced to Athena's new gimmick, where you get to do a psychological analysis of the emotions witnesses are expressing when they testify, and point out seemingly contradictory emotions to get closer to the truth. This works a lot better than Apollo's body language expert skills; it adds a new way to get new information from a witness without requiring them to be either lying or mistaken, and it's still engaging with the testimony rather than engaging with a small sweat animation on someone's armpit. (I'm not over it.)
I like the narrative touch of using the intro case as a little in medias res snapshot of what's going on in the main story, then flashing back to the actual rising action; I don't remember exactly how much of this case itself ends up coming back later, but we definitely get to find out about Apollo's new jacket, and why after this case he decides to go on a leave of absence.
The breakdowns of the real killers start getting extremely extra in this one; the animators were, I think, excited to have 3D models to work with even if the animation style is made to emulate 2D. (3DS games do a fair bit of this, and I think it works great for the console; it looks a little strange scaled up to the Switch, but nothing too egregious.) I'm here for it, of course; watching a murder man break down is also why I like Columbo, after all.
And that's pretty much all I have for this one. It's a solid enough intro case; simple murder, simple motive, and a lot of things going on that will be addressed later. So with that, I bid you farewell until next week, when we get to see a yokai do a murder, allegedly! I know I'm excited.