case by case: GAA 1-3: a masonic conspiracy
What are you doing.
Welcome back once again to Case by Case, our Mondaily series examining every case in the Ace Attorney series. Last week we stowed away on a steamship; this week it's time to meet an Irish billionaire! There will be, as ever, spoilers below.
A trial-only case to follow up on our investigation-only case from last time, this one features Ryunosuke being given the extremely bad deal of "I'll let you stay here for your friend's study tour if you defend Magnus McGilded, an Irish billionaire, and get him found not guilty, and also you don't get any time to learn about the case". This is also the case where we get to meet Barok von Zieks, a Dracula of a prosecutor, who is . . . well, we'll talk about him in a later installment, I think. He's an absolutely wild time.
What stands out about this one, especially in the context of the previous few cases, is that our client is obviously fabricating evidence for us. He's an extortionate loanshark billionaire (NB., he probably is not technically a billionaire due to inflation), and the trial starts going our way partway through the trial when some convenient evidence suddenly shows up on the carriage in which the crime took place. Instead of the usual "prosecutor and/or witnesses have a whole bag of tricks waiting for us", the tide just shifts our way, and we are given the opportunity to either say "hang on, this doesn't seem right" or just ride with it. I opted for the former, but the outcome is clearly going to be the same regardless. Our client is acquitted despite the core evidence being called into question; von Zieks has nothing to add; then, in the case's epilogue, McGilded burns to death inside the carriage.
If the first two cases seemed a little dark--the first murderer getting away due to complicated extradition treaties, the second murder being entirely accidental--this one is just . . . hard to feel good about. It feels ethically wrong to have won this case, and then our client dying after being exonerated adds to this intense sense that there is something rotten in Denmark. Excellent storytelling.
As Ryunosuke himself laments, we don't really find out what happened in this case, so it's hard to talk about the case itself. The big twists don't come about in our understanding of the case, but rather in our understanding that things are going our way because of fabricated evidence. I don't recall if we ever get it confirmed later that McGilded did the murder but it sure feels like he probably did.
This one is great. It breaks one of the series' core rules (that our client is always innocent) in a way which is a lot more narratively compelling than the version in 2-4. In that one there is never really a reason to grapple with the question of defending a guilty person; while we still don't have a choice in 2-4, we are allowed to believe our client is innocent for just long enough to get the investigation going, and then once it's clear he's guilty we spend the rest of the case trying to find a way to get him found guilty while also not getting Maya murdered. And don't get me wrong, I thought 2-4 was a pretty solid case; it just doesn't really confront you with the ethics of "hey, this guy sucks and is fabricating evidence and also probably did the murder" like this one does. So this case ends up really standing out in the series despite being not much of a mystery, on the strength of its storytelling alone.
And that's pretty much all I've got for you this week. Next week we get to meet renowned Japanese novelist Soseki Natsume! He's kind of a hot mess. I will see you all then, friends.