case by case: GAA 2-2: doing olive the crimes
This guy is like this 100% of the time.
Welcome back once again to Case by Case, our ongoing dive into every case in the Ace Attorney series. We're currently working our way through the second Great Ace Attorney game; last week Susato wore a hat, and this week we get to hang out with our pal Soseki Natsume again! Spoilers, as ever, below.
Once again Natsume is involved in a murder that ends up not actually being a murder, and once again he is the prime suspect. I'm wondering if perhaps the fact that he is a real person made them not want to make the crimes he was suspected of actual murders? Or perhaps they were simply experimenting with the formula.
Because experiment they do here; we learn, as the trial goes on, that the victim was actually attempting to do a murder on Natsume, and then, subsequently, that the reason the victim almost died is because he had murdered another guy the same way and the fiancee of that guy wanted revenge. There's a fair bit going on here but it's not as big of a twist as you imagine; for the most part everything seems fairly tidy. It's possible the revelation that Olive Green, the victim from Soseki's previous case, is the attempted murderess this time around, was harder than I recall it being the first time around, but one of the structural limitations of everything being 3D models rather than 2D sprites is that models take longer to make. Often you can just figure out who to accuse of the murder by process of elimination; there just aren't that many characters in any given case.
Notably, this is the first time in GAA that we have used something close to the classic old formula of investigation-trial-investigation-trial, which I must say, I still think that structure is a great scaffold on which to hang the story.
We were promised at the conclusion of the previous case that this one would tie into some grander scheme of why Susato was summoned back to Japan under false pretenses; that comes in a little ten minute interlude at the end of the case, where we find the old treasure stash that was the motive for the attempted murder of Soseki; it's a very large blood-stained collar with many gems set in it and a big ol' letter B emblazoned on it. This prompts Sholmes to ask everyone to never speak of this again. We are left to assume that it involves the Hound of the Baskervilles, which was the previous case Sholmes was weird about, but they actually don't drop the name.
An interesting fact about this case: we met two of the characters, Shamspeare (the victim slash only guy who actually did a murder in this case) and Metermann, back in the first game, however briefly; it was a somewhat inexplicable exchange, and I have to admire them for making us wait for an entire game to figure out what was going on with that.
All of which to say: this one was fun. The Great Ace Attorney games are fond of their bittersweet endings, and this is no exception; there is often a sense that though we are clearing our clients' names, we aren't really restoring justice in the same way that we so often do in the main series. There is more of a sense of lingering regret, of lives overturned, and we are only barely powerful enough to make sure that at least our client won't be convicted as a result. It's interesting, at least; I'm not sure how well this observation will hold up, but there are certainly some notable examples. (Maybe that's a thesis for Case by Case 2: The Case By Casening to explore.)1
And that does it for this week's case! Next week, it's on to the I Can't Believe It's Not The World's Fair, where there will be, if memory serves, a murder! I can't wait. It will also be an eight hour case, so . . . I'm going to have to pace myself, I guess. I'll see you then, friends.
This is not a promise, but, like, I'm not saying it's not going to happen eventually. Give me a couple years to think about it.↩