Moving right along
(This review contains
spoilers!)
Ask anyone what their favourite part
of the Ace Attorney games are, and I guarantee they’ll say the courtroom
scenes. How could they not? The deliberations, the cross-examinations, the
revelations about the characters, it’s always a blast to play through. On the
other hand, there’s the investigation segments. I always found they went on a
bit too long, but I still found them necessary and enjoyable enough.
It seem that the showrunners agreed with
me, but to an even higher extreme, as they skipped over more than half of the
investigation segment for this episode’s case.
It’s shocking just how much essential
information they just showed by montage. The security camera that was vital to
the first courtroom scene was skimmed over, leaving it a surprise piece of
evidence. An entire character’s questioning was passed by, leaving her
anonymous. And why was this all done? To give us more time with the security
lady.
I could go on with how annoying she is
as a character, but I know she’s deliberately written that way, so I won’t.
Instead, I’ll focus on how stupid it is to only show Phoenix questioning one
person, when it’s made very clear that there were other staff on site the day
of the murder. Aside from the girl he’s shown questioning, he isn’t shown
talking to any of the staff onscreen. Why not just add that to the montage you
already have?
The Steel Samurai case was never one
of my personal favourites, but I’d forgotten who the true culprit was. I was looking
forward to figuring it out myself again.
That is, until the show blatantly told
me who it was.
This is a huge problem with the anime.
It immediately assumes you’ve played the game, and literally spoon-feeds you
the information on who did the murder. The true killer is shown for a few
seconds, makes a snide remark, and then is never shown again for the rest of
the episode. If I didn’t already know who it was because I played the game, I’m
sure it wouldn’t take a brain surgeon to figure it out.
Then there’s also the problem that
once again, the subtitles list the characters with their Japanese names instead
of the English translations, but this is more the translator’s fault than the
show itself.
However, it underlines a huge problem
with Ace Attorney: it’s just not trying hard enough. It’s the kind of show that
feels like it can get away with name recognition alone, quality be damned. At
this point, I’d still recommend playing the game over watching the anime. It’s
more fun, and you get to really uncover all the secrets behind the case
yourself, including who really did the crime.
FINAL SCORE
4/10
Mediocre
No comments:
Post a Comment