As I said at the start of these
reviews, I’ve only played the first Ace Attorney game. While it’s not the
amazing game that everyone seems to think it is, I really enjoyed the
storylines and the characters.
When an anime adaption was announced,
I thought it was a match made in heaven. Seeing the fun storylines and
high-energy court cases animated sounded like it was meant to be from the
start. I’m aware that there is a Japanese live-action adaptation as well, but
apparently that didn’t go over so well.
Unfortunately, this anime fell to the
same fate. The animation was uneven, the performances bland, the characters
uninteresting, and the storylines completely butchered. I couldn’t even bring
myself to continue through what was ultimately my favourite case in the game,
it was so boring. I have no interest in seeing what comes next, so I'm just stopping at episode 9 and moving onto something better.
It wasn’t even bad in a “Wow, I need
to keep going to see how much worse this can get” way, like last year’s Comet
Lucifer was. Ace Attorney was just a boring, uninteresting show. There wasn’t
anything exceptional about it, it was just a thing that existed this season.
There were a few bright spots,
however. The portrayal of prosecutor Miles Edgeworth was good for the most
part. He was the closest the writers got to correctly adapting a character
through both dialogue and animation, and the voice actor sounded pretty much
exactly like you’d expect Edgeworth to sound. I’d also have to admit some of
the jokes lifted from the game got a few chuckles from me when read out loud by
the voice actors.
But then the rest of the show
happened. Phoenix, Maya, Gumshoe, and the rest have all been reduced to the
bare minimum of their characters from the game. Phoenix is goofy but smart,
Maya is hyper, and Gumshoe is the bumbling detective that somehow gets the job
done. That’s it. It gets even worse for poor Maya in that it’s never really
established why she and Phoenix start working together, because they never
really form a strong bond. She just sort of jumps in.
Then, there’s the animation. It’s not
terrible by any means, but it never even comes close to the heights of shows
like Non Non Biyori or Yona of the Dawn. Even this month’s Space Patrol Luluco
looks better. Characters are often off model, animation is jumpy and often
moves awkwardly fast, and let’s not forget those terrifying CGI models used for
the crowd once, and then never seen again. They still haunt my nightmares.
While I thought Ace Attorney would be
an excellent fit to watch, I think I’d have to go back on that. After sitting
through three cases, I’ve realized that it doesn’t quite translate well. Ace
Attorney worked because you were in the thick of the courtroom actions, making
split-second decisions and solving for the cases yourself. In the anime, you
have no involvement, so you might as well be watching jury duty.
Ace Attorney is not a good show, but
it doesn’t completely bomb either. If it seems like the type of thing you’d be
interested, go for it. I think it would also help if you’ve never played an Ace
Attorney game either. If you haven’t, I’d recommend giving the first one a
shot. You’ll have more fun that way.
FINAL SCORE
3/10
Bad
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