Let's face it: Although people constantly thought Ace Attorney would work well as an anime, it really doesn't. The games take a slow pace - The cases, or at least most of them, are not pieced together in a short space of time, they take hours and hours of carefully piecing clues together, shifting through testimonies, disproving accounts, and going through interesting dialogue. Phoenix stumbles
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Let's face it: Although people constantly thought Ace Attorney would work well as an anime, it really doesn't. The games take a slow pace - The cases, or at least most of them, are not pieced together in a short space of time, they take hours and hours of carefully piecing clues together, shifting through testimonies, disproving accounts, and going through interesting dialogue. Phoenix stumbles through the case, but ultimately is able to prove his worth by turning things around. That's why that grand moment when you finally corner the culprit and earn that verdict for the sake of the truth is so satisfying.
That does not transition well into anime. You need to wrap cases up swiftly, and you need to focus only on points that actually move the case forward. Ace Attorney is full to the brim with filler content in all of it's cases - What in the game was an entire cross-examination is wrapped up with a single observational line from Phoenix in the episode (The deal hearing the time on the TV & the blackout).
Does this make it feel less grand, and less involved then the games? Yes. Is that the anime's fault? No. Rather then the anime being bad, it's the simple fact that it IS an anime. No matter what you do, you are not going to be able to recreate the games. Well, that's a lie: Technically you could, but it would make for the the most boring and slow mystery drama of all time. Not to mention it'd make the MC look like a complete idiot.
Because the player is actually involved in the games and is the one shifting through the testimony during cross-examination, and when you actually present the contradicting evidence, you're the one who worked it out, and made Phoenix notice it. Here, you're observing , so seeing Phoenix uselessly press the witness while the blackout record sits there right next to him would make him come across like a complete man-child.
Yes, this would make the experience closer to the games technically speaking. But it would make for a mystery anime that's complete horse-shit.
It's things like this that shape the way a story works in it's respective media. You can have Phoenix stumble through a video game, and witnesses who give useless testimonies, because that's how video games are like. An anime needs a coherent, constantly moving story, with an MC who helps it move along at a constant pace.
I mean, just look: You have some people complaining that the anime bangs things on the head TOO much. That's exactly the point I'm making: Even what they did with The First Turnabout here, taking liberties to essentially rush points along for the sake of not making it seem like the MC needs points hammered into him, makes points seem too hammered in. If they actually went at a slower pace it would have been ludicrously pandering, to the point of seeming like it sees the viewers as complete babies.
My rating of 5 stars is based on how well they adapted the source material into anime , which I believe they did to the best of their abilities. On every level it gets things as close to the game as it can, without actually compromising the fact it's an anime: The characters are spot on, the case is just like you remember it in terms of it's actual plot points, the animation works well enough for the series, and it gets that feeling of seriousness & comedy just on the line, as par the games themselves.
This is seriously as close as it can get to being a pitch perfect anime adaptation, and I'm looking forward to the rest of it. It absolutely does not deserve just 3.7 stars (at the time I'm writing this) and I'm actually surprised so many people hated it - Yes, I much prefer the games and I would definitely recommend them over this in a heartbeat. But for what it is, it's as good as it's ever going to get as a straight up adaptation of the first case.
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