Headscratchers / Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice

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The Foreign Turnabout

• Phoenix has been shown to truly love his adopted daughter Trucy. So naturally, he heads off to Khura'in...in spite of the fact that he won't be able to meet Maya right away. While Trucy's big show, "Trucy in Gramarye Land" is about to start. And while it's a good thing for Ahlbi Ur'gaid that he did so...why didn't he wait to at least see Trucy's debut?
  • If you go by the anime prologue, Phoenix rushed off to Khura'in early because he thought Maya was in imminent danger. Because she was on the phone to him when she got attacked by a rebel, and the last thing Phoenix heard was Maya screaming before the connection cut. I'd say believing your life-long, or at least over a decade long, best friend is getting murdered is fairly high up on the "justified reasons to skip out on your daughter's debut" scale, personally.
  • It’s ambiguous, at best, whether the anime prologue is supposed to be canon to the game. Maya appears to be fine by the time Phoenix arrives in Khura’in, and there’s no mention of “I’d heard she was attacked by someone, is she safe now?” No, he just leisurely pals around with Ahlbi like a tourist until her training is done. Even if she had been in danger and was rescued, that wouldn’t excuse Phoenix staying there doing nothing for two weeks when he can’t even see her.
  • As an answer to the original question, Phoenix does love Trucy, but he admits to her own mother that she can be “a little annoying at times”, and he’s never seemed to mind leaving Apollo to babysit her while he goes and does something else. So it is possible he went to Khura’in two weeks ahead of when Maya finished knowing he would miss out on Trucy’s magic show.
  • According to the ending of case 2, Phoenix was supposed to serve as Trucy’s assistant in her show, since he asks Apollo to go in his place, which Trucy takes to mean that Apollo will be her assistant. Phoenix probably went to Khura’in early as an excuse to duck that responsibility just like how he makes Athena be Trucy’s assistant in the DLC case; as much as he loves Trucy, it doesn’t mean he wants to be put through the wringer with her various tricks and stunts.
• If trials in Khura'in are determined solely by the results of the Divination Seance, then why is there a prosecutor? IE, what's the point of Payne being there at all? And for that matter, why is there another desk opposing him, where a defense attorney would be in trials abroad, when there's no defense attorneys?
  • It's still the prosecutor's job put together a case against the defendant so that there's context to what's happening in the Divination Seance. Plus, if there's anything incomplete or obscure about the seance, the evidence would help fill in the gaps. As for the latter question, defense attorneys aren't banned from providing defense, just punished with extreme prejudice if the defendant is guilty. Perhaps it's just easier to leave the defense's desk as a vestigial relic of the court system rather than remove it, in the unlikely but possible event that a defense attorney steps up.

The Magical Turnabout

• This case reveals that Lamiroir is alive and well and supporting Trucy from the sidelines. Given how Trucy's reputation, let alone the entire legacy of Troupe Gramarye is a hair's breath away from going up in flames, why does she still insist to stay out in hiding when her daughter might need her the most?
  • Considering the timeframe that Case 2 happens in (seriously, it only has one day of investigation and trials) it's quite possible that depending on where she was at the time that there wasn't enough time for her to get back.
  • Consider also that it was the antics of Troupe Grammarye that led to Lamirior losing her eyesight and memory and being spirited off to Borginia. You can’t blame her for not wanting to get back into that field after that happened, even if she’s willing to support Trucy. In addition, if she were to show up sporting the same look she had at the end of the fourth game, there’d be no way Trucy wouldn’t realize that she’s actually Thalassa — and Lamiroir already told Phoenix that she doesn’t want either her or Apollo to find out just yet.
• Why is everyone so shocked when it's revealed that Bonny has a twin sister? Are twins in the Ace Attorney universe that rare?
  • They're not shocked that she has a twin sister. They’re shocked to discover that one twin had been deliberately masquerading as the other twin to conceal her own existence, even during the middle of a murder trial. Granted, Apollo shouldn’t have been that surprised since he’s the one who first proposed that Bonny had a twin, but it makes sense why everyone else was taken aback.
• This bugged me throughout the entirety of this case. It's taken as a given at various points of the case that Trucy stabbed Mr. Reus with a real sword in the coffin. The given explanation for the wound being in the back was that he had twisted to try to avoid being stabbed. My biggest issue, one that should have been immediately apparent and that I kept expecting to be brought up, is... BLOOD! Let's say for a second Trucy actually stabbed him. WHERE IS ALL THE BLOOD? He was stabbed clean through in a tiny little enclosure, and the weapon was immediately withdrawn. There should have been quite a bit of blood splatter, not just in the hole Trucy pulled the sword out of, but staining the wall as well. You shouldn't have even been able to make out the trapdoor because it would be pooling all over. And even given the actual way he died there is absolutely no blood except in his back wound. We can't just blame Mr. Retinz, as even if he mopped up the blood, Luminol testing would reveal it after the fact.
  • Plus, the blood would be on the sword itself, when there is clearly none when it’s pulled out.
    • The show footage never gives a clear view of the sword after it’s withdrawn from the coffin. The camera was zoomed in on Trucy’s face the entire time.
  • Trucy is a magician, so it's very possible that Nahyuta or someone else would chalk those up to illusory tricks. Remember that basic Occam's Razor pointed to Trucy, and by the time Retinz' involvement became clear, the theory that Trucy had stabbed him through the coffin's opening had already been disproven (the argument now being that she stabbed Manov in the back, which would explain the lack of blood on the floor. The blood in the coffin openings would eventually doom Retinz).
  • All Retinz would have to do is wipe up the blood in places it wasn’t supposed to be and plant traces of it in and around the coffin. The police wouldn’t go around using Luminol in places that have nothing to do with the crime scene, and it could have been argued that Trucy wiped away most of the coffin blood when the dragon set piece fell and everyone was in a panic.
  • Actually, a different gripe about this- When Apollo remarks that the prints are backwards, and Athena suggests he just turned around, it's pointed out by Apollo that at best he could wiggle a little in the coffin. It was too small to turn around. Immediately after, Ema says Nahyuta will probably be of the opinion Mistree turned to avoid the sword and Apollo agrees it's possible. To get the injury he got, he would have to turn fully around to the side, as the stab wound isn't at an angle, it's straight through his back. If it's impossible for him to turn around in the coffin, how in the hell could he manage that? It should be impossible for him to dodge, and if he did, he wouldn't turn to expose a wider area, he'd press his back to the back of the coffin more.
    • It’s possible Retinz altered the shape of the stab wound to make it seem like it had gone in at an angle. Alternatively, since the victim was pulled up to the catwalk on a stunt wire, there’s no telling whether the sword didn’t penetrate at an angle. After all, the game never says the wound was “straight through his back”.
  • Additional gripe about the blood- where indeed is it? There should have been blood on the stage that rained down when he was stabbed, and there is no pooling where his body was placed which should have raised questions. Even if it was wiped, Ema would have found it with luminol. She wouldn't NOT do that, it's specifically noted she even dusted Magnifi's notebook for prints for fun. Further, a lot of blood being in the coffin would have been ideal to blame her.
    • Yeah, Ema is extremely thorough when it comes to dusting for fingerprints. Nowhere is it said that she goes spraying Luminol everywhere to look for bloodstains in unlikely places. As for blood not being found inside the coffin, the victim was wearing a cape at the time. They probably assumed that the cape absorbed most or all of the splattered blood.
• Given that it's is supposed to be part of the great "Gramarye miracle magic", which is established as being a closely guarded secret, isn't the secret behind Trucy's coffin escape & switch with Mr. Hat a little bit weak? I know it's probably a lot more complex to pull off then it seems, but "go through a trap door, obscure the view with smoke, pull Mr. Hat up, then pop up through another trap door" seems incredibly simplistic, and something that anyone who's even the slightest bit savvy to typical magic gimmicks would be able to realize was going on. Especially given the fact that Mr. Hat's shadow was clearly visible, making it obvious to just about anyone who's able to watch the footage of the show that he was being pulled upwards.
  • Do they ever specify that that trick was Magnifis greatest trick? It's possible Magnifi had other, far more elaborate tricks.
  • As for the Shadow, that was probably an accident that came as a result of the mistake Bonny made. It's possible that, had the trick gone right, the Shadow was set up to never appear.
  • Mr. Hat’s shadow was cast to the left of where he was on stage. If he had been positioned farther to the left, like he was supposed to be, then his shadow would’ve been blocked by that of the castle set piece at stage left. The crowd probably wouldn’t have been able to see it if not for Bonny’s mistake.
  • The part of the show the player sees is the ending of the first act and part of the second act of the show. Magicians typically do their biggest and best tricks near the end of their show. The third act directly involved fire tricks and was extremely dangerous. One of Gramarye tricks may have happened during the final act.
• I can get why the luminous tape moved acted as evidence that Manov Mistree's death was a murder, since it seemed to directly indicate that someone, namely Trucy, had lead him into the coffin that was going to be stabbed. But, why exactly does the court treat the note that Trucy purportedly wrote as evidence that the crime was a murder, when all it actually seemingly proves is that Trucy knew that the prank was going to happen? That's a motive, and it gives her the knowledge required, but it isn't actually evidence that it wasn't an accidental death. This is such a glaring issue with the prosecution's claims at that point that I was honestly expecting Apollo, or at least someone else, to point this out.
  • I think the supposed reason it proves it was a murder was because at that point the court had been assuming that the trick was supposed to be performed via Trucy stabbing a coffin she knows to be empty with a real sword. But the note supposedly shows that Trucy still did that even though she knew Manov Mistree was going to be in the coffin for the prank. Apollo then objects, pointing out that the trick is actually performed via Trucy swapping swords with a rubber one just before she stabs the coffin.
  • Okay that makes sense at least. But doesn't it defy common sense to think that Manov Mistree would climb into a coffin that he knows is about to be stabbed with a real a sword in the first place?
  • I could be wrong, but I believe the assumption is supposed to be that Manov Mistree didn't know how the trick was performed, and so assumed the sword that Trucy uses is a rubber one. It's a bit silly that you'd take a risk like that on an assumption, but given how idiotically risky some pranksters actually are in real life, it's actually not unlikely as far as a theory. Plus, he probably assumed since the prank was set up by the TV station that he was safe, since he likely assumed they wouldn't risk him actually dying. And as it turns out, this IS how it's performed anyway, so he likely did actually know how it's performed, so "knew" it'd be fine. (Which, again, in turn, turned out to actually be true, given that he wasn't actually stabbed until after he played dead.)
• Thinking about the above, a thought occurred to me: Let's say the prank was performed according to the script, and Manov Mistree really was stabbed by Trucy, be it accidentally or otherwise, after she plunged a very real sword into the coffin. Wouldn't the TV station actually the ones responsible for the guy's death? He took part in a prank via contract with the station, which ended up placing him into a situation where he was stabbed to death. Under the assumption that Trucy really did accidentally stab him, shouldn't it actually be the station that's at fault for causing his death, and not Trucy? Even if you assume that Trucy did do it intentionally as well, the trick was, to the court's knowledge, was performed with a real sword. The prank still places Manov Mistree into a situation where he's very likely to get stabbed. The TV station still surely should've been held responsible for manslaughter via their clear gross negligence, even if Trucy was convicted at that stage for the killing.
  • Retinz already had a way to prevent that: by forging Trucy's signature onto a note that confirmed she knew about the prank and, as a result, there was a big chance she did indeed murder him, the TV station couldn't be held liable on an intentional killing by some magician they're merely affiliated with and agreed to film. And even though they did the prank (which you'll notice doesn't come up until quite a bit later in the case), there was no way they knew she would "flip out and murder Mr. Reus" over it.
  • No, the prank comes up before the note is brought up. They can't bring up the prank after bringing up the fact that Trucy knew about said prank, that makes no sense. As the original point states, if Trucy murdered Mr. Reus, that doesn't change the fact that the T.V station would have been very much liable for manslaughter charges, if Trucy had been found guilty just after the note was presented. At that point in the trial, the court figured that the magic trick was performed with a real sword. The prank puts Manov Mistree into a situation in which he was going to be in a coffin that a magician was about to stab with a real sword. Yes, the assumption at that point was that Trucy found out about the prank, and still went through with the trick anyway, thus on her part it was murder. On the station's part though, from the perspective of the facts as they stood at that moment, they very clearly committed manslaughter. If Trucy didn't find out about the prank, and went through with the trick, Trucy would've stabbed Manov Mistree. As it so happens, Trucy did (allegedly) find out about it, and decided to go through with the Trick anyway, thus she purposefully killed him. Either way, Manov Mistree would've ended up being stabbed. Basically, at that point, it seemed like the prank put the guy into a situation where he was going to get stabbed, no matter what happened, unless he somehow managed to dodge the sword as it came into the coffin. So yes, if Trucy was found guilty at that stage, the T.V Station, and by extension Retinz himself, should've very much been held responsible on some level. Then again, maybe they would have been, if that actually happened, who knows.
  • The thing is, Mr. Reus was in on the trick and would have known that the sword should be fake. He is after all part of the show. Since he is part of the prank as well, he would be able to tell the station what the trick will include and therefore, any potential danger should fall on Trucy. Since it even looks like she intentionally murdered him for trying to ruin her show, that puts even more blame on her. It might even be likely that part of Trucy's contract with the station is an outline for what will be done in the show at least, so it's not impossible for the station to not know about the rubber sword and cover themselves with that for defense. Even had the station been charged with manslaughter on their part, that may be a secondary reason why Mr. Retinz added a clause in the contract that the Wright Anything Agency pay 3 million for compensation.
  • You don't understand, the point isn't what actually happened, or what Mr. Reus actually knew about the trick, it's about the facts as they stood when the court was about to declare Trucy guilty. The issue is that, if Trucy was found guilty at that point, the court would've also likely have to acknowledge that Take-2 TV were partly responsible. Since they were going to find Trucy guilty, so once they had done so, it'd have basically cemented the facts as they stood at that point. Retinz's plan would've backfired, even if Apollo didn't interject to stop the verdict. It's not so much a problem with the case, since for all we know that may be what would've actually happened and Retinz didn't plan for that specific outcome (or that he did plan for it, and had a back up just in case), it's more just something of note.
  • Literally all they would have to do in the event of being charged with manslaughter is present the footage of Mr. Reus preparing to do the prank himself, declare the fact that he knew of the magic trick (through legitimate or illegitimate means) and at the very least their charge would be severely lessened. At most, it would probably be dropped since the victim did it of his own volition and wasn't aware that Trucy was to murder him over it. Even if the station were to go through the former, in Mr. Retinz eyes it would have been totally worth it to destroy Trucy's reputation, which isn't out of character for him at all.
  • Actually, a victim's consent and volition has no baring at all on manslaughter charges. It's comparable to almost any violent crime in that regard, since most jurisdictions, including most in America and Japan, don't recognise consent and volition as a valid defense against charges involving hurting or killing a person, since ultimately it plays no part in what the charges really are. Unlike rape, for example, which by very definition involves lack of consent for the crime to have been a thing, assault by definition is just "attacking someone". Generally speaking, there's no part of it that's nullified via consent, since the charge is just "did you hurt someone? Yes? Well then you committed assault". The same thing applies to manslaughter, so there's no real way to argue for a less severe charge due to consent or violation. All you need to do to establish, is three things: Was the act illegal and/or dangerous? Well, if we're assuming that they knew Trucy was going to stab him if he for some reason went through with what they wanted him to do, then yes, it would be considered illegal and dangerous. Was there a common sense risk that any reasonable person should have notice? Yes, obviously, there was. And lastly, was the lack of response to these risks something that lead to the death? Yes, it was. They knew he was in risk of getting stabbed if he consented to it, but did nothing about it. At the very least they might manage to scrape the lower end severity of involuntary manslaughter, but involuntary manslaughter is not something any TV station would want attached to them, at any level. I guess Retinz just not caring is a valid point though, it's definitely in his character to want his revenge that badly.
  • It should be obvious that for such a defense, the station would claim they did not know Trucy would stab the victim. Even with the potential of manslaughter involved with the trick (which admittedly is a good point), they would have no way of knowing that the victim was killed intentionally as they put it. But that does bring up a curious question: can a third-party even be charged with manslaughter when the victim was murdered and the murderer is being charged as such?
    • Yes, I believe they can be. One person's murderous intent does not nullify another person's negligence in ensuring that person's safety. For example, let's say you've got a famous performer on stage. Some lunatic somehow manages to get onto stage with a deadly weapon and attacks and kills the singer. The perpetrator would obviously be found guilty of murder, and the security, whom heavily failed at their job, can also be charged gross negligence. But moreover, the TV station did know that Trucy was going to stab the coffin. There we be absolutely zero basis for them claiming such a thing, as it's the very premise behind the prank in the first place. A lack of knowledge that she's going to do that would defy all common sense.
    • That depends on how much information they know on their side of the prank contract. Manov Mistree as a magician would very much know what the trick employs and how to sabotage it, but it's uncertain how much involvement the station would know beyond the fact that there is sabotage involved (beyond of course, the real Mr. Reus, but plausible deniability is in effect here for the purposes of the court.) You could argue transparency should've been involved to begin with, but magic tends to be kept fairly secretive in the community, so there's a chance it wouldn't be told through contract. By which point, even if the studio did know, there's really no solid evidence of it.
    • You misunderstand what I was trying to say. I was just giving an example of a scenario in which two separate parties could be charged with separate crimes of murder and gross-negligence over the same incident. It was an official contract to pull off a prank during the sword trick that the TV Station had full responsibility over. At that point in the trial was was assumed that the TV Station had knowledge a real sword was going to be stabbed into someone who was inside the coffin. Or that they, at the very least, knew that this is what it looked like Trucy was doing in the trick (let's say they didn't know how the trick was performed. Yes, you can argue that a lack of knowledge over how the trick is performed can prevent you from knowing definitely that any hypothetical person inside the coffin would be in danger. But on an observational level, it looks like Trucy has stabbed a real sword into the coffin, which would hit anyone if they happened to be inside it). They apparently didn't think of this when coming up with their prank idea, or they, at the very least, brushed it aside. So, if you go by the logic of the case as it appears at that moment in the trial, the TV Station put Manov Mistree into a situation in which it was obvious he was likely to get stabbed, and in which any reasonable person would have figured there was danger of injury or even death, and, would you know it, that's exactly what happened, because everyone was seriously that stupid to not think about that or just not care. It doesn't matter what other spin you put on it, this would undeniably be the station's fault. I don't see how they'd be able to slip out of any charges at all, even with the universe's best attorney on their side, they clearly did at least something wrong with allowing the go ahead of a dangerous, negligent prank.
  • It doesn’t really matter what laws in the real world would apply here, because in the Ace Attorney universe culpability obviously works differently. Just look at “Turnabout Reclaimed”: Jack Shipley died because he slipped and fell into an empty aquarium tank, which was only empty because the culprit was trying to kill one of the orcas by draining away the water. And yet Shipley’s death is ultimately ruled an accident, despite that in real life, the culprit probably would have at least been charged. And even if Take 2 TV were charged with Manov Mistree’s death, Roger Retinz would’ve been willing to take that risk if it meant getting his revenge on the Gramaryes.
  • Recall also that Retinz’s contract reads that he’s owed $3 million if Trucy is proven culpable for the show’s cancellation “in part or in full”. That pretty much means it doesn’t matter if the TV studio was partially responsible, as long as Trucy is also proven responsible for the other part.
• Trucy's note. Used as dramatic decisive evidence (enough to cause the obligatory Darkest Hour "almost found guilty" sequence) to prove that Trucy must have known about the prank and thus must have known Mr. Reus would be in the coffin. A note that would normally be written casually to her costar, that for some reason is typewritten (I don't see a typewriter in the dressing room) and Trucy apparently formally signed it. And the signature is identical down to individual strokes, which the court even acknowledges is impossible normally, to the signature on her "contract". And Apollo's court record contains a clipboard that secretly contains carbon paper, which was given to her by an actual studio executive to use when signing the contract for them. So, with all of this said, why is there literally not a single claim during the trial that the note is likely a forgery and thus cannot be used to implicate her? Why does Apollo have to desperately change the subject in order to keep their case alive? And when the note and clipboard do come up later, why is it only to claim that Roger was acting maliciously toward her, and not to disprove the validity of evidence against her?
  • Apollo had to keep the trial running because Sahdmadhi was pushing to have the case wrapped up then and there and the Judge was leaning towards that, forcing him to use a loose-end to keep the trial going so he could collect his thoughts. And who said it was only to claim that Roger was acting maliciously towards her? It's a no-brainer that if the evidence was forged then of course it's invalid. He was simply killing two birds with one stone.
  • Then why not actually prolong the trial that way? When Trucy says she didn't write that note, Apollo should argue that his client did not write the note. When the prosecutor naturally demands that evidence be provided, he should provide the clipboard, and if needed, the contract. That way he can immediately cast doubt on the claim that she knew anything about Mr. Reus's presence. (I suspect that the real reason for this order of events, aside from the need for a Darkest Hour, was so that the case could directly change momentum as a result of Trucy's performance, reinforcing the case's theme of keeping a smile no matter what.)
  • Because at that point Apollo may as well be presenting conveniently forged evidence which states the contrary out of nowhere. It's only when Retinz claims that he wasn't doing anything malicious towards Trucy that the forged contract and the clipboard becomes relevant, and then Retinz states there's nothing linking him to that clipboard and that the contract was signed legitimately. The second-half of the evidence, the note, pointing out that the signature is exactly the same to the contract meaning Retinz did indeed own it. It's unlikely this train of logic would be allowed back when the judge was ready to wrap things up, much less so if Apollo couldn't quickly connect the dots between the note, contract and clipboard.
• And one more question about that trick. Why is there even a lengthy trick involving switching the sword before thrusting it into the coffin to begin with? Trucy was apparently locked in the coffin, which we can see was empty beforehand. Then she seemingly escaped. Thus, why would any audience member think there was anyone left in that coffin? Why go through all the dramatics of stabbing it herself? Especially if she's going to say out loud to the audience that the coffin was in fact empty before she even opened it? This kind of delivery would only make sense in a magic show if the punchline was that there was in fact something in the coffin, but in Trucy's script, there wasn't!
  • Because it was meant to prove that there was no-one left in the coffin. When it comes to magic, you don't want it to be easily guessed. Someone could decry the fact that Trucy was still inside the coffin and the one seen on stage was a stand-in for her, to which the sword in the coffin was meant to disprove that guess. Besides that, it's a show so there has to be a moment of suspense. As for the switching of the swords, that was purely for precaution sake in the event that somebody did go inside the coffin, which is what indeed happened. Despite that precaution however, things were still set up to make it look like the switch was botched.
• What is Magnifi's policy regarding accidents made by magicians, anyway? When Mr. Reus makes an error that scars himself? He's kicked out of the troupe. When two other members make an error that apparently kills a third member? He blackmails them into staying in the troupe.
  • This is explained in the game, by Trucy. Magnifi didn't kick him out because he made a mistake, but because of his attitude towards magic as just being a tool to achieve self-centered motivations, and not as something that's supposed to entertain people.
  • Magnifi didn’t kick Mr. Reus out just for making a mistake, objectively. Reus made the mistake, Magnifi told him to sit out their next performance for the safety of everyone involved, Reus tried to perform anyway, and only then did Magnifi kick him out.
• In the case's stinger, Apollo is shown having an Oh, Crap! moment as he is strongarmed into being the assistant in the stabbing trick. Since he has to know how to avoid getting skewered, shouldn't he be in on the trick at this point?
  • Because it's still pretty terrifying for someone who's never done it before, even if you know how it's performed? You can't shut off your reaction for something like that, even when you know there's no danger involved. It's the same reason why people still scream when they're on a roller coaster even though they're almost-definitely safe.
  • Probably fearing it regardless. One's knowledge doesn't always translate to one's experience. Plus there's the probable fear that she could mess up, or it may simply be that he flat out dislikes being a magician's guinea pig.
  • Also, doesn't this basically undermine the entire theme of the case? "A true entertainer always keeps a smile on their face" is not only treated as Arc Words but is also the entire Gramarye philosophy that Trucy is trying to keep alive. But Apollo is very visibly not living up to them...
    • ...No? He's not an entertainer. It doesn't apply to him, especially because he's not doing the tricks.
  • Alternatively, maybe he’s playing up his fear to make the trick seem more real to the audience. At the very least, he has to know that Trucy wouldn’t deliberately put him in danger, and he told her during the case that he believed in her professionalism when it came to the possibility she could make a mistake. He’s probably just thinking that acting scared out of his mind will improve the shock factor of the trick.
• Speaking of Apollo, why didn't he know how Bonny's teleportation trick worked? He flat-out says "So that's how the teleportation trick works...", as though he's never known the secret of it before. But knows from "Turnabout Serenade" that teleportation magic involves a body double. What's more, Trucy made him work out the trick himself during "Turnabout Serenade". He should have been able to pin down that there were more than just three people in the show if one of them has teleports. There's even a time when Athena asks how the trick works and Bonny declines answering, where we could have had Apollo remember he's dealt with teleportation magic before. He could even just suddenly remember it in court just before he proposes the idea of "two Bonnys".
  • Bonny's teleportation trick and the trick from Turnabout Serenade may both about teleportation, but they're fundamentally different. The key part of the secret to the trick with Lamiroir was her crawling through the ventilation system to get from point A to point B. Her body double was there was create the illusion that there wasn't enough time for her to get from point A to point B, since that's the part of the trick that's supposed to make you go "wow". Any idiot can watch a teleportation trick like that one and make the obvious assumption that Lamiroir just get down a trap door and is crawling towards her pop-up spot. The illusion itself comes from how little time there was for her to be able to do something that, so that solution seems impossible. That's what's supposed to make that trick so impressive. That's nothing like how Bonny and Betty do their teleportation magic. They're identical twins for starters, and since no one knows there's someone else who looks and sounds exactly like Bonny, she's able to seemingly be in two places at the same time. Whereas during her performance Lamiroir's body double took advantage of the fact that she had most of her body and face obscured, and there was also a viable method for how Lamiroir was still singing as herself the entire time, and that trick doesn't require the illusion be kept up off-stage by pretending that there's only one Lamiroir. Outside of a random Bat Deduction from Apollo that maybe Bonny has an identical twin sister who perpetually pretends to be Bonny even off-stage to keep up the illusion, there's no way he could've figured a body double as a viable method in Bonny's magic trick. Not before the point where he gets that revelation, anyway.
• Why is everyone so freaked out about the contract? Even if Trucy had willfully signed the one with the three million dollars clause, it wouldn't have held water. Trucy is only 17, and both American and Japanese contract laws have provisions requiring parental consent for a contract signed by a minor to be legally binding.
  • That's true, but the method of dealing with it that Apollo goes for- proving that Trucy wasn't responsible for Manov Mistree's death- happens to be what he wanted to do anyway, which is why he doesn't bother with proving that the contract was fake. Fortuitously enough, Apollo manages to find proof that the signature was faked through investigating the signed note to Bonny.
  • As has been stated many times, stop assuming that the realty of Ace Attorney is anything like our own. There’s are lots of things about it that don’t hold up to scrutiny from an American or Japanese standpoint. Also, even if Apollo could have gotten Trucy out of the contract, imagine what Retinz would’ve done to her reputation by saying she got out of paying him his $3 million, regardless of how legitimate the reason was.
• Why was Nahyuta so insistent on convicting Trucy of the murder after Apollo proves that Roger Retinz was responsible? He doesn’t get that worked up about Maya or Bucky being proven innocent, and you’d think a teenage girl suffering from the crimes of her family would be someone he’d sympathize with, considering what he’s doing for Rayfa.
  • Maybe with Apollo as the defense, Nahyuta thought he had to overdo his “evil prosecutor” schtick so that Ga’ran wouldn’t suspect anything? The last thing he wants is for her to think he’s showing sympathy to anyone with ties to Dhurke, whether Ga’ran knows who Apollo is or not. Also, his little breakdown comes before Retinz has actually confessed to anything, unlike Tahrust Inmee or Geiru Toneido, so he was right in that Trucy hadn’t been proven completely innocent yet.
• By the end of the case, it’s basically proven that up until Mistree’s actual time of death, everything in the show had been going as planned; he played dead once the coffin was opened, then went flying up into the air, then was impaled on the sword planted amongst the cushions. With that in mind, why would Bonny and Betty think there was anything wrong at the point where Trucy opened the coffin? If the whole point was to prank Trucy, what happened to the payoff? How did they not notice that Mr. Reus was still alive as he was hoisted up toward the cushion, at which point Bonny had already called Trucy backstage?

The Rite of Turnabout

• Why was Phoenix allowed to wander about freely following Maya's guilty verdict? This seems like a pretty big case of Gameplay and Story Separation. With Maya's conviction Phoenix is now "a murderer" too under the DC act, so he should have been in jail awaiting execution like her, even IF there was more to the case with the second murder. From a gameplay perspective you need to be able to investigate, but as Phoenix points out himself to Rayfa, you never know what a lawyer facing execution under the DC act might do. And if he hadn't pushed her to watch over him he would have been unsupervised all day, giving him ample opportunity to forge evidence, as he has nothing to lose at this point. At the very least he could leave Maya to die and attempt to flee. Even if WE know Phoenix wouldn't do that the people of Khur'ain wouldn't, so there's really no reason Phoenix should have to have to hang a lampshade on his own suspiciousness to remind Rayfa that she's not supposed to trust lawyers not to be shady.
  • It's mentioned a few times that if Phoenix had refused to defend Maya for killing Zeh'lot and begged for mercy, he might have been able to avoid execution. Maya tries to get him to drop her case for that reason, and Datz says that in the past, lawyers who'd given up on their clients and begged for their lives had avoided execution under the DC Act. As for the death penalty, Nahyuta says that if Maya is convicted for killing Zeh'lot as well as Tahrust, she'll certainly be executed(although one would wonder why she wouldn't get the death penalty for killing a highly respected clergyman). So it is strange that Phoenix doesn't get imprisoned, but there are ways for him to avoid being executed.
  • A couple things. One is that he does have Rayfa watching over him, however spur-of-the-moment that arrangement was. She had already been supervising him the previous day; no way would she pass up the chance to do so again. If he had been alone, any attempt to overturn the conviction with new evidence, forged or otherwise, would be dismissed on the basis that he’s a lawyer, and a convicted one, at that. It’s not as if leaving the country would be feasible, and even if it was, it’s doubtful people would care that much. Inga had wanted him out of the picture already, and the only thing he’s guilty of under the DC Act is aiding and abetting a criminal; it’s not as if they think he actually killed anyone.
• So after the first case, we see a man with a kukri talking to Dhurke about the breaking news of Phoenix's 'not guilty' verdict. Judging by his weapon of choice, as well as the nonchalant way he tossed it into the dartboard, we can assume that that man was Datz Are'bal. But that doesn't make sense, does it? After all, Datz only just broke out of prison the day before case three, and judging by his hair and beard, he's been in there for a while. So how could he have been in the rebel hideout talking to Dhurke after case one when he should have still been in prison at the time?
  • Maybe this didn't happen directly after the trial, but during the events of episode 3? This way, it could have been shown there just for drama.
  • There was two weeks between this scene and Datz's escape from prison (since Maya had two weeks left of her training at the beginning of the game, and then in case 3 she's finishing up the last ritual. Considering how Nonchalant Datz is about being in prison and escaping from them, it's entirely possible that he was free at the end of the first trial, and got himself captured at some point in those two weeks. As for the beard, either it was a disguise, since he's pretty recognizable without it, or it was real and his facial hair growing that fast was simply Rule of Funny.
• What's up with Phoenix's rather nonchalant response to seeing Apollo in the photo and finding out he's Dhurke's adopted son? You'd think he'd react to such a thing with a little bit more shock then he does, especially considering the astronomically large coincidence it was for him to suddenly run across something related to Apollo's past while he was in another country halfway across the world.
  • Considering Phoenix has been in contact with Lamiroir/Thalassa, it's entirely possible she told him any number of things about how she came to lose Apollo, which would naturally include mentioning she lost him in Khur'ain and she thought he had died in the fire that claimed his biological father's life. If Phoenix at least knew Apollo had spent some time in Khur'ain, I'm sure he wouldn't have been too surprised to see a young Apollo in an old photograph.
  • Phoenix is a masterful poker player. He has learned how to hide his emotions pretty well.
• Was Suicide really Tahrust's best option? Couldn't he and Balee'eb just gone underground and lived with the higher ranking rebels? I mean that's essentially what Balee'eb does at the end. They could have saved a lot of people a tonne of trouble if they just ran away in the first place instead of committing suicide and framing an innocent party as a serial killer.
  • It's not so much that suicide was logistically the best option, but rather, that Ga'ran's regime is so totalitarian that Tahrust thought it was the only option. It helps convey just how dire the situation regarding the Defence Culpability Act and other amoral laws actually is. Giving how everyone can be found guilty simply via association, going underground with the rebels after committing murder against a high-ranking government government official is hardly smart either. Using suicide to incriminate Maya detracted attention away from the rebels, effectively absolved Beh'leeb of the crime, and made him a matyr for the resistance. There's also Khura'inese belief about the soul living on, so I daresay he would have had little regrets under the circumstances.
  • In addition, it wasn't just himself and Beh'leeb he had to worry about - we later learn that Khura'inese culture considers children to be responsible for the sins of their parents, so he would have been acting to protect their unborn child as well.
  • By killing himself, Tahrust also helps cover up the source of the blood in the spring, making it seem like it's his blood rather than Zeh'lot's, and thus helping mislead people into thinking Zeh'lot had been killed in the Plaza of Devotion.
• Why exactly does the statue need to have sharp, dagger-like feathers in the first place? The dagger itself may have some function in the rite that requires it to have an actual sharp edge, but the statue is just an accident waiting to happen. It is in a secluded location that very few people have access to, but anyone going near that statue is one slip or fall away from being skewered.
  • Khura'in is not known for its sanity, obviously. Given that the statue is both ancient and exposed to the elements, someone must be going up there and sharpening the statue as well; it should have weathered to dull safety over the past few hundred years.
  • Plenty of real-life statues and ornaments are sharp, and the statue is a religious object that they'd want to keep in pristine condition. Plus, the Inner Sanctum is not a location that's open to the public, so the priority is to just keep everything present from being unreasonably dangerous instead of baby-proof level safe. Doubleplus, an object doesn't need to be sharp as a knife to be deadly if it gets suddenly forced into your spine with a great deal of force. It just needs to be sturdy and pointed. Finally, it could all come down to bad luck. Ze'lot got pinned against the statue when the stone pushed him back; it probably would've been more likely to have broken the feather, but unfortunately he was unlucky enough to hit it at just the right angle for it to penetrate the skin.
• Isn't it a little weird that rebel Beh'leeb Inmee is obsessed (to the point of owning a piece of unique merchandise!) with The Plumed Punisher, which is basically just government propaganda?
  • Just because it's propaganda and a rip-off doesn't mean it's bad!
  • Misdirection? Pretending to be a faithful consumer of Khura'inist propaganda seems like an easy way to mask anti-government sympathies.
  • It’s also possible that the show originated as an independent piece of media that became twisted into propaganda at some point during the Ga’ran regime. That would explain why young Nahyuta was photographed wearing a Plumed Punisher shirt.
• Dhurke says that he wants a bloodless revolution, meaning that while they'll break any other laws to accomplish their ends, they won't use fatal force against anyone. And we should assume that as subordinates to their charismatic leader that they'd follow that creed as well. Yet, when you meet Datz, Dhurke's right hand man, inside Dhurke's old law office, he says that he WOULD have executed you if it seemed you were loyal to Ga'ran's regime. So is Datz a cowboy rebel, or does he do the dirty work so Dhurke's reputation can remain bloodless?
  • It's possible that he was just fucking with Wright. He is that kind of guy.
  • Or it's possible he just wasn't talking about straight out killing him. To be specific he says, "I was going to take you out", which could be talking about just disabling him somehow, like keeping him tied up in the office.
  • Datz also said that in response to Phoenix breaking his Psyche-Locks and prying into the rebel group’s secrets. He initially tried to throw Phoenix off by claiming he wasn’t with the Defiant Dragons anymore, but if Phoenix insists on seeing through that and turns out to side with the royals, then you could see why Datz might have to take some drastic measures.
  • “And we should assume that as subordinates to their charismatic leader that they'd follow that creed as well.” Actually, Dhurke testifies during case 5 that a bloodless revolution is his personal agenda, but that there are members of the Defiant Dragons who feel differently. He may not be willing to use fatal force, but he can’t force every one of his followers to be a strict pacifist if they don’t want to.
• How come the rebel-hunting Lady Keera ties up some rebels but kills others? Mr. Zelot was fully prepared to kill a pregnant woman just because she was a rebel. And yet there are several times he simply tied them up for the police to find.
  • Technically speaking, we don’t know if he intended to kill Mrs. Inmee. She says he boasted of his ability to kill with impunity, which gives her enough cause to kill him in self-defense, but it doesn’t mean he was actually going to kill her.
  • The rebels he killed were probably the ones who put up too much of a fight to be captured alive, or maybe high-ranking insurgents who Inga wanted taken out of the picture completely.
• If the only way into the rebel base was through the fake eye 'key' how did so many people get inside? I guess we just have to assume Behleeb was Datz' contact. She went to the base, and because of that Zehlot could get in, then after she accidentally killed him she dropped the key off to Datz along with the food. It was all fine and good for her and her husband, but how was Datz planning to get his next order from the base himself? He'd have to climb all those stairs, and there's nothing blocking him from view as the stairs are out in the open. How could he hope to avoid being seen going up and then down and avoid arousing any suspicion, especially as he's a known rebel?
  • Evidence found in the hideout reveals that the original plan was for Datz to escape from prison, glide down to the scene of the rite, and use Lady Kee’ra’s costume to sneak into the royal residence, but that was botched when he developed amnesia. After Tahrust’s death and Datz’s exposure during the trial, that plan goes out the window, and Datz says he’s just going to wait to hear from Dhurke about his next order, which is why he gives Phoenix the key to the hideout. He was never planning to go back to the hideout once he got wrapped up in the murder trial.
• This is a minor thing, but when Datz escaped from prison why do the police not think to mention that he's extremely hairy? You look at the wanted posted for him, and think that's about what he looks like, though he might try to change his appearance a bit to fit in. But he didn't have a do a thing. Because that information wasn't released nobody knew that Datz was right in front of them and eventually brought in as a witness that gave false testimony and Nahyuta looked like a fool for it.
  • The poster may have mentioned him having facial hair, which Rayfa glossed over when reading it. Facial hair can be easily altered, too; as soon as Datz regains his memory, he gets a haircut before Phoenix meets him at the hideout. Thus, they probably figured it was better not to emphasize such easily altered aspects of his appearance.
• Why did Phoenix and Maya actually become frightened when Nahyuta was threatening them with divine punishment from the Holy Mother in the Twilight Realm and their next lives? They're not practitioners of Khura'inism, so for all they were concerned he may as well have been telling them that a big scary wizard is gonna come down and turn them into frogs with his magic wand. It's the exact same thing as a Christian hypothetically,telling an Atheist they were going to burn in hell for their sins. The atheist wouldn't believe them. They wouldn't start acting all scared.
  • While it's true Phoenix doesn't practice Khura'inese religion, it's still shown itself to have some grains of truth in the form of the pool of memories and spirit channeling, the latter of which Phoenix is very familiar with. Given that Phoenix doesn't know if that's all that is true about their religion, it does make the threat less hollow, if even by a little. Not so sure about Maya though.
  • Maya may have been worried for the same reasons as Phoenix. She can channel, sure, but the pool of memories is a new thing for her and she may be wondering what else she may not know about.
• When did Maya and Ema become "friends"? Phoenix met Ema in Rise From The Ashes, after Maya had returned to Kurain Village, and after the case, Ema got Put on a Bus and went to Europe until Apollo Justice.
  • Yes, but Ema had to have returned some time BEFORE Apollo Justice so she could join the police force. She probably met Maya after coming back to join the police force but before Maya left for overseas training.
  • Considering Ema didn’t know who Trucy was before Apollo Justice, it seems more likely she met Maya at some point before Phoenix adopted Trucy. Perhaps around the time of her minor appearance in the first Investigations game. Phoenix makes a cameo alongside Maya and Pearl at Gatewater Land during case 3, which is also the case where Emma appears. The likeliest answer is that she met Maya then.
• When he’s channeled by Maya, Tahrust claims he has a recording of her confrontation with Puhray Zeh’lot saved on a tape at his house, which the bailiff is sent to retrieve. Assuming the tape is legit (we never get to hear it played back), it must’ve actually captured the moment when Beh’leeb was being threatened by Zeh’lot in the rebel hideout. But in that case, why didn’t Tahrust use the tape as evidence that his wife’s crime was in self-defense? And if he was against that for some reason, why bring up the tape at all? There’s no way it could have actually recorded any wrongdoing on Maya’s part.

Turnabout Storyteller

• Are Geiru, Taifu, and Uendo Toneido related? They all have the same last name, but they are never refered to as a family, only a master and his students. We know that Geiru had someone else for a father, but Taifu could still be her uncle or something, but that's never spelled out. In addition, even though Taifu is their elder, Geiru and Uendo address him by name. If they are not supposed to be related, why do they have the same last names?
  • Toneido isn't their real name. It's their rakugo title. Much like how Uendo isn't actually Uendo's name, it was just the name passed down from the previous Uendo, who is Geiru's father. All students learning under the same master get the same title, in this case being Toneido. Whether the original Uendo was Taifu's master or the other way around in unknown, however.
  • For another example in the series, look at the Gramaryes. The only person whose last name actually was Gramarye was Magnifi. Thalassa had already been married, widowed, and remarried. It's likely her legal last name stopped being Gramarye before she was out of her teens, though she still performed under the name alongside Zak and Valant. Toneido is more or less the same way. It's possible Taifu's name is actually Toneido, while Geiru, her father, and Uendo all took his name in the way Zak and Valant did with Magnifi.
• It's revealed at the very beginning that Bucky went into Toneido's dressing room around 4pm, storming off in a huff after a few minutes. Both Blackquill and Geiru see him do it. But later, when Athena proves the victim died before this time... No one questions what Bucky had been doing. He saw Toneido dead and did nothing, implicating himself as the culprit more than the cards ever would.
  • Bucky himself explains this. He tried to get Toneido's attention, and became irate when he didn't respond, not realizing he was dead.
  • To further clarify, it’s mentioned early in the case that the dressing room had both an inner and outer sliding door. Bucky’s testimony suggests he tried to get the victim’s attention from outside the inner door, hence he didn’t actually see him to be able to notice he was dead. He only heard the sound of Uendo’s rakugo being performed on the TV, which he assumed came from the victim.
• This is just a minor one, but did Athena eat an alcoholic snack food in a court of law as a minor? She is only 19 and the drinking age is 21(USA)/20)Japan). She mentions wanting one and later Blackquill mentions her having to pay him back for the snack. So did she just break the law in front of 2 prosecutors and a judge?
  • I mean, it's not like there's a whole ton of alcohol in them. They probably didn't care.
  • It's possible that the manju buns only contain trace amounts of alcohol, as in not enough to affect a normal person, but enough to affect Uendo. Maybe the buns are considered non-alcoholic because of how little alcohol is in them? Sake has about 15% ABV so maybe only a little sake was added to the buns so they could be considered non-alcoholic.
  • I'm not sure about the US or Japan specifically, but I know in most countries the minimum drinking age is actually the minimum age you're allowed to purchase alcohol, meaning if someone gives it to you, as in this case, it's not a crime.
  • More importantly, we never actually see her eating one like we do the others, so it’s just as possible Simon didn’t buy one for her. Of course he’d still tell her to pay him back since it helps the case she argued and she couldn’t have bought them herself.
  • We should stop assuming that the laws of Japanifornia are strictly taken from either the US or Japan, and if both prohibit something, it's illegal in Japanifornia as well. There are plenty of countries where the legal drinking age as well as age of majority is 18. It's clear that the creators of the game consider it to take place in some sort of a parallel universe, even in the original Japanese script.
• In the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue, why is Uendo Toneido still in the courtroom?
  • Well he DID confess to tampering with the scene of a murder.
  • His new rakugo act is based on Case 4. It might be a set.
  • Since there was no investigation in Case 4, that was the only place Uendo could be at, because Blackquill already took the defendant lobby.
  • So Capcom was too lazy to create a new background for the rakugo theatre?
  • Pretty much, there's no point in making a new background for a case that didn't get an investigation. As the first person said, he might also have been on trial for tampering with the crime scene.
    • That's a valid possibility, but most people who are on trial in the ending (Lana and Jake in Rise from the Ashes, Adrian in Justice for All, and Iris in Trials and Tribulations) are shown in the Detention Center during the credits.
    • This is pure speculation on my part, but it's possible that it has to do with how all of Uendo's animations feature him sitting on a pile of rakugo cushions. Such a thing wouldn't make much sense at the detention centre. Although I don't see why they wouldn't have just been able to pretend he's not on the cushions, since you cannot actually see them. It might have something to do with an animation limitation caused by his obscured lower-half and the cushions he's sitting on. It probably wasn't possible to just plop him into the detention centre background, so they opted to just have him appear in court, instead.
• When Athena prepares to accuse Geiru of the murder, Nahyuta says that if Athena turns out to be wrong, he'll see to it that she loses her badge(a bit like what happened when Mia accused Dahlia in Case 1 of T&T). Why is it that the prosecutors in Ace Attorney never seem to suffer any consequences for the defendants they're prosecuting turning out to not be guilty, or worse, getting an innocent person convicted(like Winston Payne did with Maggey Byrde in T&T)? It seems rather unfair that the defense attorneys are the only ones who have to put their careers on the line in order to solve murder cases.
  • The series is based off of Japanese courts, and the bias in favor of the prosecution definitely exists in real life.
  • Prosecutors aren't the ones accusing people of crimes, they are prosecuting culprits that the police department picks for them, based on evidence the police department gathered. This is even pointed out in the original trilogy that prosecutors have an obligation to do their jobs even if there is a possibility the defendant is innocent. Defense attorneys accusing a witness in the middle of court proceedings is entirely different, especially if it looks like they're just trying to shift attention from their own client. There definitely is a bias against the defense (in an ideal court system they wouldn't need to prove someone else is guilty to get their client off,) but in this case it's laughable to suggest that prosecutors should lose their badge for doing their actual job and defense attorneys shouldn't be held accountable for making baseless accusations.

• So it’s said the reason Nahyuta is called on to prosecute cases in America is because Edgeworth is running short on personnel after firing all the corrupt prosecutors. However this case confirms that Simon Blackquill wasn’t one of the ones let go, so why couldn’t he have prosecuted the case? It can’t be because he was a witness to the events; prior games have had countless instances of acting attorneys who were also witnesses.
  • Conflict of interest, presumably. Simon says he’s known Bucky for years, which raises the question of whether he would be able to fairly prosecute the case against him.

Turnabout Revolution

American Half:

• Why did Dhurke bring Apollo back to Kurain Village after nearly drowning? They go through that mountain in the background and end up on the other side. The amount of time to get back to Kurain village probably took longer than it took for them to get to the cavern in the first place. If Apollo was really unconscious all that time then he should really get looked at. That aint healthy. What's more they manage to meet up with Datz and Trucy there too meaning the two of them took the two hour train out from the city to meet them? Given how small Kurain is and the fact that their business there was finished, I can't conceive any reason they would all turn up there that is really convoluted. And if they hadn't gone back there then they never would encountered Phoenix and be forced into the trial. They could have simply hopped on a plane and flew away without even knowing Paul Atishon was taking legal action against them. Of course the you of universe explanation is that they needed Paul to encounter them in someway to have that trial and they didn't want to make a new location exclusively for it but from an in universe perspective I find it really strange.
  • I would think it's because Kurain is probably the closest village to them that could bring them back to the city, assuming that the person who helped them out was living on the edge of the mountain or the beach. Plus they probably wanted to meet up with Trucy and Pearl anyway there, who would've been worried sick about them.
• How did Paul Atishon manage to find a single print of Datz's to leave intact when wiping down the suitcase after murdering Dr. Buff with it?
  • He probably just wiped where he knew he touched.
  • Paul never actually confirms that he did that, he just refuses to comment on Apollo's accusation either way. It might be that he wiped down the whole suitcase, thinking that its contents would identify and implicate its owner, and it was a stroke of luck that one of Datz's prints survived intact.
• What exactly is the mystery substance inside the Founder's Orb? It melts from the heat of a lighter, doesn't appear to stick to the statuette of the Founder (although that could just be artistic license more than anything), has a silver/grey cloudy color to it and is implied to return to its original state and position eventually. (Unless Dr. Buff just held the artifact upside down to allow the drained substance to drip back into the orb.)
  • Apollo and Athena discuss this at one point, though when exactly it is currently escapes me. They theorise it is some form of wax.
    • Specifically, it's after the Khura'in side of the case has begun. You can present the orb to Athena and she'll wonder how you would go about refilling it.
• Episode 5 (American Half): Why does the case even exist when it can be resolved immediately? The Orb Transfer Agreement states: "I will give the Founder's Orb to the Defiant Dragons if I will come to no harm. Signed: Archie Buff" . Archie Buff did come to harm, so the agreement should be null and void no matter who killed him. Phoenix was being blackmailed into it and Apollo obviously doesn't want to destroy his own case, but why doesn't Mr. Atishon point this out?
  • It was believed that it was meant that it would be null if he was harmed by the Dragons. That's how the judge interpreted it, anyway. At the start, it was believed to be an accident. Also, Atishon isn't the brightest bulb.
  • It's not exactly a stretch to consider the transfer agreement to mean "if I'll come to no harm by the Defiant Dragons". It's just not something you'd bother to put, since it's something that you can interpret by reading between the lines anyway. And "I'll hand over the orb to the Defiant Dragons if I come to no harm by the Defiant Dragons" sounds rather redundant.
  • I’m not an expert in contract law, but I’m fairly certain the terms of a contract only apply to the people who signed it. You can’t enter into a contract that obligates a third party to act (or not act) in a certain way. Ergo, Datz’s promise that Archie Buff would come to no harm would only obligate him and the Defiant Dragons not to harm him.
• Why would Ema need to be there investigating Archie Buff's death if the police just believed it was an accident at the time?
  • The police were likely just having her verify that it was an accident, by searching for any forensic evidence of foul play, or lack thereof to be specific.
• By the end of the game, Armie Buff is still a minor and both her parents are dead. Who's going to look after her?
  • Other family members, perhaps? It's not a big leap in logic to assume that's the case.
  • During the credits, she mentions that her father’s colleagues are letting her accompany them on an archaeological dig in Khura’in. It’s possible, then, that she was taken in by one of them.
• Why didn’t Phoenix tell Apollo the reason he was standing against him in civil court? Especially after Athena accidentally finds out? To my recollection, this is never explained beyond the suggestion that it would’ve over-complicated matters or something, but what does that mean? Where was the harm in just telling Apollo that Maya was being held hostage?
  • The moment Apollo found out he had a little dilemma about what should he do, which he only stepped out of because of Dhurk. It's likely that Phoenix, knowing Apollo, thought it was better to keep things simple for Apollo. Alternatively, maybe the terms of Inga and Atishon were that nobody could know that Maya was kidnapped, which would explain why Phoenix told Athena to not say anything.
  • And Phoenix would know from experience; the last time Apollo was faced with the choice of seeking the truth if it meant turning on one of his friends, it drove him into an emotional crisis that had to be resolved by Phoenix. Conversely, not telling him allows for things to remain professional and impersonal between them, something Apollo fares much better with. Phoenix would also be used to keeping secrets from Apollo by this point, so when faced with something that’s tearing him up on the inside, it’s at least in character for him to hide the details from his subordinates. (Who, as case 3 implies, he basically sees as his kids.)
  • Also, you find out after the trial that Edgeworth had been searching the village for Maya at Phoenix’s request. So Phoenix’s plan was probably similar to in case 2-4: keep the trial going long enough for Maya to be rescued, then resign as Atishon’s lawyer and let Apollo and Dhurke claim the orb. He just got unlucky that Maya was being held in Khura’in, not the States like he’d presumed she was.
• At the start of the case, Dhurke rightfully points out how difficult it would have been for a wanted criminal to get on a plane from Khura’in to come and visit Apollo. If we assume, then, that Maya came back to the States before channeling Dhurke, why didn’t she get in touch with Phoenix first and tell him she wasn’t being held hostage anymore?

Khura’in Half:

• Why did Inga tell Dhurke to come to Amara's tomb? He knew that Dhurke was already dead, and he didn't have Maya as a hostage anymore. Why would he think that Dhurke was still alive without being channeled by Maya, since he was the one who moved his body into the sarcophagus? Why did he think Dhurke would comply? What was his plan?
  • Inga was threatening Dhurke's wife, Amara, and/or his daughter Rayfa.
  • It was never actually confirmed that Inga was the one who moved Dhurke's body. Ga'ran could just as easily have done it. Since Inga ran away after it looked like Dhurke No Selled three bullets to the chest, it's possible he thought Dhurke was still alive.
  • He knew Dhurke was still alive because he talked to Dhurke on the phone. Maybe he did rationalize the fact that it was Maya channeling him but that doesn't really make much difference. The guy he spoke to on the phone had the Founder's Orb and could be black mailed. That's all that mattered. Whether he was alive or dead is of surprisingly little consequence.
  • Inga ran away when Dhurke was still standing after being shot. It's likely either Ga'ran or Amara (under Ga'ran's orders) was the one to hide Dhurke's body.
    • Since Ga’ran wanted Inga out of the way already, it seems doubtful she would’ve gone to the effort of hiding such blatant evidence of his crimes. She could’ve just had him arrested for it; with the Divination Seance, it would’ve been the most cut-and-dry trial for murder in this entire series, allowing her to have him killed or imprisoned for life without getting her hands dirty at all.
  • It is extremely likely that Inga was aware of Dhurke being dead. When he hears Dhurke on the phone, he freaks out in what feels like an overreaction if Inga thought Dhurke'd survived. Additionally, as Inga recovers his composure, he asks Dhurke to meet him at Amara's Tomb alone and hand over the Orb if Dhurke wants to "get Maya Fey back", despite it having been established in that very conversation that Dhurke has Maya hidden in a safe place. This only makes sense if Inga realized Maya was channeling Dhurke.
• So it turns out that Dhurke was being channeled by Maya and Amara. But both of them have long hair while Dhurke's hair is much shorter. What's more, their hair remains the same length after they stopped channeling Dhurke.
  • It's a bit hard to see in the sprite, but it looks like the first person's hair either is or could be tied up in the back, making long hair look much shorter.
    • Based on the image you see of him at the end of the first case, Dhurke does indeed have long hair tied in back.
    • Well, that explains the hair length, but Amara has white hair while Dhurke has black. What about this?
    • She dyed her hair temporarily. There was that bottle of Je Suis Le'Belle on Inga's table, after all.
• How did Dhurke get his clothes when he was channeled by Maya? He couldn't have gotten his blood-soaked clothes from his body.
  • His hideout's not that far away from where he died. It can be assumed he or Maya popped by for a change of clothes.
• How do Civil Cases work in Khura'in? Considering there are no attorneys.
  • They likely didn't take place during Khura'in during that time. You've got to remember that being an attorney and practicing law wasn't actually forbidden or illegal. It was just that the DC Act, and people's attitudes towards attorneys in general, made it a dead profession. Basically no one would have any attorneys to hire, so there'd be no civil cases that would have taken place.
  • The DC Act only applied to the defense or other support of convicted criminals. It wouldn't have applied to civil cases, so perhaps there were still lawyers around who specialized in civil law.
    • This can't be the case. In the epilogue, Rayfa's advertisement says that Apollo's firm takes on services relating to civil law, legal aide, and even private investigations (such as "investigating extramarital affairs" and "legal advise"). He's clearly taking on all legal work as the country's only lawyer, as well as even work outside of legal work. So there must not be any other lawyers of any kind, nor even any private detectives. Not to mention, oddly, an apparent lack of yak milkers given it's also advertised that he'd do yak milking. The DC Act obviously fell a lot more then just defense attorneys, since anyone who defended someone would be covered, so it's entirely possible that it caused a severe lack of much more then just lawyers. Either that, or in the Khura'inese legal system civil trials weren't a thing that existed yet, nor even P.Is, and they're trying to introduce such concepts. Khura'in isn't the most advanced country in the world, after all.
  • Rayfa advertising Apollo’s services was clearly meant to be taken as a joke, not a factual indication of what he would really do.
• In episode 5, Inga's true motivations for wanting the Founder's Orb is never really explored. Everyone accepts that he wanted the power of spirit channeling in order to stage a coup, ignoring how he would never be able to channel any spirit due to his inability to see faces.
  • Maybe Rayfa was right, and he wanted the orb to give her enough spiritual power to take over? Although this might not be entirely motivated by fatherly love as Rayfa thinks, as she is somewhat of a Daddy's Girl and will likely do whatever he says, queen or no.
  • Also, prosopagnosia does not work that way-he could see faces perfectly well, it's just that people with the disorder cannot retain memory of what those faces looked like. All he had to do to get the face was be looking at a picture of the channeled spirit while invoking them.
  • That might be true for real prosopagnosia but the fictionalised kind tends to take it up to 11. We see exactly what Inga views the world as and he sees people as literally being faceless. The only explanation that really makes sense is that he was going to give the power to someone else. Makes one wonder what his relationship with Amara was like since she's the only potential person who could have summoned the Holy Mother for him after Maya was gone.
  • I would consider the fact that the thing we see are his memories. They're his final memories of the incident. So naturally, he didn't retain the memory of the face.
• Why didn't anyone suggest channeling Inga? It wouldn't have blown the case wide open because he didn't see his killer clearly but it would have been very useful testimony for the defense when claiming he'd been killed and went to the tomb a second time.
  • At the time the only Spirit Mediums they knew about were Maya, who was in the hospital, Pearl, who was back home, and Ga'ran. Maya can't, Pearl isn't there, and it’s kinda doubtful Ga'ran would consent to do it (ignoring the fact she doesn't have powers).
  • Keep in mind what Rayfa testified - that Inga seemed to be in a hurry, apparently because he thought the whole matter of him dying was a nightmare. I doubt it would have helped.
• So, Dhurke was blackmailed by Inga because he still had someone precious to him, by the end of the game we know it probably refers to Amara or Rayfa. However the game pretty quickly confirms that is not Nayuta they're talking about, as the player would likely assume. When and why is this established? I find it altogether possible that Inga would threaten Nayuta and Dhurke would care enough to do something about it.
  • The game specifies that the "someone precious" has spiritual power.
  • Also, Nahyuta is not being held under the watch of the royal family at all times like Amara is. And everyone thinks that Amara is dead, so Inga could conceivably get away with doing something to harm her.
• So why didn't Amara reveal to the public that she was alive and overthrow Ga'ran in the nine months it took for Rayfa to gestate? Before then she wouldn't because she thought Dhurke was a legit terrorist and after Rayfa was a hostage but in the pretty lengthy time in between, I see no reason why they couldn't have made a very noteworthy attempt of overthrowing Ga'ran. Unless of course Dhurke isn't really as into revolution as he seemed back then and was completely satisfied playing family.
  • Because Amara had no proof that Dhurke hadn’t tried to assassinate her or that Ga’ran was evil. If she were to try to overthrow Ga’ran, as far as she knows, it would put her in the crosshairs of another assassination attempt or reflect poorly on her because it would look like she’d been brainwashed by Dhurke — who was still a criminal to the kingdom at large.
• If the Channeling for the foreign royal happened at 2, and the murder happened at 2 then how did Alhbi manage to both be in the palace to snap the photograph and in the Baazar to encounter Datz fire cracker?
  • The times are rounded, none of those things necessarily happened EXACTLY at 2. The murder happened while Datz and Alhbi interacted, then his dog fled and he entered the palace after him, seeing the end of the Channeling ritual (notice how the dead person is not being channeled anymore at that point) and taking a picture. So, it logically follows that the murder happened while the Channeling ritual was happening.
• Why didn't Ga'ran just have Apollo, Phoenix, and Nahyuta executed on the spot when she was challenged to prove she could channel spirits before going into her breakdown? Like, something like "Very well. I will demonstrate my powers. But before I do, please dispose of these loathsome lawyers who would dare threaten the crown." If she knew she couldn't do it, why not pull a Taking You with Me on her opponents? And please don't say "so the story can have a happy ending".
  • Since her right to rule, and thus give the guards orders, was in question, they couldn't have followed that order until she'd provided proof.
  • It's also possible that Ga'ran became so delusional that she convinced herself she really could do it. She seems surprised when she can't channel the Holy Mother, even telling the guards things like no wait, this is just a practice run, the real channeling begins now! It would fit with what happens later, as Nahyuta mentions that Ga'ran has deluded herself into believing she is the Holy Mother.
  • The person with the crown is not the one in charge. The people with the guns are. And at that moment in time the people with the guns were really eager to finally see Ga'ran do the thing that made them such massive fanboys of her in the first place.
  • In other words, Apollo did a Batman Gambit on the royal guard. And it worked.
  • Indeed, he specifically calls out the royal guard with the question of whether their loyalty to Ga’ran is unfounded.
  • Also, just imagine how the original suggestion would’ve played out in court. “Royal guard! I want you to brutally execute these lawyers in front of everyone before I go about proving I don’t have the authority to command you and that everything I’ve been accused of is completely true!” You don’t see that reflecting abysmally on her in any way? It would basically be three counts of premeditated murder once the truth came out, whereas if she confesses right away she’ll only be charged for the murder of her husband, who was planning to stab her in the back as it was. (Recall that you never find conclusive evidence proving she killed Apollo’s father, so that charge probably isn’t going to stick.) No matter what punishment she had coming, cutting her losses early on was infinitely preferable to adding three more bodies to the pile and then cutting her losses anyway.
• How is Mr. Inga's Divination Seance even possible? Every time a Divination Seance is performed by Princess Rayfa, she explicitly states "Guide the victim's soul to me! So that we may receive their final memories in the Pool of Souls!" It's also stated sometime in Case 3 that the deceased's train of thought is cut off at the point of death, so under normal conditions here this would make sense. However, Mr. Inga was channeled after being murdered for a short time, believing the whole thing to be a nightmare and walking to Amara's Tomb so he isn't late. By that point when he is forced out by Queen Amara, those should be his last known memories since to a channeled deceased person, no gap of time is experienced between death and channeling, allowing the train of thought to continue (as also explained in Case 3.)
  • The Divination Seánce is just a lesser form of spirit channeling. It’s easy to surmise that “final memories” can just be taken to mean “last memories before death”.
• Also from Inga's Divination Seance: Why does it show "Dhurke" without a face? Prosopagnosia doesn't work that way. It makes it impossible to differentiate between faces because everyone's faces look the same, not that it shows no face at all.
  • As was stated earlier in this page, this is Inga's last memories, so a cognitive disorder that makes it impossible to differentiate or recognise familiar faces would likely make his memory incapable of storing it. That's not to say he can't see the face though.
    • Also, it might make sense for purposes of the Divination Seance if you consider that showing a face, however bland or ordinary wouldn't really get the point across. If there were more than one person present in Mr. Inga's vision, like say he was in a crowd of people then it would make sense as that would look very strange. Here however it would serve to explain nothing as there's nothing to compare the oddity with, so no face is shown to give the notion that he can't see who it really is.
  • Remember what happened in the third case: Zehlot heard the Steel Samurai theme from Maya’s watch in the moments before his death, but it was misidentified as the Plumed Punisher theme when his memories of the event were being looked over. That’s because he had never heard the Steel Samurai theme before, so the memories reflected his incorrect assumption that what he heard was the Plumed Punisher theme. The séances do not show what happened at the time of death, only the victim’s memories (and therefore their perception) of what happened.
• How did Athena miss the face-blindness? The moment Phoenix found the notes about people's appearances, it should have been obvious. Psychology and the workings of the human mind are supposed to be her go-to strong suit. So how'd she miss something as odd as a notepad full of descriptions of people you've met?
  • Because seeing someone's notpad of people's descriptions and going "he must have face-blindness" is a complete Bat Deduction and would have been completely out of nowhere. There's no way to know what the descriptions are actually for and there's many possibilities for what Inga could have actually had such a thing for. It's not until it's shown in court that he has face-blindness that they actually become proof of such a thing. For all we know, Athena might have considered face-blindness as a possibility, but before there's any other more definitive proof showing he has face-blindness (as eventually came in the form of the seance visions) there's just way too many possibilities for why those descriptions exist.
  • Did she even get a chance to examine that piece of evidence? It was picked up by Phoenix and Edgeworth while Athena and Apollo were investigating the tomb. Even if she would come to the right conclusion (which wouldn't be obvious to people unaware that it's a scripted story) from a narrative perspective it would interrupt the entire flow for Athena to suddenly go "Hey, I was just looking at the evidence while everyone was busy talking and I think I have a crazy theory that might explain something."
  • Not to mention, Athena had never even met Inga before. Psychologically speaking, she can’t just diagnose someone with a mental disorder based on one piece of evidence without having the chance to talk to them about it. For all she knows, Inga having face-blindness could’ve been easily disproven by those who were close to him, or it was something everyone already knew, so she didn’t see the point in bringing it up. It makes more sense for Phoenix to piece it together since he saw how Inga had been studying his appearance when they first met, then failed to recognize him later until he took note of things like his hairstyle and blue suit, the same information listed in the notebook.
• Why did nobody ever actually get around to channeling the Holy Mother in the end? I mean, they finally know how to fulfill the biggest prophesy of their religion. Why leave that dangling out there? Rayfa needs power to become the new queen. Apollo's the one who actually solved the riddle and can still benefit from it. Dr. Buff solved it originally, but he's dead now; maybe Armie should get the power. But somebody needs to try channeling that woman!
  • Because the way the story ends negates the need for someone to channel the founder. Rayfa already has the spiritual power she needs to become queen; she’s just not practiced enough to be able to channel spirits. Also, the only spirit medium who knows the founder’s name is Amara, who couldn’t have channeled her because she was in the hospital after being shot.
• As is discussed in the final case, the wording of the defense culpability act is so ridiculously vague that it could cover absolutely anyone who remotely protests the guilt of someone who's then proven to be guilty. It's so broad in fact that it even covers those who aren't doing so on purpose. Let's look at the exact wording here though: "Those who would support criminals will be deemed just as guilty." It refers to supporting a criminal, not the accused. Which would cover anyone who's proven to committed a crime. This considered, there were multiple times when various people should have fallen under the DC Act but for some reason didn't: Ahlbi protests against Rohl being a thief. Payne protests against Andistan'dhin's guilt, and also falls under it by prosecuting the wrong person. The entire courtroom, including the Judge and Nahyuta, protests against Inmee being a rebel. Under the law's wording Rayfa's also guilty of providing insights that point towards the wrong culprit countless times. There's also Amara, who also provided false testimony and therefore "supported" Ga'ran, but who the game completely ignores in regards to the fact she'd get convicted for such a thing.
  • They choose to ignore various things so long as it favors them. Rohl was never convicted and punished, thus he was never really guilty, the same goes for Inmee. There's no evidence that Payne WASN'T deemed just as guilty as Andistan'dhin, Rayfa is their priestess so they choose to ignore it when it comes to her, and I don't believe that, even with that awful wording, her insights can be deemed as supporting criminals, there has been nothing suggesting that prosecuting the wrong person counts as "supporting criminals", and the law was overturned after Ga'ran was found guilty, since she had no claim to the throne and, as a result, any and all of the laws she made were null and void, so Amara was spared.
    • Ga'ran being found guilty would presumably make her no longer the queen even if it hadn't been proven that she didn't have the right to be queen in the first place. Rayfa would then take the place, and would presumably not want Amara to be executed and would probably pardon Amara or at least give her a lighter sentence for her role in the coverup.
  • It might be a case of Can't Kill You, Still Need You. While yes, it's certainly a point that Amara should be found guilty under the DC Act it just simply isn't convenient for Ga'ran, hence why she never points it out. She still needs Amara for spirit channelling so she can keep up the façade of claiming right to the throne, not to mention she needs her to channel the Holy Mother and gain spiritual power. As for why nobody else will point it out, they are simply not thinking about it. Moreso when the Ga'ran writes up a law of "threat to the throne" and threatens them with execution. Why should anyone think to bring up that point, especially when the said person to fall under it would be their former Queen, one who's remembered as being "the Holy Mother reincarnated"? As we've seen in Khura'in, the people don't take kindly to the blame being pointed at royalty or highly respected positions in their kingdom.
    
    For that matter, do we even see royalty be subject to the DC Act? Nobody in the royal family seems to fall under it. Perhaps royalty in Khura'in just has immunity to their own laws.
    • Yes, the law is completely arbitrary and deliberately worded so the prosecution can point to anyone they want and say they're guilty. It's been brought up with the protesters, who are all going to be charged with supporting Dhurke if he's found guilty. It's already been established at that point, and Ga'ran using it as a weapon to hold Nahyuta hostage is obvious as just that - abusing her power and the horrible law to take a hostage. She could also do that to Amara and any number of people present, but she doesn't have a reason to, and as long as she doesn't, nobody else will, so there's no need to bring it up.
  • If I had to guess, whether a person is a "criminal" or not depends on nothing more than perception by law enforcement and the public. They might excuse the royal family and law enforcement because they're just doing their jobs and they can make mistakes, but a defence attorney willingly and knowingly takes the side of someone who is perceived as a criminal. They know they're siding with someone who is seen as a criminal, and if they fail to prove the person ISN'T a criminal, then they're guilty of aiding and abetting a criminal by trying to get them off the hook. Members of the Defiant Dragons know they're siding with perceived criminal Dhurke. Ga'ran and Amara were never viewed as criminals while people were siding with them, so siding with them was never an issue. With the DCA, it never mattered if a person really WAS guilty or not- the people had decided they were and anyone who tried to defend them, knowing they were seen as criminals, was seen as a criminal as well. Ahlbi and Payne weren't siding with people who were seen as criminals by the public and the judge yet. They were siding with a victim and a witness, not criminals. Even though they turned out to BE criminals, and once they were found out and widely believed to be criminals, people who sided with them stopped siding with them. Ergo, they weren't guilty under the DCA. It appears that to be guilty under the DCA, then you would be siding with someone the public perceives as guilty at that time you side with them. If you renounce your support when they're found out to be a criminal, then you get off. This is also why prosecutors can't be found guilty of siding with criminals, even though Payne and Sadhmadi technically did when the real killers were witnesses. At the time they were supporting the witness, the witness was not seen as a criminal, thus the prosecutors were not knowingly and willingly supporting a criminal. That's my guess, and it seems to make a lot of sense. Khura'in seems to run on how things are seen- the Divination Seances, the immediate disdain for attorneys that make the von Karmas look positively accepting, the scorn for anyone accused of a crime...
    • In Rayfa's case, Phoenix points out that her Insights are jut another piece of evidence that can be interpreted, so she isn't guilty of supporting any criminals, even if she's convinced that the defendant is guilty and unknowingly impedes the efforts to find the true culprit. Nahyuta, however, gave false testimony(which is, in and of itself, a crime) in order to prevent Ga'ran from being found guilty, so he's more obviously guilty of supporting a criminal.
  • It’s likely that anyone charged with supporting a criminal has to have done so knowingly, which is why it doesn’t apply to Rayfa or the prosecutors. Nahyuta had to have suspected that Ga’ran was the true culprit and specifically gave false testimony in the interest of protecting her, even though she had forced his hand. Amara was guilty of the same, but Ga’ran wouldn’t have brought her up for a few reasons: 1.) She’s trying to force Apollo to back down from indicting her, and he doesn’t have the same consideration for Amara that he does for Nahyuta. 2.) Amara is already in the hospital with a 50/50 chance of surviving her wound. 3.) Ga’ran would still need Amara to channel spirits for her. 4.) Amara is clearly beloved by the people of Khura’in, so there’s a good chance no one would be willing to administer punishment on her anyway.
• If Ga'ran can just rewrite any law she wants, what's stopping her from writing...well, literally anything she wants? The game seems to show that she can write anything and it'll become the law on the spot by her sovereign power. She can also alter any law she wants to there and then as well. For example, she changes the law so that a seance taking place is optional, but she could have easy changed it to something far better for her cause. It didn't even have to be something damaging to the visions taking place in the future. She could have just made a law like "If Her Eminence says a seance shouldn't be performed, then it is so", or something along those lines.
  • By this point Ga'ran is panicking and flustered. Everything she's done up until court has been meticulously planned out, and all the holes Apollo is punching in her logic is making her more and more desperate. She was on the spot and trying to save her hide right that second, she wasn't concerned with how her new laws would affect the future. In the end, any way she could have re-written the law wouldn't have stopped the bombshell that she had no spiritual power, and thus no authority.
  • She's not omnipotent. She's a Queen, not a Goddess. If she simply writes a law saying “I win”, then the people, who are already on the verge of rebellion, won't be satisfied. The whole point of the Trial from Ga'ran's perspective is to definitively prove that the rebellion is unjustified. Abusing her powers too much would be political suicide (though she still tries to do so at the end).
  • In the case of Inga's seance, she may have seen it as a win-win for herself: either Apollo backs down and is unable to move the case forward, or Apollo pushes for the seance and then it turns out to implicate Dhurke. Either way, it looks like Apollo's idea.
  • Don’t forget that Ga’ran used to be a prosecutor before she became queen. She’s confident enough in her ability to prove her case without needing to rely on changing the laws because she’s done it before. On top of that, she has both Amara and Nahyuta who can take the fall for her in the event that things got that bad.
• In the Ku'rain half of the episode we initially believe that Dhurke entered the tomb, Inga fired his 4-round gun dry, and the other three bullets are unaccounted for. We later learn that Dhurke was shot and killed a few days before the trade was to even take place. So then we're supposed to believe that even though a few days had passed since Dhurke's actual death that Inga NEVER reloaded that gun? He showed he was more than willing to use deadly force, and yet he brought an empty gun to another meeting with Dhurke? Only one bullet was found in the tomb, so that rules out Inga reloading and firing another clip empty. And in the seance vision it was just an empty threat then, to raise his gun to Dhurke as Inga lay dying.
  • He could have had some bullets with him at the time, but because Ga'ran killed him way before the agreed time of exchange, he never had the chance to reload.
    • To add to the above, he honestly wasn't expecting anyone to show up at the time of his death. Probably still shaken after seeing Dhurke seemingly No-Sell his bullets and talking over the phone with him; his final moments suggest he was mulling the situation over. Anyway his gun would've been left with his body after being channelled, so it would be reasonable that he would've been looking for it to get ready for the meeting, only to be frustrated and either bring another gun or believe that he left it at the tomb. He wouldn't have had a chance to reload then either, as he's channeled out as soon as he enters.
    • It's possible that he DID reload his gun at some point, but the morning of the murder Ga'ran unloaded it. As his wife, it's likely she knew enough about his daily routine to know when he'd leave his gun unattended, or even snuck into his room during the night while he slept and unloaded it. She's certainly very stealthy, as shown in Inga's seance where she managed to enter the tomb, close the door, and get within stabbing distance of him without him noticing.
  • Ema mentions during the investigation that the gun that Inga had was broken and incapable of firing anything, and you can hear it break after he uses it to kill Dhurke in the flashback. It’s likely that he replaced the gun at some point, but then Ga’ran swapped it back in so that he wouldn’t be able to shoot her when she posed as Dhurke in front of him.
• Maya claims she could not have possibly channeled Inga, even if she had known his true name, because her hands weren't free and thus couldn't make the needed pose with her hands. Yet she was able to channel Dhurke despite being tied up still. So she had to have been lying about the special pose, or she could still make the needed sign with her hands still tied.
  • She could've lied about her hands needing to be free, as she knew she didn't channel him (since she was channeling Dhurke at the time) and wanted to get Apollo off the wrong track.
• At the end of the game Ga'ran is deposed as ruler because it's proven she had no spiritual power. Rayfa is made the next queen, but as she cannot yet channel spirits and is too young Nahyuta is made acting ruler until she is ready. My question is, why her? I know Queen Amara was fine stepping down from the throne and had other ambitions, but I assumed she would take up the position again for the sake of her people until the time came when Rayfa was ready.
  • Amara still lied to her people about her supposed death, and for all intents and purposes, she was Ga'ran's accomplice. For a country that is attempting to reform its law system, it's probably for the best that it gets ruled by cleaner people.
  • Alternatively, Amara abdicating in favor of her sister or the fact that she faked her death and/or was an accomplice to murder could've rendered her permanently ineligible for the throne, leaving Rayfa, her daughter, as the one with the best claim to be queen.
  • On top of that, pressing some of Amara’s testimony has her reveal that she doesn’t want to be queen anymore after spending so long as a servant. It’s possible she chose to appoint Nahyuta as Rayfa’s regent once news of the trial’s verdict reached her.
• Why was Amara okay with letting Ga’ran assume the throne at all? Even if she thought she herself would have benefited from going into hiding, surely she's aware of her country's bylaws and mandate of succession. She legally cannot give the crown to someone who can't channel spirits and is well aware her sister isn't able to do so since she's obviously standing in for her whenever it has to be done but still does it anyway? If they're found out everything would go to pieces and her intent to stay obscured behind her sister would have been rendered meaningless.

  • As Amara explains during the trial, she had no reason not to trust Ga’ran initially, as her assumption was that Dhurke was responsible for the assassination attempt. After Dhurke rescued her and Ga’ran subsequently recaptured her, she was having Rayfa’s well-being dangled over her head to keep her in line, in addition to her slightly-lessened but still present doubts about Dhurke’s innocence.

• Public support for the revolution may have grown, but Datz was still a rebel. And yet he was just casually hanging out at the courthouse? He dropped off the founders orb to Apollo, and then laughed about the way he freaked out Ahlbi and Shah'do in court, right in front of the queen. The judge even addresses him by name. Yet no one does anything to try and lock him up, only telling him to shut up for interrupting the trial. I suppose, as the regime was looking for a mass death sentence should Apollo lose, that it seemed a waste of effort given Datz had escaped before. Just something that bugged me, as they had locked up all the other nameless rebels.
  • Did you ever wonder why Inga needed the secret police to arrest the rebels, and lock them up in the mountain prison without a trial? Yeah, it's sorta because he has nothing to arrest them for because they haven't technically done anything illegal.
  • When Datz returns the orb to Apollo before the trial, he said he spent the night in police custody before being let go that morning. If the police had had any grounds to arrest him during the trial, then he wouldn’t have been released in the first place.
• It's revealed that Rayfa is Dhurke's daughter, and Nahyuta wanted to keep it secret because in Ku'rain they're big on the "sins of the father" thing. With Dhurke cleared of murder/assassination and the DC act repealed, Rayfa can now hold her head up high, as her father is no longer a criminal, so no stain would be on her own name now if her parentage got out. My question is, does the repealing of the DC act negate EVERYTHING Dhurke did? Dhurke did mention breaking countless rebels out of prison. "Breaking a criminal out of jail is a crime. However, because the DC act is negated those people aren't actual criminals but just civilians so technically he was just freeing innocents." I mean, is that kind of retroactive wordplay enough? Same with openly theatening to topple the Ga'ran regime. "Well, Ga'ran really WAS a jerk who had no right to rule in the first place, so that's okay."
  • Keep in mind that we’re talking about public perception of Dhurke’s criminality, not strict legal culpability. No one is going to hold it against Rayfa that her father organized the jailbreak of people who were arrested under doubly false pretenses or that he sought to overthrow a monarch who had assumed the throne in violation of their most sacred laws.
• When exactly did we learn Jove Justice's real name?
  • They probably looked up his stage name in America, traced him back to any number of venues that had hosted him in the past, and asked if any of them still had his contract on file, which would have his full legal name.
  • Datz first brings up his stage name Jangly Justice during the investigation in Khura'in. He says that at first all they knew was his stage name, but that Dhurke searched high and low for the following years to find the little info he managed to along with the photo. They never explain specifically how Dhurke found out his name. It's just chalked up to "he found it out at some point".
• If the law says that a Divination Séance must be performed in a murder trial, then how did Dhurke's trial for Amara's "death" happen? Was the law different back then? And if Ga'ran, being the queen, made an excuse for not doing it, wouldn't Dhurke suspect something?
  • The law was probably not in place.
  • Alternatively, because Ga'ran was out for Dhurke's blood she decided a Divination Séance was not necessary to implicate him in Amara's murder. IIRC, she was the new queen at the time of the trial so her decision was probably unquestionable back then.
  • It’s mentioned (and corroborated by Jove Justice’s seance) that Amara was drugged with something to knock her out when the fire was set. Ga’ran could have “attempted” a seance for her sister, and argued when it failed that Amara had no final memories because she was unconscious in the moments before her death. Or she pulled a Rayfa by claiming she was too distraught to hold a seance for her dearly departed sister.
• What exactly was Ga'ran's plan at the end supposed to be? She was about to shoot innocent, unarmed, non-violent men to death for accusing her of a crime that at that point, she wasn't even disputing he didn't actually commit? Plus she was using her own laws to basically use an unjust death to coerce people's hands as well. How in he world did she think she'd possibly get away with something like that, without a massive hailstorm being raised? I know she was desperate at that point, but even if she actually did go through with executing everyone, her reputation would have been damaged beyond repair anyway.
  • Sanity Slippage — Ga'ran spent the last leg of the trial going insane from stress and suppressed panic. Her failed attempt to channel was just the last straw; she literally believes herself to be the Holy Mother now.
• Why didn't Apollo have Maya channel Amara to prove she's not dead? Maya's credibility as a spirit medium has already been established in Khura'in, and Maya's been there long enough to know of the previous Queen and her full name, which I highly doubt is as ridiculously long as Inga's. Even if he didn't know Ga'ran couldn't channel spirits, she likely wouldn't cooperate—As Queen, she had every right not to, but a friend like Maya would've been more than happy to oblige. Apollo could've just given Maya the picture of Amara and if Amara isn't channeled, that means she's not dead. Yet, Apollo decided to take the long route explaining the picture, what gives?
  • Did you miss the part where Apollo did ask Ga’ran to channel Amara? The climax of his argument in court is to challenge Ga’ran to channel her to prove she’s really dead; Ga’ran balks immediately and then confesses that Nayna is indeed Amara. Her reaction also foreshadows the fact that she can’t channel spirits, since she refuses to try it even when there’s already a reason for it not to work.
• So why is Dhurke being put on trial for the murder of Inga? Inga stole the country’s most precious treasures, planned a coup, and had a hostage he could kill any second. It seems like a good justification for Dhurke to use lethal force to stop Inga. I know why the Queen would want to arrest him because he's the rebal leader but why not charge him with all the other stuff he was framed for like killing the former queen?
  • Because Dhurke doesn't have the authority to kill people he deems a threat to the country. The royal guard were all ready to storm the tomb and apprehend Inga themselves, but Dhurke told them to hold off until he got Maya out safely in order to minimize the risk of further bloodshed. The only thing that might give him cause to use lethal force is if Inga were to threaten Maya directly — but the crime scene and Inga’s seance both made it look like Dhurke surprise killed him from behind... Not something he would have the right to do after foregoing police intervention.
• How in the world was Trucy actually successful at stowing away in a suitcase in order to illegally enter Khura'in? There's absolutely no way that would work, given how strict customs are in this day and age, in any country.
  • The same way Dhurke got into the country? There's an entire plot point about Miles somehow finagling his way into bypassing customs altogether. If a rebel leader and a wanted criminal can make his way all the way to the royal residence without being caught, so can a teenage girl hiding (in a suitcase or otherwise).
  • Remember what was established in the fourth game; prosecutors have special privileges that allow their belongings to bypass customs inspection, no matter how strict. That’s how the culprit in 4-3 was able to smuggle an illegal cocoon out of Borginia, by hiding it inside Gavin’s guitar.
• Regarding one of the bad endings: If Apollo fails to indict Ga'ran, he and Nahyuta are forced to escape the court, and they go underground to avoid her agents and continue the revolution. They can somehow manage this even while being held at gunpoint by the Ga'ran Royal Guard.
  • Since Apollo had proven Dhurke's innocence in both murder cases, there was technically nothing Ga'ran could do if he decided to not indict her so they never had to flee from the court. After all, the revised law only meant that if they went through with indicting her, they would be charged with the crime of threatening the crown and immediately executed. But seeing as Apollo had the Founder's Orb, she likely had no choice but to send some assassins out to get him out of the way and recover the artifact. This is why Apollo and Nahyuta had to flee underground.
• Ga'ran never had any claim to the crown, because she had no spiritual power. The Founder's Orb—which all members of the royal family have access to—grants spiritual power. When she usurped the throne, she proceeded to sit on it for 23 years, twiddling her long-nailed thumbs, and then go after the Orb. This is probably the riskiest Evil Plan in the entire franchise.
  • But it's much more than that. She needed to figure out the orb's riddle. Trying to steal it before figuring it out wouldn't work, because then there'd be a massive investigation and she has the chance of being found out.
  • I think you missed something: the Founder's Orb was only discovered 8 years prior to the start of the game, and was very publicly revealed to the country before the royals had it stored away under the guard of the Head Monk and the guard. So Ga'ran's plan, originally, was to rule illegitmately with Amara performing the channeling duties in secret. It was only after the Orb was discovered did she realize that the Orb could potentially grant her actual spiritual power, but she couldn't risk doing it since Amara would be the only person who could channel the Holy Mother and it could disrupt the status quo. It was Inga, who eventually learned of Kurain Village (and more specifically, Maya when she came to Khura'in for training), be the one to start planning to use the Orb to usurp Ga'ran, but it wasn't until he got a Head Monk he could bribe/threaten with Pees'lubun who was able to get him the Orb to smuggle out of the country.
• Dhurke knew and was friends with Apollo's dad. So why then did he never tell Apollo who his parents were? It feels odd he never mentioned that Apollo's mom was a member of a famous group of magicians. I get that its because this idea didn't exist when writing AJ, but it feels odd in universe for Dhurke to have kept silent about this.
  • Did Dhurke even know that much about Thalassa? In fact, did Thalassa even go to Khura'in? I can't remember, since it's been a while since I've played SOJ. But from what I can remember, Dhurke says that he was friends with Jove, but doesn't seem to imply that even knew Thalassa. I mean, yeah, you'd expect that Jove would've at least brought his wife up at some point and told him about her in casual conversation, but a casual conversation like that may not have held in Dhurke's memory. It's possible that Dhurke just never knew Thalassa enough to remember anything about her, other then the fact that she couldn't be located after the incident.
  • Datz specifically mentions that the country was in such turmoil that no one was able to find Thalassa and she wasn't able to find out any information about Jove other than the fact that he died in the fire, presumably with Apollo. So they searched for her for a bit amidst the chaos until they came to the conclusion that she left the country thinking her whole family was dead. Afterwards, they couldn't do a complete search since Dhurke was declared the killer and went on the run with Nahyuta and Apollo.
  • Datz tells Apollo that Dhurke became fast friends with Jove and invited him to Amara’s residence within a short time frame. It’s said that he knew Apollo’s mother was also in Khura’in at the time, but that she had been off doing something else that day, so Dhurke didn’t get a chance to meet her. Since all of Jove’s belongings were destroyed in the fire, they didn’t have any way of finding out who or where Thalassa was.
• When you talk about Thalassa being Apollo's mother in "Turnabout Succession", it's said that his father 'died on stage', which makes it seem like they witnessed him dying. And yet in "Turnabout Revolution" we see that he actually died in Amara's house, trying to save his son.
  • The only character who says Jove died on stage is Spark Brushel, who’s undoubtedly going off of secondhand information, presumably from Zak, who got it from Thalassa, who got it from a Khura’inese newspaper. The true story could’ve been misconstrued just about anywhere along that chain.
• Towards the end, it's treated like Amara wouldn't reassume the throne once her sister was deposed (with Rayfa becoming the queen in title and Nahyuta becoming a regent until she's of age/can channel spirits) but since Ga'ran never had any legitimacy in the first place, wouldn't that also nullify Amara's abdication and she would just become reigning queen again (considering Ga'ran would become a Persona Non Grata in the royal lineage, thus meaning Amara abdicated to no one)?
  • Even if we're to go with the fact that Amara's still the last legitimate queen ever since Ga'ran's illegitimacy was exposed, she could still abdicate the throne to Rayfa. Though the rules of being Ku'rain's Queen require her to be able to perform spirit channeling, Amara could have easily changed the rules to allow the heir-in-training to rule while the previous queen performed that technique. Unlike Ga'ran's rule changing, it would've been legal too.
• I might have failed to notice an explanation somewhere, but how is it that Dhurke-as-channelled-by-Maya has no bloodstains on his clothes? He may not be in his real body, but the clothes he's wearing are stated to be the same ones he died in, and when Dhurke's body is found (with clothing now restored) there's blood on his chest from the attack that killed him.
  • It's never explicitly explained, but it's pretty easy to think that Dhurke-as-channelled-by-Maya stopped by his office or one of his fellow rebels to get a change of clothes.
  • The easiest explanation would be that Dhurke had multiple sets of his own clothes. Amara had been channeling Dhurke while wearing what seemed to be his clothes, and Ema took a photo of Dhurke's body while he still had them as well. Dhurke-as-channeled-by-Amara had no time to get back to the Tomb and put the clothes back, so she had to have been wearing an identical set of clothes, and so did Maya.
• So, how did Apollo end up with his Bracelet? During Jove's Seánce, he was clearly not carrying it, Thalassa assumed both perished to the fire and no one outside of Troupe Gramarye knew of the Bracelet's significance.
  • We know that Thalassa was the original owner of the bracelet, and that there was a period of time when she was away from the Troupe Gramarye with Jove, upon which she was only wearing one bracelet, the other given to Apollo. It was likely on his person somehow (but not visible to Jove), since there was little to nothing left from the arson. The alternative is that either Dhurke or someone else was holding onto or found it, and handed it to Apollo as Jove's next of kin.
  • The likeliest assumption is that Jove wrapped the bracelet with Apollo in his baby blankets to ensure it wouldn’t get lost in the fire like all his other identifying information.
  • It’s also possible that the writers forgot that Apollo’s bracelet was supposed to have come from Thalassa. The game never mentions that his Perceive ability traces back to the Gramaryes, and Trucy never mentions or uses her ability either. (Apart from her noticing Retinz’s sleight of hand with his video camera, but that could be chalked up to her familiarity with stage magic.) And Dhurke never brings up the bracelet when talking about how Jove’s belongings were burnt to ashes, when you’d think that finding it wrapped in Apollo’s baby blankets would’ve made it worth mentioning. The only thing in the game that hints at the bracelet’s significance is that Apollo wore it in that childhood photo even though it was clearly too big for his wrist back then.
• Why didn't Athena ever jump in to help Phoenix and Apollo? There were several highly emotional testimonies where therapy might have helped, and she's not a coward at all. It just feels odd she would be so willing to let her two closest friends get executed when she herself must have noticed some emotions that would be helpful to solving the case.
  • During the wrap-up of the case in the Denfendant's Lobby, Athena says that she had to physically restrain Maya from intervening in the trial. Maya responds by saying that she had to restrain Athena. So it's not that Athena didn't want to do something, it's that she was prevented from doing anything (and vice versa).
  • They explain this before the start of trial. Phoenix wasn’t willing to put Athena in jeopardy due to the DC Act, compounded by Simon threatening to use him for sword practice if he let any harm come to her. If Athena had tried to jump in, Phoenix would just insist that she wasn’t involved with the case and ask to have her removed from the courtroom. He would not have let her stand with him and Apollo, no matter how helpful she might have been. Not to mention, the trial had tigger security than usual due to the insurgents, which would’ve made it difficult for her to jump in to begin with.
• Why did it take so long for Dhurke to find information about Apollo's father, only to get the name and a single photo? Dhurke might only know Jove's stage name, but he was famous enough to be a guest star for Troupe Gramarye, and to give a private performance in the Khura'in Royal Residence. You'd think there would be more information about "Jangly Justice"...
  • If Jove were that renowned as a performer, it seems Trucy would’ve found out about him through her family connections long before the events of this game. He was just a traveling minstrel, and apparently quite young, at that. Probably not someone you could just look up on the internet. If anything, it’s extremely remarkable that Dhurke was able to track down the random European tourists who just happened to have taken Jove’s only known photograph.
  • Also, Jove didn’t perform for the royal family because he was famous, he got to do that because he was a Nice Guy who easily formed a rapport with Dhurke, who then invited him over to play a few songs. He probably got to play with the Garmaryes by those same merits.
• So Nahyuta has been pretending to be an evil prosecutor in Khura'in because Ga'ran would hurt Amara and Rayfa... but why does he keep that facade abroad, even when out of court? Unless Ga'ran has been keeping very close tabs on him when he's out of the country (which is plausible, but it's not explained nor shown), nothing is stopping Nahyuta from, say, have a private chat with Apollo about the situation at hand.
  • Probably the same reason Batman still talks in the Batman voice while completely alone in the Nolan movies: you don't want to risk slipping up and blowing your cover, so it's just best to assume caution at all times. Otherwise you could wind up exposing yourself accidentally. If Nahyuta's personality suddenly takes a shift because he's feeling hopeful rather than simply resigned it could make Ga'ran suspicious that he's planning something, and that's a risk too big to take. It's just for the best to assume someone is watching at all times and keep everything inside so as not to provoke the blackmailer.
  • Inga managed to recruit Paul Atishon-Wimperson to help him retrieve the Founder's Orb. It's not too implausible to suspect that Ga'ran has spies in other nations.
  • Also, Nahyuta isn’t as cutthroat in case 2 as he is in the other cases. He may throw a few childish insults at Apollo, but he does concede to some of his arguments and admonish witnesses for lying on the stand, which he almost never does in Khura’in. And his haughty behavior in case 4 is because he thinks Athena is a child who doesn’t belong in court, which could well be his personal feelings rather than anything Ga’ran is forcing on him. Therefore, it’s possible that he is getting to show more of his true personality when not in his home country, but he has to maintain some minimal semblance of hostility to keep up the act.
• So we find out that Dhurke befriended Apollo’s father and invited him over within a short time frame when Thalassa wasn’t around, thus explaining why she couldn’t find Apollo after the fire. But if the suggestion that Thalassa learned of the fire from the newspapers is true… Well, wouldn’t one of the papers have mentioned the infant son of the musician who had survived? Jove was the fire’s only casualty, and Dhurke knew Apollo was his son. Why wouldn’t he have let that go to press?
  • Initially, he was kinda busy getting prosecuted for the alleged assassination of the queen, you know. He was detained and thought he could win the case by following legal procedures, which he actually did (and it took quite some time, I'm sure), but Ga'ran accused him of forging evidence and that's when he became a rebel. After that, according to Datz, he searched high and low for Thalassa. We know how meticulous Dhurke is thanks to him finding that photo of Jove. If he never found Thalassa, it's safe to assume she was out of the country by then. It's explicitly said that the assassination of Amara plunged the kingdom into chaos, so it was possible tourists were extensively searched and deported, too. And for all we know, Dhurke's search might have very well involved him addressing Thalassa through the newspapers, only it was too late by then. Or it might not have, since he was on the run with Apollo and wanted to protect him from the regime.
  • It’s also possible that Thalassa was pressured to leave Khura’in before the full story was reported on, perhaps spurred on by some insistence from Magnifi back home. If you do the math, she would have been around 18 years old at the time of the fire, which is awfully young to have found her way in a country tossed into chaos by herself. Additionally, the fact that Amara’s assassination report doesn’t mention the baby and that everyone is so shocked to learn that Apollo is Jove’s son (even Ga’ran, who must’ve seen Apollo when she killed Jove) implies that his presence during and survival of the fire was never very common knowledge.
  • What’s more, Dhurke only would’ve had a limited time to get in touch with Thalassa before she lost her memory in the botched shootout trick. It’s possible once he had the revolution going that he had agents of his go and search for Apollo’s family just like how he sought out the picture of Jove, but with Thalassa missing, Magnifi dead, and Zak missing and then dead, it would have been too late to find anything by that point.
  • Though it’s probably not intentional, the fourth game ends up suggesting that Thalassa knew or suspected that Apollo had survived the fire. When Spark Brushel is telling Phoenix about her, he says her first husband died while performing and their son became an orphan and got lost in the system. If Thalassa really had thought that Apollo died in the fire too, there would be no reason for Brushel to believe that he was still alive.
  • There’s some optional dialogue from Dhurke that reveals the Ga’ran regime was in control of the media. Ga’ran probably forbade the papers from printing too much about Apollo or his father, since someone who knew him could have come forward and opened the way for a Divination Seance, which would’ve exposed her part in the crime.
• Why was Inga keeping a photo of Amara holding a baby Rayfa in his safe? If it was just because it was her baby picture, couldn’t he have had another one taken after he and Ga’ran kidnapped her?
  • It's reasonable to assume that Inga did love Rayfa, as her birthday was the code to his safe, but the photo might've been there for blackmail purposes against Ga'ran. It's interesting then that the photo eventually fulfilled this exact purpose thanks to it being found by our brave attorneys.
• If Dhurke had originally rescued Amara from Ga’ran around or before the time that Rayfa was born, then why didn’t Apollo know about her? He says that Dhurke brought him to the States ten years ago, and Rayfa is four or five years older than that, meaning he should’ve still been in Khura’in at the time she was born and Amara was with Dhurke.
  • You are misinformed. Is there a quote on Apollo being brought to the States "ten years ago"? I don't remember any such statements. On the contrary, I clearly remember it being told that Apollo was sent to the States right before Dhurke went into the more active phase of his revolution, which included Amara's rescue kidnapping, and by the end of the game Apollo realized it was for his own safety. If you check with the AA wiki, it's plainly written there that Apollo was moved when he was 9, which checks out: he was 24 in SOJ, and Rayfa was 14.
  • Well, at the beginning of the case, Apollo says more than once that it was “at least 10 years” since he’d seen Dhurke. So it’s not exactly ten years, and he could be forgiven for not remembering the exact timespan, but the way it’s written, it’s still at least a couple years off from when Rayfa would have been born.
    • Okay, I found the exact quote. It says "ten plus years", which is still vague, but it's more than enough for Apollo trying to gauge how many years it's been. In fact, I often say this in real life when talking about things from that long ago, "it was more than ten years back". And note how it's just a quick remark from Apollo at the beginning of the case. By the end of it, when we actually learn that the girl in the picture was Rayfa, Apollo himself inner-monologues about how he finally understands why Dhurke sent him to the US all those years ago, before he could meet Amara.
  • Another possibility is that Dhurke stayed in contact with Apollo for a few years after sending him to America, but they fell out of touch due to Dhurke being occupied by the revolution and/or Apollo getting shuffled through the foster system.
• Speaking of people knowing about Rayfa, was Dhurke ever in the know that she was his daughter? He had assumed Amara was being kept in some remote location rather than at the palace, and hadn’t considered how Nahyuta was forced to do Ga’ran’s bidding, but the game doesn’t come out and say whether he knew or not; he doesn’t talk much about Rayfa, and when you show him her baby picture, he keeps dodging Apollo’s questions about who the baby is.
  • It’s easy to guess that he at least had his suspicions. He had to have known he and Amara had a daughter, and there’s no way Ga’ran could’ve planned for that, so she wouldn’t have been able to convincingly fake a pregnancy ahead of time. The surprise birth of a daughter to Inga and Ga’ran at the same time that Dhurke’s wife and daughter were taken away from him probably would have been too serendipitous to be written off as a coincidence.
  • On the other hand, there’s a point where Dhurke suggests that Apollo may have a crush on Rayfa and encourages him to wait a few years, which would be an odd thing to say if he knew, since he considers Apollo his son. It’s possible he made the insinuation in jest, but he doesn’t treat it any less seriously than the idea of Apollo and Trucy being together.

• Apollo decides to stay in Khura’in at the end of the case. He seems to do this without making another trip back to get his things. Considering he was initially only going there to accompany Dhurke to the hostage exchange, wouldn’t he still have things in the States that would need to be taken care off? His belongings he left behind, and wherever he was living?

• During the final revisualization sequence, there’s some reflection by Apollo about a gaping flaw in Inga’s plans for a coup; even with the Founder’s Orb, he couldn’t have channeled the Holy Mother because only the queen knows her real name. This is never resolved after he brings it up, though. Is it to imply that Ga’ran and Inga were working together to get the orb, so she could use it to gain spiritual power? That would explain why she killed him instead of having him arrested (he could’ve dragged her down with him), how she knew that Dhurke was already dead, and it gels with how Inga was said to be a pushover. That seems to be a more logical explanation than Inga’s coup, but the game never connects the dots and says this is what happened.
  • It’s possible Inga was planning to get the founder’s name from Amara, though this doesn’t explain how Ga’ran found out about the coup or that Dhurke was dead.

• Since it’s suggested that Maya escaped the tomb by channeling Dhurke to free herself, proving that she can channel spirits while tied up, why didn’t she try channeling anyone before Dhurke showed up? She’s done that in a hostage situation before, and she’s even better at channeling now than she used to be. She could have channeled Mia again to get in touch with Phoenix, or someone strong enough to free her from the ropes — thanks to her time as Phoenix’s assistant, she does know plenty of dead people.
  • In that order? She was being watched by Inga at the time, so channeling someone would have likely got her hurt. Channeling Mia worked before because Pearl thought to channel her too. As for the last one, who could she have channeled that would have been both strong enough to break the ropes and also not panic at waking up in a strange place right after dying?
  • Well, even if they were to panic, one would think that trying to escape or break their bonds would be one of their first reactions after that.
  • Another possible answer was this: Maya said that Dhurke rescued her soon after she was kidnapped, so she probably didn’t have an opportunity to channel Mia before then. Inga probably waited until she was asleep or something whenever he left her alone, and he was barely gone long enough for Dhurke to introduce himself, from what we’re shown, so channeling Mia likely wouldn’t have accomplished a whole lot.
  • Unlike de Killer, Inga actually knows that Maya is able to channel spirits. He was probably careful not to give her any opportunity to do so for very long, or he straight-up threatened her to keep her from trying. It would be a somewhat hollow threat, since his plan requires cooperation from a spirit medium, but Maya wouldn’t know that.

• Given the premise of the trial, how does Ga’ran’s leverage over Amara and Nahyuta work, exactly? Before Inga’s murder, the threat was something like “Do as I say or I’ll expose Rayfa as the daughter of a criminal.” But doesn’t the exposure of Inga’s crimes throw that leverage out the window? If Ga’ran were to continue pretending that Rayfa was Inga’s daughter, that would make her the daughter of a criminal, anyway.
  • It’s more likely that Ga’ran was threatening to harm Rayfa directly, not just expose her criminal parentage. She could have easily arranged some kind of “accident” like how she managed to have Amara (who is beloved by the people of Khura’in) shot in the middle of the trial. The “sins of the father” thing was just one more reason for Nahyuta to want to protect his sister.

Turnabout Time Traveler

• Why does Edgeworth seem to think Phoenix is the kind of lawyer who will just take a victory without proving every avenue? He says at one point something to the effect of "You've won, why are you still fighting!?" when Phoenix objects to passing verdict on Sorin. Doesn't that go against the lesson Edgeworth made sure Phoenix learned in Case 2-4 all those years ago? To pursue the absolute truth, no matter the cost? Surely he knows Phoenix has, at least four times by that point (once in 1-5, once in 2-4, once in 5-5, and once in 5-6/5-DLC), refused to take a Not Guilty just because he'd cleared his client of wrongdoing because something felt wrong with the confession of the witness (or lack-thereof in one case)? Ema, Adrian, Athena, and Marlon all had lots of evidence stacked against them, three of them even "remember" committing the murder and confess to it, none of them are his client (Lana, Engarde, Simon, and Sasha were his clients respectively), and Edgeworth himself personally prosecuted for three of those trials! Yet he still thinks Phoenix would just take a Not Guilty verdict without finding the whole truth? Need it be pointed out that one of those times, Maya's life depended on his skill as a lawyer, yet he STILL refused the verdict that would save her because Adrian didn't confess and that stuck out as weird to him? Edgeworth's reaction, his phrasing, they make it sound like he thinks Phoenix is a crooked attorney who plans to leave the case unsolved simply because he proved his client's innocence. Edgeworth is not the type to be intimidated by Sprocket Aviation, so that can't be the answer.
  • At that point, Sorin had no alibi, a motive, and he himself admits having no memory is no indication of innocence. At that point, Edgeworth thinks Wright is dragging out the case for no good reason, since he thinks Sorin did it.
    • But he should still know better.
    • Keep in mind Edgeworth, while nicer than he was in the first game, was still made in the mold of von Karma. It's nothing personal, it's just that he's very adversarial as a prosecutor to begin with-there's a reason he seemed deathly serious about an 11-year-old girl murdering her mother despite admitting later on he had his doubts.
    • I don't think Edgeworth thinks Sorin did it. I think he believes it was Ellen the whole time, up until Pierce speaks up and tries to strong-arm him into a Guilty verdict. You can tell his sympathies go to Sorin as soon as he reveals that he has to relive the same awful moment over and over. Edgeworth has a known Stealth Mentor tactic of using Reverse Psychology on Phoenix to push him in the direction he wants — insisting on the verdict then and there was his ruse to make Phoenix defend Sorin.
  • Edgeworth's characterization in this case in general was a disappointment. Most of the nuances of his character were gone, and in its place was an abrasive Jerkass. He doesn't seem to want to be there at all, and he has even less patience than usual. And apparently even Blackquill and Klavier Gavin are in the number of the subordinates that he calls "cowards" because they wouldn't take the Sprocket case.
    • Keep in mind that the Prosecutor's Office IS currently understaffed, its quite possible that Klavier and Blackquill are currently working on other cases and simply can't drop what they are doing to take the current case. Also, at least part of the reason for Edgeworth's Took a Level in Jerkass characterization is due to the stress of his job running the Prosecutor's Office and he's taking some of it out on Nick, Edgeworth even mentions words to that effect during the trial.
  • Thought of another possibility — it could be a test prompt to see if Phoenix is being blackmailed or coerced into getting Ellen acquitted. Edgeworth might not have to worry about the powerful Sprocket family, but it's different for a defense attorney. It wouldn't be the first time. It wouldn't be the first time that game. And neither Trucy nor Athena are around during the trial itself...
  • Another possibility is that Edgeworth just wanted to go home...Like it's all well and good determining Sorin's guilt (or lack thereof) but this isn't a trial for Sorin. It's a trial for Ellen. If accused, Sorin will have his own trial and they can get to the bottom of the mystery there. Discovering the truth during Ellen's trial is just unpaid extra work for him.
  • So in summary it was either a calculated gambit to get closer to the truth or Edgeworth being stressed and tired and having a bad day?
    • Yes, unless you're in the "Unwarranted Flanderization" camp.
• Similar to the above, why is Phoenix so surprised and gratified when Edgeworth won't let Pierce Nichody force a Guilty verdict? Did he really think Edgeworth would say "Why yes, shady-as-all-hell witness who clearly has a grudge against the defendant, let's take your incredibly suspicious testimony at face value and give you the verdict you want. My tea's getting cold"?
  • Again, Edgeworth's poor characterization. The writers unironically present him as being emotionally constipated and even slightly cruel (one of his reasons for taking the case is so he can watch Phoenix squirm and suffer for his own personal catharsis).
• It's revealed that Pierce Nichody wished to kill Ellen in order to make Sorin feel the same pain that he did in losing his fiancé. The question is, why did he not kill Ellen after Gloomsbury failed to kill her? He was in the perfect position to do it. Ellen, Sorin, and Gloomsbury were all unconscious, and there was nobody else at the scene. He spent the time to move Gloomsbury's body into the statue when he could have taken that time to kill Ellen. The plan would have been even easier than the one he gave to Gloomsbury, since Ellen was ALREADY UNCONSCIOUS!
  • Easiest explanation is that he needed someone to pin the murder on, and for one reason or another he didn't want it to be Sorin.
    • But he could have still had Gloomsbury take the fall. All he had to do was check his pulse to see if he really was dead and, upon confirming that he was still alive, throw Ellen off himself. I mean, Gloomsbury was already going to do the deed anyway. There'd be no evidence against Pierce, and even if Gloomsbury wanted to say that he was unconscious at the time, nobody would believe him.
    • I might be remembering stuff wrong but I thought some other people were with Pierce when he got to Ellen, Sorin, and Gloomsbury, or at least close behind, there might not have been enough time to throw Ellen off without the risk of being seen by someone else.
    • No. I finished the case yesterday, and this was never brought up. Otherwise, when would Pierce have been able to put Gloomsbury's body in the statue?
    • Pierce being alone with Gloomsbury can be explained — if he had people with him (which he probably did), he told them he would handle Gloomsbury and sent them away to take care of Sorin and Ellen. The only question that leaves is why he didn't finish off Gloomsbury then and there, since he must have realized the man was still alive.
    • He definitely had people with him, a point is made that he was never alone. Those people were all accomplices to the tampering with the crime scene, under orders from their boss. Maybe they were even the ones who did the handiwork, which would help explain why a surgeon didn't take a few seconds to check the life signs of someone he thinks has just died... Then again, if he had the extra manpower, he could have made it seem like Ellen and Gloomsbury mutually killed each other. There wouldn't be a trial, and Sorin would suffer just the same.
    • The case seems to heavily imply that for one reason or another, Pierce was completely certain that Gloomsbury was dead until he saw him crawling out of the statue.
• Why did no one run a handwriting analysis test on Sorin's notebook?
  • What would be the point? There was no doubt that Sorin was the only one to write in the book. Besides, it'd be difficult to prove that the message that said Sorin killed Gloomsbury was written by Sorin since the page was ripped out
    • The fingerprint powder revealed the letters well enough to show what was written on the blank page. That should be enough for analysis. Additionally, it would help Sorin determine which of his notes were his own 'memories' and which had been added or edited by someone else.
    • Pierce was known for his (literal) surgical precision. He could have very well managed to replicate Sorin's handwriting to some extent
• The Sprockets are extremely wealthy and influential. What was stopping them from hiring two surgeons to operate on Selena and Sorin simultaneously?
  • Perhaps Pierce was the only surgeon they trusted, or the one they trusted the most. Perhaps they trusted him enough that they believed he could do it on his own.
  • She probably did go under the care of someone else but couldn't be saved. It would be in character for Pierce to convince himself that if he had operated on her, she would have lived.
• It seemed a lot like Arbitrary Skepticism from Wright & Co. that they immediately dismissed the possibility Ellen had actually time-traveled, as she claimed she'd done. The fact that Larry Butz believed her may have been discouraged them from believing Ellen, but the Ace Attorney world has a lot of supernatural elements, such as spirit channeling that physically changes the appearance of the person doing the channeling. Phoenix Wright has seen plenty strange things happen in his time as an attorney. Even though it turns out Ellen had been tricked into thinking she'd traveled back in time, it's odd how readily the entire concept was dismissed.
  • It's not exactly the broad idea of time travelling that's dismissed, so much as it is the ridiculous nature of it. "I wished on my magic romance pendent and it took me back in time" just sounds ludicrous, no matter what other strange stuff you might have seen in your time. It's like Sorin said as well, when he compared what she claimed happened to someone claiming they traveled down a road with a car key. It's not necessarily that time travel itself seemed nonsensical (excluding stodgy skeptic Edgeworth), more that what Ellen claimed happened makes no sense at all, and sounds completely ridiculous.
  • Also, it wouldn’t be the first instance of this universe being arbitrarily skeptical of the supernatural. After all, Regina Berry’s belief that people become stars when they die is dismissed as childish and idealistic, and Dual Destinies has the characters constantly question the notion of yokai like Tenma Taro being real. Spirit mediums are the only supernatural thing that’s given any credibility in these games.
• What was with Larry's characterization? In the original trilogy he was an idiotic failure and borderline womanizer who had zero luck with women, but his heart was nevertheless almost always in the right place. He was just pretty desperate, and pathetic. Here though, he's a full delusional womanizer, who's willing to break up a happy couple while not caring one bit about their feelings, or the fact that they're clearly happy with one another. In the original trilogy there's even a moment when he finds out that Desirée Delite, the woman of the day he was getting the hots for, is already married. If I recall, Larry was genuinely ignorant of this fact, and was put off when he Phoenix pointed it out, stating that he wouldn't go for married women. Yeah, what the heck happened to that version of Larry? I could've accepted his characterization in the game more if he had only been acting like he was towards Ellen & Sorin during the time when it was ambiguous as to whether Sorin actually loved her or not. But after it becomes absolutely apparent that, not only do they deeply love each other, but that they've been through a lot together and are bound to truly make each other happy with a long, fruitful marriage, Larry still doesn't give a crap, and just acts completely selfish. Phoenix even says at one point towards him, "That's not something a decent human being says, Larry...". But Larry is supposed to be a "decent human being". Why did his characterization deteriorate to the point where Phoenix is able to say that about the guy, and it not seem remotely out of place?
  • Unwanted Flanderization, them turning Larry into purely a tool for comedy, or both. Take your pick.
  • Although this being said, to be a bit fair on Larry, after the trial he is at least trying to force himself to be fine with Sorin marrying Ellen. It doesn't really work, but that's something at least. And baring in mind him and Ellen invited Larry to their wedding reception, they must have at least been on vaguely friendly terms with the guy, so he probably just sucked it down and moved on after all was said and done. The guy moves from failed love to failed love faster then a bullet train, after all. Although none of this really dissolves how he was acting through a vast portion of the case.
  • As far as character development goes, it's not actually that unrealistic. It's been about ten years since we saw Larry. If he continued to live his life like he did in his early twenties, then of course he's gradually going to become more pathetic and delusional. Look at Mark in Peep Show for a perfect example of how something like that would develop.
    • Larry's characterization still seems bizarre in the case though. Larry's pathetic and delusional nature in the prior games was limited to how much of a screw up he was. The first game goes out of it's way to tell us that Larry is basically just a big screw up, but that he's still a great guy despite that. His pathetic love-life aside, he's a very moral and decent person. I haven't seen a while lot from Peep Show, but I've seen, and heard, enough of it here or there, to know that Larry isn't very comparable to any character on a show like that one. It just seems ridiculous to suggest that the same Larry that they portrayed in the first game is the kinda person who would've lived his life in a way where he'd turn into the kinda person you see in this game.

• Edgeworth prosecuted Ellen himself because he claimed every other prosecutor was intimidated by the Sprockets. Either he's forgotten who works for him or even Blackquill has his limits.
  • Or Blackquill has too much work so he can't take it.
    • Considering that it's stated that Edgeworth fired a lot of prosecutors as part of his crackdown on corruption, this is most likely the case. Blackquill and Gavin probably have huge workloads, Winston Payne (provided he didn't lose his job in the crackdown) seems like he could be easily intimidated, and many of the other prosecutors are possibly freshly-hired rookies and therefore also easily intimidated.
  • Yes, Blackquill can protect himself from the Sprockets. But he also has to think about Athena, and protecting her as well would be much more difficult. It wouldn't be hard at all for the mafia to research his history and go, "Hm, this troublesome prosecutor has a friend we can hold for ransom." Bear in mind that Blackquill has derailed justice before to protect Athena.
  • One strange thing about this plot element is that when you talk to Pierce in the mansion, he claims that the Sprockets just wanted a "consultation," and when it became clear that the Prosecutors' Office wouldn't be willing to drop the charges, they instead decided to throw Ellen under the bus, and some members of the household(not just Pierce) were apparently all too happy to do so. It does make me wonder how serious the Sprockets were about using their influence to see to it that the case never reaches court.

• The police are said to have identified the murder weapons as the Time Keeper clock by matching the shape of it to the victim's head wounds, but the final reveal of the trial is opening up the Time Keeper to show that Gloomsbury was actually struck with the glass surface inside the Time Keeper. If the blood was only found inside the Time Keeper's shell, and the shell was a decidedly different texture to the inside, and we know for a fact that the Time Keeper hadn't been opened since the time of the murder, how did the police even suspect the Time Keeper was the murder weapon in the first place let alone get a forensics match on it?
• Why in blazes is Phoenix completely deprived of clients, to the point that Edgeworth provokes him more than once about the fact that he has "too much time on his hands" and belongs to a "tiny, obscure office"? Edgeworth's attitude could be construed as friendly ribbing or general assholery, depending on how much of a cynic you are (I place myself firmly on the "Edgeworth is an asshole because the case's writers shat the bed spectacularly with his characterization" camp), but there is absolutely NO WAY Phoenix should find himself in that sort of situation. He is a legendary attorney, was elevated to "national hero" status in Dual Destinies and recently made waves in a foreign country, after all. His general poverty could be explained away by the fact that he is too much of a good guy and takes most of his cases pro bono, but turning him back into the epitome of an underdog does quite a number on any suspension of disbelief, even if this case dos pull a lot of stunts to try and "feel" like it came out of the original trilogy. Is there any explanation for this, or did the writers really just throw all logic out the window so we could have the "classic" "Asshole Edgeworth - Underdog Phoenix - Larry Butz - Maya" arrangement again?
  • You pretty much hit the nail on the head. The whole point was to be a throwback of sorts, but in doing so, all of the characters felt like they lost all their character development from the original trilogy and beyond. Phoenix was treated like a rookie who was never recognised for his work, Edgeworth acted like a general ass who didn't seem to care much for the truth, Maya came across as naive and childish, even though she clearly had matured in the rest of this game’s cases. The only one change was Larry, and that was more flanderization. The whole case was a bit OOC for everyone, just to recapture the feel of the first Phoenix Wright game.
• Larry was never arrested for essentially kidnapping, disturbing the peace, harboring a fugitive, faking a bomb threat and potentially other crimes just to introduce the bride-to-be murderer suspect to Phoenix.
  • The same reason that Athena literally assaulted a police officer into unconsciousness in Dual Destinies but didn't get arrested for it either.
  • Edgeworth was probably content to let Larry off with a very stern warning. He knows Larry’s not a criminal; he’s just too stupid to know any better, and his antics have a habit of bringing some hidden aspect of a case to light. And it’s established that the Prosecutor’s Office doesn’t have a surplus of personnel to waste trying trivial cases like this.
• If you present the Photo of Reception to Pierce, Phoenix will call Pierce out on being more concerned about the company than about his subordinate's murder. He also refers to Gloomsbury by his last name alone(whereas Ellen calls him "Mr. Gloomsbury"), albeit not to his face. Isn't Gloomsbury the head servant of the Sprocket family, not to mention someone with seniority, making him Pierce's boss?
  • Actually no; I think the head servant is just that: the head of all the servants/maids. Meanwhile the butler is in charge of the entire household (except the actual family members obviously).
• At the end of the trial, Sorin says that he'll tell the truth about his responsibility for the accident that killed Selena, as well as the truth behind Gloomsbury's murder, even if his reputation suffers over it. He has a reasonable concern, but won't the fact that the entire Sprocket family knowingly tried to cover up the incident in which Gloomsbury attacked Ellen and ended up being killed be an even bigger scandal?
• Three points that are related to each other:
  • First, why did Gloomsbury drag Ellen out of the reception hall, down the elevator, through the storage area and up to the Vista Deck to throw her off the airship if he could have just shoved her through the emergency exit to the same effect?
    • Probably so he could enact his plan without worrying about Sorin trying to interfere.
  • Second, why does the emergency exit exist in the first place if it only leads to a narrow railing and thus would simply be unusable in the case of an actual emergency?
    • Because the emergency exit could be used in conjunction with a ladder or inflatable cushions or something.
  • And third, why did no one who was involved in the design and build process of the airship think that, just maybe, it would be a good idea to have a door that directly connects the reception hall to the Vista Deck?
    • Probably to maintain pressure inside the reception hall when the airship actually takes flight. You wouldn’t want a door that just anyone can walk up to and open mid-flight.
• Why wasn’t Trucy present for the wedding at the end of the case? Even if she wasn’t formally invited, I doubt the Sorockets would have cared if Phoenix had brought his own daughter along, especially since Athena ended up coming too.
  • Simplest reason: she was working.
  • Maybe she chose that time to make the trip to Khura’in to see Apollo? Possibly with assistance from Sprocket Aviation, in return for what Phoenix did? She does mention wanting to go see Apollo in the credits of the main game, and the bonus case has her struggling to replace him with Athena as her assistant, so it’s as good a time as any to want to catch up with him.

General

• Why does Edgeworth keep calling Nahyuta, a world renowned prosecutor from a Himalayan country, to try relatively mundane cases in the US? And how does Nahyuta have the time to constantly travel halfway around the world to try these cases while Phoenix is stuck in Khura'in?
  • I can't answer the second question but the first is answered in the game during Case 2. Long story short, due to the events of the last game Edgeworth is conducting a thorough investigation of the Prosecutor's Office, and as a result many prosecutors have been fired, arrested, etc. for corruption and whatnot. This unfortunately has the side affect that there are very few prosecutors left to handle trials so when Nahyuta came along on his traveling prosecutor gig Edgeworth gave him the go ahead to prosecute cases due to being strapped for manpower.
  • It is possible that Nahyuta is there on his own initiative. This particular district is probably the only one in the world where prosecutors routinely lose big cases (and have a Chief Prosecutor who is fine with that).
  • Edgeworth may have paid for Nahyuta's travel in return for information about the real state of Khura'in. We know he's been researching world court systems, and something as messed up as Khura'in would certainly get his attention. Additionally, he might have guessed Nahyuta's real motives.
    • Alternatively, it could be the reverse. We know that Nahyuta's always been sympathetic to the Defiant Dragons. He could've been researching other country's legal systems to get ideas for someday reforming Khura'in's. At some point he could've traveled through Edgeworth's district and managed to get a meeting with him to talk about law. During the conversation, Edgeworth could've brought up his lack of manpower thanks to the crackdown on corruption, and Nahyuta volunteered his services.
  • Franziska and especially Klavier Gavin seem like they'd more convenient to get a hold of. And more reputable in Japan/America.
  • We’ve no idea if Franziska is still prosecuting, or if she’s available to call on, or if Edgeworth wants to call on her or if she would want to accept. As for Klavier, it’s easy to believe that he’s busy with another case given that Simon is the only other prosecutor we know of who wasn’t let go.
  • The only answer I can think of is... everyone else is just busy and Nahyuta's the only one that he can grab.
  • He keeps taking Edgeworth's parking spot.
  • Conflict of interest could also be a factor. Klavier and Simon are the only two known prosecutors who we can reasonably assume weren’t let go, along with Edgeworth himself, and the two cases Nahyuta fills in for involve prosecuting Trucy — who Gavin and Edgeworth both have a prior history with — and Bucky Whet — who Simon admits he’s known for years.
• What kind of jurisdiction would allow Ema Skye to operate in Khura'in despite being an American investigator?
  • This seems to have been done on Nahyuta's request, and considering that he is the best prosecutor in Khura'in he probably has some leeway. Or he could have passed it off as a cultural exchange thing or whatnot, similar to how he was going around studying the various legal systems around the world. It’s also never stated that she is in charge of the investigation either, so she's probably just along for the ride as a helper and observer.
  • Just because she’s from America doesn’t mean she’s investigating on behalf of her home country. She’s still making arrests and collecting evidence on behalf of Khura’in’s legal system, so it’s not really a matter of jurisdiction.
• Is only homicide a crime in Khura'in or something? Because a Divination Seance wouldn't exactly work in a trial surrounding any other charge. Yet the final episode straight out states that a trial cannot end until a Divination Seance has been performed.
  • Maybe they just have regular criminal trials like robbery take place in a different courtroom? There's probably more than one, and maybe the Seance only take place if the crime is murder.
  • It's stated that trials are also considered funeral rites. It's possible that the courtroom you see in the game specializes specifically in capital offenses and lesser crimes (and civil suits) take place in other courtrooms that aren't as church-integrated. Or, for all we know, lesser crimes are handled through some mechanism other than criminal trials, which are reserved for only capital offenses. This is a foreign legal system, after all.
• Less about the game and more just wondering about world mechanics, but what would the Divination Seance reveal for a murdered coma victim who actually died long after losing consciousness during the initial attack? It seems to show the last thirty seconds or so before death, so presumably it'd be a pretty useless reveal (darkness because their eyes are closed, maybe the beeping of a hospital monitor or doctors yelling for a crash cart, etc.). But it's also stated to be their final memories, and the AA series does seem to love its contrivances (what, exactly, are the odds that Jove just so happened to look at a reflective plate and catch sight of his killer's gloved hand?), so would it instead show the last thing they vividly remembered about the attack that put them in the coma?
  If it really is tied to the moments prior to death, all anybody in Khura'in would need to do to get away with murder is stab their victim in such a way that they bleed to death several minutes later instead of within a few seconds, since the Seance is taken as the end of everything and "the victim died alone in an empty room" is hardly a proclamation of guilt. A knock to the head would also work, with the added bonus that they wouldn't be awake to leave a Dying Message in their own blood (since the time it takes for enough pressure to build up in the brain can vary; head trauma victims sometimes die hours after the actual hit).
  • As far as Jove just so happen to have seen the gloved hand argument goes, maybe he really wasn't looking for that. Since Case 3 it's revealed that the visions in the Divination Seance can be refined, allowing for more accurate senses. In the case of vision it wouldn't really matter if Jove Justice was paying attention to a reflection of the killer and that part was blurred anyway, implying he wasn't. It seems as long as it was in the victim's sights, the Divination Seance can be refined to focus on it.
  • The fact that it's a victim's final memories explains a lot of the sensations are so vague at first, and why things are blurry. Such as "man's voice", or "footsteps". It's basically as though the deceased person is recollecting their own memories, and then Rayfa basically asks "you think you could be a bit more specific with what you remembered?" and the spirit does just that. It's essentially no different to a normal witness trying to recall an incident, and being kind of vague about it at first before they're eventually prompted for the specifics. In terms of the hand with the lighter that Jove saw, he saw it in his peripheral vision. For all intent-and-purposes, Rayfa basically asked Jove "do you remember what was in that mirror's reflection?" and he went "I think it was a gloved hand holding a lighter."
• This is a bit of fridge logic, but why on earth is there a trapdoor that goes right into the sewers in a (former) law office? I suppose it could have been constructed later, but Dhurke's and Apollo's conversation implies they used to take this route all the time. Which is odd, considering at that point in time the office should still have been open.
  • The DCA was enacted shortly after Dhurke got accused of using forged evidence to get found innocent of Amara's assassination, which occured when Apollo was an infant. Even if the Defiant Dragons weren't founded until many years later (which is unlikely, they probably were founded within a couple years of the DCA), Dhurke had been a wanted fugitive for all of Apollo's life. It's likely the law office closed shortly after Dhurke was accused of forging evidence and the sewer entrance constructed later, possibly for Defiant Dragon use.
  • Alternatively, the law offices could have been converted from a building that would have had access to the sewers. I dunno what kind of building would have access to the sewers, but it's still a possibility.
• In the first case, the judge was going to choose not to invoke the DC act against Phoenix if he backed down after having seen the divination seance (which Phoenix obviously doesn't end up doing, so it's invoked against him). Therefore, he clearly has the authority to decide to not invoke it against people. Why then didn't he just do this for Nahyuta in the final trial?
  • Why would he do that? That would be basically treason, and he was in the same room as the queen and a number of her guards.
  • Because he has the legal authority, and the judge has clearly shown himself willing to go against royalty before for the sake of justice, when he stood up for Phoenix against Rayfa in the first case. Ga'ran was very clearly using a completely unjust case of someone being covered by the law (he was coerced into giving that "false testimony" in the first place) as a form of coercion, basically doing the equivalent of pointing a gun at the guy's head and going "if you pronounce me guilty I'll shoot him" (which she basically ends up literally doing afterwards, although at that point the Judge has no authority). I don't see why the judge wouldn't have done the same thing for the sake of justice here and not invoke the DC act, if he willing stood up to the royal family before for justice's sake.
  • Well, Phoenix was a foreign tourist, wheres Nayhuta was a Khura'inist monk and Khura'inese prosecutor. Maybe that has something to do with it, given Phoenix was an "ignorant tourist" wheres Nayhuta was fully aware of everything he was doing and their implications. Otherwise, I have no other ideas.
  • Once the law is invoked, it can't be un-invoked without good reason, but until it is, a violation of it can simply be overlooked - and in most cases it would be, due to how vague and broad the wording is. Nahyuta wasn't the only person in the room who could be charged with supporting the queen, the law as written would have worked just as well against the entire royal guard, but until someone invoked it, it didn't matter. It's not the law that it's mandatory for a judge to charge attorneys with abetting criminals, the law simply allows him to do so (and I imagine Ga'ran's oversight heavily encourages him to).
    • Firstly, the law's specific wording is "those who would support criminals will be deemed just as guilty". Specific use of will be. This means that, by law, you are considered to be committing a crime, in the same way that if you've killed someone you're legally a murderer. Therefore I don't really understand how it can just be a choice to not invoke it. But moreover, the game itself directly implies that the Judge doesn't want to invoke the law against Nahyuta in this instance, but literally has no other choice by law. At this point in the trial there is no real reason for the Judge to side with Ga'ran, particularly when he was so willing to not side with Royalty in the first case. This is what he says after Ga'ran brings up Nahyuta being covered under the act (which, as is pointed out, seems to conflict with him seemingly having the ability to flip the invocation of the law on and off at his will at other points in the game):
    Khura'inese Judge: When it comes to the DC Act even I am conflicted. And yet, as it stands right now, it is the law of the land. And as you stated earlier, no one is above the law.
  • A simple answer is that if the judge were to do that, Ga’ran could just write up a new law stripping him of the authority to do so.
• Prosecutor Sahdmadhi's desk slam animation involves him removing his rosary and hitting the desk with it - however, how does he remove his rosary, which always lies in the inner side of his braid, without moving his hair?
  • The animation seems to cheat it by clipping the rosary chain through the braid, but there is a possible way to do it with minimal hair movement: by having the chain run down the length of the braid until it rolls off the end.
• Okay, how the hell had Phoenix never heard anything relating to Khura'in before? As in, literally anything? He didn't know about their court system, he didn't know about their laws, he didn't know about the assassination of Queen Amara, he didn't know about most of their religious practices...And all this despite his best friend being someone comes from a bloodline that directly ties to Khura'in. Plus you would expect an assassination of such a well beloved Queen, especially in an ordinarily peaceful country, to have been major news world wide.
  • Phoenix wasn't even familiar with Khura'in back when the Queen was assassinated 20 years ago. Heck, he wasn't even an attorney yet, so it's likely he never found out about it. Plus, Maya's Kurain Channeling Technique and her village sound and look very similar to Khura'in, so it's probable that any information he did get on the latter was confused with the former. He also wasn't expecting to be thrust into a court case until his tour guide was put on trial, so there was no need to read up on their court laws.
    • You would expect a country like Khura'in, which is infamous for it's absolute totalitarian sovereign government, it's completely batty legal system, and it's attorney genocides, to be pretty much common knowledge though, wouldn't you? It's not as though the average person wouldn't know literally anything about, say, North Korea for example. You'd expect a generally well versed every-man to know at least the basics. And Khura'in is absolutely worse than North Korea, and non-objectively so too.
    • You'd also expect places like Japan to know or care about things going on around the globe, but the fact is your everyday person there simply doesn't. Just because the localisation turned the regular location into California with a Japanese twist, doesn't mean the Japanese mindset for other countries isn't a valid reason for this headscratcher. It's within reason to believe that Phoenix simply never knew about Khura'in until now.
    • The average, well-read, Japanese civilian still at least knows the basics about North Korea. The idea that a lawyer in Japan would have never heard anything about the world's most corrupt legal system in a country that's in the same continent cannot just be brushed off as "Japanese people aren't well versed on that stuff".
    • Even if you give it every benefit and assume Khura'in is small and insignificant enough that literally nothing about it is semi-common knowledge outside of it, it seems like a pretty big stretch to assume that no time in the 2 years he knew his best friend was there, or hell even on the plane ride over, that he didn't even google the place. He managed to get plane tickets, set up a tour guide and a place to stay, and if I'm remembering correctly even talk to Maya again sometime between departing and arriving, and never once came across a warning about the insanely harsh criminal justice system?
    • To be fair, a lot of that information on the justice system reform would inevitably be about 20+ years old by then since it was only relevant as a result of the assassination of the Queen. By now any new articles and sites on Khura'in would've moved onto focusing on better things. Assuming Phoenix did at least do some light digging for tourism purposes, it's not likely this information would've come up unless he decided to randomly check very old articles or did very heavy digging. And of course the last thing he was expecting to do during his stay there was become defense in a few court cases.
    • North Korea isn't well known becuase it's totalitarian, it's well known because it's got nukes and is batshit enough to threaten the rest of the world with them. What do you know about the law in Bielorussia? Georgia? Kazakhstan? Khurain is a tiny country whose foreign politics seem to be mostly focused on placating / sucking up to immediate neighbours via providing channeling services. And when I say 'tiny', I mean 'city-state', because the law supposedly mandates that Rayfa be present for every single murder trial that happens, and that's not realistic in anything bigger. Most people in the world probably forget it exists once they are done studying the world map at school. How many Himalayan countries near China and India can you name off the cuff? Because I can name 0. And I don't know if they are totalitarian or what. It's not totalitarianism towards its own citizens that puts countries on the news, it's aggressive foreign politics. And Khurain doesn't do that.
    • You're still skipping out on some pretty major points. What about the "assassination" of the Queen that occurred in fairly recent history? What about the absolutely absurd lawyer hating culture and total lawyer genocide that occurred? That isn't at all the type of thing that'd just fall by the way-side, and in fact in-game we're shown evidence to the contrary. Not only do characters constantly bring up the "lawyers are hated in Khura'in" thing as though it's something most people seem to know about, the country being upset over a not guilty verdict was also something that is apparently big enough news to be reported on American T.V ahead of a major news story about a famed performer being killed on stage in L.A. The main problem I have with the way that Khura'in is presented within the game, is how wishy-washy the portrayal tends to be. One minute they're treating it like it's some small country-village in the shticks that no one knows about, then the next they're implying that it's politics on lawyers and whatnot is major-international-news worthy (and yes, I know this probably makes a little more sense if you take the localization out of it. But I'm talking strictly via the localization here, since that's the version that's been given to us). Not to mention, how ridiculous it is that, with this in mind, Phoenix has never heard of Khura'in's totally corrupt lawyer politics before.
  • Keep in mind that Phoenix has always been shown to be a bit clueless and lacking the incentive to learn new things. He keeps putting off reading Mia’s law books, he only knows two or three types of flowers, he never learned how to play piano or tried to pursue another job once his poker skills proved able to support him, and in Dual Destinies he comments that Sol Starbuck must be extremely famous because he’s someone even Phoenix has heard of. It’s perfectly in-character for him for him not to have known about Khura’in before he visited there.
• How did the subject of Apollo spending his formative years in another country absolutely never come up before? He grew up speaking a different language, in an entirely different culture. After a certain age, these things don't just go away. Also, regarding the above, why didn't Apollo tell anything to Phoenix about the treatment of lawyers in Kura'in?
  • I have no response to the first, but Apollo likely didn't know everything about the treatment of lawyers in Khura'in and may have forgot or assumed it changed.
  • It’s been fifteen years since Apollo had set foot in Khura’in. That’s plenty of time for him to have gotten through whatever cultural divides existed back then, especially when he was actively trying to forget his time there and didn’t think he’d ever be going back. It’s not as though he left Khura’in, got off the plane, and then immediately started working at Gavin’s law offices as a perfectly well-adjusted American.
  • As for the language barrier, Apollo has had instances of words coming out wrong or not grasping figures of speech before. All the important Khura’inese characters seem to speak English rather fluently, too, so he probably wouldn’t have had that many hurdles adjusting to it.
• Where did Apollo go to live when he was sent to live in the States by Dhurke? Was it with a Defiant Dragon compatriot who was able to accompany him overseas? That doesn’t seem likely since Apollo ended up falling out of touch with Dhurke. In Dual Destinies, Apollo said he bonded with Clay in junior high because he didn’t have a mom, and that it was Clay kept him going in the aftermath of his first trial, which would imply that he was never adopted. Are we to take it that he was just placed in foster care until he came of age to be on his own? Or is there some other system in Japan that didn’t translate clearly in the localization.
  • This discussion suggests that Apollo was placed in the foster system, but that he never bonded with his foster family and/or was shuffled between them, at first because he assumed Dhurke would come back for him and later because he didn’t want to become attached to anyone again. Statistically speaking, children are less and less likely to be adopted the older they get, and the prickly attitude Apollo is known for at times wouldn’t have helped his chances.
• How can the lawyers of the Anything Agency (and Ema) insist that Nahyuta "solved tough cases" when what we see is him belittling, bullying, and shutting down even the ghost of an argument with insults? He doesn't "solve" a thing, he just comes in to prosecute and uses his religion to treat others as inferior (his reasoning for doing so doesn't matter). Imagine how Trucy, Maya, and Uendo would be sent to their deaths if their attorneys weren't the best in the world at what they do. Their cases would be "solved" by Nahyuta, too. Most defence attorneys in the series are implied to be subpar at their jobs outside those we have with names. How many innocent people has Nahyuta sent to their graves with a smile, saying that a victim gets their last rites as their actual killer walks free because the police nabbed the wrong person? Nahyuta has never solved a thing, and it should be painfully obvious from the moment he starts off in court.
  • This seems like you’re just trying to complain about Nahyuta rather than ask a genuine question; however, he’s not just some religious nut who throws insults at the defense. Like a lot of the other prosecutors, he regularly makes pretty logical arguments and is only outdone because the crimes he’s investigating are very elaborate frame-ups. Roger Retinz planned out a remote murder to take place at a time when no one but Trucy could conceivably have done it. Tahrust Inmee killed himself in the middle of a sacred rite, something no one could have foreseen, to make Maya seem like a serial killer. And Bucky was suspected because he failed to notice that the victim was dead when he went into the dressing room, making him look extremely suspicious in addition to the double-frame-up. In terms of his skill as a prosecutor, Nahyuta is not that different than any of the others who are said to be top-tier prodigies until they go up against Phoenix, Apollo, or Athena.
    • You missed the point of what was being asked: The question being asked is "why is he said to be good at ***solving complicated*** crimes when his entire demeanor shows no such interest in anything but what he first gleans". It wasn't a complaint about Nahyuta- there seems to be Gameplay and Story Segregation between what he's stated to do and what he does. His "solving complex cases" and "seeing the karmaeic thread" (which are treated as the same thing) are akin to Simon's psychological manipulations, which we DO see Simon doing. But we don't see the stuff Nahyuta is said to do.
  • When people talk about Nahyuta “seeing the karmic threads” of his cases, what they’re referring to is the fact that he’s extremely thorough in his investigations. Notice how Spirit of Justice is the only game where no individual case goes for longer than a day? That’s because Nahyuta is so thorough that he can foresee and adapt to most of the directions a case could go in, meaning he doesn’t need to adjourn the trial to reinvestigate every time there’s a new development. He isn’t interested in looking beyond “what he first gleans” because he prides himself on taking every relevant detail into account. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s never made a false arrest before, but it does mean he’s good at reaching conclusions that make sense and are backed up by evidence, as opposed to winning by default because the defense couldn’t prove the real culprit like every other prosecutor that came before him.
• If there are no lawyers (other than prosecutors) left in Khura'in because of the Defense Culpability Act, how are civil cases handled? Do the parties just have to represent themselves? Are civil disputes settled through systems other than trials? For that matter, wouldn't lawyers who only work civil cases be largely unaffected by the DCA, and thus still around? Then again, this might just be a byproduct of the game misusing "lawyers" to mean defense attorneys in particular instead of lawyers in general.
  • Basically, the series just is using 'lawyer' as a synonym for defense attorney, yes. The exact wording of the DCA mentions defending an accused person of a crime, not anything else. So presumably in cases like a civil trial about say, a wrongful termination employment suit, the lawyers just handle it the way any other civil attorney might.