The Animation of Phoenix Wright

The fact that gadot doesn’t even have his iconic cooffee at the beginning is so iconic. And it makes his association with coffee that much stronger

why are you using the 3ds remade version instead of the original one? I really don't understand how you can make an analysis and not use the original artstyle, the remake one is way uglier.

You just explained why I LOVE ace attorney, and how it is addicting to play this game without getting too boring in just 15 minutes. I appluad you my good sir 🫡👏

I've been playing the first PW game again (I fell off last time around Turnabout Samurai i think?) and this video has been on my mind as I've played it. Your points about the strengths of the animation + the way the characters guard slowly starts to slip/break on the stand as our reward for progression really stuck with me, even though it'd been years since I first saw the video

Some of my favorite special minimal animations include:
Gumshoe’s head scratch
Cody’s failed sword draw
Fransiska dragging her whip across the desk
Phoenix’s paper tap
Luke Atmey’s hilarious breakdown
Damon Gant’s surprisingly fast clapping breakdown
Matt Engard’s wrist phone and especially his hair reveal
Every desk slam
And of course Phoenix’s iconic point

That smile, eyes closed, back and forth wiggle of Frank's... it's the 'untrustworthy salesman' pose. Like the Happy Mask Salesman in Legend of Zelda.

How about looking at its brother game as well, the Megaman Battle Network games? Both had to really squeeze in the sizes for all the animations unto the GBA cartridge. It was even to the point Battle Network 6 crosses only recolored Megaman’s legs to save up cartridge space.

My absolute favorite "caught" animation in the series is Adrian Andrews: when you press her and catch her in a lie, he glasses shatter off her face... and she causually reaches down beneath the witness stand and grabs another pair.

This repeats *a lot*, and the absurdity is really something special.

I love that you pointed out that Franziska shares her nervous tic with her father. One of my favorite things about the posing in these games is that it doesn’t just tell you about the individual character, but also the other characters they’re close to. The series is littered with poses that mirror ones you’ve seen before in order to draw even stronger connections between family members and friends.

what got me into ace attorney and what still drives me insane about them is how characters who are close or related to each other share similar sprites. I will never get over that Franziska bows. Manfred doesn't bow but you know who does? Miles. And Miles gets the bowing from his father. It's such a cool way to show how Miles's father lives on through his son and how Miles can pass on his father's teachings to Franziska

this reminds me of Nintendo's philosophy in making games "Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology", they intentionally use limited consoles and focus on how to make the best out of it... and i love that so much, it means you do not need the most technologically advanced systems or games to have fun, that's where creativity plays a huge part of it.

Gosh i love video games!!

Good video

This series is so special.

I'm holding and mentally rotating apollo justice's entire gimmick of having advantage to insight checks in the courtoom and seeing the tics most people apparently miss to just intuit that people are nervously lying. I'm rotating it very quickly, preferably with the DS stylus.

Frank Sahwit literally looks like the mask salesman from Majora's Mask.

One of my favorite examples for poses is Gant. Especially the pose where even the shading gets ominous and his outline becomes more pointy. Also his clapping animations

This video is over two years old at the point of me writing this. But there's something that's kept nagging at me whenever I think about this ever since I discovered it:
You mention how the Ace Attorney games use full-screen effects to add emphasis to actions on screen. HOWEVER! Having played through The First Turnabout on both DS and GBA side-by-side, I can say that the full-screen effects were not present from the start. Exclamation bubbles weren't even full-screen.

The simple yet effective posing combined with the "voiceless voice acting" - that is, the pitched bleeps and the judicious adjustment of feed speed and usage of pauses, flashes, shakes, and sound effect stings in the game's script processor - is what makes Ace Attorney stand out amidst all of the various and more forgettable visual novel games that just show you whole lines of text at a time and maybe alter a static graphic every now and then.

As someone who's never played an Ace Attorney game, only read/watched LP's, the animation/pose work makes them incredibly entertaining.

Fun fact: In the fourth game, Apollo's most animated pose is his shocked face. Not only is that frankly adorable, but it also emphasises the fact that the man is a walking panic attack.
The more animated bits of the character are what clue you in to the fact that this is an important part of their character.
Franziska's little bow, Trucy and Mr. Hat, and Godot's coffee shenanigans to name a few.

The music is amazing for setting the mood too.
And when phoenix says "the line" its amazing

I have never seen any of your videos and I haven't even fully watched this one, but because of your channel name alone you have earned a singular like allotted to your video.

I love your insight! This video showed just how much appeal the animation had over this masterpiece; and that despite limitations, you can still make something great out of it if done right!

this video also shows why i think the anime adaptation doesn't do the series justice. a lot of the humor and impact came through how the games worked with their restrictions and it gave them personality, but with the anime it doesn't care much for presentation or style; just kind of feeds the information to you so it seems rather bland and lifeless

god tier character design

Watching this video before and after you’ve played most of the first trilogy and suddenly recognize every character is a pretty delightful experience

I just had an idea. What if there was a slightly creepy trial in one of these games? For example, the defendant could start off with their head slightly tilted, but as the trial goes on, it begins to lean more and more, eventually being almost horizontal by the time they reach the breaking point.

Man, I’d love to see an analysis about The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles animation, primarily because of its interesting use of motion capture and such

GBA
7 people
Visual novel
10 months
Ace attorney

I hate that they went to 3d. The animations lost a lot of impact. Imo the series visually peaked at Apollo Justice.

Kinda wish this had gotten a let’s play on play frame, would have been fun to see you go through these games.
But that said, I love this episode here.

I also like that Franks face angle changes as he goes though his poses. From tilting his head forwards looking up at you, to tilting backwards looking down at you, it really gives the sense of him being cornered and unhinged

It's one of the many series where trademark design concepts were built out of necessity because of hardware limitations. Like you said, the series started on GBA. They had to fit everything into a small game cartridge, everything they put in the game needed impact and purpose. This is similar to how Final Fantasy needed to use it's turn based combat because home consoles couldn't handle everything moving and attacking at the same time. While tech has long outgrown the need to act within these limitations, it's still used because it's fantastic work. If it ain't broke, don't fix it

This video got me to play the game!

It’s nice that the quality keeps up and improves through the series - one of my favourite animations in the series is from The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, when Ryunosuke is still learning the ropes he goes to pound the table, but instead he slaps it lightly and quickly turns to look at his hand in exasperation lol

Having played through all the PW games available in the US I'd say the only problem with the 3D games is the 2D characters. They didn't translate all that well. Almost all of the characters unique to 3D have animations that show off the style well.

As someone who's played the originals but not the 3D versions. I am not a fan of the 3D versions, especially the lost intensity in Wright's desk slam.

I now this is late but you should try and check ace attorney investigation games

I was so sad when I finished every game

Red White looks like yoshikage kira

I was kind of hoping you would mention the "phoenix throws phone" animation because truly that was pure gold. incredible. peak animation. as good as it gets

The way you used the music, seems like a good ending of the court scene. Genius.

That was a fun video very informative

Thank you

It's like with Frank sahwit.

In case, 1-1 his body moves but his head is still lol in HD it looks so odd