I really like the sick burn Viridian laid onto Petenshy.
Viridian: ……William Petenshy. “To be, or not to be. That is the question.” …wasn’t that it?
Barok: A line from William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, Act 3 Scene 1.
Viridian: I’ll tell you the answer to that. You don’t deserve to be.

To reiterate something I said in a Discord chat, the moment Petenshy woke up from his poisoning at the first Joint Deduction phase was the exact moment Takumi himself walked into frame and announced "I'm gonna blow your freaking mind and I'm not stopping" before dropping the mic and letting the game continue. He definitely pranked us all with all the promotional material for the case and it made one of the best Case 2's in the series.

And this is case 2.

So what exactly is the significance of blowing hard into the end of a gas pipe? I know the subject comes up in the second day's Closing Argument, and apparently it does something like "extinguish a fire"? I know it's how Petenshy got poisoned (poison on the end of the pipe), but the interesting part is one line Ryunosuke says at the end, when Viridian is confessing.

So, basically, Viridian poisoned the end of the lamp's gas pipe specifically because "If Petenshy was really innocent [of Duncan Ross' death], nothing would happen." As-in, Viridian set it up so Petenshy would only poison himself if he did something he would only do if he was the one who killed Ross. My guess is blowing into the pipe is somehow related to Ross' room getting gassed in the past?

The judge at the end said something about Souseki Natsume and an attempted murder charge, but I'm not sure if he means Petenshy's attempted murder charge against Souseki is getting dropped or if Petenshy is being charged with attempting to murder Souseki. This would actually make sense: Souseki had Selden's old apartment, after all.

If this is true, then I have to give props to Viridian for setting up a karmic poisoning for Petenshy while possibly prevented Souseki from dying too.

The line he says during the breakdown is most likely "Frailty... [bang] Thy name is...[bang] PETENSHY! [bang] Which is amazing.

The gas pressure in the pipes isn't strong, so when you blow hard inside them, you'll temporarily stop the gas supply to all the connected gas pipes. So if you have a gas light on at that moment, the fire will go out as the gas supply is stopped. But this is only temporarily: once you stop blowing, the gas pressure will return, and gas will start going through the pipes again. But as there's no fire anymore, the gas will just pour inside the room, instead of being lit on fire (compare to a modern electric light: if you don't switch off the light before swapping the light bulb, the light is technically still on). Petenshy used this method to kill Ross, and tried the same with Soseki, in order to get Selden's room. Green suspected Ross was killed, and poisoned the pipe entrance to see if she was right.

I think Viridian Green and William Petenshy are some of my favourite villains. I LOOOOOOOOOOVVVEE William Petenshy's theme.

The first day would've ended with a "The Stolen Turnabout" style twist, with Souseki found Not Guilty of Viridian's stabbing, but implicated in Willian Petenshy's poisoning.

The most disappointing thing to me about Clouded Kokoro was that, in the end, Viridian's stabbing was all one big coincidence. Viridian Green had no relation to the one who threw the knife at all, she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's a testament to how irrelevant the stabbing was that this case is able to go out of its way to avoid spoiling who stabbed Green and why.

BUT, here's how there could have been at least a slight connection: the love letter Joan found that led her to mistake her husband for cheating was Duncan Ross' love letter to Viridian Green. (This may actually be what really happened, I'll need to read that part of this case again) This could've given the Garridebs a bit more development too and more reasons to want to hide the crime: Joan's stabbing Green was a total coincidence, BUT it's someone she had a motive to want dead (the woman her husband might have been having an affair with), so the police might not have believed her if she'd said it was an accident.

Also, cut Pat and Laura entirely. Their subplot only really existed to lengthen the case and make the crime more complicated, which wouldn't be necessary if it was only Day 1 of a larger case.

One of the few issues I have with this one is that Petenshy being the true villain was pretty obvious, even with Viridian Green's involvement, due to how huge a presence he is in the case. He dominates both trials and everyone you talk to in investigations mentions him at least once. It's not long before the illusion that he's going to be the corpse of the week is broken, at which point it's obvious it's going to lead to something big.

If, however, the two cases were one, Petenshy's involvement is a bit less obvious, since he's just a minor joke character in Day 1 with no relevance to Viridian's stabbing. Yes it's also falling into the series cliche "minor character in Day 1 gets a lot more prominence in Day 2 and turns out to be the culprit", but I feel that still would've given the reveal more buildup than "the entire case revolves around this guy, of course he's guilty of something".

If you were going to cut anything from this case, maybe the ice coin gas theft subplot? It's Decargo and Mrs Altamont's link to the trial, but she was having him investigate the forced gas leak incidents anyway, so his presence could've been about that instead. The reveal that the ice coins were made from Souseki's tea does link in to proving the tea wasn't what was poisoned, but I feel that could've also been done another way. Really the main plot purpose the ice coins serve is Ryunosuke proving that the victim isn't trustworthy so neither is his testimony, but if this was only a single trial day you probably wouldn't need that either.

This is, I'll admit, a pretty great case so far already. I think I was enjoying it more than I was expecting to with the reunion with Viridian and her mysterious boyfriend in the photo. The joint reasoning was pretty great as well. But then the victim woke up and my level of enjoyment doubled. Good grief this was cleverly hidden during the marketing.

Of course now that he's gotten up, this takes an interesting turn. Poor Natsume. Always caught up in pseudo-murder trials where the victims turn out to be alive anyway.

As for theories on who attempted to kill Petenshy...well, he either tried to kill himself due to his extreme poverty, or Viridian did him in because that would make for an interesting case. Probably not Decargo though.

I will admit the most frustrating part about this is how Ryuu totally just ignores the stuff about the gas pipe concentration lol. I'm betting that's how the victim was poisoned or something.