Gyakuten Saiban Library

[Ash]

^ I figured I might as well get the Takumi interview from the same magazine out before the end of the year. Again, it's a mystery-focused magazine, so it's more about what kind of mystery fiction Takumi likes and how AA works as mystery fiction.

[Ash]

Decided to add this article too because it's about a subject you don't often see mentioned in Ace Attorney dev-related sources: a report of a CEDEC lecture by one of the programmers of the series.

[Ash]

Composer Sugimori tweeted some interesting tidbits about his work on the original Ace Attorney, which is pretty rare, so I added them to GS Library.

Yes, GS Library is still alive even if I only update once every six months.

Edit: also added a short article from the official AA4 guidebook featuring various AA4 developers where they get to “complain” about Takumi and the work he made them do.

[Southern Corn]

Nice reads as always, Ash! Interesting that the investigation theme was the first one made for the game but I can see it.

[Ash]

In these kinds of adventures, you tend to hear the 'overworld' theme a lot as it loops and loops while you move from screen to screen to talk with people/look for evidence, so perhaps that's why he started with that (the end product features a larger number of themes to be used in various situations, but he probably didn't know that at the start of the cycle).

[Ash]

Added a short GK2/Ace Attorney Investigations 2 Q&A where the developers answer a few questions from the readers. Most of them are about the characters and their designs, like asking whether Kay Faraday is a cat or dog person, where Edgeworth's cravats come from and about what kind of father Gregory was.

[Southern Corn]

Nice stuff. lol at the "double peace sign" thing, I never saw it as that but I can totally see it now. Also that villain origin story AA game would be kinda cool though obviously a bit out of nowhere for the series to explore.

Can't believe we lost Oldbag in case 3 though

[Ash]

Finally got working on that insanely long interview on AA4 with Takumi, Nuri and Matsukawa from the official walktrough.

I got the book like in January and while I don't update GS Library often, at the time, I at least intended to do this interview this year so I had something substantial. But once I saw how daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn long the article was, I just kept postponing work on it. Anyway, it's done now! It's as far as I know the longest interview on AA4 available, as I don't think they had even remotely interviews on the game this long in game magazines etc.

[Rubia Ryu the Royal]

Hi Ash! I'm back to catch up on all your interview articles after doing a Miles Edgeworth and faking my own death! I wanted to drop by and say おつかれさまでした and that I haven't forgotten. I'll be catching up on my GSvsAA project sometime soon now that I'm back in the AA fandom for a good while... but first I'll be blazing through The Great Ace Attorney and taking notes for later.

Some of these localized names are throwing me for a loop.

[Ash]

Nice to have you back! Travelling around the world and learning all about the world's justice systems while keeping in touch with your buddy Gumshoe right?! Looking forward to your future updates, I've noticed there's still a lot of interest in fandom regarding a comparison in the Japanese and localized text both in specific instances, but also in terms of general atmosphere/characterization. Don't disappear on us again! ;)

I'm skipping Chronicles for now as I have the 3DS games anyway and there are always plenty of other games I want ^^' But I guess I'll have to edit all my old DGS articles now to include the localized names now... (for all their first mentions at least...)

[Ash]

Nobody cares in a post DGS-release world, but I added a 2016 Nintendo Dream article where Yamazaki plays through the first part of The Foreign Turnabout (6-1) with the people of Nintendo Dream and they talk about it (I had already done the articles where they play 6-2 and 6-3 together before, for some reason I kept postponing work on this one).

[Rubia Ryu the Royal]

Man... I almost feel bad for Yamazaki these days, though he did basically retire from being director for Ace Attorney and the franchise has sunk into obscurity until very recently. Hoping TGAAC's release will inspire Capcom to revive the franchise and we get a new AA game sometime soon. Maybe Takumi will get to return as director again. AA7 could be a fresh start on its own, even.

And I definitely care whenever you update. :3 The inner linguist in me sings whenever I deal with stories with a lot of cross-cultural phenomena, whether or not it's based on real or fantasy countries, so it's nice looking back at this stuff.

[Ash]

Added the Takumi interview from Famitsu's special on Ace Attorney's 20th Anniversary special! There are other interviews with people like Sugimori, but I'll probably get back to them much later.

[Southern Corn]

Really cool stuff, thanks Ash! Fascinating reading how he came up with stuff while writing and even changed some things a bit while working on them...

[Ash]

Decided to get back to the AA3 column series for some reason. In the first few columns, Takumi would show off some of the things he wrote in his diary while plotting the story of the game (this first entry is about Turnabout Memories).

[Ash]

Last minor update of the year: old DS blog where Phoenix and Maya talk about some of the story ideas Takumi had for Rise from the Ashes before settling on what became the actual episode.

[Ash]

Wow, two updates in one week?? Short blog article from the AAI2 blog, where Yamazaki writes about how he came up with the story of the first episode in that game, and he reveals a canned idea for that one!

[Southern Corn]

Sports car case sounds really fascinating. It's funny how he mostly thinks about cases in terms of plot twists or exciting premises and works from there but yeah good stuff as always Ash!

[Ash]

Doesn't Takumi do the same? The Rise from the Ashes update I posted before the AAI2 one had Takumi say the exact same thing, that he always needs to start with an interesting case.

[Ash]

Added minor update from the AA4 blog, about the developers taking pictures of themselves as reference material for the character animations!

[Ash]

Added an interesting and rather unique interview with Yamazaki today. This is an Ace Attorney 4 era interview, dated just before the game’s release, so Yamazaki was, to the audience, still “just” a planner for Rise from the Ashes and AA4. This would be months before Eshiro would bring up making Ace Attorney Investigations and long before any of us would guess that Yamazaki would direct the next two mainline titles, so that’s cool. He talks about his tasks as a planner for Rise and AA4, and you might be surprised to learn how involved he was with the English localization of the first game!

[Ash]

There's a first time for everything, so today I added a transcript of an old podcast: Capcom Sound Sphere was a podcast produced and hosted by the sound engineers of Capcom. In episodes 4-7, originally released in the fall of 2007, they had a four-part Ace Attorney/Takumi special. In the second part of this special, sound engineers Sando and Yamamoto interview Takumi about the new team members who made up the planning division of AA4 (Apollo Justice). Until AA3, Takumi alone had been responsible for the planning of each game, but for AA4, he was joined by director Endo and the two planners Yamazaki and Yamakawa. He tells how each of these people is rather unique in their own way, team dynamics and how they sometimes inspried Takumi's writing of characters.

[Ash]

Two updates in one week?? Today a short fan Q&A with the staff of Ace Attorney Investigations organized by Dengeki Online, with most of the questions being about the characters of that game.

[Ash]

Added a report by Dengeki Online on the 10th Anniversary Special Court even, in which the developers talked about all things related to Ace Attorney. Some things aren't really interesting Gyakuten Saiban Library-wise, like promoting the upcoming film etc, but Yamazaki does mention some details about cut content from both the first and second Ace Attorney Investigations, which was the main reason why i decided to translate Dengeki's report.

[AshuraMage]

Added a report by Dengeki Online on the 10th Anniversary Special Court even, in which the developers talked about all things related to Ace Attorney. Some things aren't really interesting Gyakuten Saiban Library-wise, like promoting the upcoming film etc, but Yamazaki does mention some details about cut content from both the first and second Ace Attorney Investigations, which was the main reason why i decided to translate Dengeki's report.

Man, I am so excited for Gyakuten Saiban 5! I really can´t wait for them to finish Apollo and Trucy´s backstory from AJ and to see more of Beenix, I thought he was so cool!

[Ash]

Ace Attorney Investigations was released 13 years ago yesterday. AAI art director Iwamoto, AAI director Yamazaki and an editor of Nintendo Dream with whom they have worked a lot in the past, regularly chat about all kinds of things on Twitter Space, and because the 13th anniversary of AAI, yesterday's sessions had them talking a bit about the game, bringing up old memories. Here are some of the things they talked about not mentioned (or not in as much detail) in other interviews (as far as I know). I am not going to post this on Gyakuten Saiban Library, because I only post full translation of the source text and I didn't record their chat, but still worth putting this down.

- Kay was the first design Iwamoto started on, Rhoda the first he finished. The original concept behind Rhoda and Cammy was to contrast them by the way they wear their uniform, which was the reason why Cammy ended up looking sexy. Yamazaki mentions he was surprised at first because of Cammy's sexy design, but Iwamoto was like: "We have Mia already, so what's the difference?"

= One early thing the core team had discussions about, was about the animations for Edgeworth. Yamazaki initially had a hard time visualizing Edgeworth running, so they talked a lot about his walk animation. Both Yamazaki and Iwamoto now laugh about it, how it was a total waste of their time. Another early thing the team had discussions about was what Edgeworth should have as his default evidence (Phoenix has his badge). Because Edgeworth, like all prosecutors in that world, normally don't wear their badge. One suggestion was an organizer, which would have originally been his father's.

- Iwamoto couldn't do the (Japanese game) voice of Edgeworth now because it was in the middle of the night and he can only do it out loud, but he did do a live AAI2 Manosuke/Knightley on the broadcast.

- The title Gyakuten Kenji (Turnabout Prosecutor) was decided on later. Yamazaki didn't really like it at first, because in the main games, the 'turnabout' is about turning an almost decisive verdict around, while that doesn't work for "prosecutor". One possible title was Mitsurugi Reiji - Kareinaru Jikenbo (Miles Edgeworth - The Magnificent Case Files). Iwamoto reveals he didn't like the title Gyakuten Saiban of the main series, prefering Surviban, or at least thinking it was at least not as bad as Gyakuten Saiban.

- Originally, the project started as just a spin-off game to Ace Attorney. One early concept involved Ema as the star of the game. However, Yamazaki specifies this game would have been a very small project, nothing at all the size of a normal Ace Attorney game or the current Ace Attorney Investigations. Yamazaki mentions it would have been more like a game that'd confront the player with mystery quizzes, and imagined it as really just a game for the core fans. It would not have been a "full-size game" and the project only became that big after it was decided Edgeworth would star as the protagonist.

- The AAI cover of the 2008 June issue of Nintendo Dream was changed upon request of the editor. Originally, it only featured Edgeworth and Gumshoe, but the editor really wanted something more and hoped they could add a female character on the cover too, so Iwamoto drew the backside of Kay in the shadows. Nintendo Dream often has Ace Attorney covers, and Yamazaki revealed to the editor that Iwamoto was always grumbling about the Nintendo Dream editors always making so much requests for their covers :P

- More related to Ace Attorney in general, but Iwamoto also said he kinda regretted doing patterned fabrics, like Kay and Max Galactica wear, because it makes the animations so difficult. He names Tigre (the tiger pattern on his jacket) and Max (the card fabric on his arm) as a really PITA to animate as sprites.

- The gym clothes of the students of Starry School seen in the OP of 2-4 are actually designed after Iwamoto's own primary school gym clothes. The mark on their shirt is based on the mark of Chiba Prefecture (where Iwamoto comes from)

[Ash]

Added an early 2006 Famitsu interview with Takumi and Matsukawa about AA4. Very little was revealed at that point in time (TGS was coming up a few months later), so the interview focuses a bit on the early stuff like Apollo and Trucy and how the project got rolling. Takumi was apparently still busy writing the story in June 2006... and he kinda sounds uninterested in the interview? XD

[Ash]

It's been a while, but added two small updates to Gyakuten Saiban Library yesterday, both translations of posts originally published on the Gyakuten Kenji 2 blog. Both are about the "circumstances" in which the story was written: Iwamoto tells about the "camp" they had where the core team stayed for four nights somewhere so they could concentrate on the story, and AP Shiozawa telling about the time Yamazaki locked himself up in an office room for months to ensure he would make the deadlines for the scenario.

[Ash]

I wanted to add a source of Eshiro being an assistant producer of Gyakuten Saiban 4 (he is not credited in-game). Found a really short one, which was great because it meant little work. But it came with a food review first half, where Eshiro and Takumi try some food of a Chinese-style restaurant which had AA4-themed sets due to a colloboration with the 3DS release :P

[Ash]

First (small) update of this year is a short blog post by a few of the scenario writers of AA5. I always like these blog posts where you get to hear people other than the Usual Suspects talk about their work on these games.

I have 'bigger' interviews etc. that should still be translated, but usually, GS Library work ends up very, very low on my day-today priority list, so I'll see whether I'll get to them this year ^_~

[Ash]

Last update for this year, and just in time for the second trilogy release next year: A very long interview with Eshiro and Yamazaki from the official guide

[Ash]

And added another short 2006 interview with Takumi about the development of the first GBA game and the trilogy in general. The bit about Sugimori having to leave near the end of the project and them scrambling to use whatever scraps of music he left them is pretty interesting.

[Bulbasaur-Is-Awesome]

Hey, I noticed the other day that this blog has been set to invite-only now. Just so you know.

[Ash]

Sorry about that, was working on something, but forgot about switching it back on.

Edit: Oh, and I forgot to post the update here, but earlier this month, I happened to do an AAI2 interview (I swear I didn't know!), where Iwamoto is outed for having art of Mikagami/Verity in her underwear

https://gyakutensaibanlibrary.blogspot. ... er-up.html

[Ash]

https://gyakutensaibanlibrary.blogspot. ... shiro.html

Added a very minor 3DS AA4 interview to re-confirm Eshiro's role as assistant producer on the original AA4 (he's not actually credited in the game itself), and also it has a rare instance where Takumi comments on the mainline games that were made after he moved away from the franchise for a while after AA4.