irradiated luigchoese

It’s fairly well-known that Suekane, the first art director for Ace Attorney, is a BL mangaka, and that her actions and comments regarding Edgeworth’s initial concept are what prompted Takumi to change him from the unlikeable older antagonist to Phoenix’s childhood friend and totally-not-love-interest. If you’ve ever read my long essay on Narumitsu (x), you might also remember me mentioning that one of Suekane’s original BL works is rumoured to be very similar to her drawings of Phoenix and Edgeworth, but that I wasn’t super keen to go through tons of yaoi to find evidence backing the rumour up.

Well, the short story is that I found it. While going through Suekane’s list of works, I noticed a 2010 manga called “Retsujou”, written under a pen name. The main characters of Retsujou look like this…

Hey, wait a minute- this looks familiar.

They even have the same coat! It really just looks like Suekane cut off Phoenix’s long spikes, removed Edgeworth’s cravat, and called them original characters!

The similarities aren’t just cosmetic, either; the main characters’ backstory and dynamic are startlingly similar to Narumitsu, in more ways than one.

(Just a quick warning- there’s nothing NSFW at all in this post, but if you end up looking at Retsujou for yourself, bear in mind that it is explicit BL and has several NSFW scenes.)

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