"I'll Never Give Up on You!"

after the big reveal at the end of 5-5... goddamn no one in ace attorney can catch a break. the whole "erm actually "fool bright" has been dead the whole time and the phantom was right under your nose wearing his face" is way more horrible than just bobby being the phantom---like that means bobby fulbright was a real guy who really was like that(at least on the surface) yet no one on the main cast ever met him or realized they were being duped. and the body being so disfigured that it took a year to ID it... bro...

oh and the possibility that real bobby was masking and the phantom mimicked that, as no one apparently knew real bobby well enough to realize he'd been replaced

and revisiting previous cases knowing the end is also a little sickening---like when the phantom talks about redeeming and rehabilitating simon ,when in reality the guy who was supposed to be in charge of believing in you and reintroducing you to society is actually your nemesis who you've been hunting for 7 years, killed your mentor, orphaned an 11 y/o, and put you on death row. i think that would fuck with you at least a little

i've seen headcanons that bobby was alive and held captive or the like, and yk what sure maybe bobby went on a suspiciously long vacation for a year and came back and everyone lived happily ever after. simon deserves at least one nice thing

never explicitly said whether simon had ever met real bobby or not but idk which one is worse: finding out you've been talking to an impostor the whole time and have no idea what the real guy was like or that you never noticed the switch between real and impostor

i've still got bones to pick with the phantom's portrayal in 5-5 like how supposedly arresting this one guy would end the dark age of law or how his lack of emotions was supposed to explain the crazy things he did or how stupidly easy it was to catch an international spy who had escaped capture for 7+ years and could put on other people's faces

but this was a pretty interesting flavor of aa villain i think especially being both an unknown unnamed faceless third party yet also one of the most beloved and familiar characters from the game---reminded me a bit of 3-5 where you're busy proving the defendants innocent and then you realize oh shoot who does that leave to be the guilty party then

don't do ship things usually but after the big reveal i can see it

the dynamic between simon and phantom bobby during all of dd was questionable but if all of the circumstances were different and it was real bobby instead and no one was dead or on death row or wearing someone else's face or holding the remote for electric shackles i think they would’ve been pretty silly. foolish even