#naramitsu

Jean Armstrong is portrayed as an effeminate man who flirts with every man around him. He exaggerates his movements and mannerisms, using a fake french accent in his daily life. He owns a restaurant that is decorated in a “girlish” way, filled with roses and accents of pink. He sells perfume on the side, adding to the “girly” things he does.

Throughout the game, characters question his gender identity. It is not explicitly mentioned, but it is implied that Jean is a cisgender gay man who likes to dress in drag.

Ace Attorney is not a game where the designer was trying to express a message pertaining to gender and sexuality, rather it was to make fun of gender expressions outside the norm. The characters outright asking him if he’s a woman is meant to be humorous, although it just shows that in the game and the culture surrounding it, acting feminine equates to being a woman. The game perpetuates gender stereotypes in this way.

It is important to note that Max Galactica, a magician in a circus, is not criticized for his feminine appearance like Armstrong. With his long flowing pink hair, shiny pink clothes, and flamboyant accents on those clothes, one could argue that Max also dresses in drag.

When looking at Armstrong, the characters call him a woman due to his feminine appearance. It could also be because he flirts with men, as "something a woman would do." Perhaps Max does not receive the same jokes as Armstrong because he is straight (and in love with a 16-year old who acts like a child but let's not talk about that right now), has his chest exposed (which only a man is allowed to do), and works at a circus (where it's expected for people to act strangely).

Moving onto sexuality, the Ace Attorney fandom ships two main characters, Phoenix Wright and Miles Edgeworth.

Here is the main reason.

Here is another reason.

...enough said.

okay, one more

oh and proof that phoenix is bi

he was in love with and dated a woman

see image below

In a game where queerness is laughed at, the game "accidentally" (?) created characters with serious feelings for each other that no one in the game acknowledges or makes jokes out of.

AA is the embodiment of queer players unraveling the clear queer undertones in the game. Playing queerly, a term Bo Ruberg mentions in their article, "Video games have always been queer" (NYU Press, 2019), "imagine alternative ways of being and to make space within structures of power for resistance through play". Setting aside Jean Armstrong, Max Galactica, and WrightWorth for a moment, AA is a game where Phoenix Wright explores the world through a queer lens. He finds unconventional methods to prove his clients innocent in court, thinking outside the box while never straying from his morals (except for straight up lying to a witness to make them admit that they knew what the bottle of poison looked like but that was valid okay? not legal tho lol). Phoenix Wright plays queerly, encouraging the player to play queerly as well.

Getting back to the queer characters in a game, one can laugh at the fact that in attempting to make a laughable queer character (Jean Armstrong), the joke was ultimately on the creators as they created one of the queerest games ever.