if I had a nickel every time an episode in Ace Attorney involves a murder orchestrated by a pair of partners-in-crime where:
the one who wanted the victim dead and who's calling the shots is the yang-esque partner, an orange/red-coloured and explicitly cat-coded villain antagonist man with a misleadingly nice title/nickname/slogan ("tender"; "refreshing" etc) that doesn't suit his real nature + a bright conspicuous motorbike that is currently out of use, whose main thing is acting i.e. playing different characters & roles, and is able to fool many around him with his act, who is the primary antagonist or "real" bad guy in the episode narratively and,
the one who was enlisted by the cat-coded biker to help with the murder is the yin-esque partner, a black/white-coloured character with an ostentatious visible sign of past injury on their head and an eerie aura designated to invoke fear & creepiness from the moment they appear on screen, who consistently makes it sound as if they might kill you or someone else any second when they speak, but is ultimately treated as less antagonistic/more sympathetic than cat biker by the narrative.
and
cat biker stars as the leading role of their murderous two-man act, while the scary accomplice plays a supporting role in the background costumed in the uniform of the service job (e.g. maid, butler, waitress, bellboy) they're disguising themselves in.
despite serving the cat biker, scary accomplice is actually far more powerful in reality and both of them know it. scary accomplice's last name is infamously powerful in the criminal underworld and strikes terror into people's hearts; when brought up to the law enforcement for the first time, the player is told that other outlaws fear them and the police can't reach them.
cat biker acts tough and intimidating with the rogue face he puts on but he's actually a coward absolutely terrified of scary accomplice's actual power, because he knows the only reason they hasn't got him dead yet is that he is still on the accomplice's good side and they trust him.
and
the duo carries out the murder according to cat biker's wish but they're unsatisfied without making sure biker never gets convicted, so they decide to take a step further and mess with the lawyering as well. so they target phoenix wright personally, which eventually becomes their undoing because it just pushes him to find out the truth even more.
moreover, phoenix hates betrayal personally, and during his search he finds out that cat biker has been deceiving scary accomplice all along, despite scary accomplice's strong devotion to and forceful dedication to trusting cat biker. cat biker also even expresses his contempt toward them for this foolish trust behind them
phoenix breaks the truth about this betrayal to scary accomplice but couldn't get through until he provides evidence with the correct explanation, because accomplice has wanted to trust cat biker. after phoenix gets the truth through, scary accomplice completely turns against cat biker and wants him punished, which eventually helps phoenix gets him convicted and jailed with the help of unconventional methods
...I would have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but,
did you know that AA2: Justice for All was originally going to have 5 episodes, and Recipe for Turnabout was supposed to be 2-4 while Farewell, My Turnabout was originally meant to be 2-5, before they ran out of space and switched Recipe for Turnabout out for AA3 instead?
which means if it went as planned, Recipe for Turnabout would've been right before Farewell, My Turnabout. I wonder if that means this parallel could actually have been not completely unintentional?
anyway it's hilarious to me to think that Farewell, My Turnabout (the Engarde & De Killer case) would've been exactly one case after Recipe for Turnabout (the Tigre & Viola case) and exactly one case before the Dahlia & Phoenix case (Dahlia is a villain tied to the theme of deceit + comparable to Matt, while Phoenix is all about trust and trusting your clients + foils Shelly). fellas is it gay to strongly parallel not one, but multiple doomed godawful dysfunctional canonical m/f romances thematically








