Robin Newman's Secret (#77)

Warning: This post contains major spoilers about Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies, particularly Case 3.

Ah, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies, or as I like to call it, Gyakuten Saiban 5. Well, since I speak English, Turnabout Trial 5.

There's a website with a phone case I can
buy with this artwork. I want it. My current
phone case is a picture of Boba Fett
from Star Wars, by the way.

It combines everything I loved about the first four games in the main Ace Attorney series, while introducing great new characters such as Athena Cykes, the new defence lawyer at the Wright Anything Agency, and Simon Blackquill, the new prosecutor, who, it turns out, is also a prison inmate. For murder! Yes, a criminal prosecutor. As the game often puts it, this truly is the dark age of the law. The game takes place in 2027, around ten years after the original three which took place in 2016-2018 (Or 2016-2019, I forget) and one year after the fourth in the series, Apollo Justice's game.

The third case in the game, Turnabout Academy (every case except the fifth case in the first game, Rise From The Ashes, has the word turnabout in it, mainly because the Japanese name for the series translates to Turnabout Trial, and the main character always completely 'turns around' the events of each case) takes place in Themis Legal Academy, hence the name. I won't go into the plot in too much detail; if you want to know more of the story's explanation go visit Ace Attorney Wiki (or get the game!). Basically, at the high school, there are three courses of prosecutor, defence attorney and judge since it's a legal academy. The head of the judge course, Constance Courte, is murdered (the murderer turns out to be Aristotle Means, the head of the defence course, whose 'end justifies the means' philosophy truly represents the dark age of the law).

Anyway, in the story there are three extremely close friends who are each studying a different course and wish to become successful so they can work together to put and end to this dark age. They are a girl called Juniper Woods (she is studying the judge course and is the defendant in this case), Robin Newman (he is studying the prosecutor's course), and Hugh O'Connor (he is studying the defence attorney course). Again, the plot and character development is fantastic and you really should get the game, but the main person I'd like to talk about here is Robin Newman and his influential part of the story. I'll put a picture of him below.

On the first trial day of Turnabout Academy, Mr Newman testifies in court regarding the fact that he had put women's clothing on, specifically a dress designed by Juniper for the academy's school festival. At first, the game leads you into thinking that Mr Newman is a cross dresser, but, in one of the biggest plot twists of the case, it turns out that Robin is actually a girl! Her parents had brought her up to be masculine and to study to be a prosecutor. However, Ms Newman feels very relieved to finally be able to admit her true identity, and wishes to instead become an artist and act like her true self, which she can now that everybody knows her secret.

I think this moment in DD is pretty important because it is a positive way in this video game to look at some of the struggles and hardships of people of different sexualities in this day and age, especially those of transgender people. Whereas some video games and movies make fun of people for being different or misunderstood, Ace Attorney 5 gives us a new and sympathetic look on how some people are forced by their parents to live in a certain and possibly undesired way.

If you're interested in seeing the part of the game where Robin's secret is exposed and he reveals his true identity, you can click here to see a dubbed version of it. So you get to see some cool fan voice acting too!

Thomas