Top Ten Turnabouts - Part 10 (#100)

#1 - 1-4: Turnabout Goodbyes

Aw, come on guys, I had to choose this one! Turnabout Goodbyes was originally the last case in the first Ace Attorney game, before it was released for DS in America and they added the DS-exclusive fifth case, Rise From The Ashes (which features the amazing Damon Gant, by the way, for which reason I heavily considered including 1-5 on this list). Turnabout Goodbyes was the first final case in the series (again, not including Rise From The Ashes) and it set a very high standard for the games to follow when it came to final cases.

I love these little pictures you get after completing
a case. I just wish they weren't replaced by pictures
of one main character from the case after the first game.
I was glad they returned in Dual Destinies.

Turnabout Goodbyes begins with a scene that was shocking to many. First, a tiny bit of context: Miles Edgeworth, the prosecutor from cases 2 and 3 in the first game, started off as a big jerk who would apparently do anything to get a guilty verdict. However, after being in court with his old friend Phoenix who he hasn't seen since they were children and after Nick proving his client innocent and scarring the record of the so-called demon prosecutor who hasn't lost a case, Miles begins to question his job and the way he operates with always trying to prove people guilty, even those who may not be, he actually ends up helping Phoenix in the next case near the end of the third trial day when he begins to realise that Dee Vasquez actually probably is guilty.

So, at the beginning of 1-4, two men are seen standing on a boat on what is later revealed to be Gourd Lake in the very late hours of Christmas Eve going into Christmas Day. They are talking about something that happened 15 years ago and how one of them has waited so long for this moment. One of the men (both faces are in shadow) shoots a bullet (at the same time saying the words 'merry Christmas' which is pretty eerie considering the situation) and the splash of somebody falling into the lake is heard and seen. The camera pans up to the face of the man holding the pistol... wait, those red clothes... nah, they wouldn't... huh... is that a cravat...?...wait, no?! OH MY GOD IT'S EDGEWORTH.

AWW HELLL NAW.

After lots and lots of Edgeworth denying partly due to to pride and also wanting to protect Phoenix from the case's prosecutor (more on that evil, evil man soon), Nick eventually is able to convince Edgey-poo (<3) to let him defend him, and after a mostly desperate an unsuccessful day of investigating and scraping for clues, the first day of trial begins with Edgeworth saying one word: 'Karma'. He soon explains that the name of the case's prosecutor is Manfred von Karma, who happens to be his past mentor, a man so dastardly and perfect that he is ten times as good as Edgeworth, according to Miles himself, and has never lost a case in his forty year career. Truly unbreakable.

Pure, terrifying evil. Staring you right in the face. In fact, when you see
him like this in the criminal affairs evidence locker on day 3 of
investigation, he actually TASES YOU WITH A TASER. And
TAKES YOUR EVIDENCE. Maya clutches on to one piece of evidence
which saves the day at the end, but still... that evidence is the bullet
from the DL-6 incident by the way (see below).

You are soon introduced to the horrible and extremely fearsome prosecutor that is von Karma (Franziska's dad by the way) and it seems like he really will do anything to get a guilty verdict as he manipulates the judge by pressuring him and threatens everybody in the court with his attitude. Over the second and third days of the case, we learn about an incident called the DL-6 incident that happened 15 years ago on December 28th 2001 (the case is set around the last days of December in 2016, meaning the DL-6 incident canonically only happened a couple months after me and my best friend were born). A young Miles and his father Gregory Edgeworth, along with a bailiff called Yanni Yogi, were in an elevator at the district court on the day of the incident after a large earthquake shook the court. Gregory was shot (he was the victim in this incident) and Yogi was pinned as the defendant. He was defended by Robert Hammond, who used the untrue excuse that Yogi wasn't thinking with a sane mind when he shot Gregory due to the fact that the elevator had been stuck for five hours and there was a lethal lack of oxygen. However, despite the fact that Yogi got free, his life was ruined due to being declared insane and his wife, Polly Jenkins committed suicide because of this.

From left to right: Gregory Edgeworth, Yanni Yogi, Miles
Edgeworth. December 28th, 2001.

It is revealed in the third day of the case that the man who was murdered in the current case, Robert Hammond, was killed by Yanni Yogi, the man who was the defendant in the original DL-6 incident after being accused of killing Gregory. He killed Hammond because he had in a way ruined Yogi's life after getting him free through being declared insane. Yanni had received a letter from an unknown sender giving him clear instructions on how to exact perfect revenge on the two who had ruined his life, Hammond and Miles Edgeworth.

Yogi pretends he's a senile old uncle who can't remember his real
name or anything that isn't recent at first...

...but when Nick proves he's lying, stuff gets serious.

The true culprit all along was von Karma, who sent this letter, and, after a lot of cross examination, pressing, stressful wishing and hard thought, you are finally able to deduce and prove that von Karma was the true killer in the DL-6 incident from 15 years ago. Just in time too, since the statute of limitations runs out in like a day. The statute of limitations is something that lasts for a certain amount of years that makes it so that if somebody is found guilty of a crime, say, 15 years after it has been committed, they cannot be arrested since the crime was too long ago. In the Ace Attorney world, the statute of limitation for murder is 15 years, so Phoenix literally has one day left until the true murderer in DL-6 can't be arrested. This is a thing in real life, interestingly enough, except there's no time limit in real life for murder. That's good. In the trial that was happening fifteen years ago when the earthquake struck, Gregory Edgeworth was defending in a case (that you actually learn a lot more about in Investigations 2 which is really nice) with von Karma prosecuting, and proved that von K had done something against the rules. Karma got his first penalty ever, and he shot Gregory in the head for this. And that is the truth behind DL-6. Just for ONE PENALTY. Imagine what he'd do to Phoenix for making him lose his first case AND proving him a murderer in the same day... if the statute had already run out, if it was one day after when Nick proved this and von Karma couldn't be arrested, I'm pretty certain that Phoenix and everybody he loved would be dead. There would be no more Ace Attorney.

Manfred's breakdown. It was so satisfying to see
this devil finally come to justice. 

Another cool thing about this case is that it features the return of teh Butz, first name Larry, who actually does something useful for once (soz Larreh ma boi) in helping Phoenix out by shouting 'HOLD IT' after the Judge has declared a verdict and Phoenix is pretty much screwed. However, Udgey allows this objection to the ending of the trial and Larry testifies to the court about the night of the murder which pretty much saves Nick. So proud of the Butz.

Oh, and you get to cross examine a parrot. Yes, really. 'Nuff said.

*SQUUUAAAWWWKKKK!*

Some honourable mentions for my Top Ten Turnabouts are: Turnabout Sisters, Turnabout Ablaze, Bridge To The Turnabout, Turnabout Academy, The Imprisoned Turnabout, Turnabout Succession, Turnabout Beginnings and Turnabout For Tomorrow. Basically every other case in the series really.

Well, that's it for my Top Ten Turnabouts list. The interesting thing is, the idea for this list came a few weeks ago when I was lying in bed and unsuccessfully (as usual) trying to get to sleep. I suddenly had a load of cool ideas for my blog, and I was scared I would forget them (my memory hasn't changed...) so I actually got out of bed at around 1am to write them down in a notebook. This one was just something I thought would be great to do as a countdown to my one hundredth post, and holy crap, it was definitely a lot longer and harder than I thought it would be to make, especially with regularly uploading each part now that I'm back at school. Which sucks. Nothing like this again for a while. I don't think I like countdowns anymore. And I still have some of the other stuff planned for the near future and, yes, it is Ace Attorney stuff. But, apart from a couple posts about Ace Attorney news and so on, I will try not to mention the game series too much for a while before I actually have to call this blog Ace Attorney News. Actually, Turnabout Trial Talk does a good ring to it... hint, hint, hint... no, I'm not going to rename it to that. But that name does have some relevance to the future. You'll just have to wait and see. It's not another blog, by the way.

If you just came here to read the list, then feel free to leave the post now since the rest of the stuff I'm going to be talking about below isn't about the list but other stuff.

Wow, one hundred posts! I seriously did not think I would get this far on Awesome Fantasy News, especially not in, what, barely over three months? Yeah, it's around the beginning of September now and I started this on June 2nd, which was a Tuesday. Nice. The funny thing is, like I've mentioned loads of times, I've done two blogs before, and I never really stuck to them both. The first one I did like six posts on, with a post each day for five days, but then I just stopped. And the next and last post was about six months later, in September. Ha. Although, my excuse is that I broke my legs between then, but still. (Don't worry, that blog was a plight on mankind.)

The other one was a lot less cringey (in fact, expect a post about that blog along with a link to its page(!) very soon) and was only updated once a month, but even despite the fact that updates were extremely unoften, I still didn't keep to it, and stopped posting. Eek. And those posts were barely longer than this one. I was very lazy apparently. Still am to be honest. But somehow I managed to not abandon this. I think it might have been something to do with the fact that I'm not scheduling myself. At first, I said I would post at least once a day, then it went to once every three days, then I just cancelled the schedule and said I would promise to keep updating regularly. And it worked better without a schedule. Interesting.

But I didn't even have any plans to make another blog when I did. It was just spur of the moment really. I was in a group chat with two close friends and one of them (the guy I 'passed on the objection' to) suddenly sent a link to a little blog he made. He never had really done anything like that on the internet before so I checked it out. Then I just thought, 'I should try doing one of these again. But instead of focusing it on one thing, like reviews, I should make it about news and my life when it comes to video games and movies and just basically stuff I like'. And, well, I did. I made that introduction post, and here we are. I don't know what compelled me exactly. It was probably some kind of inspiration, or more likely a competitive spark. I know he won't be reading this, but thanks. He hasn't posted on the blog in months and he only wrote for a few days or so, but that short blog was kind of what made me want to do this for the third time. And it finally worked. I don't think he's going to continue the blog, but it's here if you want to check it out. I'm sure he wouldn't mind me linking it here.

Quite a bit of stuff has happened since I started TTT (Top Ten Turnabouts), but I haven't said much about it, because I didn't want to distract from the actual list. I've had to even write a list on the Sticky Note app thing on my laptop of things I want to talk about for the next five to ten posts. At least I have a plan, because after that, I get the feeling that I'll be fumbling for ideas again. Stupid writer's block. I've even gotten two new games this week, and am getting another today, which is one of the things I'm going to make a post about soon. But I'll save which games they are for then. Expect that in post 102, actually.

I finished season 2 of (modern) Doctor Who on Saturday night. I can't believe that Rose had to leave the series like that. So tearjerking. I haven't started season 3 yet but I will soon.

And there you have it. My hundredth post, which is probably one of if not my longest post so far. I should make a kind of AFN logo sometime in the future. That'd be nice. I need to develop art skills first though.

But seriously... oh. My. God. This post is massive. Bloody hell. Forgive me if I don't post for a day or two, I may need to recover slightly. Thanks for reading.

Thomas

Intro | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10