I wrote Piano Man in one summer, somewhere between working during the day as a lab tech and reading the kinkmeme at night. It was a very strange time in my life, when I felt alienated, or in stasis-but this wasn't a bad thing. I was recovering from severe depression from a personal loss (it's a very long, pathetic story), so I felt comparatively free. I admit the Gyakuten Saiban / Ace Attorney games were instrumental in helping me recover.

I chose to write using the English localization as canon-that is to say, that Gyakuten Saiban takes place in the United States (specifically, Los Angeles), not Japan, and that the names are as translated, etc. I seldom do this, but I have noticed the fandom has embraced the localization, and I can understand why. I played the games in English and enjoyed them immensely. I admit that the characters ARE their English localization counterparts in my mind. I also thought this was a story I could much better write taking place in the US, given that I have lived here my whole life. In 2008, I was still living in Phoenix, Arizona (make of that what you will knowing recent US history), but I frequently drove to Los Angeles to visit friends and attend cons, that sort of thing. So I had a good feel for LA by that point, certainly far better a feel than I would have for any Japanese city. Now I'm here at UCLA for graduate school, where it seems I spend an inordinate amount of time hunched over microcentrifuge tubes, so I guess things have come full circle. But I find a lot of my initial impressions from visiting were correct, whatever that says about my observational prowess. Probably not much.

I also get to dabble around in Anglosphere/English-language popular music culture, this way. I tried to choose songs that were popular, the Stones, Bowie, that sort of thing, because the shared experience of the song is important. I also just love that music. It's a good idea of what you'd be listening to if you were stuck in my car. I don't know what the hell I was thinking sticking a Kingdom Hearts song in there; WTF Kamen seriously well I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time. I assumed Phoenix would be exposed to it through Maya; seems like the sort of thing she would like. But I digress.

As I understand it, the Japanese Gyakuten Saiban takes place in a regional city, multiple degrees removed from a megacity like Los Angeles. Los Angeles is anything but culturally homogenous, which gives me platform to explore dynamics I couldn't do so deeply or pervasively in a small-town Japanese setting. I don't know where I got the idea that Phoenix's mother was a Mexican migrant, and a single mom (I guess his hair color and skin tone made it seem plausible), but it's an idea I liked having in the background. This would give him a perspective on class inequality, racism, and social justice he would not have gotten firsthand if he grew up an upper-middle class white kid (like, I imagine, Edgeworth did). God knows Japan has its racism and anti-migrant issues, but this particular dynamic (Latino-US immigration, which is politically volatile now, especially here in the Southwest) was something I knew I could write with far more authenticity. I also have firsthand experience with the political climate in post-9/11 America, which, I imagined, would inform the basis for the dystopian nature of the GS court system transplanted to the United States. It's a cheap, easy shot, but there it is.

That was something I had to twist around to address, actually-why are there no longer trials by jury? Japan did not start doing trial by jury until 2009 (at which point, the first case was a highly experimental run under considerable scrutiny-if that sounds familiar), but the right to a trial by a jury of one's peers is enshrined in our Constitution, one of our most basic democratic rights, and has been since the founding of this country. So I wanted to play with the idea of what would give political will, and leverage, to repeal that amendment, to make the bench trial system feasible in the US. Unfortunately, given the post-9/11 political climate and pervasive low-level hysteria, I did not find this difficult to do. What had happened in our country-scapegoating immigrants, especially from the Middle East and Latin America, the insanity that ever allowed the Patriot Act to be passed, or even be considered acceptable, to the public-was already a fertile setting for that concept.

This is especially tragic if one remembers that, in essence, Gyakuten Saiban occurs in a dystopian future. The justice system is so overburdened that trials are restricted to three days in length, the burden of proof has shifted from the prosecution to the defense, and there is no longer the civic trust in the concept of a jury. (And you wonder, after things like the Zimmerman verdict...) Given how terrified and divided the States have become, this isn't as much of a stretch as you would think. Especially given the heinous rate at which we imprison our population for minor offences. Overburdened justice system, indeed. But I digress. And nothing has changed for the better since I first wrote this, in 2008. We've had CISPA and SOPA, wiretapping cases, and now the recent revelation of the government's illegal electronic surveillance, to name a few government scandals that would have been considered unthinkable before 9/11, but now are being debated as reasonable measures for the safety of the public.

I'm shocked and rather touched that there are people who still remember this story-indeed, people who still seem to be reading it, as I occasionally get a notice in my inbox that somebody has commented or favorited it. I've considered editing the past chapters, given that there are parts that physically hurt me to read, but people seem to like them, and if I went back to fix every past project I have done, I would never get anything new written. I suppose I lost steam on it after I had said what I felt I desperately needed to say. Gyakuten Saiban IV left me with a profound sense of unease, and I would not feel satisfied until I had resolved that. What had happened to leave Phoenix alone and without help when he needed it most? I couldn't believe his friends had abandoned him, or filtered out of his life. I felt I had at least tied that off, establishing that he was not alone. Well, maybe that is a more realistic take on things. Maybe I'm far too idealistic to accept how pointless life often is. But I digress. This was my story, in many ways unrepentantly self-indulgent, and I can't rest until I have put my ideas to paper.

Since then I've been working on an original novel (I know every douchebag has a novel), and, as of quite late, dabbling about in Persona 4 fandom. And graduating and finishing a paper and getting into graduate school, and all that adult bullshit, with research in there somewhere. So I've had fragments I've wanted to add to this on my hard drive for-fuck, has it been years? It certainly doesn't feel like that. Anyway, I've always wanted to come back to this, when the inspiration hit again, and I suppose seeing Gyakuten Saiban V might actually happen re-awakened that. Oddly, I had a head-canon that before his first trial after being disbarred, Edgeworth bought Phoenix a new suit, and it looked exactly as the one he wears in the GSV promos-still blue, but with a waistcoat, and seemingly of far higher quality than his former suit, which I imagine came from a Goodwill somewhere. Maybe he just wears it better since he's older and has been through some shit, but let me have my fantasies.

In 2008 I had just played all the games and had a very clear memory of all the events. It's been a while, so I fear losing the 'feel' I had for things, or forgetting some crucial detail, something like that. But looking back I remember why exactly I loved these games, the humanity, the cynical handling of a crap-saccharine world where everybody is a little bit crazy, at best. I love the dry handling of how utterly absurd everything is.

I thought Takashi Miike did an excellent job transferring that gestalt to his film version of Gyakuten Saiban-he highlighted the absurdity, and for what it's worth, I love the way he incorporated retro-futuristic technology into the courtroom scenes-but there was still a definite, grey pallor, a dark future, sort of like the inside of an old computer. It was very uniquely Japanese, in the way Battle Royale felt profoundly Japanese in its dystopia, but there was a lot there that hit close to trends all over the world. So there's power in that. I try to put words exactly to what that Japanese quality is, as a foreigner, but I can't quite place it. Miike highlighted aspects of the dystopia that were at most implied in the original games. Trials have become a spectator sport, almost a way to placate the public in the wake of increased violent crime (or maybe just more hysteria about violent crime, stirred up by 24/7 media voyeurism and sensationalism)-sort of like the government wants to make a show of being tough and efficient on crime. It's a false sense of security. It is also depressingly familiar. And it is a spectator sport replete with theatricality (I like the actual confetti); it gives the public just enough reason to celebrate defenders being found innocent, every now and then, to maintain faith in the impartiality of the system. The public has accepted this loss of basic rights for the illusion of security. While Japan did not have a tradition of the right to trial by jury to be revoked, the burden of proof had shifted heavily-obscenely-from the prosecution to the defense, guilty until proven innocent, so that somebody will visibly hang for the crime. The attorneys are assumed to be defending the guilty, ipso facto, by questioning the work of the police force-Lotta says as much at one point. I also noticed the Blue Badger mascot suit hanging about with the police during public shows of force, like some sort of desperate public relations campaign. Defanging the police, or making them seem like public friends, it's all very familiar-though if any members of the police force are like Gumshoe himself, they truly do believe that. Maybe the public is starting to fear the police, maybe the police anticipated that. Placation. Everything is a massive show for placation. False shows of power while the government absorbs rights, freedoms, unobserved by most-again, depressingly familiar. All of this comes from fear.

Whatever public relations issues a police force in a Japanese township must have, I am sure they pale in comparison to those of the LAPD. If unfamiliar, either by location or age or just lack of reading, with LAPD-related controversies, I highly recommend doing some research. It's an apt representation of socioeconomic and racial prejudices entrenched in the justice system in the United States. Albeit to say, rolling out a new mascot would not be enough to fix the image of the force.

In the real world, in 2013, as I sit here, people already assume the defendant in a case is most likely guilty. It would be folly to assume that does not factor into jury bias, in-of-itself. I would be curious to see how verdicts would change if juries were given the same body of evidence, but not given a particular defendant. Criminal law is a high-burnout field. You are told being a defense attorney is 99% defending guilty clients, the scum of the earth, who you wouldn't want out in society yourself, but you have a duty to defend them as best you can. It isn't all Atticus Finch and hopeless innocents and mires of conspiracy. Often, the crimes are very straightforward. Gyakuten Saiban did address this, briefly, with the Engarde trial-what does an attorney do with a manifestly guilty client?-but Phoenix seems alleviated from the cynicism and burnout by the fact that most of his clients are innocent, and his faith in humanity is validated. I also find it interesting that in the GS universe, attorneys are poorly paid (or maybe that's just Phoenix because he only selects clients he believes in), and the prosecutors are well-compensated. It is another inversion of the existing system. Or maybe this is a comment that the honest attorneys can't make a decent living. Maybe that's a cynicism in the story.

Maybe that is one of the reasons the Gyakuten Saiban stories are so compelling. They are fundamentally underdog stories, a triumph of faith in the individual over a system that treats justice as a mechanical process, and churns out resolutions, just for the sake of a resolution-who cares whether or not there is 'truth' in it? The majority of voters can rest assured in the illusion. It is the minority, often labeled delusional, who says (or knows) otherwise. And it is always the minority (I mean this in numbers as well as in racial, socioeconomic, etc, terms) that is screwed, and then ignored, or called delusional and bitter. Bitter, perhaps, and thoroughly warranted, but it is easy to call people delusional when their view does not match the sanctioned one. I also think belief in complex narratives, itself, is a form of romanticism-the romanticism of the intellectual. It is a romanticism in which I unrepentantly indulge. The alternative is too banal.

Whatever the case may be, I do think these games are very much a product of our current political climate.

I've missed writing these guys. They're both highly verbal and witty, so the banter flows quite easily.

At the time I wrote the first part of this story, the last game released was Gyakuten Saiban IV / Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. The two Gyakuten Kenji / Ace Attorney Investigations games had not yet been released. The timeline I constructed for the story does not match with new details given in the latest games. Gyakuten Saiban III / Trials and Tribulations ends in February, 2019, with the Iris Hawthorne trial. Edgeworth had been in Europe during this trial, and had returned briefly to help Phoenix, but then returned to Europe for another month. The Gyakuten Kenji / Investigations games take place from March - April 2019 (exception given for flashbacks), and ends a little over a week before the Enigmar trial on April 19, immediately after which Phoenix was disbarred. I had assumed that Edgeworth was still in Europe following the end of the third game, and that he and Phoenix had started a long-distance relationship during a brief visit after that trial. In Piano Man, Edgeworth returns to LA after the disbarment, but the timeline given by the new games makes it highly likely he was already living in LA at the time. I thought one reason he would not have interfered with Kristoph Gavin immediately was that he was out of the country; if he was at the Prosecutor's Office, why did he not get involved sooner? But that is a digression for another day. Phoenix decides to adopt Trucy a few weeks after, on May 13, and in this story Miles has returned to Europe when Phoenix makes that decision. The dynamics of the situation would change considerably if Miles had been in town, able to immediately respond, but I feel that I should continue with the continuity I previously established. So I guess this has become fully an AU, so to speak. I also rationalized his absence in Phoenix's life during the seven year hobo period by him being in Europe finishing his work. There is no reason to think he would not have returned to Europe for a while, even given a strictly canon timeline, so perhaps the timelines can resolve at that point.

I am content to let my work conflict with canon and just continue on at this point, for the same reasons given above re: fixing stuff that sucks.

I want to thank every single person who reads this story. I never thought a self-indulgent drabble would become so popular, or mean anything to anybody but myself. Your reviews and thoughts have meant the world to me.

-Kamen

July 14, 2013