David Rosenstein's Blog

Turnabout Big Top is probably the single most hated case in the entire Ace Attorney series. While its probably not as bad as Turnabout Serenade (4-3), due to the popularity of the original trilogy I think this case gets a lot more hate. My goal here isn’t to tell you that this case in undeserving of its reputation – I still believe it is the worst case of the original trilogy – but I do think that this case actually has a lot going for it that people don’t really give enough credit to, and it honestly had the potential to be one of the best cases if it was better executed. I’m going to go over a lot of the things that people hate about this case, how they went wrong, and how, maybe with some better execution, it could have been fixed.

Maximillion Galactica

Let’s start with the defendant in this case – Max. He is really tough to defend. Not in the sense that Von Karma is a really difficult prosecutor (to be honest I find her to be the easiest of the trilogy other than Payne) but in that Max is just very unlikable. One of the first things that you discover in this case is that he has a a big rivalry with Trilo as they both like Regina (yes, I know what you want to say, we will get there). But this obviously goes way too far what Max assaults Ben by hitting him with a bottle, then hiding Trilo from him. I don’t really find this moment that necessary for the plot. I feel that they could have left the bad blood between the two rivals as they both want Regina, and nothing would be lost. Instead, the game gives a really sour taste to the person that we are supposed to defend.

What I would have done here is play up this rivalry between the two, but leave it as name calling. Make it mutual too. I think that this rivaly could also play into the bigger beef Max has with the rest of the circus, in that he believes that the other performers aren’t trying hard enough. I don’t want to make Max a flawless character, I actually think his flaws are crucial to this games potential, but make those flaws more realistic. The player could maybe relate to Max more if his flaws were more related to his work ethic and less assulty. Even if the player disagreed with him, they could at least lend him some empathy.

Regina

Okay why is she 16. I actually think this case as a whole would be significantly better if she was 20, but still act in a similar way that she does. This fixes two main things about her character in my opinion. First, it makes the whole love thing between her, Trilo, and Max less creepy (although if she still acts the way she does it would still be kind of creepy, which I am okay with, I do think it should be a little off putting). Secondly, it makes the fact that she’s so sheltered much more of a problem. I’ll talk more about this when I get to Moe. Also, I would add the bit from the anime where she apologizes to Acro in court, it is a really heartbreaking and well done.

Moe the Clown

Okay, here is easily the most hated on character in probably the entire series. But hear me out. Lets go through every reason why people don’t like Moe. First, his jokes. They *are* annoying, but I think they could be made to be a lot less annoying while still keeping his character. First, his “Aha Aha Aha Aha…”s need to be toned down. I think if they have two or three of them at the end of his jokes in the same text box it would still come across as an annoying laugh without ruining the game experience. Second, remove the unfun rule about his witness testimony. It’s just not very fun, and I feel like it doesn’t really add any skill to the game. With these two aspects of Moe removed, lets talk about what we have left.

We have a clown, who is still annoying to talk to (since he will still interrupt your conversations with jokes) but will waste much less of your time with his nonsense. His testimony is still a bit shit, but that is just as much Von Karma’s fault as his own (after all, the whole thing about Max flying is true, at least kind of). When he brings Regina to the court on Day 2 of the trial, its to help show her the real consequences of the world and to kind of unshelter her a bit – which is definitely needed after her father is gone – and so that she realizes the real problem with what happened to Bat. During all of this, I also think that Moe should show more action in helping to bring the circus back together. Remember, at the end of the case he becomes the ringmaster, which is a cute ending, but I wish there was more leading up to it. I wish we saw him trying to talk to Ben and Trilo to try and make amends with them and Max. Or maybe have him talk with Regina about training new animals for the circus. Moe will still be an annoying character, but his annoyingness will be turned down, and his humanity would be turned up.

Ben and Trilo

The main complaints about Ben and Trilo just come down to them being annoying, which is fair. I have been keeping annoying characters annoying in my changes, and these two are no exception. My main change is to just go alongside my changes with Max. First, get rid of the marriage crap, but keep the love rivalry with Max. Second, make them feel overworked by Max. They should feel that Max’s ambitions are too much on the circus performers and that he is leading them to be overworked. Lastly, tone down Trilo just a smidge. Mainly just make him a bit less rude, especially to Ben.

Von Karma

Fransiska is fine in this case, and I don’t really see her get any hate. My main issue is that she just doesn’t get developed enough throughout JfA, and I think this case is part of the problem. Her main goal for coming to beat Wright is to show that she is better than Edgeworth, but other than one instance of her talking about it, its barely brought up. This dynamic really needs more show and less tell in my opinion. Maybe this could’ve been done in 2-4 but if you look at other third cases (1-3, 3-3, i2-3), this is the case where you get a lot of that juice about the antagonist so that what every crazy stuff starts happening in the fourth case will be ready. But this just doesn’t happen in JfA. We get an implication that Von Karma is jealous/mad at Edgeworth in 2-3, then she gets shot in 2-4, runs away, and cries when Edgeworth calls her out. I know I’m oversimplifying here, but I’ve seen how deep of a character she can be in the investigations games, or hell even in 3-5. I’m just failing to see it here. To solve this, I think we would need to edit Wright’s weird hatred for Edgeworth in JfA so he doesn’t shut down any conversation about him, but that’s probably a bigger task than I’m looking for.

The Case Details

This is probably the other main issue that people have with this case (other than Moe) – which is that the arrest and evidence against Max seems very weak. The only reason it seems that he was arrested is that there was only one set of footprints – the victims. Since Max “flies” in his performances, clearly he has the ability to fly so that’s how he did this. Obviously that’s ridiculous, yet the game just roles with it. There should be more incriminating evidence against Max. Perhaps his fingerprints are on the pepper in the box. Or you just remove the snow in the first place and have there be no footprints, so he is arrested based on Trilo and Moe’s witnessing of events. Honestly, the combination of both these things would make the case a lot more believable.

Acro

Acro is the best part of this case, and I wanted to preserve this fact. In a sea of annoying performers, hes calm and nice to talk to. He is grateful for his circumstances and wants the best for the circus. He is honestly the best character in the whole case. And I wanted to keep all of this. There’s a reason why I made sure every other character was still annoying. I find the dynamic of going against the character that annoys you – the player – the least is a really cool idea that does a good job at building up for 2-4. That sometimes the people you need to attack are the ones who deserve it the least. But yeah, I’m not changing a thing about Acro.

Conclusion

Lets take stock of what the Circus looks like now. We have a rivalry between Max and Trilo on the direction of the circus. Regina is in the middle of it, not sure who se likes and also blissfully unaware of the world. Moe begins his work on trying to get everyone back together as he tries to become the next headmaster. Acro knows he made a terrible mistake, but stays to hope that he could see things get better.

The Ace Attorney anime was pretty mid, but they did a lot of these things in their interpretation of Turnabout Big Top, which made the case one of the best in the anime. I hope that more people can see that Turnabout Big Top, despite being a bad case, has a lot of interesting ideas, and if they were executed differently, the case could have been one of the best.