Characters / The Great Ace Attorney

Ace Attorney | Main Character Sheet
Wright Anything Agency (Phoenix Wright, Apollo Justice) | Defense Attorneys & Assistants | Main Prosecutors (Miles Edgeworth, Franziska von Karma) | Prosecutors & Judges | Law Enforcement | The Fey Clan | Troupe Gramarye | Kingdom of Khura'in
Witnesses and Other Characters (Original Game | JFA | T&T [Dahlia Hawthorne] | AJ | DD | SoJ | Manga | Anime | Novels | Theater) | Victims
Investigations (AAI | AAI2) | TGAA (Major | Minor)
PL vs. PWAA

Main characters of The Great Ace Attorney. See here for major characters and here for minor and case-specific characters. See here for the character sheet of the entire Ace Attorney series.

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Ryunosuke Naruhodo

Ryunosuke Naruhodo

Voiced by (Japanese): Hiro Shimono

Voiced by (English): Mark Ota

"I won't deny that I'm no expert. I'm just a student. And one who could arguably study harder, too. But standing here now in our Supreme Court, there is one thing that I feel very strongly: A country that fails to uphold the truth in its justice system is a country with no future at all."

Phoenix's ancestor from Meiji-era Japan and the protagonist of The Great Ace Attorney duology. A second-year student at Imperial Yumei University at a time when cultural change means the profession of a "defense lawyer" has yet to truly become staple in Japanese society. Is suspected of being a murderer and stands in "top-secret" trial ordered by the government, representing himself. Is good friends with Kazuma Asogi, a budding law student, who helps him in his initial trial. Eventually travels to Victorian London and participates in their trial-by-jury system along with his judicial assistant Susato Mikotoba, who helps him understand the nuances of English court procedure.

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• Afraid of Doctors: While reading through Dr. Wilson's medical report, Ryunosuke not-so-subtly hints towards Kazuma that he's afraid of going to the doctor under the pretense of forcing you to drink disgusting medicine and get painful injections, as well as charging you ludicrous prices.
• Badass Normal: In comparison to his descendant and said descendant's protégés, Ryunosuke has no supernatural or technological superpower to assist him in his investigations and trials — just his powers of observation and his deductive skills good enough to keep in step with the great detective Herlock Sholmes.
• Better Manhandle the Murder Weapon: Why he's arrested in Case 1, but it's Played With: the gun he picked up wasn't actually the murder weapon. In fact, the killer planted it there knowing he'd pick it up and become a suspect as a result. He also has a good reason for doing it: it was an English model of gun so he assumed (correctly) that it belonged to the victim and was about to return it to him when another gunshot happened to go off.
• Beware the Silly Ones: For all his Cloudcuckoolander tendencies and him being somewhat ignorant of the proceedings of court and British culture in general, he is, by all accounts, a legal prodigy, facing off against Barok van Zieks, a formidable prosecutor even disregarding the Reaper legends, and almost always coming out on top, as well as solving a decade-old string of murders and uncovering a decade-long conspiracy born from these killings.
• Big Eater: Downplayed, but he is regularly drawn eating a lot, has owed his best friend multiple times^note in DLC ep 0; Asogi also laughs that he'll treat him to an extra-large beef bowl to celebrate his innocence at the end of Case 1, was tempted to eat the cheese from a mousetrap, and is displeased enough to whine whenever he has to be pulled away in the middle of a meal, even if it's about something important.
• Birds of a Feather: He and Barok van Zieks share some funny and serious similarities: they both have a tendency of misplacing their own stuff recklessly and they both are implicated as culprits from being found picking a dropped gun near a dead body.
• Book Dumb: His knowledge of law does get better with time, but in general, he is rather clueless on a lot of subjects that should be general knowledge, with science being the sorest thumb of all.
• Butt-Monkey: Since he had to deal with — among a few things — Herlock's antics and Susato throwing him around six ways from Sunday, it's a given. Not to mention that he was accused of murder twice in a row. And these were his first cases. When Phoenix Wright is sufficiently shocked in court, his jaw simply drops. Comparatively, when Ryunosuke is shocked in court, he gets blown against the wall.
• But Now I Must Go: In the finale of the sequel, he decides to return to Japan to properly study to become an attorney.
• Character Development: Goes through a considerable amount of this over the course of both games. Compared to Kazuma, he's directionless and clearly lacking purpose in life, as well as being somewhat timid. However, the events of the story instill within him a strong desire to become a real defense attorney (though it's challenged after the McGilded trial, in which he later learns that his client was guilty). He becomes substantially more confident and competent as an attorney as the games go on, and in the final trial he is several steps ahead of everyone, including his longtime rival, Kazuma.
• Character Tic: He psyches himself up for particularly harrowing moments of a trial by smacking his cheeks with his hands.
  • He also shares a lot of his descendant's animations, such as his hunched-over nervous pose, holding the back of his head when bashful, his desk-slam, and slumping forward with his head in his hands when in despair.
• Chekhov's Skill: Majoring in English in his original line of study thankfully allows him to communicate well with the British, especially given as he was an eleventh-hour replacement for Asogi as a student lawyer in England.
• Closet Geek: Ryunosuke appears to enjoy reading penny-dreadfuls and sensationalist magazines. Upon seeing Shamspeare regain consciousness, he begins to shout out about "the walking dead," and during Case 2-3, he is fearful of extraterrestrials coming to check out the Great Exhibition. He also fears that the exhibits at Madame Tusspells were made by pouring wax over real corpses, something that also stems from too many weird magazines.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Whenever he isn't focusing on something, Ryunosuke is incredibly scatterbrained and eccentric. He frequently does things without considering the implications, and is ignorant of many things that should really be common knowledge. For instance, he fails to realize a mounted deer's head is, in fact, stuffed, and not an actual, living deer that's gotten its head stuck in the wall. His "damaged" animation even has him theatrically hurl himself against the courtroom wall, and he's fond of focusing himself by vigorously clapping his own face between his hands.
• Closet Sublet: This is how he stays undetected while on the SS Burya.
• The Confidant: Despite his open hostility, van Zieks singles Ryunosuke out as the one person he trusts enough to disclose his secrets and innermost feelings.
• Conspiracy Theorist: He reads lots of magazines about strange phenomena, and has a tendency to believe that sinister things are happening in places where there are none, such as believing hot air balloons to be UFOs coming to attack the Earth, or believing Madame Tusspells' wax models to be dead bodies put up on display.
• Crusading Lawyer: Not at first and Magnus McGilded really threw a wrench at this role, as he gains more experience he became this by the time he ends the Reaper conspiracy to protect Barok and bring justice to Mael Stronghart.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Is constantly berated by people who find his dark Yumei University outfit a sign that he's dangerous.
• Deadpan Snarker: As per usual with Ace Attorney protagonists, and a trait he will pass on to his descendant, Phoenix. Despite being a Book Dumb Cloudcuckoolander himself at times, Ryunosuke indulges in quite a bit of this in response to the antics of others, especially Sholmes.
• Decomposite Character: Of Watson, with Yujin, Iris and John H. Wilson, with him being The Watson of the four.
• A Degree in Useless: Though a bit Lost in Translation, Ryunosuke has an English language degree. This makes it quite awkward when Natsume, an English literature major, goes off on English language degrees as tantamount to researching how to breathe.
  Natsume: If they had told me to study English literature, THAT I could have understood. That's my field. But no, they told me to study the English language. Utterly, Unreasonably, Unjustly Unbelievable! Only the other day, I was told to send a report about my first year here. I tendered a blank piece of paper.
• Determinator: In his very first case, he refuses to give up even when it becomes clear he's essentially in a Kangaroo Court. After the second case, despite never having studied law, he vows to learn enough to qualify to be an attorney by the time he gets to Great Britain. In 40 days. And that's just for starters.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: He doesn't actually think out loud, but his face is so transparently readable that anyone can tell exactly what sort of First-Person Smartass comments are running through his head and respond accordingly.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Despite his eventual wins in court, he is still ridiculed by everyone around him (even those whom he successfully acquits), just like Phoenix Wright. It's even worse in his case while in Great Britain, where the citizens deem the Japanese inferior people at best or shady people at worst...so he gets both of these combined.
• Eyes Never Lie: His eyes give away any thought he might have on his mind, for good or for ill. As a result, van Zieks immediately fixates on him as the world's least Inscrutable Oriental.
• Face Fault: His "damage" animation is rather extreme, even by Ace Attorney standards. Rather than just looking shocked like Phoenix does, he gets blasted against the back wall of the defense bench then rebounds into a faceplant on the desk. Susato imitates this animation when she gets a turn behind the bench in the first case of Resolve.
• Failed a Spot Check: In the first case, he mentions that he saw "a woman" at the scene of the crime, but he cannot say anything more. When that woman, Jezaille Brett, turns up as a witness, she's wearing a swan on her head and an incredibly fancy dress, and she confirms she was wearing the same things on the day of the crime. It's Lampshaded that it would be incredibly unlikely for someone to not notice these details.
• Fatal Flaw: Insecurity and impostor syndrome. Ryunosuke only really snaps out of his belief that he's a poor replacement for Kazuma when the final trial airs Kazuma's own dirty laundry and he has to fight to stop his friend from convicting an innocent man because of a personal grudge.
• First-Person Smartass: Just like his descendant, he has many snarky remarks in his thoughts, but many people he interacts with pick up on those remarks.
• A Fool for a Client: Ends up doing this in his very first case, though at the least he has the legally qualified Asogi assisting him. The original plan was for Asogi to represent Ryunosuke in court, but that came with the risk of Asogi losing an opportunity to study in Great Britain, something Ryunosuke didn't want to happen. Asogi realizes that Mikotoba had Ryunosuke act in his own defense so Asogi could assist him without risking losing the opportunity to study abroad (although Asogi would have given it up if he'd lost). Following this, Ryunosuke does it again in the subsequent case — just not in the courtroom.
• A Friend in Need: Disrupts his best friend's plan to stand as his defense, after he's learned that because of him Asogi may not be able to go to Britain. While it's technically given it as your first option in the game, you're not really allowed to let things be.
• Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!: Delivers a verbal one to Asogi, when the latter continues to hound van Zieks over the fabricated evidence in the Professor trial when it's becoming increasingly clear he had nothing to do with that.
  Ryunosuke: Kazuma... open your eyes.
  Kazuma: R-Ryunosuke?
  Ryunosuke: You must know deep down... The truth can be completely obscured even when your judgement is only slightly clouded. But at the moment... you seem to be floundering through a dense fog. Is that why you were so insistent I should be present in this trial? To see you like this?
• Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: The OG in the course of the entire series. During his first trial, when he finally realizes the first major contradiction in Jezail's testimony against him, Ryu channels his primal feeling of striking against his prey with using the pointer. It officially marks his first step forward from a clueless schoolboy to a real lawyer.
• Goal in Life: To be a lawyer (though not initially). More specifically, it's for his thought-to-be dead best friend's sake.
  Kazuma: If you were to become an attorney, then, surely...
• Goggles Do Nothing: In the sequel, his DLC costume features goggles not unlike Iris' own. But Ryunosuke never wears them for anything, making them purely a fashion accessory.
• Got Me Doing It: Whenever he hears someone talking in some sort of accent or Verbal Tic (Vilen Borshevik, the female telegraph communications expert, McGilded, Barry Caidin, etc.) many times, his internal monologue would often mimic whatever they have spoken in annoyance.
• Heroic BSoD: A bit of a downplayed example, but the events of The Adventure of the Runaway Room left him with a bit of self-doubt, which gets worse in The Adventure of the Unspeakable Story when he finds proof that the defendant of that case truly was guilty. It took until that case's trial to completely clear.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Has an extremely close friendship with Kazuma. Their relationship is one of the emotional cores of the story.
• Identical Grandfather: He looks exactly like Phoenix, barring hair style and eyebrows. Even more so if you equip his DLC outfit, which is basically a 20th-century version of Phoenix's blue suit.
• The Illegible: He admits to himself that his handwriting is terrible when he asks what a typewriter is, and wants one after it is described to him.
• Inner Monologue Conversation: Even more so than Phoenix. Ryunosuke is apparently so bad at keeping his true feelings on a matter off his face that anyone, especially Susato, can tell what he's thinking at any given moment. Its gets to the point that most of his internal dialogue is casually treated as if he had said it aloud.
• Improbable Age: Played with. He works as a fully-fledged criminal defense lawyer in London, despite being only 23 years old, and not holding any actual degree in law. The cases he accepts are frequently so desperate that professionals won't touch them. However, he's still effectively an exchange student, meaning the cases he accepts are essentially hands-on training. He returns to Japan to study properly and become an accredited lawyer at the end of GAA 2.
• Indy Ploy: His courtroom MO, much like his descendant. Though in an interesting case, he's a lot less prone to making seat-of-his-pants bluffs than Phoenix does.
• Leitmotif: Alongside the usual "Objection! 2015", there's also "Prelude to an Adventure", a slower rearrangement that often plays when he's making a point. A passage from his theme also appears in "Pursuit ~ The Grand Turnabout". G2-5 gives him a special Pursuit theme for the episode as well, a more bombastic rendition of Objection! 2015 entitled "Great Pursuit ~ The Resolve of Ryunosuke Naruhodo", as he's about to deliver the final blow to the Big Bad.
• Last-Name Basis: Like Phoenix and Edgeworth before them, this is how he and Kazuma refer to one another (Only applies in the Japanese version). Virtually everyone besides Iris calls him by his surname, and in the original Japanese, she simply uses "-kun" on his surname (which is generally less formal than appropriate for a child addressing an adult).
• Malaproper: While not exactly Asian Speekee Engrish, he seems to have a bit of trouble in getting some words in the English language right (examples: mispronouncing "inertia" as "ineptia", being unable to say the word "Stradivarius" right, and at one time mishearing the surname of Felix Mendelssohn as "meddlesome" before Sholmes plays some of Mendelssohn's music, which Ryunosuke later recalls as "not meddlesome").
• Morality Chain: Turns out to be one for Kazuma.
• My God, What Have I Done?: He has this reaction in Case 5 of the first game when he learns that Magnus McGilded, whom he'd successfully defended two months prior, was actually guilty of murder.
• Naïve Newcomer: Being a last-minute replacement in a foreign exchange student program, he's a newcomer to both London and law practice. He's technically not even a law student, instead having majored in English.
• Nervous Wreck: In addition to being rather skittish in the courtroom, Ryunosuke has a bit of a paranoid streak, such as believing hot air balloons to be invading UFOs and finding wax sculptures of crime scenes to be incredibly unnerving.
• No Poker Face: So bad that most people can read his thoughts to the letter.
• Not a Game: He expresses a similar sentiment when Stronghart decides to have him defend someone accused of murder as a test of his lawyerly abilities. He says it wouldn't be right to treat a trial in which someone's life is on the line so lightly, something he understands due to having been accused of murder twice in the recent past. He changes his mind when Stronghart mentions that the accused has no one else to defend him.
• Persona Non Grata: Was stripped of his qualifications of being a defense attorney and barred from entering the British courts after the events of G1-5 (which, considering he accepted and defended Gina's false testimony and advocated for the corrupt McGilded, is not surprising). Fortunately for him, he manages to appeal to Chief Justice Stronghart to overturn it six months later in time for G2-3.
• Photographic Memory: He claims to have a very good memory to even the smallest detail, which is why it all but turns the case around when he remembers that the steak plate that was on Wilson's table had blood on it.
• Primal Fear: Much like Apollo Justice, he has an overwhelming fear of heights, causing him to become nervous from the mere sight of hot air balloons and Ferris wheels.
• Red Armband of Leadership: He has one after agreeing to act as a substitute for Asogi, but instead of a symbol of leadership, it is used as a substitute for an attorney's badge.
• Reverse Arm-Fold: His default resting stance at the start of trials, though he tends to adopt more relaxed or aggressive postures as the trial progresses.
• Saved by the Awesome: Averted. Despite managing to expose a murderer who was part of a conspiracy to sell secrets to enemy nations, Ryunosuke is still barred from British courts for six months over his unwitting use of false testimony and tampered evidence during the McGilded trial.
• The Scapegoat:
  • The reason why he's put into a top-secret trial — even though everyone in the restaurant knows Jezaille exists, the Japanese government can't accuse an Englishwoman of killing another Englishman in a foreign country without an irrefutable basis, lest they risk Japan-British relations.
  • Poor guy has it happen to him again in the very next case, due to being a stowaway in a Locked Room Mystery. In a refreshing and sad turn, the one who helped set the frame-up to begin with later apologizes from the bottom of his heart that he hadn't considered Ryunosuke' anguish over the events and his friendship with the deceased, having ignored them in his own desperation to protect the culprit.
• School Uniforms are the New Black: Always wears his Yumei University uniform, even in the far-off country of Britain.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: In the final case of the first game, Ryunosuke, faced with the tall task of proving Gregson's collusion with Ashley Graydon, realizes that the second disk they found is supposed to be played at the same time as the first one to get a code. He then decides to play them at once, despite Gregson urging him that playing this in front of an entire gallery would be tantamount to betraying the whole Bristish government.
  Ryunosuke: Well... By fair means or foul, I'm prepared to do [my duty].
  Gregson: Don't you dare ...
  Ryunosuke: I will stop at nothing to protect my client! I don't care who I make an enemy of!
• Seeker Archetype: Ryunosuke believes that a trial is a place to uncover the entire truth of a crime and that his role as a defense attorney isn't just to get an acquittal for his client but to work with them to uncover all the events leading to their arrest. He will even request that a Not Guilty verdict be postponed in order to get more testimony if it seems that there's more information to be gleaned from witnesses.
• Sherlock Scan: Somewhat — he is able to follow witnesses' cues to correct Herlock's deductions by finding the correct evidences and details. He does a decent job doing it himself for a bit when Herlock is momentarily knocked unconscious by Iris' boxing glove trap in the living room chest during GAA 2-4's Dance of Deduction, though when Herlock gets back up he points out Iris is still hiding something very important that Ryunosuke hasn't caught yet.
• Spanner in the Works:
  • His incredibly innocent act of wanting to introduce himself to John Wilson ended up with him being accused of murdering him, but it also meant Jezaille Brett had to shoot Wilson to frame Ryunosuke, which only ended up creating several inconsistencies that proved she was the killer.
  • His last-minute decision to become a law student in Asogi's place not only deprives Stronghart and Jigoku of their expected assassin, but shuts off the opportunity to send a replacement without drawing suspicion.
  • Ryunosuke taking Barok van Ziek’s case for the murder of Inspector Tobias Gregson and later the Reaper Killings not only saves Barok from getting hanged for crimes he did not commit, but also unravels Mael Stronghart’s Reaper Conspiracy, starting with Seishiro Jigoku and finally Stronghart himself. He also proved that the Professor was not Genshin Asogi, but instead was Klint van Zieks.
• Supporting Protagonist: Much like Apollo Justice in his first game, he's a downplayed example of this trope. We do see him undergo significant character development over the course of the two games, from a nervous student to an assured lawyer who helps bring down a major conspiracy within the British courts. However, the overall story of the two games is really much more Kazuma's than it is Ryunosuke's, with the latter mostly (and unwittingly) helping to bring Kazuma's plan to fruition during the timeframe when Kazuma is presumed dead, and then out of action with amnesia.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: During Adventures' final case, once Ryunosuke reveals how his defense of McGilded went and just how much he unknowingly tampered with both the McGilded case and the current one (indirectly or otherwise), Barok tells him in no uncertain terms that he'll be punished once the trial is over. Sure enough, Ryunosuke starts the second game's third case suspended from his attorney duties.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Aside from his similarities with Phoenix, his more logical approach where he's less prone to bluffing also evokes a bit of Apollo.
• Tragic Keepsake: Asogi's katana and headband, which he carries the rest of the game. The armband he wears also still has its original owner's name within it, which can be seen when examined. In the second game, he gives Asogi's katana back to him after he's revealed to have survived the ordeal aboard the SS Burya, although Kazuma bequeaths it back again to Ryunosuke after the events of GAA 2-5.
• Uncertified Expert: Ryunosuke is established as being something of a legal prodigy, being able to take on top prosecutors while still being a novice. However, prior to coming to Great Britain, he was an English major whose experience in legal matters was limited to defending himself once in a Japanese court and 40 days of study with Susato as a tutor on the voyage to London. As such, the only people willing to take on his services are defendants who other attorneys are unwilling to represent or defendants who were initially uninterested in having an attorney until Ryunosuke convinced them to let him handle their cases.
• Unwitting Pawn: Asogi admits in the end the initial reason he made Ryunosuke tag along with him for his England studies after having seen his pro se defense was actually to set him up to become a defense lawyer in his place; had he been arrested for the assassination of Gregson he would have hired Ryunosuke to defend him in court.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Sholmes is one of his closest allies but Ryunosuke can get pretty annoyed by his weirdness.
• The Watson: He isn't well-versed in English laws, traditions and trends, leading to Susato, Herlock, or Iris explaining details about it (such as Summation Examinations). Fitting, considering he's working with Sherlock Holmes for most of the game.
• We Gotta Stop Meeting Like This: In GAA 1-5, if you press Juror #1 in the first Summation Examination Ryunosuke will recognize him as John Garrideb, one half of the husband-wife couple involved in the trial of Soseki Natsume, as well as a witness he speaks with in the investigation of GAA 2-2 and says something along the lines of "We really ought to stop meeting like this."
• Windows of the Soul: Ryunosuke is extremely bad at hiding his internal monologue; several people comment on it. This is also why Barok trusted him almost from the moment they first locked eyes.
• Worthless Foreign Degree: Inverted—Ryunosuke is able to practice as a lawyer specifically because England does not recognize Japanese legal credentials, making him technically no less qualified than the actual law student he was sent in place of.
• You Remind Me of X: Reminds Barok of two wildly disparate individuals (namely, the brother he idolized and said brother's killer), which makes interactions with the man very awkward.

Kazuma Asogi

Kazuma Asogi

Voiced by (Japanese): Yūichi Nakamura

Voiced by (English): Ben Deery

^{Click here to see his second appearance}

"In other words, our feeble government is scared of upsetting England’s policy makers."

Ryunosuke's fellow student, best friend, and mentor. Despite still being a university student, he is qualified to be a defense attorney. He was taking part in a student exchange program and was about to depart to London when Ryunosuke was accused of murder.

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• The Ace: The first case wastes no time introducing his competence, reputation, and perfectionism.
• Achilles' Heel: In Escapades #1, Kazuma mentioned Tongue Twisters as his weakness, as he lost a speech contest to Ryunosuke at the university due to flubbing the last part of his speech.
• Advertised Extra: Advertised as a main character of the first game to avoid spoiling his "death" in Unbreakable Speckled Band. Inverted later on in Resolve, as he becomes a major player in the late game, but does not show up in promotional material to avoid spoiling his return.
• Anti-Hero: A result of his stubbornness. While his primary motivation is to seek justice for his father's unfair fate, he will stop at nothing in order to achieve this goal, whether it's betraying the government conspiracy which gave him the assassination mission he accepted, or hiding the truth many times in order to successfully convict the man who prosecuted his father.
• Badass Bookworm: The katana isn't just for show, which might be one reason why he was selected as an assassin candidate.
• Be All My Sins Remembered: At the end of Resolve, he asks Ryunosuke to hold onto Karuma, as he now feels unfit to hold it until he can defeat his own inner-demons van Zieks's trial revealed to him.
• Big Brother Mentor: To Ryunosuke, his best friend.
• Big Bad Friend: He isn't the Big Bad himself, but he is the final prosecutor and goes to extremely unethical lengths to get Barok convicted of being the Reaper while remaining genuinely friendly and supportive to Ryunosuke.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: During their trial, Kazuma sometimes refers to Ryunosuke as his "learned friend", as per Victorian court etiquette. Given, unlike van Zieks, he might actually mean it.
• Broken Ace: Turns out to be much less stable and principled than Ryunosuke's rose-tinted perspective of him would suggest. Although the stress and years of pent-up feelings of hate for finally being able to put a face to the man whom he blames for his father's unjust demise does hugely play into his behavior it doesn't explain all of it. Particularly accepting a hit job under the guise of a cultural exchange program was a decision made fully and knowingly against any morals he claims to uphold because his drive to get to the truth of his father's death takes precedence in his mind.
• Broken Pedestal: Not as severe as most, but reuniting with Ryunosuke and Susato in Britain forces Ryunosuke to confront the fact that his seemingly perfect friend has a lot of cracks. At first, he attributes it to the head trauma and amnesia from his almost-death, insisting that Kazuma is merely Not Himself at the moment, but he's forced to accept otherwise when Kazuma admits he accepted an assassination mission as a condition for his British study tour.
• Character Development: He admits in the end that he initially didn't want to be a defense lawyer at all, instead using his studies as a coverup for the Assassination Exchange program and his revenge against the van Zieks, while setting Ryunosuke up to replace him in his studies should he fail his main goals and end up needing a trustworthy defense in court. The end sees him released from the shackles of his past with a changed heart, now pursuing a career as a prosecutor with Barok van Zieks as his mentor.
• Composite Character: He's one of Miles Edgeworth (main character's best friend and motivation to become a lawyer, became a prosecutor through a tragic crime that led to his father's death, Final Boss of the second game where he teams up with his best friend facing him in court in order to catch the true culprit), Mia Fey (main character's mentor and inspiration who dies early in the story — although it was staged in Kazuma's case), and Godot (former defense attorney who 'came back from the dead' in a mask, goes on a personal quest to seek vengeance against the man he believes to be responsible for the death of a loved one).
• Cool Sword: Karuma, an ancestral katana forged during the Sengoku period. Kazuma goes as far as to declare it his soul, and it serves multiple roles in the story as a Tragic Keepsake, a damning clue of Kazuma's unscrupulous actions, and the belated Dead Man's Switch revealing the truth of the Professor case. It even has an effect later in the series timeline, as the implied origin of the Karuma/Von Karma name!
• Death Faked for You: His altercation with Nikolina ended with him being knocked out rather than killed. Herlock, in a bid to stop him going on the exchange program, claimed he'd died and had his unconscious body smuggled off the ship to Hong Kong.
• Deadpan Snarker: While generally good-natured about it, sometimes Ryunosuke wonders why he has such a mean best friend.
• Death by Falling Over: Breaks his neck after a sudden shove causes him to collide against his bedpost. Though Resolve reveals that the fall merely knocked him out.
• Decomposite Character: He and Barok are this to Miles Edgeworth. While Barok fills Edgeworth's role of being a cold, grey-haired prosecutor who serves as the final defendant, Asogi fills the role of being Wright's best friend who was an aspiring attorney who became a prosecutor after a tragic incident involving his father. Also, Asogi serves as the Final Boss of the second game, as Edgeworth does in JFA.
• Determinator: Big time and to an unhealthy degree. His lifelong determination to clear his father's name leads to some very ethically comprimising actions such as willing collusion in an assassination plot. Never mind the fact that he was dead set on restarting his journey back to Britain while amnesiac when his mind kept telling him to go there at all costs. This attribute also helps Ryunosuke as his unyielding need to avenge his father and satisfy his vendetta means Lord Stronghart often gets pushback from both the defense and prosecution over his hasty attempts to adjourn as his machinations unravel as winning the trial means far less to him than finding out the truth.
• Detrimental Determination: He's a genuinely principled man, but his stubbornness in what he sees as a worthy goal can erode his morals; Ryunosuke is only barely able to save him from becoming He Who Fights Monsters because he just refuses to listen to evidence that he's doing the wrong thing. He nearly kills Gregson when Gregson refuses to talk about the 'Professor' frame-up, and as the final prosecutor he's dead set on proving Barok to be the Reaper because Barok convicted Genshin of being the Professor, even as evidence piles up that not only was Barok genuinely innocent, he was an Unwitting Pawn in the Professor trial who was set up as the prosecutor because he was so emotionally-compromised that he could be guaranteed to convict Genshin despite evidence of a set-up... which is the exact same thing Kazuma is doing.
• Does Not Like Spam: Even when other characters have remarked how deliciously it was prepared, and in this Christmas illustration by Nuri the meal was probably cooked by Iris, Asogi really can't stand chicken. Which becomes a plot-point in Case 2 of Adventures, as him not eating the chicken served for dinner led to him being exempt from the sleeping drug, and thus being able to meet Nikolina while conscious.
• Dragon with an Agenda: Stronghart appoints him as the prosecutor in Barok van Zieks's trial hoping to make use of both his knowledge of defense counsel's strategies and his personal vendetta against the van Zieks. But while Stronghart simply wanted Barok out of the way, Kazuma intends to use the trial as a platform to exonerate his late father and convict Barok as the Reaper in revenge.
• Dramatic Wind: Somehow manages to get these indoors. Ryunosuke wonders if it's a supernatural ability.
• Exact Words: When questioned about why he accompanied Gregson aboard the SS Grouse, he replies "assassination of the mark," quietly omitting that his designated mark was Gregson and that Jigoku was his true employer rather than the reverse.
• Fanservice Pack: Swaps out his fairly conservative university gakuran for a Form-Fitting Wardrobe heavily accentuating his musculature when he returns in the second game as a prosecutor.
• Fatal Flaw: He tends to get tunnel-visioned in support of his goals. Good when he's unconditionally supporting Ryunosuke despite the latter's insecurity, bad when he's colluding in an assassination plot and trying to convict Barok for for a crime he's completely innocent of because of Kazuma's personal grudge against him. This flaw causes him to play right into Mael Stronghart's plan, though it's a double-edged sword as Kazuma is too stubborn to quit even when it'd be better for Stronghart's plan. It takes a good verbal smackdown courtesy of Ryunosuke to snap him out of it.
• Final Boss: Like Edgeworth before him, he's the final prosecutor of the second game.
• A Friend in Need: Risks the exchange program he's been working tirelessly toward to stand as his best friend's defense. He outright says to his professor/mentor he'll willingly withdraw from it if Ryunosuke is found guilty, citing that he doesn't deserve the opportunity if he can't help his friend in his most desperate hour. The second game reveals that this was even more meaningful than it first appeared, since he saw the tour as his one chance to clear his father's name and even signed on as an assassin in order to get the ticket. He'd throw away his life's mission to make sure his best friend gets justice in Japan.
• Friendly Rival: Becomes one to Ryunosuke when he becomes a prosecutor. Doesn't mean he's gonna let him off easy, though.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Has an extremely close friendship with Ryunosuke. Their relationship is one of the emotional cores of the story.
• He Who Fights Monsters: His lifelong quest to prove his father's innocence starts to slip into a less principled desire for revenge, which almost corrupts him into committing the same crimes as the two men he hated; he signed up for the assassin exchange and nearly killed Gregson, which would've made him a killer for Stronghart like Klint was, and as the final prosecutor he repeats Barok's greatest mistake of prosecuting someone out of hatred for the defendant rather than a desire to find the true culprit. Luckily he has Ryunosuke to snap him out of it.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Kazuma Asogi, The Ace and a studying lawyer with a way with words...can't do tongue twisters. One causes him to flounder for five minutes and he spent countless hours practicing a relatively easy one only to find out he got the twister wrong...and when he tried it again he immediately messed up.
  • He appears to enjoy making crime scene dioramas, as Ryunosuke suspects after he proudly points out that he made the signboard in one.
• Hired Guns: Was actually employed to be the assassin of Tobias Gregson, but despite nearly killing him in personal hatred and breaking Karuma in the process, his actual intentions was to just to investigate his father's past and avenge him.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: It's discussed that because he has plenty of experience as a defense attorney, he can use the knowledge and tactics as a prosecutor to his advantage. Sure enough, he's on the delivering end as he pulls off the "scenario reversal" early in van Ziek's trial.
• Hot-Blooded: Described as such in the trailer, and it shows. He's still calmer than Ryunosuke, however.
• Humble Hero: According to Ryunosuke's monologue, he seems to be one of if not the most famous student in their school, and while he has pride, he's still significantly nicer than one would expect, often accrediting his achievements to hard work and being very encouraging to our protagonist.
• I Choose to Stay: Chooses to remain in London at the second game's conclusion as a prosecutor under van Zieks.
• It's Personal: The final two cases of The Great Ace Attorney 2 make it clear he's not prosecuting in the interest of serving justice, he has his sights directly set on sending Barok to the gallows as a matter of avenging his father. As the trial drags on he becomes increasingly vitriolic whenever an opportunity to cast suspicion on van Zieks arises, to the point that Ryunosuke and Susato are telling him that he has lost sight of his duty and is disregarding logic in order to satisfy his vendetta. He does calm down afterwards but by the end of the game he realizes he's still got a lot to work on in himself.
• Jerkass to One: As a prosecutor, not only is he hell bent on convicting Barok, who he believes to be the Reaper responsible for his father's death. But he goes as far as mocking him for his mistakes, such as walking into an obvious trap meant for someone else.
• Katanas Are Just Better: He carries a katana with him that's stated to be a family heirloom. It's named "Karuma", meaning 'demon hunter'. It shares the same kanji as the Karuma family name (localized into English as Von Karma); in Resolve, it's mentioned that one of Kazuma's father's apprentices took the katana's name as his surname. Ryunosuke inherits it after he is seemingly killed, but he gives it back to him in the second game when they meet again. Asogi then formally bequeaths it to Ryunosuke in the epilogue of the second game, believing himself to be unworthy of having Karuma until he can quell his anger towards his father's death.
• Leitmotif: "Samurai on a Mission", a noble and well-paced song fitting for a samurai. There is also the Nocturne variation that plays when others discuss his death or mourn his loss. He gets two more upon his return in Resolve: "His Glorious Return" for the reveal that he's alive, and "A Prosecutor, Reborn" as a prosecutor, which fittingly uses some instruments and motifs present in Van Zieks' theme.
• Light Is Not Good: Exchanges his dark uniform in Adventures for a white uniform in Resolve when acting as Barok's apprentice, and in doing so, goes from being a defense attorney to a prosecutor, and pulls no punches when it's his turn to act opposite to Ryunosuke during the final case.
• Martial Arts Headband: Wears one of these. It even flutters indoors! Escapades #1 reveals he wore it to help him with reciting Tongue Twisters.
• Mirror Character: Becomes this to Barok van Zieks in the second game, partly from learning under the man himself. He even goes to whatever tailor Barok uses to get anachronistically tight-fitting clothing. And he almost repeats Barok's worst mistake of convicting an innocent man despite very obvious signs of a Frame-Up. Thankfully, he has Ryunosuke there to stop him.
• Misplaced Retribution: After learning the evidence that led to his father's conviction was forged, Kazuma focuses all of his anger over the Miscarriage of Justice on Barok van Zieks and insists on condemning him as the mastermind of the Frame-Up even after Ryunosuke has exhaustively explained that his target was an Unwitting Pawn who was specifically set up to take the blame if the Frame-Up failed, and correctly named Stronghart as the true mastermind.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: He winds up dead in the first game's second chapter. Ultimately subverted: he survived the events of the chapter, if barely, but was rendered amnesiac by the events.
• Named Weapon: "Karuma", the famed katana of the Asogi clan.
• Necro Non Sequitur: At the end of Case 2's second Dance of Deduction session, Ryunosuke and Herlock come to the conclusion that he tripped on a cat, slipped on a puddle of shoe polish, and broke his neck on the floor, killing him. The actual truth is much simpler, though: Nikolina pushes him and the back of his neck hits the bed post, killing — or rather, incapacitating him.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: He vows to keep Nikolina's presence a secret, and ends up being pushed to his near-death.
• Not So Stoic: Goes from seemingly unflappable to a screaming wreck if his Relative Button is pressed hard enough.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In the first case of Adventures, it's evident that things are going completely wrong for the defence when even he panics despite being calm and collected prior.
• Only Mostly Dead: When Herlock found Asogi's body, he was still alive albeit unconscious, though he remarks that if he hadn't resuscitated him quickly enough he might actually have died.
• Persecuting Prosecutor: He plays very fast and loose with due process in van Zieks's trial, even withholding his own collusion in the very assassination plot he's attempting to convict van Zieks for from the court. It takes several What the Hell, Hero? moments from Ryunosuke and Susato for him to snap out of it.
• Pet the Dog: After inadvertently contributing to Daley Vigil having a breakdown in court, he's mentioned as having gone over to apologize to him afterwards, showing that his moral nature isn't completely gone yet despite his Revenge Before Reason leaving him teetering on the edge of He Who Fights Monsters.
• Poor Communication Kills: If he had told Nikolina the "friend" he mentioned was inside the wardrobe, he probably wouldn't have nearly died.
• Revenge Before Reason: In the finale of the second game. He's determined to prove that Barok, the person who got his father convicted for murder, is the true mastermind behind the Reaper Organisation — despite the mounting evidence to the contrary.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: He's utterly sure that his father Genshin couldn't be the Professor as he wasn't a killer. It's true, Genshin wasn't the Professor, but he did kill Klint van Zieks, the man whose murder he was convicted for- because Klint was the real Professor.
• Saved by the Awesome: As Barok points out in the final morning of his trial, Kazuma should have been arrested for collusion in murder, and Kazuma admits the only reason he's not behind bars is because he's successfully petitioned to delay his indictment for a day. Fortunately for him, he subsequently plays a pivitol role in exposing the Lord Chief Justice of Britain for high treason, so the British judiciary is perfectly happy to just not deal with Kazuma at all, lest they add an international incident to their problems.
• Second Place Is for Losers: Ryunosuke beat him in a speech competition a year before the start of the game, and he's still not over it.
• Screw the Rules, They Broke Them First!: Asserts this when Ryunosuke confronts him on his court misconduct and tells him Barok van Zieks deserves a fair trial, as he believes the accused himself had his father convicted in a Kangaroo Court and deserves much the same treatment.
• Spear Counterpart: He's the Mentor to Ryunosuke who dies early on and whose philosophy greatly influences his student's approach to being a lawyer, making him one of Mia Fey, right down to having similar lines.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Being someone thought to be dead who comes back as a masked prosecutor also makes him one of Godot. He's also has a twist of Miles Edgeworth. The best friend of the protagonist who was originally supposed to be a defense attorney is taught to be a prosecutor after a tragic accident involving his father.
• Symbolically Broken Object: He often says a katana is a Japanese man's soul. Karuma's tip breaks off in Gregson's metal suitcase when Kazuma nearly cuts him down in a rage.
• Undignified Death: Downplayed, but death by getting shoved into a bedpost by a panicky ballerina over a misunderstanding is perhaps not the most manly way to go. And it didn't really kill him, though it came close.
• The Unfettered: The whole reason he became a defense attorney and took up the student exchange program was in order to go to London and find out the truth about his father's death. Said exchange program was a cover-up for exchanging assassins, which Asogi willingly colluded with the plan to assasinate Tobias Gregson in exchange for the truth of Genshin's death (although he claims to have no intention of fulfilling his end of the deal). And even when he was rendered amnesiac, Asogi found a way to London via a cargo ship, before eventually regaining his memories and picking up where he left off. Gregson refusing to reveal the identity of the man behind Genshin's death almost pushed him into killing him where he stood, although he stopped himself at the very last second.
• Walking Spoiler: Very hard to talk about him without giving away his death in the first game's second case or that the sequel reveals him to be alive after all.
• Wearing a Flag on Your Head: His prosecutorial outfit, an all-white uniform with a red jabot, is designed to evoke the Japanese national flag,◊ in contrast to Barok van Zieks's Blues & Royals-inspired attire.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Van Zieks calls him out for prosecutorial misconduct during the final trial, warning of what happens to He Who Fights Monsters. Kazuma ignores him, but it's clear the words hit a nerve.
  • Whether or not he ever intended to go through with the deed, Ryunosuke and Susato are absolutely horrified to learn that he volunteered to involve himself in an assassination exchange program in order to get to Britain.
  • Naruhodo calls Kazuma out again for his stubborn insistence that Barok was the mastermind behind framing Genshin even as it becomes painfully obvious he was simply too blinded by grief to realize the true identity of the Professor, asking if this display of blinding hatred was what Kazuma wanted him to see when he pushed for him to be the defense.
• Wild Card: Kazuma plays very fast and loose with loyalties, as Jigoku is dismayed to discover.
  Kazuma: There's nothing I wouldn't have done to get here, be that agreeing to assume the role of assassin... or betraying people's trust.
  Jigoku: Well, you certainly did a fine job of betraying mine, Asogi.
• You Killed My Father: This is the reason why Kazuma prosecutes Barok van Zieks, as he believes the latter prosecuted his father — and thus sent him to his death — by deliberately using forged evidence. He's wrong; someone else gave Barok the forgery because he knew Barok would make the perfect Unwitting Pawn for it. He similarly becomes enraged with Inspector Gregson, who admits to forging said evidence and finally sets his sights on Mael Stronghart when he learns the man was ultimately responsible for all of these events. In a twist, he never confronts the man literally responsible for his father's death, Jigoku, as he was already in custody by the time Kazuma learned he shot Genshin.

Susato Mikotoba

Susato Mikotoba

Voiced by (Japanese): Kana Hanazawa

Voiced by (English): Rina Takasaki

^{Click here to see "Ryutaro Naruhodo"}

"'What must I give up on?' is not the question you have to ask yourself here. It's 'What can I protect?'"

A young judicial assistant and primary companion to Ryunosuke. She is described as a proper maiden, but also a progressive thinker and has a love for foreign mystery novels. Her knowledge of the English court system aids Ryunosuke in understanding their unique trial-by-jury procedure. She has an affinity for sweets.

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• Ascended Fangirl: She loves "The Adventures of Herlock Sholmes", so getting to share a living space with the great detective is a dream come true for her. Then she learns that her own father Yujin was in fact Sholmes's original investigative partner and biographer.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: Rei Membami finds her male disguise in the first case of GAA2 quite "gallant and dashing". Raiten Menimemo frequently refers to her as a mysterious handsome lawyer.
• Badass Cape: Her disguise as "Ryutaro Naruhodo" had one.
• Batman Gambit: Set up one for the real killer in G1-5; after witnessing the murder by creating a peeking window on the crime scene's door, she takes advantage of the fact that said killer doesn't know of the existence of the window, and thus she set out to keep the cat door maker's existence a secret, followed by having Herlock give it to Ryu in the case that the killer tried to use it to claim to be a witness to the crime.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: During the first case of Resolve, where she is in the guise of "Ryutaro Naruhodo" she performs some of Ryunosuke's animations such as his Face Fault and fist pound. However she uses more conservative versions of his more extreme animations, such as her face not deforming when she smacks her cheeks together, and she doesn't have his "sweating profusely" animation, instead simply going to her "clenched fist and furrowed brow" animation when getting back up from the faceplant. She does keep the "nervously darting her eyes around the courtroom" animation, however.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Susato is the epitome of a prim, proper Japanese lady. She can also judo-toss you across the room without breaking a sweat, defend her friend against a charge of murder in court, and absolutely roast Shamspeare by stating that flies are too good to be buzzing around him. She also expresses confidence that she could tune up a knife-wielding serial killer while examining the exhibits at Madame Tusspells.
• Big Damn Heroes: Multiple examples.
  • In the first case, When Ryunosuke and Asogi have a hard time proving Jezaille's murder method, Susato arrives in the middle of the trial to provide evidence.
  • Later in Case 5, she quickly thinks to use Iris' Cat-Flapomat to create a peephole for Windibank's murder scene after Herlock gets shot, which ends up being decisive evidence against Graydon.
  • In Case 3 of the second game, she shows up in court near the end of the first day to snap Ryunosuke out of his Heroic BSoD.
• Born in the Wrong Century: She is described as a progressive thinker. This is exemplified in her fashion sense, more specifically, the addition of her hakama over her kimono: at the time, this style of dress was typical for students of the relatively newly established girls' schools because it was easier to move around in than a kimono.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • As she idolizes Asogi and expects Ryunosuke to be a good friend to him, she is naturally appalled when Case 2 pointed towards Ryunosuke as Asogi's murderer. Because of this she treats him horribly at first, but he slowly regains her trust once he is able to prove himself not guilty.
  • In the second game, she is furious at Yujin while she's under the impression that he fathered Iris whilst in England.
  • Comically, at times, even she can't help scolding Sholmes whenever he makes some rather bold, wrongful remarks(for example, she points out why a snake could not have been used for a murder in Case 2), but she's mostly always supporting him anyway. More seriously, though, she's rather hurt when she learns that Sholmes lied to her and Ryunosuke about Kazuma's "death."
• Captain Obvious: In Case 1-4, she declares that as Ryunosuke's judicial assistant, it's her duty to point out that a police officer having witnessed Soseki Natsume apparently stabbing Olive Green will make defending Natsume extremely difficult. Ryunosuke mentally snarks that as a non-judicial assistant, he could have pointed that out, too.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: She's much more grounded and level-headed than Ryunosuke is, and often reigns in his more outrageous tendencies. She does have her moments of levity, though.
• Composite Character: She shares clothing choices, Fangirl status for prominent works in their respective games, and the close platonic relationship they have with their respective Naruhodo with Maya Fey, as well as being a Hypercompetent Sidekick, a Cute Bruiser, and a rookie lawyer who has to defend her best friend in court for their first case with Athena Cykes.
• Contrasting Replacement Character: Is much more serious than all the other assistants in the series.
• Cool Big Sis: Iris considers her one, to the point that she's disappointed to learn that they're not secretly half-sisters after the identity of Sholmes's original partner is revealed; she still asks Susato to be her "big sister", and Susato agrees.
• Crazy-Prepared: She studied Japanese wabun morse code in case she ever needed it, which came useful when it turns out the important morse code at the end of the first game turns out to be in Japanese.
• Cute Bruiser: In the second case of the first game, when she still thinks Ryunosuke is guilty of murdering Asogi, she repeatedly subjects him to a "Susato Takedown," a judo throw that sends him sprawling on his back, despite his being older and taller than her. In Resolve, she does it again to Menimemo, this time in tandem with Rei. At Madame Tusspells, she comments on the Jack-the-Ripper expy's weak posture and expresses confidence that she could tune him up.
• A Day in the Limelight: The first case of GAA2 has her don the garb of a defense attorney to defend her friend in Ryunosuke's absence, and becomes the playable character as a result.
• Death by Childbirth: Her mother's fate, which caused a heartbroken Yujin to accept an offer to study abroad in London shortly after her birth.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Due to the circumstances of how they meet again for the second time, she's very cold to Ryunosuke at first. It only lasts as long as she still suspects him of the murder, and they're on friendlier terms come Case 3, with her apologizing for how she treated him. Even before Case 2 was over, she'd begun showing sympathy for Ryunosuke's predicament and expressing the urgency of getting his name cleared before they reached Hong Kong.
• Disappeared Dad: Yujin was one to her during the first few years of her life.
• Dub Personality Change: Her defining trait in the Japanese version is that she speaks in overly polite Japanese, such as using the extremely formal honorific "-sama" on her friends (Kazuma, Naruhodo, Iris, Gina and Haori/Reui — she only uses the honorific on the former in the localization, using "-san" on Naruhodo and yobisute on the latter three). While this is typically translated by not using contractions, her actual dialogue and demeanor doesn't always line up in a way that avoiding contractions would make seem polite or professional. Instead, rather than always being polite in the English version, she instead is very professional in court or when speaking with new people, but then becomes very relaxed and friendly as she gets more acquainted with them.
• Eek, a Mouse!!: She says this when Ryunosuke finds a rather large mouse in Olive Green's hospital room.
• Even the Guys Want Him: As Ryutaro Naruhodo, nearly every man involved in the case comments on her dashing and elegant looks, even prosecutor Auchi.
• Fangirl: Of Herlock Sholmes, thanks to Iris' "The Adventures of Herlock Sholmes".
• Family of Choice: By the end of the duology, Iris views her and Ryunosuke as her big sister and big brother, respectively.
• First-Name Basis: Aside from her own manner of being addressed, she also calls Asogi "Kazuma-sama". He in turn, however, calls her Judicial Assistant Mikotoba. Most characters who interact with her on a regular basis call her by her first name, using "-san" or "Miss" as appropriate.
• Genius Bruiser: She's one of the most Hypercompetent Sidekicks in the series, and her Susato Takedowns are something to look out for.
• Great Big Book of Everything: More like "pocket-sized book of everything", but she carries a book in her sleeve that serves as a reference to everything from trial procedure to mystery novels to herpetology. As she says when Ryunosuke examines the about the suits of armour in the first visit to the Lord Chief Justice's Office:
  Susato: This book tells me everything I need to know about everything. If you're ever unsure, just ask!
  Ryunosuke: (Where did she get that incredible tome?!)
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: She's the formally-educated judicial assistant to both Asogi and Ryu, and knows more about the law and trial procedure more than most previous assistants in the series. She's the one who teaches Ryu everything he knows, and sometimes adresses the prosecution directly and confidently when Ryunosuke is lost for words. Heck, if the situation demands it, she can even step up and be the defense attorney herself!
• Leitmotif: "A Blooming Flower in the New World", a graceful and beautifully-orchestrated song using Japanese instruments more prominently. She also has "Serenade", a slower, more somber remix. During her brief stint as a defense attorney, "Ryutaro Naruhodo ~ Objection! 2017" and its Prelude equivalent, which is a rearrangement of her usual leitmotif.
• Lost in Character: As "Ryutaro Naruhodo", she ends up making some remarkably misogynistic observations during the trial, to the point that Hosonaga called her "bigoted" and a "weak little man". Susato mentally chastises herself, saying she got "too into" her male persona.
• Meaningful Name: "Mikotoba" means "Polite words".
• Miss Exposition: Ryunosuke relies on her and her Great Big Book of Everything quite heavily, being a Naïve Newcomer to Britain and law alike.
• My Greatest Failure: Tampering with the crime scene of Windibank's murder using Iris' Cat-Flapomat, in order to leave evidence for Ryunosuke to capture the culprit. It almost made her throw her law book to the ocean in shame before Ryunosuke arrives and reassures her about it.
• Nice Girl: Apart from briefly being cold to Ryunosuke for understandable reasons (believing he murdered his best friend and someone she admired), she's one of the nicer characters in the series.
• Not So Above It All: When behind the defense bench, she's found to exhibit the same nervous tics Ryunosuke has while defending; eyes darting around nervously, recoiling and faceplanting into the desk in shock, slapping her face to invigorate herself, etc. Considering that this is the first time she's an actual lawyer rather than a judicial assistant, that she's scared of getting in trouble if she's discovered to be a woman in disguise and that her best friend will be executed if she gets convicted, her nervousness is understandable.
• Signature Move: She uses a self-styled "Susato Takedown" on Ryunosuke if he annoys her enough, and a "Susato Shutdown" when she doesn't want to say goodbye to him just before the final trial of the first game. She also uses a "Ryutaro Takedown" in the second game to put a manhandled Menimemo out of commission.
• Silk Hiding Steel: She's prim and proper by default, but she's also capable of shoulder-tossing Ryu like it's nothing. This extends to what are basically cooperative wrestling moves with Rei, as Menimemo finds out the hard way.
• Spanner in the Works: Her secret action of constructing a peephole to Pop's storeroom with the Cat-Flapomat after his murder, which led Gregson and Graydon to assume and insist the peephole had been there all along and building their entire "witness" testimony around its existence, ultimately being the key evidence that outed their direct involvement with the incident.
• Spirited Young Lady: An otherwise proper Japanese lady who has aspirations a bit ahead of her era.
• Sweet on Polly Oliver: Auchi unknowingly calls her cute when disguised as Ryutaro, and everyone thinks she's "dashing", especially her close friend Rei.
• Sweet Polly Oliver: Disguises herself as a male defense attorney to defend Rei Membami, under the name 'Ryutaro Naruhodo' (registered as such by her father).
• Sweet Tooth: Sholmes deduces out she likes to eat pastries in one of the trailers.
• Teen Genius: Her legal education is comparable to Kazuma's. But while Kazuma is a grad student, Susato is sixteen.
• Third-Person Person: While she doesn't maintain this trait in English, she refers to herself in the third person to her friends in the original version.
• This Is Unforgivable!: After Kazuma's "death" is concluded to be due to him accidentally falling, Susato calmly tells Nikolina that while she has sympathy for the latter's circumstances, if Nikolina continues lying about her involvement, Susato will not forgive her.
• Yamato Nadeshiko: One of her defining qualities. In contrast to the other assistants in the Ace Attorney series, who are known for their cheery pluck, Susato is a demure and proper Japanese lady. It also helps that she's a badass perfectly physically capable of defending herself...and Ryunosuke.
• Younger Than They Look: She looks like she's in her 20s, but is actually 16.

Herlock Sholmes (Sherlock Holmes)

Herlock Sholmes (Sherlock Holmes)

Voiced by (Japanese): Shinji Kawada

Voiced by (English): Bradley Clarkson

"Come along, now! Shall we embark together on a journey of deduction?"

A man who, perhaps, needs no introduction. Herlock Sholmes is a consulting detective famed throughout the world through the published accounts of his adventures. He is known for his keen deductive ability and observation skills. He meets Ryunosuke and Susato while investigating a murder onboard the SS Burya.

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• Adaptational Attractiveness: In Doyle's novels, he was a gaunt, hook-nosed man, with Watson being implied to be the more attractive of the two. Here he's gorgeous.
• Adaptational Dumbass: To the point that correcting his wrong assumptions is a game mechanic. Subverted in that the games heavily imply that he makes them deliberately wrong to help Ryunosuke improve his deductions. In the final case he's paired with Mikotoba for the Dance of Deduction instead and despite it having the most difficult deductions in the series and no options to blunt force guess your way through the sequence, Sholmes remains effortlessly a step ahead of Mikotoba the entire time without making a single mistake. Nonetheless, Sholmes is still extremely scatterbrained.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Sherlock Holmes is usually depicted as having dark black-to-brown hair in both the novels and most adaptations of him. Herlock Sholmes on the other hand, is depicted with platinum blonde hair. His character designer says it's to visually distinguish him as English in his majority-Japanese Cast Herd.
• Adaptation Personality Change: While both versions of the Great Detective are eccentric geniuses, how they're eccentric differentiates. The original version of Holmes wasn't without quirks, but for the most part, he was The Stoic, and preferred to keep to himself. Sholmes is rather expressive, openly The Gadfly, and doesn't seem to have any problem with being around others; he even goes out of his way to help Ryunosuke and Susato when they're looking for lodgings in London.
• Affectionate Parody: Aside from his overall goofy behavior and scatterbrained deductions, Sholmes regularly parodies elements of the Holmes canon, including but not limited to: a 7% solution of caramel that he carries with him at all times, mistaking a viola for his violin and thus playing it very badly, being unable to wake up before 1PM, and outright quoting himself out of context. The writer for the game has admitted to being a fan of the original books, and they have definitely Shown Their Work.
• Age Lift: Doyle's Holmes was born in 1854, which would make him roughly 46 at the time the game takes place. The Great Ace Attorney shaves 13 years from this and sets the start of his career to be at age 18.
• Ambiguously Gay: Continuing with popular tradition, the game hints that his partnership with Wilson (or Yujin, rather) was more than merely a professional one. Official art◊ even confirms that they co-parented Iris before the doctor left for Japan.
• Ambiguous Situation: There is a case to be made that Herlock deliberately has been acting the fool in order to help Ryunosuke improve his investigative skills, but the games are coy on if Herlock is truly the genius detective his reputation built him up as.
• Anachronism Stew:
  • Downplayed. Herlock's devices for forensic analysis and crime scene reviewing only seem a bit odd given their style and usage. However, given the time period, they actually make a good amount of sense, especially given that Doyles' Holmes used forensics in his own investigations well before they were ever practiced in Real Life. He even invents a security camera for Mr. Windibanks pawn shop... A security camera that wastes reams of expensive photographic paper every half-hour; you'd better hope the crime in question happens at one of those exact intervals. (This being an Ace Attorney game, of course it does).
  • Taken to its extreme in the sequel, where he and Iris not only invent portable two-way wireless communication, they also invent live two-way hologram communication streaming.
• Annoying Laugh: Ryunosuke comments on how loud and annoying his laugh is, which is actually a subtle moment of Truer to the Text; whenever Sherlock laughs in the stories, it's usually in an explosive, abrupt, and obnoxious fashion.
• Adaptational Wealth: The literary Holmes was generally middle-class; while he received unstated-but-substantial sums from some of his more aristrocratic clients, he was never particularly concerned about money. Sholmes, on the other hand, is often concerned about money, something that partially stems from his wasteful spending habits. He considers paying the rent to be the oldest problem facing mankind. This probably stems from Sholmes being a lot more Money Dumb than the original.
• Attention Whore: Loves being the center of attention, often getting tempermental when characters make a point of ignoring him.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: There's a photo on his mantel of a woman which Susato assumes is Irene Adler. Iris later tells her and Ryunosuke it's actually Sholmes himself. Ryunosuke thinks he pulls it off quite well.
• Badass Fingersnap: What triggers the spotlights in his Great Deduction scenes.
• Behind the Black: A Running Gag of the game is that Herlock will be, rather unexpectedly, just off-screen investigating an item until the player pans the screen over.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • After spending most of Case 5 hospitalized, he arrives near the end of the trial (highly anemic and about 5 minutes away from passing out, no less) when Ryunosuke's just minutes away from losing to give him a very vital piece of evidence that exposes a hole in Graydon's testimony.
  • Once again in the final case of TGAA2, and done twice. Once when he barges into the final trial to turn the gallery's opinion against Chief Justice Stronghart so the trial will continue, and then at the very end when he helps take down Stronghart by revealing he has been broadcasting the whole trial to the queen.
• Big Good: Of the duology. He actively investigates the assassination conspiracy and tries (but fails) to prevent the death of Tobias Gregson. In Resolve, he helps Naruhodo and Kazuma by preparing witnesses to avoid giving Mael Stronghart time to cover things up, hunting down Seishiro Jigoku, gathering the evidence needed to prove Jigoku murdered Gregson, and broadcast the closed trial to Queen Victoria in case Stronghart was invincible through his manipulations, so he can be taken down no matter who or what he has.
• Breaking Old Trends: In contrast to other main detectives in the franchise, Sholmes is a Private Detective unaffiliated with the police or prosecutor and instead functions as an additional (if overbearing) assistant for Ryunosuke.
• Bumbling Dad: At times, Susato wonders if he's really Iris' Parental Substitute rather than the other way around.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: His investigation method puts him in weird places, he's a prankster and he's generally eccentric. But when the chips are down, he knows exactly what he needs to do. Case 2-3 also reaffirms he is still an excellent man of science when he warns Naruhodo at the start of the trial that he and Iris looked over the defendant's "instantaneous kinesis" hypothesis several times, but both agreed that this was completely impossible in practice. He sternly tells him that he will have to reveal this to the defendant at some point to reveal the truth.
• Captain Ersatz: Notably, this change is not original to these games. The name Herlock Sholmes was also used in various Arsène Lupin stories featuring the great detective for a very similar reason.
• The Chessmaster: It takes Sholmes ten long years, a lot of help from Ryunosuke, and a little help from Kazuma, but he ultimately outmaneuvers the Reaper Conspiracy. Case 2-4 and 2-5 involve Stronghart's Gambit Pileup coming to a crashing halt due to Sholmes' machinations. With the aid of Ryunosuke, Barok and Kazuma, Sholmes brings both Stronghart and the rest of the Conspiracy to justice.
• Cloudcuckoolander: His deductions can get a bit... out there. He's not even necessarily a bad detective, really: he reads people extremely well and often catches them dead to rights when they're trying to hide things. It's just that when he goes from that to making deductions, he focuses on the most insane of details which causes him to go on wild and clearly erroneous conclusion jumps that lead to ridiculous ends. Even in his mannerisms, he plays himself up more like an eccentric, artsy genius than a detective. He even seems aware of how skewed his thought process is on occasion, not that it stops him, and once put on the right track he usually gets the job done without problem. It’s also implied he’s doing this on purpose for a lot of the game, deduction wise. During his Dance of Deduction with Yujin in 2-5, he’s far more focused, and doesn’t stray onto wild tangents once. He still has his quirks, like a poor memory and an impulsive nature, just not enough to actually interfere in his work.
• Consummate Liar: It's extremely difficult to tell when he's lying, since he plays dumb just as often as he pretends he was just playing dumb. Even after living with him for over eight months, Ryunosuke doesn't get the slightest inclination that Sholmes knew Kazuma wasn't even dead, much less murdered by Ryunosuke as he had initially "deduced".
• Comic Books Are Real: Well, quasi-fictional literature in this case. "The Adventures of Herlock Sholmes" are published by Iris in the Randst Magazine which she based on the notes written by his former partner, and the Great Detective himself is real.
• Crazy-Prepared: In the final case of GAA2, he ensures several witnesses needed to take down the culprit are available and in the courthouse to prevent any unnecessary recesses. He also set up a live holographic camera feed for Queen Victoria just in case Mael Stronghart managed to win over the judiciary.
• Cuckoosnarker: For a guy who thinks antigravity devices look like Incredibly Obvious Bombs, Sholmes can be snarky when he wants to be. This is one of the first signs that his apparent idiocy is obfuscative.
• Didn't Think This Through: Sure, he's a genius that can invent things to analyze a crime scene through forensic science, but his Cloudcuckoolander tendencies and general eccentricity make it so he never thought to actually register his inventions or patent them, meaning the British courts have a hard time accepting his findings as evidence in trials. The only reasons as to why Scotland Yard ends up using his security camera prototypes as evidence of the murder in GAA1-5 are that the victim did pay Herlock to have those installed in his pawn shop, the incident is a Locked Room Mystery they have very little leads for, and they consist of photographic prints which are commonplace in trials as evidence and thus accepted much more easily.
• Distinguished Gentleman's Pipe: Part of Sholmes' trademark look, though outside of promotional material, the pipe itself never actually touches his mouth.
• Dumb Blonde: Often makes insanely wrong assumptions.
• Dub Name Change: A notable example for the official Western release — his original name was at the time Public Domain, but a portion of the Holmes canon was not, prompting the change.
• The Eeyore: Tends to fall into a very downcast mood when he happens to lose some of his most precious items.
• Extreme Omnivore: Has a habit of ingesting potentially hazardous substances such as soaps or alkaloids in Iris' medicine cabinet. Sometimes it's out of curiousity, but he also does it just because he's hungry. This is another shout-out to the original Doyle canon, where Holmes was so into this that he willingly poisoned himself and Watson to test a hypothesis.
• Great Detective: Interestingly enough for a version of the Trope Codifier, this is Played With. Sholmes' powers of observation and deduction are just as flawless as the legend goes. The problem is that he's severely limited by his ignorance of matters outside of criminology and his tendency to jump to conclusions from nothing more than a glance. While he is quick to pick up on the suspect's psychology, he deduces from flawed premises, quickly leading his deduction off the rails to erroneous conclusions. Ryunosuke has to step in and correct him multiple times before they can get to the right answer, which comprises the "Dance of Deduction" segments of gameplay. His deductions are flawless when he's with Yujin and on a time crunch, which supports a different interpretation — that, although he is undeniably scatterbrained and ignorant on some things, Sholmes was purposely flubbing his deductions, specifically so Ryunosuke would step in and correct them.
• The Gadfly: Finds much amusement in annoying people, especially Ryunosuke. In his introductory case, he's taking Ryunosuke and Susato for a complete ride, both to obfuscate Kazuma's "death" and to mess with Ryunosuke.
• Genius Ditz: This iteration of Holmes is just as good at deduction as the original, but considerably more scatterbrained. He has a very bad habit of jumping to conclusions, and a short attention span. Ryunosuke has to step in and redirect his considerable brainpower in the right direction, but once he's set straight, he quickly gets back to form. The final case strongly implies his ridiculous leaps of logic are just him screwing with Ryunosuke.
• Genius Sweet Tooth: The Great Detective himself, who has an affinity for caramel bars.
• Hero of Another Story: Quite literally. Sholmes is often working on his own cases while Ryunosuke is investigating his, though it's not uncommon for them to overlap.
• Insane Troll Logic: He almost always comes up with Larry Butz-style faulty logic in his "great" deductions, fixating on Red Herrings that he has Mistaken for Evidence. Ryunosuke has to redirect Sholmes and set him back onto the right logical course. The final case of Resolve shows him perform the final Dance of Deduction flawlessly, and this time around, he corrects you for "playing games" if you present incorrect evidence.
• Inspector Lestrade: Ironically for the Great Detective himself, he often finds himself caught in the trappings of Doyle's Lestrade. He's excellent at deducing a crime scene and identifying the exact people involved with a crime, but he's terrible at figuring out how they're connected to the crime or the exact series of events, and usually relies on Ryunosuke to fill in the gaps for him.
• Interdisciplinary Sleuth: Used to be a hospital lab technician before he got into detective work and uses this background to make his own forensic investigation tools.
• Inventional Wisdom: The device he invented and worked on for a year, the Great Analytiscope, is apparently capable of analyzing anything, but its readouts are incomprehensible to the point Iris posits that Sholmes should make an Analytiscope for the Analytiscope. Surprisingly, the device doesn't become a Chekhov's Gun.
• Large Ham: He loves to make a showboat out of himself. His Dance of Deduction segments, in particular, show him posing dramatically at every point he makes. Even outside of them, he loves to surprise people with his appearance and can be pretty dramatic.
• Leitmotif: "Great Detective of Foggy London Town", a fast-paced orchestra with heavy emphasis on the violin, Sherlock's trademark instrument. Later shares "The Game is Afoot!" with Yujin.
• Lethally Stupid: In "The Return of the Great Departed Soul", he enters a room containing what is clearly a time bomb, and ignores the incredibly dangerous object. When he does acknowledge its presence, he insists it's actually an anti-gravity device Drebber used to escape from the scene. Had his deduction taken just seven seconds more, everyone in Drebber's workshop (except Drebber himself, who was hiding in a bomb-proof safe) would have been blown to kingdom come.
• Let's Get Dangerous!:
  • The whole last case of GAA2. He tracks down Judge Jigoku and flushes him out of hiding in a matter of minutes with a flawless deduction, then coerces Chief Justice Stronghart into continuing the trial even after he was accused of being the Reaper. Furthermore, he already arranged for the necessary witnesses to arrive at the courthouse. Lastly, he transmitted the entire "secret" trial to the Queen to ensure the Big Bad couldn't weasel out of punishment.
  • His final Dance of Deduction in particular stands out as this. Paired with Mikotoba, who he considers at least a bit closer to his equal, instead of Naruhodo, and forced to operate under significant time pressure, he makes none of his usual mistakes and instead remains a step ahead of the player the entire time, effortlessly making every deduction in the most difficult sequence in the series correctly without a single failure and genuinely putting the player in the role of The Watson for once.
• Manchild: He does often act like a kid in a candy store. If he isn't playing with things at the crime scene or galavanting around and hanging off things, he's playing pranks on people and bouncing from topics all the time. Case 5 of the first game also shows that he is rather pouty and stubborn when he's in a bad mood. Ironically, it is Iris who lampshades this by saying he can be such a baby when he's feeling down. It prompts both Susato and Ryunosuke to wonder who's the parent and who's the child in Iris and his relationship. However, this doesn't stop him from getting things done when it really counts.
• Master Forger: By pressing any evidence into his bars of caramel, they leave a perfect indent, and he's able to recreate their exact shape with just these indents.
• Meaningful Rename: When legal disputes with the Doyle estate forced Capcom to change his name, the localizers pointedly renamed him after Maurice Leblanc's Captain Ersatz of Holmes, created for much the same reason.
• Mistaken for Evidence: This is the game mechanic for Sholmes Deduction and Reasoning Spectaculars. He will pick the wrong items as clues (such as wrongfully assume what a perpetrator is looking at, or pick out the wrong item on their person) and subsequently generate Insane Troll Logic deductions from them; Ryunosuke pointing out which items are really clues leads him to come to the correct conclusions.
• Money Dumb: Some of the escapades and Resolve reveals him to be pretty prone to frivolous spending. Perhaps the most notable example is in "Twisted Karma and His Last Bow", where he reveals he's spent most of his earnings from resolving Madame Tusspells' waxwork kidnapping in "The Return of the Great Departed Soul" on a motor car.
• Mood Motif: Sholmes is heavily associated with a violin in the soundtrack, as a reference to Sherlock Holmes' trademark Stradivarious; his leitmotif, "Great Detective of Foggy London Town", emphasizes it heavily. And "The Game is Afoot!", which he shares with Yujin, couples it with Yujin's signiture tap-dancing.
• Mood-Swinger: His moods are quite intense and varying. He often is cheerful and the Troll from time to time. He also gets super depressed, like when he accidentally picks up a viola instead of his violin at the pawn shop by mistake.
• My Greatest Failure: One that happens during the game, in fact. Given he's spent a long time trying to protect Gregson from what he correctly assumed was a plot on the man's life, he takes the man's death at the eleventh hour very hard.
• Nice Guy: Despite his eccentricities, he's often very encouraging to those he believes to be innocent, and is still cordial with those he suspects. He even allows Ryunosuke and Susato to set up shop in the attic of his apartment complex when he sees they're strapped for living quarters.
• No Hero to His Valet:
  • Ryunosuke is not terribly impressed with Sholmes' detective skills while regularly assisting in them despite Sholmes being praised by near everyone else.
  • Similar to Ryunosuke, while Yujin obviously has deep respect for Sholmes, he nonetheless has no reservations with pointing out Herlock's foibles and snarking at him whenever the great detective gets too far ahead of himself.
• No Sense of Personal Space: Loves getting in people's faces, particularly Ryunosuke's.
• Not a Morning Person: Not an early riser, by his own admission. In one case where he actually makes it to one of Ryunosuke's trials in the morning, he confesses it was because Iris woke him up; by ripping off his covers, shaking him, slapping his face, punching him, kicking him out of bed and finally pouring scalding hot tea on his face. It wasn't until the tea that he finally woke up.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: The final case strongly implies Sholmes has been taking you for a ride since the first case he appeared in. With the two of them now intensely pressed for time, instead of making mistakes in his deductions as he does throughout the rest of the game, Sholmes guides Yujin to the correct conclusion without a single mistake, and even chastises him for getting the wrong evidence; in less time than it takes to get a Steamboat out to sea, he tracks down Jigoku and whisks him away to the Old Bailey. The player's first hint at this is when it's revealed Kazuma was alive the whole time, something Sholmes would have to have known. When Ryunosuke asks him about it, he initially tries to laugh the whole thing off as him just having not noticed Kazuma was still alive before admitting to the deception.
  Sholmes: Great detectives are wont to lie.
  • This is something that's actually subtly foreshadowed in the second case in the first game; when everyone, including Susato, was willing to accept that Kazuma's "death" was an accident caused by Darka and Nikolina merely had the scene covered up with Bif's help to remove suspicion from herself, it was Sholmes who immediately pointed out that there's still something strange with the crime scene (namely, Kazuma's clenched fist), and after he has Ryunosuke point this out to the assembled crew and passengers, he reveals what was in said fist — Nikolina's crescent moon earring fixture, making it known that he knew from the beginning who Kazuma's attacker was.
• Oh, Crap!: After overhearing that Jezaille Brett was actually a false name used by Asa Shinn, this causes him to realise what exactly the hidden list of four names actually was since he first assumed it was a death list for everyone on it since Shinn went missing from England and Wilson was murdered, but since she was actually alive in Japan at the time, this turned his theory topsy-turvy and prompted him to put a request to Hosonaga to get a copy of said list from Jigoku's office, which then confirms his new theory about it being a list containing two targets and their assigned assassins.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • He's usually very lax in his mannerisms and is rather careless with his speech, but he handles Olive Green's attempted suicide completely seriously.
  • He also becomes dead serious when insisting that Iris not publish her The Hounds of the Baskervilles manuscript, or anything related to the case in G2-2.
  • Sholmes usually shirks any sort of responsibility for anything he does, but after Gregson is murdered he's incensed with himself for being unable to prevent it even though there was likely nothing he could've done.
  • The final Dance of Deduction has him specifically tell the player "no games" as they were under a considerable time crunch, and this is thus the only deduction sequence where he makes no outlandish theories and simply comes to the correct conclusions the first time around.
• Parental Substitute: He raised Iris in the absence of her real parents. Iris herself was so young when she was left with him that she saw him as her real father for the longest time.
• Perpetual Poverty: A recurring problem for Sholmes in GAA2, causing him to apply for odd jobs such as pretending to be a wax statue in Madame Tusspells' museum, or trying to apply for the Red-Headed League when his hair turned red in an accident involving tea leaves.
• Phenotype Stereotype: The reason for his Adaptation Dye-Job, according to his character designer.
• Pragmatic Hero: More than happy to employ questionable or illegal tricks if it means saving the day, even cheerfully admitting to blackmail to escape from the hospital in order to pull a Big Damn Heroes at Gina's trial.
• Pretty Boy: Unlike most depictions of Holmes, he is young, slender and with fine features.
• Private Detective: He does not work for Scotland Yard, instead taking private matters such as theft or missing persons.
• Professor Guinea Pig: Consuming questionable mixtures of chemicals he's raided from Iris' medicine cabinet is his biggest hobby.
• Public Domain Character: While the English localization needed to resort to some Writing Around Trademarks, in the original Japanese he is that Sherlock Holmes.^note While the character of Sherlock Holmes was in the public domain in the United States as of 2014, the entire Holmes canon was not before 2023, and some of the latter-day stories are mentioned in the games. Arguably, the localization resulted in him becoming a different Public Domain Character.
• Pungeon Master: He has made quite a lot of wordplays regarding the cases he works on.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Despite clearly going through money problems in Resolve, it never occurs to him that he can market his inventions and register his crime-solving gadgets to obtain royalties such as a special camera film that can show dark areas (which he did actually sell to someone), "skin-prints" which reveal whatever the subject had been touching using a sample mixed with reagent along with goggles to see what the results are, and most notably instant wireless communication through Iris' little knapsack toys akin to a mobile phone and outright video communication through holograms. He does get offers to sell the latter, but has to refuse due to technical problems and he swore to secrecy about the closed trial.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons:
  • The meat of his deductions are usually composed of Insane Troll Logic until Ryunosuke nudges his line of thinking in the right direction, but usually the two broader "facts" he states up front before the deduction begins turn out to be true, just not for the way he initially claims.
  • Regarding the entire assassin exchange plot. His monitoring of British-Japanese communications correctly clued him in to the fact something was going on between the two governments. However, with Asa Shinn vanishing from London and the news of John H. Wilson's death, he assumed all the people on the list were in danger of being killed. It's only when he realises that Asa Shinn was alive until 2-1, and was actually John H. Wilson's killer, that he realises the true significance of the list, and starts to move accordingly.
• Secret-Keeper:
  • He knew that Asogi wasn't dead, just unconscious. Herlock had him sent to a Japanese embassy in Hong Kong and set up Ryunosuke to take up the student exchange program to prevent Asogi from coming to London out of belief Asogi was set to be assassinated there. But even Sholmes didn't know the whole truth about the exchange program at the time...
  • He knows the identity of Iris' birth family. In fact, he refuses to publish or let her see the manuscript of The Hounds of Baskervilles because it contains the truth about her family.
• Sherlock Scan:
  • What the Dance of Deductions ultimately are, though in a twist, he doesn't seem concerned about whether what he deduces is actually true (and it usually isn't, as he ends up noticing the wrong things). It's up to Ryunosuke to consider the evidence and decide if his deductions hold weight. That said, when Ryunosuke finds the correct train of thought, Herlock follows through with it effortlessly.
  • Outside of gameplay, it's Played for Laughs in the second game; Sholmes correctly deduces Ryunosuke has received shocking news based on the untidiness of his appearance, only for Ryunosuke to point out that his untidy appearance is due to completely unrelated factors which Sholmes forgot about, and that he had already mentioned the shocking news he received a few moments earlier — Sholmes just hadn't been paying attention.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Is absent for most of G1-5, after being hospitalized for suffering glass wounds and chemical burns from a gunshot to his pouch. Even when he shows up, he quickly has to bow out due to running on fumes.
• Stealth Mentor: Claims his more ridiculous deductions were to give Ryunosuke and Susato the opportunity to build up their own deduction skills, though the jury's out on whether it's actually true.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Caramel bars. They not only serve as comfort food for whenever he's in a funk, but also for recreating the indentations of confiscated evidence for the sake of forging replicas.
• Waistcoat of Style: His home attire.
• Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?: He's a walking crime lab, with him or Iris inventing tools and gadgets for their investigations. Fitting, since he's the inspiration for the Trope Namer. It unfortunately counts against him sometimes, as forgetting to introduce their inventions to the British government or patent them means that they can't treat their evidence as valid submissions to the court record.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Though not shown, Iris mentions that he has a noticeable preference towards female disguises, and quite convincing ones. The photo on the mantle that Susato assumes was of Irene Adler is actually of Sholmes himself.

Iris Wilson (Iris Watson)

Iris Wilson (Iris Watson) (van Zieks / Baskerville)

Voiced by (Japanese): Misaki Kuno

Voiced by (English): Claire Morgan

"Well? Was it a winner? Were my deductions correct?"

A medical prodigy (with an M.D. at the age of 10, no less!), Herlock Sholmes' assistant/roommate, and (in-universe) author of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (or The Adventures of Herlock Sholmes in the the English version).

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• Adorably Precocious Child: A world-famous author and doctor of medicine, all by the age of ten.
• Ambiguous Situation: While not confirmed, the timing of her interruption, her sudden insistence on meeting Barok (her uncle) for tea, and her later request for Gina to drop her promise of finding her father suggest she overheard Yujin's admission that Klint van Zieks was her father and is merely feigning ignorance afterward.
• Anachronism Stew: Iris managed to develop a holographic video projection system between the Old Bailey and Buckingham Palace. A holographic projector in early-1900s England.
• Anime Hair: Has her hair styled in massive twintails that are each almost the size of her actual head, with braids that end in a heart shape somehow. It's to the point that her outdoor/travel outfit sports a massive hat shaped like Mickey Mouse to accommodate them.
• The Baby of the Bunch: Among Ryunosuke's group, she's the youngest.
• Canon Character All Along: An interesting inversion. Set up as the daughter of John Watson, but the sequel reveals she's actually a totally original character with a familial tie to the Baskerville family through her mother's side.
• Captain Obvious: She has a tendency to over-explain and point out things that Ryunosuke has already figured out, such as when Barok van Zieks was making clear jabs at McGilded and then Ryunosuke himself without directly naming them. She's likely used to having to explain the obvious to adults, considering Herlock is her roommate and Gregson overindulges her to protect his own reputation.
• Cheerful Child: For somebody who writes world-famous murder mysteries, Iris is quite a sweetheart. She's always energetic and cheerful, even when meeting people like the rather-imposing Barok van Zieks. The only thing that puts a damper on her mood is the subject of her missing father.
• Child Prodigy: She's 10 years old... but she has a medical doctorate.
• Cultured Badass: About as cultured and about as badass as a ten year old girl can be, anyways. She's well-informed on Japanese culture, easily recognizing Ryunosuke's katana and Susato's kimono. She is also the true author of the world-famous original Holmes stories. On top of all that, she cheerfully threatens Gina Lestrade with a steampunk bazooka in order to get the streetwise pickpocket to surrender a stolen portable smokebomb launcher. Said smokebomb gun was also Iris' invention.
• Dead Guy Junior: Yujin ended up being the one to name her, and eventually settled on giving her the English variant of his beloved wife's name — Ayame.
• Death by Childbirth: Her mother died shortly after giving birth to her.
• Deceptive Legacy: Klint van Zieks's dying request was for Iris' true parentage to be kept under wraps, fearing the stigma that would fall upon her should London at large ever learn he was the Professor; which Yujin Mikotoba held as a personal vow both for her sake and that of his friend Genshin's own final request. However the trial of van Zieks gives Yujin a new perspective and he decides at some point the truth is something she should be allowed to know.
• Decomposite Character: Of the literary Watson, with Ryunosuke and John H. Wilson. Out of them, she has Watson's "Holmes' flatmate" trait, as well as the medical training alongside Dr. Wilson. Later revealed to actually share the flatmate/partner trait with Yujin and not Dr. Wilson.
• Family of Choice: She comes to view Sholmes as her father figure, and Herlock's very happy when she finally calls him "Daddy." She also asks Susato and Ryunosuke to be her 'big sister' and 'big brother,' respectively.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Shares Herlock's knack for machine making. Some of the things she's made include a coloured smoke Grenade Launcher and a cat door maker.
• Happily Adopted: Was raised by Sholmes since birth, and despite angst over her true parentage, clearly could not be happier with him as her father figure. She formally acknowledges Sholmes as her father at the end of the second game, calling him "Daddy" and thanking him for being a great dad.
• Improbable Age: She's earned a medical doctorate and become a massively-successful author at the age of ten!
• Informed Attribute: Her doctorate in medicine. While Iris is shown to be extremely intelligent for her age, a highly regarded novellist, and a Gadgeteer Genius, her medical knowledge is never demonstrated in the same way and doesn't play into the plot in any way.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: As befitting her sweet personality. GAA2 reveals that the colour comes from her father, Klint van Zieks.
• Kid Sidekick: To the great detective himself, Herlock Sholmes. She's also this to Ryunosuke in Case 5 when Susato is returning back to Japan, as well as in GAA2's Case 3's first half before Susato returns from Japan.
• Kind Hearted Cat Lover: She absolutely adores cats, and is one of the sweetest characters in the series.
• Leitmotif: "The Little Biographer", a fast-paced bubbly theme with a few mechanical whirs.
• Long-Lost Relative: Case 5 of the second game reveals her to be Barok's niece — shocking Barok, who didn't even know his brother had a child.
• Mysterious Parent: Her father. She's under the impression that his identity is that of Dr. John H. Wilson. Case 2-4 reveals that this is not the case — instead implying that it's actually Yujin. Case 2-5 finally reveals her to be the daughter of Klint van Zieks, making Barok her uncle.
• Narrator All Along: As "The Adventures of Herlock Sholmes" is written by her, her being the narrator of the stories seen in the episode opening segments isn't exactly a big surprise, but the end of the second game features a scene where the narrator Wilson's voice is gradually replaced by Iris' voice, highlighting the point and spelling it out for players who hadn't thought about it until then.
• Nice Girl: Iris really is a sweetheart, as her proper introduction consists of her being nothing but helpful and polite to you. She stands out especially given that almost every British person you've met prior to her is stuffy at best and downright xenophobic at worst.
• The Nicknamer: In the localized version, she refers to people by various nicknames, such as Hurley, Runo and Susie. In case 5 of Resolve, this reaches its climax when she has tea with Vicky.
• Parental Substitute: Sholmes is one to her, but in a twist she was so young when she was left with him that she initially grew up thinking he was her actual father.
• Pint-Sized Kid: Iris is ten years old, but according to character designer Kazuya Nuri, she's only 120 centimeters (3'11") tall — the size of a girl about half that age.
• Really Royalty Reveal: Turns out to be the daughter of Klint van Zieks which would be a very esteemed lineage if it weren't for the fact Klint was secretly a notorious serial killer.
• Recurring Element: A little girl who accompanies the protagonists in their investigations, much like Pearl Fey.
• Rose-Haired Sweetie: Has bubblegum pink hair to match her bubbly personality.
• Sherlock Scan: She is capable of doing this, and very good at it. Case in point when she correctly deduces what Ryunosuke and Susato's jobs are, what they're doing in 221B Baker Street, and who they're defending.
• Supreme Chef: Iris is the cook of the house, and is very happy to do it.
• Swallow the Key: After opening the chest containing what she believes to be her father's case files, she tries to hide it from Sholmes by hiding the key in her mouth and refusing to say a word. Her trying to keep him from being struck by a spring-loaded boxing glove inside the chest causes her to start talking again, and the key falls out of her mouth.
• Theme Song Reveal: It's not obvious from her primary theme, but the track that plays when she's discussing her true father, Klint van Zieks, is a dead giveaway that she's a relative of Barok. It incorporates many of the same instruments as her uncle's.
• A True Story in My Universe: She is the author of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in this universe (or The Adventures of Herlock Sholmes in the English release). Actually, she just publishes them. They were really written by Yujin Mikotoba (though she assumed that they were written by John Wilson).
• Unpleasant Parent Reveal: That mysterious Disappeared Dad of hers is London's most infamous serial killer.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: She is a Child Prodigy, and is much more emotionally mature than Herlock Sholmes.
  Susato: Mr Sholmes and Iris have something of a parent-and-child relationship, don't they?
  Ryunosuke: Yes, except that Iris is clearly the parent here...

Barok van Zieks

Barok van Zieks

Voiced by (Japanese): Kenjiro Tsuda

Voiced by (English): Robert Vernon

"Please forgive my impudence in my partaking of the hallowed chalice within these Halls of Justice."

The Reaper of the Bailey, and main prosecutor of the Great Ace Attorney Chronicles duology, Barok van Zieks is a feared prosecutor who has returned to the courts after a 5-year absence. He's gained his moniker and reputation due to the fact that defendants in his trials are doomed to death should they receive a Not Guilty verdict, dying in horrific incidents either soon after the trial is over, as long as they remain within British soil.

Like most of London's population, he has a scathing prejudice towards Japanese people and is openly disdainful of Ryunosuke, taking every opportunity to belittle him in court while sipping wine from an ornamental chalice.

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• Abstract Apotheosis: A rather dark example, as he's come to be seen as a divine avatar of karmic deaths. Stronghart engineered the Reaper's murders specifically to achieve this, to which Van Zieks is not happy about.
  Stronghart: Your role wasn't that of some embodiment of death. No, you were London's guardian angel.
  Van Zieks: An angel with bloody hands? I think not.
• Antiquated Linguistics: His language is notably dated even in the context of a Period Piece, leaning more towards Flowery Elizabethan English than Victorian. His most noticeable linguistic quirk is to use the more dated term Nipponese in place of Japanese, and he often uses "Pray" instead of "Please."
• Ambiguously Evil: Ryunosuke spends the entirety of Adventures unsure of what to make of his motives, connection to the Reaper curse, or even his literal humanity. It's not until Resolve that his byronic nature becomes clear.
• Apologizes a Lot: While no less prone to violent courtroom dramatics than other prosecutors, he does apologize to the judge for them.
  Van Zieks: ...If the sight of my iron-heeled Wellington offends...pray, do forgive the discourtesy.
• Backhanded Apology: Most of his frequent apologies are comically insincere, always asserting that he's simply reacting to others' absurd Courtroom Antics in kind.
• Badass Bookworm: He's apparently as much a beast outside the courtroom as he is in it, regularly fighting off assassination attempts by the underlings of late defendants.
• Badass Longcoat: Wears a sleek black justacorps.
• Bad Boss: Subverted. Van Zieks's apprentice, Kazuma, explains the exhaustive, back-breaking labor that maintaining his master's wine supply involves. Ryunosuke is dismayed to hear this, but Kazuma quickly corrects him: van Zieks does all the work, since he doesn't trust anyone with his wine. Kazuma himself finds the apprenticeship quite reasonable and even talks van Zieks out of retiring at the end of Resolve so he can continue it.
• Bait-and-Switch Comment: In Case 1-5, when Sholmes arrives to give Ryunosuke evidence, something that will take a few minutes, van Zieks observes that the trial has taken hours, seemingly as a complaint, and Gregson chimes in to concur... but van Zieks then says that if the trial has gone on that long, they may as well spare a few minutes, much to Gregson's dismay.
• Baritone of Strength: An imposing deep voice for an imposing man.
• Batman Gambit: Prosecutes Albert Harebrayne even though he secretly believes him to be innocent, predicting that Ryunosuke would once again employ The Perry Mason Method to win an acquittal and expose some corruption in Scotland Yard's ranks while he's at it.
• The Beautiful Elite: Wears Gorgeous Period Dress, drinks the finest vintages from gold-trimmed chalices crafted by the most talented craftsmen in the most lavishly decorated office, speaks with impeccable eloquence, and is very attractive on top of it all. He even shouts, "Objection!" and "Hold it!" in blackletter rather than bold comics lettering.
• Better Manhandle the Murder Weapon: Albeit a more grounded example than most. Scotland Yard doesn't yet have the ability to test ballistic markings, van Zieks wears gloves (not that the British Courts accept fingerprints as evidence yet) and the make of the gun is standard for all members of British law enforcement or the judiciary. Witness testimony does put him under suspicion and lead to his immediate arrest, but his possession of the gun is deemed merely circumstantial after the prosecution admits they cannot conclusively establish the gun's ownership (serial number tracking is available but only came into effect in the recent past, meaning some guns assigned to the judiciary were not tracked).
• Beware the Honest Ones: His allegiance is to the truth alone, which becomes an increasing frustration for less scrupulous individuals the justice system. Stronghart seizes the opportunity presented by Jigoku accidentally framing Barok to try and convict him for Gregson's murder. This winds up backfiring horribly, and the ensuing court case unveils Stronghart as the true mastermind of the Reaper Conspiracy.
• Big Brother Worship: Revered his late older brother, who was the reason Barok became a prosecutor. He takes it very hard finding out that his brother was a serial killer.
• Bigot with a Crush: Though not an overtly romantic one, he admits to being instinctively drawn towards Ryunosuke from the outset despite his own anti-Japanese sentiments, going as far to compare him to his much-idolized brother... and the man who killed him.
• Blue Blood: As a member of the highly esteemed van Zieks family, Barok is a lord as well as a barrister of the Crown court.
• Blind Shoulder Toss: Sometimes throws his bottle... into the gallery.
• Break His Heart to Save Him: In a platonic sense at the end of Case 3 of Resolve, he immediately orders his friend Albert Harebrayne out of England to Germany following his acquittal out of fear that his Reaper curse will kill him, much to Albert's dismay as he was planning to reconnect with van Zieks and tour the Great Exhibition.
• Break the Haughty: The second half of the final trial is not a good time for van Zieks, especially when his brother and idol is exposed for the very monster thought to have killed him.
• Broken Bird: The pressure of the Reaper and his Cynicism Catalyst have made him cold, miserable, and distrustful... and weirdly fascinating to Ryunosuke.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: You'd be forgiven for assuming he's among the more serious prosecutors in the series on account of his straight face. Even ignoring the "Curse" that gets every person he prosecutes killed if they remain on British soil, this is a man who drinks red wine in court, crushes and throws glasses of it, throws bottles of it at the gallery, and slams the desk with his leg when he's holding a glass. And he apologizes for it at most instances (though the longer a trial gets, the less he does the latter). Regardless, he's still a talented prosecutor who makes it quite clear the truth is what matters most to him, especially during the last case of the first game, and it's largely hinted that most of his losses are on account of corruption on the part of the defense or defendant.
• "Burly Detective" Syndrome: Hilariously, he never once utters the word "wine" despite his copious consumption of it, instead always using flowery alternatives such as "carmine contents", "essence of grapes", or "liquid of a more sanguine hue". Even the wine barrels in his office are just referred to as his "vintages".
• Byronic Hero: Shifts from Ambiguously Evil in Adventures to this in Resolve. He's very intelligent both in court and outside, is absolutely relentless and uncompromising in his pursuit of the truth to the point of defying the very institution he works for on many occasions, heavily struggles with personal demons from his past and his present, has grown cynical and mistrustful over the years, and lets his emotions cloud his better judgement in regards to his prejudice.
• Cannot Convey Sarcasm: His Perpetual Frown and cold bravado makes him sound like he's always sarcastic, and Ryunosuke will assume sarcasm unless proven otherwise.
• Classy Cravat: It's actually a jabot (traditional courtroom attire for judges and barristers), but it has the same effect.
• The Coats Are Off: He throws his cape away when he gets serious. Eventually he either just does it at the start of the trial or simply starts without it.
• Cold Ham: Van Zieks is probably the most theatrical prosecutor in the entire series — and trust us, that's really saying something. He manages to achieve this feat despite never raising his voice, other than to shout the obligatory "OBJECTION!" He doesn't need to, the way he swans about in a vampiric cloak, drinks glasses of fine wine, throws bottles into the gallery, and slams his foot onto his desk to make a point.
• The Comically Serious: He maintains a very serious demeanor even as he does ridiculous things such as slamming his leg on the prosecution bench or throwing a glass/bottle of wine.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Ryunosuke is unnerved by the casual attitude he (and everyone else) takes regarding assassination attempts against him. Often he just draws his sword and fights his way out of it.
• Conspicuous Consumption: While it isn't exactly stated how much his own-brand handpicked wine and crystal goblets cost, he always destroys both during trials as if they were worthless.
• Consummate Professional: He takes his job completely and utterly seriously to the point where he'll try to debunk an argument that could prove him not guilty of murder just because it has a potential hole in it. He's also perfectly content on building on the defense's argument if he believes it makes sense, and, despite his bad first impression, even stops witnesses from badmouthing Ryunosuke.
• Contrived Clumsiness: Loves to claim this when throwing his bottles into the gallery.
  Van Zieks: I was throwing my hands up in despair and happened to catch my hallowed bottle on the way. Pray, forgive my maladroit mistake.
• Convicted by Public Opinion: When arrested for Gregson's murder, it's nearly impossible for him to find representation because of his reputation as the Reaper.
• Creepy Good: He's intimidating beyond all reason, but he's actually one of the few completely clean prosecutors in the franchise.
• Dark Is Not Evil: As it turns out, the man who dresses like a vampire who is surrounded by death is actually one of the franchise's most honest and restrained prosecutors.
• "Darkness von Gothick" Name: His given name is a play on baroque, while his surname is pronounced very similarly to "banjikyuusu", which means: "it's all over".
• Deadpan Snarker: He's very prone to sarcastic toasts and scathing comments delivered in the same dead-serious manner as his less facetious dialogue.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Played with. Much like many of the other British characters in the game, he has a great deal of racism towards the Japanese, although his case is due having a former Japanese friend who was later convicted of being a serial killer, one of the serial killer's victims being Barok's brother Klint. And later he learns it was completely unfounded, as it was the opposite: his brother was the serial killer while Genshin Asogi was a fall guy for it.
• Decomposite Character: He and Kazuma are this to Miles Edgeworth, with Barok having his stoic demeanor, upper-class posturing, some of his design elements and past cases that haunt them into adulthood, one of which involves a notorious serial killer. Barok even becomes the defendant in the final case, much like Edgeworth (originally) was in the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: Subverted. Characters warn Ryunosuke that no one can save a defendant from Barok van Zieks. Ryunosuke and Susato assume this to mean he's never lost a case. It does not.
  Gregson: ...No, you really don't have a clue, do you? What happened to that bloke in the end, eh? He's dead... Magnus McGilded came a cropper in that omnibus when it went up in flames. So you can't rightly say you saved the defendant, can you?
• Deuteragonist: Becomes this in Resolve.
• Didn't See That Coming: He really didn't know as much about his older brother as he should have known. He is completely blindsided that Klint van Zieks is The Professor and he didn't know that Iris Wilson is Klint's daughter; but it does make sense that she shouldn't be raised into the van Zieks family because of Klint.
• Doom Magnet: Somehow, the defendants of the cases he tackled in the past that were declared 'Not Guilty' eventually died under various mysterious circumstances; run over by carriages, sickness, mugged by highwaymen, drowning in the Thames, etc. He has no idea why this is, though he's aware of it and gives McGilded a warning about it after it appears the man has become a Karma Houdini — quite accurately, as it turns out. As Resolve reveals, however, this is due to a conspiracy by an organization of people headed by Mael Stronghart.
• Does Not Like Guns: Prefers a sword when in battle. He was actually presented a gun after becoming a prosecutor, but somehow lost it some time ago.
• The Dreaded: A particularly feared prosecutor, though not because of his record. See Doom Magnet above.
• Ermine Cape Effect: He wears royal court dress no matter the occasion, even in jail.
• Evil Is Bigger: At 192 cm (6'4"), he's the biggest prosecutor yet and absolutely massive compared to the 168 cm (5'6") protagonist, Ryunosuke. And while he's not evil, he's certainly teased as such for much of the duology.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Contributing to his Ambiguously Evil nature, his voice is quite deep courtesy of both Kenjiro Tsuda and Robert Vernon.
• Face of a Thug: He may be handsome, but his stature, scar, garb, and perpetual Death Glare make him look Obviously Evil. Even when he's trying to be courteous, Ryunosuke can't help but feel like he's about to kill him.
  Ryunosuke: His face says 'I hate you,' but his words are... almost jovial today.
• Face Palm: A very common reaction, particularly outside of court.
• Failed a Spot Check: Toyed with. It exactly once occurred to him that his brother's hunting dog Balmung may have been related to the killings of the Professor using a large hound that ripped the victims' throats, but his hero worship of his older brother (and eventual death at "the Professor's" hands), as well as one of the Professor's victims being his brother's mentor caused him to dismiss the theory.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Racism, which leads him make enemies out of much needed allies for the crime of being Japanese. His prejudice drives him to unwittingly attempt to convict the man who stopped the Professor as the very serial killer he had defeated.
  • The above is a symptom of another flaw- his inability to be objective about people he cares for, which doesn't come up often in the present day because he has very few friends. The sole reason he blamed Genshin for being the Professor is because the other option was that Klint was, and Barok simply couldn't accept that his brother was a murderer.
• Final Boss: Although the final section of Resolve has an array of varying witnesses to it, Barok is the first to be called in as a witness to it, and is the one constant witness to be on the stand in its entire duration.
• The Finicky One: He is extremely particular about how his wine and chalices are handled, so much so that he refuses to trust anyone else with managing them and does everything from bottling to cleaning the glassware himself.
• Flourish Cape in Front of Face: Often opens trials with one.
• Flowery Insults: He likes to get very poetic and elaborate with his insults, at one point extensively explaining the expense and labour that goes into crafting each of his hallowed chalices just so Ryunosuke can fully grasp the cost of his idiocy whenever he breaks one in frustration.
• A Fool for a Client: Of a very unusual variety. While van Zieks hires proper representation in the form of Ryunosuke and lets him do his job, van Zieks winds up prosecuting from the dock, starting an evidentiary hearing against Stronghart before he's formally acquitted for the Reaper killings. Sholmes has to remind van Zieks after the successful indictment of Stronghart that he's still technically the defendant.
• Former Bigot: Following character development. Just to drive the point home, he gladly takes on Kazuma—the son of the same Japanese man who killed his brother—under his tutelage as a prosecutor.
• Form-Fitting Wardrobe: His justacorp isn't fitted so much as painted on. The clothes he provides for Kazuma under his mentorship are similarly skin-tight.
• Freudian Excuse: For his racism. His brother was murdered by a serial killer, who was later determined to be a Japanese detective Barok became friends with.
• Functional Addict: He's evidently an alcoholic, but it never seems to truly affect him much, as he stays coherent. It probably helps that most of his wine supplies end up decorating the courtroom instead of being drunk.
• Gentleman Snarker: Likes to deliver his snark in the form of backhanded apologies and sarcastic praise, and With Due Respect.
  Van Zieks: My learned Nipponese friend is obviously in training to be a clown, the way he regales us with such witticisms. To your future career in the circus.
• A Glass in the Hand: He crushes it when he's sufficiently agitated, and tosses it against a nearby candelabra when he's demanding attention.
• A Glass of Chianti: He's not a villain, but he does have the habit of drinking red wine from an ornamental chalice in court, which not only makes him look malicious and uncaring for the defense and the defendant, it makes him resemble a certain vampire. Amusingly, only one of his animations actually involve getting around to drinking his wine, because he's too busy using it for Courtroom Antics.
• A God I Am Not: Is more bothered by rumors of his divinity than he is of suspicions of serial murder, and usually only refutes such suspicions when they ascribe supernatural abilities to him.
  Van Zieks: I'm a Crown prosecutor and mortal like any other. I'm no demigod.
• Graceful Loser: Because he cares more about finding the truth of a case more than his record, a Not Guilty verdict where it's clear where the defendant is actually not guilty barely gets a reaction out of him, and in fact gradually gets him to treat Ryunosuke a bit fairer. The only time he seems genuinely upset about a case not going his way is with McGilded, who was obviously guilty and rejoicing he was off on a technicality.
• Hair Color Dissonance: Though the only suggestion as to what colour it's supposed to be is his assertion it "could no more be described as black as it could red" when asked about the Red-Headed League.
• Hellish Pupils: Has narrow, oblong pupils to make his Icy Blue Eyes even more chilling.
• Hello, Attorney!: He may intimidate more than entrance, but his looks don't go entirely unnoticed, particularly by 2-3 jurist Evie Vigil. Character designer Kazuya Nuri also admits in the game's artbook that he chose to ignore historical accuracy in favour of the Rule of Sexy, giving him an impossibly Form-Fitting Wardrobe before the invention of stretch fabrics.
• Hero Antagonist: While very, very flawed, he's simply doing his duty in an adversarial legal system. And while he is suspiciously fixated on Ryunosuke, he doesn't seek to defeat him, but to "look into the eyes of the man [he] once knew and try to understand."
• Heroic BSoD: Screams in anguish when he learns his deceased brother was the serial killer known as the Professor.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: He really is an honest prosecutor; the Reaper of the Old Bailey is a Government Conspiracy, designed to present Barok Van Zieks as an embodiment of divine justice, striking down criminals who are too wealthy or well-connected for the courts to touch. Despite his on-screen actions being, at worst, rude and racist, the public views him so negatively that there's an exhibit based on him at Madame Tusspells — "for public scorn", as he puts it.
• Hey, You!: Makes a point of never using Ryunosuke's name, instead sarcastically addressing him as his "learned Nipponese friend." Only upon baring his heart to Ryunosuke and explaining why he trusted him the moment they locked eyes does he does start calling the young lawyer by name.
• High-Class Gloves: So classy that they don't even get stained by all that wine he throws around.
• High Collar of Doom: Part of his usual outfit. It's a big contributor to his vampiric image.
• Icy Blue Eyes: Often made more chilling by his tendency towards Thousand Yard Stares.
• I'm Standing Right Here: In the third case of Resolve, he has to endure Iris and Ryunosuke gossiping about various features in his office, such as speculating that he hides bodies in his wine barrels and had artists touch up a picture of him to make it more handsome, while he's standing right there and clearly getting increasingly annoyed with them.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Absolutely refuses to endure his own trial sober.
  Van Zieks: Pray forgive the discourtesy of filling my hallowed chalice whilst I stand accused of murder.
• It's Personal: Deconstructed. Genshin Asogi's trial was indeed personal for Barok as the victim was his older brother... which is exactly why he shouldn't have gotten involved. Real-world legal systems have conflict of interest laws for a reason; Barok fell for a frame job he would normally be intelligent enough to see through because he couldn't be objective about the person who killed his older brother. It's pretty clear that Stronghart only let Barok prosecute to make him a patsy; in the event someone discovered that Genshin wasn't the Professor, it'd be easy to point at Barok and claim he framed Genshin on his own initiative in revenge for Klint's death.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • He condescendingly says that the juries are too easily swayed by emotion when the jurors temporarily decide that McGilded is not guilty. It may sound like sour grapes considering that he's losing, but he's absolutely right. Even disregarding that McGilded is, in fact, guilty, and used bribes and evidence tampering to win, the jurors are overly quick to fall for McGilded's Villain with Good Publicity act. His point is further proven by every subsequent trial up til 2-4, as Ryunosuke will have to perform a Jury Summation at least once per case.
  • Many of his objections to Ryunosuke's positions tend to be reasonable, but very abrasive in their wording. One example is his dismissing Ryunosuke's attempt to link a witness to the scene of a crime using a blood-typing chemical. He does so by belittling its inventor, Herlock Sholmes, but also by pointing out that the chemical and what the defense claims it does has not been officially verified in any way — something which Ryunosuke even admits he knew would be a problem when presenting it.
• Large Ham: What else can you say about a man who brings a wine glass to court so he can throw it at dramatic moments?
• Leg Focus: His most infamous Courtroom Antic is to perform a vertical split and axe-kick the prosecutor's bench for apparently no other reason than to show off his legs. He even does this while testifying in the dock at his own trial. An unused pose ups the silliness on this by having him literally sit on top of the prosecutor's bench.
• Leitmotif: "Reaper of the Old Bailey", a grandiose classical piece which incorporates elements of a funeral dirge, invoking a powerful, imposing image.
• Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: He insists on fighting fair and holding to due process no matter how low his opponent sinks. He even switched from drinking from his grandfather's silver chalice to crystal glasses to show how much he values transparency.
  Van Zieks: I will fight fair in all things. My taste in glassware reflects that.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Was kept in the dark about Stronghart's Reaper plan despite being its central figure, both because it hinged on keeping his hands clean and because he would definitely blow the whistle if he ever knew the truth.
• Luxurious Liquor: His office doubles as his personal wine cellar. He's so particular about it that he insists on carrying out the backbreaking labor involved in maintaining it himself.
• Mad Libs Catchphrase: "Pray forgive the discourtesy of [doing X]." "X" usually has something to do with his "hallowed chalice" and/or is something outlandish such as slamming his boot onto the bench.
• Meaningful Name: Baroque, like the art movement, which refers to his upper-class posture and outfit. "van Zieks" might be from the Japanese term "banjikyūsu", translated roughly to "all is over". His name's also Dutch for "baroque of sickness," perfect for a Darkness Von Gothick Name.
• Mistaken for Superpowered: He's rumored to be The Grim Reaper himself or some warlock enacting his "curse" through magic.
• Moment of Weakness: While he had all the clues available to realize Klint was the real Professor and would normally be smart enough to connect the dots himself, he couldn't bring himself to actually believe his brother was a serial killer and succumbed to Selective Obliviousness instead.
• Mr. Fanservice: Very tall, very handsome, finely dressed and has a deep, attractive voice (with Kenjiro Tsuda providing his Japanese voice, and Robert Vernon providing his English voice). Also, he wears form-fitting pants and thigh high boots and his memetic desk slam has him kick his one foot into the air and slamming it on the table in all its glory.
• My God, What Have I Done?: His reaction to discovering Genshin was the fall guy for the real Professor, Klint van Zieks. While entirely unaware of what was going on behind the scenes, he fully recognizes that demanding Stronghart give him the case to begin with was a serious case of prosecutorial misconduct and that his personal stake blinded him to obvious signs of falsified evidence.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The Grim Reaper of the Old Bailey. A man who is named after both the embodiment of death and the highest criminal court in London is not to be trifled with, even before you factor in what happens to the defendants he can't take down legally.
• Never Be Hurt Again: While Japanese people face the brunt of his distrust, he admits that he can't find it in himself to trust anyone, nor even the very system he works for, ever since his brother's murder.
• Never Gets Drunk: He'll drink as many as seven glasses of wine during a trial, yet remains just as coherent and clear headed at the end of each trial as he was from the start. It's worth pointing out that he spills more wine than he drinks.
• Non-Idle Rich: Is both a lord of an estate and a public prosecutor.
• Nostalgic Music Box: His second theme, aptly titled "The Reminiscences of Barok van Zieks".
• Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: Many are convinced he's an outright serial killer, if a Necessarily Evil one, and his ominous mannerisms do little to dispel the rumors.
• Not So Stoic: Despite earning the moniker Reaper of the Old Bailey and being seemingly uncaring of it, this was actually the reason he decided to take 5 years off of prosecuting; he couldn't handle the stress and burden of being called the Reaper and being associated with so many deaths.
• Obviously Evil: Played with. He's got an imposing voice, a penchant for capes and wine that make him come off as outright vampiric, and he's nicknamed 'Reaper of the Old Bailey'. His defendants always seem to die, even if they're acquitted; the game drives this home by showing Barok watching from the shadows as McGilded burns to death at the end of Case 3. He's really a Red Herring meant to divert the player's suspicion.
• Oblivious Younger Sibling: He couldn't acknowledge the obvious signs that his brother was the Professor, blaming Genshin for his crimes instead.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: In Case 3 of Resolve, he and his apprentice got involved in an ambush where the thugs wanting to kill them had pistols. Both just drew their swords and neither suffered any injuries.
• Ominous Opera Cape: Complete with High Collar of Doom. Notably, the frequency in which he wears it decreases significantly when he shifts from Ambiguously Evil to Byronic Deuteragonist.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • It's noted that the cases he prosecutes after returning from retirement are a stark departure from his original MO, as if he's picking cases based on how likely Ryunosuke will take up the defense counsel. He's doing exactly that. Though not because he's seeking to defeat him...
  • He is noticeably more subdued and less caustic towards Ryunosuke than usual in Case 2-3, since the defendant is an old friend of his who Barok secretly believes to be innocent.
  • While presenting Ryunosuke's attorney badge provokes mockery from nearly everyone else, van Zieks makes no attempts at his usual sarcasm and responds with candid empathy while clutching his own Memento MacGuffin.
• Painting the Medium: His objections are written in ornate blackletter◊ to convey his aristocratic air.
• Parenthetical Swearing: "Nipponese" technically isn't a racial slur in the period the game takes place, but he sure uses it like one.
• Pass the Popcorn: Cracks out his first bottle to make a point of how comical he finds the defense counsel's arguments.
  Van Zieks: Pray forgive the discourtesy of filling my hallowed chalice in a court of law, but I find myself in unexpectedly good humour.
• Perpetual Frowner: Made even more perpetual by the Rugged Scar between his eyes.
• Persecuting Prosecutor: Subverted. He's a scary prosecutor, surely, and he does have a reputation for the defendants in his cases dying after their acquittal, but he's entirely focused on finding the truth and placing the real criminals in jail. Naturally, he's also not the one responsible for the defendants' deaths, merely being the scapegoat for a larger conspiracy at play.
• Pet the Dog:
  • After Constable Roly Beate confessed to moving the crime scene, van Zieks, instead of detailing the punishments the officer may receive, asks Roly and Patricia to go home and rest, gently telling Roly not to do it again, implying that he will make sure Roly will simply be let off with a warning.
  • He makes a point of asking after Soseki Natsume, despite his hatred of the Japanese; this is one of the earlier hints that Barok's reputation as the Reaper weighs on him since he's well aware that Natsume truly is innocent — twice over.
• Practically Different Generations: At the time of his older brother Kint's death, Barok was 23 and Klint was 33.
• Prestige Peril: The biggest downside of his infamy as the Reaper is that just about everyone in the criminal underworld wants him dead, either out of revenge or to prevent his alleged curse.
• Privileged Rival: While Ryunosuke is a broke college student setting up shop in Sholmes's attic, Barok is the lord of the van Zieks estate.
• The Proud Elite: Though his aloof and condescending demeanor is a product of trauma rather than upbringing, as Harebrayne remarks that he used to be Spoiled Sweet before his Cynicism Catalyst.
• Propaganda Hero: The Reaper's curse is revealed to be Stronghart's plan to elevate van Zieks into "London's guardian angel" to explain away the extralegal actions of Stronghart's Secret Police as divine retribution.
• Race-Name Basis: Has a noted tendency to address Japanese characters as "Nipponese" rather than by name.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Van Zieks will see that justice is done, but he won't usually be polite about it. His objections are generally logically-sound, and once Ryunosuke presents substantiating evidence, he doesn't mind following his line of thought, as can be seen during 2-3. He also hates dishonest witnesses, even if he summoned them, and doesn't hesitate to use his authority to force uncooperative people into complying with the Defense, whether it hurts his case or not. This is first shown when Joan Garrideb is trying to worm her way out of testifying, using her position as a juror as a defence. In a surprising Pet the Dog moment, he implies that he plans on letting Roly Beate off fairly lightly.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: He calls Kazuma out on his incredibly shaky case, and accurately points out that his goal is to see Barok dead for what happened to Genshin — not to see justice done. He also remarks that this would make Kazuma "a far more sinister Reaper" than Barok was ever claimed to be.
• Red Baron: "The Reaper of the Old Bailey".
• Relative Button: One of the few ways to make him lose his composure is to bring up his brother or the man who killed him, Genshin Asogi.
• The Reveal:
  • He is truly not the Reaper of the Bailey. That is an organization led by Mael Stronghart with him at the top.
  • Since Iris is Klint's daughter, that makes him her uncle.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: He was correct that Genshin killed his brother. The crucial mistake he made was thinking Genshin was the Professor instead of the man who dispatched him.
• Royal Rapier: Always carries a court sword on his person, mirroring Ryunosuke's katana. Unlike Ryunosuke, however, he actually needs his sword to defend against assassination attempts, including one mentioned in the newspaper in Case 3 of the second game.
• Rugged Scar: Has a faint, cross-shaped scar between his eyes. The story behind it is never told, but it's strongly hinted to be the result of an assassination attempt.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: While no Cowboy Cop, he has little issue with breaking rank and defying superiors' orders if they run counter to the spirit of the law, such as in In Case 3 of Resolve where Ryunosuke manages to prove a possibility that Courtney Sithe had forged the autopsy of The Professor. However, Stronghart had instructed a missive that would prevent Sithe from testifying. Due to his own personal ties to the case, Barok orders the missive to be scrapped since he still has the final say of all policies set in any trials he's assigned to as the main prosecutor.
• Serious Business: Van Zieks is very intense about his wine stock and the maintenance thereof. Kazuma notes that he personally and fastidiously handles everything related to his wine collection—from cleaning his hallowed chalices to completely reorganizing the wine barrels lining his wall on a weekly basis—because he's far too fussy to trust anyone else with the job.
• Selective Obliviousness: He had most of the clues needed to conclude that his brother Klint was The Professor, but he dismissed the possibility due to his Big Brother Worship.
• Shrouded in Myth: Barok is widely rumored to be, at best, an embodiment of Divine justice, and at worst, a serial killer, sorcerer, or something not quite human. Every defendant who goes up against him suffers mysterious deaths, sooner or later. Ryunosuke himself facetiously speculates he's a secret demigod, and often refers to him as such in conversation. It isn't until you meet him outside the courtoom in Case 2-3 that the situation starts to come into focus. Barok categorically denies having anything to do with the mysterious deaths surrounding the Reaper, and Ryunosuke vindicates him after accepting him as a client.
• Shut Up, Kirk!: He ruthlessly tears into Kazuma for his actions. While he acknowledges that the former's hatred of him is understandable, he calls Kazuma out for doing the exact same things that he blamed Barok for.
• The Snark Knight: Though he professes to have no faith in Britain's justice system or even people in general, he nonetheless insists on abiding by the law and doing his job within its constraints instead of giving up or going vigilante.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: Naturally, being an infamous public figure who cannot trust even his own colleagues makes for a pretty miserable existence, as he confesses in jail. It's also revealed in the epilogue that his five-year retirement was the result of an emotional breakdown from the stress of his reputation.
• Spanner in the Works: In Resolve, he's this to Jigoku's murder of Gregson. By all rights, Jigoku had a good plan to frame Daley Vigil for Gregson's murder by using a large firecracker as a fake gunshot, but Barok was personally investigating and heard the "gunshot" go off while closer, and thus, it ended up that Vigil witnessed Barok with the gun; the investigation not only ends up giving Vigil an alibi, but jogs his memory out of its Trauma-Induced Amnesia and reveal the truth of the Professor murders, and indirectly exposes the Reaper conspiracy.
• Spoiled Sweet: Used to be this. Albert goes as far as to call him the "little darling" of the van Zieks family and is just as shocked to learn of his present persona as Ryunosuke is to learn that he Used to Be a Sweet Kid. He begins to revert back to this old self during the final trial, becoming gracious, sincere and self-effacing enough to charm Iris and unnerve Ryunosuke.
• The Stoic: Hardly shows changes in emotion, and it's pretty hard to make him even flinch. He gradually loses this trait as the games go on and become more prone to doing his "damage" animation, but even then, they are significantly more subdued compared to virtually every other character in the franchise.
• Straight Man: Despite his overdramatic acts in court, he's actually a calm and collected prosecutor who has to put up with a lot of absurdities around him, such as Naruhodo's logic and assumptions.
• Strong Family Resemblance: With his brother, to the point that Ryunosuke and Iris mistake his brother's portrait for his own.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: He prosecuted the Professor trial despite a clear conflict of interests... and completely screwed it up because he couldn't be objective. Stronghart had allowed him to take the case specifically because Barok couldn't prosecute fairly- he'd never realize Genshin was framed because to do so would be to admit that Klint was the Professor, and his obvious motive for convicting Genshin would mean that any suspicions of foul play would be directed at him.
• Suspiciously Clean Criminal Record: Despite the suspicious deaths of the acquitted, Scotland Yard has yet to find anything to suggest he was involved in any of their deaths despite years of thorough investigation, which has lead the public to suspect a more supernatural explanation. In truth, he's entirely innocent every single one of them... because the deaths are specifically engineered by Stronghart to ensure it and provoke rumors of divine retribution.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: To Miles Edgeworth, as of Resolve. Besides the regal appearance and the stoic mannerisms with the occasional quirk, van Zieks is also associated with an incident concerning a family member (like the DL-6 Incident for Edgeworth) that has been haunting him for his entire life, said incident also involved a serial killer and blackmail (like the SL-9 Incident), and the final case sees him at the defendant's chair, requiring the defense attorney to help him. He also has similarities to Lana Skye, being a prosecutor with a fancy uniform who ends up being the unintentional scapegoat for the murder of a man of the law in leiu of the intended mark.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: He stands at 6'4", with beautiful silver hair and piercing cold eyes, as well as overall handsome.
• Tall, Dark, and Snarky: Towering, chilling, very accomplished, and has a stock of sarcastic jabs as seemingly endless as his wine supply.
• 10-Minute Retirement: Took a five-year sabbatical from being a prosecutor before the events of the game, returning to his profession in the third case of Adventures.
• Terms of Endangerment: He likes to address Ryunosuke as "my learned Nipponese friend" With Due Respect.
• Terror Hero: Despite the suspicion and physical danger it puts him under, he does little to push back against his infamous reputation because crime has substantially dropped since people started calling him the Reaper. He comes to regret this attitude by the final trial, seeing his acceptance of the moniker and the legend behind it as a tacit endorsement of the murders committed in his name.
• Tragic Bigot: Unlike the other openly racist characters of the duology, Barok has a Freudian Excuse for his bigotry: he was once friends with a Japanese man who was later convicted of being a serial killer. He gradually learns to treat Ryunosuke with respect as he sees his competence as an attorney.
  • Ultimately subverted when it's revealed that not only was Genshin not actually the Professor, but that Barok could have easily realized this if only he had the courage to put the pieces together. Unfortunately, buying into Yellow Peril was easier than accepting that his own brother was a serial killer or that he sent a man to the gallows on obviously fabricated evidence.
• Tragic Keepsake: His prosecutor's badge, which formerly was his brother's.
• Tranquil Fury: He never truly loses his composure, no matter how much is getting to him at the moment. You can tell in case 2-5 that he has had quite enough of Lord Stronghart but he only tells him with fire in his words how he feels without changing his stony expression. The closest you see to him letting his emotions control his outward expression is when the Awful Truth about his seemingly idyllic brother finally comes to light but even then he manages to stay mostly subdued in his reaction. This compared to prosecutor Asogi, who can barely contain his fury whenever he speaks the name of the accused.
• Troubled Sympathetic Bigot: His racism is a dire Fatal Flaw in what would otherwise be a very principled (if eccentric) individual, leading him to repeatedly reject and lash out against a man who could otherwise be his greatest, most trusted ally. He even acknowledges that generalizing a personal betrayal to an entire ethnicity is irrational and unjustified—the feelings of anger and distrust just won't go away.
• Tsundere: His behavior towards Ryunosuke becomes quite erratic, often showing more trust and vulnerability towards him than he does for people he's not flagrantly racist against. Just before his own murder trial, he begrudgingly admits he has something of a (debatably) platonic Bigot with a Crush who's been trying to violently push down the unprecedented level of trust he felt the moment they locked eyes.
• Unwitting Pawn: The actual role he plays in the Reaper killings is being a figurehead who gets all the blame for the Reaper's actions while having no real idea about what's going on. He has his suspicions about the situation, but not enough evidence to do anything. Poor Barok is completely blindsided by the first time he was used this way- Genshin's trial. He thought Stronghart was allowing him to prosecute as a favour to give him closure and allow him to avenge his brother, but in actuality Stronghart did it because he knew Barok was too emotionally compromised to notice that Genshin was being framed, and his relationship with the victim would make him the obvious target of anyone else who noticed the frame-up.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Harebrayne describes him as 'a gentle, good-natured guy' in his university days, with Ryunosuke and Iris being so confused to the point they have to remind him again that they are asking about Barok. As we later learn, much of his current attitude stemmed from the murder of his brother Klint shortly after he graduated.
• Villain Takes an Interest: Ryunosuke notices that all of van Zieks's court appearances suspiciously coincide with his own, which he attributes to racist griefing. He's half right. Van Zieks has been court-stalking him, but out of ambivalent curiosity rather than spite, as Ryunosuke reminds him of Genshin before he shattered his trust.
• Villainy-Free Villain: He is a racist Blue Blood who antagonizes Ryuunosuke Naruhodo for being Japanese, but is one of the most honest and principled prosecutors in the series who only breaks the rules if they contradict the spirit of the law.
• The Von Trope Family: Used to signify his Blue Blood and as part of his "Darkness von Gothick" Name.
• When He Smiles:
  • The picture he took with Klint and Inspector Gregson to commemorate the start of his prosecutorial career shows him with a gentle, almost shy smile on his face, emphasizing even further how happy he used to be before his brother's death.
  • Later subverted after his own trial, when Susato promises Ryunosuke that he'll be rewarded with Barok's smile, only for van Zieks to give a Thousand-Yard Stare instead.
    Susato: Oh dear... I really shouldn't have presumed.
• You Are a Credit to Your Race: The halfway point to his Character Development is to acknowledge Ryunosuke's integrity as a lawyer "despite" being Japanese. The way he calls him his "learned friend" even seems imbued with this meaning.
• You Killed My Father: Barok gets Genshin Asogi convicted as the Professor as revenge for killing Klint, the brother he idolized, this also being the reason he hates Japanese people. Ironically, this is the reason Kazuma Asogi prosecutes Barok 10 years later.

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