Not even the Ace Attorney games have immunity from being made into Abridged Series.
Get it? "Attorney"? "Immunity"?
Okay, anyway. This franchise managed to get two separate abridged series, amusingly within weeks of each other. The first, by Cardboard Lawyer
, is a reasonably straightforward abridgement of the first three Ace Attorney instalments, managing to turn the games into a Black Comedy. The second, by Volty and discussed further below, rarely tries to follow the plot of the games, preferring instead to place the characters in original stories.
Let's talk about Abridged Attorney first. Phoenix Wright is a fresh, wet-behind-the-ears defense attorney working for Mia Fey, who has no faith in him and continually beats him up. Things only get worse for him from there.
This show provides examples of:
- Black Comedy Rape: Subverted. You'd think with Phoenix screaming off screen, he's being violated, but he's just not taking it well that his Tetris high score was beaten. Played straight with Gant, however.
- Comedic Sociopath: Everyone has their moments, but Maya seems to be stuck on this.
- Don't Explain the Joke: "It's not as funny when I have to explain your own joke to you."
- Downer Ending: Phoenix gets disbarred, Gumshoe gets fired, and Edgeworth gets killed by Aquaman of all people. All Played for Laughs, of course.
- Idiot Hero: Phoenix himself.
- Kangaroo Court: Even more crazy than the original games!
- Large Ham: This series has good amount of hammy moments. The most notable are Luke Atmey and Manfred Von Karma.Atmey: You shall face true fear in court! FEAR! IN THE FORM OF MAN! EPIC BADASS! Sharp dresser, cool mask, and a really F*CKING COOL MASK!Von Karma: No, I don't have any evidence. All I have is... SUPER EVIDENCE!
- Mouthy Kid: Pearl.
- Running Gag: Gumshoe's pay continually being cut.
- The random television shows mentioned throughout the series, always in the form of "X vs Y", such as "Man vs. Tiger", "Hamster vs. Gun", "Puppy vs. Paper-Shredder", etc.
- Shout-Out: You can tell the guy's a Zelda fan, as the series finale uses numerous songs from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask and even references that "[Maya] has only three days to beat [a] dungeon before the moon falls on us!"
- Several episodes use music cues from Ocarina of Time as well.
- Synthetic Voice Actor: The Judge, but with a Spanish program, even though everyone else speaks English. (except for Edgeworth's Dutch-speaking replacement Robo-Judge)Franziska: What in the hell kind of foolish language is it speaking?Miles: Dutch.Franziska: You bastard! Only you would make a Judge-Bot that speaks a dead language.Miles: I'm pretty sure Dutch isn't a dead language.Franziska: Of course it is, you fool.Miles: You may be more ignorant than Wright.Franziska: Hah! Fool! Don't even compare me with Wright. My ignorance knows no limits!Miles: This is going to be a long trial...
- Thematic Theme Tune: "I Fought the Law" by Bobby Fuller for the first game's cases.
- "Weird Al" Yankovic's "I'll Sue Ya" for the second game's cases.
- And for the third game's cases, a reworked version of the theme song for Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law.
- Tsundere: Maya never misses an opportunity to beat up or have Phoenix beaten up by someone else.
- Voice of the Legion: Dahlia and Morgan
PHOENIX WRIGHT: ACE IDIOT
Just a few weeks after Abridged Attorney began, Travolta3335 (now known as Volty), who was unfortunately the editor of Apollo Justice Abridged, put out his own parody of Ace Attorney. This one mostly ignores the plot of the original games, instead coming up with original stories that manage to make even less sense. If Phoenix Wright: Abridged Attorney is the franchise's Code Geass: The Abridged Series, then Ace Idiot is its Code MENT.
This series provides examples of:
- Butt-Monkey: Phoenix, even moreso than in the games.
- Catchphrase: Several characters have one.
- Judge: "You lose the internet!"
- Ema: "I'm completely oblivious!"
- Payne: "WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
- Mia: "...with a totem pole!"
- Dirty Old Man: The Judge. Frequently lampshaded.Judge: "I'm old, Mr. Wright. Didn't you learn anything from anime? All old men are perverts!"
- Early-Bird Cameo: Godot, who refers to his actual debut, Season 3, as "Season Negative One."
- Fate Worse Than Penalization: Losing the internet is supposedly the worst thing that can ever occur to a character in the series, so much that Phoenix wishes for a ridiculous supply of them from Santa Claus to both make up for the ones he lost and the ones he inevitably will lose.
- Gratuitous Disco Sequence: In a certain flashback, everyone had afros, and the Judge was referred to as "Your Grooviness" rather than "Your Honor".
- Meaningful Name: Subverted by Bellboy, who is actually a NASCAR driver.
- Old Shame: Invoked in the descriptions for some of the early videos, which are heavy on the self-deprecation and snark. Volty dislikes the original 11 episodes of Ace Idiot because of what he considers their low quality and sluggish pacing (and the sixth episode in particular because it was literally made in a single day), justifying their existence by explaining that he was 15 and had no idea what he's doing when he made them. Years later, he remade the first episode, and has since divulged into an entire different series with the same name, Phoenix Wright Ace Idiot.
- Running Gag: Phoenix losing the Internet. ("Crap.")
- Larry Butz's first name being a stock voice clip (the same no matter who says it).
- The Judge telling explicit stories during Christmas cases.
- Payne and Larry constantly being convicted of murders, most of which never even happened.
- Scary Black Man: Pearl (a.k.a Leroy).
- Shout-Out: The Judge shuts down a confrontation with Phoenix by shouting "I was FROZEN today!"
- In an earlier episode, the Judge makes a direct reference to CardboardLawyer's Ace Attorney Abridged.
- The inner machinations of Edgeworth's mind are an enigma.
- The Internet Is for Porn: The Judge embodies this.
