Re-arranging Ace Attorney Characters Page

Currently, in Characters.Ace Attorney, the characters are grouped based on their professions. This may look reasonable at first glance, but on closer inspection it makes little sense narratively, and just end up scattering characters all over the place. For example, Roly Beates is located in Ace Attorney: Detectives and Other Law Enforcement Officers while his wife Patricia Beates is located in Ace Attorney: Witnesses and Other Characters - The Great Ace Attorney. This is despite both of them are practically glued together and never seen apart at all. Another example, Ryunosuke Naruhodo, the main character of the Great Ace Attorney spinoff, is somehow placed way down in Ace Attorney: Defense Attorneys and Assistants, below one-note characters like Robert Hammond who only appeared in one case to be killed.

My proposal is to make "recurring characters" pages and then game-specific pages. Characters who have non-cameo appearances in more than one game will go into the recurring character pages, while those who don't will go into game-specific pages. The game specific pages will further be divided into "game-recurring" and case-specific pages.

So the list would look somewhat like this:

Any comments, feedbacks, or suggestions to this plan?

Edited by TrueShadow1 on Feb 16th 2022 at 9:44:24 PM

Hooray. I've always disliked how this page is organized.

All the votes to splitting off TGAA. They're so divorced setting-wise from the main games that it makes no sense to scatter them around like this.

Some other ideas, based around how I like the Recurring Element of the series, so to me grouping prosecutors, detectives, etc. is the logical approach:

• I think keeping Characters.Ace Attorney Main Prosecutors page (minus van Zieks, plus the Paynes and I guess Manfred?) is fine. When I split it off from Prosecutors and Judges it was because that page was already horrifically long, and I don't think merging it back somewhere will do any favors. Really the only prosecutor who doesn't 'recur' is Godot, so it doesn't seem worth it to punt him to a separate page.
• "Major Supporting Characters", softsplit into:
  • The Judge
  • Detectives (Gumshoe, Ema, Fulbright^note to avoid Spoiled by the Format)
  • Other Characters (Grossberg, Larry, whoever else)
• some recurring/important family member/backstory characters page (name TBD) (Not sure about this one, but given how much of the games are unraveling the mains' tragic pasts...)
  • Misty, Morgan, Ami?
  • Gregory Edgeworth, Manfred Von Karma if not in the 'prosecutors' page?
  • Troupe Gramarye

I think the less important 'recurring' witnesses (eg. Lotta) can just go back to their respective debut cases, and note that they appear again later on (so basically as they are now). They're not really supporting characters as much as plot devices with personality.

I pretty much agree with everything else, especially 'split by game'. I think the major concern would be that some of these pages are already quite lengthy by themselves (Characters.Ace Attorney Kingdom Of Khurain is already at 96k+) so merging some of them back might make them too long. But that's a bridge I'm willing to cross when I get there

Yep, I agree on splitting TGAA. I think that should be our first priority since it's very clear where those characters belong.

How do you think it should go? I'm thinking:

• Main Characters: Ryunosuke, Kazuma (to avoid spoilers), Susato, Sholmes, Iris, van Zieks
• Major Characters (Japan): Auchi, Yujin, Hosonaga, Jigoku
• Major Characters (Britain): Stronghart, Old Bailey Judge, Gregson, Gina, Soseki(?)
• Other Characters: Masked Apprentice, Toby, The Professor, Klint van Zieks, Genshin Asogi, Lady Baskerville, Ayame Mikotoba
• Case-specific characters

One question is how should we handle the Jurors? Currently they're all bundled together in Ace Attorney: Detectives and Other Law Enforcement Officers. I'm considering splitting them for each case, but I'm not too sure.

Hmm...I see your point about page length and not kicking Godot and Fulbright. That said, I'm not really sure how to deal with the leftovers of Defense Attorney, Prosecutor & Judges, and Law Enforcement. Once you've cleaned up the one-shot characters and main prosecutors + detectives, you're left with: The Judge, Manfred, the Paynes, Grossberg, and Meekins. I guess we can group them under "Other Law Workers"?

'Other Law Workers' might work, though I'd still prefer to put it as part of the Major Supporting Characters page I suggested.

I haven't played TGAA 2 so I'll defer to your and others' judgements. I think splitting the jurors by case makes sense.

Edited by Synchronicity on Feb 8th 2022 at 11:04:20 AM

I haven't played Investigation 2, DD, SoJ and TGAA, so I'm abstaining to discuss about them.

For the Characters.Ace Attorney Main Prosecutors, I wonder if it wouldn't be better to have a "Main Rival" page. IMO, from a narative point of view, the main prosecutors have a lot more in common with Shi-Long Lang than with the Paynes or Manfred. However, if we soft split Investigation from the rest, then we should keep it and add the Paynes. Manfred is only your opponent in a single case though, so I feel like he should go elsewhere.

I agree with the "Major Supporting Characters" soft split, where you would put Manfred. However, we need to define which characters should go there. At the very least, they should be in at least two games to qualify (otherwise, we can just put them in the page for the game), but do we need other criteria?

I also agree with splitting tropes for Shadi and Thalassa and putting Troupe Gramarye in AJ. Same with the victims.

For the case-specific part, should there be a specific order for the characters? Something like "Defendant -> Main victim -> Other characters by order of appearance"?

Finally, a minor nitpick, but I think Diego should go in case 4 of T&T.

That's all I can think about right now.

I think Investigations games should be separate page. They're not as divorced as TGAA, but as far as I know their story is self-contained and don't really get integrated into the main games.

As for Major Supporting Characters, how about "have non-cameo appearances in at least three cases over at least two games"? This would include Larry, Oldbag, Lotta, and Maggey off the top of my head, but exclude the likes of Will Powers and Adrian Andrews.

So it would look like this:

• Main Detectives: Gumshoe, Ema, Fulbright (or maybe this can go inside the main prosecutors page as well)
• Other Law Workers: Judge, Manfred, Paynes, Grossberg, Meekins
• Recurring Witnesses: Larry, Oldbag, Lotta, Maggey

Although I think Grossberg can just go into the original game page, and Meekins go into witnesses. While technically Meekins is a policeman, his role is more similar to a witness.

Yeah, these make sense.

I personally think the Big Bads of each game should have their own section though with the warning (SPOILERS UNMARKED) like the mastermind in Investigations 2 as they are usually reoccurring characters in the game they appear in particularly Dahlia and Kristoph. Like each Big Bad would have their own section in a Big Bad section.

Edited by Klavice on Feb 10th 2022 at 6:46:45 AM

I think that would be a self-fulfilling spoiler, tbh.

Now that you mention it, I agree separating the TGAA games and keeping the 'shared' sheets to Phoenix's games would work decently.

Made the sandbox characters page for TGAA. Although, it's too long for all characters, so I split them into Sandbox.The Great Ace Attorney Characters for major and Sandbox.The Great Ace Attorney Characters Case for minor ones.

I haven't made much edits into the contents, though, just some formatting.

Edited by TrueShadow1 on Feb 12th 2022 at 10:50:45 PM

Looks good.

Cleaned up a bit:

• Removed all spoilers above the trope list. Put the spoiler in another trope if I can.
• Added some tropes to the Masked Apprentice.
• Removed the "Debut" sections from character info because they're pointless in this page.
• Changed Yujin's picture to a full-body picture.

Remaining problem: A minor one, I think. The character images in the "witnesses" section seem to be custom-made mugshots, and I can't find them in the fandom wiki. Some characters like Roly Beates and Courtney Sithe are now using their full-body images instead of mugshots like other characters in the page.

Anyway, if the image problem isn't that big and there are no objections, I'll publish the pages and remove the characters from other pages by tomorrow.

Edited by TrueShadow1 on Feb 13th 2022 at 12:06:38 AM

There's an IP-sanctioned project towards giving people full-body or waist-up art if available.

Alright, Characters.The Great Ace Attorney and Characters.The Great Ace Attorney Minor Characters are now live! I've also removed the characters from other pages. For Characters.Ace Attorney Witnesses And Other Characters The Great Ace Attorney, for now I'm redirecting it to the minor characters page.

For the next step, I'm thinking about moving all one-shot characters and victims to their respective cases. Although I'm still in the middle of AAI 2 and I haven't touched DD and SOJ. For those games I'd like some help from those who've played them.

Edited by TrueShadow1 on Feb 16th 2022 at 9:49:35 PM

Bump. I'm now going to move victims and one-shot characters to the witnesses page (renamed "minor characters")

• Sandbox.Characters Ace Attorney Minor Characters Phoenix Wright
  • Should we merge "Uncle" and Yanni Yogi? I separated them to avoid spoilers, but I'm having trouble finding tropes that apply exclusively to Yanni Yogi before the reveal. Merged.
• Sandbox.Characters Ace Attorney Minor Characters Justice For All
  • Same situation as above with Ini and Mimi Miney. Managed to find some standalone tropes for Mimi, albeit at minimum number.
  • Should we put Morgan Fey in "Reunion and Turnabout" folder? Morgan Fey moved.
• Sandbox.Characters Ace Attorney Minor Characters Trials And Tribulations
• Sandbox.Characters Ace Attorney Minor Characters Apollo Justice
  • Thanksfully Shadi and Lamiroir has enough distinct tropes from Zak and Thalassa.
  • I put the Troupe Gramarye sans Mr.Reus here and split Turnabout Succession into "present" and "past" cases. Mr.Reus will be placed in case 6-2.
  • Also tempted to just put UNMARKED SPOILERS warning about Thalassa, because of the spoilers in both AJ, and SoJ.
• Sandbox.Characters Ace Attorney Minor Characters Dual Destinies
• Sandbox.Characters Ace Attorney Minor Characters Spirit Of Justice
• Sandbox.Characters Ace Attorney Minor Characters Investigations
  • Not sure whether to put Tyrell Badd here or let him stay in Detectives page.
  • Also remove all spoiler tags from moved characters?
• Sandbox.Characters Ace Attorney Minor Characters Gyakuten Kenji 2
  • Also not sure to put Blaise Debeste here or leave him at Prosecutors page.
  • Remove spoiler tags? Also give the warnings on Di-Jun Huang and Patricia Roland?

I haven't played DD and SoJ (although I've been spoiled on some stuff), so I'd need some help for those two.

Edited by TrueShadow1 on Mar 1st 2022 at 10:59:42 PM

I agree with merging Uncle and Yanni Yogi. I don't think Uncle has another trope to stand on his own. Same with Ini and Mimi. Also, yes to putting Morgan Fey in the Reunion and Turnabout folder as she was heavily involved in that case.

Edited by MacronNotes on Mar 1st 2022 at 9:23:35 AM

May I cutlist Sandbox.The Great Ace Attorney Characters and Sandbox.The Great Ace Attorney Characters Case, since Characters.The Great Ace Attorney and Characters.The Great Ace Attorney Minor Characters exist now?

Sure. I'd see about splitting that page further into "Main" and "Major", since half-splits are always kinda weird.

Seeing as Sonic and Pokemon sheets have been un-generalized, remembered that this topic was also ongoing, but looks like the sandboxes are almost ready?

I haven't played DD and So J yet, so I can't sort the characters from those games. If anyone could help it would be great.

I played all of the main series games so I might be able to help with that.

Hmm...actually I got this idea. It would mean completely re-arranging the non-witness pages, though.

The idea is to make pages based on what games they first appear in. So the layout would be like this

• Phoenix Wright trilogy
  • Major characters ^note Phoenix, Maya, Miles, Franziska, Judge, Gumshoe, etc
  • PW case-specific characters
  • JFA case characters
  • T&T case characters
• Apollo Justice ^note Apollo, Trucy, Klavier, case characters
• Dual Destinies ^note Athena, Blackquill, case characters
• Spirit of Justice
• Ace Attorney Investigations
  • Major characters ^note Kay, Lang, etc
  • AA 1 cases
  • AA 2 cases

Phoenix Wright trilogy gets special treatment because the games are more interconnected and they introduce the most characters.

This would let us split the pages objectively without needing further reorganizations in the future, since new games would just get their own pages. We'd lose the "Tropes that apply to this group as a whole" but I think we can live without those.

Edited by TrueShadow1 on Apr 5th 2022 at 10:35:11 PM

Working on it, give me a sec...

I've sorted everything into Sandbox.Characters Ace Attorney, not sure what else to do there, but these all need a double-check.

• Sorry for recreating new sandboxes, I've wanted to tested organization without touching the previous sandboxes.
• I haven't removed spoilers from pages that say unmarked spoilers.
• Some characters may not have been sorted chronologically, especially in non-canon media since I have no idea what the order is.
• I've not touched navboxes, since they'd have to be remade after the pages are up
• Characters.Professor Layton Vs Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney, being crossover, lists Professor Layton and Ace Attorney protagonists separately, what are we going to do with that?

Would Big Bads like Damon Gant, Investigations 2's mastermind (who I honestly believe SHOULD get their own page as their identity is a spoiler, like we just have Tropes that apply to Simon Keyes before becoming the mastermind and then on the Mastermind page have Tropes that apply to him AS the mastermind) Or are we sticking them on Main characters or Case Specific characters?

There are a few problems I have with that.

1. Character-Specific Pages have specific rules. We make them due to length and not to keep them isolated.
2. In terms of pages, being separated is an even bigger Self-Fulfilling Spoiler than having a "Spoiler Warning" next to the name. Ace Attorney: Dahlia Hawthorne having own page is a giveaway that she's not a one-time character like appears initially.
3. Being a Hidden Villain is not an issue if they have a spoiler warning in the folder name. It can mean anything, like dying unexpectedly. People who see a warning shouldn't click on them if they're not ready for the rest of the game twists. Practically every chapter's villain is hidden, it's a mystery series. We're not going through the entire site to split off pre-reveal and post-reveal tropes for every villain.
4. 1-5 and AAI2-5 villains don't operate under a different identity, they are just Evil All Along. The DD-5 villain has enough screentime with both identities, meaning enough tropes to justify a split and being referred to by different names, to have a separate folder. Two TGA2 characters also have enough material for when they've operated under different names.
5. 1-5 villain is not even a Big Bad (well, he is for the episode he appears in), he's no more significant than any other one-off culprit.

That being said, contrary to point 3, it's not unprecedented that we do that anyway, some pages do have separate folders for "The Real Culprit (Unmarked Spoilers!)" only to show it's someone who was described earlier but with additional info. The AAI2-5 villain is referred to as "The Mastermind", so a split can work there. It all comes to our spoiler policy being rather flexible on individual sheets, and I operate under the reasons of consistency.

Edited by Amonimus on Apr 8th 2022 at 11:22:10 AM