Training for Trouble

ねぇ忘れないでねblue bird

「blue bird」(Garnet Crow) 

Hey, don't forget me, blue bird

"blue bird" (Garnet Crow)

Earlier this year, I re-read the 5-volume manga series Gyakuten Saiban ("Turnabout Trial") by Kuroda Kenji (story) and Maekawa Kazuo (art), based on the comedic courtroom mystery videogame franchise Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney. While the short manga series did feature the familiar characters and settings from the videogames, the plots were created exclusively for this series by writer Kuroda Kenji, and in my review I mentioned how it's actually a very good mystery manga that could easily stand on its own and would also appeal to people without any knowledge of, or even interest in the videogames. The series was originally serialized irregularly between 2006 and 2008 in Young Magazine to cross-promote the 2007 release of the Nintendo DS game Gyakuten Saiban 4 (AKA Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney). 

In 2009, the spin-off game Gyakuten Kenji ("Turnabout Prosecutor") AKA Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth was released on the DS, which focused on the adventures of the prosecutor Mitsurugi (localized name: Miles Edgeworth), a rival character in the main series. The duo Kuroda and Maekawa were again made part of the marketing campaign, as they too started a new series based on this game. Gyakuten Kenji ran irregularly between 2009-2010 in Weekly and Monthly Young Magazine and consisted of eight stories collected in four volumes. In terms of setting, it followed the spin-off videogame: Mitsurugi is a prodigy prosecutor, who always teams up with the hapless police detective Itonokogiri (Dick Gumshoe) to conduct investigations at the crime scene to find the person they are going to bring to trial. While Itonokogiri often thinks the case is open-and-shut, Mitsurugi shows he's not called a prodigy for nothing by uncovering complex murder schemes based on his own investigations. After writing my review of the Gyakuten Saiban manga series, I also re-read this 4-volume series, but to be honest, I found the stories in Gyakuten Kenji not as memorable as the ones in Gyakuten Saiban and ultimately, I just didn't feel like writing anything about it.

So why am I talking about this series now? Well, Kuroda Kenji has been posting some of his unpublished stories/unfinished scenarios on his Note page for a while now, because he thought it would just be a shame if these stories would never see the light and be kept in the vault forever, despite all the effort he poured into them. And so, a few weeks ago, Kuroda also started posting the unpublished scenarios he had written for the Gyakuten Kenji manga! These scenarios were written over ten years ago, but ended on the cutting board. But now these ideas are given new life! I can only applaud such efforts to show the public this cut content, so obviously, I just had to write something about these stories, even though I haven't even written a review about the whole series.

Moesakaru Gyakuten ("The Blazing Turnabout") starts with a few cases of arson at the campus of Medaru Sports Academy, a renowed university with famous athletes who have won many awards. After another incident, detective Itonokogiri decides to visit the head of the school, Medaru Nozomu, in the hopes of learning more, but Medaru is very dismissive of Itonokogiri, assuring the police detective that these were not cases of arson, but just minor accidents of students not being careful with their cigarettes and things like that. It's obvious Medaru doesn't want the news to blow up, and he tries to get Itonokogiri out, but not before Itonokogiri has a chance to meet four of Medaru Sports Academy's finest, who will go an international event next month and are going to have dinner with Medaru now. That night, Itonokogiri hangs around the campus when he runs into one of the four students he met earlier, who has discovered a fire behind the training facility. They managed to extinguish the fire, but nearby, they find the strangled body of Kurama Manten, a gymnast who was one of the four students Itonokogiri met earlier that evening. Itonokogiri is convinced Kurama must've spotted the arsonist and was therefore killed, but when prosecutor Mitsurugi arrives on the scene and starts poking around himself, he discovers a very different motive for Kurama's death.

Those who have actually played the videogame Gyakuten Kenji/Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth might be able to guess why this story was canned. The title Moesakaru Gyakuten was originally intended to be the second story in the series, but the title sounded too much like the title of the final episode in the game it was supposed to promote: Moeagaru Gyakuten/Turnabout Ablaze. Kuroda didn't know about these details of the game, because he worked on the scenario before the game was released, but ultimately, this story was abandoned. A truly unfortunate coincidence and I'm happy he has now found a way to still release this story in a way. As you can see on Kuroda's Note page, it's just the core plot divided in scenes, with all the spoken lines of the characters and the important visual cues written out in detail. There's no art at all, and as far as we know, Maekawa never did create any art for this lost episode.

As a mystery story, The Blazing Turnabout is okay. I found the Gyakuten Kenji manga on the whole a bit disappointing, because I thought the turnabout theme of the series was never as strong as in the Gyakuten Saiban manga series. There were always elements of things turning out to be actually the other way around, but in the spin-off series, the moments always felt less impressive. The same can be said of The Blazing Turnabout: there is a really clever moment where Mitsurugi points out that one certain action of the arsonist-murderer was taken for a completely different reason than you'd first assume, but it feels detached from the rest of the mystery plot. A shame actually, because I love this turnabout part of this story! It reminds of two of my favorite stories in Puzzle Game ☆ High School in terms of what the real goal of the culprit was, and really challenges you to think outside the box. So the 'grand' turnabout moment the story works towards to is really good, even if it's not as grand as we've seen in the main Gyakuten Saiban manga series and admittedly, more hinting would've been welcome: Mitsurugi's realization kinda comes out of nowhere. Other parts of the plot make less of an impression: the identity of the murderer is awfully obvious because it's the one single character who's been given a trait to make them stand out, while earlier parts of the investigation feature very easy to spot "contradictions" or simply Mitsurugi receiving a report that outright tells him something is off. 

In hindsight, the "special school" setting of this story is pretty interesting: the 3DS game Gyakuten Saiban 5/Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies (2013) would eventually also feature a similar setting, though with a special law high school rather than a sports academy. I wonder if this chapter had been published, whether it would've worked the other way around too, and whether the writers for Gyakuten Saiban 5 would've refrained from using a school setting for their game.

Toki no Yakata no Gyakuten ("Turnabout in the House of Time") is an inverted mystery story, which is interesting because Kuroda never wrote any inverted stories for both the Gyakuten Saiban and Kenji series, and now we learn that he did actually write one, but he canned the idea! Tokita Shinnosuke is the founder of TOKITA, a luxury watchmaker. He is retired now, giving him time to spend with his antique watch collection. Or at least, that's what he hoped for, but his son Ryuuzu, who is running TOKITA now is ruining Shinnosuke's life work, and when he learns of Ryuuzu's intentions of selling the company, Shinnosuke decides to take his own son's life. At his own 77th birthday reception, Shinnosuke tells his guests he'll be leaving them for thirty minutes to wind his antique clocks, a daily routine he never skips. He however uses the time to kill his son, who was parked down the hill on top where the Tokita manor stands. When prosecutor Mitsurugi and police detective Itonokogiri arrive on the scene however, their investigation tells them Shinnosuke of all people couldn't have killed his own son in the blank periode of thirty minutes when he was alone, because he is in a wheelchair. Tokita Manor stands at top of a very steep hill, while his son was killed down the street, on the parking lot at the foot of the slope: the slope is too steep for Shinnosuke to safely descend on his own, and also far too steep to climb with his arm strength. Apartment buildings are lined along the hill street, so the image of an the old man struggling to climb the hill in a wheelchair would've been noticed by someone, while the less steep, but roundabout path would take much more than thirty minutes. So how did the man kill his son within half an hour?

This is a truly interesting story to read as a scenario for a comic, because its greatest moment, when Mitsurugi reveals to the reader how Shinnosuke did manage to kill his son within the thirty minutes, is definitely designed to be seen as a comic book panel! You really feel that this plot was written with the visual medium in mind, because it works towards a fantastic shot where you suddenly see how simple, but brilliant Shinnosuke's trick was to get to and back from the crime scene in time while in a wheelchair. The 'turnabout' theme is again not particularly strong here, but as a short mystery story, it definitely has interesting ideas, even if the clewing is a bit too crude (culprit dropping crucial piece of evidence on floor is not really exciting). But the basic idea of how Shinnosuke managed to create a "secret route" to kill his son is really original, and would've looked great on paper.

After posting the scenarios of the two unpublished comics above, Kuroda followed up with one final surprise. In 2007, Kuroda wrote the first original short mystery prose story for the franchise: Gyakuten Saiban - Gyakuten no Kakehashi was a fun novelette-sized impossible crime story that followed the same format as the Gyakuten Saiban manga, focusing on the courtroom adventures of Naruhodou Ryuuichi (Phoenix Wright) and Mayoi (Maya Fey). Kuroda apparently had plans for a second novelette story, and had hoped to have the two stories published as one single volume, but that dream never became reality, so the plot for this second story was put away, until he posted them on his Note.

Gyakuten no Michishirube ("Turnabout Signpost") is a direct sequel to Gyakuten no Kakehashi, and starts at Yatabuki's noodle stand, where Mayoi, Kanae and Yatabuki are thrilled to see the show by the popular five-man comedy act The Green Monsters tomorrow, to be held at the Twins Hotel where Gyakuten no Kakehashi took place. The Green Monsters have been an enormous hit and consist of five people dressed as monsters with green as their trademark color. The five also had completely different careers before they switched to comedy: Monster King was a stuntman, Monster Queen a model, Dracula a doctor, Wolfman a guitarist and Franken a wrestler. Mitsurugi stops by the noodle stand however to bring bad news: Monster King has died, and the circumstances suggest that Monster Queen killed him. Last night, the five members had been drinking together in Monster King's suite room until late. When the party was over, Dracula, Wolfman and Franken left the twelfth floor, as the two suite rooms on the twelfth floor were occupied by Monster King and Queen. Guards had been posted at the elevator because Monster King has a stalker, and they swear that after Dracula, Wolfman and Franken left, only King and Queen remained on the twelfth floor. Later that night, Dracula, Wolfman and Franken went outside to the court to rehearse their act, when they witnessed how Monster King plunged to his death, having fallen from an old emergency door on the twelfth floor: the door had been in disuse and locked because the emergency stairs had been removed so the door led to nothing, but someone had forced the door open and Monster King fell through that door. Because the three heard him cry for help before he fell, they know it's not a suicide, and because Queen was the only other person on the twelfth floor, she's the main suspect. She however maintains she's innocent and hires Naruhodou as her attorney.

Wow, this was surprisingly fun! While the plot is mostly dialogue and there are some segments that would need to be worked out in more detail in terms of setting clues up, this scenario definitely had potential to have been an interesting locked room mystery! The story revolves around two 'locked spaces', being the twelfth floor of the Twins Hotel as a whole, as well as Monster King's suite room with autolock and the mystery revolves around who could've broken through those locked rooms. The argument goes back and forth in the courtroom as at one moment Naruhodou manages to avert suspicion away from his client, while the other moment a new witness appears who points the arrow back at Monster Queen: exactly like you expect from the series. The plot is slowly revealed in the trial, and the grand trick used by the killer to kill Monster King is definitely the kind of idea you'd expect from this series, with a proper "turnabout" theme, and I've loved to have seen this story worked out completely. I do have to say the plot does work better when you imagine the scene visually, so it's a bit weird Kuroda planned this as a prose story, instead of using the idea in the manga series... Though to be honest, this story does mirror some concepts from another story already featured in the manga.

I wouldn't consider either Moesakaru Gyakuten or Toki no Yakata no Gyakuten hidden masterpieces that had been wrongfully been kept away from us, but they are reasonably entertaining short mystery stories that would've been perfect additions to the published Gyakuten Kenji manga series. The prose story Gyakuten no Michishirube would've been very entertaining as a mystery story too, so it's such a shame Kuroda never got to release his own Gyakuten Saiban volume together with his earlier Gyakuten no Kakehashi. Anyway, as full-fledged "extra" stories revealed ten years after these series originally, I quite enjoyed reading them. But most of all, I can only say I love the idea of creators digging up old material that have gone unpublished/were cut for various reasons like this and making them available to the public. Obviously, I don't expect them to actually work the whole thing out, but even scenarios like these are fantastic material!

Original Japanese title(s): 黒田研二『逆転検事 ヤンマガ版未発表脚本』『逆転裁判 小説版未発表プロット』

The Adventure of the Unspeakable Story

修羅場を演じる時代劇のど真ん中に立ってるみたいだ

「2012Spark」（ポルノグラフィティ）

I feel like I'm right in the middle of a fight scene of a historical drama

 "2012Spark" (Porno Graffiti)

Perhaps I should also reread the Gyakuten Kenji manga...

If you look around on this blog, you'll find a lot of posts that cover the Gyakuten Saiban ("Turnabout Trial") videogame series. While it started a low-key zany Columbo-inspired courtroom drama mystery game on the GameBoy Advance back in 2001, Gyakuten Saiban, better known outside of Japan under its localized title Ace Attorney, is now nearing its twentieth birthday as a multimedia franchise. I have reviewed the various videogames in this series, but also other media outings like novels, serialized short stories, guidebooks on the actual Japanese justice system, musicals, stage plays, theatrical films and probably more. Nowadays you also have events like real life Ace Attorney Escape Rooms, but I vividly remember that the series really started to develop as a multimedia franchise after the release of the 2005 Nintendo DS title Gyakuten Saiban; Yomigaeru Gyakuten, which was also the first game in the series to be released outside Japan with the title Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. This was an enhanced port of the original 2001 videogame, but after this release, it was also announced that the fourth game in the series was in development. It was the marketing surrounding the release of the Nintendo DS game Gyakuten Saiban 4 (AKA Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney) that really made the franchise grow into something much more than videogames.

The serialized manga Gyakuten Saiban ("Turnabout Trial") by Kuroda Kenji (story) and Maekawa Kazuo (art) was probably one of the more remarkable moments that helped the series' development. This limited series was serialized irregularly between 2006 and 2008 in Young Magazine and ultimately collected in five volumes. While it was based on the videogames, basically no prior knowledge is necessary to read this series. All you have to know is that this is a comedic mystery series about the attorney Naruhodou. Each story revolves around a trial, where he and his client face absolutely hopeless situations, but by slowly pointing out contradictions in the prosecution's story and pulling a Columbo, Naruhodou always manages to turn the case completely around and find out who the real murderer is. The stories featured are completely original creations by the mystery author Kuroda and the recurring characters from the videogame that do appear, are properly introduced for first-time readers/players.

So the manga Gyakuten Saiban wasn't a comic made exclusively for existing fans, but it was written to introduce new readers to the world of Ace Attorney, to entice the readers to purchase and play Gyakuten Saiban 4, which was released soon after the serialization of this series started. You'll find no obscure references to in-game events or a story steeped too deep in the lore of multiple videogames: this is simply a highly enjoyable mystery comic that made great use of the characters and setting of the original videogames. This comic was also published outside Japan, and to be honest, at times I do think this series may be better to introduce mystery readers to mystery manga than for example Detective Conan or Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo, because it's a fairly compact series at only five volumes, while still featuring a few interesting locked room murders and other types of tales (and the English version features localized names, making it easier to follow for people who can't memorize Japanese names). So I'd definitely recommend this series even if you haven't played any of the videogames or ever read any mystery manga.

This was an interesting re-read for me by the way. I hadn't quite seriously started studying Japanese yet when this series started, and I bought the recently released first two volumes during my first visit to Japan. My Japanese studies started after that and reading Gyakuten Saiban really made it clear how much I was learning. I could hardly read any words when I started with the first volume, but by the time the fifth volume was released, I was already preparing for my first extended study exchange in Japan... And now of course, I can race through these five volumes in the same time it took me to read one chapter in the first volume when I first started. The 2007 prose short story Turnabout Bridge, which I reviewed in 2016, was also written by Kuroda Kenji by the way, so you consider that 'part' of the manga series.

In the opening story Kaze to Tomo ni Gyakuten ("Turnabout in The Wind"), Naruhodou has to defend his childhood friend Yahari, who has a real knack of getting into trouble, and causing trouble for others. He is the suspect in the murder case of Shinjou Hikaru, a middle-aged married man who had an affair with Yahari's girlfriend Suzune. She broke up with Shinjou after finding out he was married, but even though she was dating Yahari now, Shinjou kept bugging her. On the night of Shinjou's murder, Yahari had made a rather threatening call to the victim, and Shinjou was found not long after Yahari's call, stabbed in the abdomen. Making Yahari the perfect suspect. While it's not hard to guess who the real murderer is, I think this story is an excellent showcase of how the mystery plotting of the videogames go, and it works also perfectly in this manga. The reader is thrown into the trial right at once and basically backed into a corner immediately with all the evidence the prosecution has, but you'll slowly uncover small contradictions that string together into an actual line of reasoning. The clues are really good: some make clever use of the visual medium, some require you to also make deductions and conclusions yourself based on previously presented information. There's a really nice flow to the story: you're not waiting until the very end of the story to see things unfold, but you move there step by step, clearing up smaller contradictions one at a time. The way the evidence of the prosecution is turned around in the defense' favor is also great, and if you'd plot all the clues/foreshadowing on a graph and how they sometimes return later in the story, you'd see that despite the simple and short set-up of this tale, it's a very well crafted and fair tale. For example, there's one aspect of the story that requires knowledge that is a bit specialistic, but Kuroda's clever plotting and clewing allows the reader to deduce that piece of knowledge on their own, so even if you didn't know that, you can make an educated guess based solely on the information given to you within this story. So the game is played very fairly.

Naruhodou and his assistant Mayoi are invited to the manor of IT company CEO Komori Akamune in the second story, Gyakuten no Shikeidai ("Turnabout Gallows"). Two weeks ago, his arrogant, but talented employee Kimura Jirou committed suicide by falling off a platform in the park and Akamune fears he may be arrested for Jirou's death. On the night of Jirou's murder, Akamune had invited Jirou to his manor to discuss his attitude, but when Jirou left the house, he was in an extremely agitated state and ultimately made a fatal fall. When Naruhodou and Mayoi talk to Akamune's daughter Sara and Jirou's older brother Hatsurou however, they realize that Akamune had probably murdered Jirou, by making use of Jirou's fear for spiders. Akamune's younger brother Sasao lives in an annex building with his huge collection of spiders, and Hatsurou suspects Akamune tortured his younger brother with those spiders. Later that night, Akamune is knocked out by an unknown figure, and he wakes up to findhimself tied up to a chair in the Spider Mansion. To his great shock, he sees a spider-man walking on the ceiling. His wife, daughter, Hatsurou, Naruhodou and Mayoi had been looking for Akamune in the main manor, and when they use the intercom to contact the Spider Mansion, Akamune explains he's being held captive in the Spider Mansion and that's there's a spider-man roaming around. But then Akamune's killed by a knock on the head and the Spider Mansion goes up in flames. The suspect in the murder case is Akamune's younger brother Sasao, as he was the only one absent during the intercom call to the Spider Mansion from the main manor.

Again a case that makes good use of the theme of a "turnabout" and visual clues. The visual clues are really clever and nicely incorporated in the background, and it really gives you a good chance at figuring out what happened and how the real culprit managed to fake their alibi. It's pretty easy to guess who probably did it, but I really like how you also need find the logical argument to prove that the real murderer did it, and it's here again where the trope of re-using earlier presented clues/evidence in new context really shines. In the videogames, most evidence pieces are used multiple times in various context, and that is replicated perfectly here, with utterances and clues being used in one way in deductions presented earlier in the trial, coming back in a completely different way at the end. The trick behind the murder is really original, though to be completely honest, it's a bit hard to swallow anyone could've prepared all of that within that short time period. It's a lot of work. Still, it's a really interesting case.

Gyakuten no Showtime ("Turnabout Showtime") is a much shorter case, but still interesting. Narohodou and Mayoi are visiting the entertainment park Kira Kira Land, but during the Kirarin Show with the three mascotte figures Kirarin, Pikakorin and Dekarin, one of the actors collapsed on stage. When they realize he's so bleeding heavily it's seeping out of the suit, they try to get the actor, Ichinomiya, out of it but the zipper in the back has been glued tight. It's already too late when they finally get him out, but to everyone's great surprise, Ichinomiya had been stabbed in his stomach. As the three suit actors can't zip themselves up (the zipper is in the back, but it's impossible with the suits' arms and hands to even attempt to zip up yourself), suspicion of the murder falls on the actress Juri, as she is the only one of the group who doesn't wear a big fluffy suit and could thus unzip Ichinomiya, stab him, and zip him up again. Everyone has a few moments backstage during the show, so the police suspects Juri stabbed Ichinomiya while they happened to be backstage together. Assuming that Juri's innocent though, it means Ichinomiya died inside a locked room: he was inside a mascotte suit that had no exterior damage at all (so the knife did not pierce through the costume), yet all the other suspects were zipped up and none of those two could unzip themselves or Ichinomiya in a swift manner to stab him in the stomach. I love this story: the setting of a murder during a mascotte costume show is really original as is the notion of the "smallest locked room murder" as Naruhodou calls it. You're constantly presented with information that at first seems to be in your favor, then dismissed in a logical manner by the prosecution, only to come back again later in the trial in surprising manners. The theme of "turnabout" (the situation being exactly the opposite of what you assumed) is used fantastically here too.

In Gyakuten no Yogensho ("Turnabout Prophecy"), Naruhodou and Mayoi visit the fortune tellers' corner at the local department store, where they also meet with Kaede, a high school student with a love for the occult. The corner houses five different fortune tellers, and because of the immense popularity, visitors are put in time slots and scheduled for three fortune tellers. Naruhodou is having his palms read when he hears a woman's cry from the room of Oracle Reika, a fortune teller who is considered the real deal. They break the locked door open to find a shocked Kaede inside. Reika however has been brutally murdered with the Deathscythe which usually decorated the wall. Because the two doors to the room (one connecting to the plaza in front, the other to the backyard) were locked from the inside, it appears only Kaede was capable of slaying Reika, but Kaeda swears she couldn't have done so, as Reika had instructed the girl to put her arm through the Hell's Gate and that a demon on the other side held her hand until moments before she herself found Reika's body.

Are fortune tellers corners a thing in Japan? It seems so extraordinary, but I've seen the same setting (a courtyard with various fortune tellers with different specialties) used in series like Puzzle Game ☆ High School and 33pun Tantei now... I think it's a shame these stories always feature such a small cast, because you can usually guess who the murderer is (not very imporant) and as a result, make an educated guess about what happened (I find this more disappointing). In this case, I think it becomes pretty obvious soon in the story how the locked room of Oracle Reika could be penetrated, but I do think the explanation of how that trick was done and why everything was arranged like that was really good: the foreshadowing for that reveal is excellent.

Tengoku kara no Gyakuten ("Turnabout From Heaven") is the most minimalistic story featured in this series, and has no impossibility/perfect alibi angle whatsever. The story revolves around the death of Kanenari Nihachi, the elderly owner of a famous buckwheat manufacturer. Ironically, the man had developed a buckwheat allergy recently, and someone had swapped his medicine for buckwheat, which obviously killed him. The suspect is his daughter Tsukimi, who was the only other person at home that night. She however claims it must have been her mother who killed her father. Tsukimi's mother died 16 years ago, but lately, Tsukimi has been seeing her a lot in her dreams, especially in the dreams about when she was kidnapped for a few days when she was young. She was saved by her mother then, and she believes her mother's ghost killed her father, as he had been abusing Tsukimi. The story seems to revolve around who could've swapped the medicine with buckwheat, but then turns into a very different story as Naruhodou has to prove the motive of the killer. I love the theme of turnabout here, and this story offers a very weird experience you don't even really see in the games. It's very different from the more technical murder mysteries in this series, but I think it's a welcome change of pace.

Gyakuten Kuishinbou ("Turnabout Gourmet") is about the televised food fighter competition The Strongest Gourmet King Competition. Naruhodou, Mayoi and her cousin Harumi are watching because their local ramen food stall will be offering the meal that will be used in the finals: whoever finishes the Yatabuki Special Super Spicy Miso Ramen Muscle (Super-Sized) the fastest, will be the new Gourmet King. Justice Masayoshi manages to beat his rivals Muscle Taketora and Eko Risa, but he's halfway through his victory speech when he falls down dead. The announcer becomes the defendant in the murder case, as he was the only one who could poison Justice's bowl of ramen, but was it really a case of a targeted murder? Perhaps the most disappointing case in the series, even if it's fairly entertaining on its own. The murderer's plot consists of hoping a lot that characters will do exactly as planned, which is plausible for one single action, but not if multiple characters have to do various things at various stages. I think the case does make good use of the visual medium, and the way Naruhodou deduces something had been going on behind his back is pretty good, ultimately, this is definitely the story that stands out the least in this series.

The final story in this series is titled Gyakutenryoku VS Jinzuuriki ("Turnabout Power VS Supernatural Power"), which reunites Naruhodou and Mayoi with Kaede from the fourth story. She's been interested in the shady sect The Great Tengu Association, a group which worships the Heavenly Tengu. Naruhodo had been calling Kaede everyday during her stay, but when she stopped answering his calls, he became worried and decided to visit the Association together with Mayoi. When they arrive at the cult's five-storeyed pagoda in the middle of nowhere, they find that the Association is also being harrassed by a private detective, who is determined to prove the sect and its founder Hime Tengu to be a fraud. Naruhodou and Mayoi find a safe Kaede, who has become a true believer of the Tengu. After a discussion with the founder, the detective takes the elevator down to the ground floor, an act witnessed by every member of the sect, Naruhodou and Mayoi, but when the elevator arrives on the ground floor, Kaede (the only person at the reception desk), swears the elevator is empty. The sect fears the detective is still snooping around the premises, so they search the pagoda going from bottom to top, but can't find any trace of the man. When the group is about to give up and decide to take the elevator downstairs again, they find the detective's body lying in the elevator! As Kaede was the only one who had been alone at the time, prosecution thinks she killed the detective, hid his body and later put it back in the elevator, but Naruhodou is of course sure Kaede wasn't the murderer.

A disappearance from a moving elevator! I love the trick behind it, and the clewing is really good too. There's plenty of visual clewing going on, some of them directly related to the actions of the murderer, but also a lot of clewing and foreshadowing that is utilized during the trial segments, when the defense and prosecution go back and forth with their arguments to prove or disprove Kaede's involvement in the case. Because these stories are not only about uncovering how and whodunnit, but also about making a logical argument during a trial that moves from the question of whether Kaede's guilty or not, to building a case to accuse the actual murderer, the plots in this series are usually really packed with all kinds of smaller mysteries/contradictions, and this is another great example of that leading to a story that is engaging start to finish. There's always something happening, the reader is always put in position where they're able to deduce things themselves and in the end, this is without a doubt a highly entertaining mystery story with an original impossible angle.

This post has become rather long as I decided to discuss all seven cases in this five-volume series, but as I said: Gyakuten Saiban is a really good mystery manga that is also recommended to people who don't know anything about the videogames it's based on. The stories Kuroda wrote for this series feature really original plots, most of them featuring some kind of impossible or locked room mystery, but they also do a great job at playing with the "turnabout" theme of the videogames, with the deduction battles between prosecution and defense going back and forth. The way the series makes use of the visual medium is also great and considering the series is only five volumes long, I truly think this is an excellent entry point for those who want to try out mystery manga.

Original Japanese title(s): カプコン（監修）、黒田研二（脚本）、前川かずお（漫画）『逆転裁判』第1-5巻

Bridge to the Turnabout

残酷な天使のテーゼ 

窓辺からやがて飛び立つ

「残酷な天使のテーゼ」

This cruel angel's thesis

Will soon take flight from this window

"A Cruel Angel's Thesis"

It's been a while since I did a review of one single short story, actually. And I think this is actually the first time I'm doing a single post on one short story on the blog, because I seem to recall that even at the times I did do seperate short stories, I always put them together with some other (unrelated) things to stretch it out to a full post.

A while back, I discussed 2016's Gyakuten Saiban - Gyakuten Idol, the first original novel based on the Gyakuten Saiban (Ace Attorney) court mystery videogames. It was not the first time the series was presented in a text-only form though. While there have been some fanfics published in the official fanbooks, the first true, official Gyakuten Saiban story is Gyakuten Saiban - Gyakuten no Kakehashi ('Turnabout Trial - Turnabout Bridge'), a short story by Kuroda Kenji. Defense attorney Naruhodou and his assistant Mayoi are enjoying a ramen noodle at their favorite joint Yatabuki, when the ramen cook himself asks for Naruhodou's help. One of his customers, Kanae, is being suspected of the murder on the popular action actor Ookochi Hikaru, who was found dead in his hotel room, in the hotel where they were going to shoot his latest film. Kanae was one of Hikaru's biggest fan, and she might have even done things that most people would consider stalking. She knew Hikaru was shooting a film at the hotel and she too had taken a room there. Hikaru was killed inside a locked room, and the only way in or out was through the window. Due to an illegal architectural design, the two towers of the hotel are built so close to each other you could climb over from a window in one tower to a window in the other tower. Because Kanae had taken the room across Hikaru's room, it appears only she could've committed the murder and gotten out of the room and there is even a decisive witness to prove that! Can Naruhodou help Kanae out of this situation?

Gyakuten no Kakehashi is the first official story of the series, but is also one of the most obscure. It was published in two parts in the literary magazine IN-POCKET in 2007 and has never been collected in any form, meaning you need to get your hands on two issues of an old magazine if you want to read it now. The writer, Kuroda Kenji, is also the writer of the 2007 manga of Gyakuten Saiban, so he was already familiar with the material. In the past, I have reviewed a volume of the spin-off of that manga series: Gyakuten Kenji, which was also written by Kuroda.

I'd say that Gyakuten no Kakehashi is a decent mystery story, that manages to follow the formula of the Gyakuten Saiban series. In many ways, this story mimics a first episode in any of the games. The story is basically inverted, in the sense that it does already show you who the real murderer is at the start, even if it doesn't show you the how. In court, Naruhodou is facing prosecutor Auchi, who is always the first opponent in all the games.And like in the games, Naruhodo arrives at the truth by pointing out, and pointing at contradictions. This is a different mode than most mystery fiction, but because this story is based on a game, it follows the same formula, which in turn was based on Columbo. Find a lie, pull the thread, find a new lie, pull even harder on the thread, all the way until everything is untangled. Whereas a lot of mystery stories put all the mystery solving at the end, this series has always been about being an interactive experience, with more things to 'do' throughout the story and a more direct way of showing how one deduction leads to another.

The locked room mystery is also decent. I think most people will get a fairly good idea of what has happened early on, but getting all the details right might be difficult and the hints are laid down good. The one 'complaint' I'd have is that I think this story in particular would've been much better in comic form!

The story was published in IN-POCKET, a pocket-sized literary magazine which features serialized short stories and novels among others, so the writing style of Gyakuten no Kakehashi is fairly serious. matching the rest of the magazine. By which I don't mean that the story does not feature comedy (it does, or else it wouldn't be Gyakuten Saiban), but the narration and the language used is not something you'd usually see in the games. Compare to the more recent novel Gyakuten Idol, which was released in a line aimed at children. The language was much simpler, with more dialogues, but that is what made that novel feel a lot more like how the language used in the actual games (which is basically just dialogue, with some occassional inner monologue). Gyakuten Idol is much better at invoking the atmosphere of the games. The characters in this story for example don't have a real comical side to them, nor do they 'break' character whenever they get caught in a lie, which is a characteristic of the games and it was also recreated very well in Gyakuten Idol.

I am going to guess that they wanted to attract new players to the game, as Gyakuten Saiban 4 had been released earlier that year. By introducing "normal" mystery readers, who read IN-POCKET, to the world of Gyakuten Saiban through this short story, they hoped these people (who normally don't play games) would also try the games. Whether it worked, I don't know. Why they choose this particular plot for a short story, even though it'd work better in comic form, I don't know either. But I can say that Gyakuten no Kakehashi is definitely a decent locked room mystery short story, that should satisfy most fans of the series.

Original Japanese title(s): 黒田研二　「逆転裁判　逆転の架け橋」

Recipe for Turnabout

「弁護士はピンチの時こそふてぶてしく笑うもの」
『逆転裁判』

"Defense attorneys have to smile brazenly especially when they are in a pinch."
"Gyakuten Saiban"

Need to cheat with a short manga review. Again. But it's game-related, so it still fits in with this month's theme.

Like mentioned in the Trick X Logic post, Kuroda Kenji has been connected to the Gyakuten series for several years now, being the script-writer of the serialized manga version. The manga is not a comic-version of the games, but contains original stories set in the Gyakuten world with art by Maekawa Kazuo. Just like the games, the manga started out as Gyakuten Saiban ("Turnabout Trial"), with defense attorney Naruhodou as the protagonist, but two years ago the title changed to Gyakuten Kenji ("Turnabout Prosecutor"), and features prosecutor Mitsurugi as the protagonist now.

Gyakuten Kenji 4, released in February, contains two complete stories, Gyakuten! Kikikaikai  ("Turnabout! Strange Monsters") and  Gyakuten Clinic ("Turnabout Clinic"). In the main story, Gyakuten! Kikikaikai, Mitsurugi and detective Itokonogiri end up in a small hotel in the mountains after a driving accident (resulting in Itokonogiri's patrol car's fall of a cliff). With the Supernatural Phenomena Research Committee gathered in the hotel and no rooms left, Mitsurugi and Itokonogiri are forced to stay at the hotel-annex. Fire has broken out several times the last month in the annex and one of the guards even says he saw an Oni in the midst of the fire once. Add a woman who thinks her husband disappeared from the hotel, an excorist and a rather touchy hotel owner and you have all the ingredients for murder. When the hotel owner is found dead outside the hotel, seemingly pushed from the seventh floor of the annex, Mitsurugi starts his investigation. He has done it in other stories in this series, but Kuroda focuses a lot on architecture and the movement of people in this story and while the story has no real original elements, the solution consisting of two smaller, well known tricks, Kuroda managed to mix the elements in an amusing way.

Gyakuten Clinic ("Turnabout Clinic") is a short story and has the same  focus on architecture and the movement of people, but is less interesting that the previous story. It features a very crude locked room mystery, one of the most basic forms (and solutions). The usage of a modern kind of key actually makes this kind of locked room even more easy to pull off (and see through), and I am actually kinda disappointed in Kuroda for writing such a story.

But the biggest problem I have with this volume is that it strays far from the focus of the Gyakuten series on contradictions and turnabouts. People who have played the games will know that the title "Turnabout Trial" doesn't only refer to the flow  of the trials in the games, where you often need to switch between defense and offense. You also often have to look at the facts from the totally different angle (sometimes it's even needed to actually turn evidence around) to get to the truth. While Kuroda's earlier stories for the manga did reproduce that turnabout feeling, lately his stories are "just" normal detective stories. They just don't feel like they are specifically turnabout stories, which was why I liked the manga in the first place. It is still a decent, sometimes quite good detective manga, but I don't see the need of the Gyakuten name anymore. At this point, I would say Kuroda might as well drop the Gyakuten franchise name and just write an original detective manga.　

Original Japanese title(s): カプコン（監修）、 黒田研二（脚本）、 前川 かずお（漫画）『逆転検事４』/「逆転！鬼々怪々」/「逆転クリニック」

「論理の旋律は必ず真実を奏でる」

１．アカシャに書かれていることは全て事実。ただし犯人はウソをついている可能性がある

２．動機の強い弱いは重要ではない

３．トリックや犯人は、超能力や宇宙人など超常的な事象によるものではない。冥界の住人も、現世の事件に一切関与していない

『TRICK X LOGIC』

1. Everything that is written in the Akasha is true. However, there is the possibility that the murderer is lying.

2. It is not important whether a motive is strong or weak.

3. Tricks and criminals are not supernatural, like psychic powers or aliens. The inhabitants of the underworld are not involved with incidents in the world of the living.

"Trick X Logic"

More games!

I think I bought my PSP in the winter last year, but I have to honestly say I haven't played it that much this year. Strangely enough, the PSP games I have cleared  are all detective games. Weird. You'd think I'd clear something like Warriors Orochi faster than a game that actually requires me to read.

I've already covered the first season of PSP game Trick X Logic in an earlier post, and I won't go into the specifics of how this game works here, neither the details of the story as it's all there. Trick X Logic Season Two is exactly the same as the previous season, except for the stories of course. As my previous post was mostly about how the game works, I'll discuss the stories of Season Two more deeply this time. Once again, all of these stories are loosely linked by the story of prosecutor Yoshikawa trying to solve his own murder by reading underworldly Akasha (crime records) and young camera-woman Tsukasa who keeps getting involved with murder cases.

As the problem- and solution-chapters of Bourei Hamlet ("The Ghost Hamlet") by Kuroda Kenji were divided among Season One and Two, I started this season just checking whether my deduction was right. Which it was. The story was a very interesting one, with a man, dressed as the Phantom (of the Opera) being killed at a costume party. His murder is caught on CCTV, but it seems his murderer was... an armor of suits. Was it the Ghost of Hamlet that killed someone? With a gun?! I had a lot of fun with this story, and I think that came from the fact I'm somewhat familiar with Kuroda, due to his manga adaption of the Gyakuten series ("Ace Attorney series"). If you read this story as a Gyakuten story, everything makes sense.

Bloody Mary no Nazo ("The Mystery of Bloody Mary") by Takemoto Kenji starts with a famous detective writer visiting a hotel. Several fans knew he would visit this hotel and have booked their own rooms there too. Add in some other suspects, and you're all set for a Murder of a Detective Writer. Hardly an original premise, but it's usually entertaining. Which it was, but this story certainly didn't offer something original or innovative. A decent story, but nothing more than just a decent story.
 
Maya Yutaka's Rifling Murder is one of those stories I don't know whether I should love or hate. With a man being killed in his cottage on a small island, with the trajectory of the bullet suggesting the murderer was flying (or "Being sniped by a man hanging from a helicopter!"), it certainly has an interesting concept. The solution however, while adequately hinted at (well, that's pretty mandatory with this game), borders on the fantastical. It's not impossible, but quite improbable.

Me no Kabe no Misshitsu ("A Locked Room with Walls of Eyes") by Ooyama Seiichirou is maybe the most ambitious story of the whole bunch. In this story, the owner of a building is found killed in his office. But strangely enough, no murderer is seen entering the office through the door (there is a camera), nor through the window (witnesses). What makes this story so interesting, is that everything up to the discovery of the corpse is written from the viewpoints of the suspects, switching between them. One of the rules of the Akasha is that everything that is written there is true. The only exception is that the murderer might be lying (in conversation). Therefore, a sentence like "He thought that was strange" is true, while an utterance of "That's strange" might be false. Making use of these Akasha rules, Ooyama has neatly written one of the better stories of Trick X Logic.

Y no Hyouteki ("The Target of Y") is probably the story that attracts most attention. Written by Ayatsuji Yukito and Arisugawa Alice?! That's like Queen and Carr collaborating on a story! The story itself felt very Trick-ish, with a sun-worshipping cult-like new religion and the second patriarch being killed while he was performing the daily Southern prayer. Who killed him, and more importantly how? The prayer was held in a special court, locked from the inside with only his two most trusted followers besides him. Neither of them seems to have done it though. This religious element as well as the solution also remind of Chesterton and it's all in all a very neat story. The solution is somewhat spoiled by the title (which is a very Arisugawa-like title!), but like the previous story, one of the better ones. Well, it has to be! I'm not sure how the two worked on this work though. While I'm fairly well-read with Arisugawa, I'm not that far with Ayatsuji and it's hard for me to point at something and say, 'well, that's clearly Ayatsuji there'.

The final story, Kanzen Muketsu no Alibi ("The Absolutely Perfect Alibi") by Abiko Takemaru is a rather simple story compared to the previous two. The story obviously is about breaking an alibi, but the solution is an old, old one and thus a somewhat dissappointing ending to a fun series.

Well, it's not the ending actually, as there is also a bonus story (you unlock a chapter for every story you clear). Bousou Juliet ("Juliet Running Wild") by Kuroda Kenji is once again that is so obviously inspired by the premise of the Gyakuten series, I wonder whether he was planning to use this in the Gyakuten Saiban/Gyakuten Keji manga originally. Here, a man, Shuuhei gets crushed between his own car and a truck. Tsukasa, who was sitting in the backseat of the car, swears the car started to accelerate on its own, killing Shuuhei. She remembers the story she was told by Shuuhei. When he bought the car, the seller said it was called Juliet and that the previous owner had commited suicide. The car was still looking for its owner. Did the car run over Shuuhei? And why? This bonus story is just a normal story, so there is no looking for keywords/mysteries/insights here, but Kuroda Kenji did manage to slip in a Challenge to the Reader here and somewhat hard to believe at a certain, crucial point, it's a very nice bonus story.

The worst of the lot, has to be the overall storyline though. Yes, Yoshikawa "solves" his own murder, but in such a ridiculous way, it's not even worth mentioning. Tsukasa as the sole link between every story also feels very forced and didn't really add something for me (especially the obligatory "chief inspector Marunouchi suspects Tsukasa did it" scenes every single time were horrible). Maybe it bugs me that much because I have been praising the Gyakuten series for good overall storylines, but I expected something better from Chunsoft. You know, the company known for writing stories and sound novels.

Trick X Logic, basically being a interactive novel written by several big names in the world, is still very entertaining though and hope Chunsoft will use this deduction system with a few tweaks in future detective games though.

Original Japanese title(s): 『TRICK X LOGIC』/ 黒田研二　「亡霊ハムレット」/竹本健治　「ブラッディ・マリーの謎」/麻耶雄嵩　「ライフリング マーダー」/大山誠一郎　「目の壁の密室」/綾辻行人 & 有栖川有栖　「Yの標的」/我孫子武丸　「完全無欠のアリバイ」/黒田研二　「暴走ジュリエット」

「君ね、決め台詞のない名探偵なんて、存在価値がないも同然だよ」

"But what is often called an intuition is really an impression based on logical deduction or experience. When an expert feels that there is something wrong about a picture or a piece of furniture or the signature on a cheque he is really basing that feeling on a host of small signs and details. He has no need to go into them minutely - his experience obviates that - the net result is the definite impression that something is wrong.But it is not a guess，it is an impression based on experience.", Hercule Poirot, "The ABC Murders"

Upon my return, I discovered I had a bigger gaming and detective fiction backlog than expected, so it was nice (and more efficient) to have something that was both a game and detective fiction. Trick X Logic Season One was a game I bought only days before I left Japan (because I have wa~hay too many point cards), but that doesn't mean it was just chosen on a whim. I had been actually looking forward to this game for some quite time.

This visual novel, developed by veteran Chunsoft, caught my attention because many big-name Japanese detective writers collaborated on it. Seven writers wrote ten scenarios for the game, with the reader being forced to solve the mysteries themselves.

The premise: after being pushed off of a building, prodigy prosecutor Yoshikawa Itsuki wakes up in Hell. Where the judge of human souls, Yama, asks Yoshikawa for his help with some unsolved cases. Yama usually reads a record of human deeds, the Akasha, to pass judgement on human souls, but in some cases he can't figure out whodunnit just by reading the Akasha. Hence the need for Yoshikawa's mind. He is to read the Akasha and figure out the culprit. If he cooperates, Yama promises to return him to the land of the living.

Cue the scenarios of the detective writers. Season one consists of 5 and a half stories, being 0) Yubisasu Shitai ("The Pointing Corpse", credited to Chunsoft), 1) Nusumerata Figure ("The Stolen Figurine", written by Abiko Takemaru), 2) Akari no Kieta Heya de ("In the dark room", written by Takemoto Kenji), 3) Yuki furu Joshiryou nite ("At a snowing Women's Dormitory", written by Maya Yutaka), 4) Setsudan sareta Itsutsu no Kubi ("Five Necks Cut Off", written by Ooyama Seiichirou) and the story part (no solution chapter) to 5) Bourei Hamlet ("The Ghost Hamlet", written by Kuroda Kenji). The stories all feature classic detective themes like dying messages, impossible disappearences, cut up bodies and alibi tricks.

In practice, you get to read a story (or for the lazy: listen to a reading of the story!), with no conclusion. Then you select keywords from the text ("He can't read" and "He was seen reading a book"), in order to generate mysteries (the previous keywords might lead to "Why was the man reading a book if he can't read?" for example). This mysteries can be combined with other keywords to solve them, thus creating insights ("It was an imposter" or "He actually can read"). Finally, these insights are used to answer the questions of who- and howdunnit.

It's like a more advanced version of Gyakuten Saiban (Ace Attorney); reading the text you'll find suspicious sentences, which you pursue further. The difference being the scale: whereas Gyakuten Saiban usually gives you 5 pieces of testimony a time, Trick X Logic will give you a 200 page story to find all the clues. And the mysteries and insights you find while reading the story? A lot of them are plausible, yet false. This combination-of-hints-to-produce-hypotheses system is kinda reminiscent of the Trick game (not related), only at a much higher level.

Which is also the frustrating part of the game: at times you'll figure out what happened and how, but have severe problems finding the right combination of keywords out of a 200 page story. It's a complaint I hear a lot about Gyakuten Saiban, knowing what happened without knowing how to activate the story flags to actually proceed. I personally never had any problems with that in Gyakuten Saiban, but let's say that a 200 page version of that is indeed very vexing.

I certainly had fun with this game; the stories were fun, production values are quite good for the budget price at which this game is sold and I am looking forward to the second season. However, at times it was kinda frustating to actually find the right keywords and mysteries within the story to complement the (correct) ideas I already had in my head. Still, I guess this is the closest you can get to a one-on-one conversion of a classic detective novel to a game.

Original Japanese title(s): 『TRICK X LOGIC』/チュンソフト　「指さす死体」/我孫子武丸　「盗まれたフィギュア」/竹本健治　「明かりの消えた部屋で」/麻耶雄嵩　「雪降る女子寮にて」/大山誠一郎　「切断された五つの首」/黒田研二　「亡霊ハムレット」