#and half of them are place attorney members whom I forced to watch spatort in vc

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Tatort Saarbrücken/Ace Attorney parallels

To celebrate less than two weeks until FdG airs, I finally took the time to proofread this text about parallels between Ace Attorney and Tatort Saarbrücken that I wrote almost a year ago and then somehow forgot to post. Enjoy!

I have recently noticed that there are a lot of parallels between the relationship between Miles Edgeworth and Phoenix Wright, and the story of Adam Schürk and Leo Hölzer, so I decided to write them down. I have no idea if there is any overlap between these fandoms at all, so probably no one else will care about this but whatever. This should go without saying, but this has spoilers for the first Ace Attorney game, and the first three episodes of Tatort Saarbrücken. I’m also aware that all of these overlaps are most likely a coincidence, but I wanted to compile them anyway, because I thought that it was really interesting, and maybe someone else will think so, too.

You may ask: Who are these people? I will try to summarise their stories first, and I will go into more detail later:

Let’s start with Phoenix and Miles: They were in the same class when they were nine years old and became friends after Phoenix was accused of stealing someone’s lunch money, when Miles was the first one (and together with Larry the only one) to stand up for him and defended him in the subsequent class trial. A few months after that, Miles’ father Gregory, a defense attorney, is murdered and Miles vanishes (he is adopted by Manfred von Karma and presumably moved to Germany, but Phoenix doesn’t know that). Years later, Phoenix reads a newspaper article about Miles becoming a prosecutor, and he decides to become a defense attorney to meet him and find out what happened to him.

They meet again when Miles prosecutes Phoenix’s second case as a defense attorney after not having seen each other for 15 years. After working two cases together, Miles is arrested as a murder suspect, and Phoenix defends him in court, even though no one else wants to defend him and he is almost the only one who is on his side. In this trial, he finds out that Manfred von Karma, the prosecutor in the current case, murdered Miles’ father 15 years ago after he got a penalty because of him. Then, he decided to adopt and mentor Miles, only to frame him for murder 15 years later as an elaborate revenge on Miles’ father. By uncovering this, Phoenix saves Miles from being convicted for murder.

Now to Adam and Leo: They became friends after Adam defended Leo from bullies at school. Adam’s father was physically abusive towards him and beat him regularly. One day, he catches Adam and Leo hanging out together and beats Adam up so badly that Leo thinks that he’s going to kill him, and decides to step in by hitting him on the head with a spade. Adam’s father falls into a coma, and Leo and Adam burn the garage to hide the crime. A few months after that, Adam vanishes, apparently leaving Leo to think that he has died.

Later, they both become police officers, Adam in Berlin and Leo in Saarbrücken. Adam returns to Saarbrücken, and they reunite after 15 years. After they worked on two cases together, Adam is arrested because he is suspected of murdering his father. Leo works hard to investigate his case, even though he technically isn’t allowed to, with their colleagues refusing to help him at one point and maybe even believe that Adam really is guilty. In the end, Leo manages to prove that Adam’s father killed himself and disguised his suicide as a murder to take revenge on Adam and Leo for putting him into a coma 15 years ago.

Sounds familiar? Here are all of the parallels and overlaps between those two stories that I can think of, maybe there are even more that I didn’t catch:

They met and became friends in school. Both pairs only became friends after one defended the other from bullies.

Shortly after something happens to his father, one of them disappears suddenly. Incidentally, in both cases, the one who disappears is the one who saved the other one from bullies.

Adam and Miles disappear after something happens to their father; Adams father falls in a coma, and Miles’ father is murdered

They both reappear after 15 years, during which the other one didn’t know anything about their whereabouts (Phoenix knew that Miles had become a prosecutor, but only a few years before they meet again).

Phoenix and Adam both altered their careers to see the other again; Phoenix starts studying to be a defense attorney after he learnt that Miles became a prosecutor s that they could meet again in the courtroom, and Adam accepted a transfer request back to Saarbrücken.

Both pairs meet again in their workplace, though Adam and Leo work together now, whereas Phoenix and Miles stand on opposite sides of the courtroom.

Not long after they reappear, both Adam and Miles are framed for murder by their abusive father.

The other one fights for them, even though they are (almost) the only person on their side, and everyone else is against them.

Both Adam’s father and Manfred von Karma have committed crimes in the past and framed someone else for it: Manfred killed Miles’ father and both framed the bailiff for it and manipulated Miles to blame himself; Adam’s father robbed banks with a friend, and one of them shot someone in one of these robberies. Said friend took the blame for both the robbing and the shooting, and never revealed the identity of his accomplice to the police.

Tatort Saarbrücken episode 3 is literally Turnabout Goodbyes, the fourth case in the first Ace Attorney game. Miles and Adam are both framed for murder by their father figure as revenge for something that happened in the past. Their respective partner takes their side and fights for them, ultimately revealing their innocence.

They are also both happen after they worked together for two cases.

Again, do I think any of this matters? No, but I realised that these parallels exist and had to get this out of my system. And I had fun writing this. If you notice even more parallels, please share them!