#anyways. 'godot thinks he's a failure of a man' here's how godot can still become nonbinary

[4ragon]

Simon keyes for the analysis thing?

Okay, so real quick

Hi! You should play AAI2! It’s the best Ace Attorney game! It’s full of interesting twists and turns and is so much fun! And if you want to play AAI2, PLEASE do not continue to read this post! I’m serious! It’s going to be nothing but spoilers! Get out of here! Go look at my post about how Godot is a weird dipshit. Please. Anything. Go on. Shoo.

Okay, they’re gone. Phew. Anyway.

Simon Keyes! I think he’s one of the most interesting, dynamic, well rounded villains in the series. More than Blaise, more than Kristoph or Dahlia (two other stellar villains but that’s a note for another day). And I think a lot of that comes down to his backstory, his character motivation, and the parallels between him and both Miles and Kay.

I actually wasn’t sure I liked him after my first playthrough. Or, no, I did like him, I liked him a lot, but I wasn’t sure if I was sold on him being the Big Bad, the Final Boss, the Mastermind, when I got to the end of the game.

There were a lot of little parts about that final case that I thought were a bit of a letdown, especially after The Forgotten Turnabout, which is one of the best cases in the entire series. After all, we’d already saved Kay from Blaise, from the PIC, that constant, nebulous threat that had been hanging over Miles’s head since case 2. And Blaise is a really good villain, he represents all of the stuff we’d been dealing with since the beginning, all of the corruption and cruelty inherent in the system that Miles is trapped in.

But after having spent some time ruminating on it, and chatting with my friends, I think I’ve come to understand that Simon Keyes is just as important of an antagonist for the purposes of AAI2, thematically and just as a villain. (I don’t want to take all the credit here but I also don’t know if I should tag anybody? I don’t know my friends are very smart and cool and I don’t want to bother them.)

To start, Simon Keyes represents a lot of things. He is the failures of the system. His story is directly opposite to Miles’s own loss of his father. He actually challenges a lot of this new worldview that Miles had gained over the course of the entire series, and particularly what he’s experienced in AAI2 alone. After all, Miles trusted in his client, and was stabbed in the back. He followed the ideals of his father and Phoenix, and it backfired on him. And in addition, Simon is right in a lot of the ways that he challenges Miles. A lot of the accusations he throws around are not wholly inaccurate, all things considered, even if so many of them are twisted to fit his own cold worldview. I think Simon has seen the absolute worst of the court system in these games, and as a result I think he became one of the most compelling villains to date.

And I think having a character challenge Miles in this way was so important. Like, anyone who played Dual Destinies or Spirit of Justice before getting into the investigations games knows that Miles sticks with his whole prosecutor gig, but I think the important part of AAI2 is the why. Why does he make that decision, especially when the rest of the series shows the importance of the defense attorneys defending the people who have nowhere to turn. And Simon Keyes proves to Miles that change needs to occur on both sides of the bench, that he can change things, protect the people who need protecting, while still being his own person separate from the father he lost. Simon showed some of the flaws inherent in always believing in your client, but also gave Miles a completely new insight that was crucial to that decision to stick with being a prosecutor instead of becoming a defense attorney.

Oh, gosh, I feel like I haven’t even fully touched on Simon as a character. He’s manipulative and cunning and conniving. You can really feel that he’s never really received the love that he deserved and needed as a child, and it really shows in all of his interactions, especially with Miles and Kay. It’s so clear that he can’t even conceptualize being able to care about someone the way that the people around him care about each other, all stemming from the cruelty of the adults in his life that used him and tossed him aside. I find it so interesting that his redemption sort of goes hand in hand with the ‘redemption’ of Sirhan Dogen. And I use the word redemption loosely, I don’t think either of them are redeemed per se, but it’s clear that Dogen cares about this horrible boy that he saved on a whim, and Simon needs someone to care for him, even, you know, the worst man on the planet. And I think that despite the fact that Dogen is, you know, a super murderer, the fact that they both can at least find some sort of bizarre peace in their punishment is weirdly satisfying? Particularly for Simon, like. He deserves his punishment, but you can’t help but feel sorry for him, and it’s nice that this other horrible person has decided to do something good at the end of a very horrible life he lead.

But yeah, Simon is so well fleshed out from beginning to end. He’s a bad man, and he deserves the punishment that he receives, but he’s also a tragic figure deserving of sympathy, and was integral in shaping Miles into the person that he is by the end of the game.