#i'm sorry i despise ace attorney fans. some of what i say here is somewhat specific to a particular critique but honestly it is far more-

[t440]

i love trials and tribulations. but sometimes i hate it, and it's not it's fault at all, but i do. because people play it, then seem to think they're educated enough on japanese society and how it interfaces with familial abuse, sexism, and disability, especially the interaction of japanese traditional masculinity and misogyny or disability, and then try to talk about trials and tribulations, which is a work about these topics, without knowing fucking literally anything about the topics, and so they talk about it, and they make videos hours upon hours long about this game, and they say the most despicably racist and misogynistic and abuse apologist and ableist things possible while insisting that it's a very normal thing to say, and that in fact, this game told them this. and that they did HOURS OF RESEARCH on japanese law so as an american they can 100% confirm that it's not commentary on japanese law. from. HOURS OF RESEARCH! god forbid, having to do research to understand a game from outside of your culture! god forbid we understand a game as commentary on japanese masculinity and misogyny and cultural blindness to familial abuse! god forbid we understand anything within its context! no, we're experts, with our HOURS OF RESEARCH, so we can conclude, factually, 100% logically, that it makes light of abuse, and makes things ""too black and white"", and that it's not a game about the legal system, no, it's a silly lawyer game. it's a lawyer game and silly and it accidentally made an ontologically evil character teehee because the writers are too stupid to handle topics like abuse and misogyny.

like, could you just admit you have a deep-rooted dislike of japanese people and assume the worst intentions of their writing, don't respect their handling of complex topics, don't think it's worth doing more than HOURS OF RESEARCH on a topic as broad as The law of an entire goddamn country, don't care about cultural nuance, don't see japanese women as real people, don't see disabled japanese men as real people, don't want to explore abuse because it's icky to remember children are abused and even ickier for a japanese game to talk about it, and most of all, are completely and utterly disgusted by people from a society you were not raised in attempting to make a game about their own culture because as an american you expect all narratives to be fucking catered to you

anyway i think ace attorney should never have been localized. ace attorney being critiqued without the people making this critique having to think more than passingly about japanese culture is one of the worst things possible