#they have a perfect trilogy: po knows exactly who and what he is

[mechieonu]

just binged the entire trilogy and. yeah. i honestly don't understand what left of Po's story needs to be told

[gnomey22]

Phoenix Wright & The Feys

Ace Attorney has a lot of important relationships, a whole range of ones you could argue for being the most significant throughout the games - in the original trilogy, at least.

As anyone in this fandom knows, the general fandom places most emphasis on Phoenix and Miles' relationship, and their extremely convoluted development from childhood-best-friends-who-became-estranged-to-unwilling-coutroom-rivals-to-Obviously-Gay-At-This-Point-But-Capcom-Are-Cowards. It's the greatest example of how Phoenix, and those like him, are such a positive influence in the Ace Attorney world, inspiring a deeply broken man to push forward and change his ways - and of course, it's excellent shipping fuel too. All of that is certainly up there as one of the most important relationships, but I'd only call it the second-most-important.

The third-most-important relationship is (and hear me out on this one) Phoenix Wright's relationship to the courtroom as a whole. His entire character motivation lies in the 4th grade class trial, and as AA1 implies and T&T expands upon, Mia's mentorship in the ways of the courtroom dictates a lot of his general life philosophy. He believes he exists to lend a voice to those who can't get their messages across, and the dramatic all-important courtroom is his perfect outlet. It screws him over time and time again, this fictionalised legal system's greatest similarity with the real one is its unfavourability towards everyone involved, but he uses it to his advantage, turns everything around for the greater good. But that's all metaphorical talk, not an actual character relationship.

Phoenix Wright's relationships with the Fey family are what truly define Ace Attorney, from most conceivable angles. I've seen people claim it's all about his relationship with Maya, or likewise for Mia, but I think that's a pointless separation. There's a reason Phoenix's conflation of Mia and Maya in AA1 plays out the way it does - with Phoenix learning to appreciate Maya's influence better than anyone, while still honouring Mia as best he can - and it's not because either of them were more important to him. And none of this is to talk about his relationship with Pearl Fey, how he was able to break through her shell with far more delicacy than he usually shows, an excellent showcase of his good capabilities as a vague-family-figure and lawyer, or even to talk about his relationships with the Hawthorne twins, how their manipulation and lies wounded him deeply, but nonetheless shaped him into the sharp-eyed seeker of truth he is throughout the trilogy.

In truth, it's the whole Fey family, and how inexplicably closely Phoenix Wright is tied to them, that Ace Attorney revolves around. The shichishito at the start of 3-5 is such an important moment to me, because it explains exactly what I'm about to say in a much more succinct and artistic way - The Fey family branches out to everything it touches, pulling people in too deep and entrenching them in the toxicity and pressure, until they cave and break off entirely, either getting themselves killed or deeply hurting those they left behind. This all applies to members of the family, too, so many of them meet terrible fates just for being born into it, let alone getting involved in it later in life. The few who don't die get pulled into crime, or extremely traumatised by all the pain their family lineage has faced and indirectly wrought through mere existence.

And then you have Phoenix Wright. He wasn't born into the family, we don't even know his family at all, he has no history with them whatsoever until college. He didn't marry into the family, his relationship with "Dahlia" went down in flames, and now his interests lie in the Demon Prosecutor he had a fourth-grade crush on. He didn't even visit Kurain Village once until 2-2, and he was already close with multiple Feys at that point. But he's been inexorably linked to the family in dozens of ways, from dating Iris posing as Dahlia, to spending three years learning everything he knows from Mia, to carrying her memory alongside her younger sister and his developing best friend Maya, to comforting a young Pearl when she's put in the most vulnerable position of her life. Everything I've just listed is wrapped in tragedy, from toxic relationships to false murder charges to real murder charges and unwarranted deaths, but Phoenix never breaks away. He always has to wrap up every loose end, leave no stone unturned, and stick by the people who need a voice like his. So, even through the unimaginable amount of violence and trauma the Fey family brings about, he finds many of the most valuable relationships in his life through them, and in turn, he unravels the mysteries and curses shrouding their entire existence one-by-one, providing bittersweet closure to the crimes and tragedies always unfolding in front of their, and his, eyes.

Just like he does with the courtroom, and just like he does with Miles, he turns it all around. That is the spirit of Ace Attorney.

...

and also it's just really funny that this random lawyer is constantly pushed into the centre of generational magic family drama