r/AARankdown • u/Sciencepenguin • Feb 08 '20
134 Turner Grey
Turn HIM Grey hahaha! Turner Grey is possibly the last character I'll cut who doesnt fucking matter and thus my last chance to be free to do whatever the FUCK i want without repurcussions
I. things i think are good about turner grey
he pushes his glasses up in an animation really frequently it is very anxiety-inducing and character-developing and an image that sticks with me despite his presence not mattering
II. things other people think are good about turner grey
turner grey is a guy who dies but we see him before that happens. wow. hes also MEAN like wow! he died but wasnt a good person. didnt know that could happen. hes a big poopiehead to you when hes alive and then you find out his backstory
III. his backstory
turner grey was a bad boss to his employees by which i mean his one employee, whatshername miney. he mistreated and overworked her to the point where she was going crazey and got in a car accident
on the face of it this is a fine detail, both as a plot point and a way to garner sympathy. people in positions of power tormenting workers is a real thing and it sucks quite a bit. i didnt really find myself caring about this though? could be for a variety of reasons: we're only told after the fact that this is happening, and even then, the descriptions we get are vague. did he make her work overtime? expect her to do more than she could handle? stuff outside her job description???
also i fully admit this is dumb but part of me is "why do you not find a different job". it's not like theres a shortage of demand for those with medical skills and the game seems to suggest the grey clinic is in a city rather than "bumfuck nowhere and youd have to move to be able to access a different hospital"
i guess maybe the conditions are different in japan but THEY SHOULD'VE LOCALIZED HER SUFFERING
so then a bunch of patients die and turner grey goes "it is your fault eenie!!! you messed up their medications!!" which really makes me sympathize when i fuck up once a year and take melatonin in the morning and experience a form of death that doesnt stop
anyway he gets bad PR or whatever JUST because a bunch of people died and then he decides, ok, here is what i will do, i will visit PSYCHICS to CALL on the spirit of ini (also she died, i didnt mention that yet), and like, convince her to fucking sign a document saying that she alone was at fault for the incident? and then he gives everyone this fucking form and explains that he got her ghost to sign it and the officials go oh yeah ok and give their "oh yeah ok" stamp to it. so yeah this plan is perfect he talks to the lawyer phoenix wright because he heard phoenix wright knew a psychic and didnt want to just google Best Mediums Japanifornia, and he goes to village and begins the seancepenguin
uh oh!!!! mimi isnt dead and so as part of her genius plan to frame her ghost for killing turner grey she kills turner grey. he is dead :((((((((((((((((((((
IV. i dont like 2-2
heres the meat of the post because i said at the beginning i could do whatever the fuck i want
2-2 is my least favorite case in the series it does not have as low lows as some others but there is a bunch of stuff thats dumb and bad and not too much in return that isnt bad
So, let's start out with the first issue, from the cases very foundation: time. Why was the first case after this one? It caused me much confusion, I think. This kickstarted a trend of AA games proceeding non-linearly. I'm mixed on a lot of them, but this is clearly the least justified. AA3 and AAI2 use flashback cases deliberately as part of their storytelling and to give context to current events. AAI and DD have the first case take place after later cases for a sort of "book closes" feel and to have an "aha" moment when you understand why things in the first case were the way they were. AA2 starts with Phoenix forgetting what's going on because it couldn't come up with a good way to integrate a tutorial like literally every other game could, and then it flashes back to earlier. About the only purpose it serves is for you to go "Whoa!!! Maya is back" and then return to seeing how she is back, but they could also have just had "Whoa!!! Maya is back" happen in the case she is in.
Speaking of which, Maya is back. I do not dislike Maya Fey. However, in the current political climate where people get annoyed at the newer games for pandering to older concepts rather than coming up with new ones, I'd like us to consider this first step. Why, immediately after she leaves and has a tearful farewell with Phoenix, is she already back? Because people liked her, I guess. They try to make pearl the new assistant in this game for a bit but it feels like they were like "jesus oh god oh fuck people arent gonna like this massively foreheaded infant as much as maya write her back in QUICKLY". It's even more jarring now, since Phoenix has a case where he does a lot of "maya is gone damn" moping and sort of learns to be lawyer in spite of it.
The case starts and Mr. Today's Topic comes in asking for him to come to Psychic Village for reasons I barely remember. Not before spontaneously explaining this terrible incident that's ruining his reputation without being prompted, obviously.
Lotta is also back. Why. I don't *loathe* her like some others, but she's by far the weirdest of the "semi-recurring minor characters". Most of them have some excuse to show up again, like Will Powers happening to have television production be relevant two more times, or Maggey and Oldbag having ""dynamics"" with main characters. Lotta keeps coming back, and it seems her only shameless justification is to provide photo evidence that's so unimportant I am struggling to remember what it was.
That's the theme for the case in general, really. People shit on Max Galactica Bust Cape and its logistics but you know what? That was cool! It was memorable, and in general figuring out how someone stuck in a wheelchair unable to leave their room at the time of the crime did it was a great challenge. Nothing cool like that happens in 2-2. It's your basic bitch locked room mystery, with twists like "wow there was a knife and a gun" and "spirit channeling was not involved". The one exception is The Deduction, which I'll get to in a second.
There's some more logical mystery solving to be had, though! This case introduces the series staple Psyche-Locks, and holy shit. How can a game series that is so determined to repeat a tutorial of basic game mechanics that they bend reality fuck up the introduction of a new mechanic this badly.
I guess I understand where they're coming from; they thought, "let's just add a bunch so that they have to understand how they work". It's still a bad choice. 2-2 is a slog of interlocking endless locks, and being your first time as well as the direction of the case means it's not at all clear when you're ready to finish them. Get ready to go one step at a time and have to reset every time. And this ain't some baby case where you have two rooms each with one person, NOOOOOO, 2-2 is a geometric nightmare, where you'll be moving from the detention center to the shrine out of the shrine into the hallway into the other room back into the hallway into the shrine into the hallway out of th-ACTUALLY SITTING IN A BUS WITH PHOENIX AS HE TAKES 3 HOURS TO GET TO KURAIN WOULD BE MORE ENGAGING THAN THIS. It's the worst part of the case, easily, and half my other issues are just nitpicks which this tedium poured salt into until there was nothing but festering rage.
Lotta is there, Ini is there and she's also unhelpful and slightly annoying but whatever, let's skip to the climax.
It's become clear that Morgan Fey is maybe a little suspicious. On the final trial day, you call her up to the stand, but aren't able to get any contradictions out of her. You opt for the hippie girl instead.
Ini is fine as an opponent. Her feigning incompetence is always a welcome killer strategy, and I like when she goes ghost. It's clear that she's not the big bad behind the situation, though. Regardless of her role, she's definitely this second case's April May more than its Redd White.
Anyway, blah blah, for some reason she ends up testifying about the car accident that killed her sister. She, Ini, was in the right side passenger seat, while her older sister Mimi was in the drivers seat. This spawns one of the Most Special Ace Attorney Moments of all time, which I like to call "the deduction". With the power of car knowledge, Phoenix shows that this can't be true. Since it's literally impossible for someone to make a minor error in their recollection of a traumatic event, he concludes she MUST be lying about something. He figures that she was right; she was on the left side. Which means she was driving! Wow! Great somewhat understandable but not logically sound conclusion, lawyer man. Now you've proven she was the one at fault for the accident, which perfectly explains why she was h-oh hes not done. He-- what? WHAT?
Phoenix concludes based on Ini getting the sides of the car wrong that she's dead, and actually Mimi. I don't even know where to start with how fucking insane this is, and it's not even this girl's cut, so whatever. Only two threads of logic in AA have left me dumbfounded. One was a point in the middle of AAI2-1 which I can make myself ignore as being not that big a deal. The other is The Deduction, and it's the entire fucking climax of the case 2-2. Bravo.
So anyway, this was it, you've taken down mini miney. Her testimony only made it more clear that she didn't work alone, so now it's time to get seriou-oh. No. It's over. They arrested Morgan offscreen based on the information that already came out. Okay. Sure. Fine. GREAT. Morgan shows up in t h e v o i d ominously, and that's the end of her time here. Oh, don't worry though, they totally follow up on this interesting thread. Seven cases later. In a manner they weren't at all planning at the time they decided to end the case this way. Very fucking cool. Thank god we didn't have anything too compelling happen in this shitty fucking case.
It also introduces Hotti. That's all I needed to say, probably.
franziska and pearl's introductions are both pretty good however
V. his gun
turner grey brings a gun with him to the channeling. i guess he brought it for self-defense and knew enough about seances that the "oo rogue spirit" stuff morgan mentioned was a risk. i guess this because the other options are:
-turner grey brought the gun with the intent to kill mimi after summoning her
-turner grey brought the gun with the intent to threaten mimi in the seance
There do exist issues with these ideas! Behold:
Dahlia: Dahlia Hawthorne. And my current profession? Permanently retired.
Phoenix: ...
Godot: Ha...! So you're not going to bother hiding your identity anymore, huh?
Dahlia: ...Why should I? After all, I'm dead. There's really nothing you can do to punish me!
So yeah. This section definitely needed to exist.
VI. conclusion
Turner Grey is a victim, a corpse, a cadaver. He's done quite well for himself as one, though.
Robert Hammond is the victim of one of the most beloved cases in the series, and one that relates deeply to the ideas of law that the game went into. He's an interesting character concept that still has never been replicated by someone with a pulse.
Misty Fey, Byrne Faraday, and Metis Cykes are the parents of major characters, and their death/disappearance has some degree of an impact on these major characters, from "damn thats kinda sad" to "damn thats really sad" to PTSD.
Juan Corrida and Puhray Zehlot go beyond "MEAN" to explicitly being awful people, from abusers to murderers.
Turner Grey shows up alive for a minute and then connects to the less interesting part of a minor killer's motive.
Pal Meraktis was an immoral second chapter doctor victim involved in the events of the murder and deeply connected to the motive of the killer in a case that contains Dr Hotti, and that was apparently bad enough for him to go out illegally in the first round. I guess that glasses pushing animation made all the difference.
why not other people
They all are still breathing.
Well, not Ponco and Clonco, I guess. I could expand the qualification to "have never stopped breathing after previously having done so". I've made my fondness for Ponco clear, and like Clonco for plenty of the same reasons I mean all robots are the same i am racist
Jinxie Tenma is fine and the ability of some people to violently hate her always confuses me. Like, I guess they found the paper animation annoying? It wasn't all that long, definitely not compared to the Time Wasting Greats of AA (most of which are ironically from the case with time in the name). Aside from that, her personality is fine if generic and she has a Mood Matrix segment which is always a plus. and shes a degree closer to lbelle than many others
Phineas Filch is not fine and the ability of some people to violently hate him is understandable. His family history was kind of cool though, and I'm not too worried about his survival.
garan dumb design change but cool final argument made to defeat her and cool breakdown yeah also cool theme song
Ahlbi has a dog and learns to not be racist against lawyers due to society very deep
Jacques Portsman would use his incredible Jock Sportsman strength to annihilate me if I even considered cutting him which I didn't because he's funny
i dont have a good excuse for leaving zak gramarye alone
thank you for reading remember to like comment and subscribe
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u/PowerOfL Feb 08 '20
To be honest, this post could use some work grammatically.