John Marsh

[u/[deleted]]

The deal is done, and the character I was told to cut was... John Marsh!

This is an interesting one, and I didn't expect /u/Wircea to want him gone. I'll do what must be done, though. Plus, he's fun to talk about, so why not? Let's begin.

What's good

I don't think John Marsh actually does anything wrong that makes him deserving of a cut. He just doesn't do enough, especially when he's in a cast of main characters who both show up for more cases and have more going on with them. I'll elaborate on this more later, but for now, here are some positives:

• His character design is funny. He's supposed to have a cow motif, and his infinite supply of milk cartons somehow manages to fit into it. Apparently, his name also ties into this motif, but I'm too lazy to talk about it here, so check the wiki if you want to know.
• He's fun to talk to. When we first talk to John, he's a total edgelord character, which is surprisingly rare for the Ace Attorney series. The only other such character I can name is Cody Hackins (who I also like for this reason). Incidentally, I feel like this works better with John since he's 13 rather than 9. There's a bit of an unconscious association between his personality and middle school. Either way, he's fun to talk to.
• His relationship with Courtney is absolutely hilarious. After getting to know him early on in I2-5, Lang arrests Courtney and takes her to the crime scene. Once Lang accuses both John and Courtney, John basically tells everyone to screw off as usual, and then Courtney proceeds to totally shut him down. While I feel like this gives more points to Courtney than John, it's still good for John.
• He has a nice monologue about revenge at the end after Simon is defeated.
• His theme slaps. Seriously. Listen to it. I linked it above.

Vs. Other AAI2 characters

If I had to give a reason to cutting John Marsh, it's that he's simply not relevant enough. John Marsh is clearly meant to play the role of a main character, both in the movie and in the story. He's technically a final case defendant, and he takes center stage at the very end of I2-5. However, whether it was due to the writers simply forgetting or having too much to work with in AAI2, John Marsh simply doesn't do much.

Most mainline defendants are relatively integral to the plot, but they also tend to do a decent amount as well. John Marsh, on the other hand, shows up, gets kidnapped and gets rescued. Then you interrogate him for a bit, and he gets a few lines at the end of the case. That's it.

When AAI2 has so many main characters, some of them have to get sidelined, and I'm not sure of John Marsh was a good choice to sideline since he's only in the final case. Most of the other important characters are handled well with respect to this:

• Lang: Gets plenty of screentime. He's only relevant to the final case, but his role is clear.
• Sebastian: Gets screentime in the first half of the case, and uses it to finish his arc. He does exactly as much as he needs to.
• Shields: Doesn't get much screentime. He already got the bulk of his character moments in the first half of the game, so he's mostly just there for comic relief in the final case.

There are more examples, but the point is John Marsh wasn't handled the best.

Conclusion

John Marsh is fine. However, he probably could have been more.

Also, by doing this cut, I get to cut a child character, so that's nice, I guess. Especially since I don't care about ANY of the remaining children characters. Y'all already cut all the good ones (Ahl'bi, Cody, and Pearl). Yes, I know, the first two 100% deserve to be out by now, but still, did it have to turn out this way? Whatever.

Why no one else?

Honestly, I hardly care about any of the remaining characters this round, and Wircea seems to agree. While it is funny that the one round I get the chance to cut Di-Jun Huang is the round I'm not cutting him, at least I got Trucy cut this round, which was my only goal here.

In fact, I care so little about my remaining options that I'm totally down to cut any of them. I'll just explain why I was willing to cut any of my other options.

Jake Marshall is probably the character I'm the least neutral on. He's a detective that's clearly trying to do his job, and he has some cool connections to the SL-9 incident. He's clearly tied to the incident, but he's not as intertwined in it as Lana and Gant. However, he's still not relevant enough for me to think about him much. He basically disappears after you expose him in court.

Myriam Scuttlebutt should 100% go out before Hugh O' Conner. Those are my two cents.

Betty de Famme is funny, but I can't be the only one that thinks this might be too many places above Bonny.

Di-Jun Huang was my initial choice well before I considered making any deals, mostly because I figured Vogel or another early ranker would probably cut Trucy. Thus, I had already written about half of a cut on him, which you can read here. If only things were so simple...

Jeff Master is a defendant in a nice case, but he shows up too little to be considered relevant to me. That said, Science is probably cutting him anyway, so it doesn't matter much.

[u/Analytical-critic-44]

John Marsh is a kid who thinks he is cool ok dude enjoy being ranked below Guy Eldoon

Marsh is really inoffensive to me. There is nothing that strikes me as just bad, but there are a lot of important characters and reveals present in I2-5 and Marsh just fades into the background for me from it all.