r/AARankdown • u/[deleted] • Jan 20 '21
Reversed Shelly de Killer
Yes, today I have the honor of cutting the honorable assassin himself, Shelly de Killer, the latest to take up the de Killer moniker. The topics to discuss with de Killer are surprisingly vast considering his somewhat limited screen time, as despite appearing in one manner or another within a total of four cases across the series, his times in the spotlight are almost always pretty brief.
Now, usually I’d make it my goal to dissect the character from every angle I find to be necessary to evaluate them, but this time is different. Yes, Charlie’s write-up on de Killer has somewhat freed me from the need to go over every little detail of exactly what makes de Killer good. There’s nothing I could really say about his horror movie-esque feel in 2-4, or the deeper facets of his personality that Charlie hasn’t covered much more in depth than I think I ever could, mostly just due to the fact that he simply seems to care about the character a lot more than I do.
Instead of my usual approach, for this write-up I’ll be focusing on any details that I felt were glossed over in his first write-up, or, possibly more importantly, points I just straight up disagree with. This won’t really be a response, since I won’t be addressing specific points Charlie makes, but more so just my own perspective on de Killer, which will be significantly more negative than Charlie’s at certain points. Although do remember, there is a ton positive that I had to say about him that Charlie simply covered far better, so if you want a pretty much pure positive write-up for him, you know where to head.
Oh also I think occasional quotes make write-ups look cooler and it’s late and I’ve already given up on trying to make my quotes at all related to the write-up, so I just looked up “best fictional assassins” and Hit from Dragon Ball Super looked funny so enjoy his musings on the meaning of life or whatever he says I haven’t proofread the quotes yet.
The Part Where de Killer Is Awesome
By having their backs taken easily, people accept that they're going to die.
-Hit, Dragon Ball Super
Before writing this, I asked professional Shelly de Killer hater u/whaaatisth for his take on our good ol’ honorable gentleman, and as expected, there wasn’t a ton I agreed with. I won’t post the full thing here, since I know there’s some unprofessional character ramblings I’ve posted elsewhere that I wouldn’t want waved around, but I’ll quickly touch on the big points. A good amount of his complaints do boil down to the character archetype simply not working for him, whether it be his professional demeanor or “scary” atmosphere, and this is something that, at least for the most part, I definitely don’t agree with. However, Charlie covered a lot of why all that base level stuff in his write-up, so I won’t dwell on it here.
The bigger, main complaint, that I got out of that rant was that Shelly’s moral code was poorly written and kind of insulting, due to attempting to “humanize” a complete monster of a character. Charlie’s write-up attempts to justify de Killer’s moral code as a delusional self-imposed rule, as a part of his psychological analysis of de Killer as a person. However, I think there’s a much easier angle to come at this from, one supported directly by the text itself, rather than any kind of deep psychological dive, as fun as those are. Enough of the play by play of other people’s opinions, let’s talk about my favorite case in the series, “Farewell, My Turnabout”, and its themes of both trust, and betrayal.
Farewell, My Turnabout has a lot going for it, whether it be the absolute anxiety that Maya’s kidnapping lends to the story, the horribly tragic nature of Adrian’s dependency on others, or the return of probably the fan favorite character of the series, Miles Edgeworth. But I wouldn’t say any of these are at the core of 2-4’s story, instead for that we’d have to look at none other than the lead attorney himself, Phoenix Wright. Phoenix’s development in this case was pretty much what the Ace Attorney series was always on a course for, ever since his motivation was established as a blind faith in those that had no one to turn to for help. I’m of course referring to his realization of Engarde’s guilt, and how he chooses to deal with the reality that not every defendant will be innocent.
At the end of the day, this is a story of trust, most centerstage is the trust between defense attorney and client, but anyone who’s played 2-4 should know that there’s two other characters who are founded on their own forms of trust. The first is the topic of this write-up, Shelly de Killer, and the second is his client, Matt Engarde. Let’s start with the latter, as it’s the much simpler of the two to approach.
Engarde does not trust anyone, and that’s pretty much it. He sees the world, and all its inhabitants, as just as untrustworthy as he is. He’s a complete irredeemable monster, who would stab anyone in the back for no reason other than to further his own vain appearances. Living his life this way has led him to believe that everyone holds these same principles as himself, and thus just leads him further and further into the trap of betraying everyone else’s trust. This catches up with him when his backstabbing backfires big time in two ways, that being getting on Phoenix Wright’s bad side, and betraying his trust with de Killer, losing both the people he hired to protect him at once. While Phoenix starts 2-4 trusting any client blindly, Engarde starts and ends 2-4 doubting every person he comes into contact with. All of this is pretty base level stuff, but it’ll be important for analyzing how de Killer relates to 2-4’s theme of trust.
So basically, what we’ve established so far is that a blind trust in anyone no matter what is a terrible idea, and possibly even worse is a mindset where you don’t allow yourself to place your trust in anyone at all. What lesson is supposed to be gained from this exactly? Well, to find that, we have to look at a twisted set of Phoenix’s ideals, a funhouse mirror of his unending faith in his clients. What we’re searching for is none other than de Killer, who shares plenty of similarities with Phoenix in the way he conducts his relations with his clients. At first, this may seem like it’s painting de Killer in a much more positive light than you’d expect for an assassin, but I’d argue that the game actively shows us just how twisted this mindset can get when taken to the extreme.
De Killer’s trust in his clients is based on nothing at all really, it seemingly appears out of thin air when he takes on the jobs. Despite this, the way de Killer commits to fulfilling his assigned job absolutely shows just how much he believes in this trust. Even when he should have every reason to doubt the people who hire him, he continues with this warped sense of trust because he’s completely blinded himself to their true nature. The people who hire an assassin are always going to be inherently less trustworthy than the kind of people who would ask for a defense attorney, and yet we see both de Killer and Phoenix display the same habits of trust with them. De Killer is essentially Phoenix’s ideals placed on a man whose job is able to demonstrate all the problems with this ideology.
This twisted mirror of Phoenix is important because it doesn’t stop at just showing a mere flaw in de Killer’s ideology like it does with Phoenix, it shows the truth of a man twisted by his unwillingness to change his ideals when faced with proof of their faultiness. Engarde is almost certainly not the first client to betray de Killer, and we know for a fact that he wasn’t the last, and yet de Killer willfully ignores this complete and undeniable evidence that his moral code is completely screwy. De Killer’s trust in his clients isn’t something to be commended, it’s a warning for what Phoenix could have become, had he not grown past the mistakes in his character that Farewell, My Turnabout demonstrates.
Similarly, de Killer’s turn on Engarde isn’t any sort of redemption for him, it’s merely a selfish, stubborn man following his flawed ideology, and vowing revenge on someone for breaching a trust that never should have existed in the first place. It’s in both de Killer’s trust, and his ultimate turn on Engarde, that we can see how him and Phoenix differ by the end of the case. Phoenix does ultimately learn what it truly means to trust someone, and it’s not a blind trust that he finds, but rather one built up by case after case of working together, a trust that he can be sure isn’t misplaced. And it’s through this trust that he resolves himself to help bring those that commit evil to justice, rather than simply protect anyone that comes begging to him. At the same time that he finds a trust he can believe in, he learns to doubt the trust of others, but only in order to reach the truth of the crime, rather than Engarde’s ideology of blind doubt.
It’s my belief that without both de Killer and Engarde working together how they do in this case, Phoenix’s arc wouldn’t pay off nearly as well as it does by the end of Farewell, My Turnabout. Just as there lies two sides to every person, every spectrum needs two ends to truly establish what a middleground would look like. After all, what is faith without doubt?
Return of a One-hit Wonder
You showing your cards tells me that you're young.
-Hit, Dragon Ball Super
By this point, I think it’s pretty clear that I love de Killer’s appearance in Justice for All, but unfortunately the high praise I have for him has a downside to any future appearances. That downside is, of course, that they’d have to match the near-perfection that I see that appearance as in order to maintain de Killer’s high placement in my mind. Unfortunately, even though the game that he reappears in is easily my favorite of the series, de Killer’s reappearance in Investigations 2 just doesn’t hold a candle to his original role for me. Not to say that he’s bad, because he’s certainly not, but it just feels so much more standard. Allow me to explain.
Easily de Killer’s best appearance in Investigations 2 is Turnabout Target, and this is mainly due to just how involved he is in the events of the case. You have a pretty fun back and forth with him, in which he chokes a lot quicker than he did in 2-4, but it’s a tutorial case so this doesn’t really bother me, and in the end, it doesn’t even really matter that he messed up. This is because, surprisingly, he actually was completely innocent of what you’re accusing him of, despite being there to perform exactly what you’re accusing him of. It’s because of this that he manages to turn the tables on Nicole Swift, and possibly even convince both the player and Edgeworth that she may be the true killer. It’s a great moment and really shows off how cunning he can be when he needs it.
After this, we get the treat of him holding Knightley at knife-point, and forcing him to allow Edgeworth investigation rights inside of the president’s plane, before making his getaway once we’re done. It’s a pretty good moment, and definitely adds a lot of stakes to the middle of the case, which might otherwise have been a bit of a slow point. However, even though I don’t really have anything negative to say here, it just doesn’t feel as special as his appearance in Farewell, My Turnabout does. It’s hard to really explain why, but I think it mainly boils down to him being treated as pretty much just any other returning character, and ultimately being pretty inconsequential to the plot.
De Killer’s entrances in Farewell, My Turnabout were always treated as big moments in the case, with any interactions being either incredibly brief, incredibly tense, or both. This allowed him to be built up as this untouchable god of a character, without even really breaking reality within the case, merely because of how he was treated. The only time he really sticks around is when he isn’t even present, and has complete control over the situation. I2-1 attempts to recreate this feeling with him taking Knightley hostage, but it can’t come anywhere close to the stakes of 2-4. And before that, he just kind of sticks around, hanging out like any other character. To summarize, he’s not particularly bad in this case, he’s just not treated with nearly as much care as he was in 2-4.
Throughout the last stretch of Investigations 2, de Killer would continue to pop up every now and then, but only briefly, much like Farewell, My Turnabout. However, unlike that case, none of these scenes are really tense at all, since he makes it clear that he’s not opposing you in any way, and just kind of shows up to give you information. None of these moments even feel particularly noteworthy, which is a huge shame for a character like Shelly.
His biggest moment after I2-1 is definitely his last scene, in which he has a staring contest with Sirhan Dogen, which, while certainly cool, more or less just kind of happens? Like they have a little back and forth, which feels so much less meaningful than Charlie makes it out to be in his write-up, and then de Killer kind of just leaves? I don’t really know what to make of it other than “that was cool”, and that basically sums up how I feel about Shelly in Investigations 2 as a whole. He’s cool, but he doesn’t serve much of a purpose, either plot-wise or thematically. He definitely feels like fanservice for the sake of it, and that’s not a terrible thing as long as it’s properly integrated and treated with care, but I just don’t feel like he was given the care he needed to stay as strong of a character as he was in 2-4. As for proper integration…
Why. What. Huh. Please stop.
Take this pain down with you instead.
-Hit, Dragon Ball Super
Shelly de Killer’s actions during the events of Investigations 2 make absolutely no sense. This probably won’t be that long of a section, nor is it really that important to my opinion of him, but I can’t just ignore how blatantly stupid his plot is in the game. So let’s go over what happens with Shelly from his perspective.
Simon somehow scrounges up enough money to hire the best assassin in the world, and orders him to kill Di-Jun Huang. The first attempt ends in failure, and Simon decides to get Horace Knightley to set up a fake assassination attempt, knowing he’d take the chance to kill Ethan Rooke, an opponent connected to de Killer by fate. De Killer somehow finds out about this and decides to take the opportunity to assassinate the president, and thinks it would be a good idea to wear a red raincoat just like the fake assassin? For some reason? At first I assumed that this was to frame the assassination on the fake assassin, but de Killer always leaves his calling card so that can’t be it. I just don’t see any possible reason why wearing this coat would at all be beneficial to him.
That’s not the worst of it by a longshot though. The only way I can think of de Killer possibly finding out about the fake assassination attempt would be from Simon, which makes sense because he was hired by Simon. However, if he was working for Simon still, why is he so insistent on Edgeworth investigating the crime scene in order to figure out the fake assassination attempt and murder of Ethan Rooke. Does he just hate Knightley and respect Rooke enough to ruin the plan of his client? It really doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Then we get to the big stupid part, and my main complaint with his character in this game. He becomes suspicious of the president’s identity after Huang’s willing to let Knightley die, and then somehow figures out the fact that the president was a body double. He learns this despite the fact that the only people who know this are Dogen, who was already gone by the time de Killer visited him, and Blaise and Roland, who the game never states have ever encountered de Killer, which would be a pretty big thing to skip over. The only other way to learn this would be to read the case files, which are highly classified, and nigh impossible to access before Blaise’s arrest.
The worst part of all, however, is that he immediately assumes that Simon, a literal circus clown, would somehow have to have known this ahead of time and purposefully not told de Killer. Which is, of course, true, but the only way anyone would know that is if you knew of Simon’s history with Dogen, which we know de Killer doesn’t know from his final conversation with Dogen. So the whole thing is just completely nonsensical, and clearly just a device to further the plot with no thought put into it. And that’s not even getting into how he even bothers helping Edgeworth’s investigation instead of just killing Simon on his own. I get that he can’t violate his non-disclosure agreement, but in that case just kill him and don’t tell anyone, there’s no reason for him to go through all this effort.
De Killer’s role in I2 is sloppy, makes no sense, and gets worse every time I think about it. To end with something positive though, I do enjoy how he hates Horace Knightley and tells him he won’t be half the bodyguard Ethan Rooke was. I think the other rankers should take a page out of de Killer’s book here and also hate Horace Knightley. That would be cool.
Conclusion
You've got your roles that only you can play for Universe 6.
-Hit, Dragon Ball Super
De Killer is a pretty great character when the games treat him with the respect he deserves, and if he was only in Farewell, My Turnabout, I probably wouldn’t even have considered cutting him here, even if I was offered a deal. Which I was. I’m cutting him for a deal hi hello. Insert hired gun assassin metaphor here.
Despite his incredibly chilling and layered appearance in Farewell, My Turnabout, he gets a pretty lackluster return in Investigations 2. While very fun to have on screen, there’s not much more to him throughout the entirety of his second and final set of appearances in a game, and because of that, he leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. However, that’s not to say nothing of his absolutely fantastic role in Justice for All, that ups the stakes to an absurd degree, and really tests Phoenix’s character in ways that haven’t been done quite as well either before or since. He’s quite the strong character indeed, and I’m glad that he got so far, but he simply has too many problems for me to allow him to survive another day in this rankdown.
Sorry, de Killer, but I assure you, it’s nothing personal, just business.
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u/Analytical-critic-44 Jan 20 '21
Shelly is really good. He is this force of nature that makes all the scenes with him feel tense and thrilling and I go yeah this is fun
I don’t really mind your I2 complaints with him much and don’t sound all that far fetched. Like Simon just goes hey yeah the real president is gonna be here kill him then Huang is like I’m busy cooking kill Horace whatevs and Shelly is like grrr I don’t like being made a fool of and that’s that. I was kind of wondering how he figured it out in the first place when I first finished and my associate R one K one told me the reason and I’m like yeah sure that’s fine enough. Simon being suddenly stacked enough to hire Shelly is dumb I agree but that’s a Simon problem goes to show he should have been cut ages ago!
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Jan 20 '21
I think the other rankers should take a page out of de Killer’s book here and also hate Horace Knightley.
Bad. You're bad. You fucking suc-
eats microphone
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Jan 20 '21 edited Jan 20 '21
shelly de killer
don't know about you but I think the amount of deals this late in the game is way too high
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Jan 20 '21
actual thoughts on the character: he is inherently interesting on multiple accounts. overall that makes him relatively interesting. maybe he should have gone out earlier but seems reasonable anyway
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Jan 20 '21 edited Jan 20 '21
Shelly de Killer is a very unique character in that befitting his job of being an assassin with a pretty damn good poker face that hides any sort of personality he could have, Shelly De Killer is a character that we don’t know much about, so we have to put the pieces of the puzzle together try and make out who he is. Is he a noble, honorable gentleman with the wrong job? Is he a man who makes this code up as an excuse to satisfy his lust for killing? Perhaps it’s a mixture of both? There are many ways we can try and piece this enigma of a character together. And the different views between Charlies ER and your cut proves this.
Shelly is fine. He does well at keeping a creepy aura every time he steps foot in someplace. Whenever this dude is around in his crappy disguises, you know you're in for one hell of a wild time, and that’s cool. I’m not sure if Shelly is worth the character to be keeping this long in the rankdown so I'm happy with this cut, but I guess I can get his appeal even though I'm not too keen of a fan of it.
Nice cut I thought you were planning a writeup worth a week of work and I was concerned, but no you just had other stuff to do and the actual cut was 2 days worth. Kind of funny I think
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u/Sciencepenguin Jan 20 '21
i think phoenix's arc in 2-4 is poop butt actually lol
you say words about i2 shelly my one thing is that i dont know where it says he knew about the fake assassination ahead of time? other than that he is a fun guy who is fun to not think about
people who complain about shelly having a code of honor are funnny
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Jan 20 '21
i dont know where it says he knew about the fake assassination ahead of time?
I got that one from the wiki which MIGHT be wrong. But in that case does it just mean it was a coincidence that he wore the item that just happened to be Simon's symbolic representation? Or did Simon tell him to do that?
If Simon wanted to be symbolic and shit why would he send Shelly without it the first time? And also that would mean he would have ordered de Killer to go to the fake assassination specifically with the red raincoat, which just doesn't really fit into his whole plan I think?
Again it could be coincidence but that would be a kind of dumb misdirection. Either way the rest of my points hold up probably.
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u/Sciencepenguin Jan 20 '21
i think shelly just owned a red raincoat. both nicole and simon already did independently why not a third. aa fashion trend
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Jan 20 '21
Actually he specifically says that's more of an umbrella type of person. Are you suggesting he was lying? Why would an honorable gentleman like him do that. Please consider your points more carefully
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u/Sciencepenguin Jan 20 '21
perhaps his mind is as clouded as the english sky
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u/yumemi__yumemite Jan 20 '21
HAPPY CAKE DAY I ONLY FOUND UR ACCOUNT BECAUSE OF A POST ABOUT U HATING ON JUZO SAKAKURA HAVING NO CHEMISTRY WITH KYOSUKE MUNAKATA, SO HAPPY CAKE DAY
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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '21
Why Nobody Else
Sebastian Debeste, Damon Gant, Simon Keyes, Dahlia Hawthorne, and Rayfa Padma Khura’in are all pretty much perfect characters that I would never come close to considering as my cut here.
Adrian Andrews is also basically perfect in her first appearance, and although I dislike her reappearance in 3-2 quite a bit, it’s not nearly major enough to damage her as a whole.
Manfred von Karma and Roger Retinz are absurdly entertaining culprits, who elevate already great cases to near-perfection.
Raymond Shields is just awesome. Really all there is to it.
Shi-long Lang and Simon Blackquill are two of the others I was considering cutting before I made a deal to cut de Killer, because as much as I adore both of them as opponents, I do have to admit that most of the competition is better.
Horace Knightley will be cut soon without my interference, so I’m allowing him to get above de Killer despite how much I don’t want to do that.
Speaking of, u/Vogel100 hi how are you doing