This is a spoiler-free review of Gyakuten Saiban, where the first two games (Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice For All), also known as Gyakuten Saiban 1 and 2 in Japan) has been adapted.
The Ace Attorney series is a big series of games, with the first game released during 2001, and went on to boast a catalog of six main games and four side games. The games, as many fans claimed to be, are a parody of the justice system.
As such, many elements regarding the law in this show could be depicted as inaccurate as compared to its real-life counterpart. This show also bears strong supernatural elements, where the spirit channeling technique pretty much becomes the central theme of the story. Keep this in mind that you should not be expecting a fully realistic justice system.
Even so, you will see trials being held in a courtroom, you will have witnesses providing testimonies, with the defense attorney cross-examining them, and you will see evidences and objections being thrown all over the place, with the two opposing sides, prosecutor and defense attorney getting into each others' throats. So it could well be an entertaining ride if you are into this sort of thing.
In the original games, you play as Phoenix Wright (Ryuuichi Naruhodou), a defense attorney whose job is to get his client (the defendant) acquitted, while his opposition, a prosecutor, would aim to get the defendant a guilty verdict instead. The game is mostly split into two parts: 1) An investigation part where you have to gather evidences, as well as clues from relevant people of the case; 2) The trial where you cross-examine the witness and search for contradictions, present evidence to prove why your defendant isn't guilty, as well as finding out the truth and the real culprit.
The anime also works the same way.
For most of the first half of the show, the scriptwriters followed the original script rather closely, but our producers did make more and more changes to make the story flow better. These changes are a hit and miss. Most of these changes are done just to speed up the case, cutting down lots of the mundane stuff, such as making witnesses blurt out highly relevant information at a much quicker rate (you often need to dig hard for them in the games), and investigations are becoming rather short and hastily went through in favor for the trial scenes, which are also sped up to a degree where it could become difficult for anime-only viewers to solve the puzzle themselves, instead everything was revealed before the viewers could actually fully grasp the full extend of the case.
Indeed, pacing is the greatest issue of this show. I believe that anime-only viewers will struggle with the super-quick pacing and might have to pause/rewind various scenes so that they can catch up with the story. In the games, you could slowly browse through the profiles of all the relevant people and all the evidences of the case, slowly piecing them out together to discover the real truth. But here, you will have to think faster as time is always ticking for every episode have a limited airing time. This may prove to be a huge factor in determining the enjoyment value of this show. (Then again, you could pause and rewind the episode, if that is your thing.)
Moving on to the art department, which is the weakest point of this show. The character models aren't really drawn well if you compare them to their original game counterparts. Phoenix (Naruhodou) has overly emphasized lightning eyebrows, Maya (Mayoi) is obviously moe-fied, Detective Gumshoe (Itonokogiri) always appear in varying sizes, sometimes plump sometimes malnourished, etc etc. Animation at most times, stiff and minimal. 3D-CG was also utilized poorly, most evident from the grotesque audience of the court. The art may scare viewers away at the first few episodes, for they are, sad to say, really poor. The art gets better during the latter half, but still pretty below-par according to modern standards.
Sound-wise, I'd say Kaji Yuki portrayed Phoenix pretty well, the oomph when he yelled out "Objection"! ("Igi Ari!") was there, and his performance was pretty consistent throughout the show. The other characters have voices fitting to their roles, which is really nice to hear, as most of them do not have a voice in the games. For the soundtrack, various themes from the games are remixed and inserted in various scenes, however, I feel that the soundtrack list is too short, for there aren't many songs in the show, as well as some scenes did not have the right music at the right time.
The good thing about anime adaptations, is that you get to flesh out the characters a lot more as compared to the game. The games are known to have a penchant of quirky characters, and A-1 Pictures did well in preserving these quirks, at the same time amplifying them sufficiently to give these characters more depth.
So, is Gyakuten Saiban worth watching? This is a tough one, for I am left a little disappointed at the latter half of the show, seeing how they changed so many things, mostly for the worse. Admittedly, as a fan of the series, I have been waiting for an adaptation, and the show is great advertisement for viewers to check out the games, which, I guarantee, will be very worth your time, for they have really good storylines, great characters and it is quite satisfying seeing how the case unravels itself. Therefore, if you like, you could come over and watch this, even better if you decided to skip the show and go for the games instead.
