Our first client seemed to think that she was a magnet for trouble. But clearly, she’s never met Maya Fey. If she had, she’d know that Maya gets into trouble far more frequently.
I explained it in the episode, but the original Ace Attorney was deliberately designed to avoid being overtly set in Japan, so that localization teams could do whatever they needed to to the script in the even it was released in other countries. They didn’t know how successful this franchise would be, so they wanted to be prepared for the best case scenario.
After the first game was complete, the design team began to incorporate more overtly Japanese elements into the story, as you can see with Kurain Village. Now, this poses a problem because the original localization team set the first game in California, and California doesn’t have ancient Japanese villages. Fortunately, a solution was ultimately achieved and it truly doesn’t matter all that much in the grand scheme of things. It’s just one of those weird localization quirks that’s funny to think about it retrospect.
It speaks to the localization team’s talents that despite the awkward situation, they managed to thread the needle well enough that this franchise became such a popular franchise internationally.
Leave a Reply