Gyakuten saiban
Director: Takashi Miike
Writer: Takeharu Sakurai, Sachiko Ôguchi
Based on: the Ace Attorney games
Cast: Hiroki Narimiya, Mirei Kiritani, Takumi Saitô, Rei Dan, Shunsuke Daitô, Ryo Ishibashi
Part of: /slash Filmfestival

Plot:
Phoenix Wright (Hiroki Narimiya) is not a particularly apt attorney as he gets easily flustered. But his mentor Mia Fey (Rei Dan) believes in him. But then Mia dies under weird circumstances and her sister Maya (Mirei Kiritani) is implicated. And when Miles Edgeworth (Takumi Saitô), who is known for his questionable methods to get a win, takes up the prosecution, Phoenix knows that he has to take matters into his own hands to make sure that justice is actually served.

Ace Attorney was very, very funny, but then it got a little long. I think to really appreciate it, you need to know the games at least fleetingly, which I don’t, so I feel like I was missing something to really get everything out of the film.

I’m not sure why I couldn’t really get into the film as much. Maybe because it got a little too silly at times. Maybe because I don’t know the games. Maybe it was something else entirely. Whatever it was, it was there and it kept me from really enjoying the film as I should have.

And that even though I absolutely loved the visuals of the film. The hairstyles alone would have been worth to see it, but generally the movie perfectly translates the anime style (and as far as I can tell from a couple of stills from the game, they are extremely faithful to the game as well). It actually made me feel that I have an idea of the game now.

It’s probably better not to talk about the plot at all as that would involve thinking more about its clichéd, flat stupidity. If you’ve ever read a mediocre crime novel or watched basically any crime show, you know what the clues are from about 10 km’s distance. But admittedly that’s not the point of the film and despite my snark, it didn’t bother me a bit.

The villain’s meltdown, though, was a thing of beauty and featured one of the best flounces in the history of flouncing. Hats off.

Summarising: It’s colorful, crazy and  if you like the games, you will probably enjoy it more than I did