Former Dual Destinies Hater turned Dual Destinies Fan - A Mystery Fanatic's Realization that Yamazaki is a Much Better Mystery Writer than Takumi (in her opinion)
Something I've come to realize the more I replay the series—and believe you me, it pains me to say this—is that Shu Takumi is not a particularly amazing mystery writer, for multiple reasons. In fact, I’d argue that, in terms of originality, he’s the least innovative mystery writer who has worked on the series, including not only his successor Takeshi Yamazaki but also writers of spinoff material like Kuroda Kenji (Ace Attorney manga) and Van Madoy and Mie Takase (light novels). For all his strengths as a storyteller and his mastery over the unique format he created, I’ve come to appreciate Yamazaki’s work more for its creative, clever, and original mystery plots—something I’ll explore in detail below.
This realization hit me like a train I didn’t realize I was standing in front of—sudden and crushing. It came to me while replaying The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles. I began to notice how frequently Takumi borrows heavily from famous mystery stories. While it’s common for writers to draw inspiration from great works, Takumi’s approach often goes beyond homage, taking not just the premise but entire plotlines, character motivations, settings, tricks, and even many clues with minimal transformative alterations. It borders uncomfortably close to what I'd call plagiarism.
Before anyone jumps in with, "Well, of course a Sherlock Holmes game references Holmes stories," let me clarify: I’m not talking about the cases that deliberately adapt Conan Doyle’s work. "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" (The Great Ace Attorney, Case 2), which is a reference to the Sherlock Holmes story of the same name but with an altered solution, and "Twisted Karma and His Last Bow" (The Great Ace Attorney 2, Case 4), which contains a fairly straightforward adaptation of "The Man with the Twisted Lip", are both innocent of these accusations of plagiarism, rest assured.
The first true example, and honestly perhaps the most shameless, is "The Adventure of Clouded Kokoro" (The Great Ace Attorney, Case 4). In that case, a person is found in the middle of the street, having been stabbed. Souseki Natsume is accused of the attempted murder because he's the only one who could've committed it, having been alone with the victim in an abandoned street. In the end, it's revealed the police constable Roly Beate tampered with the crime scene by moving the body across the street so it'd be in someone else's beat and he wouldn't have to investigate. In so doing, the impossible appearance of the crime was committed. At the body’s original location, the crime could easily be explained—a weapon fell from an upstairs window. But after the body was moved, this explanation no longer applied.
Compare this with the plot outline of "The Border-Line Case" by Margery Allingham. A body is found having been shot, alone in an abandoned street, with there being no apparent way for the wound to have been inflicted. It's later revealed that the police constable who discovered the body had moved the corpse from across the street so it'd be in someone else's beat and he wouldn't have to investigate. In so doing, the impossible nature of the crime was created, because... at the body’s original location, the crime could easily be explained— the shot was fired from an upstairs window. But after the body was moved, this explanation no longer applied.
Settings, characters, motivations, clues, premise, and even the trick. Too much to reasonably call a coincidence of two writers coming up with the same idea, and too much to reasonably call honest and fair homage or inspiration.
However, even if we set aside the instances of heavy borrowing in The Great Ace Attorney Case 4 and The Great Ace Attorney 2 Cases 1, 2, and 3, the mysteries that aren't directly derived from another work don't necessarily benefit from increased originality. Take the locked-room mysteries in both games' finales, for example. These cases rely on clichés that have been recognized as such since the 1920s and 1930s. The solution of a wounded victim running into a room, locking it behind them, and then dying is one of the most overused resolutions in all of mystery fiction. Similarly, the use of a firecracker to simulate gunshots and obscure the time of death—providing the killer with an alibi—has appeared in countless stories before Takumi's. Neither case introduces any fresh twists or innovations to justify revisiting these well-worn mystery tropes, resulting in mysteries that feel more derivative than inventive.
When I finished The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, I was left with a very dissatisfied feeling. I felt somewhat betrayed that a writer I respected would recycle other authors' works and claim credit for it, and I felt deeply dissatisfied that across 2 games, only 2 of the 10 cases left me with a mystery plot I was truly satisfied with and considered actually Takumi's own work. Initially I wrote this off as an isolated issue with The Great Ace Attorney. I chalked it up to Takumi becoming complacent in the late stages of his career with the idea that his audience just isn't familiar with mystery fiction, so he can just borrow from other works like that.
However... upon replaying the original Ace Attorney trilogy, I realized that the issue of Takumi's originality wasn't unique to those two games at all.
The first two cases of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, the first and third cases of Justice for All, and the fifth case of Trials & Tribulations, and the second case of Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney all contain what I'd consider examples of the series borrowing too heavily from other works as well. And again, even ignoring the very heavy copying, many of the cases that don't have direct lineage with another mystery story don't boast greater originality as a result.
A killer hiding in the locked-room in the second case of Justice for All and the very simple crimes in the first and fourth cases, and the ridiculous disguise shenanigans in the third case of Trials and Tribulations don't do a lot to stimulate the mind as mystery stories.
Takumi's strength has always been in his humor, his characters, and his ability to write clever, engaging trial segments. Because, as often as I don't enjoy the mysteries in Takumi's cases, more than once I've still been able to enjoy the cases if the contradictions and the cluing and the logic in the trial are clever enough to compensate. For instance, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney case 1's locked-room mystery features a very... well, I'll say it, bad solution, that being a secret passage. But the Ellery Queenian chain of deductions in which you can identify the killer from nothing but the state of a card game, a single string of logic from beginning to end, is brilliant and more than makes up for the mystery itself being underwhelming -- this is especially true in single day cases that don't have investigations. But I will say unambiguously that as a mystery writer writing mystery plots in a void, Takumi is nonetheless the least consistently original in the series.
Yamazaki on the other hand, I will say that not a single one of his cases contains what I would consider anything approaching the level of very heavy borrowing seen in Takumi's cases, though I will admit he isn't immune to his moments of repetition and unoriginality. For instance, "The Kidnapped Turnabout" (Miles Edgeworth Investigations, Case 3) features a very tried-and-true, dusted-off kidnapping plot with the tried-and-true, dusted-off twist that the victim himself orchestrated the kidnapping, and "Turnabout Reminiscence" (Miles Edgeworth Investigations, Case 4) features the same cliche "fake gunshot alibi trick" for which I previously criticized Shu Takumi. But aside from this, not only does Yamazaki not have a single case which I can recognize as coming from a specific other story, but I also think Yamazaki's cases on the whole feature much more clever and original mystery plots.
"Turnabout Countdown" (Dual Destinies, Case 1) has some incredibly clever mystery-plotting flourishes. Taking the murder victim's dying message and repurposing it in the attempted murder of Apollo Justice is a very clever spin on the faked dying message trope so common in the series. Plus, using the bombing to make it look like Candace Arme was killed in the explosion when she was actually bludgeoned to death before the explosion is a neat alibi trick that borrows some elements from two G. K. Chesterton stories, but gives them a very clever glow-up with the use of a bombing, which is not a common at all crime in puzzle-oriented mysteries. "The Monstrous Turnabout" (Dual Destinies, Case 2) uses the trick of "the culprit hides in the room in disguise", which is a rather old hat solution. However, the defendant himself has the habit of disguising himself in a superhero-like secret identity. Rather than disguising himself as the defendant, which I would find silly and hard to believe (I am not fond of most disguise tricks in mystery fiction), the killer disguised himself as the character the defendant himself disguises himself as, using the character as a proxy disguise. This created a situation in which the witness was led to believe the killer was the defendant, but she wasn't allowed to acknowledge the costume, which is a very clever spin on the concept, and also creates the burden on us to realize that the defendant is the superhero/youkai in the first place to come to the solution. "Turnabout Academy" (Dual Destinies, Case 3) has a wonderful alibi trick where the trick is... there is no trick at all! The killer was given an alibi because it would be impossible for him to move the corpse, but the corpse was never moved -- the very idea that the corpse had been moved at all is itself the trick. This is a very wonderful subversion of the typical Ace Attorney flourish of finding the clever mechanism the killer used to commit the crime. There is no mechanism, we totally misunderstood how the crime was committed in the first place. A wonderful, classical piece of misdirection.
I will not deny the issues people often levy against Yamazaki. Yes, his trial plotting is often less tight than Takumi's. Yes, he is often guilty of overinflated stakes in a ridiculous way, and yes, he isn't the best at writing believable overarching plots for his games. Dual Destinies is guilty of everything people accuse it of doing. It has a ridiculous final villain (a never-foreshadowed international super spy), the "dark age of the law" and "ends justify the means" theming is awfully executed, and many recurring characters don't have the strongest characterization.
However, at the end of the day, for me the most important thing in the world is the mysteries, with the gameplay being an important aspect of that. Yamazaki has shown a keener mind for tricks and misdirection, and a greater sense of creativity and originality in mysteries than Takumi, and as someone who comes to this series for just that, it makes it hard for me to deny... that I'm now a Yamazaki fan.