Dee Vasquez

"Dee Vasquez"

- And here I was worrying that today would be as boring as all the rest.... Very well. Let us have a battle of wits, you and I.

Dee Vasquez was the high-ranking producer of The Steel Samurai: Warrior of Neo Olde Tokyo as well as other shows produced by Global Studios. She had ties to the local mob, which she used from time to time to get rid of people. She was a witness in the murder of actor Jack Hammer.

Death of Manuel
In 2011, Dee Vasquez witnessed a fatal accident involving action star Jack Hammer and a fellow actor named Manuel. Vasquez was producing a show starring Jack Hammer, but during a fight scene, Hammer accidentally pushed Manuel onto some sharp fence tips, killing him. A paparazzo took a photo of the incident, but he was silenced by Vasquez's mob contacts. Vasquez later used the accident to blackmail Hammer into doing what she wanted, including working on kids' TV shows as villains for petty change.

Hammer's vengeance

 * Main article: Turnabout Samurai

Five years later, Vasquez produced the TV show The Steel Samurai: Warrior of Neo Olde Tokyo, starring Will Powers as the Steel Samurai and Hammer as the villainous Evil Magistrate. By this time, Hammer was fed up with the blackmail; he donned Powers's Steel Samurai costume and confronted Vasquez in Studio 2 of Global Studios, intending to kill her. However, the ensuing fight ended with his death on the same fence that had killed Manuel; a fanboy witnessed the death from a hidden area.

Vasquez transported Hammer's body by truck, with the help of the director of The Steel Samurai, Sal Manella, to Studio 1. There, she dressed Hammer's body in the Evil Magistrate costume, burned the Steel Samurai costume, and called the police; the police determined that Powers had killed Hammer with the Samurai Spear, which was a part of the Steel Samurai costume.

Phoenix Wright represented Powers in court; during his investigation of Global Studios, he confronted Vasquez in Studio 2 and learned about Manuel's death. Vasquez tried to use her mobster friends to eliminate Wright, but Detective Dick Gumshoe entered the scene in time to rescue Wright.

Wright eventually got Vasquez to testify in court about her alibi. He convinced Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth to force Vasquez to testify further, which resulted in Wright exposing a contradiction in her testimony and implicating her as the real killer.

Since Vasquez's crime was manslaughter (the only instance of such during Wright's career) rather than murder, she may not have received the death penalty. When the judge asked where Vasquez was after she had been revealed as the true killer, Edgeworth replied that she had gone to the waiting room, rather than that she had been arrested. Furthermore, during the next case, Maya Fey stated that "the criminal [Hammer] impersonated the defendant", indicating that Vasquez was considered innocent.

Personality
Vasquez was generally very calm (to the point of appearing bored of everything around her) and rarely got angry, even when she was indicted for Hammer's murder. She treated Manella like dirt, but the latter didn't seem to mind. Although she did have a brief lapse in her composure when Wright began to get the better of her, she returned to her usual self when finally beaten and accepted her defeat calmly, being one of the few culprits Wright encountered to accept defeat graciously. The other notable break in her normal demeanor was just after Manuel's death, where she was openly horrified and screamed frantically for the actor not to die.

Vasquez's extreme reaction to Manuel's death, as shown in a flashback, could indicate that she knew the actor personally. Alternatively, it may just show a producer panicking at having an actor die in front of her and under her care. She also at one point during Wright's investigation suggests that Manuel's death was not an accident, but that Hammer had done it on purpose. It's never confirmed whether what she says is true, although she does ask why else Hammer would let her mercilessly run his life otherwise.

Name

 * In Japanese, her last name "Himegami" (姫神) means "princess-goddess". Her name can further be broken down as "megami" meaning "goddess", and "Hi", which could refer to a different kanji which is read as "hi", meaning "fire", perhaps as an allusion to her smoking.


 * "Sakura" (サクラ) is traditionally known as the cherry blossom, which is seen as a noble and beautiful flower, and Vasquez is stated as being very beautiful by Wright.


 * Her English given name is possibly derived from the word "diva" (especially if combined with the start of her surname). This is backed up by Manella accidently referring to her as "Diva" instead of "Dee" at one point. "Dee" is also used as a diminutive form of various male and female given names including Cordelia, Daniel, Dawn, Deidre, Douglas and Mandy.


 * "Vazquez" is a Spanish surname (it can also be spelt "Vázquez", "Vásquez", or "Vásques") which may originate from the Spanish family name/masculine first name "Velasco", which in turn comes from the Basque "bel-" (meaning "raven" or "crow") and the diminutive suffix "-sco". With Dee Vasquez, it may be a play on "vacuous", referring to her apparent lack of attention.


 * Her full English name may be a play on "divaesque", meaning something reminiscent of a diva.

Development

 * Originally Vasquez's character was to be male, but was changed when one of the designers pointed out that all the criminals were turning out to be men.


 * In-game, when a character is speaking, the noise used as the text appears on the screen usually differs depending on the gender of the speaker; deeper if male and higher pitched if female. Vasquez is unusual in that she uses the "male" tone, suggesting that she has a low voice. Alternatively, it may be a leftover from the developers initially intending for the character to be male. That this was unintended is backed up by the fact that her "text tone" was changed to the usual female version in the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy HD remake.


 * Her sister, Tanpopo, appears in the Gyakuten Saiban promotional manga (Turnabout Crossover), and is also a producer.


 * She is the first killer in the Ace Attorney series to congratulate Wright on defeating them in court.


 * After breaking her pipe in anger, her small "from-behind" sprite still shows her holding it, intact, in her hand.