Franziska von Karma

"Franziska von Karma"

- Tsk, tsk, tsk. Mr. Phoenix Wright. I grow tired of the foolish foolery of the foolish fools of this foolish country...

Franziska von Karma is the daughter of the late veteran prosecutor Manfred von Karma and a formidable prosecuting attorney in her own right. She was the prosecutor for most of Phoenix Wright's cases from June 2017 until March 2018, as well as an acting prosecutor for the trial of Iris of Hazakura Temple. She also aided Interpol in their investigation into an international smuggling ring, as well as another investigation into a black market auction. She enjoys using the terms "fool" and "foolish" (and variations thereof) to describe people who are, in her opinion, inferior. She is also known to carry a whip (a riding crop when she was younger) with her at all times, which she will often use on almost everybody she meets with very little provocation.

Early life and career

 * Main article: Turnabout Reminiscence

"Phoenix Wright"

- Th-Th-Thirteen!? The kid became a prosecutor at the age of THIRTEEN!?

Franziska von Karma was born and raised in Germany by her father Manfred von Karma. When she was two years old, her father took in an orphaned Miles Edgeworth, with whom she shared a sibling bond. However, Edgeworth tended to do his own thing, frequently leaving Franziska behind. During her years at elementary school, Franziska would always wind up going to her previous year's classroom.

Feeling overwhelming pressure from her father's reputation as a so-called "perfect" prosecutor, Franziska started her legal studies in Germany at a very young age, and by the age of 13, she was set to pass the bar exam. She took a vacation to America with her father to watch Edgeworth prosecute his first case, but the trial was canceled when the defendant and a prosecutor were found dead in a defendant lobby.

Manfred put the two of them in charge of the subsequent investigation, much to the dismay of detective Tyrell Badd, who was supposed to have been a witness in the trial as an expert on the notorious Great Thief Yatagarasu. Franziska told Edgeworth that they would compete to find the killer first, and Edgeworth played along. Upon investigating the crime scene, Franziska and Edgeworth argued about the order of events, with Edgeworth arguing that the evidence didn't make sense with the assumption that the victims had killed each other. Franziska then followed Edgeworth as he questioned the various individuals tied with the trial until Edgeworth confronted Calisto Yew as the killer and the Yatagarasu. However, Yew shot at them and escaped from the courthouse, with Detective Badd vowing to catch her.

Franziska started her prosecuting career shortly after this incident. Compounded with her perfect record up to her arrival in America, she earned a reputation as "the Prodigy". Like her father and Edgeworth, she would go to great lengths to get a guilty verdict, resorting to her father's tactics in her efforts to match his fame.

Encounters with Phoenix Wright

 * Main article: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice For All

"Franziska von Karma"

- I gave up a promising career in Germany and came to this country for one sole reason. Revenge.

In 2017, Franziska von Karma learned of her father's loss to defense attorney Phoenix Wright and his subsequent conviction for the murder of Gregory Edgeworth. She also learned of Miles Edgeworth's losses to Wright and his subsequent disappearance. Franziska traveled to Los Angeles to face Wright in court; if she won, she would have beaten a lawyer that Edgeworth could not, getting her revenge for being "left behind".

First encounter

 * Main article: Reunion, and Turnabout

"Franziska von Karma"

- Foolish fool who foolishly dreams of foolish dreams... Ten minutes. I give the defense ten minutes before it changes its plea. That's right. I'll have you running for the "justified self-defense" plea in no time.

Franziska first faced Wright in the trial of Maya Fey, who had been accused of the murder of Turner Grey during a spirit channeling at Kurain Village. Franziska whipped anyone who she felt was out of line, including the presiding judge himself. She began the trial by mocking Wright that he would change his plea from "not guilty" to "justified self-defense" in ten minutes, but Wright persisted with the plea of "not guilty". Eventually, when she was revealed to have manipulated the witness testimony, Wright quickly condemned her for being no different from her ruthless father.

Franziska proved to be quite a formidable opponent for Wright, even having researched the Kurain Channeling Technique to strengthen her case. She was even willing to break established evidence law so as to show an incriminating picture that strengthened her case to the judge. Wright, sensing her grudge towards him, told her that winning would not bring her father back. Despite all the tactics that she utilized, she could not best Wright, and she experienced her first defeat. Furious, she whipped Wright until he fell unconscious.

Next confrontation

 * Main article: Turnabout Big Top

"Franziska von Karma"

- You have no chance. Zero. Zilch. Nada. I'm not losing this case! Why, you ask? Because it is not in the nature of a Von Karma to lose at anything!!

"Maya Fey"

- I guess being born with the name Von Karma is a free pass to be arrogant and annoying.

By the time of their next courtroom battle, Franziska had concluded that her previous loss had been a fluke and "did not count". She made her intentions known to Wright, blaming him for Edgeworth's disappearance. She knew that Detective Dick Gumshoe was trying to help Wright in his investigations, so she planted a tracking device on him to prevent him from doing so. She found Wright talking to and taking evidence from a witness, Acro, and took said evidence for herself. Gumshoe later suggested a surprise search of Acro's room, which Franziska conducted; this ended up costing her the case, as Acro, who turned out to be the real killer, had been forced to hide his murder weapon underneath his wheelchair to avoid discovery during the raid, and had thus taken it with him to court. Wright figured this out, leading to another loss for Franziska von Karma.

Return of Edgeworth

 * Main article: Farewell, My Turnabout

"Franziska von Karma"

- You pathetic fool! I don't want to hear the wretched whimpering of a disgraced loser! A Von Karma is someone who is destined to be perfect! Miles Edgeworth... You are no longer worthy! You are no longer worthy of being a Von Karma! And neither am I!

Franziska was now even more determined to defeat Wright in their next trial together. A famous actor, Juan Corrida, had been murdered, and another actor, Matt Engarde, had been accused. During their investigations, however, Miles Edgeworth returned to the Criminal Affairs Department to discover Wright and Franziska arguing about whether the latter prosecuted only to win. His appearance angered them both, with Franziska calling him a coward.

Franziska later spoke to a witness, Adrian Andrews, telling her not to testify about her involvement in tampering with the crime scene. However, before the trial, Franziska was shot in the shoulder and taken to the Hotti Clinic, while Edgeworth took her place as prosecutor. In addition, telling Andrews to refuse to testify worked against the prosecution, as Wright tried to name her as the real killer. Edgeworth emotionally broke Andrews in order to force her to talk, which resulted in new information which delayed the verdict until the next day.

At the Hotti Clinic, Wright visited her with a bouquet of tulips. However, when she asked what Wright was doing with the bouquet, he panicked. Franziska later recovered and, upon hearing that Gumshoe had gotten into a car crash trying to deliver crucial evidence, took it upon herself to deliver said evidence to court instead. Although the evidence ended up clinching the guilty verdict, after the trial, she was shocked to find that Wright was happy, despite experiencing his first loss in court. Unknown to Franziska, her shooter had kidnapped Maya Fey and had been blackmailing Wright into getting an acquittal for Engarde, who he knew was guilty of the crime. The evidence had turned the shooter against Engarde, thereby ending Maya's imprisonment.

Meanwhile, Edgeworth explained that he had disappeared in order to find out what being a prosecutor truly meant, and that his answer was simply to find the truth. Furious that Edgeworth was talking about something bigger than winning in court, and overwhelmed by her own losses, Franziska stormed out of the courtroom, leaving her whip behind. Edgeworth followed her to the airport and returned the whip. He told her that she was still a prosecutor, even if she wasn't a genius like her father, and that she herself would understand someday the meaning of being a lawyer. However, if she quit prosecuting, he would keep going forward and wouldn't wait for her. Franziska then began to cry, and vowed to become a better prosecutor and to face Wright in court again when she came back. She left the country with that vow in mind, taking a piece of evidence from the case with her: a Shelly de Killer calling card over which Maya had drawn an image of Wright. She said that she would give it to the defense attorney the next time they met, but has made no mention of it since.

Return to America

 * Main article: Bridge to the Turnabout

One year after Engarde's conviction, Franziska was appointed as an acting prosecutor to another case with Wright, and she returned to America for another chance to defeat him. The case involved the murder of a children's book illustrator, Elise Deauxnim, with a temple nun named Iris as the accused. However, instead of Wright, she saw Edgeworth at the defense's bench. Shocked at first, she quickly recovered to see this as her chance to prove herself as Edgeworth's better directly. The presiding judge tried to confiscate her whip, but Edgeworth asked him to allow her to keep it. The judge then remembered Franziska's father, but she told the court that she no longer identified herself as the daughter of a genius prosecutor whose genius she had to match, but as just herself.

Edgeworth and Franziska argued about the strange circumstances in which the murder victim was supposedly killed. In addition, witness Larry Butz claimed to have seen Iris flying across a burning bridge. Using a crystal that had fallen from the victim's staff far from the apparent scene of the crime, Edgeworth convinced the court that the murder had happened somewhere else, and the trial was adjourned. Franziska was infuriated with her failure to defeat Edgeworth, and blamed Butz for this failure, whipping him into unconsciousness just like she had done to Wright a year ago. Undeterred, Butz tried to get her to model for his picture book, to no avail.

Franziska decided to follow Wright, who had been incapacitated that day and recovered after the trial, in his investigation. They met Pearl Fey, Maya's cousin, who harshly told off Franziska for her behaviour towards Maya in her trial. This left Franziska speechless and visibly hurt, although she quickly recovered enough to whip Wright when she caught him smirking at her situation. They also met Godot, the prosecutor who was supposed to have taken the case. He treated Franziska with disdain, telling her to know her place as an acting prosecutor, as the case belonged to him.

Accompanying Wright, Franziska learned of a plot to murder Maya Fey by channeling Iris's deceased sister, Dahlia Hawthorne. It was also revealed that Elise Deauxnim was actually the long-lost Master of the Fey clan, Misty Fey. Godot vowed to defeat Wright, but he lost in court, after being implicated as the real killer. Wright acknowledged that, without the help of Edgeworth and Franziska, the case would have been lost.

The smuggling ring

 * Main articles: Turnabout Airlines and Turnabout Ablaze

Franziska went on to assist Interpol in its investigation of an international smuggling ring. One of the ring's major activities involved smuggling Babahlese ink to Zheng Fa to make fake currency there. Her investigation took her to Hope Springs Airport in the wake of the murder of Akbey Hicks, the agent she was supposed to be aiding. At first she believed that Edgeworth, who was on the plane that Hicks was on, was the killer, but Edgeworth quickly refuted her accusation, which shifted the blame onto flight attendant Rhoda Teneiro. She allowed him to question Teneiro and investigate the cargo hold of the plane, which turned out to be the crime scene. Edgeworth determined that another attendant, Cammy Meele, had pushed Hicks over a railing to his death. Using Franziska's phone to download details from Hicks's phone, whose screen had been broken during the fall, Edgeworth found decisive clues leading to Meele's arrest.

Franziska's next mission from Interpol sent her to the embassies of Allebahst and Babahl, along with another agent, Shi-Long Lang, to serve as part of the security contingent for a goodwill event happening in the joint building as the notorious "Great Thief" Yatagarasu had threatened to steal a terrible secret from the embassies. Franziska watched as Allebahst's ambassador, Quercus Alba, prepared to give a speech in the rose garden of the Allebahstian Embassy, but the Yatagarasu's shadow suddenly appeared, throwing the audience into an uproar. Franziska tried to catch this figure, whipping anyone she could, but the shadow disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared. Shortly afterward, Alba summoned Franziska to his office to have a friendly talk. Meanwhile, the Yatagarasu was also sighted in Babahl, and two fires erupted on that side. Shortly afterward, the embassies were embroiled in an investigation of two murders, one at each embassy.

Edgeworth happened to be in the embassy, seeking to catch the Yatagarasu. He offered to placed himself under Franziska's authority to gain investigative privileges, which she enthusiastically accepted; the opportunity to have her "little brother" working under her was far too good of an opportunity to pass up. The victim on the Babahlese side, Ambassador Colias Palaeno's assistant Manny Coachen, was found to have been a part of the smuggling ring, and it was presumed that he was the leader. The victim on the Allebahstian side, a thief named Ka-Shi Nou, was found to have been killed with the Primidux Statue in the Allebahstian Ambassador's Office. The statue had in fact been switched with an identical-looking statue in Babahl; the statues originally in the Babahlese and Allebahstian sides were later revealed to be genuine and fake, respectively.

Edgeworth and Franziska then investigated the rose garden and determined that an accomplice to the Yatagarasu had set up two statues in the garden so that spotlights would shine on them and form the shadow seen earlier. Edgeworth then returned to the Babahlese side for further investigation. He, Franziska, and Lang met at the Theatrum Neutralis between the embassies to discuss Edgeworth's findings. Edgeworth pointed to Lang's aide Shih-na as the arsonist in the Babahlese embassy, and after questioning, she was revealed to be the woman to had gone by the alias "Calisto Yew" from many years before. However, as she was being taken into custody, "Shih-na" told Edgeworth that she had not murdered anyone at the embassy, and that the rest was for him to figure out.

Quercus Alba then tried to declare the investigation over, since the apparent culprit of all of the events that had unfolded had been caught, but Lang then suddenly accused Franziska of the murder of Ka-Shi Nou. He requested that Alba allow him to investigate Alba's office again to solidify his case, which Alba was obliged to grant. After questioning Franziska about her visit to the office, Edgeworth eventually figured out that Alba had been Shih-na's partner in crime and the true leader of the smuggling ring. At this point, Lang admitted that his accusation had been a ploy all along, so that he could get to his real target, Alba. However, Alba wouldn't surrender that easily; he admitted to killing Ka-Shi Nou out of self-defense, showing a wound that he claimed Nou had inflicted on him. Because of his position as an ambassador, he had the right to be tried in his own country's courts; America's prosecutors could not touch him.

However, the investigation team didn't give up. Franziska did her part by digging up the security footage of people entering each embassy, which proved that Coachen had not left the Theatrum Neutralis alive. The next confrontation with Alba had Edgeworth prove Alba's guilt of Coachen's murder piece by piece, with the aid of several other individuals in the area and Lang contacting the Allebahstian imperial household to have Alba's ambassadorship revoked. Alba was subsequently tried in both the United States and the newly-reunited Cohdopia, with Edgeworth and Franziska at each respective prosecutor's bench, and Alba was finally convicted for his crimes. After the trials, Franziska chose to stay in the Cohdopian courts for a while to give her whip new vigor.

Black market auction

 * Main article: The Forgotten Turnabout

After the Alba case, Franziska returned from Cohdopia to the United States. Still working on Interpol's behalf to hunt down the remnants of the smuggling ring, her investigation led her to a black market auction of police evidence being held at the Big Tower. When Tsubasa Kagome was found murdered in the Prosecutorial Investigation Committee's (P.I.C.) meeting room, Franziska was put in charge of the investigation. She headed to the crime scene and found Edgeworth and Kay Faraday, as well as the coroner, Otome Itami.

Later, Hakari Mikagami and Yumihiko Ichiyanagi arrived, and they ended up arguing with Edgeworth about the case. Franziska had no qualms with giving her opinions on Yumihiko's competence using both her words and whip. Eventually, Yumihiko's father Bansai, the chair of the P.I.C., showed up and tried to force Faraday's arrest for the murder. Edgeworth intervened despite threats of being fired and, to everyone's shock, laid down his prosecutor's badge, saying that he would not be stopped from finding the truth. Faraday then ran from the meeting room, and Edgeworth chased after her.

Franziska was upset that Edgeworth would just quit and leave her behind again, and told him as much later that day when he took a secret lift to the meeting room from the floor above; Edgeworth had found a hidden storage room for the auctioned evidence on the floor right above the meeting room. After a discussion on the matter, it was determined that Kagome had been a customer, and that the conductor of the auction was still at large. Bansai then found them and, despite protests from Franziska and others, had both Edgeworth and Faraday thrown in jail.

Edgeworth had a hearing with the P.I.C. the next day, which he used to launch an accusation against Bansai as the man behind the auctions and the murder. During the meeting, Dick Gumshoe asked for an updated autopsy report on the victim, and handed it over to Franziska, who went to the hearing to present it. It turned out that the original autopsy report had been altered by Itami's granddaughter Tōko Mutō, who was being blackmailed by Bansai. The murder weapon was never found, but with the surprise help of Mikagami, Edgeworth was able to prove that Bansai was indeed guilty. Upon realizing that his father was a criminal, Yumihiko ran away. Franziska sympathized with him, knowing the pain of realizing her father's true nature.

Yumihiko's disappearance

 * Main article: The Grand Turnabout

Yumihiko was not found in time for the trial of Marī Miwa, who was charged with murder after a previous investigation by Edgeworth. Kagome was supposed to be Miwa's defense attorney, but Tateyuki Shigaraki took her place. Franziska offered to fill in for Yumihiko, but when the trial started, she found out that the evidence against Miwa had gone missing. Shigaraki convinced Mikagami to suspend the trial instead of ending it in an acquittal.

Edgeworth arrived at the courthouse and, after learning of the situation, had both Shigaraki and Franziska agree to stall the trial while he looked for Yumihiko. He found the young prosecutor bound and gagged in his father's garage. Edgeworth learned that Yumihiko had given the evidence against Miwa to his father for safekeeping, and that Bansai had probably thrown it away. Yumihiko suddenly ran away, leaving Franziska and Shigaraki with little choice other than to go with the few leads that they had. Edgeworth found out that Miwa and Bansai had a connection from 12 years ago, and so Shigaraki summoned Bansai to the stand.

Yumihiko eventually returned to the courtroom with evidence. It turned out that he had gone to look for the evidence that Bansai had thrown away in the junkyard. Franziska graciously gave the prosecutor's bench back to him and watched from the gallery as he and Edgeworth proved that Bansai had thrown away the evidence. The trial was thus adjourned, with Bansai officially losing all of his authority.

Just then, however, Lang arrived to take in Mikagami for questioning. Upon seeing Miwa and Bansai, he mentioned them finally getting justice for what they had done during the SS-5 Incident. Franziska and Shigaraki decided to investigate said case, and it turned out that Bansai had been in charge of it. They brought the case files to Edgeworth and Lang so that they could re-investigate. Afterward, Franziska accompanied Edgeworth and supported him in the final confrontation with Sōta Sarushiro, the mastermind behind all the recent events that Edgeworth had encountered.

Personality
"Franziska von Karma"

- Those of von Karma blood have only one fate. And that is "perfection".

Franziska von Karma in court was very competitive, unrelenting, and cold, going to extreme lengths to get a guilty verdict. She viewed trials and investigations as competitions, and considered defense attorneys her enemies. This was due to her belief that being a "genius" prosecutor with a perfect record was the only option that she had, although she knew that she was not really capable of the genius her father had displayed. In her earlier years, she even had a tendency to suck up and show off to those in authority.

When she began to lose to Phoenix Wright, she lost what she believed was the meaning of her life. When Edgeworth began to talk about the meaninglessness of win records, she resisted the idea at first, but eventually began to understand, after which she resolved to no longer live under her father's shadow. She has since developed somewhat friendlier relationships with those whom she had previously considered her enemies and incompetent obstacles. She has expressed a continued determination to beat Wright in court - for her own sake, not for anyone else's - but has since moved on, aiding Interpol in its investigations.

Franziska is very arrogant and headstrong. Although she generally speaks in a formal tone, to the point of addressing everyone by their full names, she constantly uses the word "fool" and variations thereof to describe people whom she considers inferior, namely almost everyone. In addition, she likes to use her whip to assert her dominance over other people, including those who are supposed to be her superiors. However, she is prone to lose her cool and even be visibly emotionally hurt, such as when Pearl Fey blamed her for trying to convict the innocent Maya. Nonetheless, as far as her general reputation goes, Edgeworth has described Franziska as a megalomaniac, and he and Godot have both referred to her as a "wild mare".

Franziska's whip is notable for revealing much of Franziska's attitudes toward others and herself. She once commented that it seems to have a mind of its own after suddenly whipping Gumshoe. She later whipped him again, claiming that it was her "reward" to him. The use of her whip in this way has the consequence that it is never seriously acknowledged as a weapon that could be used to cause serious harm or even death. While murder weapons like knives are frequently referred to as dangerous, Franziska is allowed to keep her whip and use it even on authority figures such as judges.

The whip (with a riding crop being previously used when she was a young teenager) also seems be a metaphor for Franziska herself. She abandoned it while trying to run away from her life, and her one known emotional breakdown occurred as Edgeworth was giving it back to her. Pearl Fey also told Franziska that she was simply a little girl without it. She has also befriended Adrian Andrews and taught her how to use the whip, a friendship that she initiated after her own breakdown at the airport in front of Edgeworth.

Name

 * In pronunciation terms, her Japanese surname "Karuma" (狩魔) is the Japanese romanization for "karma". In kanji terms, "karu ma" (狩 魔) means "a demon who hunts".
 * Her Japanese given name "Mei" (冥) can mean "dark", "gloomy", or "night".
 * "Franziska" is the female form of "Franz", the German equivalent of "Francis", which comes from the Germanic tribal name of the Franks, and means roughly "frank" (as in open/honest) or "free". It was probably chosen to match the Germanic influence of her father's name.
 * "Karma" likely comes from the bad karma her father had built up over the years from his questionable tactics. "Von" is a German preposition which approximately means "of" or "from". Also, German names containing a "von" are usually names of aristocrats.

Development

 * Although Miles Edgeworth was originally intended to be the primary prosecutor in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice For All, the development team caught wind of the character's popularity during production. Feeling he couldn't have the popular "prodigy prosecutor" continue to lose every case against Wright, Shu Takumi decided that Edgeworth should instead be used more sparingly, and so Franziska was created to fill the rival role for the game.
 * Both Franziska and Manfred von Karma are Japanese in the original versions of the games, but Franziska studied and was raised in America.
 * Franziska's hair and eyes are blue in development notes and game sprites for the first three Ace Attorney games. However, in Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth and Gyakuten Kenji 2, they are more grey-blue.
 * Franziska has some animations that are similar to her father's, including one in which she crosses her arms with her eyes closed while every so often clenching her hand.

Other media

 * Franziska, Mia Fey, Phoenix Wright, and Miles Edgeworth all appear as Character Cards in SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters DS.
 * Franziska was originally supposed to be a playable character in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars, along with Wright and possibly other characters from the Ace Attorney series. The game's producer, Ryota Niitsuma, noted that having a whip would have made her easy to implement. However, problems with Wright's character prevented both of them from making the cut.
 * In Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Wright has a number of alternative costumes he can wear, the color schemes of which are all references to other characters. Maya Fey appears as some of Wright's attacks and her costume also changes depending on the one Wright is wearing. One of the choices for Wright is based on the color scheme of Dick Gumshoe's normal clothing, while Maya's corresponding color scheme is based on that of Franziska's clothing. She also appears, along with Miles Edgeworth and Godot, as cards in the game's "Heroes and Heralds Mode".
 * Franziska appears as a character in Onimusha Soul, a social strategy RPG for online browsers and smartphones developed by Capcom and only released in Japan. Maya Fey and Kay Faraday also appear in the game.