Angel Starr

"Angel Starr"

- The name is Angel Starr. Don't you go forgetting it. Or before you know it I'll have you whimpering at my heels.

"Phoenix Wright"

- Y-y-yes, ma'am! (Yipes! She means it!)

Angel "Cough-Up Queen" Starr is a boxed lunch vendor. She was a detective until she was fired after the events of the SL-9 Incident. Two years later, she was called as a witness in the murder of a fellow detective who had been involved in the SL-9 Incident but had kept his job. Starr is shown to have a strong hostility towards prosecutors, especially Lana Skye and Miles Edgeworth.

Early life
Little is known of Starr's early life other than that she knew Dick Gumshoe when he was 16. According to him, she was already good at getting people to "cough-up" when she was in high school. He has mentioned vaguely to Phoenix Wright that only Starr could get him to talk about what had happened "that day", although he has never elaborated on what he meant by this.

Detective career and the SL-9 Incident

 * Main article: SL-9 Incident

Eventually, Starr joined the police and rose to the rank of detective. She was very adept at getting criminals to confess, earning the nickname "Cough-Up Queen". Her career culminated in the investigation of the SL-9 Incident with fellow detectives Bruce Goodman, Jake Marshall, Lana Skye and Damon Gant, as well as prosecutor Miles Edgeworth.

After SL-9, all the detectives involved in the case were either fired or demoted to patrolmen. Starr was one of those who lost their jobs completely. Like others, she suspected that the prosecutor's office had tampered with the evidence, and began to develop a cynical hatred toward prosecutors. Over the next two years, Starr used her new job as a boxed lunch vendor to visit the Prosecutor's Building and hopefully gain some insight as to what had really happened in the SL-9 Incident. She would boast that her lunches were imported from "the freshest and the best from the Far East". She also began to have multiple "boyfriends" who would help with her investigation. Meanwhile, Gant and Skye were promoted to Chief of Police and Chief Prosecutor, respectively.

Witness

 * Main article: Rise from the Ashes

Two years after the SL-9 Incident, Starr walked into the underground parking lot of the Prosecutor's Building, where she saw Lana Skye stab the body of Bruce Goodman in the trunk of Miles Edgeworth's car. She covertly took pictures of the deed that was unfolding using a camera disguised as a boxed lunch. She then approached Lana and apprehended her as she was calling her sister Ema Skye. Getting to Lana took about five minutes due to Starr's positioning in the parking lot. Lana was put on trial for the murder.

Phoenix Wright took Lana's case. Starr met Wright twice during his investigation in the parking lot, and she divulged some details about what she had witnessed. Starr then met Wright again as Prosecutor Edgeworth's first witness. Wright found some holes in Starr's testimony, and he drew attention to the time that Starr had taken to get to Lana. However, Starr presented one of Goodman's shoes to the court, which she had taken from the crime scene since she didn't trust the prosecutor's office and suspected they may try to cover the crime up. Starr claimed that Lana had kicked over a drum full of water to wash away the blood that had been at the scene. Nonetheless, the trial was postponed when Damon Gant appeared to deliver the news that another "Bruce Goodman" had been killed in the police department. Starr then met Wright again at the parking lot and told him about the SL-9 Incident. Wright later found that Goodman had already been dead when Lana was stabbing him, and that Goodman's real killer was Damon Gant, closing the SL-9 case for good.

Personality
Before the SL-9 Incident, Starr looked up to and admired Lana Skye. However, when the aftermath left her without a job, she quickly developed a resentment towards Lana, believing her to have betrayed her colleagues. She also developed a passionate hatred towards prosecutors, who she believed to be corrupt.

Starr is an aggressive and promiscuous woman who has little trust in other people. She also has the habit of using her various boxed lunches to emphasize a point, to bribe someone or to indicate her true feelings towards someone. She always speaks with her bangs covering one eye. One of her personality quirks is that her more aggressive side causes her to flip her bangs to cover her left eye. Her left eye is brown and appears serene and sweet, while her right eye is grey and looks far more menacing. She seems perfectly aware of these two drastically different parts of her personality, saying that she is sometimes a demon but she could be an angel too.

Name

 * "Ichinotani" (市ノ谷) is a play on Ichi-no-Tani, the site of a famous battle during the Genpei War in Japan. This may be in reference to her aggressive personality.


 * "Kyouka" (響華) means "an offering of flowers before a grave" or "mirror flower".


 * In Japanese, her nickname (the Japanese version's equivalent of "Cough-Up Queen") is "Gero-mamire-no-Okyou" (ゲロまみれのおキョウ), with "ゲロまみれ" meaning "covering in spew". "Gero" can mean both "spew" and "confession", likely meant as an indication towards her talent while she was a detective for extricating confessions from suspects.


 * The name "Angel" could be to convey a sense of goodness and purity. This is at odds with her aggressive nature and her multiple boyfriends. "Starr" may be meant to convey similar sentiments.


 * Her French name means "angelic star".

Development

 * The difference in her eye colors are apparently due to colored contact lenses according to the developers.


 * Starr has what appears to be onigiri attached to the side of her hat and a necklace similar in shape to the "octodogs" (sausage cut to resemble an octopus) seen in Japanese-style bento lunches.


 * Her lunches tend to incorporate gimmicks or follow a theme. The lunches mentioned in-game in chronological order (although some rely on presenting certain evidence or making a mistake in court) are: Half n' Half, Crunchy Goodness, General Tso's Trilobite lunch set, Lunchland's Pickle Supreme lunchbox, Caviar Lunch, Fiesta Bowl, "The Fingerprint" lunchbox, "Salmon Swirl" lunch, "Lover's Lunchbox", Orange-peel Lunchbox, Squid Wheels, PB&J lunch with fresh boysenberry jam, jumbo lunchbox (triple-decker), Salisbury Steak Lunch, and The Wright Way Lunch.