Zak Gramarye

Shadi Enigmar, better known by his stage name Zak Gramarye, was a member of the famous magician group Troupe Gramarye along with Valant Gramarye, Thalassa Gramarye, and their mentor Magnifi Gramarye. Enigmar was Phoenix Wright's final client before his disbarrment and the first suspect to be prosecuted by Klavier Gavin.

After his trial, he went missing for seven years until he reappeared under the alias of a traveller called Shadi Smith. Unfortunately, he was then murdered and his case became the basis for Apollo Justice's first trial.

Troupe Gramarye
Shadi Enigmar was one of the two pupils, the other being Valant Gramarye, that famed magician Magnifi Gramarye chose to carry on his legacy. Under the stage name Zak Gramarye, he, Valant and Magnifi's daughter Thalassa formed the magician's group Troupe Gramarye. Thalassa left the Troupe temporarily to marry another stage performer, but when her husband died, she returned and came to marry Zak. They had a daughter, Trucy, together.

During his career with Troupe Gramarye, Zak came to know of Magnifi Gramarye's ability to focus on tiny, involuntary tells that other people made, which would reveal their state of mind. Zak faced Magnifi in a poker game and, due to Magnifi's "power", he lost a poker game for the first time. Zak later found that Thalassa also had Magnifi's "power"; the ability was passed down from parent to child.

The accident
In 2016, Troupe Gramarye were practicing a dangerous magic trick called "Zak and Valant's Quick-Draw Shoot'em". It ended tragically, however, with the accidental shooting of Thalassa. Magnifi told his apprentices that she had died, covered up the accident, and began to blackmail the two with the incident for three years. A reporter, Spark Brushel, began to snoop around Troupe Gramarye to gain more information about the accident, and this was how he became acquainted with Zak.

Magnifi's death

 * Main article: Turnabout Succession

Magnifi was eventually confined to the hospital with cancer and diabetes. A year later, Zak received a letter from his mentor.

Per his mentor's orders, Zak came to the hospital at 11:05 PM. When he entered the room, Magnifi appeared to be asleep. The guns from "Zak and Valant's Quick-Draw Shoot'em" were on a table in front of the bed. Zak picked up one of the guns, and aimed it at Magnifi. However, he couldn't bring himself to shoot his mentor, so he turned and shot a clown doll in the corner square in the forehead.

After Zak took his shot, Magnifi "awoke," telling Zak he passed. He then wrote a will passing on the rights to his magic to Zak, and tore the page he wrote it on out of his diary. They then had one last conversation as mentor and student, then Zak left the room, taking the gun with him. However, less than half an hour later, Magnifi was found dead in his room with a gunshot wound in the forehead, and Zak was arrested for the crime.

Trial
Needing a defense attorney, Zak invited Kristoph Gavin to his cell to play a game of poker to see if he could trust the man. He determined that Gavin was untrustworthy, so he fired him. Later, Zak invited Phoenix Wright over to detention to play cards with him. Wright won; Zak saw good in Wright and hired him immediately. This action would prove to have dire consequences for both Zak and Wright.

The next day, the trial took place. Zak told Wright to do his best, but that if something were to go awry, it would be impossible for the court to find him guilty. Meanwhile, someone gave Zak's daughter Trucy a letter to give to Wright, who filed it into evidence.

During the trial, Wright presented the evidence, believing that it was the page that had been ripped off of Magnifi's diary. However, the prosecution exposed the evidence as fake. The disappointed judge prepared to give a guilty verdict to Zak, telling him that he had the right to hire a new attorney to appeal his case. However, Zak told the court that it would be impossible to prove him guilty, because the court couldn't give a verdict to someone who didn't exist. He then suddenly disappeared.

The prosecution immediately dispatched the baliff to find Zak. To distract the baliff, Zak used a decoy: Trucy's giant Mr. Hat puppet. The baliff spotted the puppet and gave chase, only to encounter Trucy in defendant lobby No. 2, with no Zak in sight. Meanwhile, Zak escaped the courtroom and disappeared. He would not be seen again for seven years.

Due to his disappearance, people began to suspect Valant as Magnifi's killer, and he was jailed for a short time. Wright was stripped of his attorney's badge, and he adopted Trucy after failing to find any of her relatives.

Reappearance and death

 * Main article: Turnabout Trump

Seven years after Magnifi's death, Zak met Wright at the Borscht Bowl Club under the guise of a traveler named Shadi Smith. Zak had Wright and Spark Brushel sign and notarize a will turning over the rights to Magnifi's tricks to Zak's daughter Trucy, and then Zak wrote a note admitting to killing Magnifi (though he had not), as he regretted causing so much trouble for Valant. Wright questioned Zak about Troupe Gramarye and learned about the Gramarye "power". Zak then challenged Wright to a game of poker, a rematch for the game he had lost to Wright seven years earlier. They played in a room in the basement of the restaurant, which was known as the Hydeout.

Zak's plan was to accuse Wright of cheating with the help of a professional dealer named Olga Orly, who would plant a card on Wright's person. The plan failed when Wright found the card Orly had planted on him and disposed of it. Upon realizing that his dealer had failed, Zak hit her on the neck with a bottle of grape juice, knocking her unconscious. Afterwards, Wright went upstairs to phone the police, while Kristoph Gavin came in through a secret passageway in the Hydeout. Zak spun around in his chair to face Gavin, and was promptly hit with a grape juice bottle by his rejected defense attorney. Zak died from the head trauma, and his hat fell from his head onto the floor.

Wright realized that he would be accused of the murder, and he called Kristoph Gavin to defend him, but when Gavin commented on Zak's baldness under his hat, Wright realized that he was the killer, since Zak had worn the hat for the entire time in which he was out of hiding until his death. Wright decided that he would hire instead one of Gavin's students, a greenhorn attorney by the name of Apollo Justice, who happened to have been the son that Thalassa had had with her first husband. Wright then replaced Zak's hat on his head and prepared for the trial. During his trial, Wright told Justice about the "power" that he had unknowingly inherited, and Justice used it on Orly to find out what had really happened to her. With Wright guiding him along, Justice deduced that Gavin, not Orly or Wright, was the real killer. However, Gavin's motive for killing Zak would not be revealed until months later. Gavin had been furious at being rejected by Zak, who had instead chosen Wright to defend him. Determined not to let this perceived slight go unpunished, it was Gavin who had given Trucy the forged page, in order to ruin Phoenix, and then killed Zak when he finally emerged from hiding.

Personality
Zak had a confidence befitting a famous magician, and he was very jovial. However, he had a violently competitive side that showed when he played poker. He took great pride in his win record, going to great lengths to "punish" Wright for his victory over him, and turning his anger on Olga Orly when things didn't go his way. He was also rather violent toward Spark Brushel, punching him on several occasions when he revealed secrets that Zak didn't want revealed.

Zak also used his poker games to read into his opponent's personalities. He used this to hire a trustworthy lawyer for his trial. However, Zak's ability to read his opponents was a practiced one, and it wasn't nearly as good as the natural "power" of his mentor and his wife.

Name

 * His Japanese stage surname, "Arumajiki" (或真敷), means "unworthy". It could also be a play on "aru" meaning "there is" and "majiki", possibly meaning "magic".


 * "Zakku" (ザック) comes from the Japanese word "zakkubaran" which means "frankly".


 * The alias "Kagerou", comes from the Japanese "kage", meaning "shadow" and "rou" meaning "cage". This means the name "Kagerou" literally means "shadow cage". It could also mean "heat haze".


 * "Zak" and "Zachary" were likely just taken from his Japanese given name.


 * The English stage surname "Gramarye" comes from a word once used as a synonym for magic or sorcery. It is also an alternative spelling of "grimoire", which is supposedly a book of instructions in the use of magic. The French surname "Grimoire" is a more obvious play on this.


 * His real English given name, "Shadi", is a play on "shady". This is likely to make him seem mysterious.


 * His real English surname, "Enigmar", is likely a play on "enigma", meaning "puzzling", "mysterious" or "inexplicable".


 * His fake surname "Smith" was likely chosen as a generic name, as in "John Smith".


 * Zak formed a performing duo with his partner Valent which was referred to as "Zak and Valant". This is a play on "knack and talent", which is even referenced in-game after Phoenix Wright unlocks Valant's Psyche-Locks during the "present" section of Turnabout Succession.

Development

 * His Shadi Smith design was created first. Zak Gramarye was then created by giving him his own Troupe Gramarye costume.


 * Like the other members of Troupe Gramarye, Zak's cape is held in place by a brooch in the shape of a suit in a deck of cards. In Zak's case, this is clubs.


 * For his design as "Shadi", the designers had some difficulty in creating a balance between his "rough" Shadi side and his more fatherly Zak side. This can be seen in the softer facial expressions they gave him during his appearances as "Zak".
 * In his "Shadi Smith" persona, it is noted that Zak's mustache and goatee appear as an inverted version of his Gramarye symbol: The Clover.