| This article contains information about Ace Attorney media that has been recently released and thus likely contains spoilers! | |
|---|---|
 Readers of this page should be aware that this article likely contains MAJOR SPOILERS concerning the media in question. You have been warned! | |
| We need more pieces to finish this puzzle. | |
|---|---|
|
This article is under construction. While it is not short, it still needs expansion as outlined in the manual of style. The article most likely needs expansion near the end of the tagged section or sections. |
- "Ora Shipley" redirects here; for this orca's sister, see Ora Shipley the First.
| Phoenix Wright |
| A punk-rock pirate killer whale? *groan* It's official -- society's on the road to ruin. |
Orla Shipley (also previously known as Ora "Orla" Shipley) is an orca or killer whale living at the Shipshape Aquarium that is the "lead" in the aquarium's pirate-themed show. After the aquarium's owner, Jack Shipley, was found dead by Orla's pool, she was suspected of having killed him. Her trainer, Sasha Buckler, believed that Orla was innocent, and so requested a newly-reinstated Phoenix Wright to defend the orca in court.
Ora and Orla
Orla and her sister Ora were both found beached on a shore when they were young orca calves by Jack Shipley. They were cared for by Dr. Herman Crab and Jack (with Orla being in worse condition) until they deemed well enough to return to the wild. However, when it was time for the pair to leave, they both refused. They had both become fond of Jack, and so he decided to bring them to his aquarium instead.
Jack Shipley's death
- Main article: Turnabout Reclaimed
Orla on trial
In the time in which Ora and Orla were both at the aquarium, the aquarium had a stage performer, Azura Summers. Animal keeper Marlon Rimes developed a lover relationship with Summers. However, Summers had a fatal heart condition and died suddenly during a stage show, which appeared to most onlookers as if Ora had killed Summers, due to the fact that the orca appeared holding Summers' corpse in her jaw. The Center for Dangerous Animal Control (CDAC) demanded that Ora be euthanized, but Jack Shipley and resident vet Herman Crab negotiated to let Ora live and quietly transferred her to the larger Supermarine Aquarium. At that point, feisty Sasha Buckler and Orla took on Summers' and Ora's roles in the stage show.
By that time, Marlon Rimes had developed a deep hatred toward Orla for being the sister of the orca who had "murdered" his girlfriend. To show his contempt, he did not feed Orla and eventually tried to kill her by draining the orca pool. Jack Shipley caught him in the act and tried to stop him, but fell into the dry pool. Rimes tried to rescue him, but to no avail. Desperate, Rimes performed a call with his whistle and made Orla perform her newly learned "lifesaver" trick. To onlooker Norma DePlume, it looked as if the orca had bitten Shipley to death.
Sasha Buckler went to the Wright Anything Agency and demanded Wright's help, without letting on that his soon-to-be-client was an orca. Wright investigated near the orca pool and found enough evidence to convince Bobby Fulbright to reexamine the case from a criminal perspective and take it to court. Thanks to Norma DePlume's testimony, Wright was able to prove Orla's innocence.
A new suspect
However, the convict prosecutor Simon Blackquill wasted no time in putting Sasha Buckler in the defendant's chair in Orla's place. Blackquill argued that she was Orla's trainer, and had free access to the orca pool, therefore, she could easily murder Shipley while he was there and perform the call to falsely accuse Orla. Wright was able to get Rimes onto the stand and expose his secret.
Personality
Orla is a playful and intelligent orca who has learnt several "tricks" for communicating with humans, including trying to cheer Buckler up with a volleyball and revealing the body of Jack Shipley.
Name
Orla's mugshot.
- "Arafune", her Japanese surname, means "wild boat".
- Her Japanese name "Ale" comes from "hoeeru" (ホエール), which is a word for "whale".
- "Orla" (which means "golden princess") and "Ora" are both derived from "orca".
- "Shipley" is a play on the word "ship."
Development
- Orla is the second non-human animal (after Polly the parrot in Turnabout Goodbyes) to be called as a witness in the Ace Attorney series, as well as the second character to give their testimony remotely (the first being Shelly de Killer in Farewell, My Turnabout). She is, however, the first witness to not speak any English at all during their testimony (excluding Machi Tobaye's testimony, which is in Borginian and translated into English by Lamiroir).