Ponco

Ponco

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Ponco V · T · F
Occupation	Robot
Biological information
Reckoned birth year(s) (this is for age comparison purposes, and so may look odd; click on the question mark for details)?	2020 or earlier
Documented age range (as recorded in court record profiles & case files)	At least 7* (age at debut)
Eye color	Changes with mood; usually blue
Hair color	N/A
Height (the metric (cm) values are sourced from official guidebooks and may not reflect the relative sizes of characters as depicted in-game or in other official media)	3'9"; 115 cm
Associates
Family	Metis Cykes (inventor and "mother"; deceased) Aura Blackquill (inventor and "mother") Clonco (fellow robot and "brother")
Friends	Athena Cykes
Affiliates	Cosmos Space Center (birthplace and workplace) Yuri Cosmos (Space Center assistant director) Solomon Starbuck (Space Center astronaut)
Aliases/nicknames
Ms. Panko* (by Miles Edgeworth)
One-off nicknames
An utterly inflexible little robot* (by Miles Edgeworth)
Names in other languages
Japanese (romanization written with the given name first)	Psychological Operator & Navigating Companion ポンコ (Ponco)
Miscellaneous
Debut episode	The Cosmic Turnabout
Musical theme	"Lively People"

Ponco

Welcome to the Space Center, guests! Welcome! [...] Are you sightseeing? Are you lost? Are you looking around? Choose one! I will guide you!

— The Cosmic Turnabout

Ponco, standing for Psychological Observation and Navigation Companion, is a robot working at a space station. Its face bears a similarity to Athena Cykes's Widget.

Abilities

Like the other "Robots with Hearts", Ponco has the ability to engage in conversations with people, although her ability to communicate is limited to what she's been programmed with. This means that she sees things with her limited knowledge of what's happening. For example, she can mistake a person attacking someone for giving them a hug. She also can express basic emotions, as indicated by her "face" and how she feels happy upon helping people.

Like the other robots, Ponco has a number of identification recognition abilities. These include facial recognition, ID scanning and a heartbeat detector.

Witnessing a "hug"

Main article: UR-1 Incident

On October 7 2020, Ponco went to the Robotics Lab to recharge, where she "saw" who she detected as being Dr. Metis Cykes and her daughter Athena. In reality, Dr. Cykes had been murdered, and was on the floor with her face covered by a handkerchief. Wearing Dr. Cykes' coat with her ID tag on it, and using a mask to cover his face, the murderer managed to trick Ponco's recognition systems into believing that he was Dr. Cykes. Ponco witnessed the young Athena stabbing her mother's killer with a knife, which, due to her limited understanding, she interpreted as a hug.

Afterwards, Athena asked Ponco to move her mother's body to the operating table so that she could "fix" her. Shortly after, Simon Blackquill came to the lab to discuss with Dr. Cykes about Athena. Believing that Athena had killed her mother, Blackquill dismembered Ponco with the katana used to murder Dr. Cykes, thinking that she had witnessed the crime. The dismantled Ponco was placed in a rolling case and wheeled out of the lab, and left elsewhere in the Space Center where she was later found and repaired.

Retrial of UR-1

Main article: Turnabout for Tomorrow

Ponco ended up becoming a witness during the retrial. Her testimony, and information of her recognition systems, helped Phoenix Wright to prove Athena's innocence.

Ponco was chosen to join the HAT-3 launch on a visit to the Moon. She casually wondered if Athena and Dr. Cykes would be more interested in one of two lunar landmarks. Upon being told that both would be happy with either decision, she cheered.

Personality

Like the other robots, Ponco referred to Dr. Cykes and Aura as "Mother". She built lasting relationships with them and Athena, considering them her friends. Programmed to guide visitors around the space center, she takes great delight in helping people out and making people happy. The one thing that annoys her seems to be people referring to her name incorrectly, which is done by Miles Edgeworth, causing her to angrily restate her name.

Notes

• Ponco is the fourth known non-human witness to give testimony in court. Canonically, she's the third, with Orla Shipley giving testimony in Turnabout Reclaimed, and Polly testifying before her in Turnabout Goodbyes.
• During the first 13 episodes' opening credits of Gyakuten Saiban: Sono “Shinjitsu”, Igiari!, Ponco is seen as a chalk drawing along with Trucy Wright, her puppet Mr. Hat, and the Steel Samurai, however, she is colored green like Clonco.

Development

• Having robot characters allowed the developers a lot of freedom that was not afforded to typical human characters. Ponco's over-the-top "damage" animation (in which her head flies off), the psychical and "psychological" abuse they are casually subjected to, which is mostly played for black comedy, are examples of the developers fully utilising this opportunity.