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Turnabout Sisters - 1st Trial is the second episode of the animated adaptation of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Gyakuten Saiban: Sono "Shinjitsu", Igiari!. It is the first of three episodes that adapts the story of Turnabout Sisters.

Phoenix Wright agrees to meet Mia Fey for a dinner appointment at her office, where he will also meet her younger sister Maya. However, upon arriving, he is greeted by the ghastly scene of his mentor's body, murdered by a violent blow to the head. With evidence on the scene pointing to Maya, Wright finds himself in a bind to aid her plight.

Synopsis

A phone is heard ringing and is picked up by a female who introduced herself to the caller as "Maya". On the other end, she recognized the voice of her older sister Mia, calling from the law offices of Fey & Co. After exchanging pleasantries, Mia informed Maya of her reason for calling: she was requesting Maya's assistance in holding some evidence on her behalf that she didn't feel comfortable keeping in the office. The evidence was being kept in the shell of "The Thinker", the clock Larry Butz had gifted to Mia during her previous trial. However, unbeknownst to either party, another individual had managed to patch into their call and overheard their entire conversation, taking particular interest in the contents of the clock.

Later in the day, Phoenix Wright was on his way out of the office and was talking with Mia, who had just informed him she had a younger sibling. Wright was surprised he had never heard of this younger Fey and Mia extended an invitation for him to join her and her sister for dinner when her sister came down to the offices. Meanwhile, at the courthouse, a trial was coming to a close. The maroon-jacketed prosecutor had just ended his argument, amid accusations from the defense that he had concealed evidence. The allegation had made front-page news, which Phoenix Wright was reading on the train journey home. His own court victory the previous month had only managed to take a small corner of the page by comparison.

That night, Wright found himself running behind schedule getting back to the offices for his dinner. Upon arriving, he noticed the door to Mia's office had been left ajar and that the lights inside were off, suggesting Mia hadn't yet arrived. He let himself into the back office but found himself stepping on pieces of broken glass. Taking a quick survey around the room, Wright saw it had been thrown into disarray, as if there had been a violent struggle prior to his arrival. Rounding the desk, Wright was greeted with an awful scene: the dead body of Mia Fey lying propped up against the wall.

A thump from behind Wright broke his attention from Mia's remains to a teenage girl sitting terrified in the corner. Wright tried to calm her but she rushed over to the body and mourned the loss of her "sister", meaning she was the younger sibling Wright was going to dinner with that night. Before he could even learn the girl's identity, a man in a dingy green jacket with a pair of handcuffs and flashing a police badge burst into the room with a cadre of other police personnel. Once the police had taken charge of the scene, he introduced himself to Wright and the girl as detective Dick Gumshoe.

A forensic investigator directed Gumshoe's attention to some evidence found on the ground: a receipt with bloodstains on the back that spelled out a name; "Maya". Upon hearing the name, the girl spoke up and revealed it was her name they had read. Gumshoe immediately proclaimed that the case had been closed and grabbed Maya by her arm, charging her for the murder of her sister. Wright tried to protest the hasty arrest but only found himself being dragged in for questioning as well.

The following day, Wright was back at his apartment, listening to the news report of his boss's murder from the previous night. Wright was frustrated over the nonsensical justification for the arrest and how he could do nothing to help Maya, who he saw no reason to suspect for the crime. Hoping to help in any way, he boarded his bicycle and headed for the Detention Center to meet with Maya. Upon arriving in the visitor's room, a depressed and downtrodden Maya was led to the opposite side of the separating glass from Wright.

Wright's first observation of Maya was her unusual mode of dress. He asked if any of her family had been contacted since her arrival but Maya said her mother and father were no longer with her. She explained she had been at the office at the request of her sister and that Mia had intended for her to hold some evidence. Maya said the conversation she had with her sister was likely recorded to her cell phone but that she had dropped it in the office sometime during her arrest. Wright decided to satisfy his curiosity about her outfit, which she explained were the robes of a Fey spirit medium. Her place as a female of the Fey family granted her strong spiritual powers, which she was currently in the process of honing, and that Mia too had been a very gifted medium herself.

Wright asked if Maya was capable of channeling Mia to help solve the crime but she said her powers were not robust enough as of yet. Maya requested a favor of Wright: locate a lawyer named "Grossberg" to counsel as her defense attorney. Wright tried to offer his defense but Maya declined, fearing Wright had already suspected her of the crime from their encounter the previous night. Wright agreed to find the lawyer Maya requested and left the Detention Center.

Later that day Wright was meeting with Marvin Grossberg, the senior attorney of the Grossberg Law Offices. Grossberg explained his connection to Maya as having once been the mentor of Mia. Grossberg was happy to take the defense of Maya, keeping to the promise he had made to her sister that he would look out for Maya should anything happen to her. Wright was very grateful for his acceptance and bid Grossberg farewell. As he left, a phone call came into Grossberg's desk line. Upon picking it up, he was left speechless at the voice familiar to him on the other end of the line. Wright returned to his apartment for the evening while elsewhere, in the office of Miles Edgeworth, Edgeworth was looking out over the cityscape as he reviewed the case files for the upcoming Fey murder trial.

The next day, Wright returned to the empty Fey & Co. law office and reminisced about Mia. He looked at the nearby potted plant and recalled that Mia had named the plant "Charley". As he was looking at the plant, his eye caught the lanyard of a cell phone peering out over the edge of the pot, which turned out to be Maya's phone from the night of the murder. Wright listened to the recorded conversation between Maya and her sister as Dick Gumshoe entered the room. Wright inquired if Gumshoe's investigation had turned up anything but Gumshoe responded that he refused to comment on the case to a defense attorney. Gumshoe said that the trial was all sewn up and that Wright (despite not being her defense attorney) had no chance in court as the prosecutor assigned to the case was Miles Edgeworth, a name familar to Wright as a vicious and uncompromising prodigy of prosecution who had not lost a single trial since taking the bench at age twenty.

Wright inquired about the witness, to which Gumshoe unknowingly gave up as "April May" and that she was presently staying in the nearby hotel. Wright made his way to the hotel and found the witness's room as "303". The door was ajar so he let himself into the room in order to investigate. Wright found a very ornate screwdriver but dropped it upon hearing May's voice call out from the bathroom. However she did not exit, being in the middle of a shower, and assumed her guest was the bellboy. Wright clumsily tried to escape the room, tripping over a wastebasket on his way out. In doing so, he discovered that someone had attempted to hide a strange device in the basket. He took the device and hastily left the hotel.

Outside he took a closer look at the device and discovered it was a wiretapping bug. Wright's cell phone rang, the caller being Marvin Grossberg. Grossberg informed Wright he was suddenly pulling out of the case the day before it was set to go to trial. Wright begged him to reconsider but Grossberg apologetically explained he was not in a position to accept the case and that no other attorney in the city would be willing to either before abruptly hanging up.

Wright desperately crisscrossed the town in the rain, trying to find another attorney who would be willing to accept Maya's case. He was taken back to his own experiences as a child when, at his darkest hour, he had no one supporting him against false charges and likened it to Maya's current predicament. Returning to the Detention Center, Wright apologized to Maya. Maya accepted her abandonment but Wright showed her a list of attorneys he had contacted and that there were still two who might be able to help. He stood up to leave. At that moment, Maya got a glimpse of Wright's suit and saw the cherry blossom petals that had stuck to his back, indicating how much time he had spent trying to help her. Struck by Wright's dedication, she realized there was no one better to help her and, in the same instant, Wright asked her one more time to be her attorney. Realizing they had come to the same conclusion, they attempted to embrace but forgot there was a panel of glass separating them, bumping their heads into their respective sides.

The next day, both Wright and Edgeworth made their way to the courthouse for the trial of Maya Fey, Edgeworth driving in his red sports car and Wright biking. Edgeworth was greeted by a large entourage of media and law enforcement personnel while Wright parked his bike at the bike racks. Wright took his place at the attorney bench and awaited the arrival of Edgeworth. Edgeworth entered the courtroom and greeted the judge with a bow. From Wright's words to his opponent, a sense of familiarity was established and Edgeworth returned the sentiment. All the pieces in place, the trial was set to begin...

Characters

Differences from the game

  • Redd White is not shown killing Mia in the prologue as he does in the game, instead only being shown in shadow while listening in on Mia's phone call to her sister, and later while calling Grossberg to extort him from taking Maya's case.
  • At the time of finding Mia's body, April May is not shown screaming, alerting Phoenix to her presence across the street in her hotel room. Confusingly, later in the episode, Phoenix asks Gumshoe about the "witness" despite never seeing her, although it is possible he either learned about the witness off-screen or was bluffing.
  • In the game, Maya is cautioned against using Wright as her attorney by her sister prior to her death because of his lack of experience. In the anime, her apprehension comes from her belief that he suspects her of being the culprit.
  • In the game, the newspaper article that suspected Edgeworth of using underhanded tactics was what prompted Wright to be a lawyer in the first place. In the anime, the article is published after Wright wins his first case.
  • In the game, Grossberg immediately refuses to take on Maya's case when approached by Wright to defend her. In the anime, Grossberg accepts the case without any issue before receiving a phone call from Redd White and declining the following day.
  • During the shots of Miles Edgeworth's office, the King of Prosecutors trophy and Steel Samurai figurine are shown. These are anachronistic to Turnabout Sisters, Edgeworth having received the Steel Samurai figurine after Turnabout Samurai as an unprovoked gift from Wendy Oldbag and the King of Prosecutors trophy during the events of Rise from the Ashes. In addition, the flashback to his acceptance of the trophy shows he accepted it with his mentor, Manfred von Karma, but in the game von Karma had already been arrested for his role in the DL-6 Incident by the time Edgeworth won the award.
  • Wright does not have a conversation with May in her hotel room as he does in the game. May simply mistakes him for the bellboy from the bathroom and does not meet Wright face-to-face in this episode.
  • In addition to the screwdriver and wiretap, Wright finds a gold and diamond cufflink belonging to White in the trash bin of May's hotel room, serving as evidence to May's connection to White. He also finds the evidence scattered about the room rather than in a drawer, with the screwdriver appearing on the table and the wiretap in the trash bin.
  • As in the first episode, flashbacks to Wright's class trial are shown, a subject that was not touched on in the game's canon until episode 4, Turnabout Goodbyes. In addition, an unnamed girl is shown walking with a young Wright in the rain, offering her umbrella, something that was not originally mentioned or referenced. This girl is also shown among the students accusing Wright of stealing the lunch money during the trial.
  • In the game, Wright insists on officially defending Maya himself almost immediately after Grossberg abandons her. In the anime, he visits and is rejected by dozens of other law firms before finally earning Maya's trust and accepting her case. Furthermore, Wright alone makes the decision to defend Maya in the game, while the request in the anime is mutual and simultaneous.
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