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cashewHere's the thing I don't understand about the Ace Attorney fandom: why is it that everyone seems to think that Wright is the smart one and Edgeworth, although an intellectual equal, is emotionally constipated?
Like, I get that the "unnecessary feelings" line has everyone in a tizzy, but that's really very little evidence, and when you take into consideration the entire body of the Ace Attorney work, Edgeworth is clearly the more emotionally developed person, while Wright is pretty emotionally oblivious (both to himself and others).
Game 1
Case 1-2.
Wright finds Maya crying over her sister and instead of talking to the human being first, he moves her out of the room and examines the murder scene. Then, after examining everything, he goes back and is surprised that Maya hung around and only then gets around to asking after her and how she's doing. Does that sound like something an emotionally competent person would do?
Then at the detention center, despite finding out that Maya is the sister of his boss, his first instinct is to leave her to do what she wants. Yes, it makes logical sense, because Wright is a rookie attorney at the moment, so he clearly understands his own limits, but it's an unemotional decision, because most people would be thinking "this is a traumatized 17-year-old, I better give her some emotional assurance first". It's not until Wright realized no one wants to take this case that he offers himself as her defense attorney. Not exactly the "heart on sleeve" character that fandom is so fond of portraying.
Meanwhile, Edgeworth is introduced as the "Demon Prosecutor", the ruthless man who will persecute every defendant until he puts them behind bars. And it's true that Edgeworth is quite ruthless in court. And yet, when Wright gets himself into hot water by pissing off Mr. White, an extremely well connected man with a lot of political power, Edgeworth's first course of action is to go to the defendant's lobby and warn Wright he's up against unwinnable odds.
Edgeworth comes off as a threatening villain because we're experiencing things through Wright's frame of reference. But when we remove ourselves from Wright's interpretation ("You've changed, Edgeworth.") and read between the lines, we'll find that Edgeworth did something out of the ordinary. He took the time to warn Wright before the trial that White is connected to the Chief Prosecutor, who also happens to be Edgeworth's boss and that his boss is telling him to convict Wright no matter the facts. Edgeworth is effectively telling Wright, "Hey, this isn't personal. I'm just doing my job and my boss is breathing down my neck about this."
Edgeworth felt like he owed Wright, someone he hasn't seen since fourth grade, the courtesy of explaining himself. He's saying, "It doesn't matter if I believe you're innocent, it's my job to convict you. I'm not throwing the trial just because I know you." Yes, it's cold, but he didn't owe Wright an explanation for his coldness. Nonetheless, he still tried to let Wright know that it's not because he thinks Wright is a murderer, he's being pressured by his job to keep going.
When we realize the type of person Edgeworth is, someone who has no patience for people in general, it's clear that Edgeworth went above and beyond the call of duty. He obviously understood how bad this was going to be and wanted to warn Wright of the consequences of his actions, even if Wright won't understand. Edgeworth's flaw in this case is not that he was doing his job, but that he was trapped in his own narrow framework of what his job entailed, something he breaks out of after seeing how hard Wright fights for him later in the game.
Case 1-3.
Wright starts this case being confused about Maya's obsession with a kid's show, establishing right off the bat that he doesn't understand geek culture at all and has a generation gap with Maya that he's not quite sure how to overcome. He doesn't even think for a moment to consider Maya's upbringing (in the mountains, highly secluded and separated from modern...well, everything) and how a simple TV show might be Maya's only connection to the world outside of her almost hermetic village. This is a girl who thinks miso ramen (or burgers in localization) is a treat, something special because she doesn't have access to it in her super rural village. Of course it's normal for someone so sheltered to cling onto anything familiar when she's relocated into a big, metropolitan city.
Again, Wright's emotional distance isn't because he's a bad person (he does defend her solely because he wants to protect people who have no one else), he's just not very emotionally intelligent, so he doesn't know what to do with all this difference that's staring him in the face.
On Edgeworth's side of the equation, we find out from Gumshoe that Edgeworth had been mulling over the previous case and it clearly bothered him. Wright assumes it's because Edgeworth is sore over his broken win streak, but we know that Edgeworth was already discomfited by the way the Chief Prosecutor intervened in the case. As the audience, we should remember that, unlike Wright, Edgeworth navigates a very complicated work place. He has to get along with the police, listen to his boss, please his mentor (who is also evil, but they don't know that yet), and juggle his own sense of justice in a world where everyone expects him to constantly deliver a guilty verdict.
So the little fact that Detective Gumshoe is privy to Edgeworth's more contemplative moments speaks to a closeness that Wright clearly doesn't have with his (dead) boss and coworker/ward (Maya). Gumshoe is actively concerned about Edgeworth's emotional health, despite Edgeworth threatening to deduct his pay. And it shouldn't be hard to understand why, since Edgeworth takes responsibility for Gumshoe's failings repeatedly in the Ace Attorney games. Even early on, we can see that Edgeworth is a harsh but fair boss and has his subordinate's undying loyalty. You don't get that from being an emotionally constipated ass, you get that because you're an emotionally competent person. Gumshoe's loyalty is just another point in Edgeworth's favor.
And let's talk a little about these "unnecessary feelings".
Fans take this as a sign that Edgeworth is emotionally constipated, that he couldn't "confess", so he used vague words. But remove shipping goggles for a moment and consider the fact that Edgeworth knew Wright for all of two cases in the span of a month. A month. They're not friends yet. They barely qualify as acquaintances. They've spent at most a few hours together in a court room. To a person who is essentially a stranger, Edgeworth admits his emotional vulnerabilities. Yes, he did it as a way to push Wright away, but the point remains that Edgeworth is verbally acknowledging his complicated feelings. Because Edgeworth doesn't leave the line at "unnecessary feelings". He literally names the feelings: unease and uncertainty.
As any trained psychologist can tell you, being able to name one's feelings is a sign of high emotional intelligence. And unease and uncertainty are not easy feelings to identify. Most people would confuse them for fear or anger or frustration. So Edgeworth is demonstrating that not only is he very attuned to how he feels, he's capable of letting his guard down around practical strangers to do it. That's fucking emotional competence right there.
Case 1-4.
This is the big one, but also looks really bad for Wright in terms of his emotional competence. The fact that even straight male gamers can read Wright's confession about going to law school for Edgeworth as "Oh man, this is true love right here" and for Wright to not realize he's in love is a pretty big hint that Wright's not emotionally in tune with himself. (See: Game Grumps evolution from jokingly to genuinely shipping NaruMitsu.) As someone once said, "No one goes to law school for a friend. That shit takes real passion to get through."
And we already have confirmation that Wright doesn't have a passion for law, given he's confessed to not bothering to read the law books (how did you pass the bar, Phoenix?!) and knows only the names of two flowers: sunflowers - the motif of his defense lawyer badge, and tulips.
Which means Wright, a Japanese lawyer in the original game, doesn't know the prosecutor's badge is the chrysanthemum or that his national flower is the sakura. A JAPANESE man who can't name SAKURA. This isn't just a funny quirk about the man. THIS MAN IS DUMB AS BRICKS.
(Just to clarify, yes, even in Japanese, Naruhodou Ryuuichi only knows the same two flowers. Naruhodou is a dumbass.)
What I'm trying to get at here is that Wright really does not give two fucks about the law. His only drive to be a defense attorney is because of Edgeworth. And somehow...the man doesn't understand what that means. This is not an emotionally competent man.
Meanwhile, Edgeworth repeatedly tries to warn Wright off from his case. Edgeworth puts on an off-putting façade because he doesn't want Wright involved with the DL-6 case. He knows this would be painful, both for himself and Wright and he doesn't want to go through that misery. You can argue the ethics of trying to shield someone from unpleasant experiences, but you can't deny that Edgeworth's motivation is emotionally driven. He's actively trying to prevent emotional trauma for himself and trying to avoid ruining Wright's career, because Edgeworth has very accurately pinned down that Wright has been bullshitting to victory in the past two cases.
Let me say that again, after two trials, Edgeworth correctly recognizes that Wright has been bullshitting his way through the trials. He's not wrong in saying that Wright has been lucky because a lot of it had been luck. A lot of people had to be in the right place at the right time for Wright to be able to make his case. Wright had nothing prepared and was flying by the seat of his pants and his only saving grace is that his clients are genuinely innocent. A point that will come back to bite him in the ass in game 2.
At the end of game 1 (yes, I'm ignoring Rise from the Ashes, there's already too much stuff), even though the entire story is told from Wright's perspective, it's very obvious that Wright, not Edgeworth, is the emotionally constipated person. He's the one who can't even understand what it means to go to law school for a guy. He somehow convinces himself that becoming a lawyer and facing him in trial is the most efficient way to talk to Edgeworth. Not...I don't know, just going to his goddamn office.
What about this man is emotionally intelligent? I really cannot understand fandom's interpretation.
A note about game mechanics: Due to the focus on finding "contradictory statements", Wright becomes a character who is focused solely on the literal words being said. He ignores all the underlying nuances and emotional state and extended meanings. He's solely focused on the literal interpretation. And it is only through logical contradiction that Wright is capable of recognizing someone is lying to him. This does not speak of emotional intelligence here.
And this aspect is reflected in how he reacts to Edgeworth when Edgeworth isn't being truthful. Wright is flummoxed and simply cannot grasp why Edgeworth is the way he is. 15 years changes people, but that's apparently a concept that Wright is incapable of understanding. His biggest emotional hangup through out this game is "Why isn't Edgeworth the same kid I knew when I was 9?". Ignoring that Wright himself also changed over these years. So uh...gee, Phoenix, I don't know, maybe people grow up.
Game 2
So Wright spends 3/4 of this game feeling bitterly betrayed and sad that Edgeworth left him. Yes, he thought Edgeworth committed suicide and he was grieving, but the point is he's not handling his grief at all. He won't talk about it, can't even bear for anyone to mention Edgeworth by name. That's literally the most unhealthy way to handle grief and Wright doesn't care. He's gonna bottle it all up and pretend like nothing is wrong.
This is a classic case of emotional constipation.
Thus Wright is in an emotionally vulnerable place when the worst thing happens: his client is GUILTY. And Wright has a complete meltdown because he doesn't have the capacity to handle this. Remember how in the first game Edgeworth has to deal with his job forcing him to convict Wright despite his personal reservations about Wright being guilty? How he comes to Wright and warns him how things are about to go down in court because Mr. White is a very well connected man who just might be above the law?
Well, Wright doesn't explain shit when it's his turn. Yes, he was warned by an assassin to not talk to the police, but he didn't even try to explain his situation, even obliquely to Edgeworth. Even though Edgeworth was reaching out to try and help him during the entire meltdown, Wright was still too emotionally fucked up to offer up any information voluntarily. Edgeworth had to piece together the problem himself and confront Wright about it before they could go find a solution together.
Seeing as this was the game that got the least love of the trilogy, I'm not surprised that this portrayal of Wright kind of flew over everyone's heads.
And let's talk a little about the new mechanic: Magatama.
So, remember how I mentioned earlier that Wright is incapable of spotting a lie unless there is a literal contradiction in the person's words? Well, this gets amped up to eleven in this game because Wright is apparently so terrible at reading people's emotions that he needs a magical stone to tell him when someone is lying to him. Holy shit, this man is a walking emotional disaster and dense as a fucking brick.
Basically, the entirety of game 2 is to establish that Wright has no emotional competence whatsoever, does not understand how feelings work, and really, really oblivious to Edgeworth's emotional shift from distanced colleague to genuine friend.
Which brings me to the big moment: Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth chooses death.
Yes, that was overly dramatic. Yes, Edgeworth should've handled it better. All of that is true. But, again, I remind the audience that Edgeworth just suffered multiple blows to the ego. Between finding out that what he thought was real wasn't, that his mentor and caretaker was gaslighting him for a decade and a half, and that his teacher murdered his father, I think we can cut Edgeworth a little slack for not being the most emotionally competent in this moment.
At least what can be said about Edgeworth is that he was aware enough of his terrible emotional constitution and recognized that he needs to get his shit together. So he took the time off to see to his mental health. Hell, most people in the real world don't have the emotional competence to recognize they're emotionally fucked up and need to take some time to get themselves back together. I give him all the credit for recognizing that. To proactively manage one's emotions and giving it due importance is emotional maturity that deserves credit, not mockery.
So no, I don't see Edgeworth's overly dramatic note as a sign of his emotional constipation. I see it as someone who was stressed out and handled a situation poorly, but recognized the importance of mental health and did what he had to do to get out. That's infinitely better than how Wright handled his emotional meltdown.
Game 3
I confess, I don't have a lot to say here, but I do want to bring up one aspect of the character. In the last case, Wright has a moment where he's overcome with emotion for Edgeworth and can't find words for it. At this point, these two guys have known each other for a little over two years, going onto three years now. Presumably, they've talked after the big emotional upheaval at the end of game 2 and are communicating on the regular, even outside of their jobs.
(An aside: it's literally not OK for these two to be conversing too much on the job, since they're on opposite sides of the court and thus to communicate too much would raise questions of collusion and is a conflict of interest. This is the professionally ethical course of action.)
It's safe to say that by game 3, NaruMitsu have reached a pretty solid friendship. They are friends now. They are allowed to share feelings. There's no social propriety that's holding these guys back from expressing their vulnerabilities to each other, because they know each other as people, more than just "that guy I went to school with for a year in 4th grade".
And under these circumstances, Wright, worrying about Edgeworth's safety and emotional welfare after an earthquake, finds said person he's been worried about and...can't find words to express himself. (WTF, Phoenix?) His internal dialogue informs us that he's so overcome with feelings that he's gone nonverbal and wants to hug Edgeworth.
And proceeds to do none of it.
Most. Emotionally. Constipated. Man. Ever.
I'm not even going to get into Edgeworth practically flinging Wright and Iris at each other and telling them to work out their emotional hangups. Or the fact that Wright dates a murderess who frames him and he still feels an attachment to her or that Wright doesn't talk out any of his fucked up history when he found out he was dating twins without consent or that Wright dates a girl because she said they should. I mean Wright just comes off as an emotional doormat this entire game and has zero agency and god, that man needs a keeper, holy shit he's a danger to himself.
And that about sums it up for the original Trilogy. Oh, but as we expand out from the original games, it only gets more obvious who has emotional competence.
Game 4
This is mostly Apollo's game and Wright only gets a small cameo. Oh, but what a damning cameo it is.
(I have so many problems with this game, but let's just stick to Phoenix's emotional fails.)
Wright seems incapable of asking Apollo to work for him like a normal person. I'll excuse the cloak and dagger bullshit for undercover reasons, but once Kristoph has been put away and Wright has no more reason to keep up appearances, he keeps being cryptic towards Apollo even when it would help the situation more to be upfront with all the information. He could have said, "Hey, now that you know your mentor is a murderer, how about you come work for me instead? I mean, I know I've been disbarred, but I still have plenty of courtroom experience you can benefit from and it's not like other practices are hiring you anyway, right?"
Seems simple enough. But no.
Instead, Wright calls Apollo over under false pretenses and has his 15-year-old adoptive daughter guilt trip Apollo into helping. Even though Apollo is clearly eager and ready to practice law and is a sweet (and dumb) enough kid to work for a disgraced lawyer as long as it gets him back into court. All that manipulation was completely unnecessary. Why is he doing this?
Because Phoenix Wright doesn't understand how emotions work. (Why does Miles put up with you, Phoenix? Why?)
Every so often, Wright would say something cryptic before disappearing, leaving his under-aged daughter with a 22-year-old dumbass lawyer to investigate the fucking Yakuza. This...can we sue him for criminal negligence yet?
So, my point here is, what little we do see of Wright is highly, highly unflattering. People say that he seems out of character, too cynical or something. But honestly, given how much Wright failed to understand his own emotions, it's not surprising to me at all that he's failing so hard to understand Apollo.
(And the sad part is Apollo is canonically even stupider than Wright, so...yeah. This was not a partnership that was going to end well.)
So, that's all I've got to say about on the Wright side of the equation. Next, let's move to the gaiden game and talk Edgeworth.
Ace Attorney Investigations 1 & 2
The Investigations gaiden game focuses on Edgeworth's side of the story. Here, we see the highly emotionally competent Edgeworth.
In the first game, Edgeworth's main emotional dilemma is how to handle the fact that sometimes the law is not enough to deliver justice. Seeing as he's a prosecutor (thus on the law enforcing side), he has to wrangle with the ethical dilemma of when it's OK for him to bend the rules for the greater good and when it would be stepping too far.
This is actually a pretty complicated question and requires pretty high emotional intelligence to wrangle. As anyone can tell you, blindly following unjust laws is an easy way to perpetuate systemic injustice. But at the same time, giving yourself too much leeway lies the path of corruption. So it's a delicate balance to walk and Edgeworth, arguably, navigates the difficult dilemma well.
In addition to the overarching dilemma, Edgeworth also faces a bunch of minor emotional obstacles, such as: convincing a suspicious stewardess to trust him; consoling a 11-year-old girl who just lost her father in a violent murder as a 20-year-old rookie prosecutor; winning over the respect of a grizzled detective; coaxing a territorial Interpol agent to cooperate on their investigations. All of these actions require not only logical arguments, but also emotional sensitivity. And Edgeworth manages to win over the cooperation of everyone who initially resented him to successfully expose an international smuggling-and-counterfeiting ring, while navigating a divided nation's independence/reunion political upheaval.
Point is, Edgeworth was in a situation that required a delicate emotional touch and he delivered, proving that not only is he a deductive genius, he's also an amazing people person, despite his personal dislike for people in general.
In the second game, we get more of the same, except this time Edgeworth is getting hounded by the Prosecutorial Investigation Committee (P.I.C.) for his badge. Since the P.I.C. has the authority to strip him of his investigation rights, and did so multiple times through the game, Edgeworth has to navigate a politically fraught tightrope where he pushes enough so that he can continue to unravel the murders while not pushing so hard that he's stripped of his badge. Of course, he finally decides to take a stand against the P.I.C., gives up his badge and continues as a civilian, because he is a man with ethics, who, after deliberation, decides that his ethics matters more than following rules.
In terms of the minor emotional difficulties Edgeworth has to juggle this game, it gets even more personal: reacquainting with his dead dad's assistant who hates his guts and convincing him to allow Edgeworth to continue the investigation under his name; winning support from a judge who is stressed by her own secretive investigation; helping a 17-year-old rookie prosecutor to handle the trauma of being emotionally abused by his father for his entire life; convincing his 17-year-old assistant not to give up after she suffers amnesia and gets framed for murder; pry information from close-lipped reporters who hinder more than they help; expose an extramarital pregnancy scandal of a foreign nation's president without getting more people killed in the process; consoling a distraught mother who lost her son in a kidnapping.
Point is, many, many emotionally delicate situations abound and Edgeworth handles all of it with, uh, relative delicacy. He pushes a bit in some circumstances, but for the most part, he's able to navigate the complicated feelings without many breakdowns. (The 17-year-old crybaby was a lost cause, but at least Edgeworth talked him out of his panic and even gave the kid his confidence back.)
And here I have to talk about the "logic chess" mechanic in the second game. Although it's called "logic chess", it mostly consists of selecting the correct verbal response during dialogue to coax the witness/suspect/rookie prosecutor into talking more. A huge important factor is making sure to observe the emotional state of the person so that you pick the right thing to say. This isn't logic, this is emotional reasoning. Edgeworth has to determine when to push for information and when to sit back and let the witness talk at their own pace and when to give some guidance when the witness gets emotionally distraught and needs reassurance. It's all about emotions, where Edgeworth says the correct things to coax out more information, which he then uses to disassemble the lies his witnesses are feeding him.
In short, Edgeworth doesn't have a magical stone to tell him when someone is lying. He's relying purely on his logical and emotional reasoning to figure out where the truth lies. And he has to do it while the people he's interrogating are on an emotional see-saw. Investigations series puts Edgeworth's emotional intelligence to the test and Edgeworth shows us just how good he is at handling both his own and other people's emotional turmoil.
In conclusion:
I think it's fair to say that canon has shown us pretty explicitly that Wright is really quite bad at handling emotions while Edgeworth is quite deft at it. I don't understand why fandom insists that Wright is the one that wears his heart on his sleeve and has emotional awareness when the story repeatedly shows that it's Edgeworth who has a better handle on things.
Neither character are much for wearing their hearts on their sleeves, but Edgeworth is certainly more forthright and has the ability to name and voice his emotions. Meanwhile, Wright is mostly flailing and stews in his negative emotions while incapable of expressing his positive ones. Sure, Wright will cry with frustration and worry, but he doesn't seem to know why he feels things or what he's feeling in the moment. That doesn't speak to a very high emotional intelligence at all.
Finally, by games 5 and 6, Wright seems to get a bit better, but still can be pretty callous from time-to-time. For example, in the DLC case in game 5, Wright stonewalls Apollo's offer to help on the case, assigning him repeatedly to babysit his daughter and making the poor kid file away unneeded evidence. Wright clearly doesn't know what to do with the kid. In the DLC case in game 6, Wright straight up ditches Athena, a rookie he explicitly recruited, to work with Maya. Meanwhile, Edgeworth does get a bit tsundere from time to time (denying he wants to spend time with Maya), but given how quick he is to offer the support Wright et al. needed right at the moment they needed it without Wright ever needing to open his mouth, it's hardly meaningful to hold these moments against Edgeworth.
Over all, however, games 5 and 6 are mostly about the next generation of defense attorneys and prosecutors, so we get significantly less information on who Wright and Edgeworth are as people. Other than establishing that the two are in a very comfortable place with each other and know each other inside-and-out, we don't have much else. How did they get here from the end of Game 3? Who knows? The game's not interested in exploring that.
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