So, somehow, Phoenix has been using his brain this whole time and comes to a conclusion about what really happened before the words come spilling out of his mouth. I know, I can’t believe it, either. He blue-fonts, “I’ve finally figured it out… So this is why Lana tried to stop the trial! It’s too late to quit now, though.” Phoenix is really making an art form out of pissing off Lana and not acting sorry about it. The music goes silent for Phoenix’s big revelation: “Please recall the witness’s testimony. She said she knocked away the man who was holding up the knife. In the next instant, the jar was hit and flew threw [sic] the air.” Nice, localization team. Well played. “Now tell me…” he asks the court. “What could have sent the jar flying?” The judge reasons, if we want to call it that, “That would have to have been…the impact the man made when he was knocked into the wall?” That is indeed where Phoenix is going with this, but in what universe, with what crazy fucking physics, would someone bumping into a wall cause a jar on that same wall to bounce UP into the air? It would have just fallen over. But this is totally plausible!
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Phoenix goes on, deploying his evidence-tapping hand, “if I may draw your attention to this picture once more.” As we look at the photo again, Phoenix asks, “If the man was knocked in the direction of the shelf the jar was sitting on…what would he have hit?” Um, I don’t know, because we don’t know exactly where on that side of the office he would have been standing? He might have hit nothing? I am about 90 percent sure that Phoenix thinks Neil Marshall’s positioning in this photo, taken hours earlier, matches where he was in the office at the time of his murder. Phoenix is dumb. But Ema goes, “A-AHHHHHH…” and the judge echoes her shock by answering, “The suit of armor! Holding…a very sharp and dangerous-looking sword…” But I thought that deadly, unsheathed weapon in Gant’s office wouldn’t come into this at all! Usually when we see those at crime scenes, they turn out to be unrelated!
“And since the man who was knocked into the armor was carrying a broken knife…” Phoenix reasons, “he would had to have been Neil Marshall, wielding the Prosecutor’s Award.” Again, there are about a hundred logical issues with this supposition, but Edgeworth is too turned on by Phoenix’s deductive prowess to point any of them out. Instead, he breathes, “No…Mr. Wright… You can’t be thinking…” Oh, but he is! He’s thinking that accusing Ema of manslaughter is totally getting him laid tonight. “Yes,” he says. “There is another possibility of what actually happened in that room.” He’s sure to add, “Of course the perpetrator would have had no idea, but nevertheless!” But only now, after all but saying out loud, “Ema did that shit,” Phoenix thinks to himself, “I…I don’t know if I can go through with this…” If it was too late earlier, it’s definitely too fucking late now! Spit it out, Nick!
Since Phoenix has grown cold feet, Edgeworth takes over, explaining to the judge, “If events took place as the defense theorizes… Then the outcome is obvious. In that moment…assuming the man Ema Skye knocked away was actually Prosecutor Neil Marshall…” Edgeworth trails off, but to illustrate their theory, a black-and-white animation shows Neil Marshall flying perfectly backward into the waiting sword of the suit of armor, which neatly impales him. In the butt.
That suit of armor stole Joe Darke’s man!
Everyone is shocked into silence, presumably because they can all see the rather gruesome animation playing in Edgeworth’s brain. But Ema is the first one to speak. “You mean…” she gasps, hand over her mouth, “Mr. Marshall died…because of…me…?” When the full force of this “fact” (spoiler: NOPE) hits her, she screams, “NOOOOOOOOO!!!” The screen flashes white, and with a “*thud*” she faints in the middle of the courtroom. Girl sure can faint like a pro.
To review: Ema saw the two men wrestling, one with a knife, with THE JAR in midair over their heads. That is what is depicted in her drawing–the drawing Phoenix just spent an agonizing amount of time proving to be perfectly representative of that exact moment in every way. So she ran at the one with the knife, Marshall, and shoved him. Ema just happened to shove Marshall right into the suit of armor, and this 14-year-old girl had such buff arms that the force of this shove not only IMPALED A MAN ON A STATIONARY SWORD, but the force of his impact made THE JAR–which is not even positioned against the same wall as the suit of armor–dislodge from its place on the cabinet and do a perfect fucking parabola through the air.
So, everybody sees the problem with this, right? When, exactly, did THE JAR go flying? There are three separate accounts: that it was in the air when Marshall was fucking Darke’s brains out (the drawing), that it was in the air just as Ema shoved Marshall (Ema’s testimony), and that it was in the air as a result of Ema shoving Marshall (Phoenix’s theory). Obviously, all of these contradict each other. My best guess is that Phoenix is correct–that it moved when Marshall made an impact, which means that the person who wasn’t there just asspulled the correct sequence of events out of whole cloth, while the eyewitness provided testimony and evidence that contradict each other and are both wrong anyway. And I don’t want to hear any bullshit about how Ema was SO CONFUSED and her memories of the entire event got muddled, because that could then call anything about the drawing into question, including her perfectly accurate knife drawing, and effectively would make her testimony completely meaningless. But don’t worry! Our truth-seeking attorneys are going to get right on solving this conundrum by never, ever bringing it up. And why would they? It’s not like this was the crucial piece of evidence that blew the whole case wide open or anything! So it causes a time paradox, NO BIG DEAL.
And do you all know the best part? We’re not even done with THE JAR yet! No, there are actually even more problems with it! I…I need a 15-minute recess.
*drinks bottle of rum*
*eats Costco-sized bucket of chocolate ice cream*
*sobs into Edgeworth’s spare cravat*
*questions every life decision that led to this moment*
I’m back! Everything is great. Never better. Okay, so Ema is still unconscious, and Edgeworth is making a go of sounding contrite about accusing her of manslaughter. “So it was the witness who took the victim’s life…” wonders the judge, “and then proved so with her own testimony! This is unprecedented!” I’m pretty sure that’s what happens in every case–it’s just that it sucks here because we like Ema, and because THE JAR is the worst thing to ever happen to her or me. But whatever.
Yeah, we’d have to get some kind of spirit medium to conjure their ghosts! How fucking stupid would that be? Ha ha ha!
“OBJECTION!” a “mystery person”–right–shouts. Obviously it’s Lana again, and she is super pissed. A feeling I share! “Joe Darke murdered Prosecutor Marshall!” she screams in Phoenix’s face. She’s now so agitated that she’s sweating and biting her nails. Her botox face is wearing off! “How can you think it was Ema!? How dare you try to pin the crime on her!?” Edgeworth is all, “Don’t you talk to my man that way,” and reminds Lana that they know she forged evidence, and it sure looks like she fudged this crime scene and moved Marshall’s body to keep Ema from taking the blame. By the way, since this also will never come up, luminol revealed absolutely no blood anywhere on Gant’s side of the office, neither on the floor nor on the suit of armor. So I guess Lana has some kind of chemical agent that removes blood even past luminol detection, which as far as I know does not exist. But carry on! No problems here!
Edgeworth and Lana engage in a lot of very catty back-and-forth that is probably tinged with two years’ worth of workplace passive-aggression, until Lana finally says to both him and Phoenix, “If you hope to have anyone believe your insane allegations, I’m afraid I’m going to have to have proof. Tell me… Do you have any conclusive evidence that proves my sister killed Neil Marshall?” Phoenix kind of does–he has the handprint of Ema’s on the leather scrap, though he doesn’t have any context for it yet. And Lana rejects Edgeworth’s suggestion of relying on testimony: “I’m afraid that won’t work in this case. Both parties involved in the incident are dead.” Well, there’s Ema. Who is just dead to the world right now. But I guess she doesn’t count because we’ve already heard from her? Fuck, I don’t know.
Phoenix is about to give up on his sudden lifelong dream of proving Ema killed a cowboy prosecutor, but Edgeworth has another card to play. “Touche, Ms. Skye,” he says, tapping his perfect face with his finger, code for “I want a penis waving in front of my face at recess” for Phoenix. “Of course… That only leaves us with one possibility.” And that possibility is…God dammit. I don’t want to do this. “I mean, the possibility that the victim has left us a message.” In nicely highlighted red font! Wouldn’t that be hilarious and contrived? “For better or for worse,” Edgeworth goes on, “Mr. Marshall did not die instantly. He may have left behind the name of the person who took his life…somehow.” I have never wanted to kick Edgeworth in the balls so badly. Jeanne, in one of the thousands of bitter, bewildered discussions we’ve had about this case, pointed out that Edgeworth doesn’t actually know at this point if such a message exists, and seems to be pulling the possibility out of thin air, which is insane. Why is this the trope this fucking series keeps trying to make happen? Has anyone in real life ever actually done this?
‘A private parlor off the courtroom lobby in which to get nasty.’
To my disgust, the judge tells Phoenix, “This is the only possibility left to you,” like 1) looking for a name written in blood is the only sensible, logical solution, and 2) the worst thing in the world would be to fail to prove that Ema killed a dude. But Phoenix, over Lana’s increasingly desperate pleas, digs into his court record, and once again thrusts out–UGGGGH–THE JAR.
‘It says…Miles Edgeworth?!?!’
Before Phoenix can even get to how it’s a “message from the deceased,” which makes me roll my eyes every time someone says it, first Edgeworth, the judge, and Lana all treat THE JAR like it’s actually the Blue Badger. “Oh, is he going to speak the killer’s name?” Lana asks scornfully. If I find out the Blue Badger is a spirit medium, I am making Phoenix throw it in the incinerator before it channels Mia and grows a giant pair of blue furry cardboard tits. Once everyone is temporarily done being stupid, Phoenix points out, “A message was left here…on the surface of this jar.” He means, of course, the spots of blood that are still on the pottery, except for on the formerly missing fragment, where there are clear lines. “So what you’re saying,” Edgeworth derps, “is these ‘dots‘…were once lines!” Edgeworth is turning stupid–clearly he and Phoenix need a quick break to blow off some steam. Like eating a snack to get your blood sugar up. The two of them use teamwork to conclude that there’s a message on THE JAR, and that even after it was wiped off, “the blood must have seeped into the jar where the lines change directions.” I guess. The long and short of it is that Phoenix has to play connect the dots, because dumping his remaining luminol on THE JAR is apparently out of the question. He blue-fonts melodramatically, “There’s only one thing the victim would have written, given the circumstances: The murderer’s name!”
I’m sure you all are not remotely sick of Jeanne and me complaining about bugs in the iPad version, but hoooooly shit, is this part bugged. It’s not enough to connect the dots to say–duh–“EMA.” You also have to write the strokes in the exact right order and in the exact right direction–no shit, I had to find a walkthrough on how to do it properly because I kept failing. Fucking ridiculous. But the screencaps look nice, so fuck it. Once Phoenix has finally solved the puzzle, he stares at it. “It’s a defense attorney’s duty to prove his client’s innocence,” he thinks. No, it’s a defense attorney’s duty to provide his client with the best possible representation, regardless of her innocence. But don’t look at me, I don’t have a degree from Hollywood Upstairs Law School. “That’s why all I’ve been thinking about is saving Lana,” he monologues some more. Yeah, he’s just so invested in Lana’s welfare. That’s really come through clearly. “After all my efforts, I never thought it would turn out like this!” Well, no fucking kidding, Phoenix. Though it would have been funny if, when Ema walked into his office three days ago, his immediate thought was, “I can’t wait for her to be accused of murder.” JUST LIKE MAYA!