NOTE: What I'll be saying only covers Season 1. I'm a rabid Ace Attorney fan and I could barely bring myself to watch up until the 14th episode of the series before giving up
This anime has every sign of a poor adaptation of a source material:
- Animations range from decent to abysmal, even by Dragon Ball Super Episode 5 on TV standards. And what happened to the colors? Compare the vibrance of the games' graphics to these washed out disasters
- It banks too much on the source material to cover for the anime's faults. As a result...
- Pacing doesn't exist and everything moves too fast, so nothing has the time to settle, and it barely makes the viewer connect to the characters or what's happening to them. It was a terrible idea to have investigations and trials together, or dedicating only one episode to an investigation and half of it to a trial
- Creative liberties can be a good thing can be a good thing. Are they here? Absolutely not. I wanted to rip my hair out of my head at what they did to the ending of Turnabout Goodbyes, one of the best and most memorable cases in the entire series. Or even smaller things, like adding an unnecessary piece of evidence to fabricate a contradiction when the game's contradiction worked just fine in Reunion and Turnabout. I'm not going to go jnto spoilers, but trust me, these are dumb
The score is about the only thing I would kind of save in this mess. Also Jinsei Wa Subarashii is pretty good
Let me close this "review" by giving some advice:
- Play the games
- Watch the live action by Takashi Miike
- Watch Season 2 if you're curious, but skip Season 1. You're not missing out at all.
