Kurain is an idiocracy anyway, but that’s not what I’m ranting about today. The whole spirit-chanelling thing just doesn’t make sense in-universe.

In the real world, we can dismiss mediums as a bunch of scam artists, but in the Ace Attorney universe, it’s genuine. They would 100% have won James Randi’s $1,000,000. I mean, they literally shapeshift for all to see. There’s no way to dismiss them as frauds. And it’s not like it’s a secret. We know from the Dr Grey case that the Feys take clients, and spirit channeling is their job. We also know the cops hired Misty years back. Mia frequently appears in court post-death and Franziska literally shows the court a photo of Maya transformed into Mia.

And that’s why it makes no sense in-universe. With all this proof, the public should have already accepted Kurain channeling as something usual. You’d think the cops would be using this all the time. In the case of Gregory Edgeworth, it makes sense that he blamed the wrong person, as he didn’t know von Karma was there. But if Misty had actually physically shapeshifted into Gregory, which she should have if she was using the Kurain technique, the most the cops could have said was that Gregory himself got it wrong, because they would have seen that it was Gregory himself talking, not Misty.

With this, in every case, all Phoenix had to do was get Maya or some other medium from the village to channel the victim and get the info from them. Even in cases such as Turnabout Bigtop, where the victim didn’t see the murderer, they could still get a timeline of where the victim was and what they were doing, which would help them solve the case. There’s always the chance that the victim could be deliberately lying or mistaken, but Phoenix’s speciality is noticing contradictions, so it’s still no reason not to. Treat their testimony as any other witness’s.

That’s why the Kurain technique is really flawed from a plot point of view. It’s like they just wanted a way to get Mia and her boobs back on screen, but they didn’t really think of how it would affect the story. If they had just done the usual sort of channelling with no shapeshifting, it would have worked better, because then you could easily dismiss it as a scam. They could even have made them emulate the voice alone, so sceptics can just dismiss them as being trained impressionists.

Having recently translated some of the Takushuu columns, I can only assume that the pressure they were under didn’t really give them the time to think it all through! Good thing there are snarky nitpickers like me around to point it all out, huh? XD

PS No I still haven’t resumed Farewell, My Turnabout. It’s not even that I don’t like it, it’s just that Heroes III is so darned addictive. I actually don’t want to play it, but I can’t stop myself 🙁