Mystery and intrigue, crime and punishment, uncovering the truth–all in a day’s work for the ace defense attorney Phoenix Wright and his beautiful assistant Maya Fey. Based on the hit game series, Ace Attorney brings new adventures to the games’ colorful cast. Can Nick successfully swing the gavel of justice or will he be crushed by the weight of incriminating evidence?

Story by Kenji Kuroda; Art by Kazuo Maekawa
Publisher: Kodansha Comics
Age Rating: Teen
Genre: Mystery
Price: $10.99
Rating:

There’s not a lot of mystery manga available in English (unfortunately), so when a new series does come out, I like to check it out. Ace Attorney Phoenix Wright is based on a video game of the same name, and features many of the characters from it. It’s a decent police procedural, but the goofy characters, both in design and personality throws it off-kilter for me.

This first volume of Ace Attorney Phoenix Wright features one-and-two-thirds cases, which serve to introduce most of the characters. The first case has Nick defending his old friend from elementary school who doesn’t have the best luck with the ladies, as he is accused of murdering his new girlfriend’s old boyfriend. The second is much longer, and has Nick meeting a potential client, only to have the client killed in a locked room scenario.

Both stories are well written. The first takes place mostly in the court room, and uses several elements from the video game, including Nick’s “Objection!” pose. The comedy is played up more, particularly between Winston Payne, the prosecutor and Larry Butz, the defendant. In between there is murder and a woman scorned, but the impact of the case is lessened with the more comedic acts in the courtroom. The full impact doesn’t hit until the last page of the story. The second mystery takes itself much more seriously, possibly since it doesn’t take place in the courtroom, and Nick can be more of the detective than attorney. A lot of time is spent setting up the scene and the suspects, with the actual crime not happening until the end of the volume. It’s a good cliffhanger to get the reader back to find out more.

The art is on the cartoonish side, but most of this is because of the source material. The characters all look like their video game counterparts, which does sometimes swing on the silly side. Nick’s hair looks like it was blown back by a hurricane and stuck like that permanently. Larry always looks good with big red cheeks and a lot of cartoonish expressions. I know this can’t be helped as it is the way they characters were designed for the video game, but the whole look didn’t work as well as a manga for me.

I did enjoy the mysteries presented in this first volume of Ace Attorney Phoenix Wright, but I’m still on the fence about getting more. If it were available digitally, I wouldn’t be so hesitant since it wouldn’t take up precious shelf space. For now, Ace Attorney Phoenix Wright will have to sit on the back burner unless I get a craving for some more mysteries.