The first episode of Ace Attorney the anime has aired in Japan and also recently aired in America this past Saturday on April 2nd. More episodes will be coming very soon for those subscribed to Crunchyroll, where they can view the original subtitled anime episodes each week on the streaming network.
Gamespot picked up the news that the anime based on Capcom's popular handheld games has recently gone live. They mentioned that each subsequent episode will go live on the weekend at around 4:00am PST and 7:00am EST.
The news about the Ace Attorney anime was originally revealed to the Crunchyroll audience through a post by the brand manager, Victoria Holden, on the official Crunchyroll forums. Holden explained that the first episode is available and more would be arriving each week to Crunchyroll members worldwide, excluding Asia.
There aren't any details on the forum about the show being made available, but Capcom community manager Kellen Haney went into a bit more detail about the anime based on the popular Nintendo 3DS series on the Capcom Unity blog. He explains that over in Japan the series is known as Gyakuten Saiban, which directly translates into Turnabout Trial here in the West. It's also revealed that since the Ace Attorney show will be subtitled instead of dubbed, the characters will have their original Japanese names, so you can see the translation of the names below between the Japanese and Western versions.
Naruhodo Ryuichi (Phoenix Wright)
Mitsurugi Reiji (Miles Edgeworth)
Ayasato Mayoi (Maya Fey)
Ayasato Chihiro (Mia Fey)
Yahari Masashi (Larry Butz)
Itonokogiri Keisuke (Detective Gumshoe)
Auchi Takefumi (Winston Payne)
The series will follow Ryuichi (Phoenix Wright), the prosecutor, and a few of the friends, foes, allies and rivals that he will encounter as he attempts to solve a case while combing through the evidence and interviewing suspects.
Fans are fairly excited about the Ace Attorney anime, but some are a bit disappointed that they'll have to watch it with subtitles instead of experiencing it through dubbing. One of the reasons some don't like the subtitles is that the names, locations, and some of the themes have completely changed from what some gamers might be used to. In the localized versions of Ace Attorney the setting takes place in America and references such as food and locations have been acculturated for Western audiences.
In this case, it may make it a bit difficult for long time fans of Ace Attorney to get into the show unless they're familiar with some of the regional differences present in the original Japanese version. This is one of the dangers of changing things a bit too much during the localization process where a lot of the story, character, and location nuances are altered to fit a different audience. In this case, so much has changed it may require a little extra effort from Western audiences to really get into the show and catch all the references.
The anime has arrived just in time to help promote the upcoming release of Ace Attorney 6, which is due for release in Japan on June 6th. The North American and European release hasn't been set yet, but expect it to come soon.
