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elyvorg · 1 year

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Kazuma Asogi: Behind the Paragon

The Great Ace Attorney is so very great that it’s become my favourite Ace Attorney game, and it’s also given me a new all-time favourite Ace Attorney character, in Kazuma! Despite him getting quite a bit less screentime than the other major characters, he’s just so fascinating and has so much going on under the surface that’s perfect for me to get my analytical teeth into. So here's a big analysis post in which I break all of that down and talk about Kazuma’s character in great detail. (There will be spoilers for Resolve, too.)

Now that we’re safely beyond the readmore, I can add that a lot of this comes from me having spent all of Kazuma’s screentime during my first playthrough of Resolve very intrigued but also very confused. I kept constantly switching my perception of what the hell was going on in his head, desperate to figure him out, determined to make it all make sense even after I’d finished the game and still couldn’t quite fit it all together yet. And, well, I’m confident that I have now! This is something of a record of my achievements in unravelling the fascinating puzzle that is Kazuma. But also even aside from that, he’s just delightful and full of so many issues, and all of it deserves to be talked about.

Because I used every scrap of canon Kazuma content I could get in order to get as much insight into him as possible, I’m going to be mentioning some stuff not from the main game here and there. There’s the Escapades, bonus scenes that can be found in the game’s special contents menu, the first two of which feature Kazuma. And then there’s some much more obscure bonus content: the original Japanese 3DS release of DGS2 came with a pre-order bonus of two mini cases, one set in Japan, the other set in London. These unfortunately cannot ever be republished and localised due to legal reasons, but fan translations of them can be found on Youtube if you search “Japan DLC”/”London DLC” along with Dai Gyakuten Saiban. (They’re technically not DLCs, but that seems to be what people have settled on calling them.) They can both be assumed to be canon, and as the Japan one features Kazuma as the POV character, it has some good relevant content for our purposes here. I highly recommend you go check them out! (The London one lacks Kazuma but is also good, especially if you like van Zieks.)

Part 1: Japan

Losing his father

Originally, I felt like I ought to start this off by talking about just how much Kazuma idolised his father when he was alive. But then I realised there’s not much opportunity to do that when we don’t actually see any of his time with his father, beyond that one photograph. So it says a lot that we don’t need to have seen any of it to still be able to appreciate just how much Kazuma’s father meant to him, because it’s already so clear from the way his death shaped Kazuma’s entire life.

That said, we see barely any of it on the surface. Kazuma never talks about anything directly to do with his father at all until the Professor case is right in front of him and he can no longer avoid doing so. Even Ryunosuke went their entire friendship until Great Britain seemingly not having any inkling of the fact that Kazuma’s father was so important to him, let alone anything involving his death. From Adventures alone, we get basically no indication of the single most fundamental part of Kazuma’s entire character.

The one way in which Kazuma’s devotion to his father is even somewhat apparent on the surface – the only part of any of this that he ever freely talks about – is in how precious Karuma is to him. Kazuma is very firm about his belief that a Japanese man’s sword is his soul, and he mustn’t be parted from it. It’s true that this was a belief held by samurai in those times, but I’m sure that an even bigger reason why Kazuma is so insistent on never being parted from Karuma is that, by that same token, it also houses his father’s soul. So long as he keeps Karuma by his side, his father will always be there, watching over him. That must have been an immense help and comfort through his grief. (Very much like how Karuma was to Ryunosuke when he thought Kazuma was gone!)

No doubt the time Kazuma spent honing his swordsmanship with Karuma ever since he inherited it was a way for him to feel closer to his father. I like to think that the reason Kazuma’s so boastful about his Asogi Sword-Drawing Technique (something we learn about in Japan DLC) is that it was a technique his father had mastered, one that little Kazuma always admired and wished he could do too but could never manage it, until he had Karuma himself, when it was too late for his father to see and be proud of him. Calligraphy, too, is a pastime Kazuma most likely took up because, as he mentions in one bit of easy-to-miss dialogue, his father had a passion for it.

Mind you, Kazuma would be nothing if not used to chasing after his father’s absent back, what with how Genshin spent six years prior to his death still being decidedly Not There in his son’s life. But I’m sure Kazuma would have had an easier time handling his absence then, when he knew it was for a good reason – no doubt Genshin had told him all about how important it was that he studies in Great Britain in order to make Japan’s judicial system the best it can be. (Though even then, living without his father must have been harder for little Kazuma than he’d have wanted to admit.)

But it’s not the same at all when he’s simply gone forever and never coming back and this never should have happened. Kazuma’s not seen his father in six whole years, and now he never will again. It’s a strange, atemporal kind of bereavement. When did Kazuma lose his father, really? The day he learned of his death? The day several months before that on which Genshin actually died? Or the day six years past, the last time he ever saw his father alive? That’d be hard for anyone to cope with, much less a child – even less a child whose bereaved mother is unable to be emotionally supportive, leaving him in the care of a new guardian he doesn’t know all that well.

Living with the Mikotobas

It’s a little unclear exactly when or even why Kazuma moved in with Mikotoba. Our only real indication is that Susato says he came to live with them “after she’d got used to having her father around”. Given that she was only six years old at the time, I can’t imagine that would have taken her that long – maybe a few months, tops? So Kazuma’s reason for coming to live with them couldn’t be because his mother had died, since that happens later. However, given that his mother eventually passes from grief, it’s easy to imagine that within those few months after learning of Genshin’s death, she became mentally unwell enough to be unable to look after Kazuma, and thus Mikotoba had to take him in. So that’s how I imagine it happened.

As for Mikotoba – well, we already know that he’s not the greatest at dealing with grief. Even coming back to Japan with the resolve to finally face his family again and be a proper father to Susato wouldn’t necessarily have made him any better at the emotional side of things. The pain from losing Genshin, his good friend, would still have been raw, and everything that happened was so awful and sudden and unresolved, and so… he chose to lie to Kazuma about the circumstances of his father’s death, feeling that would be better than having this bereaved teenager learn the horrible truth.

Kazuma always suspected Mikotoba had lied to him, even before the letter. He idolised his father as the Greatest Person Ever – there must have been a part of him that felt that surely someone that incredible could never have been taken by something as mundane as illness. (And perhaps, in some sense, he wanted it to be more than just that, because he didn’t know how to cope with all this grief and desperately wanted there to be somebody to blame.)

Still, Kazuma couldn’t really begrudge Mikotoba for lying, because he could understand that it was out of a desire to protect his feelings. But on the other hand, it must have hurt, having so desperately wanted to know the real truth about what happened to his father, and having that hidden from him out of pity, as if his feelings were too fragile.

This is bound to have shaped Kazuma into the mindset that if he ever wanted to learn the truth about his father, he needed to stop having feelings, because if anyone saw that he was hurting in any way, they’d pity him, and coddle him, and think he couldn’t handle it. And besides, Mikotoba, his only remaining parent figure, would have been not at all someone Kazuma felt he could open up to and be vulnerable around, because Mikotoba himself doesn’t know how to be openly vulnerable with grief either. (And Susato? She was far too young to burden with this.)

So Kazuma learned to shut it all away. He is far, far too good at suppressing his emotions about his father’s death, to the point that even he doesn’t consciously realise most of them exist. I’m pretty sure that the way Mikotoba approached the whole thing has to be a lot of the reason why.

The life-changing letter

The timing of when Kazuma received that fateful letter is harder to pin down. The only real indication is that he talks about how it revealed what had been hidden from him “for all those years”, which suggests it was several years after his father’s death, but I don’t know if that feels right? First of all, it seems odd that the anonymous writer of the letter, who did so out of uncontainable grief and resentment, would wait several years to get that off their chest. And I also feel like it ought to have been fairly early on in the timeline, because it very much feels like Kazuma has spent the majority of the ten years since his father’s death knowing about his execution and desperately wanting to put things right. It’s possible that Kazuma says it was “all those years” only because his sense of time has become warped by grief – and because the last time he saw his father alive was six years before his death, which would make it feel like longer than it really was.

Whenever exactly it happened, receiving the letter would have had a massive impact on Kazuma and been a huge turning point for him. When he’s finally telling Ryunosuke and Susato the truth about his father’s fate in the scene in his office, this is the one part where he gets somewhat vaguely close to expressing something of how he felt about it – that is to say, he says that it “changed my life”. That’s not an exaggeration.

All along, he was right to have assumed his father wasn’t really taken by illness, that there was more to it, that Mikotoba was lying to him – but this is so much harder to cope with. Even worse than him having simply died, even more horrible than him having been simply murdered. It’s wrong. It’s not fair. And perhaps more importantly than any of that… there’s someone he can blame.

I’m very sure that Kazuma’s hatred of van Zieks extends all the way back to the day he received that letter. The letter itself probably didn’t mention van Zieks, but it also came with a newspaper clipping to prove its legitimacy – probably a headline such as “Barok van Zieks Avenges Older Brother in Glorious Courtroom Victory against the Dreaded Professor!” There’d certainly have been plenty of reasons for the newspapers to have mentioned his name when reporting what they were allowed to disclose about that case.

The main reason I’m really sure that Kazuma’s hatred of van Zieks is so long-lasting (long enough to support the idea that he must have received the letter quite early on) is because of how heartbreakingly irrational it is. If it’d been something that Kazuma only latches onto in the eight days after regaining his memory and realising this was the man who’d prosecuted his father, he’d have been nowhere near as desperately fanatical about it in the ensuing trial. This is a deeply formative grudge that’s festered for the better part of ten years, born from the rage of a broken, grieving teenager who had no idea what else to do with all of that pain.

Because he certainly couldn’t talk to anyone about it. Susato was still just a child, far too young to burden with any of this. Mikotoba had already lied to him in an attempt to protect his feelings, leaving Kazuma unwilling to trust him with the exact painful truth the man had been trying to shield him from. And when he went to Jigoku, someone less close to him whom he maybe thought would be more likely to just give it to him straight, he got laughed off, after seeing for a moment in Jigoku’s eyes that he knew and was lying about it too. No wonder Kazuma internalised the idea that he cannot ever tell anybody about this, so powerfully that that concept even persisted in the amnesiac voice that drew him to London, telling him ”no-one else must know”.

When grief became determination

Even so, even after receiving the letter and learning the awful truth, Kazuma didn’t immediately fixate on his goal to go to Britain and put things right himself. No doubt he would have wanted to, and thought about it and imagined the idea of it. But it must have seemed so unreachable – for him, to become the very best law student in all of Japan in order to be chosen for such a rare opportunity as an exchange to Great Britain. And then, to somehow be able to pierce through the lies and find the truth, against corruption so powerful that it even destroyed someone as impossibly amazing as his father…? That’s nothing but a fleeting dream. Lost among his grief, he must have felt so small, so powerless to ever achieve something that huge against such impossible odds.

But then, a year after Kazuma received the letter, his mother died too, finally succumbing to her own grief. Not only did Kazuma find himself with even more unbearable pain to deal with, but he was also faced with a very stark illustration that grief can literally kill you.

And, in Kazuma’s own words, that’s when he made up his mind: that one day he would make it to Great Britain and seek the truth, no matter what it took. It was that additional agony of losing his mother to the same horrible injustice that took his father, and the fear – no doubt subconscious; I can’t imagine he’d have ever consciously broached the thought – that the grief would kill him too if he didn’t find some way to cope with it and push it down and turn it into purpose, that led to his unbelievable determination to personally put things right.

Kazuma really is incredibly strong. He’s had to be. He even frames it to himself as “I had no choice”, when really, of course he made a choice to do this. But it doesn’t feel that way to him, not when the only alternative he could see was to let himself be obliterated by grief and helplessness.

Perfectionism and Fate

Kazuma’s sheer determination to fulfil his mission at all costs ended up shaping a lot of other little things about the kind of person he is.

It’s subtly notable in a number of places that Kazuma is kind of a ridiculous perfectionist. Escapade 1 in particular is a great source of it – he literally wears that headband as a constant reminder to himself of the time he messed up a tongue-twister once, what a dork. One might think that this simply comes from him being an Asogi; van Zieks comments after his first trial day that Kazuma’s “flawless performance very much reminded me of his father”, implying Genshin was also a lot like this. Then there’s the whole thing about the, uhh, Karuma clan having originated from an apprentice to Genshin. But while that’s probably part of why Kazuma’s like this, I don’t think it can be all of it. Genshin was a good dad and I cannot imagine him being so brutally strict as to ingrain such an overwhelming standard of perfectionism into his eight-year-old son.

The real reason Kazuma became so incredibly intolerant of the slightest mistake or flaw is that he felt like he had to be, in order to achieve his goal. Only the very best of the best could ever be chosen to study abroad in Great Britain, so he couldn’t afford the slightest failure. And it’d take someone even greater than that to be taken seriously as a foreign student in the British courts – where he knows his father must have not been – and to pierce through corruption so strong that it even defeated his father. Kazuma must have felt like he had to become nothing short of perfect.

But even then, even if Kazuma devotes everything he has to studying and manages to become the most perfect, skilled, disciplined lawyer the world has ever seen… there’s still a chance that might not be enough. There are certain parts of his goal of getting to Britain that are out of his hands and are basically down to nothing but luck. What if the Japanese government just never offers another British study tour? What if he gets passed up for some arbitrary reason such as being too young, or them not accepting defence lawyers, that has nothing to do with his ability?

This leads into another interesting subtle trait of Kazuma’s that grew from this, which is that he appears to have particularly strong ideas about fate. It’s right there in the official localised title of his character theme, for one: “Samurai of Destiny”. The amnesia voice – which is made out of thoughts ingrained deeply enough in him that they weren’t completely forgotten – tells him that his destiny awaits him in London. During a press dialogue in 2-4 when Sandwich is mumbling something about fate, Kazuma chips in with, “The defence is fated to lose. And the prosecution to win,” which comes across as very forceful and weirdly uncalled-for of him.

But Kazuma has to believe that coming to Britain and winning this trial and avenging his father is his destiny. He has to believe that fate is on his side for all of the parts of his mission that aren’t under his control. The possibility that he could fail anyway, despite all his effort and hard work, purely due to some random chance… that’s just a completely unbearable thought. There’s a very telling line he delivers at the end of Japan DLC, which sounds like a principle of his that he lives by: “If you hold onto your will, then the winds will blow in your favour.” Kazuma has had to convince himself that so long as he works as hard as he can for the sake of his goal, Fate itself will reward his determination by granting him the opportunities he needs to achieve it.

Unexpected friendship

One thing Kazuma very much wasn’t expecting Fate to do for him, mind you, was to give him a best friend. As we learn in Escapade 1, Ryunosuke and Kazuma meeting really was complete happenstance that could easily not have come to pass. Ryunosuke just happened to be Kazuma’s final opponent in the speech competition, and then Kazuma just happened to be bad enough at tongue twisters to flub his final line (about filial piety, because of course Kazuma’s speech was about filial piety, aka respecting one’s parents and elders), such that Ryunosuke won the competition and registered in Kazuma’s head as a person of note.

(I also love how their meeting in the speech competition mirrors their actual dynamic in a lot of ways. Kazuma went into his speech with a strict and perfect plan, and then choked when he made a small unexpected mistake, while Ryunosuke just kinda bumbled along with something much simpler and more instinctive but didn’t stop for anything. As such, Kazuma ended up being the one to idolise Ryunosuke, despite that Ryunosuke would never imagine that was the case. Plus it’s just very fitting that they first met as opponents and rivals, given their eventual opposing roles in the courtroom.)

Kazuma approached Ryunosuke after the competition not even out of any attempt to befriend him, but simply to ask him how he doesn’t trip up on his words – in other words, Kazuma just wanted to learn how to be perfect again after his “failure”. And yet, Ryunosuke, the precious earnest dork that he is, saw that the super amazing star student Kazuma Asogi seemed to want to get to know him, and just kinda friended at him real hard? And it worked… and all of a sudden Kazuma found himself with a best friend, completely without having intended it.

Having a friend like Ryunosuke brings out another side to Kazuma that’s very rarely seen – that of a more normal person that he otherwise might have kept being if he hadn’t lost his father. It’s difficult to realise just how rare and remarkable this is, especially for the first half of the game, as we experience everything from Ryunosuke’s perspective and so only see what Kazuma is like around his friend. But we can see glimpses of it in how he interacts with other people. Even with Mikotoba, who’s Kazuma’s surrogate father figure and someone he’s known for most of his life – Kazuma stands to attention when speaking with him and seems a lot more formal and guarded compared to his relaxed, open body language with his friend. He basically never smiles at anyone except for Ryunosuke (and sometimes Susato too, but it’s a lot rarer), because their friendship is the only source of genuine happiness Kazuma has in his life. Without Ryunosuke, Kazuma would probably never smile, and barely even remember what it felt like to be happy… and I doubt he’d even realise how unusual and tragic this is, because something like happiness isn’t relevant next to his mission.

It might seem from Ryunosuke’s perspective, with how much he idolises Kazuma, that he’s the one who benefitted the most from their friendship. But really, Ryunosuke would have been fine without Kazuma – a little aimless, perhaps, but he’d have lived a perfectly decent life. Kazuma, though? Without Ryunosuke, he would have found his burdens so much harder to bear, and might even have lost himself to his demons entirely in Great Britain. Kazuma was always the one who needed Ryunosuke, not the other way around. I suspect that it was Kazuma who started calling Ryunosuke “partner” first – he’s the one who uses the term more – out of noticing that Ryunosuke seemed to feel inferior to him and wanting to make it clear that they should be equals. He respects and looks up to and is grateful to Ryunosuke so much more than he could ever say.

On the surface, though, Kazuma mostly seems to show his affection with plenty of biting snark, and also a lot of stern nagging at Ryunosuke to study harder and be less scatterbrained and things such as that. He’s basically a dad friend! Which feels very appropriate for Kazuma, for obvious reasons. Hopefully Ryunosuke helped Kazuma out in his own, opposing way, by encouraging him to take breaks sometimes and not work himself way too hard. I’m sure that Ryunosuke, being an English student – a subject he chose probably just because he likes words and wordplay and therefore finds it interesting – also would have been able to help Kazuma a lot with practicing his English for when he goes to Britain.

As for Kazuma’s Britain mission, Ryunosuke quickly became abundantly aware of just how determined his friend was to go there… and yet Kazuma evidently could never bring himself to tell even his best friend the reason why. It must have been incredibly refreshing for Kazuma to have a part of his life so completely unconnected from the overwhelming weight of his mission and his father’s death looming over him, something that could let him just feel normal for a little while. It seems like Ryunosuke never even knew that Kazuma had lost his father at all until the waxwork scene, and even afterwards, he low-key buys into the idea that Genshin was the Professor until their conversation in Kazuma’s office. This means that not only did Kazuma never bring up his father’s death to his friend, he also never mentioned his father at all, because Ryunosuke would have been a lot less likely to assume that Genshin was a serial killer if he’d ever heard Kazuma talking about his father with pride.

And yet, perhaps it’s also because Ryunosuke is so completely unconnected to any of the events and people who had to do with his father’s death in Britain that Kazuma eventually felt somewhat able to open up to him about it – or at least, he was clearly trying to work his way up to doing so while on the Burya. He couldn’t bring himself to get that close to the truth with anybody else, not even Susato, despite her being his literal assistant (you’d think she’d need to know at some point, Kazuma) and also basically his sister. And she was already fully aware of at least the part where he'd lost his father, which is one step up from Ryunosuke. But she’s too connected to the events of ten years ago by being Mikotoba’s daughter, and was also so very young until quite recently, so it just never crossed Kazuma’s mind that he could perhaps confide in her, even though of course he trusts her in principle. Poor Susato.

Being a lawyer

While pursuing his mission, Kazuma studied to become a lawyer – a choice that’s rather interesting, considering what happened to his father. On the one hand, a lawyer is the kind of person who could hypothetically have saved Genshin from that wrongful execution. On the other, being a prosecutor was always really the better path for Kazuma to take for the sake of his actual goal of bringing the people responsible for his father’s death to justice!

According to Susato, Kazuma’s goal to become a lawyer is “a promise he’d made to his father”. It’s ambiguous whether this is a promise he made directly to his father while he was alive, or a promise he made as part of his personal mission to avenge him following his death. I think it’s a lot more likely to be the former, though, for a few reasons. If it was the latter, it’s bound to be because a lawyer could have prevented his father’s wrongful execution – but I don’t know if Kazuma would fixate so much on this empty hypothetical of how things could have gone when it’s far too late for that, not next to the more grimly pragmatic approach of being a prosecutor. And the fact that I’ve gravitated towards the implication that Kazuma moved in with the Mikotobas before he received That Letter (and he implicitly told Susato about his promise soon after he moved in) means he probably wanted to be a lawyer before then anyway.

So, I believe Kazuma promised his father he’d become a lawyer in person, while they were still together! I imagine Genshin told his son a lot about what he was hoping to achieve for Japan’s justice system, and why defence lawyers needed to be introduced as a crucial part of making it fairer for everyone. And so, little Kazuma, hanging onto every word of his father’s ideals and eager to make him proud, promised he’d become one of the very first defence lawyers himself! He does always say that he wants to study in Britain for the sake of improving Japan’s legal system, and while that’s obviously not his main reason, I don’t think Kazuma would be comfortable saying it so often if it wasn’t still true.

…And then, his father died, and of course he would want to cling to that promise no matter what, even if his desire to change Japan’s legal system suddenly becomes very much second priority, and even if another path might actually be more practical for his ultimate goal.

(And even once he reads the letter and knows what his goal is, there’d be a large part of him that wouldn’t want to change his mind and become a prosecutor, no matter how much more practical that might be. After all, it was a prosecutor who got his father killed, and he’d hate the very idea of becoming the same kind of person as that monster Barok van Zieks.)

As part of being a lawyer, Kazuma has also formulated some strong principles about what it means to be one. A lawyer’s greatest weapon is their belief in their client, because they can’t ever know the truth for sure, and this means they have to believe in their own judgement of other people. He evidently cares about this enough to talk about it a fair bit, based on the fact that Ryunosuke can easily recall several of the things he’d said about it in the past.

Since lawyers are so new in Japan, and his father wasn’t one (detectives like Genshin would have to take a more objective approach, you’d think), Kazuma likely didn’t learn this stuff from anyone else. He must have come up with these principles himself. Which… when you move outside of the bubble of how Ryunosuke sees Kazuma and think about what Kazuma’s really like, seems almost odd. We’re talking about someone who only acquired a best friend by complete accident, someone whose interactions with everybody except for said best friend are almost entirely transactional, someone relentlessly, ruthlessly goal-driven… and yet somehow he manages to have such well-formed principles around the concept of believing in complete strangers.

So I believe that the only reason Kazuma has given so much thought to this is because of his own father’s case. For all he knows, Genshin really could have been a serial killer! He doesn’t have any proof either way! But of course Kazuma would be desperate to believe in his father’s innocence no matter what. Of course he’d want to cling to the notion that doing so, despite a lack of concrete evidence, is just the right thing for him to do, and that his judgement of his father from their time together has to be something he can rely on. That’s where all of his principles about a lawyer’s belief must have come from.

Despite this – and perhaps rather tellingly as to the fact that he came up with it for somewhat unrelated reasons – Kazuma also doesn’t seem to think he’s all that good at this whole believing-in-your-clients thing. After seeing his friend at work in one trial, he’s already acting like Ryunosuke’s obviously much better at it than him, even though his only evidence is Ryunosuke believing in him and his guidance, which is a completely different matter than believing that someone who’s accused of murder didn’t actually do it. Perhaps that’s out of a general overall sense Kazuma has that his best friend has always been better with people than he has, and was always more suited to this lawyer thing of choosing to believe in someone you’ve only just met, simply based on the kind of person Ryunosuke is.

Jigoku’s ultimatum: the assassination mission

About a year and a half after befriending Ryunosuke, it’s finally the time Kazuma’s been waiting for. After all the effort he’s been going through for the past nearly-ten years of his life, all that hard work, all that studying, it’s finally about to pay off. He’s finally going to take the exams to prove himself to be the best of the best and earn his place on an exchange to Great Britain.

But then, sometime during the exam period, Jigoku approaches him and tells him: actually, I don’t care how good you are, or how hard you’ve worked; the only way you’re getting a place on this study tour is if you agree to murder somebody.

And Kazuma realises, with a slow, dawning horror… that he’s actually going to agree to this. Something so underhanded and vile that under any other circumstances it would be unthinkable to him. Because he has to. Because nothing is more important to him than his goal.

Kazuma tells Ryunosuke on the Burya that he would sacrifice anything for the sake of his mission. But I think it’s quite likely that he never realised this fact until Jigoku gave him that awful ultimatum. Before then, he wouldn’t have assumed he’d ever need to. His mission to clear his father’s name and avenge him is righteous and just, so becoming able to achieve that ought to be an equally just path. It should require nothing but determination and effort, which aren’t really sacrifices at all. He never for a second expected he’d have to sacrifice his moral integrity of all things in pursuit of this.

Granted, he doesn’t remotely intend to carry out the assassination. But even then, simply saying he’ll kill someone, and the act of making a promise he intends to break are both morally reprehensible things to Kazuma that he would never otherwise have dreamed of doing. It goes completely against the kinds of principles his father must have taught him to uphold. (More on those later.)

It must especially sting for Kazuma to know that his utter desperation to go to Britain to the point that he’s willing to stoop to such depths is really the only reason he’s being chosen for the exchange. All that hard work and studying, all his academic achievements? Basically irrelevant, because Jigoku would have chosen him for his desperation anyway, even if he wasn’t the star student that he is.

Nonetheless, Kazuma would still have done his best in the exams, determined to prove that he is the top candidate and he would have deserved this for legitimate reasons, and so he can basically pretend that’s what’s going on and just not think too much about the whole assassin thing. He at least does a decent job of keeping up that façade on the surface, such as when he’s eagerly telling Ryunosuke at La Carneval (which they’re presumably visiting to celebrate him being officially chosen as the exchange student) that he’s finally been recognised for his “academic achievements and successes in court”. How forced must that smile have been, I wonder.

Japan DLC features some fun subtle exploration of Kazuma’s feelings on this matter. Rumours of “foul play” in the selection of Kazuma as the exchange student get brought up, as it appears that he in fact scored second place among the candidates, and not first. Kazuma never tries to argue against this on the basis that it wouldn’t make sense for him to have been chosen if he’d only been in second – after all, he already knows exactly why that might have happened. Instead, he just gets extremely worked up over the notion that what do you mean he wasn’t first???, even when it turns out that it was only by a margin of one point. And, yes, part of this is very much Kazuma’s ridiculous perfectionism at work – but it’s not just that. It’s also that he was desperately clinging to the idea that he does still deserve this on a real, above-board level, because at least he really was the top candidate academically, right? It has to have been a massive punch in the gut to learn that apparently… no, he wasn’t, and the only reason he’s getting this at all is because he was willing to agree to kill a man.

(I’m not gonna tell you whether or not Kazuma really did come in second place; you’ll have to watch Japan DLC yourself to find out.)

Jigoku claims during 2-5 that Kazuma had an actual reason for wanting to kill Gregson – and, sure, he theoretically does, since Gregson played a part in getting his father killed. But I don’t know if I believe Jigoku’s implication that this was something Kazuma knew about when he took the mission back in Japan. The only person who could have told him that is Jigoku, and, well. First of all, I’m not sure Jigoku even necessarily knew anything at all about how Genshin was framed at the time, since he seemed to have genuinely tried to stand up for him in court, and he was only involved with the faked execution half of the plot. And even if Jigoku did know about Gregson’s involvement, I’m not sure he’d risk telling Kazuma that, because that begs the question of how he knows about this, and Jigoku probably wouldn’t want to imply his own involvement in Genshin’s death in front of his son who is currently standing right there with a sword at his hip.

However. Despite that I doubt Jigoku told Kazuma anything about Gregson other than that this is his target and perhaps also that he’s an inspector, Kazuma’s still bound to have wondered. Why is Jigoku of all people insisting that he kills a random Englishman? He has to figure that whatever connection Jigoku has to this Englishman to want him dead must have something to do with what went on in Britain ten years ago, and therefore that Gregson is likely to be somehow related to his father’s death. I wonder if Kazuma ever considered the hypothetical: if it did turn out that this Gregson person actually was one of the ones responsible for killing his father, what would he do about the assassination then…?

Another point to note is that, based on his surprise when it gets brought up in 2-5, Kazuma was apparently completely unaware that his assassination mission was one of a pair, connected to the murder of Wilson. That said, he shows some interesting behaviour during 1-1 that suggest he’s figuring out some extent of what’s going on there. He’s silently lost in thought for most of the testimony where Ryunosuke’s trying to prove the existence of the woman whom everyone else suspiciously insists they never saw, and then he’s the first person to suggest, without any real basis, that said woman is both: foreign, and a student. I strongly suspect based on this that he’s realising this is a very similar deal to his own exchange assassination, in which the killer gets protection from the higher authorities due to being a foreign student.

Ryunosuke’s trial (and Jigoku’s other ultimatum)

Jigoku’s corruption in trying to keep Stronghart’s British assassin out of trouble during 1-1 is evident even in ways that aren’t immediately apparent on the surface. Remember that Ryunosuke was in prison for three days, and yet Kazuma only managed to take over as his lawyer the evening before the trial. That might seem a little odd at first: Kazuma surely would have heard about his friend’s arrest upon seeing it in the papers the next morning at the absolute latest, and yet it took him that long to get assigned to the case? Obviously this detail is there for the sake of the loophole that lets Ryunosuke defend himself, but it does make a lot of sense in-story, too. No doubt Jigoku, desperate to make Ryunosuke into a scapegoat for the crime, assigned him some random lawyer who was fully expected to throw the trial, and did everything he could to prevent the actually-competent Kazuma getting anywhere near the case. Kazuma must have spent those three days fighting tooth and nail against Jigoku’s roadblocks to be allowed to defend his friend, and even then, he only just made it in time.

(And he evidently never told Ryunosuke about any of this struggle he went through, presumably because he didn’t want to worry him, typical Kazuma. But poor Ryunosuke, stuck in prison for three days with no sign of Kazuma until the last minute – he must have assumed his best friend just thought he’d done it and abandoned him, oh nooo.)

With that in mind, consider the ultimatum Kazuma’s been given for this case, which was almost certainly put in place by Jigoku: if he fails in defending Ryunosuke, he loses his place on the exchange trip. Except that Jigoku does not actually want Kazuma to lose his place on the exchange trip at all, because then he’d have to find another assassin, and he’d be hard pressed finding anyone else desperate enough to agree to that like Kazuma was! However, what Jigoku also really doesn’t want, for the sake of protecting Stronghart’s British assassin, is Kazuma defending Ryunosuke in this case. He’s already learned that he can manipulate Kazuma into doing things he doesn’t like by exploiting his utter desperation to make it to Great Britain. By threatening Kazuma with the risk of losing his exchange trip, Jigoku is hoping to make Kazuma too afraid to go near Ryunosuke’s case at all.

Unfortunately for Jigoku, since this ultimatum isn’t a secret, he still has to make it appear above-board. What he’d really like to do is threaten Kazuma with losing the exchange trip if he takes the case at all, even if he wins – but that’d look pretty obviously dodgy. Why forbid the chosen student from going on the trip when he’s just proven his competence by winning a case? So all he can do is threaten to do that if Kazuma loses, and hope that this risk will be enough to sway him.

But of course Kazuma isn’t swayed. And it’s not because his best friend is more important to him than his chance to make it to Britain. After all, there’s no outcome in which he saves Ryunosuke but loses the exchange trip. If he wins the trial, he keeps both! So he’s just going to win it, simple as that. He refuses to acknowledge the possibility that he might lose. Because if Kazuma isn’t even good enough to prove his best friend’s innocence, if he can’t keep another person precious to him from being wrongfully executed (because that absolutely would have been Ryunosuke’s fate) even though he has the power to stop it this time… then how on earth is he ever going to be good enough to clear his father’s name in Great Britain? He simply has to be good enough, there is no other option.

He says as much himself in the trial’s recess, after Ryunosuke’s protected him from the ultimatum by defending himself, and yet Kazuma announces that he’ll give up on his trip anyway if they lose this case: “If I’m the kind of man who can’t help his best friend avert the worst crisis of his life… I shouldn’t waste everyone’s time by going to study overseas anyway.” That line means so much more when you know what “studying overseas” truly means to Kazuma.

Ryunosuke reflects about this decision of his that “that’s the kind of true friend he is,” but… that’s not really it at all. This is not actually about Kazuma being willing to sacrifice his chance to go to Britain for the sake of his best friend. This is about Kazuma’s utter inability to accept the idea of failure, and how badly he would fall apart if he did.

Coping with (near-) failure

And then… Kazuma basically does fail in that trial. There’s one awful moment at which he’s completely given up and can’t see any possible way out, and it’s only thanks to Ryunosuke that their case is salvaged. If Kazuma had actually been the one defending Ryunosuke, like he was supposed to be, Ryunosuke would have been found guilty. Kazuma would have lost his best friend, along with all faith in his own ability to put things right in Britain.

(It’s also interesting to think about why Kazuma fails. He approaches Brett’s first testimony with a firm Plan in mind – to prove that she had a way to hide a gun on her person. So when the apparent way to prove that turns out to be a dead end, he can’t see any other way forward. Meanwhile, Ryunosuke has no real sense of a plan at all and is just desperately grasping at any tiny detail that could mean something, leading to him noticing the burn mark that proves the victim was actually poisoned. Ryunosuke is a good defence lawyer, because defence lawyers have to constantly improvise new lines of reasoning to react to whatever curveballs the prosecution or witnesses throw at them! And the fact that Kazuma’s more skilled at setting out a clear plan from the beginning and less able to roll with the punches when unexpected twists happen goes to show that he was really always more suited for prosecution.)

Of course, since Ryunosuke did manage to save himself and things turned out all right in the end, Kazuma’s able to more or less – on the surface – gloss over the part where he basically failed when it mattered. He’s still desperate enough to go to Britain that he’s not about to give up on everything over a slip-up that didn’t end up having any actual consequences. But this near-failure of his nonetheless clearly bothers Kazuma a lot.

For that matter, it also bothers him that Ryunosuke took over his own defence at all, out of a desire to protect Kazuma, as if he felt Kazuma needed protecting and might not be good enough to win the case on his own. Of course Ryunosuke didn’t at all do it out of a lack of faith in Kazuma’s abilities – he just wanted to make sure that if things somehow went badly anyway, his friend didn’t have to suffer as well. But Kazuma certainly took it as Ryunosuke lacking faith in him. And then the events of the trial, that failure of a moment where Kazuma gave up, would have only cemented it in his head that Ryunosuke was right to.

Another of the delightful subtle things going on in Japan DLC is that Kazuma is really desperate to make up for his perceived failure and inadequacy in Ryunosuke’s trial. It’s set ten days later, as Kazuma receives a rather ambiguously-worded telegram from Susato and Ryunosuke about “new charges” and rushes to the courthouse, fiercely determined to defend his best friend and do it right this time. He doesn’t even bother reading the actual charges document, apparently feeling that he doesn’t need to, that perhaps if he gives himself a handicap by going in completely unprepared then he’ll just prove himself more when he wins anyway. Ryunosuke tries to tell him something, and Kazuma cuts him off, assuming that Ryunosuke wants to defend himself again, and insists that no, really, let him do it this time.

And then the trial begins with Kazuma making an absolute fool of himself when it turns out that he is the defendant, actually, and it was never Ryunosuke at all. This is quite possibly the only time in Ace Attorney where a protagonist, given one of those blatantly obvious can-you-read-the-Court-Record tutorial questions, is very clearly meant to have canonically got it wrong. Kazuma is so desperate to make up for his “failure” in defending Ryunosuke during 1-1 that he tunnel-visions hilariously hard on the completely false idea of his friend being the defendant again, just so that he can have an opportunity to do so. (Which also tracks with how very prone Kazuma is to tunnel-visioning on things that aren’t true in general.)

(What is Kazuma on trial for in Japan DLC? Again, not gonna tell you; go watch it yourself, because it is good Kazuma content.)

A friend-shaped package

Of course, Kazuma’s “failure” during Ryunosuke’s trial, and the fact that Ryunosuke was the one to pull things back on track with his surprising talent at lawyering, also leads to the very important event of Kazuma asking Ryunosuke to stow away with him to Great Britain. The trial must have dealt a huge blow to his ability to believe that he’d be good enough to find the truth about his father – but it also handed him a potential solution to that problem: his best friend. Kazuma can reassure himself that even if there comes another moment where he falters and can’t see any path forward, if Ryunosuke’s with him, then he’ll be able to see the way to the truth in Kazuma’s place.

That said, though, it’s subtly noticeable that Kazuma wanted Ryunosuke to join him in Great Britain anyway, even before the trial where he saw just how much potential his friend has as a lawyer. He casually suggests Ryunosuke should come with him while they’re chatting about it at the restaurant, in a way that makes it sound mostly like a joke, but I suspect he was hoping that Ryunosuke would bite and take the offer seriously. It’s also rather telling that he never actually explains to Ryunosuke that his lawyer talents are the reason why he’s asking him to come, once he actually officially asks after the trial – strongly suggesting that they aren’t really the main reason why at all.

The real crux of it is that Kazuma just doesn’t want to be alone while facing something as huge and painful and frightening as what happened to his father in Britain, not to mention the awful false promise he’s had to make in order to finally reach it. He just wants his best friend there by his side to make it all more bearable. Of course he does. So would anybody.

But Kazuma’s inability to acknowledge that he’s having painful feelings about any of this makes him completely incapable of admitting that this is the real reason, even to himself. Which is why he cannot bring himself to outright ask Ryunosuke for that favour until the trial gives him an excuse to do so. Now he has a proper, material reason why Ryunosuke can help him in Great Britain, both with his father’s case and also potentially with that awkward looming assassination issue. It’s a good reason, see, one that has nothing to do with his feelings, because he doesn’t have any of those and anyway something like that wouldn’t be a valid reason to ask his best friend to uproot his entire life for several years. (It would, Kazuma; Ryunosuke would absolutely do that for you if he knew how afraid you were about this.) …And yet, this excuse is really mostly for himself, since he never actually gets around to explaining any of it to Ryunosuke.

Well, no – Kazuma does sort of tell Ryunosuke about some of it on the Burya. He makes an attempt, at least, but he doesn’t get much further than “if you became a lawyer, then…” (you could defend me if the assassination mission gets me arrested), and “there’s something very important I have to do” (clear my father’s name and avenge him). I also get the impression that their conversation about it on the Burya is the first time Kazuma ever tells Ryunosuke the name of Karuma… which is probably the closest he can manage to get at that moment to talking about his father, since his love for his father is so deeply entwined with his love for his precious sword.

Kazuma clearly wants to finally open up and trust his best friend with this huge burden of his, now that he’s directly asking him for material help with it (and emotional support, not that he’d be able to admit that part). But close to a decade of believing that he can’t ever tell anyone the truth about his father’s death is not a habit easily broken, especially when it’s so tied up with all the painful feelings that he’s unconsciously suppressing so hard. Maybe Kazuma would have eventually worked up the courage to tell Ryunosuke everything somewhere during the two-month voyage, if it’d proceeded as normal. But unfortunately, tragedy struck before he could reach that point, changing the trajectory of Kazuma’s path completely.

Part 2: Great Britain

Unusual amnesia

I happen to have some rather unique feelings on the topic of Kazuma’s amnesia, in large part because I spent an awfully long time in my first playthrough utterly convinced that he was faking it. (It’s probably only thanks to the unusual circumstances of me playing the game that I ended up thinking that – I had seen a fan-translation of the first game and remembered Kazuma’s name appearing in a Secret Government Message, and had also been spoiled for his survival, which led to me imagining there was a lot more Secrecy involved in his upcoming role in the second game than there actually was.) This resulted in me writing a whole AU fic in which Kazuma actually was faking it, to explore why he plausibly might have done so and how he would have felt doing it.

Buuut I am fully aware that that’s not actually the intended canon reading, so I’m putting all that aside here to talk about the canon version of events (while also discussing why I had some very valid reasons to latch onto my alternative theory).

Here’s the thing about Kazuma’s amnesia: it’s not the regular garden-variety kind of amnesia. It can’t be, because if it was, then his actions in the 2-3 scene on the experiment stage where Susato recognises him wouldn’t make any goddamn sense.

There he is, an amnesiac who’s been compelled to come to London for some mysterious purpose he must be dying to know more about. And for the very first time since he woke up with no memories, here’s someone who seems to know who he is, is asking to talk to him, even calling out to him with a name that feels strangely familiar. Any regular amnesiac would realise that this person could help them regain their memories, and would eagerly take such a person up on that offer to talk and learn more about their forgotten self.

But Kazuma? He just turns around and leaves, barely acknowledging Susato or her reaction at all, literally not even looking at her or Ryunosuke for the entirety of the scene! And we can’t put this down to Stronghart’s ridiculous rule that he’s not allowed to talk to anybody, either, because when has Kazuma ever heeded arbitrary rules when something he cares about is at stake? On the surface, it makes absolutely no sense for the amnesiac Kazuma to respond to Susato’s outburst by just leaving. No wonder I thought he was faking it – that would be a perfectly fitting explanation for that scene!

But since he’s not faking it, what’s actually going on with Kazuma’s amnesia is that it has to be of the PTSD-driven variety.

It’s a lot like Daley Vigil’s, in that sense. We get some glimpses of how Vigil’s mind had warped itself in such a way as to avoid thinking about the traumatic memories he wanted to run away from, even when it went against all logic. It really didn’t make sense for him to have willingly quit his well-paid job at the prison to become a street pedlar, but he just… never quite manages to think that through and make that connection.

Similarly, Kazuma’s subconscious is steering him away from any reminder of his true identity, even though it goes against the conscious logic of him wanting to understand why he’s here in London. He ignores and avoids responding to these people who seem to know him, due to some deep and primal part of him that’s desperate to protect him from the painful truth of who he is and his mission. He probably doesn’t even consciously understand why he ignores them and leaves; he just does so, and then never thinks about it much, because his subconscious doesn’t want him to question it.

During van Zieks’s trial when Vigil is on the stand and it’s become apparent that his memory of ten years ago is hazy, Kazuma is the first one to suggest that he outright has amnesia (despite not having evidence for it like Ryunosuke does), and he gives a speech describing how such a thing can be caused by trauma. And the way he gives this speech is so very telling. It’s a lot more evocative than you’d expect for something he’d otherwise have just read or heard about somewhere, and he even uses “we” language for it, which he wouldn’t normally do when giving an example. It all reads as very suspiciously specific – as if this is as close as Kazuma can bear to come to admitting that this is something he’s been through himself.

Kazuma got amnesia not just from the injury he received on the Burya. It was more that the injury happened to trigger the deep, aching part of him that just wanted to run away from everything he is and is headed towards. To run away from the agony of his father’s death, and the fury towards his killers, and the unimaginable burden of having to put everything right in Great Britain. In that moment of traumatic injury, that part won out and managed to suppress all of that pain, to hide it where he couldn’t reach it - but everything was so intertwined with his very identity that it ended up hiding that too. There was a part of Kazuma so traumatised by everything he is, so desperate to make the pain stop, that all it could do was make him not be Kazuma Asogi any more.

And yet, it couldn’t block out everything. Kazuma’s sheer determination to make it to Great Britain at all costs was so deeply ingrained into him that it lingered, as the voice that compelled him relentlessly to London. Kazuma couldn’t do anything but follow that voice, making it all the way there all on his own against all the odds, despite not understanding why, despite subconsciously not wanting to remember why. He spent all those months with amnesia trapped in a mental war between the part of him that wanted to run away from it all, and the part of him that needed to run towards it. And of course the latter won out in the end.

The pain of remembering

Considering that Kazuma’s amnesia wasn’t just regular amnesia but his psyche trying to block out actual trauma, regaining his memories must have been agony for him. Especially so considering that the trigger was seeing his father as the Professor. No wonder he screamed as it all came flooding back.

It also means it’s not as strange as it might seem that his reunion with his friends in that scene is actually remarkably brief. Literally all he says to them is thanking Susato for taking care of Ryunosuke, and thanking Ryunosuke for taking care of Karuma, and that’s it. Hardly the heartfelt reunion with long-lost friends who’d thought he was dead for months that you’d expect him to have. This was another of the things that made me seriously side-eye the legitimacy of Kazuma’s amnesia on my first playthrough, because he was being so weirdly cagey about things. But that was because, at the time, I didn’t realise just how bad Kazuma is at talking about his feelings. He must have been in emotional agony for that whole scene, but of course he couldn’t let anyone see that, not even his closest friends (and especially not van Zieks, who must have still been silently present even though he vanishes from the Cutscene after a certain point). So instead, Kazuma just… leaves to cope with everything alone. If he’s going to break down over this overwhelming flood of emotion, he can do it where nobody else will see him. Just like he always has done, with all of the pain he's carrying.

Yet despite the agony that remembering caused him, Kazuma has absolutely no regrets about having done so. With his memories back, he’s once again fully on board with how overwhelmingly important his mission is, even if he may now somewhat understand why part of him wanted to lock it away. His conviction that facing the truth is always better, no matter how much it hurts, is likely a big factor in why he was so ruthlessly willing to force the truth out of Vigil’s mind, even though he knows the cost of doing so better than anyone else in that courtroom.

The pain of his amnesia – both having it and recovering from it – is also bound to play a big role in Kazuma continuing to avoid and be distant from Ryunosuke and Susato in the following days. Just before leaving the courtroom, he vaguely implies that he intends to catch up with them sometime… but then he doesn’t even contact them for over a week until they’re brought face-to-face again because of van Zieks’s arrest.

Kazuma must have expected the catching-up conversation with his friends to involve all sorts of questions about his amnesia, and about his father, and all of the pain he's been carrying. He just can’t bring himself to face that pain, so he puts it off, tells himself it’s less important than everything else he’s got to focus on now. Talking to Ryunosuke out of necessity because they’re opponents in a trial is much easier for Kazuma than opening up to his best friend about his feelings. Even when Ryunosuke and Susato come to his office to ask him about his father, Kazuma tries to brush off the topic by saying that they already know what happened and so they should already understand. It takes Ryunosuke asking in no uncertain terms to hear it from Kazuma himself to get him to actually talk about it. And even then, as he’s telling his story, Kazuma never once mentions how any of it made him feel.

In fact, there’s lot of times during Resolve (whereas he does it maybe only once or twice in Adventures?) that Kazuma addresses Ryunosuke with his full name. It comes across as strangely pompous and distanced, like he’s trying to put up a barrier between himself and his best friend, so that Ryunosuke won’t be able to see how much he’s hurting. Or perhaps it’s also because Ryunosuke is now his opponent in van Zieks’s trial, the person trying to defend and believe in that monster, and that’s easier for Kazuma to deal with if he puts more distance between them.

It's really kind of heartbreaking to think how this distance between Kazuma and Ryunosuke is largely the fault of the accident on the Burya. Even though Kazuma survived it, it drove a wedge between him and his friend all the same. Kazuma was at least attempting to work up to telling Ryunosuke the truth about his father while on the ship, but here and now in London, he barely wants to talk about it even when it’s right there in front of them. Being separated from his friends and forgetting he had them entirely shunted Kazuma right back into his usual mindset of having to do everything completely alone and rely on nobody but himself. That regained habit stuck around even once he’d remembered them – after all, having a friend he could rely on was never something he’d actively sought out in the first place.

But Kazuma barely realises what he’s missing out on, just like he never did before. Not when he’s far too focused on the mission to avenge his father that’s now finally within his reach.

The despicable Reaper

Kazuma must have had quite the shock, upon regaining his memories, to find himself already under the tutelage of Barok van Zieks, of all people. The man who wrongfully condemned his father to death, the man Kazuma’s loathed for so many years and been so determined to take his revenge on once he made it to Great Britain. And on top of this man being the effective murderer of Kazuma’s father, it turns out that he’s also the Reaper of the Bailey, a serial killer who murders every innocent defendant that he fails to convict in court.

With his regained memories, Kazuma would have latched onto the rumour that van Zieks is the Reaper and seen it as the inarguable truth the very second he thought about it, because it makes far-too-tragically-perfect sense in his head. He’s grown up coping with his grief by clinging to his hatred of van Zieks as this monster who killed his innocent father, because he’s just that terrible. So it just makes sense to him that van Zieks would continue to do that with everyone else he prosecutes, no matter how innocent they may be. Kazuma says himself, when arguing for why van Zieks would have wanted to murder Jigoku for his petty crime, “Isn’t the whole premise of the Reaper absurd, killing those who have been found innocent? Clearly the rules by which the man operates… are beyond a sane person’s comprehension!” There simply doesn’t need to be any actual rhyme or reason behind van Zieks killing someone, in Kazuma’s mind.

As I said earlier: I extremely strongly believe that Kazuma knew about van Zieks from the moment he read that fateful letter, and has hated him for all those years. His hatred is too irrational to not have been born from the emotions of a broken grieving teenager desperate for someone to blame. Van Zieks is the monster under the bed, the bogeyman who destroyed Kazuma’s entire life – of course he’s the Reaper as well.

A fun little detail of Kazuma’s constant seething hatred towards van Zieks is that he almost never refers to him as “Lord van Zieks” while he still sees him as the enemy. That happens only a tiny handful of times, like three or four, whereas the rest of the time he sticks to “the Reaper” (which he obviously is, right), “the accused”, or simply “Barok van Zieks”. While simply calling him “van Zieks” without a title would probably be considered rude and be called out, Kazuma clearly does not want to afford this man the dignity and respect of being referred to as “Lord” if he can help it, so he goes out of his way to avoid doing so most of the time.

One courtroom-language quirk I noticed while paying attention to this is that the term “defendant” is only used by the defence, and meanwhile the prosecution will always refer to the same person as the “accused”. With this in mind, it’s very interesting to consider that when Kazuma presents the noticeboard of Reaper cases and talks about the victims, he refers to them as van Zieks’s past “defendants”. He is thinking about them from a defence lawyer’s perspective – meaning he believes they were innocent. And van Zieks, that monster, had them killed anyway, because killing innocent people for no reason is just what van Zieks does, right?

(Kazuma is also apparently able to employ some mental gymnastics on the topic of Asman, who was guilty as sin but got acquitted due to corruption. Kazuma would have helped van Zieks work on that case and therefore surely must have been aware of just how awful Asman was. This would, you’d think, paint a picture in his head of the usual kind of people van Zieks prosecutes and that maybe several of those killed by the Reaper weren’t actually so innocent after all. But it seems like Kazuma manages to file that away in his head as Irrelevant, because it contradicts the monstrous image of van-Zieks-the-killer-of-innocents that he’s clung to for so long. Probably helped by the fact that he had amnesia at the time of the Asman case, so it all feels very separate from his reborn hatred and is easy to brush off.)

Revived as a prosecutor

Kazuma must have also got quite a shock at the other part of the situation he suddenly found himself in when he regained his memories, which is that, oh look, he’s a prosecutor now. Earlier I discussed my thoughts on why he stuck to his promise to his father of being a defence lawyer and never considered switching to prosecution even though it would actually be more practical for his ultimate goal. But now that he’s here, in Great Britain, with his father’s case coming into the open and van Zieks right there within his grasp… how can he turn down such a perfect opportunity?

Still, he’s not entirely happy about it. He’s not able to admit that, not even to himself, because he can’t be allowing himself to have doubts about something that’s such a necessary part of his mission now. The only indications that he’s conflicted about this are in his body language: when he talks about how he’s a prosecutor now instead of a defence lawyer, he tends to appear more hesitant and less sure of himself than usual.

(At least he can take solace in the fact that his will to be a lawyer hasn’t vanished entirely, because Ryunosuke’s there, carrying it on in his place, being exactly the kind of lawyer Kazuma was trying to be. That means a lot to Kazuma, no doubt helping to alleviate some of his guilt about abandoning that promise he made to his father so long ago.)

Kazuma’s hesitancy around the idea of being a prosecutor now is bound to be wrapped up in the fact that it was a prosecutor who got his father killed. In fact, when Susato tries to argue that van Zieks was simply doing his job in convicting Genshin and deserves no blame, Kazuma shuts that idea right down: “It’s people who condemn people. The law is just a tool they use to do it.” Out of his sheer desperation to have a target, a person, whom he can hate and blame, he chose to take on a worldview that allows him to view van Zieks as the man who personally murdered his father. Clearly the law itself, as a flawed system, wasn’t a satisfying enough target to hate in the midst of his grief.

But this mindset of Kazuma’s gets very awkward if you follow the logic through to its natural conclusion. Prosecutors are always condemning people to death, and that’s perfectly legal and acceptable so long as the accused is truly guilty. If the law is simply a tool, the same as a sword, then… wouldn’t that also make it equally acceptable to straight-up murder someone if they’re guilty of a capital crime? Doesn’t that mean that vigilante justice is right and justified? Doesn’t that make what the Reaper does justified?

I don’t think Kazuma’s actually thought this through that far. He never shows the slightest hint of feeling like the Reaper’s actions are justified, at any point, even after he’s dropped the irrational conviction that all the victims were innocents. According to this logic, it would have been right for him to personally murder Gregson for playing a part in killing his father – but he’s clearly horrified by the dark impulse within him that wanted to do just that. Despite the words Kazuma came up with to give himself an excuse to blame and hate van Zieks, his base sense of decency and honour still instinctively feels that vigilante justice is wrong and that true justice can only be carried out through the courts.

Nonetheless, it’s got to be nagging at the back of Kazuma’s mind in his newfound position: that thought that by being a prosecutor he’s effectively killing people, and it’s only acceptable if they’re truly guilty, but if he ever gets it wrong then he’s basically committing manslaughter at best. Geez. I hope that sometime after the end of the game, he rethinks his “the law is just a tool” mindset, because continuing to be a prosecutor while feeling like that makes him effectively a killer cannot be healthy for him, even if he is doing it to combat the “demons” of society.

(The actual answer to this seeming moral conundrum is that the death penalty is wrong and barbaric, and that nobody truly deserves to die for being guilty of a bad enough crime, whether their sentence is carried out via the law or not. It’s got to be rough for Kazuma and van Zieks and every other Ace Attorney prosecutor stuck working with a system where they routinely send people to their deaths.)

The assassination mission

In the week after regaining his memories, Kazuma must have been busy using his status as an apprentice prosecutor to search for every scrap of information he could about the Professor case, in the hope of finding something he could use against van Zieks. (Far too busy to get around to contacting his friends, of course.) But in amongst that, he’d also be haunted by the other thing he’d remembered – that someone in Britain expects him to assassinate Gregson.

Imagine his panic and horror when he’s approached in secret by Gregson himself, of all people, to talk to him about an assassination. Kazuma must have had to put on one hell of a poker face until he re-oriented himself and realised that Gregson was actually talking about having Kazuma help him assassinate somebody else, for the Reaper.

The actual purpose of this mission is, of course, not a real Reaper killing and very much to give either Kazuma or Jigoku the chance to kill Gregson. But, as I’ve already discussed, Kazuma is completely convinced that the Reaper – who is obviously van Zieks, right – would just want to kill Jigoku for that petty crime he got acquitted for ten years ago. So Kazuma definitely buys that this is a genuine Reaper mission.

Still, he must have wondered if there wasn’t more to it. See, the Reaper mastermind himself never approached Kazuma to get him to agree to be the assassin here (he can’t have, or Kazuma would have learned it isn’t van Zieks), so it must have been Gregson who was Kazuma’s only point of contact. And yet, Gregson wouldn’t have done so without expecting Kazuma to be fully on board – meaning the Reaper also expected Kazuma to accept the mission. Which is a hell of a thing to expect someone to agree to out of nowhere… unless said person knew Kazuma had agreed to a different assassination mission already. From this situation he’s found himself in here, Kazuma would be able to deduce that the Reaper is the same person who masterminded his exchange assassination, and that actually this is also the mission to assassinate Gregson that he’s been dreading and hoping to avoid forever.

But he can’t just refuse the mission, because this also happens to be his perfect chance. He’s been looking into the fateful autopsy that got his father convicted and knows that Gregson had a hand in it – must have had a hand in forging it, surely, because his father was definitely innocent. The only way Kazuma feels he can be sure of confirming that from Gregson himself is by doing some not-very-legal threatening of his life, and the only place he can do that without getting himself into trouble is while they’re on an illegal mission, something Gregson can’t speak of without incriminating himself.

Which is… actually a terrible approach for Kazuma’s ultimate goal of proving his father’s innocence in court! Not only is he going to have to incriminate himself to even admit that Gregson confessed to anything here, but Kazuma stating what Gregson told him is just hearsay and not admissible in court as actual testimony – to say nothing of the fact that Gregson was being threatened. It simply would not work at all (and it certainly doesn’t get him far when he actually does bring it up). Kazuma ought to know this… but he’s just so desperate to find anything that can even just feel like he’s got Proof of his father’s innocence. He must be so afraid that he’ll never be able to uncover anything that matters if he doesn’t resort to this.

(He said he’d sacrifice anything for this, right? He already has; what’s the big loss from just one more blow to his morality, when it’s already been tarnished?)

Having confirmation for himself that Gregson did indeed forge the autopsy, and did it on somebody’s orders, would nonetheless help Kazuma put some pieces together. He probably already suspected that the person who wanted Gregson dead probably wanted to silence him due to something related to his father’s case, and now he can be even more sure of that. Said person has to be van Zieks, right, since van Zieks is the one who prosecuted and framed his father and is The Worst. And Kazuma’s also now been able to deduce that the exchange mastermind must be the same person as the Reaper. Thus, he can prove that van Zieks is the Reaper!

Kazuma insists to Ryunosuke later in his office that he has proof that van Zieks is the Reaper – and he does, more or less. It’s made from a lot of deductive reasoning that’ll be tricky to have stand up alone in court, it’d require Kazuma to incriminate himself to even talk about (which of course he’d be willing to do, if there was no other way), and it’s based on the completely mistaken premise that van Zieks was the original prosecutor on Genshin’s case… but there is some actual logic there in Kazuma’s head that isn’t just his blind hatred. He’s so furiously determined to prove van Zieks is the Reaper in the trial not only as revenge, but because he knows that in doing so he’ll be bringing things around to his father’s case and proving the fabrication there, thus finally clearing his father’s name.

The demon

Of course, Kazuma really, really wishes that Gregson would just tell him who ordered him to forge the autopsy. He already knows (so he thinks) that it’s van Zieks, but hearing it from Gregson’s own lips would be proof of it. At least, it feels that way, in the heat of that moment in that cabin where he’s able to mostly forget that none of this will stand up in court anyway and is just relishing in finally getting to hear someone admit to how corrupt this all was. If nothing else, he just wants to hear validation of his furious convictions that all of it was van Zieks’s fault.

But as he realises that Gregson will never talk no matter what, Kazuma loses control of his anger. He’s been keeping all of his pain and grief and rage suppressed for so, so long, never letting himself show any of it, only even letting himself feel the anger as long as he can turn it into purpose – he has absolutely no idea how to healthily cope with it. If he’d had anyone at all during his adolescence whom he’d felt safe opening up to and who could have helped him learn to process his emotions, his anger here would have likely been controlled enough to not lead to anything bad. But as it is, it’s been suppressed for so long that it simply explodes out of him. He’s standing in front of this man who’s just admitted to playing a role in his father’s death and yet still won’t give him what he wants, and suddenly Kazuma finds himself overwhelmed with blind fury and wanting to kill him, and—

…The moment is presented ambiguously enough within the game’s format such that one might interpret it as Kazuma deliberately swinging his sword at Gregson’s trunk on the floor or something, redirecting his anger towards the trunk as a proxy for Gregson himself. But I don’t think that can be it. The angle of the gash in the trunk, the direction it’s subtly curving in, doesn’t look like it could reasonably have been made that way by a natural right-handed sword swipe if the trunk was lying upright and open on the floor. It only works if the trunk was open and sideways at the moment of the impact – meaning it must have been held by Gregson, as a shield, to protect himself from Kazuma striking directly at him.

Not only did Kazuma want to kill Gregson in that brief, awful moment – he actually tried to. He’s incredibly lucky that Gregson reacted quickly enough to block it, or he’d have ended up completing his assassination mission after all.

It probably occurred to Kazuma himself just how close he came to this. We know just how haunted he is by the “demon” that he realised was inside him that day. But in true Kazuma style, I suspect he coped with it for the time being by suppressing it and basically trying to forget it had happened, clinging to the notion that Gregson wouldn’t be able to tell anyone what’d happened without admitting to the mission and incriminating himself.

Except that, shortly after Kazuma arrives back in London, he learns that Gregson’s been killed. I wonder if, for a brief horrified moment, he felt like this was karma finishing the deed that Kazuma only didn’t by pure luck, that it might as well have been him…?

…Only for Kazuma to hear, moments later, that van Zieks has been arrested for the crime, having been caught red-handed holding the gun. Everything would have instantly flipped itself around in his head: this is it, the golden opportunity to take that monster down, because van Zieks killed Gregson, and so there’s no need to think about how else it could have gone. On top of all of his usual hatred and furious drive to condemn van Zieks, perhaps just a little bit of Kazuma latching onto this was also fuelled by him desperately wanting to deflect and run away from his own guilt in Gregson’s near-death.

But is van Zieks guilty?

Still. Despite Kazuma’s fervent tunnel-visioning on van Zieks’s guilt for most of the case, one of the most intriguing things – and the biggest reason I found Kazuma so damn hard to get a read on during my first playthrough – is that, actually, not every single part of him is convinced van Zieks really is guilty.

What makes me so sure of this is the photo of van Zieks when he was younger, smiling happily with his brother and Gregson before everything went wrong. That photo is necessary for Ryunosuke to get through to van Zieks’s more vulnerable side and convince him to let Ryunosuke defend him – and it’s Kazuma who gives him the photo.

And, sure, Kazuma had plenty of reason to want Ryunosuke on the case even if there’s not an ounce of him that thinks van Zieks might be innocent, simply because he wants his best friend there opposite him as he uncovers the truth of his father’s case. But that alone doesn’t explain why Kazuma knew the photo would work on van Zieks. That means that there’s a part of Kazuma capable of acknowledging that van Zieks is a person who’s suffered (just like Kazuma has) and cannot actually be a heartless monster who murders innocents for no reason.

Of course, Kazuma barely acknowledges the part of him that’s thinking this. He’s extremely evasive in that entire conversation, especially when asked why he’s giving them the photo. (And he’s also very evasive when asked about Klint’s portrait in his office, for the same reason.) He doesn’t want to accept that he’s not actually one hundred percent all-in on his conviction that van Zieks is The Worst, because he can’t allow himself to be having doubts and to possibly be wrong in his mission that he’s worked so hard for.

And yet… though he could never admit it, that has to be a part of why he wants Ryunosuke to defend van Zieks. If it should happen that Kazuma is wrong after all, he trusts his best friend to be able to see the truth about van Zieks and prove it to him. He trusts Ryunosuke to save him from himself before he goes too far and condemns an innocent man to the same fate as his father.

Going native

As we move into the trial and see Kazuma stand as a prosecutor in the British courts for the first time, there’s a few more interesting little things about his character that become noticeable. One subtle thing going on with his demeanour here is that he appears to be putting in a conscious effort to appear as British as possible, despite his obvious heritage, in a lot of small ways. It’s in a pointed contrast to Ryunosuke, who remains unapologetically Japanese the whole time.

At one point in the trial, Kazuma describes a short distance using inches, the (at the time) British measurement. Later on, Ryunosuke describes the very same short distance using centimetres, the Japanese measurement, which goes to show that going out of one’s way to use inches isn’t a necessary part of speaking English as a non-native – and yet Kazuma does so anyway. Kazuma has a very pronounced English-style bowing animation, whereas Ryunosuke… well, he doesn’t have a bowing animation at all, but I can’t imagine him bowing in any way other than the Japanese one. And while Kazuma’s outfit changing to an English one wasn’t his choice, I suspect he might have made that decision anyway if it’d been up to him – meanwhile Ryunosuke keeps his Yumei uniform the whole time and never even considers dressing like anything other than the Japanese student that he is.

(And of course Kazuma doesn’t put his headband back on even though it’s right there wrapped around Karuma’s sheath, not only because it’s a Japanese style, but also because that headband was there as a reminder of his failure. Can’t be having any of that while he’s here in Britain and cannot afford to fail.)

Kazuma’s insistence on going native is particularly exemplified in a few jabs he makes at Ryunosuke in court, to the effect of “don’t imagine that a lowly foreign student like you would be allowed there”. Ryunosuke is quite understandably bewildered at the obvious hypocrisy of these comments, and I find that hypocrisy fascinating, because it’s almost… insecure of Kazuma? I believe what’s going on is that Kazuma is desperately projecting his own status as a lowly foreign student onto Ryunosuke alone, in an attempt to create a fantasy where he isn’t and is above that and will be treated with greater respect by the British judiciary.

After all, Kazuma is well aware that ten years ago his father was also “just a foreign student” and that this was likely part of why he was scapegoated and powerless to properly defend himself from the charges. (And, though not quite how Kazuma’s imagining it, that was indeed Stronghart’s excuse for not following up on Genshin’s suspicions of Klint, leading Genshin to take matters into his own hands and seal his fate.) So Kazuma feels like he needs to ingratiate himself into the British judiciary and act exactly like one of them in every possible way, so that they’ll respect him and listen to him and take his arguments seriously when he starts revealing the truth. It's painfully ironic, how he feels like he has to become the same as the very group of people who got his father killed.

(The one exception to this, the one part of his Japanese culture that he refuses to suppress no matter what, is Karuma. Because of course it is. Kazuma will not disrespect his father’s soul for anything.)

Not lying

I spent a lot of my first playthrough of the final case, given that I’d figured out he was with Gregson on the day of the murder, assuming that Kazuma must have been telling a whole bunch of lies in order to hide this. But, as it turns out, replaying while knowing exactly what went down on the Grouse and exactly how much Kazuma is aware of… he never tells a single direct lie at all. It’s really quite impressive, given just how much he’s hiding, that he manages to do so while never actively lying about anything. He has to be making a deliberate effort to do that, because lying would be easier.

In fact, the only time in the entire game that Kazuma ever lies about anything is during Escapade 2, on the Burya, when he absolutely has to in order to protect Ryunosuke from being discovered. He even thinks to himself, “I’d be lying if I said no”, before he actually says anything untrue out loud, as if he’s hesitating for a moment upon realising he’s got no choice but to lie here.

Most people would consider hiding the truth, in any way, to be just about as morally bad as lying, but Kazuma is freely willing to do the former all the time while going out of his way to avoid doing the latter unless it’s completely necessary. It’s an odd moral priority to have… which is what makes me suspect that this might be a principle of his that he learned from his father and therefore cares immensely about sticking to the very word of, even if what Genshin meant by “you shouldn’t lie” was probably something closer to “you shouldn’t deceive people”. (…That said, Genshin kept a lot of secrets of his own and had a hidden compartment in his sword for the purpose of doing just that, so perhaps he also had some slightly skewed priorities about deception. And, of course, he did eventually end up breaking this principle and lying with his confession – for Kazuma’s sake.)

Granted, most of Kazuma’s careful avoidance of lying happens in court, and could therefore be simply put down to him not wanting to be accused of perjury… but there is one very interesting example of him doing this outside of the courtroom. If you investigate the portrait of Klint in his office, Ryunosuke asks if Kazuma knows who it is, and Kazuma’s response is extremely evasive, with “Why would I?” and “I wouldn’t have the first clue what [van Zieks] decorates his office with”. It’s very striking when usually Kazuma would just give a straight yes or no answer to such a question. The real truth appears to be that he does realise this is van Zieks’s esteemed brother who was killed, but he doesn’t want to acknowledge that (as mentioned earlier, because that would involve acknowledging that van Zieks is a human person who is suffering) – however, he also doesn’t want to lie and say he doesn’t know, hence the evasive response that gives that impression without outright lying. It would cost Kazuma nothing to lie here, but he goes out of his way to avoid doing so anyway!

(He also exercises his expertise in hiding things without directly lying when it comes to how he’s feeling, of course. When he sees Ryunosuke and Susato again in Stronghart’s office after regaining his memories, he apologises for worrying them, and then, after a pause as if he’s searching for words, reassures them by saying “It’ll be alright now.” Not “I’m alright”, because he isn’t, and saying that would be a lie.)

Definitely not corrupt

Along similar lines to his insistence on not lying, Kazuma also really cares about giving off the impression that he’s being as honourable and above-board as possible during the trial. When Ryunosuke presents the alternative theory of how the Fresno Street scene could have been a set-up and Gregson was actually killed elsewhere a day earlier, Kazuma makes a big point of how this is only conjecture, but the whole judiciary is watching and he can’t allow the slightest doubt, so he’s going to pursue the possibility anyway. It reads a little like he's trying to stress how very rigorous and thorough he’s being, entertaining this conjecture from the defence just to be sure they do things right. (After all, he’s convinced himself it is just conjecture, because van Zieks is definitely guilty, right.) He’s also able to come across this way in the part on the second day where he admits he only brought up the smuggling angle because he was instructed to, but he disagrees and is now going to reveal the real truth that the Prosecutor’s Office was trying to hide.

Kazuma’s insistence on this is less specifically about his father’s principles (though there’s still probably a bit of that). It’s more just that he believes that van Zieks, and the British judiciary in general, was unforgivably corrupt in convicting his father, and he’s absolutely determined to be the complete opposite of that. When van Zieks calls him out for being in danger of becoming an “even more sinister Reaper” than him in the way he’s pursuing this case, Kazuma suppresses most of his reaction but is clearly Not Happy at that insinuation. He can’t stand the idea that he’s being a hypocrite, only able to clear his father’s name and condemn his killer using the same corrupt tactics and twisting of the truth that happened ten years ago.

And yet. Van Zieks may be a little off about the corruptness of the particular testimony that he calls Kazuma out on this for, but on the whole, he’s really kind of got a point. Kazuma’s approach to this entire trial, despite the way he tries to insist he’s doing this properly and righteously, is actually remarkably dodgy! It would make this post even more ridiculously long than it’s already being if I talked about every little bit of this (though maybe I will try and make another post going into this in more detail), but let me at least take you through some of the major strokes here.

[[Hey, guess what: I ended up making multiple other posts analysing Kazuma throughout the trial in line-by-line detail, which you can check out on my other blog here!]]

Questionable tactics

Prosecutors in Ace Attorney very rarely call the accused themselves to the stand, as it’s usually not necessary. Kazuma does it anyway, twice, despite it being thoroughly unnecessary here too. It’s all so that he can tear van Zieks’s testimony apart – which is not supposed to be the prosecutor’s job, but Kazuma’s still somewhat thinking like a defence lawyer – and make him guilty of perjury on top of everything else. The first time he calls van Zieks, Kazuma makes a point that “he believes in the oath of office he’s taken and will be compelled to tell the truth”, while fully intending to prove that he’s lying. The second time, later on day 3 once it’s been proven that van Zieks did not shoot Gregson and was not lying at all in his first testimony, Kazuma again tries to get him to “lie” by testifying that he had no involvement in the assassin exchange, and points out that if it can be proven he was involved, this would make van Zieks’s words perjury. Kazuma could have perfectly well explained the connection that he believes makes van Zieks the exchange mastermind without needing a testimony! But no. He is so viciously determined to prove to the court not only that van Zieks is a murderer, but also that he’s a horrible lying liar who lies. Which doesn’t seem like the correct priorities for a prosecutor to have.

Then there’s the whole part where Kazuma proposes they examine Gregson’s whereabouts on the day before his body was found, then subtly leads Ryunosuke into suggesting that he was investigating the redheads at Lime Park. Kazuma knows full well Gregson wasn’t there at all, because he was personally accompanying Gregson to Dunkirk that day. But he just… quietly doesn’t mention that fact (while being careful not to lie about anything, of course), and lets the court spend several testimonies on what he knows is a complete wild goose chase.

On my second playthrough of the case, I wondered if maybe Kazuma had somehow found out about Daley Vigil being Gregson’s fake-alibi man, and he pursued this line of questioning about the redheads because he knew it would end up with Vigil on the stand, thus letting him get answers about his father’s execution. But that can’t be it, because Kazuma is visibly surprised both upon learning about the fake alibi thing and also learning who Vigil is at all. Finding Vigil here can’t have been anything but a lucky coincidence for him.

So if that’s not why Kazuma lets this happen, then the real reason has to be, largely, that… it’s just a huge diversion ploy. He knows that whatever truth Ryunosuke does uncover about why on earth one of Gregson’s diaries mentioned Lime Park that day (something he’s bound to be a little bit curious about himself), it’s going to involve conclusively proving that Gregson was not murdered there. Kazuma then uses this misdirection to argue that this “completely destroys the defence’s case”, as if Gregson not being murdered at Lime Park on the 31st (because he wasn’t even there) means he must have been killed on the 1st at Fresno Street after all. That’s obviously nonsense, because we still haven’t looked into where Gregson really was on the 31st! It’s a little unclear how well this argument would have worked out for Kazuma, though, because he promptly gets sidetracked by the Vigil thing, which leads to an abrupt end to the trial day.

Chronic tunnel-visioning

The next day of the trial, after seeming like he cares about doing this honourably by subtly allowing Ryunosuke to see through the whole made-up smuggling angle that he was ordered by Stronghart to pursue – which really he does so that he can reveal that Gregson was working for the Reaper – Kazuma then proceeds to spin the absolute most bonkers line of so-called logic we’ve seen from him yet. It gets a little waylaid by Ryunosuke managing to prove that Kazuma was with Gregson that day as the assassin, but ultimately, Kazuma’s argument is as follows:

Gregson was ordered to kill Jigoku that day, and since he failed (because Kazuma refused to do it, not through any fault of Gregson’s, mind you), van Zieks, who is obviously the Reaper’s mastermind (still zero proof of this base premise to all his arguments) therefore must have killed Gregson as punishment for disappointing him. Kazuma acts so certain of this argument, like this is proof that van Zieks did it. But even if this didn’t rely on the completely unfounded base premise that van Zieks is the Reaper, and also the flimsy idea that Gregson was at fault for the mission failure, this still proves nothing but van Zieks’s potential motive, and not that he actually killed anyone!

(This isn’t the only time Kazuma argues using the base premise that van Zieks is the Reaper without backing it up – it also fuels half of his basis for calling van Zieks’s first testimony a lie, because obviously the Reaper must be lying about having never visited his own hideout before, right.)

And then Kazuma brings up Jigoku’s disappearance and makes an even worse argument: that van Zieks totally still wanted to kill Jigoku anyway, badly enough that he was willing to send some other assassin after him from prison (something he’s totally capable of, somehow, because uhhhhhh Reaper). Therefore, Jigoku’s disappearance proves that van Zieks had him killed, and thus also that van Zieks killed Gregson. Definitely no other possibility, not that if Jigoku’s missing it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s dead, nor that if he has been murdered it could possibly be the work of anyone other than van Zieks. If something bad has happened, then it must be because van Zieks’s is the Absolute Worst.

All of this backwards logic falls apart in an instant if you even just briefly entertain the possibility that van Zieks isn’t the Reaper and isn’t the Worst Person Ever. But Kazuma’s not being corrupt here on purpose – he’s just so horrendously, tragically tunnel-visioned into his reality where van Zieks is a monster that he genuinely can’t see how broken his logic is. He’s so convinced that van Zieks must be the Reaper and Gregson’s killer that any events which could be explained by that get twisted around in his head to become further proof of that, proof he’s confident enough to present in court, despite the obvious logical fallacy in that way of thinking. He genuinely seems to believe that this entire argument for van Zieks’s guilt, which hinges on the unfounded premise that we already know he's the Reaper, is going to then prove he’s the Reaper as well. That’s completely circular!

Even when Jigoku’s on the stand the next day, at which point most people’s suspicions would be likely to have shifted at least a little towards him (you know, given the whole fleeing-the-country thing), Kazuma’s opinion hasn’t budged at all. He remains firmly convinced that this is nothing but a dead-end, right up until he simply can’t any longer. When Ryunosuke manages to confirm that there’s blood in Jigoku’s trunk, thus conclusively proving that Gregson was murdered on the Grouse, Kazuma’s reaction is immediate and distinctly shocked – “You can’t be serious! You did it?” He is only realising in this very moment that Gregson’s killer was someone other than van Zieks, and he almost can’t believe it.

And even then, with Jigoku’s confession, Kazuma manages to mental-gymnastics his way into convincing himself that van Zieks definitely still ordered the killing and is therefore still guilty. It’s actually a relevant detail that Jigoku’s setup at Fresno Street was intending to frame Hugh Boone and not van Zieks, because Jigoku would never have tried to frame his superior. This way Kazuma can tell himself that van Zieks just carelessly, foolishly blundered his way into the trap set up by his underling for someone else (it’s a fun contradiction how the van Zieks in Kazuma’s head is simultaneously a terrifying monster and also a blundering fool) and it totally all still makes sense.

Opening his eyes

It really is kind of heartbreaking to see Kazuma, who truly is a highly-skilled lawyer most of the time, descend into desperate obvious fallacies like this. And while Ryunosuke is apparently still caught up enough in his idolisation of Kazuma to not notice any of his flawed logic for most of the trial, he does eventually see how clouded his friend’s mind has become. When van Zieks confirms he knew nothing about the fabrication of the ring in the autopsy, Kazuma brokenly tries to insist that no, it must have been him, it has to be – he’s clung to his hatred of van Zieks as a coping mechanism for his grief for so long that he doesn’t know what to do without it. Ryunosuke takes this opportunity to finally try and talk him down, telling him that his emotions have blinded him to the truth. And in a testament to the strength of their friendship, Kazuma listens and takes his words to heart. Surprisingly quickly, in fact!

Another of the little hints that a buried part of Kazuma was always capable of acknowledging that van Zieks is a good person is that it really doesn’t take long for him to re-evaluate his opinion on the man, once Ryunosuke talks him into letting go of his hatred at last. Only a minute or so later, Kazuma’s able to acknowledge that perhaps van Zieks is the one who’s been deluded all these years, that the reason he condemned Kazuma’s father could be simply that he was mistaken (or misled) about the Professor’s true identity. (Though Kazuma does phrase this statement as if he wasn’t also equally deluded about the real truth of things until just now, which sure is some projecting.) Later on, Kazuma fervently defends van Zieks by praising the strength he showed in enduring the title of Reaper for all these years, which is a remarkable level of acknowledging van Zieks’s suffering and humanity from someone who was until very recently convinced he was nothing but a monster! It just goes to show that Kazuma already did notice all these things about van Zieks during his time as his apprentice. He simply forced himself to suppress and dismiss those thoughts until now because they didn’t fit the villainous image of van Zieks he was so desperately clinging to.

Despite all of the awkwardness and reservations that it’d be difficult to shake completely, Kazuma does express respect for van Zieks at the end of the trial. He’s also clearly determined to keep studying under him, as shown by the fact that he’s the one to encourage van Zieks to keep prosecuting when he’s planning to resign due to his brother’s crimes. I suspect Kazuma wants to study under him not only because van Zieks the most skilled prosecutor in Britain, but also because he’s so incredibly good at not being corrupt despite everything, and Kazuma feels he needs to learn from someone like that, after having come so close to falling prey to his own demons.

Even then, with his respect for van Zieks and determination to learn from him, Kazuma still can’t forgive him for the mistake ten years ago that cost his father’s life. And that’s a heavy fact, considering that Kazuma himself is guilty of very nearly doing as much himself in trying so fervently to convict van Zieks. It would have been exactly the same kind of mistake – condemning an innocent man to death due to overlooking the hints at the real truth out of grief-driven hatred. That Kazuma can’t bring himself to forgive van Zieks for such a thing very strongly implies that he’s also not able to forgive himself for all the mistakes he’s made.

After all, forgiveness as a concept probably doesn’t really exist in Kazuma’s head. For ten years since losing his father, he’d never have felt like he needed it. How would forgiving the monster who destroyed his life have fixed anything? – far better to focus on avenging his father and bringing justice and putting things right. And by that same token… how would forgiving himself fix anything? Yet now here he is at the end, in a position where the healthiest thing to do really would be to forgive both van Zieks and himself for their mistakes and wrongdoings and move forward. But Kazuma doesn’t know how to do so.

And then there’s his father. Kazuma’s learned during this trial that his father – the man he so passionately believed would never take another man’s life, would never engage in underhanded deals, would never tell a lie – did in fact do all of those things ten years ago. It’s going to be tough for him to come to terms with that. But maybe also, that could help him? To realise that even his father, that esteemed paragon of justice in his eyes, was flawed and human, someone who compromised his own morals out of desperation and emotion and trying his best to do the right thing. I really, really hope it stuck with Kazuma that the reason Genshin lied and took the deal with Stronghart was out of love for him. If that’s an understandable enough reason, if that’s something he can forgive his father for, then it ought to be just as understandable and forgivable that Kazuma himself did so many things he regrets out of the very same love for his father.

The other thing I hope Kazuma reflects on is how glad he must be that he brought Ryunosuke to Great Britain. Even though things didn’t turn out remotely as planned, even despite all the awkward painful distance caused by the accident that separated them, Ryunosuke still succeeded in doing exactly what Kazuma brought him for, which was to help him. And that’s not only helping him find the truth, but also helping him do the right thing and not lose himself to his hatred and convict van Zieks. I truly don’t know if Kazuma would ever have been able to forgive himself if van Zieks had actually been wrongfully executed because of him, condemned to the same fate as his father. But that didn’t happen, thanks to Ryunosuke. Kazuma’s best friend managed to save him from himself.

I think Kazuma is at least somewhat aware of this, as indicated in the reason he asks Ryunosuke to hold onto Karuma at the end. Kazuma’s own demons are what caused him to horribly misuse Karuma and lead to it breaking, and he doesn’t trust himself with it any more at present – but he trusts Ryunosuke. On a symbolic level, he’s trusting his best friend to safeguard his soul and keep it from being damaged further, until he feels he’s grown enough to be worthy of it again and to be able to look after it himself.

So even though they’re parting ways for now, I hope Kazuma can look at the importance that his bond with Ryunosuke had in keeping him on the right path, and seek out other opportunities for friendship and connection during his time in Great Britain. More than anything else, what Kazuma needs to fight his demons and stay walking on the path of light is simply to not be alone.

~~~

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed my thoughts on Kazuma enough to make it all the way to the end of this post, you may also be interested in reading the Kazuma-centric fics I’ve written. They explore a lot of the concepts discussed here and even helped me to figure several of them out in the first place!

Sharing the Pain

An AU in which Ryunosuke and Kazuma are caught out in their stowaway ruse on the Burya, leading to a flogging as punishment. Explores a more vulnerable side of Kazuma than normal, his difficulty opening up to his best friend about his emotions and past even when he wants to, and the way he really just wanted Ryunosuke with him on this trip for emotional support and to not be alone but is completely incapable of admitting it.

Not Forgotten, But

My AU in which Kazuma actually was faking his amnesia, exploring how that might have come about and how it would have affected him. Featuring Kazuma’s hang-ups about the assassination mission, distancing himself from his friends, lots of hatred and mental gymnastics around van Zieks, suppressed trauma about his father’s case, and his inability to acknowledge that he could be having any kind of doubts or regrets about the situation he’s in.

A Friend, Locked Up

Taking place in that same AU where Kazuma was faking his amnesia, this follows up with what I very strongly believe should have happened in canon, namely Kazuma getting arrested for Gregson’s murder halfway through the final case. Includes his perspective of that fateful moment in the cabin with Gregson, and then featuring his suspicious actions and questionable approaches to the case actually collapsing around him in court, bringing Kazuma lower than he ever comes in canon and giving me plenty of opportunity to explore all the reasons he’d have to hate himself, before Ryunosuke pulls him out of that and saves Kazuma from himself in a much more direct way.

#ace attorney #the great ace attorney #the great ace attorney chronicles #great ace attorney #dai gyakuten saiban #tgaa spoilers #kazuma asogi #asougi kazuma #character analysis #ramble #friends #my buttons

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