This is, primarily, a few early reflections on Ace Attorney. Another rather soon update by my standards, but hey, the change in my routine has me particularly excited again.
I’m currently very early in case 2, when you first meet with the defendant in the holding cells. The first game starts with a very short trial, and I’ve logged 8 hours (though I’m not staying 100% right there doing it every moment of that time for sure), so that does mean I’m moving quite slowly! But at the same time, it’s not a real indication of reading speed because I’m taking this very intensively and also mining words, going off on tangents to look up when/if Wanikani teaches me new kanji, etc. What I’ve noticed is that the vast majority of kanji I don’t know are coming up in the late 20s or early 30s. I don’t actually think I’ve noticed one used in Ace Attorney yet that WK doesn’t teach, but the game does seem to favor writing a lot of words out in katakana that could have been kanji (and not even supposedly “usually kana” words).
From a learning perspective, wow, this game is fantastic for my level so far. There are a bunch of sentences where I don’t know a word or two, but because they’re delivered in such bite sized chunks, that actually just means it’s perfect for finding those i+1 moments (could do with a little less trailing off between multiple text boxes, but it isn’t SO bad). It does not take me long at all to create 20 or 30 cards and go “ok I really should stop now.” The amount of sentences that I just haven’t been able to figure out are very small, too. There are a couple where I couldn’t quite work out how some part was reaching the overall meaning (which has virtually always been very clear, though I have to repeat I’m pretty familiar with this game so maybe that helps), but they’re such exceptions rather than the rule.
It’s also, with the overall relaxed difficulty, given me a little time to sit back and appreciate the nuances more. Every character has pretty distinct quirks so far. Naruhodo (Phoenix) uses a lot of the masculine enders like ぞ in his thoughts, but they don’t tend to make it out to his speech thus far. The shift in the first criminal’s speech patterns was fun, going from pretty thick honorific language to slurred, rude accusations and commands really suddenly. Haven’t had enough time with Gumshoe (forget his Japanese name) and Mayoi (Maya) yet but I’ve seen little things like Gumshoe using the っす ender a lot where no one else has. There are so many interesting little shortcuts to distinct speech styles in Japanese.
It also lets me compare the original to the translation, which is fun. “Larry Butz” was always a name I slightly rolled my eyes at… I mean, they make a joke out of mistaking his name for “Harry Butz,” and that quote they repeat is “when something smells, it’s usually the Butz.” It was a little… strangely close to toilet humor for a series that doesn’t do that? So it turns out in Japanese his name is Masashi Yahari, and the joke is just calling him やっぱり instead. The aforementioned quote was 「事件のかげに,やっぱりやはり」which I just really like the sound of. It’s clever and flows nicely. That said, I get where the translators were coming from, and how hard this would be to deal with, so while the actual result isn’t quite to my taste, I think this is a decent bit of cleverness to find a name that still works for both jokes, in some way. For a point in the translation’s favor, I always thought Winston Payne was a very clever pun, and didn’t immediately notice it (winced in pain). In Japanese this man is just named Auchi lmao.
Anyway, Japanese is fun, Ace Attorney is fun, things are good. Highly recommend it for anyone else in this sorta low intermediate zone looking for real native material that will prove they actually have learned quite a bit, haha.
I’m glad you could find something both interesting and helpful for yourself!
