Turnabout Enemies

Break Time!

I'm going to give everyone a break from this story and do something random. When writing No Escape, I wrote sorta commentaries on the fan fiction. Though, since I'm kinda writing small notes on the very bottom of each chapter for this story, I thought I'd instead focus on the characters and my interpretation I have for them in this story. Considering that this is a what if story, I will dive into why I made their characters the way I did in this story. I'm going to start with the character I consider to be the most misinterpreted character and often the commonly troll character in AAO (Ace Attorney Online), Manfred Von Karma.

Writing this, I knew that everyone was going to go into this with the mentality that Manfred Von Karma might be the kidnapper, bad guy in this story or least bad person. It's difficult doing stories like that, because in order for it to work, you have to make the main antagonist or villain be far worse than the arch villain. In Dragon Ball Z, the second season introduced Freeza, who not only destroyed the home planet of the previous villain from season 1 and Goku's birth planet, but is the destroyer of many worlds. He was the kind of villain that not only became personal to Goku, but to Vageta, who had previously tried to destroy Earth in season 1. Other examples include Walker from Danny Phantom, who arrests Danny unfairly and forces him to join forces with his previous enemies, and the two aliens from Kim Possible, who kidnap Kim and force her and Ron to team up with their arch enemies in order to defeat them.

That's not where I wanted to go with Manfred Von Karma. I wanted to go the same route as the first Phoenix Wright game where you think the main villain is Miles Edgeworth, until you realize that he's actually the victim that Phoenix Wright is trying to save. Of course, the connection between Manfred and Gregory would be far different. Regardless, I wanted to set up the story where Gregory doesn't just defend Manfred Von Karma to save his son, but to save Manfred Von Karma himself. The question became if I can turn Manfred Von Karma from one of the most hated characters in Ace Attorney to a tragic character that my readers will want to side with. The answer is most definitely.

What many people make the mistake with Manfred Von Karma is assuming he is the worst of the worst, the most evil villain on the planet. In truth, he's more of a gray character than a bad guy. He's not a good person by any stretch of the means, but he's also not heartless or devoid of emotion or feeling. Even when talking with many Ace Attorney fans like myself, we all agreed that Manfred Von Karma did love and cared for Miles Edgeworth like a son, regardless of whose son he belonged to. By playing just the trilogy, you wouldn't know this, even with Franziska making her appearance and showing her devoted love to Miles Edgeworth as her older/younger brother. Though, when playing the Miles Edgeworth spin-off games, there is an obvious close relationship Miles Edgeworth and Manfred Von Karma have with one another. The second Miles Edgeworth game makes it clear, when you compare Blaise Debeste's relationship with his son, that it proves that Debeste never loved him and constantly abused him in every way possible. Manfred, on the other hand, had always treated Miles Edgeworth fairly and taught him everything he knew. It's easy to throw stones at someone until you realize that there might be more humanity to them that is often overshadowed by the evil they do.

One thing I can say about Manfred Von Karma, no matter how many crimes he's committed, is that he is not devoid of human emotion or capability of forming relationships. Not only does Manfred have a daughter, but he even mentioned about having a granddaughter with a dog named Phoenix in Turnabout Goodbyes. Now, this could be interpreted as him grasping for straws and lying through his teeth, but considering his relationship that we see of him with Miles Edgeworth and young Franziska Von Karma, him having a granddaughter might not be that far fetch. It's very close to possible for Manfred Von Karma to be both a cruel prosecutor and a family man that loves his family very dearly. This would be the catalyst to the plot of the story, while also being what gets my readers to start sympathizing and siding with Manfred Von Karma. Generally speaking, it is hard to hate an action that is out of love or someone that proves he can love. I don't mean how Thanos claimed to love his daughter before sacrificing her in order to gain one of the reality stones, but one that is shown through action and sacrifice.