I know I’m extremely late on the defence here, but I couldn’t help myself when I saw one of my favourite Ace Attorney characters on here. So without further ado, the trial for Trucy Wright is now in session - And the defence is definitely ready.
(Also be aware, this defence has spoilers for the fourth Ace Attorney game.)
Poor replacement for Maya
Now I admit that Trucy does indeed share a lot of traits with Maya. They’re both the assistant to the titular attorney (in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney at least), they’re both bubbly and energetic, and they’re both future professionals in training who are up-holding their family traditions. That being said, I don’t in any way see Trucy as “a replacement for Maya”. It’s no secret that Trucy IS supposed to play the same role Maya did in the original trilogy (again, most of this applies only to Apollo Justice: Attorney attorney, and not the games after that one, at the time of writing this. I’ll stop emphasizing that point from here on out since I’ve made that clear enough here). She’s there to bounce interactions off Apollo, and to give his her assistance in trials, much the same way as Maya did with Phoenix.
However the two are completely different and I’ll always stand by that. Maya’s entire character is based around how she wants to grow up, and she wants to balance her “teenage side” and the side of her that has to accept the responsibilities of being the Master of the Fey Clan. Trucy is different to this - Her teenage side doesn’t exactly stand in contrast to her goal: To become a world famous magician. Although a lot of actual responsibility obviously does have to go into a career as a magician, it’s inherently a funnier, more casual experience then having to become the powerful, wise Master of an entire clan. This makes Trucy much more in her place then Maya ever was and this comes across in how she acts. Maya is often times not confident in herself or her abilities, while Trucy is often the exact opposite: She calls herself the CEO of the Wright Talent Agency, and she doesn’t hesitate to let people know just how good of a magician she is.
She’s got a confident attitude especially with her future as a magician, and inheriting her family’s name. This is the biggest, most glaring difference she has to Maya, who is the exact opposite: Maya is scared and unsure about being the Master. This is why I dislike her being seen as a “Maya replacement” or a “Maya Clone”. She is completely different in many ways.
As for her being “worse” or “better” then Maya, that’s opinion based. I can see why someone would like Maya better, but I just prefer Trucy. I’ve rambled about this one point for a long time though so moving on.
Useless because she and Apollo have the same power
First of all, there’s an actual reason why she has the same power as Apollo. And this is where it gets into spoiler territory for end-game plot details. They’re siblings, both being the biological children of Thalassa Gramarye, and the power is passed on through the Gramarye gene. So it’s only natural they have the same power.
This having been said, this is an extremely moot point, since Trucy hardly ever… in fact, to my recollection actually NEVER, uses her power. Since in order to focus it and actually use it to it’s fullest you need one of the special bracelets on your wrist. If anything, Trucy seeming to have the ability to use the power Apollo has is just there as a hint to the fact that her and Apollo are related by blood. Trucy gains her use as a character in other ways, without needing to use that power at all. Speaking of which…
Seen as less intelligent than the other assistants
That’s just…flat out no true. Granted the other assistants are all in themselves rather clever, and have shown a lot of smarts. But this applies to Trucy just as much as any other assistant. Just to name a few out of the many times when she’s shown her intelligence:
Working out who the killer in Turnabout Corner had to be(or who it seemed like it had to be at that point) before Apollo himself. To quote Apollo from that point: “She turned the entire case on it’s head whole I was still working it out!”
Noticing before anyone else at all, (including a prosecutor, a defence attorney, and a detective) the events of the day on the day of the concern in Turnabout Serenade matched the lyrics to the song.
There’s also the countless times when she’s generally been helpful towards Apollo. Acting as his motivation, with a simple “you can do it” or just generally giving her opinion on things". One of the main points you’ve got to consider here with this too, is that she’s Phoenix Wright’s daughter, and his lawyer-y skills have rubbed off on her - She knows what she’s doing, and she definitely exudes a confidence in the courtroom, along with actual showing her intelligence by objecting whenever she feels she needs to. It’s no exaggeration to say that without her, Apollo wouldn’t have won his first few cases. In fact, that’s LITERALLY true, considering she interrupted the trial just as the Judge was about to hand down a guilty verdict, in Apollo’s second case. (Granted, this was by staging her own kidnapping, rather then with an actual objection, but coming up with methods like that on the fly, as dodgy as it may be, still requires sharp and quick thinking).
Puts on a fake smile all the time instead of showing her real emotions
I have a LOT to say about this one. For starters, her real emotions: The deep pain she feels over losing her entire family There is no way in hell you can say that a little girl is supposed to go through what she went through without developing a deep rooted darkness of some kind. (This is obviously all from the perspective of what Trucy thought happened. But you could argue that the fact she thought all this was true when some of it wasn’t, just makes it even worse):
The girl’s mother was shot and killed in a magic act accident. This was while her grandfather was dying from cancer. Then said grandfather is murdered while in the hospital, and her father is accused of doing it. After his trial, her father disappears out of her life forever. In the space of a short amount of time, she lost her mother, father, and her grandfather. And she had no other living relatives.
It’s a very, very good thing Phoenix has a heart made of pure gold and adopted her so she didn’t have to suffer through things alone. If he didn’t I can imagine Trucy would have gone down a very dark path. The thing here though, is that at this time Phoenix was also going through a very rough patch in his life. As he himself puts it, those few years following his disbarment were the darkest times he’s ever faced, but Trucy was the light that got him through it.
They were both full of darkness at the time, and they supported each other. Phoenix learned to become a father, and look after Trucy, and in turn, Trucy began to grow into the girl we know her as. Constantly supporting Phoenix has his… -ahem- “sugar daddy”, as she herself puts it at one point. Being the “shadow chief” of his business and becoming his daughter. She created this “persona” and at the same time, her new father supported her. Personally speaking…I don’t find this “fake” in the least.
This is what it truly means to get over darkness. Trucy isn’t faking anything… she’s using Phoenix’s support, and her life he’s given to her, and used it to make herself smile despite however dark her emotions can be inside her heart. Plus on top of this, she’s afraid of losing people - She’s lost all her family, like I said, in such a short space of time. Now she has this new group of loved ones of hers with her new father, her brother Apollo (although she doesn’t know he’s her brother, it’s clear she sort of sees him like one), and her fellow female friend Athena. As well as the others she’s met along the way, like Ema, and Jinxie. She doesn’t ever want to lose them.
But again, I ask: Is she really faking her emotions? When she smiles, is that smile not a proper smile? When she’s happy, is she not actually happy? Obvious those dark feelings will never go away from her heart. But that doesn’t mean this happy side she has isn’t real too.
Panties
Yeah… Okay this is where I think I start to get a little shoulder shruggy in my defence. I can get why this can be off putting to some people, but there’s several points to keep in mind here:
For starters, despite however you might want to joke about it with…and however the games themselves DO put their own perverted spin onto the entire deal with her magic panties for the sake of comedy, you have to remember that they ARE just a magic prop at the end of the day. They’re not panties she wears. They’re not actually a perverted item. They’re a prop she uses in her magic acts. The entire joke with her magic panties is how…perverted it actually looks and sounds without context, compared to how perverted it actually is when you know the context.
“People come from far and wide just to see my panties.”
“My panties are magical!”
“I’ll put them into my panties for you for later.“
Yeah, all of these sound perverted without the context of what Trucy’s magic panties actually are. Of course, there is still the fact that…her magic panties, despite being a prop, are still a pair of actual panties, and she’s still flashing them around. But the context here is whats most important. The joke like I said, is supposed to be how disgusting these things would seem without context.
Heck, if you go into Dual Destinies without having played Apollo justice: Ace Attorney first, you’ll likely fall into the camp of finding it rather disturbing. But that’s hardly Trucy’s fault. You have to remember that Trucy is naive - Another magic part of the joke is the fact that Trucy can’t seem to see the unfortunate way that her magic panties would come across to most people. For example, with this joke:
Trucy: They love my me over at the Wonder Bar! People come from far and wide just to see my panties!
Apollo: You…might not want to advertise it like that…
Trucy: …?
Secondly, the panties are a vital plot point in Turnabout Corner, which involves a panty snatching at it’s center. Again, this is hardly Trucy’s fault. Want to blame anyone for that episode’s events, blame the pervert student that decided to steal the panties, Wesley Stickler.
I could understand using this as a point against Trucy if she was purposefully throwing panties around with full knowledge of what she was doing. But she really doesn’t see what she does as being dodgy in any way. In her mind, they’re just a magic prop.
As a small side note: Just to play devil’s advocate for a second, the reason she uses panties of all things as her signature magic item, and why she doesn’t seem to understand why such a thing is a bad thing to do at her age (15), is never explained. So I do admit it could come across as slightly pointless from a development viewpoint. But that’s not a point against the character herself. She does, and she’s naive to why that’s bad. That’s really all there is to it.
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Holy molly, that was long. I just have a lot to say about this, and I think Trucy is a great character who gets too much flake for just being "a Maya clone”. It’s a pretty large shame that Dual Destinies gave her such a back-seat role, basically making her only purpose being one of the hostages taken at the space center, as a way to really get Phoenix moving on things within the plot.