Wizard Barristers ep2: that really pissed me off!

It is really gonna be hard for me to get through this series without feeling some level of serious anger. There’s just something about dealing with police and a brain dead justice system that just irks into an angered state of belligerence. It’s kinda why I try so hard when playing a Phoenix Wright game. The mere idea of some sneaky idiot getting away with murder, or some lazy lawyer tossing some innocent into prison just pisses me right off! And it’s also a reason why I have so much trouble dealing with these contrivances when I watch these lawyer shows.

Just as a refresher: In 2018, humans and wizards live together in Tokyo. Police continue to protect order in society, but wizards are tried according to magical law, in special courts defended by wizard barristers. At age seventeen, Cecil has just become the youngest wizard barrister, and begins work at the Butterfly Law Offices. While she hasn’t realized it yet, she has tremendous magical potential.

Source: ANN.

In this episode, we see the Cecil’s defendant get put on the very edge of death, simply because the prosecution was able to come up with a theory that the man that killed an armed robber (that took a hostage) was actually killing one of his accomplices do to some grudge that they can’t even prove! I don’t care if I just made a run-on sentence, that’s F*CKING RETARDED!! I know this is a fictional world, but you can’t just sentence someone to death with no objective evidence to back up your theory! It’s just stupid, and would make it way too easy to frame someone for murder and therefore get that person killed! The very idea BREAKS my brain!

If I take a moment to step back and calm down, this does tell me something very clear about the world of this anime. And that is that wizards, witches, warlocks and the like are under heavy scrutiny and prejudice by the “normal” humans of the world. It shows that there is a very, very high bar being placed on the elite who use magic when it comes to the legal system, and it also shows that there’s no trust towards that group of people either. I imagine some of this is self imposed as well. I get the feeling that the users of magic in the courts also want to do their best to stomp out any delinquency in their ranks, and prove their trustworthiness to normal people. That’s the only way I can understand a system like this being allowed to hand out death penalties this easily. Then again, there’s always the possibility of corruption when we’re talking about humans and power. My oh my. I’m just so pissed right now. And that’s even after the damn verdict was turned in Cecil’s favor.

I guess I should talk a little about this episode while I’m at it. I can’t totally let my personal feelings dominate the analysis of this episode.

I’m quickly learning how this story is going to be told. This was a pretty simple case, but because of the strange ease and swiftness that maximum punishment is allowed to be doled out to magic users, extreme measures had to be taken. Instead of seeing Cecil use her knowledge to reject and later crush the prosecution’s TERRIBLE argument against her client, her boss illegally appropriates information and evidence (though it’s also bullsh*t that the police wouldn’t give the defense the information they needed) and passes it shadily on to Cecil. And why does she do this? So Cecil can TAKE the evidence she needs directly to the courtroom, which is already beginning trial. And that evidence is a member of the gang that robbed the damn bank in the first place! Top it all off with a giant mecha (monster?) battle that was needed to apprehend this group of dangerous criminals, and you have a complete disaster! All of that should have been completely unnecessary, but I’m learning that that is what is going to probably be the common route to address problems in this show. Please understand, that I don’t hate this episode and I definitely don’t think it’s bad. It’s just that the logic behind this show infuriates me. INFURIATES!

I’ll hurry up and close this out with but a few more observations. For one, we learn that the woman Cecil visited in that high security women’s magic prison was her mom, who is on death row. She’s also Cecil’s whole reason for being a magic lawyer. And it her final, most important goal is to get her mother a retrial and acquital. I suppose in this world, anything’s possible. And finally, I’m really starting to hate Moyo. She has the creepiest of creepy eyes in the show, and utterly ruins all her food with the worst possible toppings for them.  If anyone deserves the death penalty, it’s her.

And with that, I’ll end this post here.  It looks like I may have found one show I’m willing to follow weekly from the Winter 2014 season.  This show at the very least is interesting, even though I fear it shoves a little too much into its concept.   Hell, maybe I’ll finally get over my hatred of the eyes on this show’s character designs – though I wouldn’t count on it.

Further Reading:

• Check-in Station: Wizard Barristers ep1(perhaps it’s too good?)