u/sagenagato

Zero confirmed kills

Obsessed with Soyboy. Yapping ancient history nobody cares about.

Gallery of weird faces. Whipping out new toys every chapter only to get shitted on. Has more "cough cough" than the protagonists.

Defrosting attempt failed. Forcing Giants to submit failed. Domi Reversi on Luffy-Loki failed. Kidnapping kids attempt about to be foiled.

Nobody even fears him. No characters shitting on their pants because of him. Even Sabaody Kizaru instill more fear than him.

wtf is he in Elbaf for???

Spoiler warning for the entirety of AAI1

Recently I was replaying AA Investigations 1, and knowing what the end point would be, I have a nagging feeling throughout the whole game that something was off. Waaay off. It feels as if the first 4 cases were leading toward something and the 5th one just threw out all those setups out of the window. And yes, I'm talking about the much memed Quercus Alba but there's so much more other than him.

For example, despite Edgeworth saying that his part of the case began with Turnabout Airlines (Case 2), the part where Cammy smuggled Alif Red statue from Zheng Fa doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the game. There's also Shih-na's unknown role of becoming Lang's subordinate in Interpol, how does Alba get that much power if he's just an ambassador? And there's the matter of the ringleader black Yatagarasu card, despite prominently appearing in previous cases, it doesn't seem to have much importance in relation to catching Alba.

And lastly, try to make a chronology of what Alba is doing in the entirety of Case 5. You can't. It's laughable how much this old man has to do in a single evening just to transport back and forth between garden pool in everyone's full view to launching statues in the air, just to get caught because he whacked a thief using the statue just because. Meanwhile Shih-na started two fires and jump into the pool to clean up his mess. Instead of doing the obvious: why didn't he just order Shih-na to kill Coachen in his office, retrieve the block, and burn the building?

And then it dawns of me. That has to be the original plot. Turnabout Ablaze was supposed to be just the case of Shih-na murdering Manny Coachen while framing it as Yatagarasu killing the smuggling ringleader, and it ends with the scene of Badd-Lang-Shihna confrontation. The entire Quercus Alba portion of the case was a later addition, a rewrite that hijacked the entire game.

My full view is thus:

>Originally, the game was planned as duology, AAI1 deal with the smuggling ring in Japanifornia while AAI2 was Edgeworth chasing the ringleader in Zheng Fa. The red herring of AAI1 was planned to be Manny Coachen as the ringleader betrayed by Shih-na, only for the ending to reveal, using KG-8 video retrieved from Amano, that Coachen has the black card, proving that he's only a subordinate and the real ringleader is still out there, opening the way for the sequel.

>However, after the script was finalized, somehow they got the feedback that the final case was too simple and there's no assurance that a sequel would be greenlit. And so the last case was rewritten to make way for Quercus Alba, the single embassy was split into 2 embassies (that somehow unified again into single embassy at the end of the game, curious?) to accommodate the smuggling theme, and to let out their frustration of the decision, they made the final confrontation to be very, very ridiculous.

Viewing it this way, every writing decision in AAI1 prior to Alba inclusion makes much more sense.
What's the point of Turnabout Airlines? It's to establish that Interpol has sniffed Zheng Fa-Cohdopian embassy connection.
Why the ringleader uses the black command cards? Because he's actually overseas, in Zheng Fa (or maybe some other country introduced in the original AAI2 script, who knows). And that also explain why Yatagarasu has never caught on the ringleader despite sniffing the embassy way long ago.
What triggered the whole plot of AAI1? It's the ringleader deciding to close his operation in Japanifornia through the embassy, with Coachen taking the fall, because Interpol has caught on. That is his MO since KG-8. And not Alba's clumsy "Coachen tried to overthrow me" excuse.

There's much more in my mind than these, but I'm curious about what the community thinks. I'm sure I'm not the first one and there are others who come to similar conclusion, but I don't know where to search. The part with the developers is just pure conjecture and I wanna know if there's any source that could prove or disprove that guess.

Gaban confirmed he heard Joy Boy's story about Imu. So it must contain Imu's atrocities as well

And they laughed. They laughed and quietly disband

Even worse he swore up and down that he's Eustass Kid's son

Roger Pirates are not being slandered enough

Seriously, what the hell is Imu thinking? Nobody knows what the hell is he yapping about

Whole world including WG has to bow down to slave-owning nobles and everyone believe having a king will "contradict everything they stand for"??? Why is this "secret king" still a thing? Where the hell is this before the Reverie arc???

Not to mention now Shanks is included in the list of people who did know about Imu's existence before the series began, including Roger, Gaban, Garp, Loki, Jarul, and none of them bother to tell anyone else?? Not to mention Imu don't even care to keep himself hidden in God's Valley and Elbaf??

I'm convinced that this flashback was a draft Oda had back then before Gunko possessed by Imu, but then it got scrapped because it would took too long.

The reason being that all the plot twist in this flashback has already been revealed in all chapters after 1149, and the timeline makes sense to make this the prelude for God Valley flashback:

1. Gunko was revealed as just Gunko on her first introduction, but on GV (ch 1160) she is introduced as St. Manmayer Gunko. We're not supposed to know that, in the original plan it's just confirmation after this Candelle fiasco has been revealed beforehand.

2. In this chapter, Gunko's demon form is revealed as cliffhanger, as if we shouldn't have known yet what happened to her, but in chapter 1150 her demon form + Domi Reversi is revealed casually. It was supposed to be the reverse.

3. In chapters leading to 1149, Gunko made references to Soul King and she already met Brook in ch 1146, but those development are discarded until after Harald flashback and Loki stuff are over.

4. This flashback is perfect as a foreboding to what's to come (Harald's flashback) and why everything is backwards afterwards.

Will Shakky share the same fate as Candelle? (no)

Shuri was DR-ed and killed his father, did Loki got controlled by Imu to kill Harald? (it was the reverse)

5. Additionally, Leuven dying in this chapter suggest this is the same version of Domi Reversi as GV, before being retconned to "going back to full health" after dying. So it wasn't retconned twice, it's just once.

I'm convinced that this flashback was a draft Oda had back then before Gunko possessed Imu, but then it got scrapped because it would took too long.

The reason being that all the plot twist in this flashback has already been revealed in all chapters after 1149, and the timeline makes sense to make this the prelude for God Valley flashback:

1. Gunko was revealed as just Gunko on her first introduction, but on GV (ch 1160) she is introduced as St. Manmayer Gunko. We're not supposed to know that, in the original plan it's just confirmation after this Candelle fiasco has been revealed beforehand.

2. In this chapter, Gunko's demon form is revealed as cliffhanger, as if we shouldn't have known yet what happened to her, but in chapter 1150 her demon form + Domi Reversi is revealed casually. It was supposed to be the reverse.

3. In chapters leading to 1149, Gunko made references to Soul King and she already met Brook in ch 1146, but those development are discarded until after Harald flashback and Loki stuff are over.

4. This flashback is perfect as a foreboding to what's to come (Harald's flashback) and why everything is backwards afterwards.

Will Shakky share the same fate as Candelle? (no)

Shuri was DR-ed and killed his father, did Loki got controlled by Imu to kill Harald? (it was the reverse)

5. Additionally, seems like Leuven died in this chapter, which suggest this is the same version of Domi Reversi as GV, the one that hasn't been written as "going back to full health" version