“On Defense Attorney Apollo Justice” or “How to sucessfully defy everything previously established without having people notice”.
I have been waiting to get to this. *crack knuckles* Let’s put on some fitting music. *Plays “The Life” by KENN*.
Apollo Justice. What can you say about the guy? If you are sticking strictly to what has outrightly been spoon-fed to us by the game, not much. Apollo is an underdeveloped character, in the sense that we have been told very, very little about him. He is introduced to us without any established relationships, other than his apparenticeship to Kristoph. After Kristoph is taken away, Apollo is effectively left without any familiars who could shed some light onto him as a person. And neither does he ever speak much about himself. Of course, he does speak about the present and future, but never about the past. in a way, Apollo himself is one of the biggest enigmas in the game he is supposed to be the protagonist to.
But I don’t believe that this means we know nothing about him or that he shows no personality. Actually, he has a very strong personality and I think it’s possible to deduce a lot about him from it. The fact that many people in the Fandom who I know played AJ more than just 1 or 2 times have ended up making very simmilar headcanons about him without telling each other about them beforehands only supports me in this believe.
Since we, however, don’t know much about Apollo for sure, I can’t structure this as a biography, as with Phoenix. So let’s take a wildly different approach for this. I will point out different things about my analysis and interpretation of Apollo and then elaborate on them. I will have to compare him to Phoenix a lot while doing this. That said, let’s start off right by saying this:
While Apollo’s outer persona somewhat resembles Lawyer!Phoenix’, his personality is actually an almost polar opposite.
I know, this sounds weird on first glance, especially given that Apollo has often been accused of being a carbon copy of Phoenix, but truly, I have never really felt that way. Apollo and Phoenix always have felt like wastly different characters to me, which is why Court-Record.nets description of Apollo always ticked me off. “Can be considered easily flustered, but at his core he’s a lot like a young Phoenix.” No, actually Apollo never struck me as that simmilar to Phoenix. Especially not at the core.
People tend to forget that characters, while not as complex as real people, have layers and a certain complexity (How much depends on the skills of the author) to them as well. Two characters who have a very simmilar speech-patern and some simmilar habbits, it doesn’t mean their personalities are necessesarily simmilar too. I feel this is exactly how it is with Phoenix and Apollo, especially in the English version.
(The Japanese Version actually does a very good job at distinguishing Apollo’s speech from that of Lawyer!Phoenix, he sounds rougher and much less laid-back.)
Apollo and Lawyer!Phoenix share some simmilar habbits, like ocassional bouts of sarcasm, moments of either ego-petting or (justified) self-pity and (in the English version) the level of politeness they approach dialouge with. That doesn’t make them as simmilar as you’d believe, though. I will thus now start pointing out the points in which Apollo heavily differs from Phoenix, one by one.
Finally, what I’ve been trying to tell people for years. Gold star, one free internet, eternal accolades, etc. to you!
(Source: nenihaslefttheplanet-blog)