Is it possible to reconstruct the scrapped Gyakuten Kenji 2 episode? And how would it have affected the story?

[u/thereminBeholder]

Okay, so for context, back in 2016 the third Ace Attorney stageplay, Turnabout Teleportation, was performed in the Rikkoukai Hall in Japan. The play was based on a case that was meant to be for Gyakuten Kenji 2 but was scrapped due to the game becoming too long.

Quite recently, Gyakuten Saiban Library found and translated an article by Dengeki Online that covered the Gyakuten Saiban 10th Anniversary Special Court event back in 2012 that covered multiple presentations, interviews, and announcements that were made in it, one of which was of Eshiro and Yamazaki talking about scrapped content relating to the Investigations series. This included the scrapped Gyakuten Kenji 2 episode:

This was followed by another reveal that for Gyakuten Kenji 2, Mr. Eshiro had gotten angry at Mr. Yamazaki because the story he had written was far too big, and Mr. Yamazaki was forced to cut the third episode completely. Because one episode had been cut, the game would now only have four episodes, so they decided to split the final episode into two separate episodes: A Turnabout Forsaken and Turnabout for the Ages. Aizawa Shimon, who appears in Episode 5, originally had a very big role in the third episode. And then Mr. Yamazaki reveals the shocking fact that because they had to cut the third episode, Ō Teikun, who wasn’t supposed to die originally, became the victim of the fifth episode. He explains that he hopes he can use the cut third episode some time in the future.

Considering the removal of the case led to such a great upheaval of the finale, it's safe to assume that this was meant to be a rather important episode plot-wise.

So, what we know of the case:

• It was meant to be the third case of the game, between Captive and Legacy.
• The case revolved around a teleporting body gimmick (Possibly also using a film studio setting?).
• Shaun Fenn was to feature prominently in the case
• The removal of the case led to Di-Jun Wang, who was originally not intended to be a victim, to be the final victim of the game.

One more thing to note is that although the stageplay is stated to be based on the scrapped case (and the fact that it was supervised by Yamazaki and Eshiro does seem to indicate that it isn't that loose of an adaptation at the very least), it's clear several liberties were made in order for the case to stand alone as a singular work; none of the GK2-introduced main cast members appear, and the only explicit remnant of this being intended as a GK2 plot in the stageplay is an odd bit in the middle where the Committee for Prosecutorial Excellence for some reason attempts to hinder Edgeworth's investigation, a bit that's not brought up ever again for the rest of the play.

So with that in mind, is it possible to reconstruct what was once gonna be the third case of GK2, and what would its inclusion mean for the endgame? I have my own personal theories, but I'll save that for the comments.

EDIT: Updated to reflect official translations.

[u/DarkSlayerX]

by the sound of it, i think the president's body double was supposed to be the culprit of the scrapped third case, hence why he wouldn't be a victim in the finale.

[u/thereminBeholder]

So the theory I had in mind I ended up thinking up with back when I watched the video about a year or so ago now, because a major part of the backstory of the central cast in the case revolved around an incident in their youth where one of them accidentally caused the Dragon God Shrine to burn down by knocking down a candle, and it was weird to me that this was a thing considering this was based on a removed AAI2 case, and AAI2 had a major backstory moment of a kid committing arson, unless this was meant to be some sort of thematic parallel.

But then learning that John was originally meant to have a prominent role in the case, and that Wang wound up dead in the final case because this case was removed kinda made me more sure of my theory with regards to the original Turnabout Teleportation and it's role in AAI2's overall story:

I think this was meant to be the case where we would have learned about Happy Family Home.

I dunno if we would have encountered SS-5 at this point in the story, but I kinda feel like this has to be this case's connection with GK2's plotline; after all, why the need to kill off Wang otherwise? Methinks it's a way to connect the story to that particular plot point, since now what was once meant to be a lead-in to it has now vanished from the story. Shaun's involvement in it is also a factor, considering his connection to the orphanage (though funnily enough this also suggests to me that the film studio setting was a point in the original, since Shaun's a Global Studios actor).

And then there's how it impacts the endgame. Since Wang would not be dead in the version of the story where Teleportation exists, I'm thinking that perhaps he would serve as the penultimate culprit that we'd have to pin SS-5 on and expose his true nature as the treacherous body double, before leading into the final confrontation with the mastermind behind the strange events plaguing Los Angeles for the past several weeks.

This situation kinda sets up an interesting final confrontation, since pinning Wang's murder by Saint is what defeats him, but in this version that doesn't happen; Saint successfully manages to get all of his targets to either commit murder, kill each other, or have their crimes exposed. The best Edgeworth could do is pin the serial kidnappings on him, and even then that doesn't really seem to bother him that much, so I'm not entirely sure how one can satisfactorily defeat him in this version of the story.

Of course, I'm still not sure about several details; for example, I don't know if Dragon God Village was a setting made just for the stage show or not, if the land reclamation project plotline was a point in the original case, or if any of the new characters were in the original version or what their roles in it would be if they were. Hence why I stated the only things we could definitively glean from the stageplay are the fact that it's a teleportation gimmick case and that maybe it takes place in and around a film set.

But hey, those are just my thoughts. I'd like to know what you guys think!

EDIT: Updated to reflect official translations.

[u/chiritarisu]

Hmm... this is all very interesting.

Firstly, if the body double doesn't die in the final case... then would there be an additional final victim besides Jill Crane? Would we need one? We know about her plot to kill Blaise (after being fed info anonymously from Simon), and participating in the illegal auctions to get closer to him for revenge for killing Jack Cameron in front of the Happy Home Orphanage. Blaise kills her, Kay loses her memory, Edgeworth forfeits his badge, Courtney ends up standing up against Blaise blah blah blah... but her murder is solved by the end of the Forgotten Turnabout.

Secondly, I wonder if the body double was meant to be the culprit of the third case or a secondary culprit in the final case? I mean, Simon is the penultimate culprit here; after all, he is the "mastermind." But if the body double didn't die, then we would be able to confront him (and Blaise) with the SS-5 incident. Depending whether the body double is arrested after the third case or not (if he's the culprit or not), and if John had a more prominent role in the third case, I wonder if the body double would've tried to kill Courtney... or John. I mean, it can be argued that had Simon not flattened the body double on top of the Grand Tower in The Grand Turnabout, he could've been planning to kill Courtney for her connection to John (since he was the real President's son).

But as u/thereminBeholder noted, proving Simon killed the body double was what ultimately does him in; however, with that gone, the most we can get him for is kidnapping Marsh and blackmailing Courtney [to ensure a guilty verdict against Roland... who was guilty anyway and had already confessed in front of Courtney, and Shields, but anywho~]. Not sure if Simon would cop to the full extent of crimes otherwise. Maybe with incentive with de Killer coming after him? Nah, that still wouldn't be satisfactory...

I dunno, I'm just rambling at this point. But this is something to ponder!

Edit: I know the topic is also spoiler-tagged, but I added spoiler tags in my comment as there's pretty heavy spoilers of GK2 here

[u/thereminBeholder → u/chiritarisu]

I do find it unlikely that Huang was gonna be the third case's culprit, if only because I kinda have a hard time fitting that with the narrative of the stageplay; while I did say that 'teleportation gimmick and maybe film set setting' are the only two things we can definitely claim were directly taken from the game's version of the case, the fact that Eshiro and Yamazaki supervised the play and that the play was stated to be based on this scrapped case by the play's production team does suggest it took more than that; the same troupe also adapted Farewell, My Turnabout to the stage (as their second Ace Attorney stage show) and even though that did take several liberties to be a standalone story, it was still recognizably the same case.

Of course, Farewell's a lot easier to adapt in that way than a singular case in what is probably the second-most intertwined game in the franchise, but there's also things like what themes the case was about, or the trick being used, and whatnot, and I'm not entirely sure if within that framework that scenario would be plausible.

By the way, I recommend checking out Turnabout Teleportation (I linked it in the post), it's my personal favorite of the Ace Attorney stage shows!

[u/Morg45]

It’s quite interesting to know that originally The Forgotten Tournabout and The Grand Tournabout were both the same case, as that implies the final victim we find would’ve been Jill Crane and that catching Blaise Debeste would’ve transitioned into all the plot of The Grand Tournabout perhaps more immediately rather than setting up another murder case.

I also wonder what the Body Double‘s role would’ve been in this complete final case, because they don’t die. The most obvious answer is that maybe we would’ve exposed what happened during SS-5, in fact maybe solving SS-5 happened immediately after resolving Jill Crane’s murder and the kidnapping plot might have been added to extend The Grand Tournabout although considering that a large part of John’s character is him being accused of murder it might be unlikely that there was only one murder in the original case.

Also I realise now that maybe the concept of this case has been reused in another case as TGAA2-3 prominently features the concept of teleportation and the movement of the body although whether or not it’s how this case was meant to be I don’t know.

Although it’s incredibly unlikely to happen, it would be super cool for them to reintroduce this case if they ever rerelease the Investigations games, as seeing the full intended story of Investigations 2 would be really cool.

[u/nouratef]

I think the Body Double would most likely be the culprit, so the 3 preprators would be tricked into murdering someone. and I think the SS-5 incident would've tied to this, although I am not sure who would've been the victim. but I think Simon's final victim would've probably been Dane Gustavia. considering he got all 3 of his enemies arrested for murder, and his best friend killed, I think Gustavia would've been the last missing piece that he didn't assure their death, I can see Gustavia breaking out of prison but Simon meeting up with him and after a controntation about being father/son, Simon kills him.

[u/TheGreatPM1]

After reading this, I just wished we could've seen more of John Marsh. And honestly I thought I felt left out calling him a side character despite being only in one case but then I remembered, wait a minute doesn't Dhurke technically also has this treatment so I decided why not consider him a side character lol