I’ve been a fan of Ace Attorney for the last four years. Though, in the grand scheme of Ace Attorney’s life, this is a small percentage total. In fact, Ace Attorney
has been around since 2001, though it didn’t come to the US until 2005.
Now, I might not have been in the fandom that long, but I’ve been in it
long enough to see fandom cycles repeat, and to see a vast increase of
fans introduced to the series through the various remakes made in the
last two years.
I know what makes this fandom unique compared to the other fandoms I’ve been in.
If you somehow made it to this post without knowing what Ace Attorney is, I’ll give you a brief run-down: it’s a game series where you play as a defense attorney, trying to acquit your clients from getting a guilty verdict. But, as most Ace Attorney fans will tell you, it’s much more than that. There’s interpersonal drama between the characters, an overarching plot that haunts the narrative, struggles of morality and justice, and bonds made that are stronger than familial ones.
Ace Attorney is a series of games that spans over six mainline game and two spin-off duologies for a grand total of ten main games (plus the Layton crossover, but since it’s technically not canon, I’m not gonna add it here). And with that much history behind it, there is, of course, ten times the history within the fandom.
Side note: This is primarily about the English-speaking community, as I don’t speak enough Japanese to know what’s going on in that community comparatively, nor do I know any other languages to know those communities as well.
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Alright, now let’s get back to it!
A Brief Run-Down of the Ace Attorney Fandom
I, alone, do not have the tools to list out the entire history of the Ace Attorney fandom for what it is, especially during those early years where the internet was mostly for blogging and social media hadn’t really hit it’s stride just yet. But, I’ll try my best!
The Ace Attorney fandom exists all over the internet, from Fanfiction (dot) net to Archive of Our Own (AO3), from Reddit to Twitter to Tumblr to Bluesky to YouTube, Ace Attorney has become quite the prevalent community. Though, that wasn’t always the case.
From my understanding, Ace Attorney used to be a much smaller fandom. It was a prevalent enough game in many people’s childhood, but the fandom was quite small coming out of the 2000s. Some people disliked Ace Attorney 4 when it released, most people liked Ace Attorney 5 when it released, and to be honest, I don’t know what people’s opinions were of Ace Attorney 6. Investigations 2 was notably not available in the US for quite some time, so sometime in 2013 or so, a group of fans got together to create an unofficial fan translation of the game, which is why most of those characters will forever have two names when tagging. The anime released over the span of 2016 to 2019, but it never really gained its footing over the years, and really only had the anime to keep it alive.
The trilogy was remade quite a few times over the years, released on the Wii Shop Channel, then remade as a trilogy on 3DS, then on Switch in 2019, but all of these releases were digital only releases. Hell, until the 4-6 Trilogy, Ace Attorney 5 and 6 were only released on the 3DS eShop and never got physical releases. It seemed as if the community was really truly dying.
Until, that is, 2020. Like most communities, Covid brought a resurgence of fans back into the Ace Attorney community around mid-2020, dousing the flame that was the dying Ace Attorney fandom with oil. More and more people found the community around this time, thriving with the newest Trilogy remake for Switch. Fanfiction and fanart flourished, zines popped up in multitudes, and more and more people started streaming the games than ever.
Now, there’s remakes of all of the ten mainline games, including games that never released outside of Japan. Older remakes like the Switch’s remake of the Trilogy are getting updated with features from the newer remakes, like Story Mode. The series is getting more recognition and collaborations, like with Good Smile Company and the Nendoroid series. And the prospects of an Ace Attorney 7 have never seemed more likely. All of this is to say, the community currently is thriving in ways it hasn’t in a long time, and it’s never been easier to join the community.
What Makes the Fandom Unique?
While this is all fine and dandy, there are a couple of things that are unique to the Ace Attorney fandom that not a lot of other fandoms share. Or rather, share in the same capacity. This includes an actual timeline of events that shares our calendar and constant zines and community events that, ultimately, keep the fandom alive.
Actual Timeline That Shares Our Calendar
Ace Attorney doesn’t have canon birthday, shockingly. There’s a fanon date for Phoenix’s birthday, which is based on his age during certain cases over the course of the six mainline games, but even that hasn’t been confirmed. No, what Ace Attorney has is canon events that have actual dates.
For example, take the infamous case DL-6 that haunts the narrative of AA1. This case started with the death of Gregory Edgeworth, Miles Edgeworth’s dad, which canonically occurred on December 28th, 2001. This is an actual date with an actual year that Ace Attorney fans cling to, celebrating it every time it comes around. This is, of course, in tandem with the “Almost Christmas means it wasn’t Christmas” line that happened on December 24th, along with “Merry Christmas” gunshot meme for Christmas morning. These events, whether you celebrate Christmas or not, are crucial to the Ace Attorney fandom, and continue to be reposted every year.
It’s almost not even celebrating Christmas, but rather, a week-long celebration of DL-6, AKA the event that traumatized Edgeworth and made him *gestures vaguely* him.
If you’ve ever been on the internet around Ace Attorney fans in any capacity around Christmas time, you’ve definitely seen these two images posted together frequently. And perhaps, just as many people annoyed by this event as well.
Or, another infamous event is the day that Edgeworth told Phoenix “Thanks to you, I’m saddled with unnecessary…feelings,” promptly called “Unnecessary Feelings Day.” This, of course, is a very popular event where people recreate the infamous screenshot, and of course, is yet another excuse to post WrightWorth (or NaruMitsu) fanart (because when is it not?).
Since this happens after a case, fans know exactly what day and hour Edgeworth said this line, and can celebrate accordingly (which has passed this year, unfortunately, but is usually on October 20th).
This can occur for almost any major event on the Ace Attorney timeline, which is meticulously kept track of by fans on the Ace Attorney Fandom page (linked for your viewing pleasures). I know, I know, a very miserable website indeed. But, having the full timeline of events across all ten games is incredibly crucial to fanfiction writers and celebrators of these silly holidays. Take a peak at it sometime, it is truly fascinating to see for yourself (you can learn cool things like Simon Blackquill and Maya Fey were born around the same time, and Aura Blackquill and Lana Skye were also born around the same time; very easy to explode your brain to compare the birth dates post-timeskip characters and pre-timeskip characters).
And no, I’m not talking about the official timeline that Capcom released that is just incredibly pointless, like yes Capcom, we’re aware of the timeline of games, it’s pretty straightforward.
Essentially, instead of birthdays, Ace Attorney fans cling to specific dates within Ace Attorney’s canon to celebrate, making community-wide events on seemingly random days to keep the fandom thriving. As far as I’m aware, no other fandom celebrates specific canon events that have actual dates that share our calendar—at least, not to the extent that the Ace Attorney fandom does. Like, with 2026 coming up, we can start to follow the actual events of Ace Attorney 4, now that the seven year gap is over in real life.
Constant Fan Zines and Community Events
Another thing that makes the Ace Attorney fandom unique is a constant stream of zines and community events that keeps the fandom alive. From at least 2020, there has been a significant increase in the amount of zines produced and community events for artists and writers to participate in. In 2022 alone, there were (give or take) 25 fan zines in the works and published, which is more or less a fanzine every other week for a full year. In 2023, there were (give or take) 30 fan zines. With a constant stream of zines like that, fan artists and writers alike gathered together to create a booklet of their art related to Ace Attorney, often completely voluntary and often having any proceeds made go to a charity.
In my personal experience, I have never been a part of a fandom that had that many zines. I don’t know how many fandoms can get together in such great quantities and so frequently to be able to create zines for the community.
Not only that, but there’s also a bunch of other community events that happen frequently enough to keep the fandom alive. From specific weeks dedicated to a particular ship or platonic relationship, to big/minibangs where writers write fanfiction for artists to draw art for, and exchanges where artists and writers create art for one another, there seems to be a never ending stream of fandom events. These events allow writers and artists within the Ace Attorney fandom to interact with one another and create just so much art, sharing it around on various platforms for the fandom to share and celebrate. (zine and event info gathered from this Google Sheet, thank you transtrucy on Tumblr, very cool).
If you’ve been a part of the fandom for a while, and don’t know when events are happening or when zines are being made, a good resource to check out is the AA Fan Calendar, which is a Tumblr account that has been tracking all of those events in a Google Calendar for the last 4 years. I honestly haven’t been able to find a dedicated fandom calendar like the AA Fan Calendar for other fandoms, but it is such a helpful resource if you’re a budding artist or writer who wants to get their work out there and noticed more by the community.
What Keeps the Fandom Alive?
A lot of the things I’ve mentioned above for making the fandom unique are, in fact, also reasons for what keeps the fandom alive. A thriving community built upon theories and speculation, ships and fan culture, is what keeps a fandom alive even after the series’ end, and Ace Attorney (though not over quite yet) shares these facets of community liveliness.
Hell, because the main ten games of the series have been remade, I believe we’ll continue seeing the Ace Attorney fandom thrive for another couple of years or so. And until we get AA7, the fandom will continue to speculate the possibilities of its existence every time a game event happens, putting on their clown makeup each and every time as we hope for news.
Even if the fandom is dispersed across multiple social media platforms, that hasn’t stopped the community from hosting events and sharing zines and creating art. The fandom’s still out there, even if it’s hidden in the corners of the internet.
Remakes of the Main Ten Games
Of course, the fandom is still growing to this day, which keeps the fandom alive. By Capcom remaking the main ten games of the series, this makes the populous more aware of the Ace Attorney games and might even be enough to convince more people to check the series out.
With the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy that was released in 2019, there was a massive shift in the fandom as more and more people gave Ace Attorney a chance. However, now we also have the Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy, which is the first time Ace Attorney 4–6 have been bundled together, and the first time they were available to purchase since the 3DS eShop went down. Hell, it was even the first time that Ace Attorney 5 and 6 specifically were physically released in the US, which makes it a landmark title in the series (despite how angry it makes me that it’s even considered a trilogy).
We also have games released in remake duologies that never made it out of Japan during initial release runs. Games like The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, a duology of games released for the 3DS in Japan only, finally made it out of Japan and even exists on the highest grossing games list, albeit at 107th of 125 games.
It’s still remarkable that it sold so well despite so few English fans being aware of the games (which, frankly, might as well have been marketed as an entirely new game for English fans because that’s essentially what it was).
There’s also the Ace Attorney Investigations duology that was recently released, which released AAI2 for the first time outside of Japan as well. This was a remarkable release as well, because AAI2 spent 14 years without recognition from Capcom, so much so that a full unofficial English translation came out in 2014, and became the defacto translation for character names across the fandom up until the duology’s remake in 2025. Hell, there are still fanfiction writers who refuse to use the new translated names (specifically for Eustace Winner, my poor boy Sebastian Debeste, they did you so dirty).
I feel like rereleasing all of these Ace Attorney games, games that never got physically released or never even made it to the US to begin with, should be a good sign for the Ace Attorney series. For the first time ever, all of the Ace Attorney games are available for the same consoles, which makes it the most accessible it’s ever been in its entire life. And with the original Ace Attorney Trilogy remake from 2019 getting a recent update that gives it the same features as the other updates (primarily Story Mode), this series continues to be supported even by Capcom.
By being so heavily supported, I want to hope that means the series will have more games releasing in the future, as there aren’t anymore games to remake (other than the Professor Layton crossover, which is feasible now that Level 5 is back, but I can’t imagine being easy to just make), which means if they want to profit off of the expanding community, they’d want to get a new game out sometime soon. Hypothetically, hopefully, I’m just guessing here.
Theories of Ace Attorney 7
The possibility of a seventh Ace Attorney game coming soon has been the main focal point of the Ace Attorney fandom for years now. Definitely since AA6, but more recently, since the release of the Ace Attorney trilogy in 2019. Funnily enough, when Triangle Strategy was announced during the February Nintendo Direct in 2021, a lot of Ace Attorney fans saw the scales of justice and believed that it was AA7 until told otherwise.
The fandom continues to speculate each time there’s a new game event, like Tokyo Game Show, Nintendo Directs, hell even The Game Awards, hoping that Ace Attorney 7 will be announced. The more these events happened, and the more the fandom didn’t get news, the more delusional the fandom felt each time one of these events happened, so much so that they often posted the “putting on clown makeup” meme whenever a game event occurred and hoped for AA7. It truly felt like there was absolutely no chance that AA7 was going to be released anytime soon, and yet they continued to hope.
There was even an image that circulated heavily in the fandom around 2021, showcasing the development timeline of then soon-to-be-released games developed by the Ace Attorney teams at Capcom. There’s no real way to discern whether or not it’s true, but it’s an image that a lot of Ace Attorney fans held close to their hearts when speculating about AA7.
This circulated development timeline showcased AA7 getting a release in 2021, around the time of the 20th anniversary of the Ace Attorney series. The projected releases of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles (DGS) and the speculation of a 4–6 Trilogy getting released might be off, but the timeline starts in the 3rd quarter of the fiscal year of 2019, and we all know what happened in 2020 to slow development down. Though we can’t know for sure if this timeline is still accurate now that Covid pushed development down so drastically, and developers in 2019 couldn’t have known that pandemic was going to slow production down so much, nor could they have known that a new Nintendo console was on the rise, so it isn’t hard to presume that AA7 has been in the works for a long time, and they just haven’t been able to release it because of the timing.
Hell, this timeline doesn’t say anything about the Investigations games getting remade, nor the original Ace Attorney trilogy getting a huge free update, so we can only take it with a grain of salt. It’s still fun to speculate, and it really doesn’t do any harm.
Sure, AA7 still hasn’t been announced, but Ace Attorney hasn’t gone away. With the remakes, it really is only a matter of time until AA7 is the next announcement. There’s nothing else left to remake. Unless Capcom finds some other Ace Attorney game to release, AA7 is the most anticipated release. And with the Switch 2 recently released, I feel like there’s never been a better time to release a new Ace Attorney game.
What is the Future of the Ace Attorney Fandom?
I will say, ever since the Twitter ownership situation in 2022, and subsequent election in 2024, kind of displaced a lot of fandoms, especially Ace Attorney. I left Twitter myself in 2024, and I honestly haven’t really been able to find where the fandom primarily exists anymore. A lot of the fandom who were primarily on Twitter are now on Tumblr and BlueSky, but with such a dispersed fandom as of right now, it’s complicated getting community events and zines in the works.
Honestly, though, with the remakes and updates we have been getting, I don’t think the fandom is going anywhere anytime soon, despite how dispersed the fandom is. If it’s lasted this long with as many followers as it continues to have, I would be shocked if the fandom dies out within the next year.
My hope is that Capcom agrees and we get a new game within the next year. A new game could completely rejuvenate the fandom, essentially jump-starting it back into the common zeitgeist. It doesn’t even have to be Ace Attorney 7, it could be an entirely new series in the Ace Attorney franchise, and I think a lot of people would be on board regardless. Though, a lot of AAA game companies have been afraid of experimenting lately, so I also wouldn’t be shocked if we got another game in a current series (i.e. the Investigations series or Great Ace Attorney series), but it’s a guise for experimentation to get it sold (like the Metroid Prime 4 situation).
Ace Attorney, as a series, has sold a total of 14 million units worldwide, according to Capcom’s own investor relations page. While nowhere near the amount of units sold for Capcom’s most well-known games like Resident Evil or Street Fighter, it’s higher than series like Dragon’s Dogma, Okami, and Marvel vs. Capcom, which might give the series a fighting chance to survive for longer.
Not only that, but the Ace Attorney Trilogy remake is still one of the highest grossing games in Capcom’s catalog, currently positioned at 22nd out of the top 125 best selling games (at least as of September 30th, 2025). And like, I’m not gonna pretend I know anything about sales, but I think that sounds promising.
I still have hope for a new game. And I have hope that the fandom will stay alive for the better part of the next few years at least. It’s definitely going to be an interesting time to be an Ace Attorney fan in 2026.
And that’s about it! As you probably could tell, I simply had to get this post up on the proper day; if the “Almost Christmas means it wasn’t Christmas” day was on my upload schedule, and I already had this post prepared, I had to take advantage of such an opportunity. Merry (early) Christmas to those who celebrate, and Happy Holidays to everyone else!
Next week will be kinda fun; I’m gonna do a full-year wrap up for the games and books I’ve finished this year, to go hand and hand with my previous Google Sheets post earlier in the year. Also, this Sunday, my second Sunday Mini Stackin’ post goes live! It’s about Metroid Fusion, my absolute beloved, and I’ll be so for real with you, I went a little crazy with images and videos, so be sure to check it out!
And as always, see you next week
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