What the Temple Text Says in the Ace Attorney Games

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A reader asked about Japanese text that appears in the Ace Attorney series.

First is this sign in a temple:

Image 1

This sign says 一期一会 (ichi gō ichi ē), which literally means something like “one time, one meeting”. It apparently comes from old Japanese tea ceremonies and has connections with Zen Buddhism. It sort of signifies that every encounter or event in life is a unique, once-in-a-lifetime experience.

The iOS ports of the Ace Attorney games also upgrade the graphics, which makes stuff like the text on this lady’s clothing much clearer:

Image 1Image 2

So another part of the reader’s question was: what does this text say?

…To be honest, I don’t really know. I can make out some individual characters, but I can’t seem to piece anything together that I can look up or research well. It seems to be your regular ol’ all-kanji Buddhist scripture, or at least meant to look like it.

If anyone does have more info on what the text on her clothes might be saying or what it might be from, let me know. There’s also the text in the back, but that seems pretty hard to analyze too. But who knows, maybe someone out there will recognize what it’s saying!

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9 Comments
  1. BusterTheFox

    I still think it’s a little weird that these games were put onto iOS. But then, quite a few handheld and even a few console titles were put on iOS, so I guess it’s not SO weird.

    I never really wondered about these signs since that part of the game is so culturalized. I figured it would just say boring stuff like that. XD Nothing really interesting to speak of, IMO.

  2. DJMankiewicz

    The Ace Attorney series is one of the few “older” games that really shines with a pure touch interface. Heck, I played the DS games purely with touch. It certainly is far more natural than controlling Secret of Mana with a touch screen.

    While I enjoy the updated graphics, the text and interface elements all look absolutely horrid to me. They really look “cheap”, like something put together in a flash game.

  3. GH

    I lol’d at the hidden comments 😀
    Figured the scribbles on the clothes and the backgrounds (Kanji is so scary sometimes) wasn’t extra important since this level of detail wasn’t even in the DS version.
    They did a pretty good job in localizing this game otherwise, translating signs and changing vertical stickers to horizontal stickers.
    Also, I hated the iOS version with a passion. Not the first, proper conversion, but the compilation one.

  4. Bregalad

    The same chapter in the game has an event about cars behind driven on the left/right side of the road, too. I’ve always wondered how this was localised.

    In the french version they say the girl is a enthusiast of british cars so he had the driver’s seat on the right, which sounds really weird because nobody is enthusiast of british cars, and even if somebody would be, they are all made with models with the driver’s seat on the left.

    I know from mangas that in japan it’s common for car enthusiast to have models with driver’s seat on the left though (as in continental Europe and America), because high performance models aren’t always sold in a british/japanese “driver sits on the right” model.

    Tom, could you please figure it out ?

    1. Henrik Andersson

      Very simple. They switched the import country to one that did drive on the wrong side for the target audience. They even redid the graphics to move the dashboard to the correct side.

  5. Lauri

    Well, this certainly is a good article about the *twinkle* Ace Attorney. How about it Mandelin? Would it be awesome if your next big project is about the Ace Attorney series? That series is a goldmine when it comes to culture-specific translations and jokes.