There’s nothing like a good legal drama, and there’s plenty of media covering the detective side of things. Finding clues, interrogating suspects, making the culprit confess. It can all be rather exciting. Throw in a courtroom and things can really pick up. Whether it’s the attorney defending their client from spurious claims, or the prosecutor grilling the guilty until they crack.
Even anime has dipped its toes in the legal world, either for dramatic or comedic purposes. Here’s the case for 5 of anime’s best legal practitioners, ranked based on their success and status in their respective shows. Court’s now in session. Here are the verdicts.
5 Olga, Ristorante Paradiso
This one’s low on the list because Ristorante Paradiso isn’t really about law or drama. Olga just happens to be a divorce lawyer. But she’s also the character who inadvertently gets the show rolling. When she was young, she abandoned her daughter Nicoletta to move to Rome and marry a new man. 15 years later, Nicoletta tracks her down to Casetta dell’Orso, a restaurant she and her husband Lorenzo owns.
Nicoletta is set on taking revenge by ruining her estranged mother’s life. But there’s something about the restaurant’s warm atmosphere and handsome staff that soothe her heart. The anime then follows her as she takes up an apprenticeship there and tries to repair her relationship with her mom. It’s a nice, cosy show for romance fans with a bitter twist that Olga and her backstory provide.
4 Mr Abrams, Panty & Stocking With Garterbelt
Starting off with the comedy option. Mr Abrams represented the Anarchy Sisters when they were accused of killing a friendly ghost in the episode ‘One Angry Ghost’. Daten City’s TV show ‘Judgement Day’ described him as the most intelligent lawyer in town. Despite the fact he was a literal monkey.
He’d wear a machine on his head to translate his thoughts into speech, even though they weren’t particularly clever. Like comparing Panty’s bangs to bananas. Luckily, after the sisters got zapped, Abrams touched Panty’s hair and got an electric shock. This heightened his intelligence enough to prove the sisters innocent and reveal the true killers. For a character meant to be a joke, he still came through for his clients in the end.
3 Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney
This character needs no introduction. Search for ‘anime lawyer’ on any search engine, and the Ace Attorney cast will make up most of the results. Some pages will go to bat for original antagonist Miles Edgeworth. Others will prefer Trials & Tribulations’ prosecutor Godot. But the one that’s always come out on top is the humble defense attorney Phoenix Wright. Time after time, and even when things looked bleak, he’s proven his clients innocent and winkled out the true villains in nearly every case.
However, he’s low on this list because he isn’t really an iconic anime lawyer. Wright comes from a series of visual novel video games. Sure, he got an anime adaptation in Ace Attorney. But that show got a frosty reception due to its ho-hum animation and disappointing creative changes. It got better as it went on, but the show proved that Wright was a better lawyer on Nintendo’s handhelds than on Crunchyroll.
2 Teru Mikami, Death Note
Not every lawyer is a hero. Some are just out for their own interests or have a different idea of what ‘justice’ is. When Light Yagami needed to get the heat off of him as he became a suspect in the ‘Kira’ case, he found someone loyal to his cause in Teru Mikami, a criminal prosecutor who went to any lengths to protect the innocent as a youth. Then he took a wrong turn somewhere along the way.
He saw things in terms of ‘good’ and ‘evil’, and that the ‘evil ones’ had to be ‘deleted’ for true justice to be achieved. Once Kira’s Kingdom became established, he took to their cause like a duck to water. His devotion was so strong, Light trusted him with the Death Note itself. For a while, he became the ‘X Kira’ or ‘the Hand of Kira’. Ironically, for a character that saw everything in black and white, he’s a great example of a morally gray villain: his desire to protect the vulnerable and carry out justice made him a twisted murderer.
1 Eri Kisaki, Detective Conan/Case Closed
AKA Eva Kadan, Kisaki is a defense attorney who often provides advice for the main characters in the show. Whether her daughter Ran, or even the titular Conan himself, get stuck trying to figure something out, she’s usually there to provide some insight that gets the case unstuck. She even gets involved in the action sometimes via her judo skills, taught by her feckless kind-of husband Kogorō.
Her hot & cold relationship with Kogorō plays a big part in the show, as the two are often disdainful towards each other. She’s too stiff, and he’s too juvenile. It was bad enough for the two to legally separate and live different lives. Yet they always end up working on the same case in one way or another. They’re an effective duo that have helped Conan and co out a lot, and they know it too. As much as they annoy each other, they still love each other too. For a kid’s detective show, Detective Conan provides plenty of romantic drama on top of the legal and criminal proceedings.