Belmond Banderas Starts Gyakuten Saiban 3 and Clears Episode 1 in a Single Stream

NIJISANJI — Nijisanji’s Belmond Banderas began Gyakuten Saiban 3, the third game in the Ace Attorney series, on Monday and played through its opening episode, “Omoide no Gyakuten,” in one stream of just under three and a half hours.

Banderas said he had cleared the second game only days earlier and had heard that moving straight on to the third was worth it. The episode opens as a flashback: Chihiro Ayasato, a rookie defense attorney in only her second trial, defends a young Naruhodo Ryuichi, the lead of the earlier games, who is accused of killing a fellow college student. Banderas remarked that he had never seen the character in this setting and guessed early on that the episode was a prequel. He voiced the trial as he went, laughing at the spiky hair of the young defendant and at the prosecutor Ouchi’s pompadour.

“Who would have thought Episode 1 would be a flashback, a prequel, a zero.” — Belmond Banderas, closing the stream

The case turned on a cross-examination in which the defendant’s own testimony gave him away, then on a severed high-voltage power line, a witness whose account shifted and, late in the trial, a cold medicine entered as evidence. Banderas followed each reversal aloud and traded guesses with chat, including a lightning-strike theory that he and viewers picked apart before the court dismissed it. Near the end the prosecutor’s pompadour came undone, and the episode reached its verdict at about 3 hours 19 minutes.

At the close he said Episode 1 being a flashback was a surprise, and indicated he would carry on with Episode 2 that night. He read out the names of viewers who had sent paid messages and members before signing off. Ten Super Chats came in over the stream, several of them welcoming the start of the third game.