| “ | Did you know the Yatagarasu has three legs? Do you know why that is? Ha ha! No? Well let me tell you. It means that the Yatagarasu has more than one razor-sharp way to do her work. | „ |
| ~ Calisto Yew. |
Calisto Yew/Shih-na, is the secondary antagonist of the 2009 adventure video game Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth. She is seemingly an interpol agent assisting Shi-Long Lang with his investigations.
However as the game goes on, she is revealed to be a spy for Quercus Alba's smuggling ring who spied on Byrne Faraday and Tyrell Badd's vigilante group, the Yatagarasu, which was created in order to stop the smuggling ring without the limitations of the law. She is then arrested near the end of the game, however she decides to betray Alba by giving Edgeworth evidence to help convict him and by admitting she hadn't killed anyone during the case, before being taken into custody by Lang.
She was voiced by Yuki Nakamura.
Personality[]
Calisto Yew[]
Calisto Yew doesn't take anything seriously, prefers applying makeup on herself over doing her job, and has a habit of pushing people's buttons. While she seems very aloof at a first glance, she will burst into hysterical laughter at anything she finds amusing.
However, there was a darker side to Yew. In reality, she was a cunning and intelligent criminal who was brilliant at using her surroundings to set up elaborate crime scenes. She was able to use her own perfume and a video recording to obscure the time of crime and give herself a strong alibi. She was easily underestimated due to how distant and odd she seemed, and was happy to use this to gain an advantage over other people, such as pulling a gun on Edgeworth and escaping when she was revealed to have killed Bryne Faraday and Mack Rell.
Shih-na[]
Shih-na originally seemed to be a devoted second in command to Shi-long Lang, being competent as well as observant. She performed her duties and was always at her bosses side, with his scroll in hand whenever he needed it.
Like before, this was just a cover for Calisto Yew, who had infiltrated Interpol to report information back to Alba and the smuggling ring. She was still the same intelligent and devious woman, just one using a different disguise and persona. As with Yew, Shih-na was ruthless, holding Kay Faraday at gunpoint when she was finally uncovered, before being fought off. She broke out into hysterical laughter before resigning herself to her fate.
Real[]
Little is known about Calisto Yew, and it's unlikely that Calisto Yew was even her real name. The thing both her disguises shared was her intelligence and affinity for setting up elaborate schemes. While she was prone to breaking out into hysterical laughter, she was a fundamentally empty person who solely existed to be used as a murder weapon by her superiors. It's never revealed if Calisto Yew enjoyed what she did or if she committed her crimes only because she was told to.
At the end, it was revealed the only person she was truly loyal to was herself, as her final act was betraying Quercus Alba by revealing decisive information. It's left ambiguous if this was a sign of respect for Miles Edgeworth catching her, a genuine act of remorse, or just her betraying yet another person.
Yew was also a thrill-seeker, wanting to find excitement in whatever she did. She mentions she liked working with Lang due to the intense nature of his job and was disappointed that she couldn't continue to be by his side, despite continuously betraying him while helping him solve crimes.
Biography[]
Ten years before the events of the game, Yew was tasked by Quercus Alba to spy on Byrne Faraday and Tyrell Badd's vigilante group "the Yatagarasu" in order to stop any attempts to take down the smuggling ring. She then took the false name of "Calisto Yew", due to one of the recent smuggling ring's victims being named Cece Yew, in order to pose as her false sister and gain access into the Yatagarasu by guilt tripping Byrne and Badd into believing she was grieved over her "sisters" death. For the next three years, Yew spied on the two, assisting them with their heists until one day, a second threat to the smuggling ring came as a man named Deid Mann wanted to testify against the suspicious activity he had seen going on in the Cohdopian embassy. Acting quickly, Yew hired a thug named Mack Rell to kill Mann and prevent him from testifying, however, Rell was caught on tape and interrogated by Byrne and Badd about the murder. Before his trial, Yew ordered Rell to claim he was "The Great Thief Yatagarasu" if he did happen to get caught on tape, which he did during his interrogation, but when Faraday showed the Yatagarasu card to Rell, he had no idea what it was, which Faraday had ready as a trump card in case Rell claimed to be the Yatagarasu in court.
Wanting to kill Faraday due to him coming close to figuring out who the leader of the smuggling ring was, Yew ordered Rell to accuse him of being the Yatagarasu in court in order to get the two of them in a secluded area in Defendant Lobby No.2, where she then stabbed Faraday with the Yatagarasu key (which was an object that could turn itself into a knife too), using a plastic bag to catch any blood that would come out his wound. She then had Rell help her clean up the crime scene in order to hide her involvement and she then ordered Rell to put a VCR tape of Mann's murder inside a VCR player, before killing him with a bullet and setting up the crime scene to give herself a false alibi, create a fake timeframe for the murder and to make it seem like the two men had killed each other.
After taking Badd to Defendant Lobby No. 1 to talk, she spilt her perfume intentionally 20 minutes later so that Badd would open a window and hear the gunshot coming from Defendant Lobby No.2. Badd then rushed to the lobby and saw the bodies of Faraday and Rell, causing detective, Dick Gumshoe to panic and run to the Courtroom No. 3 to alert security about the double murder.
Miles Edgeworth was then placed as the investigator of the case by Manfred Von Karma in order to prove his worthiness as a prosecutor. During the investigation, Calisto found Edgeworth's demeanour and attitude amusing, but still attempted to pin the murders on Gumshoe as he was the most likely suspect, however Edgeworth slowly started to uncover the truth behind the murders after investigating both Defendant Lobby rooms extensively and looked at Faraday's belongings which contained the Yatagarasu key and took to Courtroom No. 3 in order to accuse Calisto of being the true killer.
Calisto and Edgeworth then argued about Calisto's alibi and the murder weapon for Faraday was a knife, yet no knife was found at the scene of the crime. Edgeworth then revealed how Calisto manipulated the timeframe for the murder by using the gunshot from the tape that recorded Mann's murder and spilling her perfume so that Badd would open a window, allowing the gunshot to be heard. Calisto then asked Edgeworth if she could look at the Yatagarasu key after he made a point that it could transform into a knife, which he agreed to. After Edgeworth then realized that Yew was the real Yatagarasu, she laughed for a lengthy period, before thanking Edgeworth for giving her a thrill that none of the heists managed to give her, before stealing the Yatagarasu key, holding Edgeworth at gunpoint and escaping the courthouse despite Badd chasing after her, getting away with the murder for the next 7 years.
At some unknown point in time, Calisto was then tasked to spy on Interpol agent, Shi-Long Lang who was working towards stopping the smuggling ring due to the economical disaster that it caused in his home country, Zheng Fa and gave important information to the smuggling ring in order to halt Lang's investigations as much as possible, under the name "Shih-na".
When Lang flew to Los Angeles to track down Earnest Amano, due to the Amano group being suspected of being allies with the smuggling ring, Shih-na noticed Miles Edgeworth and Byrne's daughter, Kay Faraday investigating a kidnapping case to do with Earnest Amano's son, Lance Amano and saw that Kay still had Byrne's "Little Thief" tool that was used to create a simulation of an area in order to make the Yatagarasu heists easier. Shih-na then made it her goal to try and arrest Kay in order to steal Little Thief for the smuggling ring.
One day later, Alba asked Shih-na to cooperate with him to kill his second in command, Manny Coachen after finding out that Coachen planned to betray him in order to usurp leadership of the ring. Alba wanted to frame the Yatagarasu as the culprit of the murder, so he sent out the Yatagarasu's calling card in order to lure Lang and his team into the Embassy, where Alba then killed Coachen and tricked Larry Butz into using a cart in order to move the body past security, where Larry then placed the cart into a pool of water.
Shih-na then started a fire in Babahlese Embassy in order to force the firefighting effort to drain the pool in order to put out the fire, so that she could move the body through the tunnel that was connected to the rose garden and then Alba refilled the pools so Shih-na could move the body back to Babahl and plant the body back in Coachen's office, where the papers inside his safe would lead to him being seen as the leader of the smuggling ring. Shih-Na then used wire from a grandfather clock in order to create a pulley system to move the Babahlese Primidux Statue as it contained illegal counterfeit plates after Alba fired crossbow bolts attached to wire from his own office. Shih-na then burnt the counterfeit bills in the Babahlese office in order to draw attention to Coachen's body.
During the second fire, Kay noticed a disguised Shih-na and pursued her into Coachen's office. Shih-na then saw an opportunity to frame Kay for the murder, so she ran back into the office, exited the room through a secret passage behind the fireplace and looped back around to make it seem as if she had just arrived in order to accuse Kay for murdering Coachen. However, Edgeworth soon arrived at the office and proved it was impossible for Kay to have committed the murder, forcing Shih-na to give up.
During his investigation, Edgeworth started to suspect Shih-na as the real killer of Coachen, due to her movements before the murder not matching up with what she was saying and the fact that she had indeed used the secret passage in Coachen's office was proven due to her getting Babahlese ink on her jacket. After presenting a perfume bottle that Kay had preserved for 7 years that had Calisto Yew's fingerprints on it to see if Shih-na's fingerprints would match. Shih-na then laughed for a lengthy period of time and thanked Edgeworth for giving her an even bigger thrill then the one from 7 years ago, more or less admitting to her involvement.
In an attempt to escape, Shih-na then taunted Kay about her father's death to lure her closer, before taking her as a hostage with a gun. Tyrell Badd then showed up behind her shortly later after Shih-na asked Edgeworth why did he think the Yatagarasu had three legs, deducing that the Yatagarasu had three members and Badd was the third member. Badd then attempted to shoot Shih-na, but Lang jumped in and took the bullet, telling Badd that while she was a criminal, she was still his responsibility since she was his subordinate. Before her arrest, she gives Kay two hair sticks, which later turn out to be the crossbow bolts that Alba used and informs Edgeworth that she hadn't killed anyone that night, giving him and Lang a vague clue as to who the real murderer was. Before he was arrested also, Badd informed Edgeworth that "Calisto Yew" never existed and she was always under a false name and persona, while also giving him the Yatagarasu card and the KG-8 video tape as he would need them in order to stop someone who is above the law.
Breakdown[]
When defeated for the first time, she starts laughing hysterically, rocking back and forth. After she's done with all the laughing, she tries to shoot at Edgeworth (who dodges the bullet)
When she's defeated as Shih-na, she starts laughing hysterically, much like the Calisto whom Edgeworth had met before. She notices it and stops with a final "hah," revealing herself as Calisto Yew. When "Shih-na" is finally defeated, she starts cackling, and after that, she suddenly starts laughing with fangs in her mouth, rocking her head back and forth.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- The name Calisto is derived from a species of butterfly while Yew is a reference to a type of tree with poisonous leaves. The former foreshadows Yew's involvement in the smuggling ring and the latter sums up her personality.
External Links[]
- Calisto Yew on the Ace Attorney Wiki
- Calisto Yew on the Magnificent Baddie Wiki
