| “ | Hang loose, baby! | „ |
| ~ Roger Retinz. |
| “ | Come on, now! I have nothing up my sleeve. I don't NEED to hide anything up there... because I require no tricks or gimmicks. For you see... my magic is the real deal. | „ |
| ~ Retinz revealing himself as Mr. Reus. |
Roger Retinz (in Japanese: 志乃山 金成, Kanenari Shinoyama) is a minor antagonist from the 2016 Capcom video game Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice. Specifically, he is the main antagonist of the second case, The Magical Turnabout. He is a TV producer who formerly worked as a magician for Troupe Gramarye under the name "Mr. Reus" (in Japanese: Mr. メンヨー, Mr. Menyo), but was kicked out by the leader of the Troupe, Magnifi Gramarye, leading him to seek revenge. Part of this revenge was being responsible for the murder of one of his long-time admirers, Manov Mistree.
Biography[]
Roger Retinz was originally a magician working for Troupe Gramarye and went under the stage name of "Mr. Reus". However, at some point, he got injured while performing a reckless magic trick, and Magnifi kicked him out of the troupe as a result, causing Retinz to bear a grudge towards them.
Although Retinz was relatively obscure compared to the rest of Troupe Gramarye, he did have his fans, one of them being a man named Manov Mistree, who was such a big fan of his that he decided to take him under his wing and train him to be a magician like himself.
After that, he becomes a producer for Take-2 TV and gained popularity for his charismatic on-screen persona, even starring in some of the shows he produced himself. He also developed a reputation for being impossible to please and being extremely abusive towards his staff.
Plan for Revenge[]
Years later, Retinz saw his chance to take revenge on the Troupe when Trucy Wright, the only heir to the Gramarye magic rights, was making her television debut. He offered to produce and broadcast her magic show. He also had Mistree pretend to be Mr. Reus in his place and hired the twin magicians Bonny and Betty de Famme to play a prank on Trucy. He planted a sword on the stage's skywalk, on which Mistree was impaled and killed when he was lifted into the air as part of the prank. He then planted blood into the coffin into which Trucy was meant to stab with her prop sword in order to make it look like she had killed Mistree by stabbing him through the coffin. He also made sure that he would be at Take-2 TV when the prank occurred so that he would have an alibi.
To make Mistree's death look like a murder (as opposed to involuntary manslaughter), Retinz forged a note bearing Trucy's signature that suggested she had known of the prank in advance and presumably planted Mistree's notebook in her belongings. His intention was for the prosecutor assigned to the case to give Trucy a motive for killing "Mr. Reus", namely that Mr. Reus was going to take revenge for being kicked out of Troupe Gramarye by revealing the secrets behind their magic tricks. Additionally, he planted the forged signature that he had made earlier on a contract that would force Trucy to pay him $3,000,000 if the show was canceled because of her incompetence, ensuring the financial ruin of the Wright Anything Agency.
After Mistree was dead, Retinz took advantage of the ensuing chaos to switch out Trucy's prop sword for the bloodied metal sword. However, due to Bonny accidentally setting up setting up Trucy's puppet Mr. Hat over the wrong trapdoor, Trucy stabbed the coffin on the side opposite the blood he had planted, so he had no choice but to tamper with the coffin to make the scenario appear consistent. He also edited the footage of the trick that his crew had taken in order to further make it seem like Trucy had stabbed through the coffin with the metallic sword, specifically by removing the playing cards that she threw when switching out the metal sword for a rubber one.
Despite Retinz's various manipulations and attempts to cover up his crime, Apollo Justice, with help from fellow attorney Athena Cykes, was ultimately able to figure everything out, forcing Retinz to admit to both being the real Mr. Reus and to the murder. Before being taken away, Retinz cursed the Gramarye name, blaming them for humiliating him and driving him to his murderous revenge. Trucy suggested that the real reason Magnifi kicked him out of the Troupe was because he witnessed his anger and disregard for life. She took things a step farther by outright telling Retinz that he in no way deserved to call himself a magician. Retinz responded to this by gloating that he was the better magician, since Trucy was not able to figure out his trick before Apollo did, which caused Trucy to start doubting herself. He was then arrested for Mistree's murder, laughing evilly as he was taken away, believing that he had taken his revenge, after all.
However, Trucy and Apollo got the last laugh when the latter reassured the former of her skills and how great of a magician she really was, as well as encouraged her not to take any of Retinz's gloating to heart, lest she truly let him take the victory over Troupe Gramarye that he had sought and desired. They unknowingly got the last laugh in another way, however. While Retinz had assumed that he had, in a way, defeated the Gramaryes by fooling Trucy for as long as he had, he, Apollo, and Trucy were all unaware that Apollo was biologically a Gramarye by way of being Thalassa Gramarye's son, and thus, Trucy's half-brother and Magnifi's grandson. As such, Retinz, in spite of fooling one Gramarye, had nonetheless been defeated by another, leaving his attempts for revenge in vain.
Breakdown[]
Continuing the streak of Ace Attorney villains who have two breakdowns in the same trial, Retinz also has two of his own. His first occurs when Apollo figures out his true identity as Mr. Reus. He simply turns the sweater tied around his neck into a magician's cape, rolls up his sleeve to reveal the scar from the injury he'd sustained years before, and begins flipping a coin in his hand before suddenly making more coins appear between his fingers as part of a sleight-of-hand trick.
His second breakdown is one of the longer ones in the history of the series, and it appears to be the first breakdown to use a motion capture performer. It occurs once Apollo is able to conclusively confirm that he is, in fact, the culprit, and tells him that his magic tricks have all been exposed. Retinz decides to perform one more last-ditch magic trick for Apollo, Athena, Trucy, the judge, prosecutor Nahyuta Sahdmadhi, and even the entire gallery. Suddenly standing at the witness stand in front of a big, red curtain, he begins moving around the general vicinity of the stand, opening up his cape repeatedly to reveal the faces of the past members of Troupe Gramarye, all of which go up in flames. He tries to burn Trucy's face, as well, but ends up revealing his old mask instead, which sends him into a panic as he tries again. But this time, he opens his cape to reveal his mask covered in blood. Now in a full panic, he waves his hands at the gallery and asserts that he did not commit the murder, instead reaffirming that he was the victim of the Gramaryes. Then, several spotlights begin to shine on him with increasing brightness, forcing him to cover his face from them and scream continuously as his panic reaches its climax. As the screen whites out, he curses Troupe Gramarye one last time before at last being seen collapsing to his knees at the witness stand, dazed and completely broken.
Appearance[]
Retinz is a man in his mid-thirties with brown hair, eyes, and fair skin. He has a mustache and a goatee. He wears a white shirt with red patterns, a red sweater over his shoulders, green shorts with lime-and-black stripes, a white fedora with a green band on it, black sunglasses with orange lenses, and white, blue, and red sneakers. He has a scar that he hides under his right sleeve, which he got as a result of a failed magic trick during his time as Mr. Reus.
As Mr. Reus, he had no mustache or goatee and dressed primarily in green-and-purple clothing. He also wore black fingerless gloves, a black cape, a frilly white cravat, and a white mask that only covered the right side of his face.
Personality[]
When first met by Apollo and Athena, Retinz simply comes off as a typical sleazy television producer who cared only about what got his network ratings and how much money his network brought in. However, as the case moves along, both Apollo and Athena slowly begin to realize that there is something much darker and more evil to him, and what they find out is clearly not good.
For starters, Retinz is an incredible sadist. As the "Ratings Rajah" (in Japanese: ジャック・ヤマシノ, Jack Yamashino), the sort of material on his network mainly includes girls in bikinis mud wrestling each other. Even worse, the reason that he attempts to foreclose on the Wright Anything Agency is for nothing other than the simple fact that they are associated with Troupe Gramarye (due to Trucy being Zak and Thalassa's biological daughter and Magnifi's granddaughter). The "trust" that he had also shown toward Mistree could, in actuality, be interpreted as a sham to turn him into a pawn to throw away later on, as Retinz did not truly trust anybody with his secrets, even admitting to it on the stand, as well as it being totally worth killing Mistree to frame Trucy. Retinz even has a pyromaniac pose that the player can see at several points, including when he performs his evil laugh, which is one of many old criteria for being a sociopath.
That is exactly what Retinz could be considered: a sociopath. He is shown to have no empathy or conscience. Throughout the entire Magical Turnabout case, especially after his reveal as Mr. Reus, Retinz is shown to be unrepentant and without any true affect. All of the stunts that he pulls and the tactics that he demonstrates are made with the sheer goal of killing a young man who had admired him all of his life, and then using his death to not only ruin the life, career, and reputation of an innocent young girl, but also the business and careers of Trucy's adoptive father, Phoenix Wright, Apollo, and Athena, all without a second thought, and with neither regret nor remorse.
Even after everything that Retinz is revealed to have done, even after his exposure, he still has the gall to claim (near the end of his aforementioned breakdown) that he is the true victim rather than Trucy, the framed party, or even Mistree, the actual murder victim. He lies so casually, he never sets off Apollo's bracelet that he typically uses to spot someone lying to him, something that even past Ace Attorney villains such as Kristoph Gavin and the Phantom both actually did do, which also shows Retinz's penchant for manipulation. He takes great pleasure in the pain and misery that he causes every party involved in the case, be it Apollo, Athena, Trucy, or the de Famme twins. He also displays much arrogance due to his claim that his magic is exactly that, and the people's enjoyment of it does not matter to him. He also thinks that squeezing the fake contract into his plot is a bright idea. And most importantly, he cares nothing about anybody else, only himself. What makes him even more vile is that he turns Betty into a potential scapegoat.
All of these things add up to classify Retinz as a petty sadist, and, despite being overshadowed by other villains in evil, possibly one of the most vile villains in the Ace Attorney series.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Retinz is the first magician culprit to be faced in court, and the only member of Troupe Gramarye to be a murderer.
- His stage name, "Mr. Reus", is a play on the word "mysterious". "Reus" also sounds like "ruse".
- His surname, Retinz, may be a play on the word "ratings".
- If his name is pronounced with the first and last names switched around, it sounds like his TV producer name, the "Ratings Rajah".
- Ironically, Retinz was defeated by a Gramarye, as Apollo and Trucy are half siblings. Fortunately for him, he went to prison never being aware of this.
- Roger Retinz is the first, and so far only direct antagonist towards Trucy.
