At the beginning of the recording taken by the stuffed animal, it says "・・・・・この・・・と・・・・" before it goes to the convo between Master and Kagome. Do we ever find out what that first line is? (yes/no plz)

Winston Payne
Phoenix Wright
Maya Fey
Ron Delite
and Dessie Delite

Oops, I forgot about those characters. Sorry about that.
BUt I'm pretty sure you could that during Case 1, you could talk to him and I'm pretty sure that he was in the audience during the assination attempt as seen in one of Kay's photos.

Bansai's motives are a mystery to me. What did he have to gain from throwing Manfred a bone in the IS-7 incident and participating in the SS-5 incident? What exactly were his goals? Hell, while I'm at it, what did Marie have to gain from the SS-5 incident?

About SS-5, I don't think Bansai's motives are made explicit, but it is mentioned that the body double bribed Marie. Maybe it's the same for Bansai. Besides, I can assume it would be handy to be the ally of another country's ruler.

About IS-7, what do you mean by "throwing a bone"?

Back when Bansai was Chief Prosecutor, he helped Manfred in the IS-7 incident by forcing the coroner to forge a false autopsy report to prove Tenkai's guilt. However, when Gregory exposed the forgery along with the fact that his client was pressured into confessing, Manfred took the blame (although he managed to shift most of it to the head detective), and Bansai refused to bail him out. And thus, we have the penalty that led to the DL-6 incident.

Well, Bansai did it all to trick Manfred. Although detective Shirase reported that the victim's body was missing, Bansai purposely didn't transmit that information to Manfred. I don't understand all the details, but I guess that led Manfred to prosecute the wrong person and to require the fake autopsy report.
In any case, I remember Mikagami saying that it was because Bansai doesn't like people who defy him or people who have power. I guess Manfred was too powerful for his taste or something.

Wow. Hypocrite much?

Another thing that confuses me about Bansai is his motives behind the Prosecutorial Investigational Committee. And what's more, how exactly did he get the authority to start that if he's not Chief Prosecutor anymore?

As far as I understand, the committee wasn't created by Bansai; it's just the organism tasked to make sure prosecutors do their job properly. Presumably, at some point Bansai retired from his position as chief prosecutor to become the committee chairman. I don't think his motives are explained, but with him being a control freak, I guess he enjoys stripping prosecutors of their badges if they don't do as he wants.

She basically... just shows up ^^'

Cases 1 and 2 are pretty connected, and she basically gets involved in case 2 because she was there in case 1

I forget why she's here... I think Edgey just called her once the murder breaks out

She's accused of murder in this one, so she's pretty involved. This is the one she was bandaged up in, although she recovers at the end

Case 4 and 5 happen right after each other, so since Kay is with you for case 4, she's there when case 5 starts up

While Kay doesn't have a direct tie to the overarching plot (like she did in AAI), the main villain framed her for the murder in case 4, in order to get Edgeworth to solve it, knowing he definitely wouldn't fail if Kay was in danger after seeing the two together in case 2.

From what I understand, Edgeworth didn't want her involved, but she followed Gumshoe to the scene of crime even though he tried to lose her.

This fancy building here wouldn't happen to be the Prosecutor's Office would it?

It's the location of the headquarters of the Prosecutorial Investigation Committee, which is the committee Mikagami works for

It's also where Bansai holds his illegal auctions for evidence from old cases

Why'd Naitou-sama kill Tojiro again?

Because he was jealous of Tojiro getting all the praise and attention from the president. Plus he wanted to take his position as leader of the bodyguards.

When Edgeworth meets a previous witness, he will make a vague reference the case when he met them. For example when he meets Penny Nichols, he thinks "she was involved in a case I was in charge of, that occurred during the shooting the Steel Samurai".

In case 1, in the Gourd Lake park, there's a wooden sign pointing to the boat shop from 1-4. Also in case 4 when Edgeworth is in detention, he says "it's the second time I'm here", which I think refers to 1-4 as well. And Gourdy is mentioned many times in case 5.

There are also references to GK1-5; at one point Edgeworth thinks "once I had to become the subordinate of a prosecutor in order investigate a case I wasn't in charge of". And "the Yatagarasu case" is mentioned a couple of times.

What is actually happening in this pic??

It's what a certain witness sees. He believes it's the dog biting Naitou-sama in the neck, killing him

More in-depth/spoilery (use rot-13)
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Oh, I see! Now I understand. I knew Kuro isn't a bad dog!

Thanks for clearing that up, that image has been haunting me since I first see it (which is like a year ago...).
And yay a Naitou fan! Someone should make a Naitou smiley...

Btw, when are you gonna do case 2?

In this picture, Kuro is actually removing the chisel that was planted in Naitou's throat.

Didn't Ryouken just do that himself when Kuro brought Naitou-sama's corpse to him? o.O

The point is, neither Ryouken nor Kuro did harmful things on Naitou. That's all I need to know

As I recall, it was Kuro who removed the chisel. Ryouken heard the bell and thought it was his knife. He didn't want to be suspected so he didn't touch the weapon (and made Kuro remove it), which is why his fingerprints don't appear on the chisel. Thus he was cleared of suspicions.

At one point, Edgeworth hands in his prosecutor's badge, on account of not being able to properly defend Kay when she becomes a murder suspect. Gumshoe is present when it happens, and once Edgeworth leaves, he becomes lost about his position as a detective. He avoids Edgeworth, believing that he had some part in the reason why Edgeworth quit. However, Edgeworth continues searching for him, and when they finally find him again while investigating the next case, he gives Gumshoe a formal apology. Then, it's back to business as usual.

Is it true you get to play as him temporarily? How long does that last?

I'm pretty sure case 1 is 2 parts...
My random hunch is that case 2 is 4 parts...
I think case 3 might be 9 parts, but that might be I-5 instead.
Don't know the rest at all.

The longest case is either case 3 or 5, I think.

It's true, but it doesn't even last a minute.

Ah, that's a shame. Probably for the best, though; trying to do rebuttals and deductions as Gumshoe sounds like a headache waiting to happen.