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Jinxie Tenma
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Jinxie Tenma
Be gone, foul beast!

Jinxie Tenma is the superstitious and yokai-obsessed daughter of Damian Tenma, the head of the Tenma family and mayor of Tenma Town. She was working as a maid at Kyubi Manor, home of Nine-Tails Vale's alderman Rex Kyubi, when the latter was murdered. Her father was arrested for the murder, but Jinxie believed the real culprit to be the demon "Tenma Taro". A friend of Trucy Wright, she had originally invited her and Apollo Justice to Nine-Tails Vale for a yokai-based celebration the village was having.

Newcomer in a monstrous village[]

Nine-Tails Vale

Yokai Lane in Nine-Tails Vale.

While her father came from Tenma Town, Jinxie's mother was born and raised in Nine-Tails Vale. Jinxie eventually took the job as the alderman's maid in Nine-Tails Vale in an attempt to become more independent and become closer to her mother's heritage. Unfortunately, she quickly became caught up in the village superstitions concerning yokai and became incredibly stressed over time, fearing that yokai were everywhere and out to get her. Said stress became so severe that she began sleepwalking — villagers in the vale would see her at night and claim among themselves that Tenma Taro had possessed her.

A yokai celebration[]

Main article: The Monstrous Turnabout

When Trucy Wright arrived at the Kyubi Manor garden for the annual celebration with her friend and coworker, the defense attorney Apollo Justice, the duo quickly ran into Jinxie. After seeing Justice's appearance, she accused him of being a demon due to his hairstyle and stuck a warding charm on his forehead to protect herself. Even after being shown Justice's attorney's badge, Jinxie simply changed her belief from "demon" to "demon lawyer", but decided him to be harmless enough.

She began to inform the duo on the yokai craze in the village, stating that hardly anyone knew of the town's existence before, but now tourists were everywhere. Jinxie then revealed her belief that there were yokai are all over the town, including one particularly terrifying one inside the manor called Tenma Taro, who had been defeated by the Nine-tailed Fox sealed inside the manor's Forbidden Chamber with a warding charm. Returning to the day's celebrations, she revealed that there was to be a surprise event later in the day that no one knew about.

Gs5-2c

The Amazing Nine-Tails chases away "Tenma Taro".

Just as she finished speaking, "Tenma Taro" (actually the manor's caretaker Phineas Filch in a costume) appeared in front of Jinxie, acting as if he wanted to take her away. Jinxie was terrified due to her deathly fear of ghosts and yokai. Suddenly, the Amazing Nine-Tails appeared, "rescuing" Jinxie and the others, before disappearing. Relieved, Jinxie went on to tell her guests that the Amazing Nine-Tails was a pro wrestler whose true identity was secret due to the mask he wore. However, Jinxie herself knew that the Amazing Nine-Tails was actually her own father.

The alderman's murder[]

Jinxie and Ninetails

The Amazing Nine-Tails confessing to the murder.

Gs5-2i

"Tenma Taro" races by Jinxie.

Jinxie then left her guests to return to her duties at the manor. However, she soon heard a scream coming from the Fox Chamber where her father and the alderman were having a meeting. Jinxie rushed to the room to find Damian slumped in his chair and the alderman lying dead on a table with a spear impaled through his body. Jinxie raced over to her father, who asked for her forgiveness for killing the alderman. Damian was wearing his Amazing Nine-Tails mask at the time, which Jinxie did not remove since that would be a great dishonor for a wrestler. Jinxie then ran over to the phone in the hallway to call the police, but as she was coming back, Tenma Taro suddenly came darting out of the Fox Chamber and ran down the hallway past her.

Florent L'Belle, her father's personal aide, later told Jinxie about the village superstition which claimed that telling anyone about a Tenma Taro sighting would result in the loss of one's soul. Jinxie therefore refused to reveal that she had seen Tenma Taro until the fact was drawn out by Justice.

When Jinxie was called to testify in court against her own father, her emotions were dominated by fear, believing that the whole crime scene was full of yokai, thus requiring Athena Cykes to perform a therapy session to calm her down enough that she could testify properly. Justice and Cykes went on to prove that the Tenma Taro she saw was merely Filch in a costume.

When Justice and Cykes learned that her father was the Amazing Nine-Tails, they figured out that the true culprit must have been wearing the wrestler's mask at the crime scene in order to give Jinxie a false confession; Jinxie would not have checked the face of the person under the mask, as, according to the wrestler's code, removing a wrestler's mask would shame and ruin them. It was later revealed that the man in the mask had not been her father, but rather L'Belle, who had also been the one who murdered the alderman. After the trial, a relieved Jinxie thanked Justice and Cykes for defending her father. She reassured her father that his fans still loved him even though his identity was revealed, and encouraged him to meet the assembled crowd outside as the Amazing Nine-Tails once more.

Jinxie would later report to her father that his fans were now asking that he don the Tenma Taro costume and fight against the Amazing Nine-Tails. She helpfully suggested that the "demon lawyer" could play the part of "the Amazing Nine-Tails II".

Thanks and well wishes[]

Main article: The Magical Turnabout
Penrose flowers

Jinxie's bouquet of nine-tails flowers (on the left) in Wright's dressing room at the Penrose Theater.

A year later, when Trucy Wright was set to make her big television magic debut in "Trucy in Gramarye-Land", the Tenmas were among those who sent her flowers as a show of support. Their bouquet of nine-tails flowers also included a note written by Jinxie, where she wished her friend the best and asked that she pass on her thanks to Justice for all he had done for them.[1]

Personality[]

Jinxie Tenma
The room was swimming in yokai! Kasha, Nurikabe, Setotaisho! Eeek! They were all there!
Jinxie Mugshot

Mugshot.

Jinxie is a fearful and paranoid person who believes that almost everything around her is either possessed or a hidden supernatural being. She has the habit of putting warding charms on "monsters" she finds (including Apollo Justice), but would also place them on herself and her father to protect them against possession. She seems to believe strongly in the power of warding charms, to the point of believing they can do more then just protect from supernatural beings, as despite being lactose intolerant, she attempted to buy a charm to cure this, as well as one to help her make better milkshakes.[2]

Jinxie suffers from somnambulism (more commonly known as sleepwalking), which led to rumors from the townsfolk saying that she would wander the village at night while possessed by Tenma Taro. In court, Jinxie's emotions were initially dominated entirely by fear, due to her deathly fear of yokai. She appeared to suffer from some form of schizophrenia, which caused her to hallucinate that everyday objects, such as coffee cups, and ceiling lighting, were yokai and demons, and was convinced that the crime scene she had discovered had been crawling with them. However, she appeared to have the ability to be pulled back down to earth with a combination of therapy and logic.[3] [4]

One of the few things that gives Jinxie courage is the memory of her mother. She began to recover from her intense fears of yokai after meeting Justice, whom she considered a "demon lawyer from hell", and whose selflessness in helping her father taught her that not all yokai are necessarily bad.[5] She eventually overcame her fear of yokai to the point, one year after her father's trial, that she claimed that she had even befriended some of them.[1]

Jinxie shares a loving relationship with her father; he is always worrying about and trying to protect her, while she made him a hat composed entirely of warding charms to keep yokai (and Tenma Taro in particular) away. She was also greatly disturbed by her father's apparent confession and refused to reveal the Amazing Nine-Tails's true identity for fear that it would ruin him.

Name[]

  • Japanese - Yumemi Tenma (天馬 ゆめみ):
    • Her family name "Tenma" (天馬) consists of the kanji "天" (meaning "sky/heaven/celestial", "god/godly/Deva", or "day") and "馬" (meaning "horse"). The word "tenma" can refer to twelve guardian goddesses in the Gelug order of Tibetan Buddhism, or the equivalent of Pegasus in Eastern mythology.
    • "Yume" (夢), which is part of her Japanese given name, means "dream", drawing reference to her sleepwalking and tendency to lapse into the persona of a yokai whilst unconscious.
  • English - Jinxie Tenma
    • Her English first name comes from the word "jinx", which can either mean "a hex/evil spell" or a person or thing that is supposed to bring bad luck.
  • French - Malveina Tenma
    • Malveina is an Italian word to describe a synthetic purple colorant.
    • In French, "Malveina" can sound like a play on "mal" and "veine". The first one means "bad", and the second one is a familiar word for "luck", commonly used in the expression "pas de veine", meaning "unlucky".

Development[]

Jinxie has long black hair tied in a ponytail and rectangular bangs, exposing her forehead. She wears a pink kimono-like shirt, a long blue dress, a white apron, two pink hair decals, and a white frilly headband.

  • The "warding charms" on her forehead were intended to be a red herring that would cause the player to believe that she would become "possessed" like her father if they were removed. In actuality, they are just bandages applied after her own clumsiness caused her to fall over.[6]
  • Before her character concept had been fully thought up, there were originally intentions to make Jinxie a bright, perpetually happy girl who liked to grin, as shown in some of her concept designs, which notably the exact opposite of her final character. After coming up with her timid and frightened nature and her role in the game, they instead gave her a "perpetual scowl".[6]

References[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 Athena: "Please tell Mr. Demon Lawyer I said thank you for everything. Thanks to him, I overcame my fears and now I'm not afraid of yokai anymore! And guess what? I've even become friends with yokai like Ittan Momen and Konaki Jiji!"
    Apollo: Ha ha ha. No matter what happens, I guess she'll never grow out of her demon obession.
    Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice. Capcom. Episode: The Magical Turnabout (in English). 2016.
  2. Jinxie: Milk, cheese, yogurt, ice cream, and...
    Apollo: (Sounds like she's out grocery shopping. She must really like dairy products.)
    Jinxie: ...a charm to make a better milkshake and another to cure my lactose intolerance.
    Apollo: (Maybe she should just stick to soy milk.)
    Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies. Capcom. Episode: The Monstrous Turnabout (in English). 2013.
  3. Athena: Yes, that's right. Her fears have installed in her hallucinations and false memories.
    Athena:She's seeing normal everyday objects as monsters in her mind.
    Athena: It's a form of schizophrenic hallucination brought on by emotional trauma.
    Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies. Capcom. Episode: The Monstrous Turnabout (in English). 2013.
  4. Jinxie: It was all just my eyes playing tricks on me. There weren't any yokai after all!
    Athena:See! A clear cut statement.
    Athena: That's the power of my psychology, and your intuition, Apollo!
    Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies. Capcom. Episode: The Monstrous Turnabout (in English). 2013.
  5. Jinxie: Still, I suppose it's not nice to repel every yokai I meet.
    Jinxie: I mean, there are some that aren't all bad. I learned that today.
    Apollo: (Um... Why is she staring at me like that?)
    Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies. Capcom. Episode: The Monstrous Turnabout (in English). 2013.
  6. 6.0 6.1 (2015). "The Art of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies -". UDON. ISBN 978-1927925447.
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