Ace Attorney series creator and director
Shu Takumi created Maya as a partner for Phoenix in order to make cases more fun to investigate by offering advice. While she was planned to be a partner from the start, she was initially planned to be a lawyer-in-training. For
Spirit of Justice, it was decided early on to bring Maya back, due to frequent requests for her return from
Dual Destinies players. The developers worried a lot about how she would be received, with the game's producer Motohide Eshiro saying that they were certain that people would criticize the use of the character regardless of what they did. At first she was written with the concept of having grown into an adult but still remaining the same inside; the game's director and writer, Takeshi Yamazaki, thought that this unchanged personality felt strange considering nine years had passed within the series' story since her last appearance, so it was decided to at some points have her act more maturely, to show that she had grown. To further this, her mastery of spirit channeling was written as improved compared to her last appearance. Yamazaki had problems with writing her dialogue, and said that he had to try his best to get her to sound right. They also had problems with getting the balance right between Maya's involvement in the story and the appearances of other characters; because of this, they decided to make her the defendant of the game's third case, thereby freeing up space for other characters during the investigation phase, and letting the player spend time with Maya during the trial itself. Starting with the second game, the localization direction was handled by Janet Hsu; one of the first decisions they had to make was how to localize Maya's hometown and the Fey clan. They decided to localize it around the idea that
Ace Attorney takes place in an alternative-universe United States where anti-Japanese laws like the
California Alien Land Law of 1913 were not passed, anti-Japanese sentiments were not powerful, and Japanese culture flourished. Because of this, the Fey clan and things related to it, such as the Kurain channeling technique, were kept Japanese as it was seen as part of Maya's heritage. Producer Motohide Eshiro said there was too many requests to add Maya back to the series after finishing the fifth installment and thus added her back.
Design Along with the rest of the first game's characters, Maya was designed and drawn by Kumiko Suekane and Tatsuro Iwamoto. She was given liveness style in order to support Phoenix. However, later revisions led to make Maya more attractive visually. Iwamoto believes she was not skilled at drawing adults and thus believed that she was more skilled with Maya by the time of the character was created. Maya was originally designed with clothes typical for traditional Japanese spirit mediums, including a
kimono and a
magatama bead; the kimono design was altered compared to the source material, however, with the hem drastically shortened. For situations when she channels Mia's spirit, her design changes: her hair and clothing remains, while her face and body change, looking like Mia's, with the intent of emphasizing the difference in their bust sizes. She is given yet another alternative design for part of the third game,
Trials and Tribulations, where she wears a waitress uniform, replacing all of her regular clothes and accessories save for the beads in her hair. Because Takumi wanted the first three
Ace Attorney games feel like three installments in one larger work, he wanted to avoid a situation where the first game looks outdated compared to the third: because of this, Maya and other major characters such as
Miles Edgeworth and Phoenix retain the same character graphics throughout all their appearances in the first three games. For Maya's reappearance in
Spirit of Justice, she was given a renewed design; before settling on the final version, the development team considered using her mother, Misty Fey, as a motif and base for the redesign. Since the game is given the number
6 in Japan, Capcom decided to incorporate it as a symbolism to Maya's character. Fuse designed her in parallel with the Khura'in Kingdom place. There was a struggle with how to properly draw an adult Maya when compared to her younger self from the first trilogy and meet players' expectations. As a result, Fuse illustrated Maya from the first game era himself, and then tand started revisiting each part of the design to decide little by little which fits more and avoid drastic changes. Her facial expression were also revisited, bringing parallels to her sister Mia, but in the end the artist decide to keep her own original face. When it came it to her looks, the team decided to keep the same aura but revisiting the clothes in order to make her look like her mother. Both Eshiro and fans were delighted by Fuse's new take on the character; Eshiro came to see this Maya from a parent-like point of view considering how she grew up. There was also an option to make her a full-fledged adult, but the staff was against that. On a second thought, they found it necessary to fit the body of a 28 year old woman. ==Appearances==