Maya Fey - Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney - Jeff Moy - Sketch card

And here we have the other half of the generous commission gifted to me by my wonderful girlfriend (the former half being the sketch card of Franziska von Karma from Jeff Moy which I have already posted). Where Von Karma's place in the Ace Attorney series was as an antagonist (and then as a rather reticent ally), Maya has served as the sidekick of the main character for most of the series, Phoenix Wright, since the beginning. Here she is depicted in her costume from the latest game in the canon timeline (subtitled Spirit of Justice), but her first appearance was as a teenager in the very fist game, the younger sister of Wright's legal mentor, Mia Fey. The explanation for the rather monk-like nature of Maya's attire (habit?) here is simple: she is a spirit medium, having just about completed her training in Spirit of Justice. The symbol on her rosary-like necklace is called a Magatama, an ancient symbol of Japanese lore with I presume important spiritual connotations. It appears frequently in the games as attached to the Fey family of spirit mediums. Not the kind of thing you'd expect to see in a game about the Japanese court system, but that's Ace Attorney for you.

Her expression here speaks most effectively to her nature as a character; bubbly, cheeky, teasing, but overall good-natured. Jeff did a fine job of depicting her, and I find that when juxtaposing both cards together as they were intended, they almost appear to me like a pair of cheeky mugshots in a rogue's gallery-style lineup of characters from the series. Perhaps someday I will commission Jeff to draw the other characters of the main cast in a similar vein and display them all here. We shall see.