ROUND 3: QUARTERFINALS!!

Oh no gumshoe is catching up @liegetonne-erbgut-posts

Not on my watch. Get some more Layton votes in there.

Layton-heritage-posts, you are my beloved comrade, but on this occasion, I fear we will have to be temporary enemies. I hope you can understand.

VOTE GUMSHOE!!

Understandable, but have you considered that, as sweet and kind as he is, ACAB still includes Gumshoe?

I find no fault with this statement as is; all cops are indeed bastards, but as an argument, my dear comrade, it falls flat. My counterpoint is thus: this is a poll whose purpose is to find out who would be considered the best fictional detective. I posit that Hershel Layton is not truly eligible. One's opinion on policing notwithstanding, Detective is a job title, and if my eyes do not deceive me, *Professor* Layton has an entirely different job title preceding his surname. I rest my case here.

VOTE GUMSHOE!!!!

Im sorry @aceattorneyheritageposts, but you'll have to try harder than that. While it is true that the good professor doesn't have the official job title of "detective", he isn't the only one. This tournament features several people who aren't officially detectives, including Mystery Inc.(more accurately paranormal inestigators) , tintin (an investagative journalist), Bruce wayne (a billionaire ceo), and steve (just some guy with a mischevious dog). What all these people have in common isn't that they all have the profession of detective, but that they do the job of a detective, that being investigating clues to find a culprit, a job which the good professor does on the regular.

(Ack! There goes my argument... Just what are all these unlicensed police-badgeless detectives doing running around investigating crimes anyway?!)

(...Let's not follow that train of thought too far... or else our own local PD might start asking me and Maya more questions about why we're snooping round their crime scenes...)

Ahem, anyway.

True it may be as you say that the actual job title of Detective isn't required for eligibility in this tournament. However! I still believe Gumshoe has the edge over Layton, and here's why!

Gumshoe, in design and naming, is the very essence of a detective. His beaten up coat, low-maintenance hirsuteness, the pencil behind his ear - all of this screams "detective". Where is the detective swag in Layton's design? It simply isn't there, your honor. Not only that, but his first and last names - "Dick" and "Gumshoe" - are both established slang terms for a detective! He was born for this profession! This man eats, breathes, and LIVES investigation!

(I'd better not mention that he's not actually very good at it... That might undermine my point somewhat.)

It is true that Gumshoe does seem to have the essence of a detective, but aesthetic alone does not make him the better detective. What makes a good detective is finding evidence and solving cases, and as we both can attest, Gumshoe is terrible at his job.

In fact, your job is to claim that he has failed in his duty as a detective. Gumshoe may look like he has the essence of a true detective, but in reality he has the spirit of a buffoon.

O-oof!

(I really should have guessed that Edgeworth of all people would draw attention to the fact that Gumshoe is a crappy detective... Poor guy'll be getting another salary cut in 3, 2... Wait, hold on a minute!)

Wait, Edgeworth!

Maybe he's not the sharpest tool in the shed, but without Gumshoe helping out, there are so many cases we wouldn't be able to solve! He's saved all of our hides more times than I can count. Without him and his metal detector, you'd be in jail for a murder you didn't commit, remember?!

And he has the biggest heart this side of Japanifornia! What more could you want in a detective? Actual detecting skills? Utterly irrelevant to the case at hand! It's a popularity contest, not a skills contest, and on the former metric, he absolutely deserves to win!

Are you really so cold as to throw such a kind and upstanding man under the bus, just because he's not very good at his actual job?!

Yes we are. Besides that, the title of the tournament is still "best-fictional-detective", not most "popular" or "beloved" detective.