Paradox Live the Animation

Paradox Live - let's set our hearts on fire with music, just don't take it literally!

If you're even a little bit interested in Japanese hip-hop, you've probably heard about such a great project as Paradox Live, aka Paralive, created jointly by Avex Pictures and GCREST recently, in 2019. The project is essentially a rap battle between members of different teams, voiced by 29 (so far) voice actors including Gakuto Kajiwara, Ayumu Murase, Natsuki Hanae (Tanjiro Komado and Kousei Arima), Yusuke Kobayashi, and many others. The teams themselves, as well as their members, have their own characteristics, song styles, history, but the most important thing that ... unites them is hip-hop.

If you believe the mainstream version, hip-hop started in Japan in the early 1980s and was, like in other countries, "freedom music". If you look for a correlation between the anime industry and hip-hop, the first thing that comes to my mind is the series Afro-samurai Fuminori Kizaki by Takashi Okazaki, where at the expense of hip-hop style to the viewer more clearly shows the concept of anime. Hip-hop in Paradox Live is the basis, it is around him all the musical teams and it is this musical genre is very fond of all the participants of this project.

The announcement of the anime adaptation was at the end of the second live concert Dope Show Paradox Live, and later the whole cast of creators became known. The series was created by a small studio called PINE JAM and directed by Naoya Andou, who had previously worked on episodes of some anime and on the music video Hi-DRIVERS! 2022. Paradox Live at the time of writing this review was divided into two story phases, this show is just about the first phase, with the main characters being the members of the four teams.

About the plot. Humans discover the metal "phantom metal", which in the not-too-distant future hip-hop artists start using to create charming illusions related to their emotions, for this they use accessories containing the very same "phantom metal", which has its own DNA. What is the toll of using illusions? Side effects, up to and including the death of the one using them - that's the price, quite impressive, but there's no way to stop the servants of their creativity. As I mentioned earlier, the anime depicts the first stage of Paradox Life. Several teams battle each other in battles after the mysterious return of CLUB PARADOX for a huge amount of money and the right to get a duet with the legendary vanished group. There are four hip-hop teams, and they are:
— BAE, a trio who perform songs in three languages: Japanese, Korean, and English. In general, the anime seems to have no protagonists, as all the teams and members are equally important to the project, but the BAE members do get more screen time, especially Allen and Hajun. Ann stays on the sidelines as a good mate.
— The Cat's Whiskers are a foursome whose line-up is more reminiscent of the title of a Russian TV series called Two Fathers and Two Sons. They differ from the other teams in that their hip-hop is combined with jazz, and their overall style is darker and nocturnal. In addition, all members work in the bar 4/7, where they mostly get together.
— cozmez is a duo of marginalised brothers, Yatonokami Kanata and Nayuta, who, like BAE, get a lot of attention. Their songwriting style is cheeky, talking about the harshness of their life in the slums and their difficult childhood.
— Akanyatsura is a five-piece team who call each other family, and are members of the Suiseki Clan, a yakuza group. Their music is more fun and lively, similar to street rap. These guys probably get the least amount of screen time than the others.

Seeing in the genres "music" don't rush to please your musical soul, this anime touches on deeper themes, as it still has drama in its genres. Even though the anime is part of a music project, this show is still not about the music, but about the stories of the characters. Yes, you will see and hear performances, but prepare yourself - there are few of them, less than in other musical anime like Love Live or K-On! The anime does a great job of showing drama, but the creators devote an entire episode to revealing some characters, and a measly minute to revealing some other characters, so it doesn't feel like they're all equally important to the story. The characters have drama in their story, and hip-hop, as a free genre of music, helps them cope with it, and the "phantom metal" effect, thanks to its peculiarity, becomes a powerful weapon for viewers and listeners.

Another advantage of Paradox Live: The Animation is 2D graphics, which turned out to be colourful, despite the fact that the show was created by a small studio. However, 3D during the performances leaves much to be desired, it would be better if it was not there at all. If it was not so noticeable during the performance of The Cat's Whiskers, it was obvious during the performance of Bad Boyz by Akanyatsura, which Pine Jam did not handle very well.

Although there isn't as much music in this show as I would have liked, it was cool and varied. Paradox Live is strong with tracks, it's hard to argue with that. The opening intro "Rise Up", performed by all four bands, sounds great despite the different styles of the bands, all the members sound unified. The closing sequence, "Every Day Every Night" by Buraikan, shows the greatness of the legendary band from the first episode.

Despite some shortcomings, the show is a great addition to Paradox Live that will delight fans and not only them, Taku Iwasaki has done his job well. Personally, being not the most ardent fan of the "music" genre in anime, after watching this project I liked it, even now, w hile typing this review, I have headphones in my ears with the BAE track playing.

A promising concept, but a mediocre anime. If you are interested in the music itself (some of them were actually great), you might as well watch the past music videos from Paradox Live official YouTube channel - no need to waste time on this anime.

With high-quality character design and music already in place, the anime should have injected soul into the characters by telling great backstories - which arguably is the hardest part, of course. This show clearly fell short, trying to juggle the large number of characters (>10!) only led to flat storytelling that are difficult to empathize with. Despite a stunning ep.1, production ... quality fell quickly. Even the live performance weren't satisfactory - sometimes the visuals and music didn't match at all.

Setting aside the promotional value, the anime itself is quite disappointing.

Epic Cyberpunk Rap Battles of History.

Whenever an anime has “the Animation” as a part of its title, I immediately brace myself and assume that the anime will be bad. However, Paradox Live the Animation completely blew my expectations out of the water with its first episode.

Set in a cyberpunk future, rappers use accessories that can create almost magical illusionary phantoms linked to their emotions to enhance their performances. Unfortunately these “Phantom Metals” have the nasty side effect of subjecting the user to intense versions of their past traumas possibly destroying them psychologically.

The show follows hip-hop unit BAE made up of music lover Allen, rich ... boy Hajun and Anne in all of their non-binary finery on their journey to win 10 billion yen in prize money after accepting an invitation to participate in Paradox Live Battle along with three other groups. The three of them have a great dynamic and they’re really fun to follow. I wish the show just followed these three (that’s foreshadowing). Of course, there is a bigger conspiracy happening in the background concerning the Phantom Metals and the mysterious circumstances around club PARADOX which gives the show a darker tone than your usual male idol anime.

Studio PINE JAM has been on a roll with its anime output over the past couple of years and Paradox Live the Animation is no exception. With its colourful neon cyberpunk colour pallet that blends well with the CGI and its incredibly good art, animation and scene direction, Paradox Live is gorgeous to look at. Its first episode also has some genuinely good music numbers that go as hard as the animation. Overall, the first episode is phenomenal.

Unfortunately, where its first episode was akin to firing a rocket, episode two feels like the rocket starts to lose momentum, episode three has the rocket fall back to earth and crash and episode four is damage control. The show throws away almost everything unique it’s established for mundane nonsense you see in your average male/female idol anime.
Get ready for an episode centred around the philosophical debate over whether or not you need to be poor to rap well or episode three’s story about the hyperactive member of one of the other rap units looking after a cat complete with “Oh no! The cat is sick, but it’s night time and it’s raining outside!” and then the kid runs outside in the rain to the vet but he trips over his feet, gets wet from laying in the street and feels sad… and at the end of the episode, they do a shoehorned in music number because the issue has been solved thanks to the power of friendship.
This is disappointing because there is presumably a lot of set-up happening whilst these events are being pushed to the forefront, but I honestly couldn’t concentrate because I was left so bored. It doesn’t help that the rest of the groups who are also tagged as “main characters” are nowhere near as likeable or as interesting as the members of BAE.

Still, that first episode was genuinely a blast and if the show hadn’t failed the 3-4 episode test I give every new anime I watch I’d probably still be watching. If you’re someone who can sit through mediocre storytelling to get to the good bits then Paradox Live the Animation might deliver later on. You can even slam open my door, crawl up next to my bed whilst I’m sleeping, shake me awake and shout “Wake up and turn the TV on i-like-this, Paradox Live got good after episode four!” and I’d probably believe you. Until then, it’s not bad but unfortunately, it’s not as good as I hoped.

5/10 Mediocre

If you come looking for clean musical production - you likely won't find this enjoyable. This has officially earned my lowest rating for an anime to date.

A story about hip-hop, with an underground type setting, is a good idea. It's a widely followed genre and has plenty of room for a great story - and great music to go with it. That's where it lost me. It's almost like the audio team was only given a maximum of 32kbps of audio detail to work with. The sound stage is terrible, flat, and lacks dynamism. I understand it's unrealistic to expect studio quality sound from an ... anime, but the fact that the music sounds like it was made using stock sounds from a DAW on some of the lowest quality settings is just an awful experience.

The story is a novel idea even though it's a pretty big stretch to have it make sense - but I made it make sense by just assuming this world had something else going on unrelated to the current story for things to be the way they are. I was really hoping the musical quality would improve past the first episode, hoping it was more of a proof-of-concept, but I was left disappointed.

The focus of the studio wasn't aligned with what I came in expecting as a viewer given I'm watching something based on the world of underground hip-hop. I can connect with music on a personal level, but I can't connect with visuals alone. The story wasn't compelling enough to make up for this fact.

3/10 - I don't see myself picking this one back up.