To be frank, even though I have started to warm up to the music genre, idol generally isn’t for me. Hypnosis Mic was a big exception to that, and Paradox Live has a very similar premise. I have been aware of the franchise for some time, but I never really bothered to dig deeper, partially because of the prospects of the anime adaptation.

At first glance, the anime looked promising. It has great character design which translates well enough to the screen, and the art generally looks great – at times I found myself getting lost looking at these pretty characters. It promised another rap battle setup and the first glimpses of music were good.

img80%(https://i.imgur.com/DaNBxch.jpeg) The animation however is wonky and sloppy, and occasionally weird enough to break emersion. At one point I was puzzled about characters staring which their mouths wide open like in some cartoon, suggesting surprise over the situation, but it failed to convey believable emotions.

ParaLive uses CGI, which is common for idol shows, but the quality varies a lot. Sometimes it really stands out, sometimes it is used in unassuming scenes where it has no business, and later it is missing during a performance where it would otherwise be used. That particular performance looked better than any other, leaving me with a bad overall impression of the CGI quality.

The anime sets up an intricate world build which is eerily similar to the one in Hypnosis Mic, which frankly means it does not make any sense. From what I gathered, there is a substance called Phantometal which enhances musical skills, but in return lets the user relive the moments of their most traumatic memories over and over again. The side effects of this metal are basically identical to drug abuse which gets more and more apparent later on. At worst, the user starts to rust… which is the point it had lost me. In comparison: Despite all its flaws, I find Fire Force found a better solution. I can see how the overuse of fire abilities might transform your body into charcoal, but I can’t see how overusing a metal pendant makes you corrode like you were made of metal yourself. It might make for great metaphor depicting depression, but it got a bit too literal for my taste.

img80%(https://i.imgur.com/iv1ZDF4.png) Whatever, somehow this arena spawns out of thin air and a tournament starts, so at least we get some straightforward tournament showdown, right? Actually, no. The tournament gets sidelined. The focus of this anime is showing the personal drama of the characters, and only occasionally you get to see the results of a match on a billboard for half a second every other episode or so. This is a bummer, but I at least we got some juicy drama, right?

I could excuse HypMic’s lack of sensical plot because it does not take itself very seriously and just uses its setup as an excuse to have the characters engage in rap battles to show off their tracks. In Paradox Live however, the Phantometal premise requires every character to have some kind of traumatic experience. The tone of the series consequently is much more serious, which requires a lot more suspension of disbelieve from the viewer, and clearly, I could not keep up with that demand. After only a few episodes, my suspension completely collapsed. I found myself rolling my eyes constantly at the petty drama which might have been good in another context, but I could no longer pretend I cared. To give an example:

Spoiler, click to view

Hajun falls into the rich boy archetype and is very cold and distant to the people around him, which makes him quite unlikeable for me already. His struggle is that despite being rich and spoiled, he did not inherit his family’s corporate empire… which is not a very relatable struggle to me. Later on, this drama gets dialled up by showing his parents telling him that they no longer need Hajun, because now they have a biological heir. Like come on, that’s clearly something you do not say to your child. Instead of developing sympathy over the now logical reason for his trauma, all I got was anger at the blunt presentation and unrealistic dialogue. Hajun went rusty because this trauma went worse or something, so his band mates visited his unconscious to save him… of course the day will be saved by the power of friendship. Moving on.

Another case where the characters were too disagreeable for me to engage in the drama were Shiki and Ryu, the former being extremely depressed and the latter creepily enthusiastic. Shiki’s attitude was at odds with his positive response to Ryu’s intrusions. It did not feel realistic at all, which had me screaming at the screen at times.

Ok, but we still got some dope tracks to enjoy, right? Well, due to the drama being the focus of the show, the music gets sidelined. We do get a performance semi-regularly either at the beginning or end of an episode, but even then, they usually get cut short. Since the tournament wasn’t plot relevant in the first place, the performances had no significance. The only exception being the season finale,

Spoiler, click to view

where all bands come together to save another character from rusting and rap him awake from his coma. Which is absurd, but at least it had some kind of impact.

What really baffles me is the complete inability of the anime to tell believable drama and develop their characters within its runtime. 12 episodes might be a bit tight for its huge cast, that is still plenty enough time to tell a good story, like it has been done by countless one cour anime before. To be fair, Paradox Live does have a huge cast - in principle. It features 4-5 main bands, totalling 14-16 characters. And from what I’ve heard, there are many more bands in the fandom that didn’t make the cut. I can see why they focused on the original ones. It is also understandable that the anime had to pick a few to treat as protagonists, in this case BAE felt like they were intended as main characters, with cozmez also being heavily featured. Those two bands weren’t my favourites, but I see the need to focus on a few characters. And even with this reduced set we only got decent plot from Hajun and Kanata? The drama about the remaining band members was definitely dealt with, but not in a depth that made it feel relevant to the plot. I am baffled how even with that many compromises, the story still does not manage to tell believable drama. We jump around the characters a lot for 8 episodes (making for lots of exhausting one-off traumatic backstories), then we get a filler somehow, and only in the last 3 episodes some actual plot starts to develop? That’s some terrible use of runtime it got going.

The finale was comparably enjoyable. It managed to build mystery, and had a decent twist:

Spoiler, click to view

Apparently Nayuta had been dead for a while and now exists as an illusion created by Kanata. The hints were certainly built up, even if it’s a bit confusing. In addition, while for me completely predictable because I recognized the voice actor straight away, there also was a secret identity for another character.

It made for a great finale, unless you think too hard about the implications for the franchise if these revelations are treated as canon. I just don’t see any future instalments rolling with the changes in lore (unless that’s canon somehow?). Furthermore, with such a weak foundation regarding character drama, I can’t see a sequel improving the storytelling much, and I certainly don’t see a remake of the first season after this disaster. Maybe that’s just me being pessimistic, but it feels like this adaptation ruined the anime presence for Paradox Live.

This disaster was only bearable because I was watching with a friend who’s been into the franchise for years, so I had someone to complain to. It was actually kinda fun watching this plane crash and burn so spectacularly, enjoyable in an unintentional way. Like I said, it fails so hard at being a character driven drama that it makes for a good parody. It’s a shame the anime tries to be a drama rather than a comedy.

In conclusion, the story and character development of Paradox Live is built on a house of cards that collapses as soon as you look at it the wrong way. Which is a shame because some of the plot lines had huge potential. The heavy weight of the drama is not supported by the weak storytelling, completely breaking the emersion necessary to engage with it from my perspective. I’ll leave it at my personal score of 4.5, as I’m heavily torn. Objectively some of my problems with the show might not matter, but the only reason why I could enjoy it was because it was so bad.