Paradox Live Story & Content
Is Chisei really dead?
I get this question so much that it has its own explainer page.
Why do you use he/him pronouns for Aoi?
I also get this question so much that it has its own explainer page.
Who is @pppieeeeeen? This account doesn't appear in the official Paradox Live character twitter list.
@pppieeeeeen (display name Hanitaro, or "Honey") is Kantaro's alt/vent account. ("Pien", basically, refers to the expression of the pleading emoji.)
We know this despite it never being officially stated because it's had interactions with/received replies from official character accounts outside of the context of mention party campaigns, Kantaro has in multiple cases been depicted with merchandise of the pien-face bear that the account uses for an icon (and the icon is marked with the Paradox Live copyright notice), and the name "Hanitaro" replaces the kanji for "sweet" in Kantaro's name with "honey".
Is Hajun adopted, or is he a bastard child?
At the moment, the official line is that he is a bastard child, since phrasing on official material states that Dongha and Hajun share a father (the exact phrasing on Dongha's profile is that he is Hajun's 腹違いの弟, literally 'younger brother with the same father but different mother'). This does appear to be a retcon of his story in the PRIDE dramas, where he states that he is adopted -- and no, this does not seem to be a case of the same word potentially meaning either as far as I can tell.
If you'd really like to try to wrestle it into coherency, you can assume that Hajun was lying in PRIDE or telling an official cover story, as him being a bastard child would be inconvenient. Hajun does remark during FATE part 1 that he is willing to be more honest than the person he was at the end of Stage Battle.
What happened to Club Paradox between VIBES and LIVE?
It is never explained in the audio dramas, but the generally understood interpretation is that following the events of VIBES and Hajun collapsing on-stage, there was a scandal about Alter Trigger's covert involvement with the Paradox Live event.
The anime... kind of goes into a more in-depth explanation, but the events of the anime are not compatible with the audio dramas, so take them with a few billion grains of salt.
What sickness does/did Nayuta have?
Deliberately-Ambiguous Anime Boy Disease.
Were Luna and Kurobuchi Maou DX ever the same cat before being retconned?
No, and I have no idea where this misconception came from. Kurobuchi Maou DX has always been the black(/tuxedo) cat that lives at Bar 4/7, and Luna has always been the white cat that accompanies Hokusai.
What are dirtmetals?
It's presumably just in-universe slang for impure or mixed metals. I've translated it as "impure metal" in my translation of Opening Show Part 3 to try and hedge the weird fixation some people seem to have on this being an important lore thing.
How canon is social media?
It is strictly speaking canon, but you should probably take it with a grain of salt. The timeline as depicted in the dramas does not align with with the timeline on Twitter*, and there is no time where the characters are tweeting about the exact events of canon.
Characters will tweet about, for example, an upcoming battle round or the song they're working on, but they'll never tweet as though they are currently living through the events of the drama tracks, and in turn they will not refer to events they've tweeted about in drama tracks. This also applies to things like the Seasonal Show game streams and Paradox Tribe posts; they are canonical in terms of information and dynamic but there is no point in the drama timeline where the events of social actually "happen".
*Examples:
[1] The series takes place in the near-future, not the present day, but social media obviously happens in the present
[2] The end of Exhibition Show and the start of LOVE take place literally seconds apart, despite releasing months apart in real life
[3] SHOWDOWN came out months after RAGE, which came out months after FATE, but SHOWDOWN treats FATE and RAGE as happening very close to each other and both only happening ~a week prior
[4] Characters have multiple birthdays on Twitter but do not age in the dramas
What theories or headcanons do you have about...
I feel that it is inappropriate for me to deliberately spread non-canon information using my translation platform. I am not interested in sharing or discussing fan-theories, headcanons, or shipping using my platform as a resource-runner, and I would prefer if you don't bring any of it to my doorstep.
Do you know where [insert piece of in-universe information] is from?
I have a handy search bar at the bottom of the menu of this site, and it may be good to poke around there and play with the phrasing to see if you can find the information in my archives!
But if you can't find it after searching, feel free to ask via my askbox (see the menu bar). Because I maintain this site manually, I generally have a pretty good idea of where everything comes from. If I can't find it, a lot of the time, the answer is "it came from a magazine interview that I don't presently have access to", lol.
Out-of-Universe Paradox Live Questions and Logistics
How will they decide the winner of Battle of Unity if both units win once each?
Battle of Unity's winning unit is being decided by dope point totals, not round wins, so even if Team A and Team R both win two rounds, there should be no conflict. The only thing that the winning teams of individual rounds receive is short after-dramas.
Can you help me set up Paradox Tribe Fan Club membership?
This is outside of my wheelhouse, sorry. The key thing is that you need a Japanese payment account on the device you're using, and I can't walk people through that, both because I can only tell you how I set up my own Android play store account before Paradox Live even started, and also the fact that my experience is outdated by virtue of being from 2019. You may have to look around on Reddit or similar.
Can you help me access ebooks/streams/merchandise/ticketing services/[etc]?
Every situation is different, and whether you need a proxy service, package forwarder, VPN, Japanese phone number, etc. varies from place to place, and I can't really account for all of that and your own situation.
I personally obtain most of my merchandise and the like via an in-person proxy (which is to say, "a friend") and a package forwarding service, and I get around region locking on websites with a VPN service. (Note that many services block most common VPNs.)
Do you know where I can watch Dope Show/Paradox Live on Stage/etc?
The official streaming platform has varied over time, but they generally have foreigner-friendly streams for purchase. Sometimes for special events they will re-broadcast Dope Shows or Paradox Live on Stage performances for cheap or free, and you can try to catch those. Otherwise? Buy the blu-rays. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Do you know how I can get a hold of the Paradox Live perfume?
This isn't a strictly Paradox Live related question, but I do own some of the perfume, so I see it a lot.
The answer is that you either have to buy it yourself in Japan, or have someone buy it from within the country, pack it in their luggage back to your country, and either hand it to you directly or ship it following your country's laws for shipping hazardous material (in the US, this means surface mail).
It is illegal in Japan (and a lot of other places too) to ship perfume internationally; anyone who offers that service is doing so at their own legal risk. It's not illegal to transport internationally (you can generally transport it in your luggage without issue), it's that it can't be safely transported via commercial international shipping methods, so proxies who are not physically carrying all of their proxied goods back with them to the country of origin can't really help.
Translation-Related
Can I repost your translations on [insert platform/wiki here]?/Can I retranslate your translations into [non-English language]?
No. I do not allow any form of reposting, mirroring, or retranslation (as in translating my JP-> EN translations into a third language) of my work under any circumstances.
I have a piece of Paradox Live content you don't have translated! Can I send it to you?
If you have anything you'd like to share, please get in touch via my askbox or Twitter DMs! Note that I vastly prefer to translate in-character material and generally don't really want to translate seiyuu/staff content.
Will you ever translate [insert Paradox Live thing here]?
Maybe. I have to juggle a lot of things, and here is a non-exhaustive list of reasons I may not have translated something:
- I just haven't gotten around to it. This is the case for many songs and other freely-available, in-universe official materials; I just don't always prioritize it. Feel free to ask, sometimes it is just the nudge I need to get around to something that's easy to get around to.
- I don't have access to it, for any number of reasons; it may be old and out of print (like many brochures/cards that stores give as purchase bonuses, or many magazines who only offer ebook copies for a limited time), or it may be prohibitively expensive (I could buy every ebook of every magazine that has a backlog and has done a Paradox Live feature, but that doesn't take long before I'm paying several hundred dollars out of pocket for a bunch of 2-page spreads). If you have any print media you'd like translated, please get in touch with screenshots of an ebook or high-quality scans.
- I don't want to translate fan comments. This is the big reason I don't directly translate Paradox Tribe Mention Parties anymore; it feels creepy and invasive to translate the words of individual fans.
- I have mixed feelings about how to distribute it in a way that does not promote piracy. This includes such things as the manga or subtitle files for Paradox Live on Stage events.
- I will not translate content that is locked behind Paradox Tribe Fan Club membership, because I cannot meaningfully lock this content behind membership checks.
- I'm just not interested in doing it. As I said above: I am not a comprehensive news site. I don't really have a lot of interest in translating seiyuu interviews or producer talk, and this is also why I will probably never translate (for example) the Paradox Live Dope Radio show. I also (also for example) have a chip on my shoulder about the anime, so I'm never going to translate the anime-original songs that I haven't translated.
Why do you translate books, etc, but not fanclub content?
Because I feel like a book that is entirely in Japanese represents less of a potential lost sale than a 500 yen a month fanclub membership, especially when fanclub membership has benefits (500 dope points a month, merchandise, priority for event ticket lottery) represent a value prospect even for people who can't read the Japanese-exclusive content unaided. Someone who can't speak Japanese will still receive benefits from a fanclub membership; someone who doesn't speak Japanese isn't likely to buy a novel that is 100% in Japanese.
Why does your translation say X when this other translation says Y?
I generally do not consult any other translations, official or otherwise, and I am unaffiliated. Official translations are often MTL and are convenient but not super reliable, and I simply do not have the need to consume other unofficial translations for work I am already going to translate myself. I make different choices than other people do, especially vis a vis phrasing, and that may change the texture of a given translation.
What is your level of Japanese proficiency?
Based on JLPT practice quizzes, I'd say comfortably N3 operating out in the world, and able to cheese my way into N2 with infinite time to process what I'm listening to/reading. I learned Japanese through a combination of basic-level classes at community college and then half a decade of slamming my head repeatedly against mobile games and visual novels until comprehension started coming out of my ears.
Site & Personal Stuff
I noticed a problem with the site/a typo/a dead link!
Please submit an notice about this via my askbox!
- If you are submitting a notice about a dead link, I need to know the page it was on and where you expected the link to go.
- If you are submitting a notice about a typo, please at least tell me what page it's on.
- If you are submitting a notice about a formatting/website function or any other technical problem, please let me know what kind of device you're using and what browser you're using, what the problem is, and what page/s it happened on.
- If you are submitting a notice about a mistake, mistranslation, or other misinformation, please let me know what page it is on and your correction (with a source if you're correcting misinformation). I am not infallible and I do make mistakes.
What is the difference between Misc. Information and Other Translations?
"Misc. Information" is for things that aren't direct translations; think observations, meta, explanations, or resources like "all of the character birthdays listed in one place". These often involve information collated from several sources.
"Other Translations" is for anything that doesn't fall into the other categories of translated content; this includes the fanbooks, mini-comics, social media campaigns, anniversary campaigns, April Fools jokes. If it's a translation of a single source, it probably goes here.
Why haven't you posted about [insert piece of Paradox Live news here]?
I am not running a news website, in short. My interest in Paradox Live is almost entirely about in-universe content, not merchandise, collabs, or events. I maintain pages about SWANK, concerts, and the stageplays because they are particularly relevant and interesting, but I am not going to keep up with every brand collab and merch line, or else I'd go crazy, lol. This site is for me to post my translations, not to be a one-stop site for all your Paradox Live news.
Why haven't you updated the news page?
I generally try to keep on top of things, but I also don't like having a bunch of extremely small changes all one after another on the front page. If I know ahead of time that I will have to update the changelog in the next ~day (example: they release the songs for a battle round one-a-day for two consecutive days, or they are doing a Twitter campaign that will take several days to complete) or the update is just very small (like adding one piece of art to the official art gallery), I will generally update the appropriate pages, but not announce it on the front page until I can lump it all into one update.
I generally post links to new pages/general site updates on Twitter and always update the appropriate index page, but the news page may lag a bit behind.
Do you have/Would you consider making a Discord server?
No. I have zero interest in maintaining and moderating a social space. People generally suggest this as a solution to my desire to not post certain paywalled content publically, and I am philosophically opposed to that, too.
How do you run a site like this?
By being stubborn and old, mostly. It's very low tech; I have to hand-code everything (I do most of my coding in regular baked-into-Windows Notepad or in the on-site editor; this is why you may sometimes find typos and dead links, lol) and the entire site is put together using basic HTML, CSS, and very light javascript. There is no function to automatically populate pages like posts on a blog; I have to individually update every file and index.
Also, I eat a lot of granola bars and drink a lot of cranberry juice, which probably does something.
If you need any help or pointers setting up your own site, you can reach out to me via Twitter.
How much do you pay for this site?
On the most basic level, I pay about $10 USD a year for my domain and $5 USD a month for hosting. I host using a paid account on Neocities; it's a very simple hosting service that accomplishes what I need it to, since I don't need any complicated server-end architecture, and it should mean that the site can remain up even if I lapse on paying for my domain.
More specifically to Trauma Button, I pay about $25 a month on Paradox Live content to translate every month (sometimes more and sometimes less). This all comes out of my own pocket.
Do you accept tips/donations?
Under no circumstances do I accept money for anything on this site.
If you would like to help, instead of wanting to tip or donate, you should instead link to Phanto.MOE; send the link around to your friends, post links so people can find it, and generally just share it!
Who are your oshis?
cozmez and The Cat's Whiskers (specifically the adults) are my favorite groups. My favorite characters are (roughly in order) Kanata, Nayuta, Saimon, Aoi, and Haruomi. I do like every group and every character quite a lot, though.