Source: Paradigm Paradox official site
Ibuki (CV Nogami Sho)
First of all, please give us your thoughts after the recording.
It took two separate days for us to record everything, and we just finished the entire recording.
In the first half of the recording, me and everyone in the staff were just beginning to grasp the shape of Ibuki based on the script and general setting. So today, on the second half of the recording, we got to go even further.
We’re recording this story from the very beginning, though, so of course we’ve got to do it this way (lol)
I had a lot of fun during recording as I compared my own trial-and-error attempts with the stage directions I actually received on site, and I had a lot of fun recording this game, building it up together with everyone.
Please tell us the charms of your character, and if there was anything you had to keep in mind while portraying him.
When it comes to Ibuki’s charms, he’s probably closer to the very heart of this story than anyone else is, so that’s why there seems to be an air of resigned philosophy about him.
I think his charm lies in his mysterious, kinda shadowy nature.
Up until this point, I’d never had much of a chance to play this kind of character before, so it was fun but also difficult (lol)
As for a point I kept in mind while portraying him, I was basically smiling as I was talking, making sure not to make big changes in my emotions.
It’s not a “huge [happy] smile”, but more of a “quiet” little smile.
When anyone learns about the not-so-great sides of other people, their emotions, facial expressions, and of course their voices will change accordingly. But still, Ibuki is the kind of character who can’t afford to, or rather, he’s the kind of character who can’t put on an air of looking down on everything.
I think there’s only one moment in this big, long story where he actually loses his composure.
So I tried to be as relaxed as possible when I was portraying him, and tried to seem as if I wasn’t too attached to what was going on around me.
Please tell us what you think are the story’s highlights, or if there are any specific favorite situations or scenes that left a strong impression on you.
One of the highlights is that there are two voice actors playing the same person.
I’ve gotten to be a part of several Otomate franchises in the past, but this is the first time I’ve seen so many female voice actors in the main billing, so I guess that’s a highlight.
When we first heard that our characters were going to transform into women, all of us in 8P were nervously thinking “are we gonna be doing [those voices]?” (lol) Our wonderful co-stars are doing that for us.
Although they’re two sides of the same person, they’re different characters, so it would be interesting to look for the differences between the characters’ male and female forms, and conversely, to find something in common.
There are many situations that left their mark on me, but if I go into detail too much, I think I’ll end up with entire censored paragraphs…
Ibuki’s the kind of person who doesn’t have any particular resistance to becoming Moravia – there’s a scene where he suddenly transformed in front of the heroine, and then transformed back, but I think that was it.
One of my favorite parts within the story is the way that Ibuki can suddenly transition into talking in Moravia’s voice within a single line.
Tomitsuka Ryou (CV Masuyama Takeaki)
First of all, please give us your thoughts after the recording.
Iโm Masuyama Takeaki, who plays Tomitsuka Ryou.
Honestly, I’m not very familiar with recording with otome games, and I’m quite nervous since this is a work to be released under the Otomate label.
But since he’s an indifferent kind of character, I tried to not let my emotions show so much, and I concentrated on portraying a strong drive to do things.
It’s not just the main story that’s interesting – the various side stories are, too. So I really had fun working on this project.
Please tell us the charms of your character, and if there was anything you had to keep in mind while portraying him.
At first glance, Ryou seems cold, or rather, he seems like an indifferent kind of character. But he’s a person who’s got a lot on his shoulders thanks to certain circumstances, so he’s got a lot on his mind, has a lot of conflicts within him, and he’s a person with a big heart.
His lines may seem indifferent, but I was always conscious of what might lie behind them.
I thought that there’s a difference between what’s really inside his heart and what he shows outwardly, so I was very careful to portray that.
Also, he’s surprisingly mischievous. Ryo is 26, and among the characters of this franchise he’s a relatively older character, but he’s still a young guy in his 20s. I find his surprisingly boyish side to be rather cute.
I portrayed him thinking that it would be nice if I could make you feel how amazing the mischievous side of him is, especially when you consider how serious of a person he normally is.
Please tell us what you think are the story’s highlights, or if there are any specific favorite situations or scenes that left a strong impression on you.
There’s a scene where Ryo’s alone with the heroine, spending their time in a certain place outside the colony. That’s when we can first see just how human Ryo actually is.
When you start learning about the baggage he’s been carrying, it feels like you’ve begun to see a facet of Tomitsuka Ryou, the human behind those things.
For example, I had fun acting out scenes where you can see various sides of him, like when you could think he really can still be like a kid, or when he seems like he’s having fun.
I thought those were really wonderful while I was doing those scenes, so those were the scenes that really stuck with me.
Hyuuga (CV Lounsbery Arthur)
First of all, please give us your thoughts after the recording.
It took us a few days to record this, but it still feels like we got it done so quickly.
Up to this point, I haven’t gotten much chances to star in josei consumer games*, so it was a really fun time, and it felt very fresh and new.
*Consumer game = A computer game designed to be played on a commercially available home game console. He combines this with josei(ๅฅณๆง), so, specifically games with a mostly-female target audience.
Please tell us the charms of your character, and if there was anything you had to keep in mind while portraying him.
Hyuuga is a nurturing big brother, or rather, a kid who feels like he went past the “big brother” stage and went straight to being the “mom”. (lol)
He gives off the feeling of being the “mom”, but it was very hard to pull off that balance – if he becomes way too mom-like from the very start, then he wouldn’t feel like a villain, he’d feel like a kind mom. That was fun to do, though.
He’s kind to his companions, but he draws a hard line, a solid wall between himself and strangers. Once you get through his defenses and get to know him more, you’d feel that he really is a character who treats [you] as family.
The warmth he feels towards the people he admits are his companions is the same warmth he feels towards the heroine.
It was fun to act out the scenes where, after being friends, after having her be there for him, he gradually begins to open up his heart to her.
If you go through the Hyuuga route, his humanity builds up gradually, so even if you think that he might not be [a good match] at first…I feel that the more you proceed with his individual route, the more you’d grow to like him.
The more you get to know him, the more charming he becomes; I feel that he’s the kind of character who’s just like dried squid*.
*ในใซใก = dried squid, dried cuttlefish. It’s a bit of an acquired taste, which I think is the idiom he’s going for here.
Please tell us what you think are the story’s highlights, or if there are any specific favorite situations or scenes that left a strong impression on you.
A highlight for me was how elaborate the worldbuilding was.
What is a colony in the first place? Is this even the real world? These are questions you end up asking because of how complex the worldbuilding is.
The scenes that left an impact on me was whenever the characters would fight amongst themselves, and when they would fight against the unknown gaijyuu*. I felt that within this franchise, the concept of dying was firmly in place.
It’s a battle between justice and evil, so depending on the route [you choose], the villains may defeat the heroes, and people could die. It was also refreshing how many different ways there were to die.
I don’t know much about otome games, so forgive me if there’s a lot of others like this and I just don’t know about them – but it feels like within the genre, there aren’t much franchises like this which have so many ways to die within the story.
For example, I think there are [franchises] when people just end up completely exhausted after going through a fight set up to be a life-and-death battle, but…in this one, people die easily.
Another one of my favorite scenes is one where the sides of justice and evil call a temporary truce and work as one. It was very exciting to see how it seemed like yesterday’s enemies became today’s friends, and how they fight together.
I’d be glad if you could play the game and see for yourself how these scenes actually turned out.
*ๅฎณ็ฃ, “harmful animals”, “vermin”.
Yukinami (CV Hatanaka Tasuku)
First of all, please give us your thoughts after the recording.
I’m just relieved that we’re done with recording.
It was the first time for me to portray a kid whose way of thinking is this immature – or rather, a kid who got raised up to turn out this way. Honestly, I was desperate to not be swept away by him.
Yukinami’s a cheerful kid – his pure, innocent side aggressively hypes up the people around him, but there’s also a violent side to him, too.
Since I’d been desperate not to let myself be swept away by this kind of guy I was portraying, I am so relieved that we’re finally done.
Please tell us the charms of your character, and if there was anything you had to keep in mind while portraying him.
Yukinami isn’t the kind of guy who doubts people or doesn’t doubt them – I think he’s just the kind of guy who lives his life as he feels it should be lived, and that’s something I was conscious of so many times as I was portraying him.
He asks a lot of questions about things we normally take for granted – a lot of “why”s and “how”s – so portraying him made me gasp in surprise. I feel that his unique perspective [on things] is his charm.
Also, he’s very straightforward. His extreme honesty is scary, but there’s scenes which make me realize that this is actually a charming point of his, and that he really is a young man with a beautiful heart.
Something I had to keep in mind while I was portraying him was that the more he grew, the more he lost his innocence – but it was a delicate balance I had to be careful with, because he can’t lose too much of it, either, and he would if I put too much emphasis on it.
Please tell us what you think are the story’s highlights, or if there are any specific favorite situations or scenes that left a strong impression on you.
This franchise is a profound story with a solid setup, and the more you learn about it, the more you feel how deep the darkness of this world goes.
Itโs packaged in such a cute and vibrant way, so it gives off a bright vibe, but it’s an earth-shatteringly proper science fiction drama, so it’s very interesting.
As I portrayed Yukinami, there were many moments when I really felt I could understand him – a lot of painful and difficult scenes, but they were highlights [to me].
Also, more than anything else, his heart-to-heart conversations with the heroine made me cry when I was reading it. There’s a lot of great scenes.
If I had to pick a single favorite scene, I’d say I love the scene with the flowers the most.
It’s a scene where Yukinami realized a bunch of things, so I really liked that.
๐ 