The term "official" in the parapara world describes routines made by certain clubs/choreography groups in Japan.
This movement started in the late 1990s with clubs like Hibiya Radio City and Tottori Eleven choreographing their own routines.
As of 2008[update], club events in Japan have not choreographed many maniac routines, and the movement has basically stopped.
The term OriPara is typically reserved for routines that are not made by famous choreographers or taught at club events.
A refilm is a home-made, usually non-profit video in which dancers film themselves dancing parapara routines.
The two general purposes of a refilm are to highlight a rare routine or to show the public ones' skills.
One theory is that it started in the early 1980s when men working in VIP rooms in clubs would choreograph dances to impress female clientele,[citation needed] while another is that it developed from the Takenoko-zoku subculture that would gather in the pedestrian plaza of Yoyogi Park in Harajuku to dance choreographed routines to popular music and disco.
[2][3] ParaPara is thought to have started in the late 1980s at high-class discos during Japan's bubble era.
Men dressed in black suits would teach routines at clubs such as Aoyama King & Queen and Maharaja Azabu-Jūban.
Like with the 1st boom, such choreography is difficult to find, albeit slightly easier due to the availability of recording devices at the time.
During the latter half of this boom, some clubs created "unofficial" or "maniac" routines, which were featured in Hibiya Radio City, Yokohama Maharaja, and Tottori Eleven.
The cause of this boom has largely been credited to the appearance of Takuya Kimura on television program SMAP×SMAP, dancing to Niko's "Night of Fire" and Domino's "Mickey Mouse March (Eurobeat Version)".
The group originally consisted of Richie, Maki, Miho, Satoko, Tomomi, and Ryoko.
With Avex Trax halting all commercial ParaPara videos, the associated marketing dwindled as well, resulting in a noticeable decline in newer paralists.
As a response to the attendance decline, many events such as StarFire, Ravenous, and others have moved to smaller venues to save costs rather than stopping outright.
The Internet has also changed the ParaPara scene, with many lessons (including those posted by clubs) being found on platforms like YouTube.
The initials stand for Twinstar, Rie, Richie, and Xenon, which refers to who started T-RREX.
The members around that time were Ichi, Omami, Rena, Yano, Shingo, Kahori, and possibly Satoko.
After Velfarre closed in 2006, almost all of the members were replaced when the event changed names to SEF Deluxe.
If one were at a more official or modern event like SEF or StarFire, the songs would probably start around 1998–1999, when the 3rd ParaPara boom began.
After that, with spoken instructions and assistance, the dancer slowly dances each part of the routine to help attendees learn it without music.
These videos are no longer sold commercially and are generally only distributed at only one event, which makes them extremely rare and essentially impossible for foreigners to see.
Because of these reasons, random people began to sell club videos, mainly DVD copies, online on auction websites like Yahoo!
[8] Club videos released since 2009 have become less and less important, as some people have begun to upload lessons mainly to video-sharing websites like YouTube.
In the 2010s, physical copies of club videos are not released as much anymore, with new DVDs only being distributed by StarFire and SEF every 5–6 months.
This is a stark difference from the 2nd boom, when there were over 100 club videos released across Japan in the span of two years.
[13] In the United States, Geneon Entertainment released the Para Para MAX US Mix series of CDs, which contain remixes of anime theme music from Neon Genesis Evangelion, Pokémon, Magic Knight Rayearth, and many other anime productions.
The DVD did not sell well due to an exclusive sales agreement with Media Play, Sam Goody and Suncoast Motion Picture Company, which soon went out of business.