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116-421: Black Rock Shooter ( ブラック★ロックシューター , Burakku Rokku Shūtā ) , often stylized as Black★Rock Shooter , is a Japanese media franchise based on independent character illustrations created by artist Ryohei Fuke, also known as Huke. It revolves around its eponymous character, a mysterious black haired girl with a blazing blue eye. The original illustration inspired a song of the same name by Supercell featuring

232-424: A vowel . In Japanese, there are basically three patterns of diphones containing a consonant : voiceless-consonant, vowel-consonant, and consonant-vowel. On the other hand, English has many closed syllables ending in a consonant, and consonant-consonant and consonant-voiceless diphones as well. Thus, more diphones need to be recorded into an English library than into a Japanese one. Due to this linguistic difference,

348-679: A 30-second test short stop motion video as a bonus featuring a remix of "Black Rock Shooter" by Joe Hahn , the DJ of Linkin Park , as well as its making-of video. An eight-episode anime television series of Black Rock Shooter was produced by Ordet with CG production by Sanzigen , and was directed by Shinobu Yoshioka, with the script written by Mari Okada , animation direction and character design by Yusuke Yoshigaki and CG battle direction by Hiroyuki Imaishi . Fuji TV, Good Smile Company, Toho , Mages, Aniplex , Dentsu and Ultra Super Pictures were involved in

464-462: A Japanese library is not suitable for singing in eloquent English. The Synthesis Engine receives score information contained in dedicated MIDI messages called Vocaloid MIDI sent by the Score Editor, adjusts pitch and timbre of the selected samples in frequency domain, and splices them to synthesize singing voices. When Vocaloid runs as VSTi accessible from DAW, the bundled VST plug-in bypasses

580-441: A Vocaloid 2 product is already installed, the user can enable another Vocaloid 2 product by adding its library. The system supports three languages, Japanese, Korean, and English, although other languages may be optional in the future. It works standalone (playback and export to WAV ) and as a ReWire application or a Virtual Studio Technology instrument (VSTi) accessible from a digital audio workstation (DAW). The Score Editor

696-603: A box" designed to act as a replacement for an actual singer. As such, they are released under a moe anthropomorphism . These avatars are also referred to as Vocaloids , and are often marketed as virtual idols ; some have gone on to perform at live concerts as an on-stage projection. The software was originally only available in English starting with the first Vocaloids Leon, Lola and Miriam by Zero-G , and Japanese with Meiko and Kaito made by Yamaha and sold by Crypton Future Media . Vocaloid 3 has added support for Spanish for

812-600: A character or fictional world becoming popular in one medium, and then expanding to others through licensing agreements , with respect to intellectual property in the franchise's characters and settings. As one author explains, "For the studios, a home-run is a film from which a multimedia 'franchise' can be generated; the colossally expensive creation of cross-media conglomerates predicated on synergistic rewards provides an obvious imperative to develop such products." The trend later developed wherein franchises would be launched in multiple forms of media simultaneously; for instance,

928-485: A franchise can even be created, which ultimately leads to the creation of brand worlds. Since the creation of Disneyland in 1955, bringing fictional media franchises to life through the theme parks slowly became increasingly popular as the way to perfectly blend tourism and real-life involvement with media itself. Similar to transmedia, the concept of bringing fictional media into a non-fictional space where fans can immerse themselves in real-life versions of elements from

1044-568: A full commercial Vocaloid was A Place in the Sun , which used Leon's voice for the vocals singing in both Russian and English. Miriam has also been featured in two albums, Light + Shade and Continua . Japanese progressive-electronic artist Susumu Hirasawa used the Lola Vocaloid in the original soundtrack of Paprika by Satoshi Kon . The software's biggest asset is its ability to see continued usage even long after its initial release date. Leon

1160-456: A leek, and sang the Finnish song " Ievan Polkka " like the flash animation " Loituma Girl ", on Nico Nico Douga. According to Crypton, they knew that users of Nico Nico Douga had started posting videos with songs created by the software before Hatsune Miku, but the video presented multifarious possibilities of applying the software in multimedia content creation—notably the dōjin culture. As

1276-485: A manga, six books, and two theatre works were produced by the series creator. Another theater production based on "Cantarella", a song sung by Kaito and produced by Kurousa-P, was also set to hit the stage and will run Shibuya's Space Zero theater in Tokyo from August 3 to August 7, 2011. The website has become so influential that studios often post demos on Nico Nico Douga, as well as other websites such as YouTube , as part of

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1392-524: A mobile phone game called Hatsune Miku Vocalo x Live was produced by Japanese mobile social gaming website Gree. TinierMe Gacha also made attire that looks like Miku for their services, allowing users to make their avatar resemble the Crypton Vocaloids. Two unofficial manga were also produced for the series, Maker Unofficial: Hatsune Mix being the most well known of the two, which was released by Jive in their Comic Rush magazine; this series

1508-424: A modeling agency, several television shows ( Playboy's Penthouse , in 1959), and even its own television channel . Twenty-five years later, Playboy released private clubs and restaurants, movie theaters, a radio show , direct to video films, music and book publishing (including original works in addition to its anthologies of cartoons, photographs, recipes, advice, articles or fiction that had originally appeared in

1624-454: A mysterious black haired girl who possesses a burning blue eye and a powerful cannon that can shoot rapid shots at high speed. Other characters also appear in more than one form of media. The OVA focuses on a girl named Mato Kuroi, who befriends another girl, Yomi Takanashi, upon entering school. As the two start to drift apart, with Yomi becoming jealous of Mato's friendship with Yuu Kotari, Yomi suddenly disappears. As Mato searches for her, she

1740-659: A retail release on December 17, 2010. An eight-episode anime television series, produced by Ordet and Sanzigen , aired on Fuji TV 's Noitamina programming block between February and March 2012. A new anime television series titled Black Rock Shooter: Dawn Fall ran for 12 episodes aired from April to June 2022. The franchise has also spawned several manga series and a video game for the PlayStation Portable titled Black Rock Shooter: The Game , each set in their own universe. While each piece of media takes place in its own universe, they each focus around Black Rock Shooter,

1856-457: A song, the user must input the melody and lyrics. A piano roll type interface is used to input the melody and the lyrics can be entered on each note. The software can change the stress of the pronunciations, add effects such as vibrato, or change the dynamics and tone of the voice. Various voice banks have been released for use with the Vocaloid synthesizer technology. Each is sold as "a singer in

1972-588: A virtual idol on a projection screen during Animelo Summer Live at the Saitama Super Arena on August 22, 2009. At the "MikuFes '09 (Summer)" event on August 31, 2009, her image was screened by rear projection on a mostly-transparent screen. Miku also performed her first overseas live concert on November 21, 2009, during Anime Festival Asia (AFA) in Singapore . On March 9, 2010, Miku's first solo live performance titled "Miku no Hi Kanshasai 39's Giving Day"

2088-563: A year in Tokyo or the neighboring Kanagawa Prefecture . The event brings producers and illustrators involved with the production of Vocaloid art and music together so they can sell their work to others. The original event was held in 2007 with 48 groups, or "circles", given permission to host stalls at the event for the selling of their goods. The event soon gained popularity and at the 14th event, nearly 500 groups had been chosen to have stalls. Additionally, Japanese companies involved with production of

2204-433: Is a piano roll style editor to input notes, lyrics, and some expressions. When entering lyrics, the editor automatically converts them into Vocaloid phonetic symbols using the built-in pronunciation dictionary. The user can directly edit the phonetic symbols of unregistered words. The Score Editor offers various parameters to add expressions to singing voices. The user is supposed to optimize these parameters that best fit

2320-413: Is a joint collaboration between Vocalo Revolution and the school fashion line "Cecil McBee" Music x Fashion x Dance . Piapro also held a competition with famous fashion brands with the winners seeing their Lolita -based designs reproduced for sale by the company Putumayo. A radio station set up a 1-hour program containing nothing but Vocaloid-based music. The Vocaloid software had a great influence on

2436-482: Is drawn by Vocaloid artist Kei Garou. The series features the Crypton Vocaloids in various scenarios, a different one each week. The series focuses on the Crypton Vocaloids, although Internet Co., Ltd.'s Gackpoid Vocaloid makes a guest appearance in two chapters. The series also saw guest cameos of Vocaloid variants such as Hachune Miku, Yowane Haku, Akita Neru and the Utauloid Kasane Teto . The series comprises

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2552-622: Is generally categorized into the concatenative synthesis in the frequency domain , which splices and processes the vocal fragments extracted from human singing voices, in the forms of time-frequency representation . The Vocaloid system can produce the realistic voices by adding vocal expressions like the vibrato on the score information. Initially, Vocaloid's synthesis technology was called "Frequency-domain Singing Articulation Splicing and Shaping" ( 周波数ドメイン歌唱アーティキュレーション接続法 , Shūhasū-domein kashō ātikyurēshon setsuzoku-hō ) on

2668-478: Is often referred to by the simpler term "media franchise". The term media franchise is often used to describe the popular adaptation of a work into films, like the popular Twilight book series that was adapted into the five films of The Twilight Saga . Other neologisms exist to describe various franchise types including metaseries , which can be used to describe works such as Isaac Asimov 's Foundation series . Multimedia franchises usually develop through

2784-482: Is only available as a bundle; the standard version includes four voices and the premium version includes eight. This is the first time since Vocaloid 2 that a Vocaloid engine has been sold with vocals, as they were previously sold separately starting with Vocaloid 3. Vocaloid 6 was released on October 13, 2022, with support for previous voices from Vocaloid 3 and later, and a new line of Vocaloid voices on their own engine within Vocaloid 6 known as Vocaloid:AI. The product

2900-571: Is only sold as a bundle, and the standard version includes the 4 voices included with Vocaloid 5, as well as 4 new voices from the Vocaloid:AI line. Vocaloid 6's AI voicebanks support English and Japanese by default, though Yamaha announced they intended to add support for Chinese. Vocaloid 6 also includes a feature where a user can import audio of themselves singing and have Vocaloid:AI recreate that audio with one of its vocals. The following products are able to be purchased; Though developed by Yamaha,

3016-430: Is subtitled in seven languages, and was released as a free DVD bundled with Hobby Japan magazine on July 24, 2010. The OVA also came with Gakken 's Megami Magazine on July 30, 2010, Animedia magazine on August 10, 2010, and is also packaged with Figma and Nendoroid Black Rock Shooter figurines. A retail version was released on December 17, 2010, in special (BD+DVD) and regular (BD) editions. Both editions feature

3132-651: Is taken to a strange world where she meets the mysterious Black Rock Shooter, who merges with her and helps her search for Yomi, fighting off the evil Dead Master who possessed her. The first television series uses the same characters from the OVA in a similar but slightly different storyline. As Mato enters middle school and becomes friends with Yomi, she soon faces personal troubles and the influence caused by another world where Black Rock Shooter fights other girls. The manga series, Black Rock Shooter: Innocent Soul , follows Black Rock Shooter and her serpent partner, Ron, as they venture

3248-479: Is the Japanese term for a transmedia franchise. The term media mix gained its circulation in late 1980s and is first used to describe adaptations of Sakyo Komatsu 's Japan Sinks , but the origins of the strategy can be traced back to the 1960s with the proliferation of anime , with its interconnection of media and commodity goods. Some of the earlier popular Japanese franchises such as Vampire Hunter D in

3364-466: Is the community of fans that indulge in many of its media and are committed to interacting with and keeping up with other consumers. Large franchise-based fandoms have grown to be even more popular in recent years with the rise of social media platforms, as many fans seek to interact with one another for discussion, debate and even to create their own fan-made pieces of media revolving around the franchise, on websites like tumblr , Reddit and Fandom . In

3480-710: The Nokia Theater during Anime Expo ; the concert was identical to the March 9, 2010 event except for a few improvements and new songs. Another concert was held in Sapporo on August 16 and 17, 2011. Hatsune Miku also had a concert in Singapore on November 11, 2011. Since then, there have been multiple concerts every year featuring Miku in various concert series, such as Magical Mirai, and Miku Expo . The software became very popular in Japan upon

3596-543: The United States state of Nevada 's Black Rock Desert , though it did not reach outer space . In late November 2009, a petition was launched in order to get a custom made Hatsune Miku aluminum plate (8 cm x 12 cm, 3.1" x 4.7") made that would be used as a balancing weight for the Japanese Venus space probe Akatsuki . Started by Hatsune Miku fan Sumio Morioka that goes by chodenzi-P, this project received

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3712-674: The Vocaloid Hatsune Miku , which gained popularity on the Nico Nico Douga website. A 50-minute original video animation based on the franchise was produced by Yutaka Yamamoto 's studio Ordet , written by Nagaru Tanigawa and Shinobu Yoshioka, and directed by Shinobu Yoshioka. A "Pilot Edition" was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc in September 2009, before the full version was released on DVDs bundled with select magazines from July 24, 2010, subtitled in seven languages, followed by

3828-483: The fantasy and science fiction genres. Similarly, fantasy, science fiction films and television shows are frequently adapted into animated television series , video games, or both. A media franchise does not have to include the same characters or theme, as the brand identity can be the franchise, like Square Enix 's Final Fantasy or the National Lampoon series , and can suffer from critical failures even if

3944-404: The "prologue maxi". The prototype sang alongside Miku for their music and is known only by the name "Junger März_Prototype β". For Yamaha's VY1 Vocaloid, an album featuring VY1 was created. The album was released with the deluxe version of the program. It includes various well-known producers from Nico Nico Douga and YouTube and includes covers of various popular and well-known Vocaloid songs using

4060-423: The 1980s and Pokémon in the late 1990s, acted as benchmarks in the country's transmedia dominance. The latter in particular began as a video game available on Nintendo 's Game Boy , and crossed through the media of television, film, news, and other non-media related realms, such trading cards, merchandise, and more. A number of Japanese media franchises have gained considerable global popularity, and are among

4176-467: The 2008 season, three different teams received their sponsorship under Good Smile Racing, and turned their cars to Vocaloid-related artwork: As well as involvements with the GT series, Crypton also established the website Piapro. A number of games starting from Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA were produced by Sega under license using Hatsune Miku and other Crypton Vocaloids, as well as "fan made" Vocaloids. Later,

4292-541: The GT300 class of the Super GT since 2008 with the support of Good Smile Racing (a branch of Good Smile Company , mainly in charge of car-related products, especially itasha (cars featuring illustrations of anime-styled characters) stickers). Although Good Smile Company was not the first to bring the anime and manga culture to Super GT, it departs from others by featuring itasha directly rather than colorings onto vehicles. Since

4408-481: The Hazama, a world between Heaven and Earth where stagnant souls that have had regrets become trapped. Left alone, these souls can become demons that can pull in other souls, so it is up to Rock to stop them so they may ascend to heaven. Black Rock-chan is a comedy series following the everyday life of a chibi-styled Black Rock Shooter named Rock-chan and her babysitter De-chan. Black Rock Shooter: The Game takes place in

4524-410: The Japanese spaceport Tanegashima Space Center , having three plates depicting Hatsune Miku. The Vocaloid software has also had a great influence on the character Black Rock Shooter , which looks like Hatsune Miku but is not linked to her by design. The character was made famous by the song "Black Rock Shooter", and a number of figurines have been made. An original video animation made by Ordet

4640-531: The NAMM event in 2007 and Tonio having been announced at the NAMM event in 2009. A customized, Chinese version of Sonika was released at the Fancy Frontier Develop Animation Festival, as well as with promotional versions with stickers and posters. Sanrio held a booth at Comiket 78 featuring the voice of an unreleased Vocaloid. AH-Software in cooperation with Sanrio shared a booth and the event

4756-544: The PSP game Nendoroid Generation , produced by Namco Bandai , Good Smile Company and Banpresto , based on the Nendoroid series of figures. The game was released on February 23, 2012. On September 27, 2024, Black Rock Shooter will be added as playable character in the action RPG game Punishing: Gray Raven . A four-panel comic strip manga titled Black Rock-chan ( ぶらっくろっくちゃん , Burakku Rokku-chan ) , illustrated by Ringo,

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4872-526: The Score Editor and directly sends these messages to the Synthesis Engine. Yamaha started development of Vocaloid in March 2000 and announced it for the first time at the German fair Musikmesse on March 5–9, 2003. It was created under the name "Daisy", in reference to the song " Daisy Bell ", but for copyright reasons this name was dropped in favor of "Vocaloid". Vocaloid 2 was announced in 2007. Unlike

4988-533: The VY1 product. The first press edition of Nekomura Iroha was released with a CD containing her two sample songs "Tsubasa" and "Abbey Fly", and the install disc also contained VSQ files of the two songs for use with her program. A number of Vocaloid related music, including songs starring Hatsune Miku, were featured in the arcade game Music Gun Gun! 2 . One of the rare singles with the English speaking Sonika, "Suburban Taxi",

5104-480: The Vocaloid 2 system are the Score Editor (Vocaloid 2 Editor), the Singer Library, and the Synthesis Engine. The Synthesis Engine receives score information from the Score Editor, selects appropriate samples from the Singer Library, and concatenates them to output synthesized voices. There is basically no difference in the Score Editor and the Synthesis Engine provided by Yamaha among different Vocaloid 2 products. If

5220-468: The Vocaloid compilations, Exit Tunes Presents Vocalogenesis feat. Hatsune Miku , debuted at No. 1 on the Japanese weekly Oricon albums chart in May 2010, becoming the first Vocaloid album ever to top the charts. The album sold 23,000 copies in its first week and eventually sold 86,000 copies. The following released album, Exit Tunes Presents Vocalonexus feat. Hatsune Miku , became the second Vocaloid album to top

5336-677: The Vocaloids Bruno, Clara and Maika; Chinese for Luo Tianyi , Yuezheng Ling , Xin Hua and Yanhe ; and Korean for SeeU . The software is intended for professional musicians as well as casual computer music users. Japanese musical groups such as Livetune of Toy's Factory and Supercell of Sony Music Entertainment Japan have released their songs featuring Vocaloid as vocals. Japanese record label Exit Tunes of Quake Inc. also have released compilation albums featuring Vocaloids. Vocaloid's singing synthesis  [ ja ] technology

5452-575: The albums Sakura no Ame ( 桜ノ雨 ) by Absorb and Miku no Kanzume ( みくのかんづめ ) by OSTER-project. Kagamine Len and Rin's songs were covered by Asami Shimoda in the album Prism credited to "Kagamine Rin/Len feat. Asami Shimoda". The compilation album Vocarock Collection 2 feat. Hatsune Miku was released by Farm Records on December 15, 2010, and was later featured on the Cool Japan Music iPhone app in February 2011. The record label Balloom became

5568-466: The anime as one of its first in a move to release more Asian-produced content on its streaming platform Disney+ . The opening theme is "Aseed" by Zaq , while the ending theme is "Before the Nightmare" by Kanako Takatsuki . Black Rock Shooter aired on Fuji TV 's noitamina slot between February 2 and March 22, 2012, and was being streamed in eight languages a day after its initial broadcast. The series

5684-510: The backing of Dr. Seiichi Sakamoto of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The website of the petition written in Japanese was translated into other languages such as English, Russian , Chinese and Korean, and, the petition exceeded the needed 10,000 signatures necessary to have the plates made on December 22, 2009. On May 21, 2010, at 06:58:22 ( JST ), Akatsuki was launched on the rocket H-IIA 202 Flight 17 from

5800-503: The car. The launch of the car also marked the start of Miku's debut in the US alongside it. Crypton had always sold Hatsune Miku as a virtual instrument, but they decided to ask their own fanbase in Japan if it was okay with them to market her to the United States as a virtual singer instead. The largest promotional event for Vocaloids is "The Voc@loid M@ster" (Vom@s) convention held four times

5916-459: The case of successful transmedia franchises, each different medium should expand the target demographic and fandom, build the interest of the consumers and add to the overarching story and narrative of the franchise itself. A connection between the characters, settings, and other elements of the media franchise do still exist within the different media, regardless of the fact that they are being presented in sometimes completely different ways, such as

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6032-502: The creativity of their user base, preferring to let their user base to have freedom to create PV's without restrictions. Initially, Crypton Future Media were the only studio that was allowed the license of figurines to be produced for their Vocaloids. A number of figurines and plush dolls were also released under license to Max Factory and the Good Smile Company of Crypton's Vocaloids. Among these figures were also Figma models of

6148-432: The day-in-the-life episodes of the many different Real Housewives series. Documentaries and docuseries are other highlights of the non-fiction branch of media franchises, such as the popular Planet Earth series, which serves as both a film and television transmedia franchise. Vocaloid Vocaloid ( ボーカロイド , Bōkaroido ) is a singing voice synthesizer software product. Its signal processing part

6264-661: The development of the freeware UTAU . Several products were produced for the Macne series ( Mac音シリーズ ) for intended use for the programs Reason 4 and GarageBand . These products were sold by Act2 and by converting their file format, were able to also work with the UTAU program. The program Maidloid, developed for the character Acme Iku ( 阿久女イク ) , was also developed, which works in a similar way to Vocaloid, except produces erotic sounds rather than an actual singing voice. Other than Vocaloid, AH-Software also developed Tsukuyomi Ai and Shouta for

6380-503: The entire "Character Vocal Series" mascots as well as Nendoroid figures of various Crypton Vocaloids and variants. Pullip versions of Hatsune Miku, Kagamine Len and Rin have also been produced for release in April 2011; other Vocaloid dolls have since been announced from the Pullip doll line. As part of promotions for Vocaloid Lily, license for a figurine was given to Phat Company and Lily became

6496-462: The events of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami , a number of Vocaloid related donation drives were produced. Crypton Future Media joined several other companies in a donation drive, with money spent on the sales of music from Crypton Future Media's KarenT label being donated to the Japanese Red Cross . In addition, a special Nendoroid of Hatsune Miku, Nendoroid Hatsune Miku: Support ver.,

6612-451: The festival. Videos of her performance are due to be released worldwide. Megpoid and Gackpoid were also featured in the 2010 King Run Anison Red and White concert. This event also used the same projector method to display Megpoid and Gackpoid on a large screen. Their appearance at the concert was done as a one-time event and both Vocaloids were featured singing a song originally sung by their respective voice provider. The next live concert

6728-725: The fictional worlds they love, adds to the overall narrative the franchise creates through its other media. Marvel's Avenger's Campus park is one of the many franchise-based theme parks created in recent times, following the creation of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studio's Islands of Adventure and Star Wars' Galaxy's Edge at Disneyland and Disney World . Media franchises tend to cross over from their original media to other forms. Literary franchises are often transported to film, such as Nancy Drew , Miss Marple , and other popular detectives , as well as popular comic book superheroes . Television and film franchises are often expanded upon in novels , particularly those in

6844-466: The film The Matrix Reloaded and the video game Enter the Matrix were produced at the same time, using the same actors on the same sets, and released on the same day. Transmedia franchises occasionally release content through certain media that is not canon to the main or greater story that the franchise is built around, meaning that the elements of said content do not truly exist in the main timeline of

6960-404: The first engine, Vocaloid 2 based its results on vocal samples, rather than analysis of the human voice. The synthesis engine and the user interface were completely revamped, with Japanese Vocaloids possessing a Japanese interface. Vocaloid 3 launched on October 21, 2011, along with several products in Japanese, the first of its kind. Several studios updated their Vocaloid 2 products for use with

7076-399: The first label to focus solely on Vocaloid-related works and their first release was Unhappy Refrain by the Vocaloid producer Wowaka . Hatsune Miku's North American debut song "World is Mine" ranked at No. 7 in the iTunes world singles ranking in the week of its release. Singer Gackt also challenged Gackpoid users to create a song, with the prize being 10 million yen, stating if the song

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7192-508: The first non-Crypton Vocaloid to receive a figurine. With regard to the English Vocaloid studios, Power FX's Sweet Ann was given her own MySpace page and Sonika her own Twitter account. In comparison to Japanese studios, Zero-G and PowerFX maintain a high level of contact with their fans. Zero-G in particular encourages fan feed back and, after adopting Sonika as a mascot for their studio, has run two competitions related to her. There

7308-555: The focus on the content of the commodity to "overlapping the commodity image with the character image". The book Anime's Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan, by Marc Steinberg, details the evolution of the media mix in Japan. Long-running franchises were common in the early studio era, when Hollywood studios had actors and directors under long-term contract. In such cases, even lead actors are often replaced as they age, lose interest, or their characters are killed. Spin-offs and adaptations of popular pieces of media within

7424-415: The franchise. Canon content often times breaks continuity, leading fans to speculate or seek to confirm which media are canon and which are not, which can get confusing if the franchise does not provide an answer themselves since entire media can be non-canon to the greater story, with a popular example occurring. On the other hand, specific episodes, volumes or parts of a series can be canon while others in

7540-500: The future. Crypton plans to start an electronic magazine for English readers at the end of 2010 in order to encourage the growth of the English Vocaloid fanbase. Extracts of PowerFX's Sweet Ann and Big Al were included in Soundation Studio in their Christmas loops and sound release with a competition included. Crypton and Toyota began working together to promote the launch of the 2011 Toyota Corolla using Hatsune Miku to promote

7656-408: The instrumental track from the original version of "Black Rock Shooter", the second video uses the "2M Mix" remix of the song with vocals using Hatsune Miku Append, and the third video uses the instrumental version of the "2M Mix". The DVD/BD also came bundled with an image booklet and a CD containing the vocal and instrumental versions of the "2M Mix". The full 50-minute version of Black Rock Shooter

7772-473: The magazine), footwear, clothing of every kind, jewelry, housewares (lamps, clocks, bedding, glassware), guitars and gambling, playing cards, pinball machines and pet accessories, billiard balls, bedroom appurtenances, enhancements, plus countless other items of merchandise. Non-fiction media franchises also exist in the television and film media, with reality TV being one of the most well-known examples; ranging from competition shows like The Amazing Race to

7888-563: The marketing of each Vocaloid is left to the respective studios. Yamaha themselves do maintain a degree of promotional efforts in the actual Vocaloid software, as seen when the humanoid robot model HRP-4C of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) was set up to react to three Vocaloids— Hatsune Miku , Megpoid and Crypton's noncommercial Vocaloid software "CV-4Cβ"—as part of promotions for both Yamaha and AIST at CEATEC in 2009. The prototype voice CV-4Cβ

8004-469: The marketing success of those particular voices. After the success of SF-A2 Miki's CD album, other Vocaloids such as VY1 and Iroha have also used promotional CDs as a marketing approach to selling their software. When Amazon MP3 in Japan opened on November 9, 2010, Vocaloid albums were featured as its free-of-charge contents. Crypton has been involved with the marketing of their Character Vocal Series, particularly Hatsune Miku, has been actively involved in

8120-400: The media fictional material is unrelated. Non-fiction literary franchises include the ...For Dummies and The Complete Idiot's Guide to... reference books . An enduring and comprehensive example of a media franchise is Playboy Enterprises , which began expanding well beyond its successful magazine, Playboy , within a few years after its first publication, into such enterprises as

8236-509: The missing roles the software had yet to cover. The album A Place in the Sun was noted to have songs that were designed for a male voice with a rougher timbre than the Vocaloid Leon could provide; this later led to the development of Big Al to fulfill this particular role. Some of the most popular albums are on the Exit Tunes label, featuring the works of Vocaloid producers in Japan. One of

8352-513: The month prior to her release, SF-A2 Miki was featured in the album Vocaloids X'mas: Shiroi Yoru wa Seijaku o Mamotteru as part of her promotion. The album featured the Vocaloid singing Christmas songs . Miki was also featured singing the introduction of the game Hello Kitty to Issho! Block Crash 123!! . A young female prototype used for the "project if..." series was used in Sound Horizon 's musical work "Ido e Itaru Mori e Itaru Ido", labeled as

8468-461: The new engine with improved voice samples. In October 2014, the first product confirmed for the Vocaloid 4 engine was the English vocal Ruby, whose release was delayed so she could be released on the newer engine. In 2015, several V4 versions of Vocaloids were released. The Vocaloid 5 engine was then announced soon afterwards. Vocaloid 5 was released on July 12, 2018, with an overhauled user interface and substantial engine improvements. The product

8584-918: The original 28 chapters serialized in Comic Rush and a collection of the first 10 chapters in a single tankōbon volume. A manga was produced for Lily by Kei Garou, who also drew the mascot. An anime music video titled "Schwarzgazer", which shows the world where Lily is, was produced and it was released with the album anim.o.v.e 02 , however the song is sung by Move , not by Vocaloids. A yonkoma manga based on Hatsune Miku and drawn by Kentaro Hayashi, Shūkan Hajimete no Hatsune Miku! , began serialization in Weekly Young Jump on September 2, 2010. Hatsune Miku appeared in Weekly Playboy magazine. However, Crypton Future Media confirmed they will not be producing an anime based on their Vocaloids as it would limit

8700-462: The planet with an army of machines. She must fend off the machines while also trying to regain her memories and fend off attacks from her former comrades, Strength and Dead Master. The origins of Black Rock Shooter date back to an original character illustration titled "Black Rock Shooter" by illustrator Ryohei Fuke, best known by his handle 'Huke', who posted it on his blog and the online artist community Pixiv on December 26, 2007. Ryo of Supercell

8816-747: The production. The opening theme is "Black Rock Shooter" ( ブラック★ロックシューダー , Burakku Rokku Shūtā ) by Supercell , sung by Hatsune Miku, while the ending theme music is "Bokura no Ashiato" ( 僕らのあしあと , Our Footsteps ) by Supercell sung by Koeda. On September 16, 2021, a new anime television series titled Black Rock Shooter: Dawn Fall was announced. It is produced by TMS Entertainment under its UNLIMITED PRODUCE by TMS label, animated by Bibury Animation Studios and Bibury Animation CG and directed by Tensho, with scripts written by Makoto Fukami in cooperation with Ryō Yoshigami. Character designs are provided by Masayuki Nonaka and Yō Nakagawa, both of whom also serving as chief animation directors. Disney licensed

8932-463: The promotional effort of their Vocaloid products. The important role Nico Nico Douga has played in promoting the Vocaloids also sparked interest in the software and Kentaro Miura , the artist of Gakupo's mascot design, had offered his services for free because of his love for the website. In September 2009, three figurines based on the derivative character "Hachune Miku" were launched in a rocket from

9048-488: The recognition and popularity of the software grew, Nico Nico Douga became a place for collaborative content creation. Popular original songs written by a user would generate illustrations, animation in 2D and 3D , and remixes by other users. Other creators would show their unfinished work and ask for ideas. The software has also been used to tell stories using song and verse and the Story of Evil series has become so popular that

9164-518: The release of Vocaloid in 2004, although this name is no longer used since the release of Vocaloid 2 in 2007. " Singing Articulation " is explained as "vocal expressions" such as vibrato and vocal fragments necessary for singing. The Vocaloid and Vocaloid 2 synthesis engines are designed for singing, not reading text aloud, though software such as Vocaloid-flex and Voiceroid have been developed for that. They cannot naturally replicate singing expressions like hoarse voices or shouts. The main parts of

9280-503: The release of Crypton Future Media's Hatsune Miku Vocaloid 2 software and her success has led to the popularity of the Vocaloid software in general. Japanese video sharing website Niconico played a fundamental role in the recognition and popularity of the software. A user of Hatsune Miku and an illustrator released a much-viewed video, in which "Hachune Miku", a super deformed Miku, held a Welsh onion ( Negi in Japanese), which resembles

9396-516: The same medium are not, such as the fact that only some of the Battlestar Galactica comics are canon, with a large amount of them breaking the continuity of the main story. In Japanese culture and entertainment, media mix ( wasei-eigo : メディアミックス , mediamikkusu ) is a strategy to disperse content across multiple representations: different broadcast media , gaming technologies, cell phones, toys, amusement parks , and other methods. It

9512-427: The second and last on September 26, 2012. Media franchise A media franchise often consists of cross-marketing across more than one medium. For the owners, the goal of increasing profit through diversity can extend the commercial profitability of the franchise and create strong feelings of identity and ownership in its consumers. Those large groups of dedicated consumers create the franchise's fandom , which

9628-520: The series was released on Hulu in America and Disney+ in Canada. Black Rock Shooter —the first season—was awarded for technical achievement in broadcast animation at the 65th Motion Picture and Television Engineering Society of Japan Awards in 2012. A role-playing video game , titled Black Rock Shooter: The Game ( ブラック★ロックシューター THE GAME ) , was developed by Imageepoch for the PlayStation Portable and

9744-416: The shared, interweaving storylines and elements of Spider-Man films, television shows, comics and video games. Espen Aarseth describes the financial logic of cost-recovery for expensive productions by identifying that a single medium launch is a lost opportunity, the timeliness of the production and release is more important than its integrity, the releases should raise brand awareness and the cross-ability of

9860-413: The software Voiceroid , and the sale of their Vocaloids gave AH-Software the chance to promote Voiceroid at the same time. The software is aimed for speaking rather than singing. Both AH-Software's Vocaloids and Voiceroids went on sale on December 4, 2009. Crypton Future Media has been reported to openly welcome these additional software developments as it expands the market for synthesized voices. During

9976-645: The software also have stalls at the events. The very first live concert related to Vocaloid was held in 2004 with the Vocaloid Miriam in Russia. Vocaloids have also been promoted at events such as the NAMM show and the Musikmesse fair. In fact, it was the promotion of Zero-G's Lola and Leon at the NAMM trade show that would later introduce PowerFX to the Vocaloid program. These events have also become an opportunity for announcing new Vocaloids with Prima being announced at

10092-779: The start of the San Francisco tour where the first Hatsune Miku concert was hosted in North America on September 18, 2010, featuring songs provided by the Miku software voice. A second screening of the concert was on October 11, 2010, in the San Francisco Viz Cinema. A screening of the concert was also shown in New York City in the city's anime festival . Hiroyuki Ito, and planner/producer, Wataru Sasaki, who were responsible for Miku's creation, attended an event on October 8, 2010, at

10208-562: The synthesized tune when creating voices. This editor supports ReWire and can be synchronized with DAW. Real-time "playback" of songs with predefined lyrics using a MIDI keyboard is also supported. Each Vocaloid license develops the Singer Library, or a database of vocal fragments sampled from real people. The database must have all possible combinations of phonemes of the target language, including diphones (a chain of two different phonemes) and sustained vowels, as well as polyphones with more than two phonemes if necessary. For example,

10324-592: The voice corresponding to the word "sing" ([sIN]) can be synthesized by concatenating the sequence of diphones "#-s, s-I, I-N, N-#" (# indicating a voiceless phoneme) with the sustained vowel ī. The Vocaloid system changes the pitch of these fragments so that it fits the melody. In order to get more natural sounds, three or four different pitch ranges are required to be stored into the library. Japanese requires 500 diphones per pitch, whereas English requires 2,500. Japanese has fewer diphones because it has fewer phonemes and most syllabic sounds are open syllables ending in

10440-423: The voice of deceased rock musician hide , who died in 1998, to complete and release his song " Co Gal " in 2014. The musician's actual voice, breathing sounds and other cues were extracted from previously released songs and a demo and combined with the synthesized voice. Kenji Arakawa, a spokesman for Yamaha, said he believes this to be the first time a work by a deceased artist is commercially available and includes

10556-592: The weekly charts in January 2011. Another album, Supercell , by the group Supercell also features a number of songs using Vocaloids. Upon its release in North America, it became ranked as the second highest album on Amazon's bestselling MP3 album in the international category in the United States and topped the store's bestselling chart for world music on iTunes. Other albums, such as 19's Sound Factory's First Sound Story and Livetune 's Re:Repackage , and Re:Mikus also feature Miku's voice. Other uses of Miku include

10672-443: The work is critical for its success. American Idol was a transmedia franchise from its beginnings, with the first season winner Kelly Clarkson signing with RCA Records and having the release of A Moment Like This becoming a #1 hit on Billboard Hot 100. The success resulted in a nationwide concert tour, an American Idol book that made the bestseller list and the film From Justin to Kelly . A transmedia franchise however

10788-472: The world's highest-grossing media franchises . For example, Pokémon 's penetration into the American market of the franchise along with others of Japanese origin, such as Yu-Gi-Oh! , gave rise to the recognition of what is variously called transmedia storytelling , crossmedia, transmediation , media synergy, etc. Researchers argue that the 1963 Tetsuwan Atomu marked a shift in Japanese marketing from

10904-565: The year 2051, where Black Rock Shooter, also known as Stella, is awoken from slumber and enters a futuristic battlefield where alien forces have invaded the Earth and have been terrorizing the planet for 19 years. She must fight off the aliens while also trying to regain her memories. The anime Black Rock Shooter: Dawn Fall follows a plot similar to the game. Black Rock Shooter, also known as Empress, awakens from slumber in 2062 and learns an AI called Artemis rebelled against humanity and terrorized

11020-480: Was also featured on an event as a part of the 62nd Sapporo Snow Festival in February 2011. A Vocaloid-themed TV show on the Japanese Vocaloids called Vocalo Revolution began airing on Kyoto Broadcasting System on January 3, 2011. The show is part of a bid to make the Vocaloid culture more widely accepted and features a mascot known as "Cul", also mascot of the "Cul Project". The show's first success story

11136-466: Was also talk from PowerFX of redoing their Sweet Ann box art and a competition would be included as part of the redesign. The Vocaloid Lily also had a competition held during her trial period. English Vocaloids have not sold enough to warrant extras, such as seen with Crypton's Miku Append. However, it has been confirmed if the English Vocaloids become more popular, then Appends would be an option in

11252-576: Was announced with a donation of 1,000 yen per sale to the Japanese Red Cross. In addition to the donation drives held by Crypton Future Media, AH-Software created the Voiceroid voicebank Tohoku Zunko to promote the recovery of the Tōhoku region and its culture. In 2012, Vocaloid was quoted as one of the contributors to a 10% increase in cosplay related services. In 2013, the Vocaloid 3 software Oliver

11368-478: Was created by sampling a Japanese voice actress, Eriko Nakamura. Japanese magazines such as DTM magazine are responsible for the promotion and introduction for many of the Japanese Vocaloids to Japanese Vocaloid fans. It has featured Vocaloids such as Hatsune Miku, Kagamine Rin and Len , and Megurine Luka , printing some sketches by artist Kei Garou and reporting the latest Vocaloid news. Thirty-day trial versions of Miriam, Lily and Iroha have also contributed to

11484-643: Was developed through a joint research project between Yamaha Corporation and the Music Technology Group in Universitat Pompeu Fabra , Barcelona . The software was ultimately developed into the commercial product "Vocaloid" that was released in 2004. The software enables users to synthesize "singing" by typing in lyrics and melody and also "speech" by typing in the script of the required words. It uses synthesizing technology with specially recorded vocals of voice actors or singers. To create

11600-461: Was done by Yuusuke Matsuo. The music was composed by Ryo and the ending theme song is "Braveheart" performed by The Gomband. A "Pilot Edition" of the anime was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc (BD) on September 30, 2009, by Good Smile Company . The pilot contains three short animated videos showing the same scenes from the anime while playing different versions of the song "Black Rock Shooter", much like in anime music videos . The first video uses

11716-489: Was featured in the album 32bit Love by Muzehack and Lola in Operator's Manual by anaROBIK; both were featured in these albums six years after they were released. Even early on in the software's history, the music making progress proved to be a valuable asset to the Vocaloid development as it not only opened up the possibilities of how the software may be applied in practice, but led to the creation of further Vocaloids to fill in

11832-467: Was inspired by the illustration and created the song " Black Rock Shooter " based on that character using vocals from the Vocaloid singing synthesizer Hatsune Miku . Huke joined Supercell and provided the illustrations used in the music video of the song, which was later posted online on the video sharing website Nico Nico Douga on June 13, 2008, which as of August 2009 had over 2.2 million views. The song

11948-530: Was later used as the opening theme for the 2012 anime television series. The song has also been included in Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA F as a playable song. Produced by Yutaka Yamamoto 's studio Ordet and directed by Shinobu Yoshioka, an original video animation (OVA) project based on "Black Rock Shooter" and its music video was announced on August 22, 2009. The screenplay was written by Nagaru Tanigawa and Shinobu Yoshioka, and character design

12064-606: Was opened at the Zepp Tokyo in Odaiba , Tokyo. The tour was run as part of promotions for Sega's Hatsune Miku: Project Diva video game in March 2010. The success and possibility of these tours is owed to the popularity of Hatsune Miku and so far Crypton is the only studio to have established a world tour of their Vocaloids. Later, the CEO of Crypton Future Media appeared in San Francisco at

12180-416: Was originally considered as an internet underground culture , but with a decade of social change, it has become a popular musical genre. The earliest use of Vocaloid-related software used prototypes of Kaito and Meiko and were featured on the album History of Logic System by Hideki Matsutake released on July 24, 2003, and sang the song "Ano Subarashii Ai o Mō Ichido". The first album to be released using

12296-555: Was released by Alexander Stein and the German label Volume0dB on March 11, 2010. To celebrate the release of the Vocaloid 3 software, a compilation album titled The Vocaloids was released. The CD contains 18 songs sung by Vocaloids released in Japan and contains a booklet with information about the Vocaloid characters. Porter Robinson used the Vocaloid Avanna for his studio album Worlds . Yamaha utilized Vocaloid technology to mimic

12412-648: Was released on Nico Nico Douga on March 9, 2011, featuring illustrations by CHAN×CO. Imageepooch are developing an iOS follow-up titled Petite Rock Shooter: Pursue the Mystery of the Sexy Planet! ( ぷちっと★ロックシューター　セクシー惑星の謎を追え！ , Puchitto Rokku Shūtā: Sekushī Wakusei no Nazo wo Oe ) for release in September 2012. Various Black Rock Shooter elements have been made available for the Japanese PlayStation Home . Characters from Black Rock Shooter also appear in

12528-664: Was released on August 25, 2011. Set in a different universe to the OVA, it features animated cut scenes by Ufotable . The opening theme for the game is "No Scared" by One Ok Rock . A limited edition Premium Box of the game was released, bundled with a Figma figurine of the game's antagonist, White Rock Shooter. The game was published digitally by NIS America via the PlayStation Store in North America on April 23, 2013, and in Europe on April 24, 2013. A browser game titled Petite Rock Shooter ( ぷちっと★ロックシューター , Puchitto Rokku Shūtā )

12644-941: Was released on DVD and BD on June 22, 2012, in a box set containing the original soundtrack and an Insane Black Rock Shooter Figma figurine. The television series is licensed in Australia and New Zealand by Siren Visual . Manga Entertainment released the series in the United Kingdom as a subtitle-only DVD boxset on May 13, 2013. Discotek Media licensed the anime in North America and released it with an English dub on July 27, 2021. Black Rock Shooter: Dawn Fall aired from April 3 to June 19, 2022, on Tokyo MX and other networks. The international release dates on Disney+ vary between regions, beginning from April 30, 2022, in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand; May 25, 2022, in Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Taiwan, and Singapore. On October 18, 2022,

12760-525: Was serialized in Kadokawa Shoten 's 4-Koma Nano Ace magazine from the April 2011 and March 2012 issues. The series features super-deformed versions of Black Rock Shooter and Dead Master, respectively, named Rock-chan and De-chan. A single tankōbon volume of Black Rock-chan was released on February 4, 2012. Another manga by Sanami Suzuki, titled Black Rock Shooter: Innocent Soul ( ブラック★ロックシューター -イノセントソウル- , Burakku Rokku Shūtā: Inosento Souru ) ,

12876-532: Was serialized in Kadokawa Shoten's Young Ace magazine from the July 2011 and June 2012 issues. Three volumes were published for Innocent Soul from November 4, 2011, and June 4, 2012. A manga adaptation of Black Rock Shooter: The Game illustrated by TNSK was serialized from September 2011 and September 2012 issues of Kadokawa Shoten's Comptiq . The first volume of The Game was released on February 10, 2012, and

12992-586: Was set for Tokyo on March 9, 2011. Other events included the Vocarock Festival 2011 on January 11, 2011, and the Vocaloid Festa which was held on February 12, 2011. The Vocaloid Festa had also hosted a competition officially endorsed by Pixiv , with the winner seeing their creation unveiled at Vocafes2 on May 29, 2011. The first Vocaloid concert in North America was held in Los Angeles on July 2, 2011, at

13108-492: Was streamed for free as part of a promotional campaign running from June 25 to August 31, 2010. The virtual idols "Meaw" have also been released aimed at the Vocaloid culture. The twin Thai virtual idols released two singles, "Meaw Left ver." and "Meaw Right ver.", sung in Japanese. A cafe for one day only was opened in Tokyo based on Hatsune Miku on August 31, 2010. A second event was arranged for all Japanese Vocaloids. "Snow Miku"

13224-510: Was to his liking he would sing and include it in his next album. The winning song " Episode 0 " and runner up song "Paranoid Doll" were later released by Gackt on July 13, 2011. In relation to the Good Smiling racing promotions that Crypton Future Media Vocaloids had played part in, the album Hatsune Miku GT Project Theme Song Collection was released in August 2011 as part of a collaboration. In

13340-572: Was used as the voice of Cartoon Hangover character PuppyCat from their web series Bee and PuppyCat . In 2023, a Pokémon collaboration was announced and released. Named Project VOLTAGE , it consists of art of Hatsune Miku as different Pokémon type trainers. The art was drawn by 6 different artists, some of which are prominent artists for the Pokémon Trading Card Game . After the release of all 18 Pokémon type artworks, songs by 18 different producers were released. Vocaloid music

13456-679: Was used to advertise both the Hello Kitty game and AH-Software's new Vocaloid. At the Nico Nico Douga Daikaigi 2010 Summer: Egao no Chikara event, Internet Co., Ltd. announced their latest Vocaloid "Gachapoid" based on popular children's character Gachapin. Originally, Hiroyuki Ito—President of Crypton Future Media—claimed that Hatsune Miku was not a virtual idol but a kind of the Virtual Studio Technology instrument. However, Hatsune Miku performed her first "live" concert like

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