187-465: Hatsune Miku ( Japanese : 初音ミク, [hatsɯne miꜜkɯ] ) , sometimes called Miku Hatsune , officially code-named CV01 , is a Vocaloid software voicebank developed by Crypton Future Media and its official mascot character, a 16-year-old girl with long, turquoise twintails . Miku's personification has been marketed as a virtual idol , and has performed at live virtual concerts onstage as an animated holographic projection (rear-cast projection on
374-424: 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,
561-462: 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
748-487: A Japanese school administrator, unofficially married Hatsune Miku. In November 2018, he held a formal wedding with the character, attracting media attention. Crypton Future Media wrote a statement to Fox News , clarifying that the company was not involved in the wedding. Commenting on it, they said: "We see this as one individual's way of expressing his appreciation for Hatsune Miku, and we respect that." Miku's popularity has resulted in various references to her in anime. Miku
935-441: 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
1122-624: A benefit from the in-group to the out-group) means "[I/we] explained [it] to [him/her/them]". Such beneficiary auxiliary verbs thus serve a function comparable to that of pronouns and prepositions in Indo-European languages to indicate the actor and the recipient of an action. Japanese "pronouns" also function differently from most modern Indo-European pronouns (and more like nouns) in that they can take modifiers as any other noun may. For instance, one does not say in English: The amazed he ran down
1309-407: A boost for promoting Vocaloid songs themselves. This spawned "NicoNico Cho Party", where fans could submit their animations to accompany live holographic performances of popular Vocaloid songs. An English voicebank for Hatsune Miku was announced in 2011 and was to be released by the end of 2012. However, the decision to move to Vocaloid 3 and issues with English pronunciation delayed the release. It
1496-414: A distinct language of its own that has absorbed various aspects from neighboring languages. Japanese has five vowels, and vowel length is phonemic, with each having both a short and a long version. Elongated vowels are usually denoted with a line over the vowel (a macron ) in rōmaji , a repeated vowel character in hiragana , or a chōonpu succeeding the vowel in katakana . /u/ ( listen )
1683-605: A female character's costume, along with "Miku Dayō" as a Mag Design. She makes an appearance in the game Brave Frontier . In 2012, a collaboration between Louis Vuitton , Marc Jacobs and Hatsune Miku was produced in promotion of an opera titled The End, where Vocaloids take the place of all human actors. The opera debuted in December 2012 at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media. Japanese language Japanese ( 日本語 , Nihongo , [ɲihoŋɡo] )
1870-568: 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
2057-419: A glide /j/ and either the first part of a geminate consonant ( っ / ッ , represented as Q) or a moraic nasal in the coda ( ん / ン , represented as N). The nasal is sensitive to its phonetic environment and assimilates to the following phoneme, with pronunciations including [ɴ, m, n, ɲ, ŋ, ɰ̃] . Onset-glide clusters only occur at the start of syllables but clusters across syllables are allowed as long as
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#17328518283552244-456: 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
2431-479: A listener depending on the listener's relative social position and the degree of familiarity between the speaker and the listener. When used in different social relationships, the same word may have positive (intimate or respectful) or negative (distant or disrespectful) connotations. Japanese often use titles of the person referred to where pronouns would be used in English. For example, when speaking to one's teacher, it
2618-423: A major main target of sponsorship since 2010, with Crypton Future Media sponsoring the winter festivals. The image of Hatsune Miku would appear around the town on public transportation. The image portrayal of Miku that is used is a derivative design called "Snow Miku". Although originally, this was simply a recoloring of the normal Hatsune Miku, unique designs have occurred every year since 2011, and figurines based on
2805-485: 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
2992-524: 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
3179-478: A new set of MikuMiku Gals were introduced; these girls wore outfits based on all three Character Vocal series females and not specifically Hatsune Miku alone. Hiroko Nagano, Atsuko and Ayami were the Racing Queens for the season. Team COX, participating in the 2010 season , uses Racing Miku (an official Hatsune Miku derivative wearing an orange racing queen suit) as their image. 2010 was the first season to receive
3366-408: A sentence need not be stated and pronouns may be omitted if they can be inferred from context. In the example above, hana ga nagai would mean "[their] noses are long", while nagai by itself would mean "[they] are long." A single verb can be a complete sentence: Yatta! ( やった! ) "[I / we / they / etc] did [it]!". In addition, since adjectives can form the predicate in a Japanese sentence (below),
3553-428: A single adjective can be a complete sentence: Urayamashii! ( 羨ましい! ) "[I'm] jealous [about it]!". While the language has some words that are typically translated as pronouns, these are not used as frequently as pronouns in some Indo-European languages, and function differently. In some cases, Japanese relies on special verb forms and auxiliary verbs to indicate the direction of benefit of an action: "down" to indicate
3740-556: A specially coated glass screen). Miku uses Yamaha Corporation 's Vocaloid 2 , Vocaloid 3 , and Vocaloid 4 singing synthesizing technologies, and Crypton Future Media 's Piapro Studio, a standalone singing synthesizer editor. She was the second Vocaloid sold using the Vocaloid 2 engine and the first Japanese Vocaloid to use the Japanese version of the 2 engine. The voice is modeled from Japanese voice actress Saki Fujita . The name of
3927-588: 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"
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#17328518283554114-563: 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
4301-624: Is compressed rather than protruded , or simply unrounded. Some Japanese consonants have several allophones , which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese language up to and including the first half of the 20th century, the phonemic sequence /ti/ was palatalized and realized phonetically as [tɕi] , approximately chi ( listen ) ; however, now [ti] and [tɕi] are distinct, as evidenced by words like tī [tiː] "Western-style tea" and chii [tɕii] "social status". The "r" of
4488-421: Is topic–comment . Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or form questions. Nouns have no grammatical number or gender , and there are no articles . Verbs are conjugated , primarily for tense and voice , but not person . Japanese adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a complex system of honorifics , with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of
4675-433: 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
4862-413: 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
5049-586: Is a singing voice synthesizer software product. Its signal processing part 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
5236-445: Is also seen in o-medetō "congratulations", from medetaku ). Late Middle Japanese has the first loanwords from European languages – now-common words borrowed into Japanese in this period include pan ("bread") and tabako ("tobacco", now "cigarette"), both from Portuguese . Modern Japanese is considered to begin with the Edo period (which spanned from 1603 to 1867). Since Old Japanese,
5423-519: Is also used in a limited fashion (such as for imported acronyms) in Japanese writing. The numeral system uses mostly Arabic numerals , but also traditional Chinese numerals . Proto-Japonic , the common ancestor of the Japanese and Ryukyuan languages , is thought to have been brought to Japan by settlers coming from the Korean peninsula sometime in the early- to mid-4th century BC (the Yayoi period ), replacing
5610-440: Is appropriate to use sensei ( 先生 , "teacher"), but inappropriate to use anata . This is because anata is used to refer to people of equal or lower status, and one's teacher has higher status. Japanese nouns have no grammatical number, gender or article aspect. The noun hon ( 本 ) may refer to a single book or several books; hito ( 人 ) can mean "person" or "people", and ki ( 木 ) can be "tree" or "trees". Where number
5797-684: Is associated with comedy (see Kansai dialect ). Dialects of Tōhoku and North Kantō are associated with typical farmers. The Ryūkyūan languages, spoken in Okinawa and the Amami Islands (administratively part of Kagoshima ), are distinct enough to be considered a separate branch of the Japonic family; not only is each language unintelligible to Japanese speakers, but most are unintelligible to those who speak other Ryūkyūan languages. However, in contrast to linguists, many ordinary Japanese people tend to consider
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5984-462: Is better documentation of Late Middle Japanese phonology than for previous forms (for instance, the Arte da Lingoa de Iapam ). Among other sound changes, the sequence /au/ merges to /ɔː/ , in contrast with /oː/ ; /p/ is reintroduced from Chinese; and /we/ merges with /je/ . Some forms rather more familiar to Modern Japanese speakers begin to appear – the continuative ending - te begins to reduce onto
6171-509: Is correlated with the sex of the speaker and the social situation in which they are spoken: men and women alike in a formal situation generally refer to themselves as watashi ( 私 , literally "private") or watakushi (also 私 , hyper-polite form), while men in rougher or intimate conversation are much more likely to use the word ore ( 俺 "oneself", "myself") or boku . Similarly, different words such as anata , kimi , and omae ( お前 , more formally 御前 "the one before me") may refer to
6358-482: 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
6545-622: 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
6732-417: Is important, it can be indicated by providing a quantity (often with a counter word ) or (rarely) by adding a suffix, or sometimes by duplication (e.g. 人人 , hitobito , usually written with an iteration mark as 人々 ). Words for people are usually understood as singular. Thus Tanaka-san usually means Mx Tanaka . Words that refer to people and animals can be made to indicate a group of individuals through
6919-722: Is less common. In terms of mutual intelligibility , a survey in 1967 found that the four most unintelligible dialects (excluding Ryūkyūan languages and Tōhoku dialects ) to students from Greater Tokyo were the Kiso dialect (in the deep mountains of Nagano Prefecture ), the Himi dialect (in Toyama Prefecture ), the Kagoshima dialect and the Maniwa dialect (in Okayama Prefecture ). The survey
7106-420: Is often called a topic-prominent language , which means it has a strong tendency to indicate the topic separately from the subject, and that the two do not always coincide. The sentence Zō wa hana ga nagai ( 象は鼻が長い ) literally means, "As for elephant(s), (the) nose(s) (is/are) long". The topic is zō "elephant", and the subject is hana "nose". Japanese grammar tends toward brevity; the subject or object of
7293-482: 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
7480-571: 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,
7667-489: Is preserved in words such as matsuge ("eyelash", lit. "hair of the eye"); modern mieru ("to be visible") and kikoeru ("to be audible") retain a mediopassive suffix - yu(ru) ( kikoyu → kikoyuru (the attributive form, which slowly replaced the plain form starting in the late Heian period) → kikoeru (all verbs with the shimo-nidan conjugation pattern underwent this same shift in Early Modern Japanese )); and
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7854-512: Is seen auditioning for the voice of Meru Otonashi ( Kagamine Rin and Len are referenced in the same episode). Miku's voice is used in one of the ending themes for the anime series Akikan! (episode 12). Moreover, she sings the ending theme for the anime Yamishibai: Japanese Ghost Stories , called "Kaikai Emaki" ( 怪々絵巻 ) . During an episode in the Lucky Star OVA , Kagami Hiiragi gets magically transformed into Miku cosplay . A character in
8041-532: Is seen in Gintama (episode 237) in the second editor of Gintaman, Daito's anime fantasies. Miku appeared in the anime Shinkansen Henkei Robo Shinkalion the Animation as a recurring character. Miku appears as a recurring guest character in 2022's Dropkick on My Devil! X , the third anime season based on Yukiwo 's Dropkick on My Devil! manga series, voiced by Saki Fujita as opposed to having lines recorded through
8228-504: Is seen in the Sapporo region of the game. TinierMe made attire that looks like Miku's for their services, allowing users to make their avatar resemble her. Miku's clothes appear as a costume for a playable character in the Japanese version of PangYa and was the back-up vocal for the game's season four trailer, as a downloadable costume for Sophie in Tales of Graces and is seen during a stage in
8415-646: Is the principal language of the Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people . It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan , the only country where it is the national language , and within the Japanese diaspora worldwide. The Japonic family also includes the Ryukyuan languages and the variously classified Hachijō language . There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as
8602-419: Is the protagonist of a manga series named Maker Hikōshiki Hatsune Mix , written by Kei Garō. The manga explores the many possibilities of story-telling and has featured numerous adventures, ranging from giant-sized battles with Hatsune Miku to home exploits. There is therefore no single storyline, and the entire setting within the manga is unofficial. During an episode of Zoku Sayonara, Zetsubou Sensei , Miku
8789-402: Is the version of Japanese discussed in this article. Formerly, standard Japanese in writing ( 文語 , bungo , "literary language") was different from colloquial language ( 口語 , kōgo ) . The two systems have different rules of grammar and some variance in vocabulary. Bungo was the main method of writing Japanese until about 1900; since then kōgo gradually extended its influence and
8976-471: Is used for the present and the future. For verbs that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form indicates a continuous (or progressive) aspect , similar to the suffix ing in English. For others that represent a change of state, the -te iru form indicates a perfect aspect. For example, kite iru means "They have come (and are still here)", but tabete iru means "They are eating". Questions (both with an interrogative pronoun and yes/no questions) have
9163-405: Is why some linguists do not classify Japanese "pronouns" as pronouns, but rather as referential nouns, much like Spanish usted (contracted from vuestra merced , "your ( majestic plural ) grace") or Portuguese você (from vossa mercê ). Japanese personal pronouns are generally used only in situations requiring special emphasis as to who is doing what to whom. The choice of words used as pronouns
9350-438: The 2015 season , the design was based on a "Princess Knight" complete with a shield and spear-like umbrella. The illustrator was Taiki, the lead visual designer from Square Enix and Sega 's games Lord of Vermilion and Rise of Mana . Shigeto once again returned as the art director and designer for the season. Tsuyoshi Kusano is in charge of the new machine design. For the 2016 season , design elements were solicited from
9537-603: The Ainu , Austronesian , Koreanic , and the now-discredited Altaic , but none of these proposals have gained any widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), extensive waves of Sino-Japanese vocabulary entered
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#17328518283559724-455: The Japonic language family, which also includes the Ryukyuan languages spoken in the Ryukyu Islands . As these closely related languages are commonly treated as dialects of the same language, Japanese is sometimes called a language isolate . According to Martine Irma Robbeets , Japanese has been subject to more attempts to show its relation to other languages than any other language in
9911-455: The Nendoroid series of figures. Later on, a mobile gacha rhythm game called Project SEKAI: Colorful Stage! (marketed as Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage! outside of Asia) was released. The game features Miku as well as the other Crypton Vocaloids alongside original human characters. Many of the game's playable songs are covers of existing Vocaloid originals. Hatsune Miku is briefly referenced in
10098-612: 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
10285-512: The Nomura Research Institute estimated that the sales of all Hatsune Miku brand goods added up into the region of ¥10 billion since the release in 2007. Her name is easily the most recognizable of all Vocaloids. In 2011, Crypton began to focus on marketing Miku to United States audiences. On May 7, Amazon placed a preview of Supercell's hit song, " World is Mine ", as a single. When the song finally went on sale, it ranked at No. 7 in
10472-504: The Philippines , and various Pacific islands, locals in those countries learned Japanese as the language of the empire. As a result, many elderly people in these countries can still speak Japanese. Japanese emigrant communities (the largest of which are to be found in Brazil , with 1.4 million to 1.5 million Japanese immigrants and descendants, according to Brazilian IBGE data, more than
10659-716: The United States (notably in Hawaii , where 16.7% of the population has Japanese ancestry, and California ), and the Philippines (particularly in Davao Region and the Province of Laguna ). Japanese has no official status in Japan, but is the de facto national language of the country. There is a form of the language considered standard : hyōjungo ( 標準語 ) , meaning "standard Japanese", or kyōtsūgo ( 共通語 ) , "common language", or even "Tokyo dialect" at times. The meanings of
10846-488: 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
11033-794: The de facto standard Japanese had been the Kansai dialect , especially that of Kyoto . However, during the Edo period, Edo (now Tokyo) developed into the largest city in Japan, and the Edo-area dialect became standard Japanese. Since the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages has increased significantly. The period since 1945 has seen many words borrowed from other languages—such as German, Portuguese and English. Many English loan words especially relate to technology—for example, pasokon (short for "personal computer"), intānetto ("internet"), and kamera ("camera"). Due to
11220-404: 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
11407-518: The 1.2 million of the United States ) sometimes employ Japanese as their primary language. Approximately 12% of Hawaii residents speak Japanese, with an estimated 12.6% of the population of Japanese ancestry in 2008. Japanese emigrants can also be found in Peru , Argentina , Australia (especially in the eastern states), Canada (especially in Vancouver , where 1.4% of the population has Japanese ancestry),
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#173285182835511594-467: 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,
11781-467: The 2011 Racing Miku derivative design was illustrator Yuichi Murakami. Ayami returned as a Racing Queen for the third time and Tachibana Saki returned for a second season. Haruka Aoi was the third Racing Queen to wear the Racing Miku 2011 outfit. GSR and Studie with TeamUKYO was continued as a sponsor for the 2012 season . The Racing Miku design was illustrated by Gan for this season. The Racing queens for
11968-541: 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
12155-410: 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
12342-482: The Japanese language is of particular interest, ranging between an apical central tap and a lateral approximant . The "g" is also notable; unless it starts a sentence, it may be pronounced [ ŋ ] , in the Kanto prestige dialect and in other eastern dialects. The phonotactics of Japanese are relatively simple. The syllable structure is (C)(G)V(C), that is, a core vowel surrounded by an optional onset consonant,
12529-472: The Japanese variation looking similar to them.) demonstrated the potential of the software in multimedia content creation. As Miku's recognition and popularity grew, Nico Nico Douga became a place for collaborative content creation. Popular original songs written by a user would inspire illustrations, animations in 2D and 3D , and remixes by other users. Some creators would show their unfinished work and ask for ideas. In September 2009, three figurines based on
12716-469: The Kagamine Append development, a "darkish Whisper/Sweet" append was being considered. Miku's English vocal was due for a Vocaloid 2 release, but it was not released in the engine due to low quality. To aid in the production of 3D animations, the program MikuMikuDance was developed by an independent programmer. The freeware software allowed a boom in fan-made animations to be developed, as well as being
12903-456: The Miku Twitter parody account mikumiku_ebooks which tweeted "I created Minecraft") as well as the book series Harry Potter . Both of these attributions came about after the original creators of both works ( Markus Persson and J. K. Rowling , respectively) published tweets that were critical of transgender people, which resulted in backlash from their respective fans. Akihiko Kondo ,
13090-531: 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
13277-724: The Old Japanese sections are written in Man'yōgana , which uses kanji for their phonetic as well as semantic values. Based on the Man'yōgana system, Old Japanese can be reconstructed as having 88 distinct morae . Texts written with Man'yōgana use two different sets of kanji for each of the morae now pronounced き (ki), ひ (hi), み (mi), け (ke), へ (he), め (me), こ (ko), そ (so), と (to), の (no), も (mo), よ (yo) and ろ (ro). (The Kojiki has 88, but all later texts have 87. The distinction between mo 1 and mo 2 apparently
13464-545: The Piapro Studio prototype was released on June 4, 2020. The full version of Piapro Studio and Hatsune Miku NT were released on November 27, 2020. On August 1, 2024, Sonicwire posted that on August 30, 2024, they would be releasing the Piapro Characters Super Pack, a voicebank bundle that includes Hatsune Miku V4 and V4X. In this post, it was announced that Hatsune Miku V6 AI was anticipated for release later in
13651-488: The Ryūkyūan languages as dialects of Japanese. The imperial court also seems to have spoken an unusual variant of the Japanese of the time, most likely the spoken form of Classical Japanese , a writing style that was prevalent during the Heian period , but began to decline during the late Meiji period . The Ryūkyūan languages are classified by UNESCO as 'endangered', as young people mostly use Japanese and cannot understand
13838-526: 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
14025-483: 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",
14212-480: 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
14399-468: 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
14586-456: The Vocaloid software. A series of rhythm 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 like Akita Neru. The series has sold 6 million copies. Hatsune Miku and Future Stars: Project Mirai was developed for the Nintendo 3DS . Miku's appearance in this game is based on
14773-543: The addition of a collective suffix (a noun suffix that indicates a group), such as -tachi , but this is not a true plural: the meaning is closer to the English phrase "and company". A group described as Tanaka-san-tachi may include people not named Tanaka. Some Japanese nouns are effectively plural, such as hitobito "people" and wareware "we/us", while the word tomodachi "friend" is considered singular, although plural in form. Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present (or non-past) which
14960-575: 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
15147-546: The anime Kämpfer appears dressed as Miku in episode seven. She appeared in the large plasma screen in Chrome Shelled Regios as an endorser. She appears in episode 11 of Baka and Test as a member of class B. Miku appears in Maria Holic episode 12, when the class is told they have a swim meet. Miku appears in episode 1 of Himōto! Umaru-chan , in an image of what the main character wants to buy. A parody of Miku
15334-510: 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
15521-518: The backing of Dr. Seiichi Sakamoto of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency . On December 22, 2009, the petition exceeded the 10,000 signatures necessary to have the plates made. An original deadline of December 20, 2009, had been set to send in the petition, but due to a couple of delays in the Akatsuki project, a new deadline of January 6, 2010, was set; by this deadline, over 14,000 signatures had been received. On May 21, 2010 at 06:58:22 ( JST ), Akatsuki
15708-503: 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
15895-493: The character comes from merging the Japanese words for first ( 初 , hatsu ) , sound ( 音 , ne ) , and future ( ミク , miku ) , thus meaning "the first sound of the future", which, along with her code name, refers to her position as the first of Crypton's "Character Vocal Series" (abbreviated "CV Series"), preceding Kagamine Rin/Len (code-named CV02 ) and Megurine Luka (code-named CV03 ). The number 01 can be seen on her left shoulder in official artwork. Hatsune Miku
16082-422: The company. On April 30, 2010, a new add-on for Vocaloid 2 called Hatsune Miku Append , was released, consisting of six different timbres for the voice: Soft (gentle timbre), Sweet (young, chibi quality), Dark (mature and melancholic), Vivid (bright and cheerful), Solid (loud, clear voice), and Light (innocent and angelic). Miku Append was created to expand Miku's voice library, and as such requires
16269-633: The consonant, a different vocal tone can be achieved. Two vocal tones are included in the EVEC system: Power and Soft . Along with the new EVEC system, phoneme errors found in Miku's V2 and V3 voicebanks would be fixed allowing for easier manipulation of the software's voice. As of August 31, 2016, Hatsune Miku V4X/V4 English was released. A Mandarin Chinese voicebank was released in September 2017, making Hatsune Miku
16456-504: The countdown. The Vocaloid software has had a great influence on the character Black Rock Shooter , who 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 was streamed for free as part of a promotional campaign running from June 25 to August 31, 2010. A televised anime series aired in February 2012. In October 2011, Crypton showed on
16643-502: 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
16830-535: The derivative character "Hachune Miku" were launched in a rocket from 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 × 12 cm, 3.1" × 4.7") made that would be used as a balancing weight for the Japanese Venus spacecraft explorer Akatsuki . Started by Hatsune Miku fan Sumio Morioka (known online as "chodenzi-P", his producer name), this project has received
17017-536: The design as "the Angel of summer". The illustrator for the 2014 season was Oguchi, one of the 15 artists of Kantai Collection . The outfit is designed by Koyama Shigeto, the art director of Kill la Kill . The machine version of the outfit is designed by Shigeto and Shōji Kawamori , who is noted for his " Macross " designs. The Racing Queens who wore the outfit were returning models Tsukasa Arai and Sena Kougami, as well as new models Kelal Yamaura and Noa Mizutani. For
17204-439: The design have been made based on the year's design. The 2012 design was chosen via a contest. The winning entry was referred to as "Fluffy Coat Snow Miku". The 2013 design was called "Strawberry Daifuku Shiromuku Miku". The 2014 design was based on a Magical Girl design by dera_fury, who was the winner of the 2014 Snow Miku contest. The illustration was "Nekosumi". The design featured a pet called "Rabbit Yukine". The 2015 design
17391-661: 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
17578-564: The effect of changing Japanese into a mora-timed language. Late Middle Japanese covers the years from 1185 to 1600, and is normally divided into two sections, roughly equivalent to the Kamakura period and the Muromachi period , respectively. The later forms of Late Middle Japanese are the first to be described by non-native sources, in this case the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries; and thus there
17765-503: 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
17952-462: 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.,
18139-451: 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
18326-404: 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
18513-399: 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
18700-508: 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
18887-419: The first official "Racing Miku" derivative design, and from this season onward, the Racing Queens outfits were based on the season's derivative design. The designer of the 2010 outfit was illustrator Redjuice. Model Ayami returned for this season as a Racing Queen and was joined by fellow models Saki Tachibana and Shihomi Kogoshi. GSR and Studie with TeamUKYO was the sponsor for the 2011 season . The designer of
19074-436: The first officially trilingual Vocaloid product. Her Chinese name is 初音未来 ; Chūyīn Wèilái ; 未来 are the kanji characters for her given name, Miku. At Magical Mirai [ ja ] 2019, head of Crypton Future Media's Character Development Wataru Sasaki announced that Hatsune Miku would be departing Yamaha's Vocaloid engine, and would not be utilizing Vocaloid 5 for any further development of their voice banks. It
19261-455: The flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly, and words from English roots have proliferated. Japanese is an agglutinative , mora -timed language with relatively simple phonotactics , a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent . Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, and sentence structure
19448-500: 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
19635-509: The game Recettear , where a young man stargazing sees "The Green-Onion Girl" constellation. In 2013, Saki Fujita voices Fei-Yen HD, a character based on one of Hatsune Miku's modules, in Super Robot Wars UX ; this appearance does not use Miku's vocal library. Haruka Sawamura from the Yakuza series, another Sega franchise, can wear Miku's outfit in Yakuza 5 , and an ice statue of Miku
19822-612: The game 13-sai no Hellowork DS . Miku's clothes appear in Phantasy Star Portable 2 as a costume for the player's female character, as well as her hairstyle and leek -themed weapons. Miku appears in the PlayStation 3 version of The Idolm@ster 2 as downloadable content. In the video game Skullgirls , one of Filia's alternative colors is based on Miku. Hatsune Miku's attire has appeared in Phantasy Star Online 2 as
20009-609: The genitive particle ga remains in intentionally archaic speech. Early Middle Japanese is the Japanese of the Heian period , from 794 to 1185. It formed the basis for the literary standard of Classical Japanese , which remained in common use until the early 20th century. During this time, Japanese underwent numerous phonological developments, in many cases instigated by an influx of Chinese loanwords . These included phonemic length distinction for both consonants and vowels , palatal consonants (e.g. kya ) and labial consonant clusters (e.g. kwa ), and closed syllables . This had
20196-412: The idea to release Miku as "an android diva in the near-future world where songs are lost." Hatsune Miku was released for Vocaloid 3 on August 31, 2013, including an English vocal library. She was the first Vocaloid to be developed by the company, following their commercial release handle of Yamaha Corporation developed vocals Meiko and Kaito, making Hatsune Miku the third Vocaloid to be sold commercially by
20383-430: The language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese . Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords . The basis of the standard dialect moved from the Kansai region to the Edo region (modern Tokyo ) in the Early Modern Japanese period (early 17th century–mid 19th century). Following the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853,
20570-453: The languages of the original Jōmon inhabitants, including the ancestor of the modern Ainu language . Because writing had yet to be introduced from China, there is no direct evidence, and anything that can be discerned about this period must be based on internal reconstruction from Old Japanese , or comparison with the Ryukyuan languages and Japanese dialects . The Chinese writing system
20757-449: The languages. Okinawan Japanese is a variant of Standard Japanese influenced by the Ryūkyūan languages, and is the primary dialect spoken among young people in the Ryukyu Islands . Modern Japanese has become prevalent nationwide (including the Ryūkyū islands) due to education , mass media , and an increase in mobility within Japan, as well as economic integration. Japanese is a member of
20944-427: The large quantity of English loanwords, modern Japanese has developed a distinction between [tɕi] and [ti] , and [dʑi] and [di] , with the latter in each pair only found in loanwords. Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has also been spoken outside of the country. Before and during World War II , through Japanese annexation of Taiwan and Korea , as well as partial occupation of China ,
21131-509: The licensing of Hatsune Miku and other Crypton Future Media-related Vocaloid content. Studie participated in the 2008 and 2009 seasons using a BMW Z4 E86 painted in official Hatsune Miku art, and fan-derivative versions of Hatsune Miku in some races in the 2009 season. In the 2008 season, a group of " Racing Queens " were seen in the pitstop of races. Dubbed the "MikuMiku Gals", the three girls were Rin Miyama, Riona Osaki and Hina Saito. In 2009,
21318-418: The manga artist Kei Garō. When Kei designed Miku, his only direction was that she was an android and what her color scheme (based on Yamaha's synthesizer's signature turquoise color) was. Various aspects of her clothing, such as the computer interface on her left sleeve, were based on Yamaha's synthesizers. Nico Nico Douga , a Japanese video streaming website similar to YouTube , played a fundamental role in
21505-563: 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
21692-469: 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
21879-408: The mass marketing has come after the software's initial release as a response to Miku's popularity and has been on going since 2008. Even with the addition of other Character Vocals, Miku's name continues to be used as the primary source of marketing for Crypton Future Media, to the point where most products for their Vocaloid related products will usually only feature Hatsune Miku's name. In March 2012,
22066-509: 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
22253-513: 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
22440-440: The new Cross-Synthesis system (XSY) built for the new engine of Vocaloid 3. The voice was imported into a device called Pocket Miku , released on April 3, 2014. Hatsune Miku received an update for Yamaha's Vocaloid 4 engine under the name of Hatsune Miku V4X . It makes use of the new EVEC system for Piapro Studio, a VSTi plugin used as an alternative to the traditional Vocaloid Editor. EVEC consists of recorded vowels. Along with
22627-461: 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
22814-473: The number-one-selling software of that time. She was the first vocal to be developed and distributed by Crypton Future Media and sung in Japanese. Hatsune Miku's instant success is owed to Vocaloid being a cultural hit in Japan and she reportedly sold 40,000 units by July 2008, selling on average 300 units a week. By January 2011, she had sold 60,000 units. Since the success of Hatsune Miku's Vocaloid 2 package led to an expansion of marketing possibilities, most of
23001-512: The official Hatsune Miku Facebook page a letter from the Japanese Minister of Economy for "contributing to the furtherance of the informatization by minister of economy." The flag of the city of Chiba was considered to coincidentally resemble the silhouette of Hatsune Miku, and on the 10th anniversary on August 31, 2017, the municipal government website temporarily changed its logo to look like Miku. Geoffrey Cain of GlobalPost has argued that
23188-425: The only strict rule of word order is that the verb must be placed at the end of a sentence (possibly followed by sentence-end particles). This is because Japanese sentence elements are marked with particles that identify their grammatical functions. The basic sentence structure is topic–comment . For example, Kochira wa Tanaka-san desu ( こちらは田中さんです ). kochira ("this") is the topic of the sentence, indicated by
23375-918: 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
23562-422: The original program to be installed on the user's computer first. This was the first time a Vocaloid had such a release, and more Append versions were reported from Crypton Future Media at later dates. It was mentioned that a seventh Append voicebank, a falsetto voice, had been recorded; however, since the developers did not think it would be useful on its own, no plans were made for an independent release. During
23749-470: The out-group gives a benefit to the in-group, and "up" to indicate the in-group gives a benefit to the out-group. Here, the in-group includes the speaker and the out-group does not, and their boundary depends on context. For example, oshiete moratta ( 教えてもらった ) (literally, "explaining got" with a benefit from the out-group to the in-group) means "[he/she/they] explained [it] to [me/us]". Similarly, oshiete ageta ( 教えてあげた ) (literally, "explaining gave" with
23936-415: The particle wa . The verb desu is a copula , commonly translated as "to be" or "it is" (though there are other verbs that can be translated as "to be"), though technically it holds no meaning and is used to give a sentence 'politeness'. As a phrase, Tanaka-san desu is the comment. This sentence literally translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mx Tanaka." Thus Japanese, like many other Asian languages,
24123-461: The phenomenon of Hatsune Miku is partly due to the love of Japanese for giving inanimate objects a soul, which is rooted in Shintoism or animism, and in the long tradition of Karakuri ningyō or automated wooden puppets. Thus, Japanese are much more ready to accept a virtual character as "human". Hatsune Miku is often jokingly attributed as the creator of the video game Minecraft (originating from
24310-491: The process. During Miku's development, Crypton decided to take a different approach from that used by the other Vocaloid soundbank publishers. It was decided that to make the product successful not only would a highly appealing voice need to be developed, but the voice needed an image. She was originally aimed only at professional producers; the amateur and otaku market had not fully formed yet, and so were not initially considered. The task of coming up with Miku's image went to
24497-463: 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
24684-477: The proposed larger Altaic family, or to various Southeast Asian languages , especially Austronesian . None of these proposals have gained wide acceptance (and the Altaic family itself is now considered controversial). As it stands, only the link to Ryukyuan has wide support. Other theories view the Japanese language as an early creole language formed through inputs from at least two distinct language groups, or as
24871-453: The public, and five finalists were selected. Mai Yoneyama combined different aspects of these designs into one final illustration. Koyama Shigeto was the art director for this season. The 2017 season marked the 10th season for the Miku GT project. The 2017 design has elements that make the design look fairy-like, which, as of 2023, is not present in any other Racing Miku design. The 2017 version
25058-488: 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
25245-466: The recognition and popularity of the software. Soon after Miku's release, Nico Nico Douga users started posting videos of songs created using the character's sound bank. According to Crypton, a popular video featuring Miku's chibi version, Hachune Miku, singing and dancing to " Ievan Polkka " while spinning a spring onion in homage to Loituma Girl 's original video (which led to Miku being commonly associated with spring onions, as well as leeks , due to
25432-518: 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
25619-503: 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
25806-459: The same structure as affirmative sentences, but with intonation rising at the end. In the formal register, the question particle -ka is added. For example, ii desu ( いいです ) "It is OK" becomes ii desu-ka ( いいですか。 ) "Is it OK?". In a more informal tone sometimes the particle -no ( の ) is added instead to show a personal interest of the speaker: Dōshite konai-no? "Why aren't (you) coming?". Some simple queries are formed simply by mentioning
25993-409: The script of the required words. It uses synthesizing technology with specially recorded vocals of voice actors or singers. To create 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
26180-415: The season were returning models Tachibana Saki and Aoi Haruka, as well as new models Sena Kougami and Ayana Sato. Studie with TeamUKYO's sponsorship continued with the 2013 season . The Racing Miku design for the season was done by Mari Shimazaki. The illustrator of the official art was Saitom. Sena Kougami returned as a racing queen for this season and was joined by Tsukasa Arai and Elena Ishiguro. In 2013,
26367-413: 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
26554-645: 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
26741-439: The speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned. The Japanese writing system combines Chinese characters , known as kanji ( 漢字 , ' Han characters') , with two unique syllabaries (or moraic scripts) derived by the Japanese from the more complex Chinese characters: hiragana ( ひらがな or 平仮名 , 'simple characters') and katakana ( カタカナ or 片仮名 , 'partial characters'). Latin script ( rōmaji ローマ字 )
26928-462: The sponsorship expanded to feature a team in the Isle of Man TT , called Team Mirai, with a Racing Miku-designed bike. They finished 6th with Ian Lougher after a fatal accident struck Yoshinari Matsushita (who rode another bike, a Suzuki 600cc) during practice at Ballacrye Corner . The Racing Miku design was adapted for a " Sepang " version showing bare toned skin as part of showing good health and promoting
27115-732: 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
27302-797: The state as at the time the constitution was written, many of the elders participating in the process had been educated in Japanese during the South Seas Mandate over the island shown by the 1958 census of the Trust Territory of the Pacific that found that 89% of Palauans born between 1914 and 1933 could speak and read Japanese, but as of the 2005 Palau census there were no residents of Angaur that spoke Japanese at home. Japanese dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent , inflectional morphology , vocabulary , and particle usage. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this
27489-476: The street. (grammatically incorrect insertion of a pronoun) But one can grammatically say essentially the same thing in Japanese: 驚いた彼は道を走っていった。 Transliteration: Odoroita kare wa michi o hashitte itta. (grammatically correct) This is partly because these words evolved from regular nouns, such as kimi "you" ( 君 "lord"), anata "you" ( あなた "that side, yonder"), and boku "I" ( 僕 "servant"). This
27676-562: 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,
27863-488: The top 10 world singles list on iTunes in its first week of sales. Since Crypton had always sold Miku as a virtual instrument in Japan, they asked their Japanese fan base if it was acceptable for them to sell her as a virtual singer to the new market audience. The main purpose of the Miku English version is to allow Japanese producers to break into the western market and expand their audiences. In 2008, Good Smile Racing began
28050-580: The topic with an interrogative intonation to call for the hearer's attention: Kore wa? "(What about) this?"; O-namae wa? ( お名前は？ ) "(What's your) name?". Negatives are formed by inflecting the verb. For example, Pan o taberu ( パンを食べる。 ) "I will eat bread" or "I eat bread" becomes Pan o tabenai ( パンを食べない。 ) "I will not eat bread" or "I do not eat bread". Plain negative forms are i -adjectives (see below) and inflect as such, e.g. Pan o tabenakatta ( パンを食べなかった。 ) "I did not eat bread". Vocaloid#Vocaloid 3 Vocaloid ( ボーカロイド , Bōkaroido )
28237-419: The two consonants are the moraic nasal followed by a homorganic consonant. Japanese also includes a pitch accent , which is not represented in moraic writing; for example [haꜜ.ɕi] ("chopsticks") and [ha.ɕiꜜ] ("bridge") are both spelled はし ( hashi ) , and are only differentiated by the tone contour. Japanese word order is classified as subject–object–verb . Unlike many Indo-European languages ,
28424-577: The two methods were both used in writing until the 1940s. Bungo still has some relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers (many Japanese laws that survived World War II are still written in bungo , although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language). Kōgo is the dominant method of both speaking and writing Japanese today, although bungo grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect. The 1982 state constitution of Angaur , Palau , names Japanese along with Palauan and English as an official language of
28611-472: The two terms (''hyōjungo'' and ''kyōtsūgo'') are almost the same. Hyōjungo or kyōtsūgo is a conception that forms the counterpart of dialect. This normative language was born after the Meiji Restoration ( 明治維新 , meiji ishin , 1868) from the language spoken in the higher-class areas of Tokyo (see Yamanote ). Hyōjungo is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications. It
28798-407: The verb (e.g. yonde for earlier yomite ), the -k- in the final mora of adjectives drops out ( shiroi for earlier shiroki ); and some forms exist where modern standard Japanese has retained the earlier form (e.g. hayaku > hayau > hayɔɔ , where modern Japanese just has hayaku , though the alternative form is preserved in the standard greeting o-hayō gozaimasu "good morning"; this ending
28985-592: 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
29172-423: 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
29359-436: The voice. Various voice banks have been released for use with the Vocaloid synthesizer technology. Each is sold as "a singer in 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
29546-592: 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
29733-548: The world. Since Japanese first gained the consideration of linguists in the late 19th century, attempts have been made to show its genealogical relation to languages or language families such as Ainu , Korean , Chinese , Tibeto-Burman , Uralic , Altaic (or Ural-Altaic ), Austroasiatic , Austronesian and Dravidian . At the fringe, some linguists have even suggested a link to Indo-European languages , including Greek , or to Sumerian . Main modern theories try to link Japanese either to northern Asian languages, like Korean or
29920-409: The year, which would be compatible with Vocaloid 6 and its AI voice synthesization tools. It was also announced that an updated version of Hatsune Miku NT was anticipated for the end of the year. Miku has been heavily promoted since 2008 and was originally aimed at professional musicians. On September 12, 2007, Amazon.co.jp reported sales of Hatsune Miku totaling 57,500,000 yen, making the character
30107-401: Was Len[A-7], who illustrated the main visuals for Magical Mirai 2016. For the 2021's season , the illustration was drawn by En Morikura, who has been involved in multiple projects involving Kizuna AI . The design places focus on elements such as circles and squares by adding them as accessories to the main design. Koyama Shigeto returns as the art director. The illustrator for 2022's season
30294-480: 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
30481-466: 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
30668-576: 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
30855-535: Was based on 12- to 20-second-long recordings of 135 to 244 phonemes , which 42 students listened to and translated word-for-word. The listeners were all Keio University students who grew up in the Kanto region . There are some language islands in mountain villages or isolated islands such as Hachijō-jima island , whose dialects are descended from Eastern Old Japanese . Dialects of the Kansai region are spoken or known by many Japanese, and Osaka dialect in particular
31042-547: Was called "Snow Bell Snow Miku" and was illustrated by Nardack. In 2012, several ice sculptures of the Character Vocal series and several snow sculptures of Miku were produced for the event. However, on February 7, 2012, one of the Snow Miku sculptures later collapsed and had to be rebuilt elsewhere with better support. The collapsed figure hit a woman in her early 60s on the back of the head; no serious injuries were sustained in
31229-478: 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
31416-427: Was created by taking vocal samples from voice actress Saki Fujita at a controlled pitch and tone. Those samples all contain a single Japanese phonic that, when strung together, creates full lyrics and phrases. The pitch of the samples was to be altered by the synthesizer engine and constructed into a keyboard-style instrument within the Vocaloid software. Crypton released Hatsune Miku on August 31, 2007. Crypton had
31603-434: Was established that the "identity" of the voices would remain the same, however. Then, on December 24 2019, Sasaki announced that information about Hatsune Miku NT (Newtype) would be released. On the same day, Sonicwire announced that the release of Hatsune Miku NT was planned for summer 2020, and those who had registered for the software early would be able to access a prototype of the new engine, Piapro Studio NT. After delays,
31790-489: 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
31977-471: Was finally released on August 31, 2013 via digital distribution . The Hatsune Miku Vocaloid 3 Japanese vocal library was released on September 26, 2013. It contained updates to all previous Vocaloid 2 vocals except Vivid and Light . These were later released separately, though they were initially offered to anyone who already owned Hatsune Miku, Hatsune Miku Append, and Hatsune Miku V3. Once imported into Vocaloid 4, all Vocaloid3 Hatsune Miku vocals could use
32164-482: Was illustrated by Tony , a designer for the Shining series of video games. Koyama Shigeto was the art director for this season. The 2018's season design was illustrated by Hiro Kanzaki, who has illustrated manga such as Oreimo and Eromanga Sensei . He has ties to other vocal synthesizer related projects, such as Project 575 , created by Sega. This season was the first time the illustrator for that season's design
32351-668: Was imported to Japan from Baekje around the start of the fifth century, alongside Buddhism. The earliest texts were written in Classical Chinese , although some of these were likely intended to be read as Japanese using the kanbun method, and show influences of Japanese grammar such as Japanese word order. The earliest text, the Kojiki , dates to the early eighth century, and was written entirely in Chinese characters, which are used to represent, at different times, Chinese, kanbun , and Old Japanese. As in other texts from this period,
32538-407: Was in charge of the theme song. Koyama Shigeto was the art director for this season. For 2019's season , the design illustrator was annin doufu, known for designing and illustrating the characters for The Idolmaster Cinderella Girls . Koyama Shigeto was the art director for this season. The 2020 season saw the return of Koyama Shigeto as the art director once again. The illustrator this season
32725-516: Was launched, having three plates depicting Hatsune Miku and Hachune Miku in several monochrome images, composed of the miniature letters of the messages from the petition form etched in the plates. The UK 59th issue of the music and fashion magazine Clash featured Hatsune Miku as their cover star (using a real-life photo model), with a full feature on her. The third launch of the MOMO sounding rocket by Interstellar Technologies used Hatsune Miku's voice for
32912-465: Was lost immediately following its composition.) This set of morae shrank to 67 in Early Middle Japanese , though some were added through Chinese influence. Man'yōgana also has a symbol for /je/ , which merges with /e/ before the end of the period. Several fossilizations of Old Japanese grammatical elements remain in the modern language – the genitive particle tsu (superseded by modern no )
33099-516: Was neco, who has had prior involvement with Hatsune Miku projects. Neco had illustrated the main visual for Miku Expo 2016. Koyama Shigeto remains as the art director for this season. For 2023's season , Koyama Shigeto stated wanting to go "back to basics" with the design. It was illustrated by Toridamono, known for designing the characters of Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout and other Atelier Ryza games. Sapporo has been
33286-606: 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
33473-416: 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
33660-976: 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 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
33847-555: 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
34034-586: 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
34221-492: 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"
34408-511: Was the first Vocaloid developed by Crypton Future Media after they handled the release of the Yamaha vocal Meiko and Kaito . Miku was intended to be the first of a series of Vocaloids called the " Character Vocal Series " (abbreviated " CV Series "), which included Kagamine Rin/Len and Megurine Luka . Each had a particular concept and vocal direction. She was built using Yamaha's Vocaloid 2 technology, and later updated to newer engine versions. She
34595-510: 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
34782-505: 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
34969-492: 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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