Lat Miku

More aptly known as Hipster Miku, this is another figure to add to my stack of Miku figures. To think that at one stage I firmly believed that one figure per character was the way to go. The timing's pretty good since my Tony Miku is in for repairs (turns out that pose is a bit hard on her feet) and I've got a spot on the Miku shelf in my cabinet that this new figure will fit nicely into.

No shots of the box, because I'm lazy like that, but it's just the normal sort of box with photos of the figure all over it.

Some new music

Some of those music CDs I ordered have arrived. The rest haven't been posted yet since they're waiting on one of them to be released before shipping. It's a bright sunny Spring day (the weather's wasted no time changing seasons), so apologies in advance for the intense glare on the photos.

tabgraphics works summer 11 (from C80)
So it's not entirely CDs, although the artbook from this is mostly just a beefed up CD booklet with a few extra pages.

From leeks to hotdogs

It's been a couple of months since I posted anything about Toyota's Miku campaign, so I figured I'd see what's happened since then. I'd hoped that it'd just die down and fade away, but then came the whole bacon-wrapped hotdog fiasco, and a couple more opportunities to make some more terrible terrible ads:

These two are a bit cringe-worthy, but could be worse. I still think it sounds silly to say "Miku-chan" in an English language ad, but that's not such a big deal. The worst is yet to come:

Yeah, I really have no idea what they were going for in these two. The ads aren't about Toyota any more, since the last three haven't had anything to do with cars, and they certainly aren't about Vocaloid as a music synthesizing program, so the only remaining possibility seems to be to piss off fans and shit on any chance of Vocaloid being taken seriously.

If you don't think the videos themselves are bad enough, take a look at the Youtube comments, where the reactions range from the positive ("MUKI IS TAKINGOVERTHE WORLD!!") to the negative ("Dont do it miku!!! dont fall for the people who nuked your home country!!", "*transforms into Black Rock Shooter* i will go and save miku before she is lost forever!").

There's also been a contest to come up with an American Miku design, to be announced at the J-Pop Summit Festival in San Francisco later this month. Given the bacon-wrapped hotdog theme though, it's clear what they're shooting for in the American market.

At this point maybe they'd be better off going the whole way and changing the song they're using from World is Mine to something more appropriate:

今の私よりもっと太く大きくなって見せるよ

On the bright side, there haven't been any new commercials in a while. I can only hope this trend continues.

I recently ordered a stack of Vocaloid CDs myself, after getting my tax return. I have no idea why the government taxes my welfare payments only to give all the tax back to me at the end of the year anyway, but it makes for a nice windfall. I ordered the new Gumi compilation album that's coming out in a month, as well as 8#Prince's newest CD and some older stuff by 40mp, among others. Hopefully they won't take too long to arrive.

And finally, it's only a week and a half until the Dota 2 championships - it'll be the first look at the game as well as (to my knowledge) the biggest prize pool in video gaming's history. I may do a post about this later, as I consider it a pretty big deal.

GSC Racing Miku

As usual, I'd meant to write a post about this ages ago. As usual, I got hit with another bout of having no motivation whatsoever. Such is life. I had planned to get some lighting set up for the photos, but it turns out the new bulbs I bought for my desk lamp were way more yellow than I'd thought, and Miku just looked like she'd been jarated in all the shots. Because of that, I went back to natural lighting. The only problem there is that there are a few more shadows than I'd like, particularly on the less close-up shots. Sorry about that.

Onto the figure. To be more specific, she's Racing Miku, and was recently released by GSC. She's based on an illustration by Redjuice for Good Smile Racing. I can't find a good picture of it after five seconds of Google Image Search, so you'll have to look for it yourself if you're interested.

I forgot to take any photos of the box again, which is a shame because it's quite good. The original illustration is on one of the sides, and it's immediately apparent that the figure is a pretty faithful adaptation.

Expensive Miku, cheap Miku

So I had a nice big thoughtful entry all written up and ready to post but, just before I hit the 'publish' button, I decided I didn't like it and deleted it all. I'm pretty tired, so my second attempt will be shorter.

cannot have

I hope we can all agree that the Magician Miku figure that was recently released is a fine bit of work. Unfortunately, it's a garage kit and was a very limited release, so you could be forgiven for giving up all hope of getting one for yourself. Don't worry though, there's still a few available here and there, such as this one being auctioned on Yahoo Japan - there's still two days to go, but the current bid is already a hefty ¥86,000. Painted or not, that's a veritable shitload of money. Maybe she'll be made into a PVC figure, god knows anything Miku-related is a license to print money.

As for the American Miku saga, be sure to buy Miku's first US single, "The World Is Mine", which is now available on iTunes and Amazon! The press release, which rather misleadingly made it seem like the song itself had only just been released for the first time, was published on Reuters about two weeks ago to no one's notice, and on various other bastions of journalistic integrity such as MTV to slightly more attention. Cue the weeaboo hipsters claiming to have liked supercell (as if they were some super obscure underground group) before they were popular.

ANN reported that the single peaked at number 7 on the iTunes charts, which seems pretty impressive, although the competition wasn't as fierce as you might have thought. Somewhere over the Rainbow charted higher, but The World is Mine did beat out the ever-popular Rasputin and Amazing Grace.

I also thought it was interesting that both Amazon and iTunes are asking 99c for the single, while it's being offered as a free download on supercell's own website. No doubt this whole process will be repeated sooner or later for Melt and Love is War - if people are willing to pay, it'd seem a bit silly not to.


I'm still baffled by the choice of song, and would have thought something that doesn't show off Miku's glass-shattering soprano potential quite so much would have been a more obvious choice, but what would I know. I  find the whole situation fascinating though, and will continue to keep an eye on it.

That's all. I'm going to sleep. Good night.

Plug Suit Asuka status: Dispatch from outward office of exchange. Maybe if I keep refreshing it'll get here faster.

Some songs and American Miku

By now anyone who's interested has undoubtedly already heard about the whole Toyota Corolla promotion featuring Miku, but I felt like adding my two cents anyway.

moe~

Like others have said, I don't see it having any value for Toyota. Most (dare I say all?) Miku fans can't afford to buy a new car, and anyone who doesn't already know her is going to be confused if not well and truly put off by the commercial. Well, the long one at least. I think the short one is a lot better for a number of reasons: the narrator isn't wanking on about dreams and works of art, we don't hear Miku's banshee wail, and we don't hear the "ima sugu ni yo" which I think seems a bit out of place - foregrounding the Japanese vocals would just serve to further distance people. If I saw the short commercial and didn't know about Miku I think I'd almost be tempted to look her up.

But it's not really about selling cars. Miku's English debut is coming up, and Crypton are trying to drum up some excitement. Surely that's not so bad? Well, no, but I still think it's a bad approach since there's still the problem of it doing very little to expand the potential market. In fact it could well end up reducing it, restricting the scope of English Miku to the 'otaku' community.

What I think they should have done is something more along the lines of Yamaha's VY1, which sounds fairly similar to Miku but was released without a character image and was advertised as having a unisex voice (although it sounds quite feminine). Obviously Miku already has a well-established character and this is the leading cause of her success, but given the Western market's general distaste for overtly anime-looking goods, I think playing down her character a bit in advertising would have been a better choice. This would give Miku more of a future in professional music (as a backup vocalist or whatever) rather than being shunned as a piece of chinese girl software. 

I could be wrong. Miku could catalyse the 'otaku' (I don't like using that word but it conveys meaning well) community into a state of unprecedented creativity and we'll actually get some good works made using her voice. I'd very much like that, but I remain pessimistic.

That's enough negativity for one blog post so I'm going to post some music. None of it's new or anything, just some tracks that I've been listening to recently.

I picked up this CD (Puzzle) on a whim when I was in Japan last Christmas, and this song's been stuck in my head on and off since. The circle is 恋竹林 (koichikurin) and the song is SA/BA/O/RI. Miku's voice is pushed a bit high but it's still pretty catchy. Another song off the album that I particularly like is Puzzle, which has a fairly similar sort of sound.

This one's Orbital, a fairly old song sung by Teto. It's got a fairly muddy sound but I really like the voice. The same guy did a second version of the same song called, not surprisingly, Orbital 2nd. It's got a cleaner sound and uses Rin as well as Teto. It's a good song too, though I think I still prefer the first.

This one isn't Vocaloid related at all - it's リラの街から (From the town of Lyre) by ORIGA, who is probably best known for her vocals on the Ghost in the Shell soundtracks. It's in Russian, I think it was released over a decade ago, but I think it's a beautiful song.

I played some Minecraft earlier with HHH and NEET. It was fun, and they've got some impressive structures going. I was going to hop back on and play some more after dinner but Cella (a Korean Zerg player from team SlayerS) is streaming Starcraft 2 and he's damn entertaining to watch. His English is pretty good too. I'll have to get back on tomorrow and work on my little house some more.

Miku Tony ver.

I've had this figure for days (weeks?) now and have finally gotten around to cleaning my desk to an acceptable standard for her to be placed on. Before I post some pictures, though, I'd like to dispel a common misconception about this figure - that she couldn't possibly strike that pose while keeping her spine intact. I tried to mimic her pose earlier and, while uncomfortable, it's definitely doable. And believe me, I'm no Chinese gymnast. If a Shiteyanyo figure ever gets made (and dear God I hope it does not, that's the stuff of nightmares) then you'll have a valid complaint.

I had a box photo but it's got way too much glare even by my minimal standards so it's straight to the lady herself.

No seriously, you can bend like that.

Mikupa!

I swear it hasn't been a year already since the last big Miku concert - although maybe that's just because the blu-ray took ages to be released and hasn't actually been out for that long. Either way, this'll be Miku's third dedicated concert that I'm aware of and I've got high hopes for it. A brief timeline:

• 2009/08/22 - first 'live' appearance at Animelo Summer Live, only performed two songs
• 2009/08/31 - MikuFES, her first dedicated concert marking her 2nd anniversary
• 2009/11/21 - apparently her first overseas concert in Singapore but I don't know if it was 'live' or just old footage
• 2010/03/09 - 39's Giving Day concert. Almost 2 hours long with performances by Miku, Luka, Rin and Len

And exactly year later it will be time to see a 2.5D Miku take to the stage again. It should be interesting to see what sort of advancements in the projection technology will be seen over the year since the last concert.

Left: MikuFES (2009), right: 39's Giving Day (2010)

Ok so the comparison images I used aren't great, and a still image can't convey the huge improvements in motion, but anyone who's seen the two concerts will appreciate how much of an improvement the second one was.

The guest performers that have been announced are: 164, 40mP, buzzG, DECO*27, doriko and OSTER project. The same names keep popping up for these big Vocaloid events but since I like most of them it's really nothing to complain about. As far as I'm aware there hasn't been any mention of what songs or Vocaloids will be playing, although songs by each of the guest performers is pretty much guaranteed. I'm expecting the Vocaloids to be the same as last time: mainly Miku with appearances by Luka, Rin and Len. As much as I'd love to see Gumi (Miki, Yuki or Teto would be fine too) appear and prove me wrong, Crypton is a sponsor and I can't see them being too eager to feature competitors' products.

As far as watching it goes, you can either pay 2000 yen for a ticket to see it live on NND or, like me, you can scour the web on the night desperately looking for someone that's restreaming it. Apparently NND will be showing 'some parts' for free but what that includes is anyone's guess. Fuck, I'm just reading further down the page that NND is encouraging people to report any restreams. Oh well, I'll just have to hope I get lucky on the night.

At least the times work well for me - one of the perks of living in Australia. It starts in Japan at 7pm on the 9th of March, which is 8pm for me. Convenient! Now back to playing Project Diva (as opposed to doing my damn assignments already) in preparation.

I should have stayed in bed

<rant>
It's been one of those days. I decided I'd try and make it to class for once, so I woke up early, ran out the door and went straight to the bus stop a couple of minutes early. However, since my city's public transport doesn't consider time to be of particular importance, I soon figured out that the bus had come even earlier and that I would have to wait almost half an hour for the next one. Not much fun, but that's how it goes. I eventually get to class almost half an hour late to find that the lecturer hadn't even bothered to turn up yet. I waited another 20 minutes before he deigned to grace us with his presence and begin the lecture which should have started the better part of an hour ago.

The littlest witch

I've always found SAL shipping very reliable: almost to a fault, packages will arrive exactly one single week after I've given up all hope of them ever reaching me. To its credit though, everything I've gotten shipped via SAL way has turned up eventually. This time it was Lucchini who spent the better part of two months in limbo, but she finally showed up today.