Forgotten Friday #9 - 春諷アンズ + 秋諷カエデ / Harufu Anzu and Akifu Kaede

Who is Harafu Anzu? Where can I download Akifu Kaede? Why do I keep doing this?

Forgotten Friday #9 - 春諷アンズ + 秋諷カエデ / Harufu Anzu and Akifu Kaede

Sometimes, I cheat a bit with my criteria. There is, in fact, a video of these two on YouTube from 2016.

However, a quick look at the uploader's channel shows that the uploader is, in fact, Japanese. That means that they aren't an overseas UTAU user. This blog is for opening the eyes of overseas UTAU users, so I feel okay with writing this despite the video existing.


Both Kaede and Anzu have three separate banks, all of which can be found here. I can't personally get the "home2" links to work, and that video shows me the CV banks available for download from getuploader aren't much to write home about. For that reason, I will only write about the VCV banks.

Who is Harafu Anzu?

Anzu's voice provider, Ria, is actually active to this day on her Twitter. I was really, really shocked that I was able to find it considering that the only linkback on the distribution blog was for a dead service called "Voiceblog". (Thank you Wayback machine!)

Unlike most UTAUs, the person who designed and distributed Anzu is not Ria. Instead, it is Hoshi. Unlike Ria, Hoshi has not touched their Twitter since 2015. Aside from that, oh my goodness, Anzu is so adorable! And her favorite things are erasers! I'm not sure why anyone's favorite things are erasers, but that's Anzu for you!

Official Art Packaged with Bank

The voice is different, though. I'm not sure exactly how it sounds the way it does. The most logical explanation is that Ria's microphone wasn't the best, but I kind of have a theory that pitch correction was used. The pitch lines look natural enough, but why else would it sound like that?! Maybe reverb was added? I don't know!

If someone were to ask me who this bank was for, I would say that it's for anyone who loves Ritsu's power banks, but wants it to sound like a robot. I love when UTAUs sound like computers and not humans, so I see a lot of utility in this bank!

Who is Akifu Kaede?

Akifu Kaede's voice provider is Zaku. Their last post on Voiceblog was (according to Google Translate) "It shut down." For that reason, I won't poke any harder than that.

Again, the design was created by Hoshi and it is also very adorable.

Official Art Packaged with Voicebank

When it comes to the voice, Kaede shares a bit of Anzu's issues, albeit to a much smaller degree. There's a strange, robotic ringing sometimes. It's small enough for me to pin it on microphone quality 100% as opposed to coming up with crazy theories about pitch shifting! For a one pitch VCV, it's pretty great.

It's hard for me to think of who exactly I would recommend this bank to! Kaede's voice fits his design infinitely more than Anzu's voice fits her design. As silly as it sounds, my recommendation is that if you like the design, you'll also like the voice!

Where can I download the voicebanks?

The voicebanks are for download on Hoshi's blog. Until Hoshi starts updating their blog again (which I doubt will happen!) the posts with the distribution links for the VCV banks will be the first two posts.

Hopefully someone sees these designs and falls in love! The real draw of these UTAUs is how fun they'd be to draw, not the voices themselves. Maybe soon we'll see new fan art of them 😃