The UTAU Collective, Fractured Hope Co. - An Investigation
There are two main camps of UTAU users. For the first, UTAUs are a tiny part of ourselves that we work on and share with the world. For others, UTAUs are OCs. Neither side is right or wrong, it's just a difference in thought process.
A group that exemplifies the UTAUs are OCs concept is Fractured Hope Co. While being overseas UTAU users, Fractured Hope Co feels completely alien to the English speaking community. The active members of Fractured Hope Co are all from Belarus. However, I assume other users were from other former Soviet Bloc countries before Fractured Hope Co consolidated its membership. Their story is quite interesting and demonstrates how hurtful bullying can be.
I don't know anything about their past beyond what they wrote, but the bullying deeply impacted their drive in a good way. Their site is beautiful and responsive with detailed backstories and plenty of art.
I would love to go through and showcase all of their UTAUs, but . . .
There are over fifty UTAU demo videos on their YouTube channel. Some of those demos introduce more than one UTAU. For that reason, I'm going to watch every video, find those that snatch my wig, and then write about those banks.
The entire reason I began this investigation was Emmanuelle BluR.
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| Official Art from UTAU Wiki Art by Sightseed |
The design stuck out to me. However, as Emmanuelle is a former member of Fractured Hope Co, I'll leave it at the design snatched my wig. I will focus on the voice and not the design for the most part, but golly they are good at designs.
Anyway! Let's go!
Some of the voicebanks had designs I loved, but voices I wasn't crazy about.
The first was Kitsune Dakesia. The color story is really thought out and I'm a sucker for animal ears. Second is Maore Tai. I really, really like boots. Eve Renir [Sweet] is an explosion of cotton-candy and bubblegum and I am an extremely simple woman. If I see an explosion of cotton-candy and bubblegum, you have my attention. Meredith Kajdar has a really awesome post-apocalyptic design. She looks really cool and like she could be the star in an Indian Jones homage! Drygva is a post-apocalyptic kitty-cat man. Nevermore's color story won me over instantly. Also, he has a pet!
Sorry for the wall of text, but this was just an aside before I dug into the banks.
Voices That Caught My Ear
My understanding is that any bank that says VCV Synth is an UTAU that has had a VCV bank created from its CV bank. While I understand the appeal of there being VCV, I don't believe that creating VCV from CV is much of a great idea. For that reason, I will ignore any banks labeled as VCV Synth. (Funny story - back when VCV was new, Hayao Misakura's voice provider assumed that everything needed to be perfect. Therefore, she rendered the VCV samples in UTAU so that the pitch line would be perfect. I was like nooooo, but VCV Synth has a pretty long precedent.)
To save time on captioning, unless stated otherwise, the art included in each entry is the official icon packaged with the bank. All links to download the banks will be in the heading.
Ennem Mon Star
Ennem Mon Star is a soft voice. This generally means UTAU will ratchet up the noise, giving you a very airy and noisy bank.
And if you know me, you'll know that I don't care. I love it. It's a sweet and adorable girly voice. I really like it. Moving on!
Shiki
Let me start by saying that there are some weird things that got me searching. I found no result. The voice provider is listed as "Shiro Queen (AiDeXinn, HALWI, MIGGRAINE)". Is that three people? Four people? One person?? I can't find any links to who Shiro Queen is or where she is from. The "r"s are a little strange and the palatalized consonants are butchered. The main place palatalized consonants live is Russian, so I'm just really confused, ok?
The OTOs aren't that great, but I love this voice, ok.
It's soft and strong at the same time while carrying a feminine characteristic. I really like it.
Ma Linaa / MLAA
Ma Linaa / MLAA's CV and VCV banks are night and day. I'm not the biggest fan of the CV, but I want to hug the VCV. The OTOs are really weird, but I can still hear the qualities I love in her VCV.
Onica's Curse
Onica's Curse was created entirely by emoPaladin as far as the ReadMe shows. As opposed to linking back to Fractured Hope, she links back to emoPaladin's deviantArt.
It's fun to listen to Onica's Curse's samples. You can tell that emoPaladin was starting to struggle a little while still pulling through in the end. These OTOs were done the same strange way as MLAA's. But that doesn't matter as much as the quality of the voice.
This is one of those voices that you need to be better than I am at UTAU to make this voice sound stunning, but this voice definitely has the capacity to be stunning.
Voices and Designs That Spoke to Me
In the previous sections, I either liked the voice or the design. For these UTAUs, I adore both. They're the ultimate winners in the race of my personal opinion! My personal opinion isn't exactly the best indicator of quality, mind you. I'm sure the people of Fractured Hope Co would be stupefied and annoyed by my choices . . . but it's my blog!
Unlike before when I only used the icon, I will use images packaged within the bank that actually showcase the design in this section. The art is all found within the bank.
Masha Moonspeak
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| Art by dreamsreaper |
The samples sound like a mix of jump cuts, not knowing what's going on, and being too quiet. It would take work to get this voice to a truly presentable level, but I love those kinds of underdog UTAUs!
If you want to hear her at her best, check out the link in the header. Used correctly, this bank is my favorite kind of bank.
The design is really plain, and that's why I adore it.
Hannah's Regret
Let me start by saying that the reason I put this UTAU in the favorite pile in the first place was the fact that the demo song was Cantarella. The second reason was boots. I really like boots. You can't see it in the included image, but Hannah's Regret has awesome boots. You can see both of those things by clicking the link in the header.
The voice is pretty great and is my favorite male voice by Fractured Hope Co.
Anne Claire / (AC-93-Anne)
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| Art by emoPaladin |
This bank is cute. The design is cute. It's the kind of cute where you can just click on random samples and go "b'aw :3". That being said, the CV bank is a flawed bank. There's a warning that it is missing samples on the download page. As cute as it is, the る is an う with no "r" at all. There is the VCV Synth, but I'm not a fan of that concept!
Honorable Mention
Honorable Mention goes to Misao Serai. She has banks I love and designs I love, but I can't figure out what goes with what!
That's Fractured Hope Co!
I couldn't do a write up on all of the UTAUs, so I picked some that I liked enough to download and show off. I hope it was helpful, and I hope it brings this collective to at least one new person's attention. Fractured Hope Co put a lot of effort into not just their UTAUs, but their entire extended universe.
If you've got some time to spend and need ideas for a new project, checking out Fractured Hope Co's website is a great idea 😄
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