Forgotten Friday #15 - 竜歌ちま / Ryuuga Chima . . . b'aw :(

Who is Ryuuga Chima? How can I  download 竜歌ちま? Who made Chima Ryuuga?

Forgotten Friday #15 - 竜歌ちま / Ryuuga Chima . . . b'aw :(

This UTAU fills me with a sad form of disappointment. If the UTAU was left as its version one, it would be a typical ancient CV bank. Not really great to use, but whatever. Nostalgia for really old banks is fun, even if it's a hassle to use them to their full extent. However, just days after recording the "official bank", 雨_月, Chima's creator, created a version 1.1 bank. And it sounds perfect! Except for one fatal flaw that ruins the whole thing. I'll complain about that in the "How are the banks" section. First, let's get into who Chima Ryuuga is.

Who is Chima Ryuuga?

 

Official Art from UTAU Visual Archive

Ryuuga Chima has two forms. Her human form is adorable to me. I generally dislike pink, but I love that specific pink, and I love that shade of blue a lot also. The dragon form is also insanely adorable. Look at that cute little face with the cute little eyes! Officially, to use the dragon form, you need to use the "g-" flag. 

I have virtually no information on her voice provider. I did send an email to the address listed in the ReadMe file, however. There's a very good chance the email address is abandoned, but you can always try. (My email address is at least a decade old, and I use it every day for example.)

There isn't much information on Chima either. She doesn't like dancing or fighting, but she loves climbing trees and relaxing. I couldn't find an official age or anything like that.

How are the banks?

As I said in the title, b'aw :( . The bank linked to on the Nicopedia is ok for what it is: an old CV bank from 2010. It's fine.

It's version 1.1 that is just . . . Well, let's listen to it together. 

It sounds almost perfect! A perfect mix of soft and muffley, yet still clear. Until you notice the popping sounds.

At first I thought it was an OTO issue. No big deal, right? Nope. Not an OTO issue.

In that image, you can see where the "に" file was spliced into the "あ" file to make "にあ". Why would someone do that? Because all of the vowels are identical. Every sample is just consonants pasted onto identical vowels. The にゃ sample is a great way of showing the issue, but it just results in a tiny bit of mechanical noise. The main issue is samples like "の".

The first major issue is that the "n" is so tiny, you can barely hear it. (Negative consonant velocity can help this quite a bit.) The second issue is, well, it sounds like a plosive. An easy way to remember what a plosive is is that it's like an explosion. Liquid vowels are meant to be hard to OTO because they lead into the vowel smoothly. That one is so easy, OREMO autogenerator got it right. That's where the popping comes from. If they had taken the effort to use envelopes and cut the vowel to the appropriate place so that there was no explosion, it would have been great! I personally know that from splicing together missing sounds. It's not as good as having the actual samples, but it doesn't have to turn into a popping mess like this.

The reason I'm writing this isn't to be mean. It's to whine that a bank that could have been perfect for what it was was messed up by really, really weird choices.

The "official" bank from Nicopedia is fine. It's a pretty standard 2009 CV with errors that come from UTAU being a fun pastime activity and not something super serious. 

How can I download Ryuuga Chima?

The "official bank" (I use official lightly, it the only thing I know to call it as it has no numbers in the name) is available on the NicoPedia page. Scroll down to the "音源配布所" section and click the link. The password is utau, of course.

The Ver 1.1 bank is only found on the NicoVideo video where the bank was first distributed. Click the axfc link and put in the password (utau, again) and you'll be good to go!

I'm not sure how many people will read this and feel the need to download her. This is definitely a case of having to love the design to sink the work into fixing up these banks to a workable state.

However, I have emailed the voice provider about VCV. There's a chance that this UTAU will get an update after nearly a decade, and I'm excited for that possibility.