Forgotten Friday #20 - Michiko Nikora / 二コラ美智子

Who is Michiko Nikora? How can I download Nikora Michiko? Who made ニコラミチコ ?

Forgotten Friday #20 - Michiko Nikora

In researching for this article, I found Michiko singing "Uraomote Lovers". I was quite a bit confused, as this was a Forgotten Friday article. That song is still super new in my head, so I got quite a shock when I found out the cover was from nine years ago. 

Michiko is a case that is both common and strange at the same time. She was created while her creator, Michicookies, still went by her original name, Rasha. Michicookies is still active to this day on YouTube. However, no UTAU content has been uploaded to her new channel. However, Michicookie's deviantArt proves that she does not fully disown Michiko. This piece of art was drawn only a few months prior to the writing of this article.

In researching, I also found a bank that no one seems to realize exists from 2011. This is a bit of a huge deal as Michiko's act three (which is the only one linked to on her wiki page) is from 2009. 

Official icon packaged with bank.
She is a cat/bird/human.

How are the banks?

I'm going to do this backwards and start with the CVVC. The samples are a bit noisy and the OTOs are wonky. However, fixing up the OTOs and ignoring the "r"s (bleh. I can't stand using "l"s as "r"s) makes her a pretty great 2011 CV UTAU. (Yes, I'm ignoring CVVC as always!)

She also has one more bank that still exists. It is both called her Act 3 and Bilingual bank depending on where you read about it. It is a two pitch CV that somehow has much clearer samples than the bank from a few years later. (and the "r"s are correct here but not later?!)

However, this bank has nearly every blank in its OTO set to zero. Ouch. In addition, the OTO is one of those weird ones where you understand the issue, but you're not fully sure why it is happening. Her OTO does not include the low pitch samples. That means that it will play the low pitch samples, but when you press "CTRL + G" to open the OTO editing window, it just refuses to load it.

I love the voice and I wish Michicookies had continued to update Michiko as voicebank building methods evolved.

Where can I download Michiko?

The only place I know of that has both links is the channel description of Michiko's old YouTube account. I assume that all other Michiko banks are gone because of the fact that her original banks were uploaded to MegaUpload. 

Michiko isn't perfect and will require a complete OTO overhaul to use correctly, but her Act 3 is phenomenal by 2009 standards. If you're in the mood for using some good 2009 UTAUs, this girl needs to be on your radar.