Forgotten Friday #27 - Ichigo Yukaine / 愉快音イチゴ

Who is Ichigo Yukaine? How can I  download 愉快音イチゴ? Where did TokiTokiIchigo go?

Forgotten Friday #27 - Ichigo Yukaine / 愉快音イチゴ

Man, my only memory of Ichigo was some guy talking out of both sides of his mouth. Disparaging out of one side, and making fan art out of the other. I only remembered the side of the conversation I was privy to, so I thought it was jealousy because YoYoPines used her.

Now, every time my mind wanders to the guy who was double talking, I realize the decade old egg on my face. You'd think I would have found all of the eggs, but they keep just showing up!

Regardless of that personal drama, Ichigo was the kind of UTAU that dropped off. Other than a video from that one Japanese guy who really likes Ashioto Kori, she has been abandoned for nearly a decade. With that being said, let's talk about Yukaine Ichigo.

Who is Yukaine Ichigo?

Concept Art from UTAU Wikia

Wiki Wednesday #16 - 花音ちろ / Chiro Kanon

Who made Chio Kanon? Why did her Twitter get deleted? How can you not adore this UTAU?!

Wiki Wednesday #16 - 花音ちろ / Chiro Kanon

I cheated. This UTAU has nearly 900 videos on her release video... on NicoNicoDouga! I can't find any videos on YouTube, so this little girl does in fact qualify for Wiki Wednesday! (Though, with her being released in 2013 and no videos being uploaded to YouTube in that time, she technically also qualifies for Forgotten Friday, but I found her on the Wiki.)

Lately, I have been complaining a lot. That ends now. I will say that I'm not the biggest fan of how these OTOs were done, but I understand it could be a stylistic choice to emphasize the cuteness and softness and I love it. 

The Twitter linked to in Chiro's ReadMe has been deleted, but I wanted to tell Tirou, her voice provider, how much I adored the bank. I emailed her saying as much. I also offered to OTO any VCV she records, which I shouldn't have with my busy schedule, but that voice did something to me! 

I know nothing about Tirou other than I owe her a few VCV OTOs now. Whoops.

Who is Kanon Chiro?

Official Art Packaged with Bank by コソラ

Forgotten Friday #26 - 唄世ウカ・恵禾エオ / Utase Uka + Keika Eo

Who is Utase Uka? I really am giving up on this SEO thing, as I don't think it works. Who made Keika Eo?

Forgotten Friday #26 - 唄世ウカ・恵禾エオ / Utase Uka + Keika Eo

Again, I'm double booking Forgotten Friday. Last week was pretty bad and these two share a NicoNicoPedia page. 

Amazingly, their voice provider is still active to this day! I didn't do any deep dives, so I only downloaded the banks listed on the NicoNicoPedia. 

Anyway, since there are three banks split across two UTAUs, I will change the format a bit, starting with the one who was actually listed on Ruto.yu.to.

Who is Utase Uka?

Official Icon Packaged with bank

Wiki Wednesday #15 - Kitsune Mangaka / 漫画家キツネ

What is a Kitsune? Who is Mangaka Kitsune? A mangaka is a manga author, and a kitsune is a fox.

Wiki Wednesday #15 - Kitsune Mangaka / 漫画家キツネ

I don't speak Spanish. Sometimes if I know the basic idea of what something says, I can parse it. But, the only way for me to actually know any information about this UTAU is to use Google Translate. 

A nice touch is that this UTAU comes with a PDF that explains usage for Spanish and with some information about the character. It's in Spanish and you can't easily Google Translate a PDF! 

A decade ago this would be odd - most Spanish speaking users would do their best to post everything in English and would only start speaking Spanish when directly speaking to another Spanish speaking user. Just like the Russian fandom exploded, so did the Latino fandom. Now, this isn't some crazy concept - it's just an UTAU that was made by a Latino.

With Google Translate by my side, let's get into the meat of this article!

Who is Mangaka Kitsune?

Official Icon Provided with Bank

Japanese to English Equivalency Chart

Which Hiragana make which sound? How can I make my UTAU English without recording an English bank? How can I make Defoko sing English?

Japanese to English Equivalency Chart

This is an appendix to my Japanese CV English in UTAU videos in which I show exactly what you use to get the sound you want.

Note: Shortly after writing this, I realized that it was impossible for me to create the video without any monetary input from my viewers. If you want the video series I was intending to make happen, please donate to my Patreon. 

Forgotten Friday #25 - Kantaru Aratane / 新た音カンタル

Who is Kantaru Aratane? Why is there kana in the surname? The power of lasagna is that when you put one atop another, you have simply created a larger lasagna.

Forgotten Friday #25 - Kantaru Aratane / 新た音カンタル

Another case of "I should know you. Why don't I know you?" 

Nick S. / Zengodnick's only social media link given is a YouTube account with, what seems like, one unlisted video. He only has four subscribers, but he has 2,880 views views across his channel. The only way to access the unlisted video is by searching "Zengodnick" which only brings up the (other than playlists) empty channel and that one video. (It's a fandmade anime music video.)

There is no readme or character file in Kantaru's bank, so no hopes of finding info there. There are no videos of this UTAU on NicoNicoDouga or YouTube. I understand completely why there's no videos made by other people, but it is strange that an UTAU this old doesn't at least have a release video.

Who is Aratane Kantaru?

Image from UTAU Wikia

Wiki Wednesday #14 - Andoryu Akai / Andoryu Makka

Who is Andoryu Makka? Does this have to do with McDonald's? Who is Worn-Out Shuu?

Wiki Wednesday #14 - Andoryu Akai / Andoryu Makka

Doing research on voice providers is a bit of a touchy subject. A blog like this should function on the qualities of the UTAU and not on the details of the voice provider. But people are really interesting, man! Worn-Out Shuu has been relatively active on the UtaForum (psst.... stay away from there if you're new to the fandom...) offering to provide voices for other people's UTAUs. 

There are some upsetting things that Worn-Out Shuu has posted, but you can tell from the voice bank that the kid is a kid. He'll hopefully grow out of that phase. 

Apparently, there is a final version of Andoryu Makka that was uploaded. But gosh darn it, I have a data cap in effect and I already have the only version linked from the UTAU Wiki.dot. Another odd thing is that the surname Akai and Makka (red vs deep red) seem somewhat interchangeable. 

Who is Andoryu?

Official Icon Packaged with Bank

Why I Set Up a Patreon and What It Means

Why am I asking for donations?? Is Wiki Wednesday at risk?!

Why I Set Up a Patreon and What It Means

So, you might have noticed the little message at the top of the blog. I set up a Patreon!

Before I get started, I want to make one thing super clear: Wiki Wednesday and Forgotten Friday will go on no matter how few donations I get! I write those because if a time traveling version of me was plopped down in the present day, I would want those articles.

When I was younger, I kind of treated UTAUs like Pokemon. I wanted to fill up each Pokedex as much as possible, resulting in projects like my 100 UTAU Koe Chorus. A resource that would help me fill up my UTAdex and let me hear samples to decide if I want them on my team? YES.

With the fact that my two main series will not be held hostage out of the way, the Patreon isn't just for this blog, but it is primarily made because of the blog.

I'll break it down a bit. If I were to avoid multi-pitch banks and appends, I could probably write both the Wiki and Forgotten article in about two hours per week. That's just eight hours of work, and under $60 per month that I'd be missing out on if my time was worth $7.25. $60 is a lot when you're low income, but it's a loss I'm happy to take if it means that time traveler Mae is happy. 

The issue is when I go beyond that minimum. In the Patreon, I make clear that the work will be based on what donors ask for. It just works out that the minimum for each of those three projects (in-depth UTAU tutorials, investigations, and MMD tutorials) is five hours. (I've spent up to ten hours on investigations before - there are some collective with an insane amount of UTAUs. I've also spent up to ten hours on LearnMMD articles, and that's not including supplementary videos.)

I'm not looking to make a fortune making these videos and articles. All I need to make this venture financially viable is roughly $35 per month for one "extended" bit of content, and I have a feeling that is enough for most people. For me to produce the work weekly as opposed to monthly, it would take $145 a month.

The reason I set up the Patreon now, whereas I was just happy doing everything for free before, is simply for the same reason I stopped Investigations to begin with. When you're low income, life throws you curve-balls. Just because one month you think everything is looking up, the next month everything may fall apart. I need to spend my time on things that are practical, because the thing my family was holding out hope for ended up not happening. 

If anyone donates, I will be extremely grateful and figure out a way to shout each of you out! Even if I don't get up to that $35 mark, I'll do my best to make my donors happy.

Forgotten Friday #24 - Meto Benine and Chomei Yokone / 紅音メト + 横音チョメイ

Who is Meto Benine? Where can I download Chomei Yokone? Where did their voice provider go?

Forgotten Friday #24 - Meto Benine and Chomei Yokone / 紅音メト + 横音チョメイ

So, my first question with these UTAUs is what in the heck did ya'll do to Marazaki?! Meto and Chomei's voice provider went nuclear, only leaving shells of accounts behind. Meto and Chomei's demos are still online as unlisted, but everything has been set to private, unlisted, or deleted on Marazaki's dA page and YouTube account.

This brings up a moral dilemma. While Marazaki obviously wanted to distance themself from those accounts, they didn't remove the downloads from the UTAU Wikia. Going onto the UTAU Wikia and removing the links is a lot easier than hollowing out an entire deviantArt account. Because these UTAUs weren't pulled down from the Wikia and their demos remain up, I'll function as normally.

Despite there being two UTAUs, I'm doing this as a Forgotten Friday because there's only three banks between the two UTAUs.

Official icons packaged with bank

Wiki Wednesday #13 - Kami Usaka / 兔歌カミ

Where can I download Kami Usaka? Who made 兔歌カミ? What does HG mean?

Wiki Wednesday #13 - Kami Usaka / 兔歌カミ

Before I get on with it, I want to complement HG_Ginta's / Mercury's website (HG is the symbol for Mercury!). I usually save all links for the end, but I have to give it props. Aside from it being a little difficult to figure out how to get to the download page (which you can circumvent by just getting the link from the UTAU Wiki.dot), it looks really nice. 

Kami Usaka was created by Hg_Ginta / Mercury. I did some research on Ginta, but it ground to a halt when I saw that Ginta has bunny rabbits! Ginta is primarily an artist and, at the time of writing, is contributing art to fan projects. I really lost steam when I saw the rabbits. I shouldn't be shocked that there were rabbits, as this UTAU is named "Rabbit Song", though!

Moving on from her creator -

Who is Usaka Kami?

Official Icon Packaged with Bank