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

Who are Meto and Chomei?

Meto and Chomei are two out of Marazaki's three UTAUs. Their third, Wa Mashou, was never released despite being promised to drop around 2012. 

Meto's design is adorable if the icon is to be believed. However, due to Marazaki's deviantArt page being deleted I don't think it's possible to actually see the official design. Meto is ten years old (I can't believe that the UTAU is ten years old as a character and as a voice bank right now) and loves friends and chocolate.

Chomei is really cool looking. He is thirteen and 5'13'' (is that an error or a silly way of saying six feet?) He must be happy Wa never got a voice bank, because he dislikes her.

How are their banks?

Meto Act 1 has no OTO. I tried to use Moresampler to make one, but it was so insanely wrong that I turned to SetParam. SetParam did a better job with the OTOs than Moresampler and I'm confused. Of course, I had to delete all of the files with names like "x" and "p" because that made SetParam just stop working.

Meto's Act 1's biggest problem is by far the swallowed consonants. Her "s" samples are just straight up missing the "s". They may have been recorded correctly, but the consonants are cut so short, they sound like "t"s. I thought it was an OTO issue, but it's sadly a recording issue.

Just like Act 1, Act 2 (the folder is only named Meto) has no OTO file. However, better samples should result in Moresampler doing its patented decent enough job with CV OTOs.

Thankfully, this version has all of the vowels you need! The reason it sounds a little wonky is just that Moresampler is a little wonky when confronted with samples that aren't the best. The tone is slightly off from Act 1, and that keeps it from feeling like just a new and improved version. But, it's similar enough to know it is the same UTAU. 

Chomei Yokone only has one act available for download, and that is his Act 2. He has an OTO file!! Yay!! 

But it's literally "oto_ini.txt". I thought saving it as oto.ini would fix it. Nope. This is one of the weirdest problems I've faced with UTAU. Of course, I can just generate one that will be decent enough automatically, but I did want to see how this user OTO'd. (Spoiler, I generated it in SetParam and it treated the noise as a consonant, so I had to sit down and press F1 over and over...)

All of those struggle aside, Chomei blows Meto out of the water. I know that I'll almost always prefer a female voice to a male voice, but Chomei has a consistent tone, pronounced consonants, and decent recording quality. It's a little hard to suggest someone use a character vocal like Meto, but Chomei sounds like it's just someone's voice.

However, there is a possibility that Chomei's voice provider can no longer do Chomei's voice. Even if they came back, it's extremely likely Chomei and Meto could never have another Act or a VCV.

Where can I download Meto and Chomei?

Meto can be downloaded from her UTAU Wikia page. Likewise, Chomei's UTAU Wikia page is the one place that has his download that I have found.

Using these UTAUs requires you to ask yourself if you think their voice provider would want you to. Because the links were never taken down and there's no public statement saying you can't use them, I think they are fair game. However, it is up to you to decide how you feel about this situation.