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

Ichigo was recorded on May 29th and May 30th of 2009. As I schedule out my articles in advanced, I'm actually writing this just a week before this UTAU's tenth anniversary! I'm actually shook because my old UTAU actually was recorded before Ichigo - I had always assumed that mine had been released after her for some reason.

 This UTAU's Wikia page is pure weeaboo fun, which I honestly miss so much. Her enemy is Neru Akita and Hatsune Miku is her adopted big sister. The design is insanely adorable with McDonald's themed stockings. She's also Japanese for some reason.

I can't find any information on her voice provider, TokiTokiIchigo, other than her name. It's a really common name, so I don't think I could find any information on her whereabouts now. I tried googling TokiTokiIchigo, and only fanart by (who I assume) are other people show up. All of her contact info was probably exchanged in private, so I think it's impossible to find her now. But, the only reason I can imagine you'd want to contact her is to beg her to record VCV. With the resurgence in giving love to CV banks, updating Yukaine Ichigo for the modern era feels iffy. That being said, let's get into how the girl sounds.

How is the bank?

Before we start, the RAR file is 81 megabytes. 

When I saw that, I got a little excited and really confused. Was she multipitch?! Did she have super long samples?! Nope. The bank has three demo songs included, all encoded as WAV. Those demo songs are over one hundred megabytes unzipped. The bank itself is under eight megabytes unzipped. 

Her OTO is completely unconfigured. There was a version uploaded to MegaUpload which had an OTO file, but it was a 2009 OTO file. Running the bank through Moresampler would probably give a similar result anyway. (By the way guys, if a service transparently pays you to pirate, it will probably get shut down by the government.)

The samples are recorded in a way that really messes with Moresampler. Some samples are missing consonants, some consonants are way too tiny... I just really like the voice, so I don't mind OTOing the samples by hand for the demo. In addition to the eaten consonants, some of the vowels are just off. び is adorable. You know how Drag Queens say "Bye!"? That's how she says it! But, of course, that messes with the lyrics. 

This is one of those UTAUs that you only use because you want to be nostalgic. Using this bank as a plug and play will require someone to painstakingly splice samples together and to remove wonky parts from the samples. There are a ton of voices that sound like this, but without the errors... But if I got permission from TokiTokiIchigo, I would honestly do all of the splicing. I have no idea what it is about this bank, but all of the harsh English Rs and unsteady samples make me just so happy. 

Where can I download this bank?

Ichigo Yukaine's voicebank is available for download on her UTAU Wikia page. As I said above, this bank can't be used for Plug and Play until someone fixes all of the errors. TokiTokiIchigo is pretty much impossible to track down, so it would have to be someone who can flip the double bird to people saying that what they are doing is "illegal".

Even if no one downloads and uses Ichigo because of this article, hearing what ten years of OTO wisdom and engine improvements can do for an UTAU. I just imagine what TokiTokiIchigo's reaction would be if I could go back in time and show her this.

Yeah, this is why I started this series - to go down memory lane.