Forgotten Friday #58 - 忘音ナル / Wasurene Naru

AAAA!! This article is literally only possible because of my friend Smoke! They were kind enough to download this bank because I couldn't get the file sharing site to work and send it to me. I had literally been trying to get this UTAU since January of 2019, and I finally got him on November 8th, 2019. I could have kept up the illusion that it took an entire year, but ya gotta be transparent. (But that's still a really long time, even if it isn't over a year.)

Forgotten Friday #58 - 忘音ナル / Wasurene Naru

This bank is from February of 2009. I'm not pulling your leg! If my "counting cells" is correct, this was the 60th UTAU ever released. (Or 59th or 61st. I'm really bad at counting, and the cells on Ruto.yu aren't aligned well when it comes to the numbers indicating order.)

According to the readme, this is an incomplete bank. I think they probably meant that there were some errors the voice provider, Sifi, didn't fix. It seems to have all of its samples, so it doesn't feel incomplete at all to me. (Really, so many old banks are missing samples!!)

I am just so excited to jump into reviewing this bank!

Who is Naru Wasurene?

Art from Meltdown Video
there was no icon in the bank!

Just straight up, Naru was a white whale. I knew nothing about him other than the fact that I couldn't download him. I tried on and off for almost a year, and I couldn't. I just felt like it and sent the link to my friend, and they were able to figure it out and I was over the moon about it.

So, with some help of Google translate and Jisho, think I have come to understand that Naru is a thirteen year old boy who loves candy. The one thing he can't stand is things that aren't mochi having a doughy and elastic texture. (Or is it the stickiness he doesn't like?)

He hates waiting and loves making sweets. Though, making sweets while you're impatient can damage the sweets a little! All of that waiting for the sugar to get to temperature and waiting while chilling things to mold into shapes... 

Just a fun fact. In Japanese, there's a different between "concept of thing" and "physical thing". So, the physical thing he hates is that mochi texture when it isn't mochi. The "concept of thing" he dislikes is waiting. I was caught off guard by there being two "dislikes" sections until I noticed the different kanji!

Anyway, his personality is really well fleshed out for an UTAU this old and is rather adorable!

How is Wasurene Naru's bank?

I believe it's possible that Naru has two banks, but I was only able to get one with the help of Smoke. It's also likely that he only has one. The original bank for his compatriot, Miru, is rough. The only distribution link that worked for Naru was on the same blog post as the Miru bank Smoke got to me, so who knows. 

Regardless of all of that, this is such a cute and sweet UTAU! The only complaint I could possibly have is that the OTOs are wonky. Some were so wonky, only static played because they put the last blue line before the consonant! That was really wacky. But those can be fixed insanely easily! So, no real complaints.

But I love this voice so much. It's a very kind and sweet voice that is helped by not using a "perfect" microphone. The voice type is a little common, but I really don't care whenever I hear a voice like this. It takes me right back to when I was first starting out and everything felt magical. This is such a cute and sweet voice, and I'm so glad I finally was able to use it.

Where can I download Naru Wasurene?

The only link that either Smoke or I were able to get to work was from this distribution post on his voice provider's blog. It may take a bit of trying, because I never got it to work. If this is a persistent problem for some people, send me a DM on Twitter and I'll just hand over a reupload. But I won't post the reupload here because doing that stuff is kind of frowned upon.

If you love UTAU history, this is an amazing bank. It was released insanely early, but is still perfectly usable and has such a sweet tone! I really, really am glad I get to write this article, because this is just such a nice UTAU.