Wiki Wednesday #52 - 永月ひかげ / Hikage Nagatsuki

When my Japanese is as bad as it is, I can't really look down on anyone for weird translations. "She fluently fluent with my back feathers. Storage possible" makes no sense. But, a lot of descriptions don't. Some of that was missing in the Wiki's translation, but it basically meant that she flies really well with her wings, though they do not sprout directly from her back. In storage (?), her tattoo glows.  

Wiki Wednesday #52 - 永月ひかげ / Hikage Nagatsuki

Whoo! This UTAU has five banks, but I wrote the title before that dawned on me. Whoops! I'm probably going to take a coffee break halfway through writing this to keep my energy up. This is the third article I've done in this binge.

As a note, I'm too out of it to check, but there are 52 weeks in a year. That may mean this is the... what's an anniversary that doesn't fall on the same day? It's been a year of articles! Or it will be next week. Who even knows in this mad world?

Who is Nagatsuki Hikage?

Official Art Packaged with Bank

In the top, you saw me going on about translations and that jazz. So, I'm way too absorbed into wondering what a hard gummy is. I believe the answer is that Haribo gummies are and example of hard gummies. And I really don't blame Hikage for loving them! I can't stop thinking about eating the Haribo cherry gummies now! I can feel the stress on my jaw as I chew on the things right at this moment. It is so much work to chew those, but that's part of the fun! After getting used to Haribo, biting into a way softer gummy is so underwhelming. Unless that soft gummy is Kasugai. Kasugai gummies are the most dope, especially when you realize why strawberry has a different texture from pineapple. They're using real fruit juice!! Real products that come out of the ground!! Man, at first I was hesitant about the apple. But I was just eating one a few minutes ago, and it was apple juice. I never drink juice because it's just pure sugar hiding as "healthy", but I do miss apple juice.

I really like gummies. I really, really like candy in general.

Anyway, she loves Pyrus pyrifolia and hates horror. I think I was able to figure out what "(type that looks like a solid face and solidifies)" means. I think it means that she is the type of person who pretends that she's not bothered, but she is. Or it means that her face is solid and then solidifies. I'm not actually good at Japanese.

She says "boku" instead of "watashi", and gosh darn it! She just wants to go at her own pace!

How are Hikage Nagatsuki's banks?

I didn't realize there were five banks until it was too late. And one is 200MB zipped? Oh no. 

Her first bank is a one pitch CV, followed by a three (not pitch?? what are these called when they aren't differentiated by pitch??) "multi-expression" VCV bank. There's a one pitch VCV, and then another. That leaves us with one last one pitch VCV bank. 

I've been avoiding multiple banks for so long, I'm not sure how to proceed. The obvious answer is one at a time, but I think I need a brief coffee break before I can get my spirits high enough to tackle this.

...

It was way too cold to put on water, so I ate a sandwich and a diet soda instead. Alright, Let's start off by looking at Hikage's CV. 

Wow, that is literally not what I expected. In a previous week's article, I pulled out one of my "please don't make me use this word" words to describe the voice type. This is close to that voice type. While Raika was heavily voice acted, Hikage just sounds like someone who sounds like this naturally. It's a voice that skews younger and doesn't sound forced at all. This kind of voice will appeal to more people than Raika would, but, the microphone quality of the CV bank leaves something to be desired.

Her next bank is "ren". I mean, I know it's shortened from 連続音, but I like just thinking about pronouncing it like Ren from Even Stevens. (Which is really "WRIN!" because of the pen-pin merger. I can't hear the difference between pen and pin, because both are pronounced pin in my accent.) The icon for the ren bank is different than the one for the CV, and I believe that this will especially be the case for her later banks. Her CV and Ren bank were released in 2016 and 2017 respectively. The next three were released in 2018 and 2019, with the latter two being from 2019.

The microphone quality is much better in ren than in the CV, but the cute voice became more forced.

The next bank released was her soft bank, Cosmos bipinnatus. (Not kidding- that's what 秋桜 is!) On her download page, the bank is listed with both the subtitle and 弱連続音, but the archive file only has the subtitle.

This bank is best described as "slightly lower quality Haruka Nana", I think. (Please don't come for me if you dropped out in 2010 - modern Haruka Nana is high quality as heck.) This doesn't sound like a yowai bank in the least, but it does sound softer than Hikage's previous banks.

Now, I have no idea why my knowledge of UTAUs is so stunted right now. If I was in a better memory space, I could probably name five well known examples that track more correctly with that comparison, but there is no time for deep personal introspection when there is an unknown deadline.



Next is her strong bank, sunflower. Same as before, the site has the symbol for "strong" and then "renzokuon" and then "-向日葵-".

I haven't mashed go yet, and I'm a little concerned about how this is going to sound with how strong her previous banks were. Here goes nothing...

It's very different. The effort it took to use the strong voice gave a strain on the cute voice. You can hear in different samples how much variance there is in the recordings. Stacking voice acting a cute voice on top of voice acting a strong voice is really difficult. And it does show in this bank. It's not a bad bank, and I believe it would be the most popular of these four. When you know how difficult something like this is, you ignore the flaws because could you do better? I... I really wouldn't even want to try.


Thankfully, the final bank is just a compilation of all the banks. You can download it to get every bank mentioned here except for the CV. The CV is excluded from the compilation, for somewhat obvious reasons. (It's not VCV!)

Where can I download Nagatsuki Hikage?

Her download page is here! But who is the furry in the background? It doesn't look like Hikage, and it's Hikage's distribution page!

This is a perfect UTAU for people who love using multi-expression to enhance their tuning. My memory is shot, but I don't think multi-expression banks for voices like this exist that much because it's really, really hard to voice act while you're voice acting. But I may be wrong. Who even knows! All I know is that I'm glad that I actually did a longer post like this for once.