Forgotten Friday #67 - 詩基歌鈴 / Shinomoto Karin

So, I had just finished the Sukoshi Coco article, and I sat down to write this one. I was dizzy and my words were not turning into hand motions. I stood up and looked around my room while I thought. I knew I needed food, but I didn't know what to eat. That's when it hit me. Bland nutrition shake! I love Soylent so much. Instead of worrying about my macros and my nutrients, I just drink a Soylent and bam, I have a well balanced meal in my tummy.

Forgotten Friday #67 - 詩基歌鈴 / Shinomoto Karin

This guy is on row 15 in my spreadsheet, and I opened his UTAU Visual Archive page so many times to see if I would finally write about him. Every time I opened the page, I was like "huh, that looks familiar". I love that the design is traditional art so much.

Now, looking closely at the name, 詩基歌鈴, I can't see it very well. I instantly recognize 基 and 歌, but then there's one that I think looks like 詩, but... Once I typed it out I saw what it was. That just leaves 鈴. I won't learn that until I'm at level 39 on WaniKani, so I don't feel bad about not knowing it means buzzer. Basics of Poetry Song Buzzer. Okay.

Who is Karin Shinomoto?

I have no idea which bank this came with; I took it from the visual archive

I should save this sentiment for the how are the banks section, but this UTAU is just... All of the downloads are spread all over the place, some are uploaded twice, and way too many links are just dead. And it uses a weird Yahoo based uploader for some of them? Some archives just have a prefix map or a few breaths, so I don't know how many banks there even are! 

So anyway, instead of just trying to find all of the information from files inside the bank, I'm Google Translating the entry on the Visual Archive. 

And... He's 35!? I thought he was like seventeen at most! I didn't even listen to the voice. I just assumed that design belonged to someone who was young. 

There's a divorce calendar. I do not know what that means. He is a doorman. My favorite part is when it says his character item, it says "持ち物 にんじん（何故". Yes, Karin. Why. (It says "holding item: carrot (why")

I'm sure if I put my mind to it, I could make this a coherent story. But I'm just like, what is a divorce calendar? Does he record divorces in his divorce calendar? Is he getting a divorce and putting important dates in a calendar? Why is his character item carrots?

How are Karin Shinomoto's banks?

Okay so, it's a whole mess. I made a few executive decisions and decided to pare down the number of banks to five. I cut out a revised version of Act 1 and 2 because the readme was written before the actual Act 2 came out? And also before Act 1.15 came out. Those revised versions were packaged in the same folder, and my head was hurting too much.

With all of the stress of figuring out what goes where and downloading several banks twice from different sources, I may have missed some links that seemed broken but I could have picked up elsewhere. (Or that one site just kept saying it couldn't talk to cancer.) So, the banks I will look at are "no suffix", "1.10", "1.15", "Act.2-R", and "VCV". 

That being said, let's pop open a tester UST and just go in order here.

The first one is "no suffix", or likely "act 1". Act 1 is adorable and sounds like a little baby who pitched down their voice to sound manly. I may be wrong, but the average pitch is C4. 

The OTOs are not very good at all, but this is a little muffle baby UTAU, and having bad OTOs helps the little baby be muffled and this banks is so adorable. 

Next is 1.10. The average frequency jumped down to F3! And... Suddenly, Karin is a jiisan UTAU. All of the cuteness from the previous bank is gone... But I think that really was intentional. The samples are extremely short for some reason, but I really don't mind that at all. OTOs are totally wonky, but it wasn't anything I couldn't fix right quick for a sample this short.



Next, we have 1.15. The jump from 1 to 1.10 was so massive, how different will 1.10 and 1.15 be? To start, 1.15 has four pitches. Up, null, down, and down down. Of course, the prefix map doesn't work because of the prefixes (not suffixes apparently!) being in the file names and not the aliases. This won't be hard to fix, so, I'll fix it. But, that took so much time, I won't fix up the OTOs!

This bank has the whole jiisan aesthetic on point, but the samples are just so robotic. If you like robotic jiisans, then this is a great bank for you. But, like, I only knew one person like that, and they moved on from that voice type a while bank.



Act 2 is only two pitches, and the microphone quality is so much, insanely so much better. Prefix map still doesn't work, but for this one I figured I would just put the prefix in the UST instead as it's only one prefix to worry about. (Also... Suffix broker doesn't do prefixes?)

It hurts to see something like this happen. The microphone quality is so good, but the consonants have been eaten. The quality is so much better! The high notes do seem strained, but I'm just sad about the consonants. Having a noisy bank that enunciates is better than having a very pristine bank that doesn't make the right sounds.



Finally, we have the VCV. Yay! And... The robot voice is back. Super muffled. I had my hopes up after Act 2, but the writing on the wall was there. This is a three mora VCV bank.

If you're okay with some robotic whirring and like jiisan banks, then yeah, this is basically perfect. But that's not really something most people are really into.

Where can I download Karin Shinomoto?

Here. That's really the place with the best chances of getting the most banks. Look under the リンク section in the sidebar to find the links.

Karin is a jiisan UTAU if you ignore his first bank. Either you like those, or you don't. There are less robotic jiisan UTAUs, but maybe you want to use a robotic bank to recapture that feeling of 2009. I'm a little glad that this UTAU isn't a shining beacon that everyone wishes to partake in, because downloading this UTAU is stressful. 

At least I had fun with my new tester UST! Having a jiisan sing Meltdown or Koe is kind of weird.