Forgotten Friday #73 - Takeshi Fujiwarane / 藤原音武

Here's another UTAU whose online presence has been completely torched, but somehow still has a bank available for download on the UTAU Fandom. Fun fact, the voice provider included his MSN handle and his skype handle in the readme. MSN was such a dope instant messenger. You could draw in it and send the drawings, you could basically make your own small reaction gifs, and you could customize what color your chat window was. Then Skype got bought out and Skype replaced MSN. That's life, I guess.

Forgotten Friday #73 - Takeshi Fujiwarane / 藤原音武

As I said in the lead in, this UTAU just doesn't exist anymore. There's one image on deviantArt and two videos (that I counted) on YouTube. Those videos are both from eight years ago. It's a miracle one of his banks was still up. (And as a super plus, it was his VCV that survived!!)

Anyway, on to the article!

Who is Fujiwarane Takeshi?

Official Icon Packaged with Bank

So, first, it has to be said that this character has no character if you remove his girlfriend, Kaeru Reni, from the picture. 

Now, this backstory is a ride. Okay. Takeshi is lazy and loves crayons. His character item is a green crayon. He hates insects (relatable) and... getting praised for good work? Is that in the right section?

Okay, so a note on the term cyborg. The general Sci-Fi definition basically means that anyone with a pacemaker (device that keeps your heartbeat regular) is a cyborg. A clone is just a genetic copy of the original person or animal. In Sci-Fi, a clone can just fall out of a vat of goo, but in reality, a clone is just born like any other human or animal. (Though, cloning humans "officially" has never happened. I swear China has to have cloned at least one wealthy person!) So, with that in mind, I kind of have no idea what any of this means. 

Takeshi is a clone, though he doesn't know it. He believes that he is a cyborg that was created to sing for people. Was the creator also a cyborg? What robotic parts did he put onto Takeshi? Was cyborg misunderstood as robot?

He has long lived for two years as of 2010, but he had the body and mind of a sixteen year old. Does that mean that he is a cyborg clone who is now twenty-six, or does it mean that he's a robot that is still sixteen?

There's really problematic parts of his backstory that I don't feel comfortable writing down. It's okay, because we were all edgy teens back then. Holding nothing against the people who came up with this. But, really, the phrasing is problematic.

But, the last sentence in his character description answer all the questions. He's not a cyborg. He's a robot. Reni is also a robot. And how do I know that distinction? Reni has files stored inside of her, and Takeshi has passwords to unlock them. Technically, there would be ways to put files inside of a human in a Sci-Fi setting. For example, a neural interface could allow a cyborg to access and view files by basically running composite cables to the lobes of the brain responsible for vision and sound. Maybe the cyborg just has a USB drive in their finger and they can plug it into computers to share files. But that's not the implication here. The implication is that she has a hard drive in her brain that is used to store data and is used for her personality and so on. There's no implication of human parts, and the timing makes it nearly impossible for her to have organic matter within her body, unless she's Adam Frankenstein. 

I get too wrapped up in world building.

How is Fujiwarane Takeshi's bank?

Let me start with stating that Lauren, Reni's voice provider, worked really, really hard to make the best product possible, and Takeshi's voice provider seems to be really intertwined with Lauren. I hope she doesn't mind me sharing this cute story. Her father was an audio engineer, so he worked with her to find and eliminate as much noise as possible in the house so that she could have the best recordings possible with her given setup. 

Let me start by saying that I can't tell if Takeshi was recorded on a microphone that wasn't the best or if he had used noise removal. If it was that the microphone wasn't the best, then I'm not mad. The recordings are extremely clear and the tone is pretty dang consistent. If it was noise removal, then it's the same problem of cut consonants. In 2010, it was a really good idea. But now, UTAU has gotten really good at hiding the noise and having the less "hollow" samples with the noise would be preferable. 

It has that "hollow" sound, and you can hear it in the output from UTAU, but it's a really nice bank! You can really tell how much effort was put into it. 

Where can I download Takeshi Fujiwarane?

His download is on his UTAU Fandom page. For 2010, it's an amazing bank, but the "hollow" samples are a bit of a down side. If you're interested in nostalgia for 2010, pick up this bank immediately!