Forgotten Friday #83 - 琥酉のあくあ / Kotori's Akua

Okay, I'm going to do something bad for this article. But, not too bad. Let's start with some basics of why what I'm doing is frowned upon. When you create something, you own the copyright. Nobody is allowed to touch what you make without express permission. But, UTAUs feel like a weird grey area on the condition that there is no explicit statement that reuploading is against the rules. And, this UTAU has no such mention of any kind of rules. This UTAU, now that the release video is gone, is simply a bank and a four line readme file. That's it. No design, no character. Nothing. Now, you may be thinking that it's important to honor the original copyright. Here's the thing: the only way for anything to happen to the person who is infringing is to be given notice by the person who owns copyright to take it down. Does Kotori even exist anymore? If that person does not ask for it to be taken down, then it is fine to keep up given there is no clause requiring for the bank to not be redistributed. I will take the file down in a second if the original rights holder, Kotori, contacts me asking for it to be taken down. Is this iffy? It's archival, dang it.

Forgotten Friday #83 - 琥酉のあくあ / Kotori's Akua

So... There's no information on this UTAU at all. Which is actually strange, because unless this is literally just a copy and paste of another UTAU, a lot of work went into this. I'm kind of thinking this might be an illegal copy of a different UTAU... The samples are nearly perfect.

I take back what I said earlier about only taking this down if Kotori herself tells me to. If this is a copy of a different UTAU, I'll put it on big red letters at the top of the article that this is an illegal UTAU and how to use the real UTAU. I mean... If someone tells me that this is freaking Kasane Teto or something, I'll feel really dumb. But then again, like, it doesn't really sound like Teto... Right? This isn't Teto?? Or... For someone running a blog about UTAUs, I've really forgotten what most popular UTAUs actually sound like. 

Who is Akua?

All of these images, generated by AI, are equally as likely to look like Akua

I mean... There's really two possible circumstances here. This article goes up and literally no one takes the time to read through and take the time to find out if Akua is illegal. Then there's the possibility that Akua isn't illegal at all and someone makes her a really awesome design and she's suddenly popular somehow. Or, someone says, "Mae. You are literally deaf. That is (insert insanely popular UTAU)."

I've got like two hundred words to burn with nothing much to say, so let me tell you about a story I have forgotten fifty percent of the details for. So, there was this kid, right? Wants to be popular and lies about being Japanese for some reason. They wanted to have an UTAU that got famous for being really good. So... They rendered off samples in VOCALOID and made a bank out of them. The owner said "It sounds like (the VOCALOID the samples were taken from) but it ISN'T (that VOCALOID)." And everyone who heard it said "It sounds nothing like (that VOCALOID)."

I inspected the files and it was obvious that it was VOCALOID renders. Part of me was hoping that they took to effort to extract the files from the database, which someone could illegally pass off as a new UTAU rather easily with saying "uwu, I know it sounds similar. I just have a really nice voice and a really good microphone!" But everyone who is anyone knows what a VOCALOID render sounds like. It was just... so obvious you felt sorry for the kid.

Anyway, on to the bank.

How is Akua's bank?

It is freaking amazing. Nearly perfect microphone quality, perfectly consistent voice acting, and OTOs that didn't really need editing. This was a 2010 bank that was linked to on Ruto dot Yu. That's literally how I got it. I wasn't trawling the Wikia and looking for suspect things. I was on the definitive source for listing UTAUs! 

It's the perfect kind of forced kawaii voice that isn't shrill... It's just like, unreasonably good and that's why I'm just so concerned that it's straight up illegal. But if it isn't illegal?! Then like... Wow, people should use this UTAU. It's really up to y'all to figure this out.

Where can I download Akua?

So, as you know from above, I re-uploaded her because the video with the link got taken down. If anyone figures out if this UTAU is literally a stolen library from a different UTAU, I will take down the re-upload and link to the actual UTAU in big red letters on the top of this article. If this is an illegal UTAU, I really want to know who it was stolen from. So, please, someone download her and end this mystery.