Wiki Wednesday #108 - 雪音ねむき / Yukine Nemuki
So, in researching I ended up going down a philosophical rabbit hole. Japanese ghost stories have a bit of a reputation for being downright silly sometimes. There's a demon (a yōkai to be technical) that just… licks dirty bathrooms.
I googled to see if yōkai are widely believed in, but there's no straight answer. One article even claimed it was an extension of Japan's polytheism, putting a talking shoe on the same level as Jupiter. Actually going to Wikipedia more properly accredits yōkai to the belief in Animism.
When reading through the history, you realize that people are fully aware that yōkai are made up for fictional stories. One guy made up around thirty of them for his manga. When people can reliably point out that something is entirely fictional, you can't describe them with any reverence as if it were analogous to Greek nymphs.
So, yeah. There are so many American shows about people hunting ghosts and Sasquatches. A formerly educational channel aired a mockumentary about mermaids existing and people actually took it as fact. Also, there's an entire genera of conspiracy theories that a man who was born in 1889 is still alive in Argentina.
So yeah, even with all of the Japanese content flooding the lives of loner teens, the anglosphere still tries to make the country seem wacky and "other".
Usually this is after the break, but ya know, I was seriously curious about this.
Who is Nemuki Yukine?
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| official art from bank |
So, back is the halcyon days of who the heck even remembers, there was a vocaloid named Something Piko. He was the last VOCALOID I know of to have a demo version. It was asked people not post works using him, but like, there was a resounding "I'm American and you can't tell my what to do!" from the anglosphere. (Yes, I just implied Australians claimed to be American to use a fancier word.) That's probably why that was the last demo I can remember happening.
I have bad memory, but to me I thought this was completely, fully, What's His Name Piko, grown, tired, and in pajamas. He has the grey hair with the hair flippy. That's all I needed to see to just say "more different Piko". I know it's not correct to be so reductive, but you know how it be.
His back story actually made me expect an entirely different design. Nemuki's best friend is his pillow. The biography also completely misunderstands makuragaeshi. Because I'm on my phone and autocorrect is a thing, I'm calling that yōkai Pillow Flipper. He doesn't steal pillows. He flips them over. Now, from a Western perspective that sounds really helpful. If your pillow is too hot, you flip it over to the cool side.
Well, in Japan, it's not even kind of like that. There is a folk belief that your soul leaves your body and hangs out on your pillow when you sleep. When Pillow Flipper comes and flips your pillow, your soul can get stuck inside the pillow.
Note that I said folk belief. Virtually no one believes that anymore, but people will sometimes flip pillows as a prank.
Anyway, Nemuki has narcolepsy, so he always has his pillow with him. He is haunted by demons threatening to steal his pillow. He sings to himself because silence triggers his narcolepsy and he wants to stay awake to fight of the demons.
Rereading the biography from the wikia, I made it way less cute and fun with the way I retold it. All that said, how is the bank?
How is Yukine Nemuki's bank?
Nemuki only has one bank. It is a one pitch, romaji encoded CV bank. The OTOs are randomly bad, where I can't say what's wrong as a whole, because some things are wrong in places and right in other places.
The average pitch is D#3. It's okay. Nothing great, and it would be a little annoying to use with some samples sounding slightly off. Low quality microphone, it sounds like, but that just helps back up the character's profile.
Where can I download Nemuki Yukine?
You can download him from his UTAU Wiki page. He's okay.
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