Wiki Wednesday #121 - usa-utauの謎 / May

I was so lazy, I actually found "no" on May's distribution page so that I could copy and paste it instead of switching to the Japanese keyboard. It's one of those days, I guess.

Wiki Wednesday #121 - usa-utauの謎 / May

Hey guys! I'm going to answer a question I had without telling you the question. Ducks and chickens only share the Class Aves with each other. They don't even share an Order. The Order ducks belong to actually came before the Order chickens belong to! So I figure, the eggs came before the chickens. 

The closest living relative of birds are crocodiles!

So, the answer was because ducks and chickens are so different, they aren't even in the same Order.

Who is May?

Official Art from Website

Forgotten Friday #131 - 禊萩ウラン / Misohagi Uran

 Back when Dubya was president, someone made a parody of "Barbara Ann" that had words I don't think I can say here. But I'm like singing the parody in my head with Iran replaced with Uran. 'Member back then? Before Obama? 2020 lasted a decade, so looking back at before 2008 is like looking at the 70s now. So different. 

Forgotten Friday #131 - 禊萩ウラン / Misohagi Uran

Finally! I believe this is the last Airuga UTAU for a good, long while. I have really good news. I confused the names of this and another UTAU of theirs and I read the story for that one instead if this one. (Uran himself has no stories about him.) Boy howdy, I was just straight up terrified of the guy in that story.

Whoever writes these stories is gifted. Even with Google Translate and no idea what was going on, it was evocative and deep. I could imagine it all in the beginning, then it became so frantic that it would be detrimental to imagine it all, and then I could see the guy staring into the glass of the phone booth. Not the guy in the story, but someone. Someone who would have done that mess.

But that guy was terrifying and did awful stuff. This is an UTAU with no story and no biography. I guess… yay? I have an excuse to not be on topic?

Who is Uran Misohagi?

Official Art from Bank

Wiki Wednesday #120 - 七色ナナコ / Nanako Nanairo

While writing the last article, the internet went out due to a rainstorm. I never set my computer to hibernate, but then I did. I jumped right back in, no problem! That was nice.

Wiki Wednesday #120 - 七色ナナコ / Nanako Nanairo

I was actually unsure what this UTAU was because it was made by "ニコニコデザイン部", which sounds big and officially! But nicovideo making their own UTAU sounded unlikely. I was avoiding Nanako because of that, but I finally looked it up. It's a group with around six hundred members. There's been a bit of drama with it, apparently. It's been through two or three official owners, and someone who just took over without the old guy leaving. At least, that's what it kind of looked like reading the nico dictionary with Google translate.

I believe it's kind of like someone on DeviantArt made a "DeviantArt Designers Club" with no input or direction from the company running DeviantArt. It sounds really cool and amazing and you want to be a part of it! And you can. You just join it.

But a name like that make this UTAU (which isn't their only UTAU) look way fancier and more important than she is.

Who is Nanairo Nanako?

From Official Art

Forgotten Friday #130 - 墓場音ジャック / Hakabane Jack

 The frustrating thing about Twitter is that if I want to interact with the fandom, I actually have to spend a few weeks retweeting, tweeting, and replying constantly to make myself viable to the algorithm. Even if people are following me, Twitter will push my tweets down further to make room for people the algorithm likes, even if my follower isn't following them! That's not dope, because getting that involved involves getting that social media dopamine mess that makes people who are nice on the inside meanie-butts. 

Forgotten Friday #130 - 墓場音ジャック / Hakabane Jack

So, after getting so many words in, I realized that most readers, like, don't care about what I have to say about Halloween. He's a fifteen year old zombie with a pet floating pumpkin and a lantern. He eats candy with ghosts in the graveyard. You can skip to the audio file if you want to now!

Okay, now back to the actual article:

Get it?! Jack-o-lanterns?! 墓場 means graveyard. So he's graveyard song illuminated pumpkin!

Who is Jack Hakabane?

Official Art from Bank

Wiki Wednesday #119 - ねりか / Zestea's Nerika

I finally made a new English tester UST! Hurray! That's why I was putting off doing this bank. Sadly, Arpasing is a gross mess where you can't be promised the bank has everything you need. For that reason, I have a feeling I will get sad and frustrated. 

Wiki Wednesday #119 - ねりか / Zestea's Nerika

This UTAU was the tenth UTAU added to my spreadsheet for this series! However, for the longest while it was the second one from the first in terms of who needed to be written about and my words failed me there.

Number five was an UTAU named Dianne, but her page was removed. That means the number one, been neglected the longest UTAU was Nerika. She was there for so long because I contacted the voice provider. Zestea basically promised the moon, and I wanted to give Zestea a chance to get everything up before I wrote about Nerika. Sadly, that Moon never came and Nerika was not updated further.

That sounds weird when you slip into the mindset of Forgotten Friday (of course the person who made a bank in 2010 didn't respond!), but I started Wiki Wednesday in early 2019 if I remember correctly, and Nerika was released in early 2018.

There's nothing wrong with looking at what you promised and realizing you just literally can't.

If you asked me to record a six pitch vcv bank, I would laugh in your face. No. Unless you were paying me in vegan ice cream and sushi and were sitting beside me to stop me from wandering off… no. And I specialized MEL to take fifteen minutes of recordings if you dawdle, but no English list did that until then. Old English lists were worse than vcv, and Zestea promised to do that six times for one append. If a friend told me they were going to do all that, I'd tell them no because they'd hate the UTAU, their microphone, and making sounds period really quickly.

And don't even get me started on OTOs. I'm experienced and that experience makes me faster than other people. But six pitches of vcv? I only do that for money or objects I would have spent the money on directly. I will do free OTOs for six different friends no problem. But that's six happy people versus one. (The happiness I bring others makes me happy, but not enough to do six pitches of vcv without actual currency.) And don't get me started on the point when you just kind of don't want to talk because you can't stand your own voice after hours and hours.

Don't force yourself to keep promises like that. They were doomed to be impossible. The issue is really the way that the fandom criminalizes having fun. If you don't have a full VCV with blah blah blah and seventeen blah blah blah and a thousand dollar microphone, you can just kick sand. It's just one segment that is like that, but we all want to be popular cool kids at some point. And the popular cool kids won't look at someone with a cv bank.

So yeah. Life, huh?

Who is Nerika?

Official Art from Wiki

Forgotten Friday #129 - 九威海継音 / Kuimi Keito

 Before getting started, I do want to apologize. My brain has been doing poorly, and not attending to the blog has made me feel icky. But I'm not all here enough to not go down a straight line, so there will be family members being posted one after the other. Thankfully, going out of order before got rid of a lot of the members in families on the to-do list. So! Yeah!

Forgotten Friday #129 - 九威海継音 / Kuimi Keito

Let's play name translation! Nine, power, ocean, inherit, sound. Inherited sound is the given name, and the power of nine oceans is the family name.

Did we gain anything from looking up the kanji? I don't actually think so.

Who is Keito Kuimi? 

Official Art from Bank

Wiki Wednesday #118 - 双曲めんこ / Menko Soukyoku

Being honest, I have no idea how I jacked up my wrist. My only real guess is when I played Stardew Valley on my phone for like eighteen hours straight or something. But that was like a year ago or something! It just randomly started bothering me, so I put on a brace. I can barely type with it on, so I got out my phone and Google docs to keep working on the articles.

Wiki Wednesday #118 - 双曲めんこ / Menko Soukyoku

I had written half of this before I saw on the visual archive that no one actually knows the reading of this name. They needed a Western name to add her to the wiki, so they just picked a reading that was already used for a different word that followed the rules of Japanese word readings. (The word was 双曲面, which is a fancy math word.)

This UTAU is chubby!! Do you know how rare that is?! And I mean, I'm part of the problem. My UTAU is skinny, even though I'm chubby. But for people who use UTAUs as wish fulfillment will make their UTAU how they wish they were - skinny and half a foot taller.

So, seeing a chubby UTAU is great and makes me feel less bad about being part of the problem. Someone else is doing the representation!

Who is Soukyoku Menko?

art from visual archive

Forgotten Friday #128 - キュアシェの / Cure She's RUKATA

I had trouble trying to figure out how to title this article.

Forgotten Friday #128 - キュアシェの / Cure She's RUKATA

The story of this family, I don't know it. I just know that there are four UTAUs, but only one is still updated and cared for. Huya is the big dog on campus, and her sisters just have to stay home.

Who is RUKATA?

Official Art from Bank

Wiki Wednesday #117 - 山とサイト / Saito Yamato

Can I type with my wrist brace on? Very barely. I actually can type faster with only one hand with the brace on my other hand. 

Wiki Wednesday #117 - 山とサイト / Saito Yamato

The design of this UTAU is familiar feeling. I'm like, oh! Didn't I draw this UTAU in 2011?! But no! It's from 2018!

This isn't a dig on the design. I don't think I can point at an UTAU or anime character with the same design to say it's derivative. It's just that it feels comfy and known. I like feeling like I'm somewhere I've been when it's nowhere I've been before. That's why I loved Stardew Valley so much. It was like I was playing Harvest Moon all over again!

As a huge note, oh my goodness I love Harvest Moon DS. I played Cute when I was younger, but all of the bachelors stunk to high heavens, and you couldn't even do a friendship ceremony with the special bachelorettes in the American version! My plan was to marry the sleeping princess this time around, but after getting to level 255 once and then falling through a hole and missing it the second time, I decided Celia was way better, anyway.

Who is Yamoto Saito?

from official art