Wiki Wednesday #137 - 馳音ヤタ / Yata Hasene

 This is my sixth article tonight! So cool! I think it took about three hours to get to this point. I think I only need six more to be in 2022! I definitely have that many drafts lined up, so yay! I'm excited!

Wiki Wednesday #137 - usa-utau's 馳音ヤタ / Yata Hasene

This one is a doozy! It's an usa utau, of course, but it's one of the ones that has a full backstory. Japanese tends to just leave out pronouns, and translate webpage is always worse than Google translating sentence by sentence. Translate webpage will just sprinkle in pronouns for the fun of it, even if they make no sense. 

I'm going to editorialize and recount the story with some details changed just based on the inferior translation. As a big note, according to what I read, there are major grammatical errors in some of the biographies that will screw up translation. (The error was leaving out "ni" after a "zu form" verb, which is supposedly incorrect in all cases, though I was going off of English language resources and not Japanese resources themselves.)

Mind you, I know how to write English well and I know all the rules. I will make grammatical errors all the time to emphasize a friendly tone. After I figured out what "zu form" was, I understood fully what they meant. It could have been a typo, or it could have been informal. (The biographies aren't proofread well - at one point they use VOALOID.) I don't have the vocabulary to ask whoever wrote it what the deal was. 

All of that is just to say, I know they will sometimes do things to make automatic translations wonky. That's why I cannot guarantee that my retelling is correct.

Who is Hasene Yata?

Official Art from Bank

To start, Yata is not directly based off of any vocaloid herself. Her counterpart, Yuto, however, is based off of IA. Likely, she is too. I don't really know anything about IA, so I couldn't tell you.

Her character item is an Otamatone she wears on her waist. Which, is hilarious for anything based on a vocaloid, because they are… well…. A garbage theremin that makes you squeeze Homsar's face. okay, that wasn't the best. This one, though… (now you can count to three!)

Yata was created in a lab to be an ubermensch using the genes of high ranking officials in the lab. Originally a virtual body, she was thrust into the world of humans.

When the revolt at the laboratory happened six years after her creation, Yata lost her old life. With only her clothes and a hairpin, she was protected in an orphanage. She met the person she wished to marry and gave them her hairpin as a promise. However, she was never able to keep her promise.

She was adopted by another laboratory where she met her dearest friend, Rust. However, against both of their wills, they were experimented on to become animal weapons. The researchers saw her affinity for crows and melded her genetics with those of a crow, disfiguring her arm to become the leg of a bird, complete with talons for fingers. Rust lost his memories of her, though she could still remember.

She was a failure in that they had done too well. She couldn't change her appearance to be fully human, and she was extremely strong. Two clones of her new genetic material were made: one to represent a white crow, and one to represent a normal crow. Their sole purpose was to keep her from harming anyone who the researchers wanted to remain safe.

Rust had grown hateful of her. She, and her guardians, knew that to survive, they had to leave. They ran. A search was called for them, but an attack from her caused the military laboratory that disfigured her to back away and allow her to leave. Rust fought to continue, but his superior knew the chase would kill him after seeing his injuries.

Yata did not leave unscathed. She was nearly dying when she collapsed in the yard of Eve, the person who holds this entire extended universe together. Eve cared for her until Yata was strong enough to go forward. However, Yata would still go back to Eve when her inner light was dimming. 

For decades, Yata hid away. However, while the military was taking over a remote village, they found her. Filled with rage, Rust gave her to the researchers along with her guardians. They destroyed her the way that The Party destroyed Winston Smith.

Yata, a broken shell of herself, was relegated to crowing sweetly to the researchers as a creative vocaloid. All she knew was that she still liked Eve.

How is Yata Hasene's bank?

Apparently, Yata was planned to have three banks. Sadly, only one is available. It is a one pitch CV bank. 

There is bad news. There are glitchy samples that just don't fit that randomly yell at you. I purposefully found a stanza that didn't include one of those, because I wanted to show her off at her best. It is a really nice voice with a less common voice type. It's halfway between youthful and mature, and has a very measured and unsure way of singing. I do like it! But I can also recognize that for some songs, it will be a major pain in the behind to use!

Where can I download Hasene Yata?

I want to use her in a fanfic. As much as I like her voice, her backstory is better. If you want to try her out, you can get her at her distribution page.