Forgotten Friday #152 - HANAUTA-PROJECT's 琉花 / Ruka

 I can't believe how fast this goes when each UTAU only has one bank! I might be able to reach my goal before the sun rises! But I won't state that as a goal because then I'd really feel like I had to do everything in one night. Which I don't. Unless...

Forgotten Friday #152 - HANAUTA-PROJECT's 琉花 / Ruka

 This UTAU is named Ruka. The reading could be Ryuuka. But they named him Ruka. Now, what’s the issue with this? Megurine Luka. The katakana is “Ruka”. This feels like a bad idea, and would be torn apart in the overseas fandom circa 2010. 

But, ya know what? There’s worse names. There’s names that just don’t work as an UTAU, because you’ll never find the videos of the UTAUs. This UTAU has unique kanji despite the unadvised reading. So, you can google for this, but not for an UTAU with a katakana name with no kanji like “shina”. 

Who is Ruka?

Official Art from Bank

The gimmick of this UTAU and the others on the same distribution site is flowers. The all have flowers in their name. But not, here is Rose and here is Daisy. No, they have the character for flower in their name.

So, random aside to something unrelated. There was an episode of Dexter’s Lab that still stuck with me. Well, just one specific scene. Deedee and Dexter have to make a cake, and they do really poorly. Well, I was a dumb kid, and Dexter was meant to be super smart. So when a joke made him more stupid than I was at the time, I thought it was the funniest thing ever! 

Deedee had grabbed some flour for the cake, and was about to use it when Dexter chided her and told her that they needed to use flower! He took a flower pot and just dumped it into the bowl. And it was so funny because he was smart, but he made such a dumb mistake! Stuff just hits different when you’re a kid, I guess.

Born on June 1st, Ruka is a male in his teens who is approximately 170 cm tall. I think that’s about 5’6’’? He likes sweets and dislikes mint and herbs. 

He has two designs. In one, he’s cosplaying as a priest wearing an Asian inspired robe of some sorts. In the other, he’s cosplaying as The Phantom of the Opera without the mast. His color story is pink and black with the exception of his hair, which is orange. Though, the dark pink could be considered maroon or purple. He has a black streak in his bangs. 

His name means precious gem flower. I don’t know what the flower he wears is meant to be. Usually I would be like, I need to google it to find out! Wild geranium. That’s my guess and I know it’s wrong, but like, there wasn’t much information to go off of. 

I’m torn about how I feel about flowers. I definitely do not like them indoors, because I am very allergic to pollen. But, seeing cute and happy flowers makes me happy.

My memory is shot, so I don’t know how much I’ve opened up on this blog. Like, if I’ve told stories like this one before, then there’s no issue being this personal. However, if I haven’t then it’s weird for me to be like, really personal all the sudden.

So here is the story anonymized. I saw a flower and called it the incorrect name. I was corrected. The next time I saw the same flower, I called it the incorrect name. I was corrected. This continued until the person who had corrected me began using the wrong name just like me. It made me really happy! It was a rare flower in my former environment, so most people paid no attention to the name. It was not a rare flower in that environment, so the name was well known.

I did know the correct name all along, and I never forgot it. I just liked to bring part of my former environment into that environment in small ways like that. 

How is Ruka's bank?

Ruka has a one pitch VCV bank that has the pitch name (D3) appended to the end of the file names. But there's only D3, so I don't know why they did that.

Of course, he has no FRQ files. He has a soft and sweet voice that is a bit youthful. Recording quality doesn't sound the best, but it's not poor by any stretch of the imagination. He's a good bank if you want a deep yet youthful male voice that is sweet and kind.

Where can I download Ruka?

You can download him from his distribution page. He is a nice UTAU with a nice design.