Wiki Wednesday #140 - Kikuro Johatsun

 Day two of trying to get this blog pushed out until 2022 before 2021 starts. Sadly, I want to go all in with Wiki Wednesday and get it pushed way out... but then Forgotten Friday wouldn't be pushed out until 2022, so that would miss the point. But at least I've got a few more Wiki Wednesday articles until 2022!

All Editor's Notes are from Dec 22, 2020

Wiki Wednesday #140 - Kikuro Johatsun

So, my dyslexia kicks my butt. Spent years thinking this was Kikuro Johnson. It obviously isn't, but that's just what dyslexia does.

I am annoyed, though. On television, whenever they were illustrating dyslexia, the words boogied and shaked all over the page. They were little noodles of lines that came to life.

Naw, not for me at least. I can easily illustrate what it is like.

Read this sentence. "I like to read along with older books."

Read it again. Read it three times. Now, you notice someone says something entirely unrelated to that. So you look back and now it says:

"I caught it along with older hooks."

It is just like the text was edited while you looked away. It was there, then it was something else. No fun jiggling around, just… entirely and utterly wrong. This is probably why I actually have the ability to read in dreams.

Who is Kikuro Johatsun?

Official Art from Bank

He is a furry! His species is very American. He's half wolf and half coyote! His fur is dark and tawny, and he has a blue Mohawk. He wears a yellow and green shirt with a biohazard symbol.

Where is the kanji of his name, though? 

I feel kindred to this UTAU. I dislike the things he dislikes. I noticed at first because I hate licorice flavor and olives. I also can't stand needless violence and rude people! And sometimes loneliness makes me cry. 

He likes chili dogs with onions. Oh my goodness, I really want a chili dog with onions now. Honestly, I kind of would like any meat. I'm doing my best to be vegetarian… but oh man. I would like some hearty chili around now! Maybe just pulled pork. Or anything. Really just anything that rings that specific bell in your brain that meat rings. (Editor's note: Since becoming vegan, the idea of meat makes me want to puke. I have tried it a few times, and it has always made me gag.) 

I am looking at my closet, though. I do have some instant noodles that might help. I think it may be more that I really freaking need salt right now, not meat. It definitely isn't because I need protein. I've been blowing that out of the water almost every day. I think I'll just pour salt onto my hand and lick it. (Editor's note: Huel Black is vegan and contains all the protein you need! Potato chips are also vegan and contain plenty of salt.) 

…

I did, in fact, pour salt onto my hand and lick it. I no longer am craving meat. Meat itself wouldn't have made me happy, but I associate meat more so with the cheap luncheon and hotdog garbage than the actual unprocessed stuff from the moo-moos and cluck-clucks. (Editor's note: I now associate meat with animals and the idea of animals dying for me to eat it. And it don't even taste good!)

One more thing to say of the UTAU: he is a kind introvert who likes video games.

He does have an English bank. I think I still have the little program I made that converts Arpabet aliases to VOCALOID phonetics. (Editor's note: I have it!) At least, I hope it goes that direction. But before I can worry about that, I need to make testing USTs and… my, my, my. I think I may be falling apart. I meet the needs as my body demands them, but I'm getting nervous because I had the caffeine equivalent of an espresso and a Pepsi because I was so tired to the point of nearly passing out after only being awake for six hours. (Editor's note: I have learned to live with my daily exhaustion, and it's no big deal anymore.)

What is even expected of me anymore? I had to take a break from my YouTube channel due to my really bad episode, but I think the episode is gone, but I don't even know who I am. (Editor's note: It's called dissociative identity disorder, and whoever you were at that point really freaking hated UTAU in general and made excuses to not use it. I like it, though!)

How are Kikuro Johatsun's banks?

I'll start with the Japanese CV banks, because I've got some words to say about the Arpasing bank.

Please, please, please do not zip your banks outside of a folder. His soft CV puked into my folder where I keep the banks I'm looking at. No big deal, I just had to clean it up a bit. But when it did that in the old days when I kept all my UTAU banks in one folder? Arrgh!! 

I don't think Mr. Bio-hazard knew the term rentan, but that's what his CV 1.0 was! It was the original, stringed CV. Not the "why do you hate me by making this almost work as CVVC" version that's more popular now, but it's "ka (pause) ki (pause)". The voice is mellow, and the recording quality sounds pretty good. The OTOs are also pretty good! ... But I still had to redo them for the sample. It was weird, the voice was so... choppy. It kind of seems to suffer from what I will now coin "short cons syndrome", which is what makes old UTAUs so choppy and artificial. There's not enough consonant! But, thankfully when you crank up the contrast on the spectrogram, you find out that the liquids are actually like twice as long as they were OTO'd for. It's a nice voice! Deep and mature and all that stuff.

Next, though it comes after the English bank in the download list if I remember correctly, is his Soft CV bank. This bank is regular CV. I love it. He rolls his "r"s when you redo the OTOs!! The whispery voice can get a little gravely, but that is actually useful in some contexts and he's so calm like he's going to tell you the world is okay! Whispery, mature male voice. That listening to makes me think everything will be okay! YES!!! Mr. Biohazard, or John if we're friendly, this is a great bank!! 

NOW, let me plug the software I wrote. Or, more appropriately, the program I cobbled together with programming worse than Yandev in Visual Studio. I use MEL for English, which is basically the most optimized way to use English in UTAU. This bank is Arpabet, which is icky. Using my handy dandy converter, I can turn icky-butt Arpabet into VOCALOID phonemes! 

Now my only problem is that I don't have any extremely well tuned MEL USTs! Okay, not really. The issue is that the OTOs aren't good. And I don't feel bad saying, "Oh, these are bad", because they were done by a computer, not by a human. 

I could never hope to live up to half of the success and good that Kanru Hua has done, but Moresampler literally doesn't understand how OTOs work. His newer projects probably do, but dang it. Not his teenage pet project that he took down and never looked back at. 

Weirdly, this bank somehow sounds just like the deep voice bank I recorded when using this UST. Honestly, regardless of how nice the samples might be, trying to fix a bank like this makes me want to cry because like, it's very, very bad despite the samples themselves being good. The OTOs would require so much effort just to get presentable. I can think of ways to use spreadsheets to get it to a good place, but honestly?! just ARGH. NOT TO MENTION, the samples are too short.

Where can I download Kikuro Johatsun?

You can find his downloads on his Wiki page. Other than me just loathing Moresampler in general, it is a really good UTAU! If you were willing to take the time to just fix up the OTOs, it can reach great heights! Also, the design is pretty. If you like good Furloids, your download folder needs to be acquainted with Kikuro Johatsun!