Forgotten Friday #159 - コトダマ / Kotodama

 Happy New Year!! As celebration of reaching my arbitrary and harsh deadline, I'm giving y'all what you came for. An old UTAU!

Forgotten Friday #159 - コトダマ / Kotodama

Who ‘members Kotodama?! (I ‘member!)

No, seriously, I remember him being one of the big name UTAUs, but he has like… five videos on YouTube, and most of them are from Hai?

Who is Kotodama?

Art from Visual Archive

Kotodama was a really big name in the early fandom, but it kind of seems like no one actually used him. Like, in talks between friends and in headcanons he came up… but like, what? How did I know him as one of the faces of the early fandom?

Oh, wait, Nicovideo. He didn’t have a ton of videos on Nicovideo, but he wasn’t as completely unknown on there. 

His gender and race are unknown, likely because he is some kind of demon. He carries about a crystal ball and his clothes have a design that references a lyre. His actual official design is nothing like I remember him looking. It is so giant and bulky, and I remember him being way slimmer.

Overseas UTAU History Time!

So, there were two main groups in the beginning. UTAU PSS and Us-loids. Those two groups were just friends making UTAUs together. UTAU PSS was only MX and that other one. USloids was some kids from Utah and their friend from Chicago. MX didn’t let anyone in her club, but personally taught me how to record UTAUs. USloids technically didn’t let anyone join them, but they harvested voices to make new UTAUs under their banner. PSS was Ishimaru Michiyo, USloids was Kurane Zanda.

So, the main driving force for recruitment into cliques was Chii of USloids. Outside of cliques, there was Hai. He was a Vietnamese guy who ran a YouTube channel that reposted UTAU content from Nicovideo. 

It does feel like a necessary evil back in 2009. Japanese users rarely posted to YouTube, and you needed an account on Nicovideo to watch videos. 

Hai introduced almost everyone to each other in the YIM days. When he fell ill, I took over his job of introducing people to each other and just throwing fun parties in group chats.

As the years pass by, the memories of back then grow fainter and fainter. But then they’ll randomly come back. Last night, I was like, okay, dude, you can do this. You can go to sleep without YouTube. But then something just hit me like. 

Okay, so I love lost love songs. Which isn’t the actual term, or a love song that is lost. Just songs about how I can’t be with you or how I’m thinking of you. 

But, like, none of the songs ever really apply to me. Can someone tell me a song that’s like, wow, it’s a good thing that I’m never going to live a lie again, but dang it, I wanted to be the mother of your child, and now it’s just farewell. (But, that one doesn’t apply to me because like, it’s implied the entire thing wasn’t a dumpster fire!) 

And I think about how if I had just kept going on dates with the lawyer, I could be in such a different place right now. I mean, I probably had like five options that I could have went with. And I just chose the literally worst one. 

If you are a kid and your parents tell you to get off the computer and go live a real life, tell them that naw. Naw. This one lady on the internet said that going out into the world and having a “real life” outside of school and work is tiring and pointless.

How are Kotodama's banks?

Kotodama has four banks linked to in his release video, but half of them are 404. So, there's his CV reprint and his VCV bank.

Starting with CV, it is a two pitch CV. I had to open setparam to get the prefix map to work by copying the filenames into the aliases, but dang it. I'm not fixing the OTOs this time. We're going to get the full 2009 experience. He also doesn't have a prefix map despite being two pitch, but I'll add that just to make life easier without messing up the retro feel. 

So, obviously, the resampler is way better now, so it's not the same feeling exactly. The pitches do not work together very well. The low pitch is very deep and forceful. The high pitch is soft and sweet while still remaining masculine as opposed to perfectly androgynous. 

Next is his VCV. His CV files say that they were recorded 7/17/2009. His VCV was recorded 3/13/2010. A lot of stuff happened between those two times! His VCV is only one pitch. The OTOs are surprisingly pretty darn good! 

I am so shocked I didn't just like, use this bank over and over as a kid. The voice provider (I know it's not Mianaito, because that was Nyal... right? Oh! It's Munoh! I think it means no worries.) just took the tone of the low pitch and the high pitch from the CV bank and smashed them together and we have a jiisan bank! It's an older guy, struggling to sing as a certain pitch. A jiisan bank will generally have a little whine because of that.

If you like jiisan UTAUs, you need this bank.

Where can I download Kotodama?

His visual archive page has the link to the video with all of his banks. It feels so awesome to have this goal finished! On December 26th, 2020, I was able to push out my blog articles all the way to 2022. And... For the first time in I don't know how long, Forgotten Friday is pushed out further than Wiki Wednesday!! Here's to another year of articles.