Forgotten Friday #166 - 小松順子 / Komatsu Junko

 I cut my nails! This means it is like infinitely easier to use my wireless keyboard! I dislike having short nails for the most part, but it really does feel better to type like this.

Forgotten Friday #166 -  小松順子 / Komatsu Junko

This is a female UTAU who is exactly 17.5 years old. Her color scheme is black and white... except that her readme says that her color scheme is pink mocha and mint blue. What is pink mocha? I don't know. She is completely incapable of one of my favorite phrases ever: reading the air. It's like reading the room  in American English, but just sounds cooler. Also, I think she's a Chinese UTAU who only sings in Japanese?

Who is Junko Komatsu?

official art

"Welcome to Atlanta!" Emily threw her arms into the air and spun around as soon as she was outside of the office building. Apple Bloom simply stood outside of the doorway and stared, her mouth agape.

She had been to Manehattan. She had seen skyscrapers. But… this was different. Rows upon rows of grey behemoths reaching to the sky. 

"I know," Emily sighed, "It's disgusting - seeing it in the history books, then it looking like this. But that's what war does, I guess."

"War?" Apple Bloom continued to gaze at the tops of the buildings, wondering what it felt like to stand on the very top of one.

"Civil War two, electric boogaloo… only insanely stupid," Emily sighed as she turned towards Apple Bloom. "You hit your head really hard, and the textbooks just glaze over it in half the country. Want the quick version?" She waited for Apple Bloom to look at her and nod before she continued. "Far right split into the Patriot Party, but it was still a two party system. Caucused with Republicans, but the split vote caused mostly Democratic Party members to win, because the Patriot Party always put up a third party candidate that Republicans would never vote for due to things like the candidates being extremists. America progresses and goes further and further left until the red areas threaten to secede if things don't change. The federal government said, okay. Leave. The red areas said they'd take the military assets currently in their land. The federal government said, okay. We don't even care, just leave."

Apple Bloom didn't understand what Emily was saying, but she nodded along. She was interested in the idea of a war, but asking for an analogy using Equestrian terms would feel like she was mocking Emily.

"So, they get excited. The red areas would be getting their own country. The issue was blue islands, like beautiful Atlanta." Emily looked up at the grey sky. "Atlanta said, if you can secede, we secede from you. The Patriots did not like that. Long story short, they conspired with Russia and that one Middle Eastern country that's now a territory to entirely level the city. Thankfully, they telegraphed it for so long, not a single soul was in the city when it was destroyed."

"It's good no one died, but how'd they build it back?" Apple Bloom gasped as she asked, her eyes wide.

"It was stupid," Emily rolled her eyes as she looked back at Apple Bloom. "Rich Patriots built this nightmare of high rises while the land was smoldering. Almost every worker ended up with cancer from the radiation, but they still tried to live here. Every. Single. One. of the residents died due to radiation poisoning."

"Then how's it safe now?!" Apple Bloom didn't know what radiation was, but she understood what dying was.

"Hundred of years," Emily nodded to herself, "Took hundreds of years, but this shell of a once great city was cleared to be lived in again. There's no more Patriots - that kind of happens when everyone in the higher ranks rots in prison. We're a happy country again, so it's safe to be a city slicker in the South again."

"Well…" Apple Bloom slowly nodded.

"And the weather…" Emily sighed, "From what I've read, it's an improvement in some ways. But we overshot solving Climate Change by a little. The world was on fire, and it needed to be fixed. So they seeded the sky with perpetual clouds. They promised they'd be gone after a hundred years. Well, no. Now the sky is perpetually grey, and most people have never seen the stars. You can get lucky in the mountains or in planes, above the perpetual clouds. They're stunning with all of the light muffled by the clouds. But no one gets to see Carolina blue skies anymore."

"Y'all don't run your kingdom right," Apple Bloom shook her head in exasperation. "Why don't you fix it with the winter wrap up?"

Emily laughed so hard, she bent at the waist. "Yeah, I'll call up our best pegasi. Let's just hope Twilight doesn't make it worse by insisting unicorn magic will make it better!"

"See! I…" Apple Bloom's eyes widened. "That's sarcasm."

"You're so silly, Apps." Emily smiled as she threw her arm around Apple Bloom's shoulder and began to lead her down the sidewalk. 

Next time on A Spectrum of Apple Skins, we'll see where Apple Bloom is meant to live while in a grey and sad America!

How does Komatsu Junko's bank sound?

Junko has a one pitch VCV bank with an average pitch of C4 that is meant to sound like a whisper bank. She is literally perfect and I love her. I expected a strong and androgynous voice from her design, but her voice is soft and feminine. 

There's actually a hint that the voice provider may be Chinese in this very sample! "do" sounds more like "to" because Chinese does not have voiced consonants, and instead uses aspiration to define what are voiced / unvoiced pairs in other languages. It's not all consonants - it's just random ones in random samples!

Where can I download Junko Komatsu?

You can download her from her official site! She is absolutely lovely!