Wiki Wednesday #226 - Zuzane Ao / ヅザ音アオ

 this is my fifth article since waking up... Yay!

Wiki Wednesday #226 - Zuzane Ao / ヅザ音アオ

Kayla "Ao" Zuzune is part of the Shortking UTAU universe. She is a very strong DV survivor who does roller derby. She is described as African American and has a very cool design.

Who Is Ao Zuzane?

Official art from carrd

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Ouura here.

George’s mother was fawning over me and how beautiful her new daughter in law was. I wanted to say something rude, but I noticed that his father was sternly sitting on the other side of the table. He wasn’t fooled by the pretty face that he paid for. He cleared his throat, which caused George’s mother to sit down and put on a stern facade.

“The surgeries worked well.” His eyes were drilling holes into me. I seriously wondered who I was at that moment. I spent so long trying to create my own identity that wasn’t the scared little disowned girl. I knew that I needed to sit up straight and say nothing, but I wanted to stick out my tongue and make a silly face. But, parental approval was some kind of drug to George, even if he tried to deny it. I didn’t mind - it was for me too until Madia just made it a normal part of my life.

“We will allow you to marry.” He grumbled. “But, you will follow our rules.”

“Not as much rules,” his mother laughed and expected me to laugh along. I politely smiled. She continued. “It’s a plan to make sure that we get our investment back. We don’t exoect you to make us money, but we deserve to get something out of it that is equivalent emotionally.”

His father grunted in agreement. “You will not have biological children. Instead, we will use a surrogate from our society with George’s genetic material. We want a grandchild - maybe more than one. But, we do not want it to have any alien genetic material or to be sterile. We have a name and a history that must be handed down.”

I grabbed George’s hand as he started to realize how objectionable that demand was.

His father continued. “You will not interfere with our standing by making people think that the child isn’t completely ours. When you go out during the surrogate’s pregnancy, you must wear something to show that you are pregnant. We will supply them.”

I clenched my jaw. Was… he… serious? He didn’t want a gross alien baby, but he wanted the gross alien to be pregnant? What was wrong with just admitting that I couldn’t have a child with him? Were they honestly trying to erase my identity?

“And.” George’s mother sighed. “You will not raise that child. Whatever mistake we made to let George end up with an alien… We will correct it. But, you will not interact with this child unsupervised. When we need to, we will summon you to make an appearance, and you will do what we say so that everyone knows that George is happily married with a healthy child.”

It hit me in that moment. I understood what they were saying, so I stood up as I fought back tears. I rushed out of the room and out the front door before bracing myself against the wall and loudly sobbing.

How are Zuzane Ao's banks?

I love that it is stated that some of these banks were recorded on Discord. I hate recording, so I record on my phone. Though, I do not record on a call - I use a sound recorder app. But if you have a phone, you can record an utau!

There Are three banks, all one pitch. One romaji encoded CV, a hiragana encoded CV, and a very sad occurrence. The final bank is meant to be CVVC, but it was recorded by making a normal CV bank, except each mora was doubled so that "ka.wav" was actually recorded as "ka ka". There are combinations of VC that cannot happen. Some can be fixed with OTOs - 'a ts' and 'a t' would be virtually identical, but that precaution was not taken in the oto. Things like "e y" can't be faked in the oto without VV, and by nature of list construction, this list has no VV. Don't get me wrong - this is a real attempt at CVVC that gets 80% of the way there and is better than stringed rentan. But, it is not a full CVVC.

Version one has some weird mistakes in the otos. She has a nice voice, but the voice sounds nervous and a little confused.

Version two also has strange occurrences in the oto file. The voice is very nice. It is less reserved and therefore fuller and warmer.

..

Version 3 is the CVVC version. If you only have time for VC or VV, VV will do more for realism than VC - just a random aside that I didn't learn until the boom of CVV. It may improve the voice to increase the amount of overlap and to make sure overlap is always on a stable area, but I didn't think of that until I closed out the edited tester UST without saving.

Welp, the tester UST I picked included 'i w', 'i t', and 'e ny', which do not exist in this bank. There are some strange mistakes in the oto, also. However, this is the best bank and can be used as a CV bank with literally no issue. She has an absolutely stunning voice, and you can hear the improvement in the recording situation. I love this voice very much as it is soft and gentle while having a tiny bit of assertiveness. 

Where Can I download Zuzane Ao?

All of her download links are on her Fandom page. She's pretty cool!