Wiki Wednesday #227 - Zumi Harine / 針音ズミ

 I'm happy I am getting so much work done!

Wiki Wednesday #227 - Zumi Harine /  針音ズミ

Her name is a pun on hedgehog. Japan is prone to having really weird rumors spread about it. People claimed they were in the know because they knew Sonic's original name... Mister Needle Mouse! No, it was just hedgehog.

Zuni was meant to be 23, but had her birthday set in 1991. She is a tsundere and hates swimming. Tsukkomi is used to describe her, which I don't know what is. I think Navigator, the one who made her, is American because the location of the YouTube channel is American, but strides were taken to obfuscate that. There is no English readme, only Japanese and Korean. 

Who is Harine Zumi?

Official art from Bank

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Ouura here.

As a way of building up tension in the previous part, I said that I was sobbing. I was loud, and there were tears, but I was disingenuous. I was laughing so hard that tears were streaming down my face as I was hunched over.

George ran out after me. He pulled me close and started to whisper some kind of reassurance. I pulled myself away just far enough that he could see the goofy, wavering smile on my face. I grabbed my clickbox out of my pocket. Not because I couldn’t say it in English at the moment, but because I didn’t want his parents to hear that they were doing me a favor. If they thought I was broken over this, maybe they’d feel too guilty to press me about something else.

“Are you kidding me, George?!” I let out another sob that wracked my body. “You get everything your parents dreamed of, and I get to be free! I was nearly a perfect child because I was so starved for love, and I still put Madia through far too much! I want to travel and play video games, not change diapers! And they just told us that we will never change a diaper unless it’s a photo op, and why would anyone make that a photo op?!”

George stared at me in disbelief before asking a question in English. “You… really don’t want children?”

I composed myself for a second as I looked into his eyes. “Do you?”

“Hit my arm enough to get my eyes to water up. I’ll try to think about the saddest thing possible.”

I held back laughter as I did what he said. He held me tight and started to do the fake, over dramatic sobbing that probably was too close to laughing. We held each other as he whispered into my ear: “I want it to be me and you, on our own, forever.”

That made me actually start sobbing in a real and emotional way. I felt myself collapse against him while he swayed a bit to try and balance our weight.

After a few minutes, we pulled away from each other and commented on how red and puffy each other’s eyes were. We went back inside.

“If this is the only way you will accept us…” George looked upset, but I knew it was an act. “Then we will do whatever you want.”

George’s mother happily clapped her hands together as she stood. “Oh! Beatrice! We are going to plan the most perfect wedding! You are going to be stunning, and beautiful, and everyone will be envious!”

“Can my mother come?” I tried to look as if I was pleading, but I was struggling to contain my giddiness at how well we were playing them.

Her face fell. “Fine. But you have to invite your Union employee sister and make her invite her friends so that we have a very prestigous wedding.”

That – that, I could do.

How is Zumi Harine's bank?

Zumi has a one pitch, hiragana encoded VCV bank. There are some errors in the oto file. 

I can tell Navigator worked extremely hard to get the best accent possible. Here are some random tips for going even deeper.

Most people probably know that oh in English isn't o in Japanese. The English oh is actually two sounds - "uh" and "oo". Play with that a bit - it sounds totally wrong at first because you'll be like UUUH oo? But if you start saying oh and stop in the first part, you'll be like Oh!!

People will sometimes say that the 'o' in 'sore' is the closest to the Japanese O, but I've looked at charts and the uh in our oh is closer. 

People don't know this often, but our 'ee' in see is actually also two sounds put together, but it's so small at the end, no one notices, but if you're like 'I need the most Japanese accent possible for my utau!!' then you need to learn how to say 'ee' as only one sound.

Palatalization is a jerk and is extremely difficult for English speakers outside of what naturally occurs - such as view, cute, and a British person saying YouTube. I did record a whole VCV properly palatalizing everything, even comparing the spectrograms of my samples to Japanese samples to make sure that they were as correct as possible... And I still sound white as heck! So the moral is that my Japanese will always sound weird, and I have come to terms with that. Though, my English is also weird, so you may not meet my fate.

Anyway, Zumi has a very nice voice with really good pronunciation and great recording quality. 

Where can I download Harine Zumi?

You can download her from her Fandom page.  She is really good!