Indeed. In this instance, I was mainly talking about the visuals. It was probably not in the original design brief that Miku and Gumi would have some low-level yuri tension going on. :)

But yeah, I get that these are characters that don't have One Story, specifically because the creators want the users not to feel constrained by the, what would you call it, canonical imperative. These are clearly people who understand how fandoms work. (And who, if they are wise, do not investigate too closely what results. I don't think I could take being a character designer. Not with a shoulder-of-Orion coefficient as high as the Internet Age's. :)

>The logic behind this is that it allows electronic artists to have a
>vocalist they wouldn't normally have.
>
>People have gotten record deals thanks to Miku.

One can only imagine how the singers' union feels about that...

OTOH, what an odd sensation it must be for the people who provide the voice templates to realize that their voices are likely to outlive them, in a more universal sense than that implied by conventional recording technology. It is already really strange, if you think about it for a second, that we can and do routinely hear the voices and see the moving, breathing images of dead people. That was utterly impossible before a hundred, hundred and twenty years ago, and now it's so routine we don't even think about how deeply weird it is.

(I feel like this bit of the conversation may have happened around here before. I'm not even sure I'm the one who originally said it. If I am unconsciously plagiarizing someone else, it's because you had such a good point that it's been stuck in my head ever since.)

Anyway. That's odd enough, but the Vocaloid concept takes it to a whole 'nother level. Like getting a singing telegram from the other side of the Uncanny Valley. By the same token, though, I kind of like that there's still a human presence in there somewhere, like a vocal version of mocap animation. I think it adds something that a voice library built on purely synthetic tones may not be able to duplicate—although I'm sure people are trying, and their attempts are getting closer all the time. That's just the nature of this kind of development.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
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