Examining the Rise of Hatsune Miku: the First International Virtual Idol
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Author Examining the Rise of Hatsune Miku: The First International Virtual Idol Linh K. Le Political Science, Anthropology Linh Le hopes to pursue a Abstract career as a diplomat and feels that his work on this research irtual idol Hatsune Miku represents a unique phenomenon in the twenty-first project has given him tremen- Vcentury. For fans, this virtual idol represents a new wave of entertainment and dous insight into facilitating engagement. Within academia, Miku represents an opportunity to explore new mod- collaborations between dif- els for global collaboration. With the proliferation of the Internet, society has had ferent cultures. He has also a glimpse of the power that comes from the combined forces of globalization and enjoyed the opportunity to social media such as Facebook and Twitter. However, in looking at those cases, what explore an area of Internet we have seen is how real life events facilitate actions in social media. On the other culture that he considers not hand, Hatsune Miku provides a case study for the exact opposite: how an event/ to have been widely known or persona created by social media inspires actions in real life. The goal of this paper researched. Outside of aca- is to look at the Hatsune Miku Phenomenon from the perspectives of the fans, the demia, Linh enjoys reading, media, the creators, etc., in order to understand how this virtual singer has inspired a playing basketball and talking new wave of creativity that is changing not only Japan but the entire world, especially to people on the Internet. in how we understand copyright and engagement. Faculty Mentor This article by Linh K. Le can be considered a “futuristic” piece of thinking and writing. Mr. Le is a Suma Cum Laude, double major Key Terms and Honor's student in Political Science and Anthropology, with a 3.9 GPA. He is great academically and an excellent researcher. His Consumer Generated Media (CGM) research incorporates the following: Who and what is “Hatsune Miku?”; Why is her rise in the international computer community Doujin Culture important?; and What are the international implications on this Hatsune Miku technology? While the article itself is of value, Mr. Le goes on MikuMikuDance (MMD) to argue that the software known as “Hatsune Miku” allows the community that UTAU revolves around this figure the creativity that questions intellectual property owner- Vocaloid ship. Read and enjoy the work of an undergraduate whose thinking and writing have no limits! Caesar D. Sereseres School of Social Sciences T HE U C I U NDERGRAD U A T E R ESEAR C H J O U RNAL 1 E XAMINING TH E R IS E OF H ATSUN E M IKU Introduction transformed from “being looked at as a software program [to] being treated as a legitimate popstar” (Eisenbeis, 2012). [I]t was the youth of the world who recognized the By understanding the Hatsune Miku Phenomenon, it is value of this Japan-made creation long before we then possible to generate new insight into existing social Japanese did.—Sakurai Takamasa, Columnist for problems such as copyrights or to encourage cross-cultural ASCII and the Yomiuri Shinbum collaborations via the Internet. This paper’s thesis and find- ings offer a different perspective than those generally pre- In 1996, William Gibson, a person whom many today credit sented by the Western media, which tends to focus more on with predicting the rise of the Information Age (specifically the virtual nature of Hatsune Miku instead of the creative the concept of cyberspace that is so prevalent in modern efforts behind Miku. In order to understand the Hatsune life), released a novel named Idoru. In his novel, Gibson’s Miku Phenomenon, this paper is divided into five sections: character, Rez, wants to marry a virtual personality named Rei Toei, the idoru (a Japanese word for idol) of the story. The first section of this paper looks at the ideas behind The concept of a virtual idol that he pioneered would later the creation of Hatsune Miku and attempts to answer not only become a reality, but would also be popularized the question of what it is. globally early in the twenty-first century with the rise of the The second section focuses on the innovations that were first international virtual idol, Hatsune Miku. inspired by Miku and how these innovations contribut- ed to the spread of the Hatsune Miku Phenomenon. While Miku might be the first internationally recognized The third section focuses on the philosophical and virtual idol of the twenty-first century, the history of vir- inspirational roots of this movement. tual idols can be traced back to Japan in 1996 with the first The fourth section examines the role of business com- virtual personality, Kyoko Date, followed subsequently in panies in the promotion of Hatsune Miku, including 1997 with Yuki Terai and many more (Galbraith, 2009). Yet, goods and concerts and how the Western media reacted while these virtual idols and others enjoy widespread suc- to these marketing strategies. cess within the anime subculture of Japan, they have never The fifth section analyzes the different perspectives of broken into the mainstream. The turning point for virtual the composers and fans through their interviews, in idols came between late 2007 and early 2008 with the release order to reach a conclusion about who Hatsune Miku is. of the Hatsune Miku software by Crypton Future Media. Unlike her predecessors, Miku enjoys unprecedented suc- cess both domestically and internationally, far beyond that What is Hatsune Miku? of the anime subculture. For example, kzlivetune’s song Tell Your World, featuring Hatsune Miku, debuted at number one “A Singer in a Box” on Japan’s iTunes ranks when it was released on January 19, Despite popular perception, the story of Hatsune Miku did 2012 (Komatsu, 2012). not start in 2007 when she was first released by Crypton Future Media as a piece of vocal synthesis software, nor did The goal of this paper is to understand the success of the her story begin in Japan. In fact, the concept of a singing Hatsune Miku Phenomenon by looking at the different computer can be traced back more than half a century. In factors that contributed to the rise of this virtual singer, 1961, three Bell Laboratory employees successfully pro- including technological innovations, marketing and, most grammed a mainframe computer to sing the song “Daisy importantly, the perspectives of her fans, amateur and Bell.” However, after this experiment, the study of singing professional composers, artists, animators, etc. This paper synthesis research remained largely unexplored until 2000 argues that Hatsune Miku does not fit into the traditional when Hideki Kenmochi, a researcher at Pompeu Fabra or popular perception of what constitutes a virtual idol (if University in Spain, with funding provided by Yamaha, she/it can be considered one at all). Unlike the popular developed a type of speech synthesis software that would concept of a virtual idol introduced in Idoru and popular- allow home users to create a lifelike, concert-quality voiced ized by mainstream media via movies and science fiction, “synthesized singer” (Werde, 2003). This software would Hatsune Miku functions more as a symbol for a form of later be named “Vocaloid” and become the true beginning large-scale creative collaboration—more commonly known of the Hatsune Miku Phenomenon. as consumer-generated media—composed of amateur and professional composers, animators, artists, and fans. As a The concept of Vocaloid is to take any given language and result of this collaborative effort, Hatsune Miku has been break it down into its phonemes, the smallest phonetic 2 The UCI Undergraduate Research Journal Linh K. Le components of a language. Then, a human singer or voice illustration in marketing the product. Crypton understood actor provides voice samples to be stored in a database, a that by including an illustration but omitting any informa- “voice bank.” The Vocaloid software allows home users to tion other than biographical data, users were free to apply retrieve these phonemes and rearrange them to form full their own interpretation to the character. These two lessons sentences in accordance with any specific rhythm and mel- were incorporated as Crypton launched their Character ody they chose (Kenmochi and Oshita, 2007). It gives inde- Vocal Series, starting with Hatsune Miku on August 31, pendent composers access to a professional singer without 2007 (Itoh 2008). The introduction of Miku would become having to hire a human singer at great expense, making it an the catalyst for the rapid expansion of Vocaloids and the attractive alternative. In essence, Vocaloid creates an envi- creation of many future innovations. ronment that promotes the expansion of “desktop music” (DTM) as it is known in Japan and “computer music” in the United States. Four years after the initial proposal in 2000, Yamaha released the Vocaloid software commercially and, since then, it has gone through three distinctive stages: Vocaloid 1 (V1), Vocaloid 2 (V2), and Vocaloid 3 (V3). Vocaloid 1 The first two English-capable Vocaloids as well as the first two Vocaloids released globally, Leon and Lola, were creat- ed in England by Zero-G Limited. Ed Stratton, the man- aging director of Zero-G Limited, originally intended for Vocaloids to act as backup vocals for existing singers such as Justin Timberlake or Jay-Z. (Werde, 2003). In 2004, a few months after Zero-G Limited released Leon and Lola, Crypton Future Media (CFM), a company based in Sapporo, Japan, released the first Vocaloid for the Japanese market, Meiko, followed by her male counterpart, Kaito, in 2006. However, CFM distinguished itself from Zero-G Limited by using a character illustration to add a Figure 1 face to the software.