I don't have a specific question but i wanted to say hi from the other side of the world

Hello from America
What brings you to 39chan?

>>323
Hello!
こんにちは！

>>324
Someone who uses this place told me about it.

Is imageboard / textboard culture still alive in Japan? Over here, i'd say that 4chan is still popular, though it's not the same thing it was in the 2000's and a lot of the communities from there have spread to other sites such as social media or other imageboards like 39chan.

>>326
Futaba is a walking corpse, 5ch slightly less so, but there are some more recent offshoots in specific niches. I wouldn't really call them all that successful in terms of a broader Japanese "BBS culture" though because it's not a healthy culture overall. Twitter supplanted 5ch, Mixi, FC2, Livedoor, and pretty much every other Japanese service over a decade ago and that foundation still holds even as the current incarnation of it makes everyone using it wring their hands and kick dirt rather than use another website.

Like everywhere else, people are also piling into dickswords. Even Futaba's best living memory at the moment is currently a huge dicksword server.

>>327
>because it's not a healthy culture overall
To be fair the same could be said about 4chan

One thing I noticed about Futaba is that it gets a lot of illegal spam. Which i guess is not too surprising since every imageboard gets CSEM spam. 39chan in the pre-Figamin days used to get it too. But on Futaba it stays up for days which makes me think that there's probably less staff than before.

>>326
Both still exist, but the user base has been noticeably aging for at least the past decade. I don’t have hard statistics, but I’d say very few younger people use message boards as a regular part of their daily lives.
The gap between boards that get frequent posts and places that are mostly quiet is as big as it’s always been, but users have scattered across different platforms, and the old momentum is gone.

At the same time, the culture that originally grew out of the old 2chan has been getting reappraised lately, partly thanks to a kind of revival wave. For example, McDonald’s recently ran an ad that clearly nodded to classic 2chan ASCII art culture.
And commentary videos or short-form clips based on old 2chan/5chan threads still seem to have a steady audience as content.

Outside of that nostalgia-driven consumption, though, it’s become rare for information originating from 5chan or other boards to sit at the center of public conversation.

That said, board-born incidents still spill out into the wider internet from time to time. With a national election coming up in Japan, a user on 5chan posted a jokingly edited version of a newly formed party’s flag, and it spread on X (formerly Twitter). It ended up being used to push a false claim that the party had copied the flag of some foreign organization, and quite a lot of people—including some well-known figures, even sitting politicians—were taken in by it.

Hopefully not a weird question, but do you have any reading recommendations or info on the 明六社?
Reason is I really like a vocaloid song called 明六某 that seems to be about the group. The artist has written a few times about the mixture/conflict between Western and Eastern cultures in historical Japan, so I guess it is mostly about that. Not sure if maybe there's a way I can understand their commentary about it more intelligently.

>>331
I only just learned about this song, but I’m not sure whether “Meiroku” refers exclusively to the Meirokusha.

Personally, when I hear “Meiroku,” I’m reminded of the Meiji 6 Political Crisis, when figures like Saigō Takamori left the government.

As for the Meirokusha: I found a website that hosts PDF scans of the Meiroku Zasshi (Meiroku Magazine), which they published. The site also makes other well-known collections available as historical resources for the study of Japanese.

https://dglb01.ninjal.ac.jp/ninjaldl/bunken.php?title=meirokuzassi

Aside from a few missing pages in issue 23, it seems to include the complete run from issue 1 through issue 43.

The texts use older kanji and historical kana orthography, but when I tried Google Lens plus translation, it actually produced English that made sense. That said, I only tested a small portion, so I can’t guarantee it’s fully readable start to finish.

Thank you for this thread Japanon

>>322
39chanへようこそ！
Here's my question: Have perceptions about Vocaloid changed over time? Has it become more "mainstream" or is it still firmly seen as a subculture connected with Otaku/Internet Culture in general?
..Sure, you probably won't hear Vocaloid on the radio or something, but I'm always curious to know.

If you're going to post with AI, at least sound believably human. The thread right now reads like a ChatGPT log of Q&A.

>>335
Not OP but isn't chatgpt common for JPN>ENG translations in Japan? I recall seeing a couple Japanese people on Twitter use it for that. I think even Hioka uses it.

>>336
Also not OP, but yeah, it's always been common for Japanese people to use machine translation. It just happens that every machine translation app these days uses some kind of LLM.

>>334
My gut feeling is that it’s become pretty mainstream compared to back in the day.
That said, it hasn’t stopped being a subculture either.
It’s not so much that Vocaloid itself became “fully mainstream,” but more that people who grew up in Vocaloid culture now hold important spots in Japan’s music scene—so even if voice synthesis is still kind of subcultural, you don’t see it being openly dismissed as much anymore… that’s the vibe.
Also, NHK (Japan’s public broadcaster) has done Vocaloid features on their FM radio before, and even my local FM station will occasionally play a Vocaloid song if someone requests it. CBC Radio even has a show literally called “RADIO MIKU.”

>>335
I should’ve mentioned upfront that I was using ChatGPT—sorry. And thanks for pointing that out.
I was probably trying too hard not to lose any meaning, so it came out a bit stiff.

Hold on… I just reread my original Japanese, and it was basically not conversational at all—zero humor, too. So yeah—ChatGPT just did its job, and the awkwardness was 100% on me.
Next time, I’ll have ChatGPT teach me how to write Japanese that actually sounds human.

>>338
Do you still enjoy Vocaloid as much as you did then?

>>336
There's a world of difference in the way someone like Hioka uses it, who mainly relies on it for strict translation and massaging an original thought, and what you're reading here. >>339 for example goes into the script of apologizing after being corrected, then "reasons" about the response. That's beyond using a machine TL and is just chatbot goop. Besides the various tells like the em-dashes and the puffed analysis, which I am generally fine to look past when it comes to an LLM-assisted translation, the content of the responses appear to be mirrored almost entirely from what a chatbot would respond with too. Note for example that the link in >>332 doesn't resolve and >>327 confuses 2ch/5ch/5chan/2chan, which is not something you would expect a native immersed in those cultures to do.

If the user is a true native, I'd like to see them post in their native tongue (seeing as this is /j/), at least alongside whatever the chatbot is spitting out. Give us some sense you're human and not regurgitating answers that you're prompting.

>>341
Meant to link >>330 for the second post example.

>>341
This is a little conspiratorial. I think this just reads as a guy who is, at worst, not proofreading some of the errors ChatGPT creates when translating.

About the URL... is that an AI mistake or some kind of obscure word filter?
>https://dglb01.ninjal.ac.jp/ninjaldl/bunken.php?title=meirokuzassi
>https://dglb01.ninjal.ac.jp/ninjaldl/bunken.php?title=meirokuzassi

>>343
Ah, it's a word filter. No idea what this is for lol, the non-filtered version is a real link. Shoutout to the only other anon who listens to Meiroku Natomodachishi

>>343
>>344
That's true for the link, imageboard admin stufff if you wanna search up the name.

It's natural that any dissection of an LLM output will sound conspiratorial, but that's the reality of proving authorship and originality now. There are tells all over the posts beyond machine TL that I don't really want to spend time picking apart. We'd have a better sense if OP would post their original writing alongside the translation.

OP's IP address is Japanese and does not appear to be a VPN either. The thread can stay.

>>341
I'd buy it just for the fact that LARPing as someone from another country is stupid even for AI standards. I understand that there were people LARPing as either Japanese or American on Twitter before the location update but this is an anonymous site. Unless you use a tripcode there's no identity attached to your post.

>>336
Canon used DeepL for the Q&A on this site. Hioka uses Grok, I think.

>>346
Ok that's good to hear then

>>340
Since the whole scene around Vocaloid has changed over time, I think the way I enjoy it has changed too.
It’s hard to compare directly, but every now and then I still feel an excitement close to what I had back when I was really obsessed with it.
So I can see why some people call this a renaissance or a second golden age.

あー、スペース入れてないからアンカーが無効になってた。投稿し直します。

>>341
まさか自分がチャットボット疑惑をかけられると思わんかったけど、人間らしさをお望みの様なので、くだけた日本語で書いてくよ。

まず >>339 がチャットボットの戯言だって指摘はある意味当たってる。だってあえて「それっぽく」書いたからね。でも元となる文章は自分で考えたよ。
もしそのせいで疑いが深まったなら、ほんとごめん…。
んで、こんな風に翻訳の途中経過を晒すのは正直恥ずかしいけど、スクショも貼っとくね。
一つの返信をまとめるのに、これと同じような作業を何度も反復してるんだ。できるだけ原文のニュアンスを伝えられるようにね。
でも、翻訳過程の全文を晒すのは、自分の頭の中をさらけ出すようなもんなので、そこは勘弁してつかぁさい。

で、 >>332 のリンクはマジで確認不足だった。翻訳作業の段階では正常なURLだったから、他の人が指摘している通りフィルターのせいだと思う。
ちな、明六雑誌は中々興味深いけど、あの文章をそのまま読めるのは歴史好きとか専門で学んでいる人とかだろうね。自分も調べながらじゃないとムズいわ。

>>327 は単純に自分の書き込みじゃないってだけだね。
自分はsageないし、同じ問いに対する自分の返答は >>330 の方だし。

でもガチな話、疑いたくなる気持ちもわかるよ。
その昔、「西鉄バスジャック事件」っていう、２ちゃんのコテハンが起こした事件があったんだけど、その時ひろゆき（２ちゃんの創設者）がテレビのインタビューで初めて素顔を晒して、「うそはうそであると見抜ける人でないと(掲示板を使うのは)難しい」って言ってたのが有名なんだ。
西暦2000年、つまり20世紀末のこの発言からも分かる通り、ネット掲示板のようなコミュニケーションツールと、デマ・ガセ・噂といった嘘の情報は当時から今に至るまで常にセットだった。
昔から、単純な連投スクリプト（自動書き込み）荒らしとかはあったけど、AI時代は書き込みの内容がより巧妙になったのは間違いない。
今や「なんJ語」や「淫夢語録」といった、一般的な日本語とはかけ離れたネットスラングを多用した文章すら、AIに書かせることができる。しかも文脈を理解して、内容に応じて返答してくる。
だから実際のところ、上の文章もAIが書いたのかもと疑い始めたらキリないんだよね。
今後数年の内に、人間の文章と一切見分けがつかなくなっても全然驚かんし。

まぁでもさ、そんなことを言い始めると、何もかもが怪しく見えてきちゃうんよね。
極端な話、自分が仮想世界を見せられているだけの、水槽に浸された脳みそじゃないとどうやって証明するのかとか、本当にキリがなくなる。
だから、どこかで線引きは必要だと思うよ。
これはソーシャルメディア全般に言えるけど、特に匿名掲示板ではね。


ま、とりあえずこれがお望み通り、ろくに校正もせず、AIも通していない、100パー脳みそ生絞りの文章だよ。
（いつもはもっと丁寧に書くけど、今回だけこんな感じでお送りしております）

これまともに英語に翻訳されるのか…？(;^ω^)
妙な部分とか意味が分からない箇所があったら教えてね。

スクリーンショット ….png - 117.81 KB (1273x726)

スクリーンショットも再投稿します。

Apologies if this doesn't fall under "Japanese Culture" but how are the non-Japanese Vocaloids perceived over there? I'm not referring to UTAUs, but Vocaloids such as MAIKA, Tonio, etc.

>>354
Just to be upfront, I’m not very knowledgeable about this, so what I’m saying here is only my personal impression.

In Japan, I don’t think non-Japanese Vocaloids have really reached the general public or more casual Vocaloid fans in any widespread way. And even with Japanese voicebanks, anything outside the especially famous ones tends to have pretty low name recognition among the casual audience.

From what I’ve seen, there are quite a few attempts on Nico Nico Douga to have the so-called “overseas Vocaloids” sing in Japanese. The number of songs isn’t huge compared to the mainstream voicebanks, but they do exist, and many get a few hundred to a few thousand views, with some even reaching the tens of thousands.
My impression is that there’s a steady core fanbase, and every so often the songs manage to reach people who don’t usually listen to them.

As for how they’re perceived or used in professional music production settings, I’m not really sure.

threads-x….webp - 45.83 KB (680x418)

I've seen Japanese people share the sentiment that Twitter/X is dying for a while now, but what do the alternatives look like these days? Is there anything that could overtake Twitter, like how Threads just did in the US, or are these sites still considered fads?

In particular, I'd like to know where Vocaloid fans interact now.

>>355
Can you give me some examples of those overseas songs on NND you're talking about?

As an aside, what are your favorite producers and songs? Any recommendations you can give us?

>>355
I think the most recent example of a foreign voicebank that has reached a wider audience would be Yi Xi from SynthV. She's Chinese but ever since an English song with her became popular she now has English and Japanese fans as well.

>>356
In Japan, social media rankings can vary depending on how surveys define “users” (registered accounts vs. MAU, etc.), but X (formerly Twitter) is still one of the largest platforms, with its user base often cited at around 68 million.

Bluesky got some attention for a while, but my impression is that many people treat it less as a full replacement and more as a backup—just in case. Threads has also been reported to be growing, but it’s worth noting that a large part of that growth comes from existing users of Meta’s other services like Instagram and Facebook. Instagram has a huge user base in Japan too, but because the audience and typical use cases are different, it feels more like coexistence/segmentation than a straight replacement.

As you can tell from how many companies and public figures use official accounts there, X’s biggest strengths are its real-time nature and its reach. For both people who want to broadcast information and people who want to catch updates quickly, it’s hard to fully walk away from X when the goal is “get it out widely” (or “pick it up fast”).

That applies to VOCALOID fans in Japan as well: as a place where creators post updates and fans help spread them, X is still the main hub.

At the same time, communities are pretty distributed by purpose: videos tend to live on YouTube / Nico Nico / TikTok, illustrations on pixiv / Instagram, and deeper conversations or community management on dicksword and other services. In particular, people in their teens and twenties use TikTok and Instagram a lot more, so as generations shift, the main “center of gravity” (and even the vibe) could change over time.

>>363
「ディスコード」がダメだったか…

>>364
There’s a word filter on it. There is some grief among western fans that dicksword makes it harder to retain and share information in the long term, that it encourages bad culture, etc.

>>357
If we limit it to the past year, and talking about songs using overseas voicebanks (regardless of whether the producers themselves are overseas), here are a few I know of on NND: Luo Tianyi’s「武装乙女」and「鬼ごっこ」are both over 40k views. Yi Xi’s「言葉遊び」and「マッテイル」are over 50k, and while it hasn’t quite reached that level, Yi Xi’s「モト゛キ」is also over 35k. Xingchen Infinity’s「データスモッグの最中で」is over 40k as well.
Like >>361 said, I think these Chinese-language-based voicebanks have a pretty solid fanbase.

As for songs by overseas Vocaloid producers that I remember being talked about on NND in the past, examples would be KIRA’s “MONSTER,” Circus-P’s “Copycat,” and SAWTOWNE’s “M@GICAL☆CURE! LOVE ♥ SHOT!”
FLAVOR FOLEY’s “BUTCHER VANITY” was also popular on NND. But the reupload of “static” is just under 20k views, and the reupload of “BIRDBRAIN” hasn’t really taken off. “Spoken For” doesn’t even have a proper reupload, which, personally, I’m not too happy about.

Honestly, if the creator uploads their music to YouTube, I think most people just listen there. So there are quite a few songs that are huge on YouTube but don’t get many views on NND at all.

And if we’re talking “overseas songs” in the broadest sense, “VOCALOID2 Hatsune Miku sings ‘Ievan Polkka’” is a legendary outlier on a whole different level.

>>364
It's filtered to Dicksword here (Dick + Sword). In the west "Disc0rd" is synonymous with spam, illegal activities, etc and it has also contributed to the death of small sites like this one so a lot of imageboard sites tend to filter it.

>>365
>>367
I don’t use it that much myself, but I do remember it being talked about because of concerns related to minors’ safety.

>>330
Semi unrelated but on /leek/ it used to be a bit of an inside joke to say that certain Japanese producers use 39chan. Would you say that this is (to some extent) true?.

>>369
A couple western producers do, they just don't really talk about it, and if they do they don't really have any negative nor positive thoughts about it, they just know it exists. (Sauce: I am friends with some of them). As for Japanese ones, it's a bit of the same, except very few of them actually know. The ones who do found it via Hioka or Canon.

Not OP btw.

>>366
>and the reupload of “BIRDBRAIN” hasn’t really taken off. “Spoken For” doesn’t even have a proper reupload
I guess this explains why Machine Love is on the compilation album over Birdbrain.

>>370
Also not OP, but most people seem to prefer chatting in their native language, so I don't think JP producers would be very active here. The handful of JP producers active on VO would just use it to advertise their songs.

>>372
I was around during the VO era but sadly never actually went in there and made an account. Interesting though.

>>369
Honestly, I don’t know. But in Japanese, almost nobody mentions 39chan publicly, at least on the surface.
That said, I can’t say for sure that nobody uses it either… because, well, it’s an anonymous board.

>>371
Since it includes an homage to “Song of the Eared Robot,” I thought it was a fitting choice to close out the compilation album.

Something that I have suspected a while so I will start with that if anyone cam answer. I noticed "Decora" fashion has a lot in common with what "Kandi Kid" ravers wear and seemingly similar mentality of expressing an inner child. I checked and found that scene emerged in California a few years before Decora supposedly appeared. Is there anything documented that proves this connection?

What Vocaloid songs would native Japanese speakers consider the most accessible to someone unfamiliar with Vocaloid?

Do native Japanese speakers consider popular Vocaloid songs like "wowaka ローリンガール Rollin Girl" and "iroha(sasaki) 炉心融解 Meltdown" to be emotionally challenging to listen to?

>>409
I’m not really knowledgeable about fashion, so I couldn’t find any sources that directly show a connection. But I did find an interesting article about the origins of Decora fashion in Harajuku.

It says that Decora may trace back to Harajuku club culture in the 1980s, and that the fashion there may have been influenced by the London club scene, especially punk fashion. There may be some common ground there in things like bold self-expression and DIY elements.
https://www.fashionsnap.com/article/whatisdecora/

Also, this article on the history of kawaii culture includes some discussion suggesting there may be a link between 1990s UK rave culture and Decora as well.
https://note.com/helixum/n/ndf8c1d4500c9

>>466
That’s a difficult question, since I’m not exactly someone unfamiliar with Vocaloid myself.

Still, if I had to answer, I’d say that how accessible a song feels mostly comes down to personal taste, and probably is not determined all that much by whether someone is a Japanese speaker or not.
Even if someone understands Japanese and can read the lyrics, interpretation will still vary from person to person.

For example, songs like “Rolling Girl” and “Meltdown” could certainly bring up complicated feelings if someone reads deeply into the lyrics or relates them to real-world nuclear disasters.
But at the same time, I think it is perfectly fine if someone simply likes the overall atmosphere of the song or the feel of the words in the lyrics.
And “Meltdown” was released in 2008, so it was not written with the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in mind.

How someone receives a song can vary a lot depending on interpretation, background knowledge, and personal sensibilities.

Also, for someone completely unfamiliar with synthesized singing voices, first impressions may depend more on whether the voice itself is easy to understand than on the meaning of the lyrics.
No matter how great a song is, if they cannot clearly make out the lyrics and the vocal style sounds unfamiliar, they will probably find it difficult at first.

So in that sense, for a Vocaloid beginner’s first impression, an easy-to-understand singing voice may be one factor that makes a song feel more accessible.
Other than that, it still mostly comes down to personal preference.

>>466
So for that reason, it is difficult for me to point to any specific songs.
To be honest, I do not really know which songs people who are getting into Vocaloid now are using as their entry point.

But to put it bluntly, I think the first impression of the MV may matter even more.

I do not mean that the MV is being valued on its own while the song is ignored.
Rather, I mean that the song’s worldview needs to be translated properly into visual form, and that it is only through the synergy between the song’s appeal and the MV that a truly positive first impression can be created.

>>468
Thank you for answering my question.

>>468
Feel free to correct me but I think what the anon you replied to was referring to is which songs the Japanese side of the fandom considers to be good for introducing someone to Vocaloid.

Over here it's common for people to recommend the classics (Rolling Girl, Meltdown, etc). You can get a general idea of what people recommend in this thread: >>>/leek/21305
But since Vocaloid is arguably more popular now than it was years ago, people also recommend new, popular songs like Mesmerizer.

I'll give my 2 cents and say that there's no definitive song to introduce someone to Vocaloid because at the end of the day everybody has different genres they like, but I do think that the classics are a good starting point.

>>467
Oh so that has some earlier roots of Decora than I saw from other sources so that does complicate things if true. Thanks.

Does the Japanese side of the Vocaloid community have their own forums to discuss Vocaloid? I know a majority has moved over to SNS such as Twitter, and I know that 2channel and Futaba Channel still exist, but are there no Vocaloid specific places? The western community has Vocaverse, UTAforum (For UTAU discussion) and 39chan.

>>366
Also Circus Monster

Apologies if its a touchy subject but I wanted to know what the general consensus on piracy is in Japan, especially since in many countries (notably Latin American and Southeast Asian ones) it is seen as a need.

I recently saw an image of a comment that said something along the lines of "Telling my Japanese friend to use an emulator was like telling him to shoot his childhood pet". Is it really such a taboo subject over there? And if so, is it true that the majority of Japanese users are against it, or is there at least a minority that understands the issue and might even be in favor of it?.

Considering how strict copyright laws seem to be in Japan I've been wondering if the concept of a "fansite" was ever a thing there. In the west at the height of Hatsune Miku and Vocaloid's popularity we had several sites run by fans such as forums and news blogs (Mikufan.com, VocaloidOtaku, VNN, etc. You could even count 39chan as a fansite).

>>625
Just noticed a similar question was asked above but I'm referring to fansites in general, not just discussion sites. Non-official news sites related to Vocaloid or Vocaloid-adjacent software counts.

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>>625
Not OP, but yes, sort of. The definitive Japanese news blog at the time was HatsuneMikuMiku (初音ミクみく). The equivalent to VO was Vocaloid Nyappon (picrel), which was an invite-only social media. Since mixi was invite-only for many years, it was normal for these types of fan communities to remain private.

There wasn't an era of large all-in-one fansites like in the west. The community was atomized across many personal blogs, personal webpages, free wikis, BBSes, and social media.

>>627
Naruhodo. Do you know if any of those were archived on the wayback machine?.

nyappon.PNG - 281.80 KB (723x557)

>>628
Private communities like Nyappon were mostly not. Almost everything would be locked behind an account, so it's just a few pages that randomly slipped through.
On the other hand, most of the rest is either still available or archived, since the free web hosts from back then haven't started closing until recently.

>>627
Vocaloid social media sounds good on paper but seeing what social media has become, yeah, maybe not the greatest idea. I wonder if that's why Crypton never brought back Mikubook.

>>641
Kiite.JP is basically Mikubook's successor, except it doesn't operate in English. It's one of the main sites that Vocaloid fans in Japan use.

>>642
This is neat. I wonder if they have their own equivalent of VocaDB as well (though from what i've seen on Twitter they just use VocaDB in Japanese).

>>643
Kiite is usually used instead of VocaDB for music discovery and playlists, but VocaDB is more complete as a database, so it has some recognition.
Fun fact: Crypton used VocaDB's API to support official YouTube uploads on Kiite while Niconico's servers were down.

>>644
lol, i wonder if riipah knows how far his project has come

>>374
I've seen people on Nijiura mention it recently but it was a passing mention and they called it "that imageboard Hioka promoted".