>>9907 I think Namigroove is slowly becoming one of my favorite Vocalo-P's. Way too many good songs recently, and this is coming from someone who's not a huge fan of the recent "denpa" trend. I think his creative approach to it and variety in voicebanks is what I like the most.
>>10044 Hey Hioka. I have an interest in internet culture so I figured I'd ask now that I have the chance. How do you feel about the current state of Japanese BBS sites like 2channel / 5channel and 2chan / Futaba? Would you say that discussions have gotten worse in terms of quality over time?
In the west, people have become unsatisfied with anonymous BBS sites like 4chan (mostly due to corrupt moderators, hate speech, and other factors), which has resulted in the creation of alternative sites like 39chan. So I'm curious if the situation over there is similar.
>>10038 missed the Q&A but wanted to ask: I like Neru's thick eyebrows, were they a conscious design decision or just a part of your normal drawing style?
I get it /leek/. I finally get it. I used to think she was ugly. But after seeing the other design i realized that she's actually very hot and it's just her clothes that were ugly.
PS:The verification challenge where it gives you just Neru/Rin/Len is evil. Good luck guessing if it's Neru with her ponytail cropped out or Rin with a bun(or somehow Len, if I just *really* misinterpreted the art).
>>10055 You got me thinking about how Futaba has a Vocaloid board. I'm not too sure how most of the threads there work, they have lots of links and it seems like it's similar to our "/rvr/" threads. I did see this thread there though, the toshiaki are really good at drawing.
Smith Hioka !!LUvMAcwpNwThu, Oct 2, 2025, 09:46 AMNo.10098
>>10055 Thanks for the question about Japan’s message-board culture.
The “quality of discussion” has always been mixed—since the early 2000s—depending on place and topic. Some spaces felt more conversational before, but that may just be personal nostalgia.
What’s changed most is the surrounding ecosystem: blogs gave way to social media, smartphones became ubiquitous, user demographics and styles shifted, and the pace of sharing accelerated. Compared to the heyday, the context is fundamentally different.
Personally, I stopped living on 5ch when non-logical posts increased and access restrictions often blocked posting. This lined up with Japan’s smartphone boom, though I can’t claim causation.
Historically, 2channel began as a refuge from Amezou’s instability, which itself swelled after “Ayashii World” closures. Since then, splits, rebrands, and look-alikes have diluted its once dominant presence.
Given that history, “refuge” alternatives like 39chan emerging is natural. Whether Japan sees them frequently, I can’t say—but under similar conditions, I’d expect similar responses.
※ The original version was about 1.8× longer, but I couldn’t post it, so I trimmed it.
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Smith Hioka !!LUvMAcwpNwThu, Oct 2, 2025, 09:51 AMNo.10099
>>10057 I could go on, but to put it briefly: I like thick eyebrows.
>>10098 That's interesting to know. A lot of this could be said about Western BBS sites as well, especially 4chan, where "it was never good" is a bit of a common sentiment among old users. And to some extent it is true. But after Hiroyuki purchased the site it became evident that he didn't know what to do with it, leading to poor decision making and questionable choices on behalf of staff / mods such as banning on-topic discussions while leaving off-topic stuff up (Notably the site's /jp/ board for Otaku Culture has become very watered down).
The "altchans" (what we call alternative imageboard sites) have existed as far back as 2004 or 2005 if I'm not mistaken but I would say that they've become more relevant than ever in recent times given the 4chan users' growing dissatisfaction with the moderation. 39chan, for example, was made in response to the Vocaloid threads there becoming very off-topic. A lot of people were fed up with the producer-bashing and lack of music discussion as well.
>>10107 I really hope so, doesn't matter who. Both Western and Japanese Voca-p's have struggles with getting them here, idk about other producers, but I'd be satisfied either way >Western While not universal, most would have problems with the fictional characters rule unfortunately. The few that don't are quiet or small producers that some people here may not know of. >Japanese Higher chance of a language barrier, though not universal as some are clearly bilingual, and even Canon used a machine translator. They're probably more busy than Western producers, too.
I wouldn't dismiss the possibility of that ever happening. But I feel like a lot of Western producers would be put off by the site due to the stigma surrounding the imageboard format in the west (a lot of people are quite ignorant about them and associate these types of sites with controversy: think illegal content (CSEM, drugs), extremist ideologies and mass shootings associated with 4chan/8chan, etc - I feel like imageboards in general have been tainted by that kind of stuff so they have the same reputation the "deep web" used to have in the 2010's when we knew nothing about it). I have admittedly considered MonochroMenace and Shobon, since they're two of my favorite producers of all time. But I'm a bit of a pussy, so I have not reached out to them at all.
As for Japanese producers, a lot of them do not respond so I assume they are either not interested or are simply busy. But if one ever responds you will know.
I also try not to reach out to people immediately after a Q&A has concluded: I don't want to be rude or pushy, so I prefer to give it time. That way I can assure everybody is equally prepared and I'm not being annoying.
>>10108 i don't think anyone gives a donkey's ass about that rule. it's neat that it exists but it's not like you'll enter 39chan and be bombarded with pics of naked yuki everywhere. not to mention porn is banned everywhere except >>>/o/.
>>10111 This. The rule is only there as a reminder that you're able to discuss taboo topics here without getting the hammer but 39chan, even when /otn/ existed, was never a porn site.
Apologies if this is a taboo topic here, but I'm very isolated from any sort of community and don't trust the Reddit answers that pop up in Google results: Are the FEs still the go-to versions for VOCALOID2 to 4? If I remember correctly, I used to have a lot of trouble with getting anything but VOCALOID1 to work in their original versions, with 2's activator somehow not helping the expired trials and 3 + 4 I believe never even got an activator and were FE-only. I can get by with the FE releases, just wondering if maybe someone unlocked the originals and all banks by now.
>>10233 If I'm not mistaken she was one of the first Korean voicebanks for SV. The WVF hated her on release due to her design and the fact that GEMVOX supports NFTs (remember those?).
>>10234 >>10087 people didn't like her not only because of the NFTs, but also because her demos used AI-generated backgrounds (and to top it all off, poorly edited images, so much so that they scream GRAPHIC DESIGN IS MY PASSION). picrel
at one point people thought even her art was stolen, turns out the artist who drew her sold the art and the company behind topaz, GEMVOX, bought the illustration and that's it
>>10235 It doesn’t help that Gemvox’s other vocal is literally like unknown and considerably worse quality than Topaz. Topaz is literally their only vocal doing any numbers.
Neither company can market their vocals well, and they market them so badly that you either have to wait their crypto streams for announcements or decipher their awful commercial that makes it look like Topaz is a V6 vocal when in reality they’re announcing a completely separate character for V6 in a Topaz commercial. They also made it seem like they didn’t care about amateurs and people took that the complete wrong way.
Gonzo please just stay a failing Anime Studio and Studio Entre just invest in something else…
gonzo's decisions feel sketchy nowadays, it's weird how GEMVOX is related to gonzo plus how they bought an illustration instead of commissioning one. not exactly sketchy but it's weird
>>10249 Eh, it’s not too weird when you realize Gemvox is a collaborative effort between them and studio Entre. Most folks don’t realize it’s 2 companies involved on the project.
I'm not sure if this is off-topic, but does anyone have a english translation/sub for [song of the beast](https://youtube.com/watch?v=LWtDHbX68SM [Embed])? It's an iconic Neru song, and I'd like to understand the lyrics.
Anons, I'm getting a bit sick of seeing Teto everywhere. At first I was happy for her but now every song uses her Synth V voicebank and it gets a bit tiring.
Of the top 50 vocaloid songs, there are: * 15 Miku only songs * 9 Teto only songs * 6 Miku and Teto duets * 3 songs that feature Miku and/or Teto
Giving you a 2 in 3 chance for a given song to be either Miku and/or Teto. It is a bad time to be a Miku & Teto hater.
Other stats I found while going though trending: * N from Pokemon is here somehow. * There are ~5 songs that feature over 5 voicebanks * Gumi has ~3 songs * Mesmeriser is *still* trending somehow * How is Butcher's Vanity ranked above mesmeriser, despite being less popular overall, and releasing before it? * There are 7 songs with a yellow background, of which 3 are critiqueof how overused it is. * Flop era(and its remix) is the only song to show up twice * Relying on the thumbnail to guess which vocaloids are in a song is unreliable.
The way streaming services handle Vocaloid stuff is so bad that even my normie friends who don't know how to pirate things off Rutracker made the switch from Spotify to MusicBee and Foobar. Amazing.
Been exploring songs with the vocacolle app and Kazehiki has been getting quite a few songs recently. Like I think since vocacolle winter 2025 I've been seeing more pop up each month
>>10568 i like a lot of 40mp songs, it's really surprising how long they've been producing vocaloid music. i wish to dive into their more obscure songs sometime.
>>10673 to my limited knowledge, they didn't like people covering and making animation memes with the song you posted for it was a very personal piece to them. After having it private and silently going back and forth with people being mad at him for doing so he put it back to public and left the vocaloid scene
Given she's ~20 years old, still being in the top 10 of 2025/ 8th of all time, is very good.
Postscripts: * Does anyone know the vocadb equivilent of the `combineSimilarArtists` feature? * I got this funny screenshot. * Who is "Female Voice 1 (AquesTalk)"? Vocadb is down, so I can't check there. * Why isn't Neru on the list? She should be at least 50th?
>>10686 > Why isn't Neru on the list? She should be at least 50th? i suppose she doesn't count, due to her using either miku or rin's voicebank with changed parameters.
>>10689 i mean, vocadb has the akita neru tag. you'd have to sift through ones that just have her as a character in the MV, but it shouldn't be too difficult.
Here you can follow the sequence from the very first mention of the name “Yowane Haku,” through several posts about the character’s setting/lore, to the point where the illustration that CAFFEIN originally published on their blog was reposted by someone else—and then the first reactions from 2channel (2ch) users.v
In celebration of Neru's birthday, I made a song cover using here NEO 2.0 voicebank. Any tips for improving it, especially the tuning, would be much appreciated.
Openutau project file available upon request, or whenever I decide to upload it.
Postscript: It took me ~10 tries to upload this. Why does the site not accept .mp3 files?
A while ago, someone posted a link to a website where you could upload utau/synthv/ect sequence files, and browse files others have uploaded. Does anyone still have the link?
>>10908 That's not him. Hioka is familiar with how imageboards work and has posted several times here before, ESL-kun doesn't know how to format links.
Anons are there any decent Vocaloid related news sources besides /news/? Positive Vocalsynth on Twitter used to be one but they've been extremely inactive as of late.
>>10931 Remember @vocafollower? the bluesky account that was created by an anon here to spread the fake news about Toriko's SynthV announcement? It has become a real news account now
But bluesky sucks ass so i recommend just bookmarking it.
> I feel really bad for Neru fans because ever since Teto got on stage with Miku there seems to be an uproar of people saying Neru needs to go on stage too and sing Triple Baka, and there has even been a fan made voicebank for her so she can stop being a literal Miku clone down to her voice. But the issue is, I’m certain Neru will not be able to go on stage without being picked up by a voice synthesizer company, and she can’t be picked up by a company without drastic changes to her design > Teto got drastic changes to her design too as she was also very derivative to Miku, but Teto had a very distinct hair that makes her recognizable. Neru is a recolored Miku with one pigtail removed and some tweaks to the outfit. She’s too similar to Miku for any other company to pick her up, and also too similar for the vocaloid brand to want to pick her up since having one of your avatars being near exact to an already existing one isn’t going to be seen as a viable move without changing her to a point where it’s questionable she’s even the same character. So there’s a whole bunch for fans excited to one day see her on a stage, and I really don’t think it’s likely. > Anyway, here’s my Akita Neru redesign I did for this.
Someone else's thought on Neru getting a voicebank. From what Hioka's said, we 'might' get a Neru voicebank, but its been that way for ~15 years, so it's unlikely at this point(but Neru's increasing popularity might change this).
>>11031 I mean the redesign is cool but she doesn't need that, or a voicebank (especially considering she's partially managed by CFM - see: >>9397 - so they could just use a high pitched Rin/Miku if they ever had to use her voice). Her design is already iconic and recognizable, especially among fans. It's not a "yellow Miku" either, by that logic then Teto is a red Miku with drills instead of twintails. Keep in mind that for the BLOOMING concert the Teto model they used was that of the UTAU design (which looks more "Miku" than SV).
Anyway, Hioka, I know you use this site sometimes. It's best to keep Neru voiceless and just allow the creation of fan-made voicebanks, that way everybody is happy.
>>11032 > It's best to keep Neru voiceless > that way everybody is happy
i still want to seea Neru voicebank. She could be so much *more*, but is held back by the lack of a voicebank. The fact that she's still popular despite not having a voicebank shows how she could achieve if she *did* have a voicebank. While I would accept Neru never getting a voicebank, I trust the Hioka would be able to create a good(and perhaps excelent) voicbank for Neru. If he did, I think we would see an upsurge in Neru's popularity. I might even get more than one engish Neru song a month.
>>11121 Same but I dig his music and animation style. A lot of people compare him to Channel for some reason but I don't see the resemblance. Also DREAMMODE only had the falling poptart and the Tumblr trumpet thing from ages ago
>>11122 >compare him to Channel I can't even imagine what would make someone forge the comparison. Given the average age of a Vocaloid fan, plenty are going to get Boss Baby vibes from anything mildly popular.
>>11123 His first song was a MikuTeto duet and he used a bit of tweening for the animation so I guess I can understand it to some extent, but eventually even he got sick of MikuTeto stuff and now his animations mostly consist of simple dances.
>>11127 Mesmerizersloop in general is a dumb term. I'm not a fan of the whole Mikuteto trend either but a lot of great songs came out of it like Daikirai, Odochina, PPPP. >puke kek wordfilter
>>11121 Clone Clone is parodying trends so it makes sense. It's also more subtle than that "original vocaloid song" that went viral a couple weeks ago.
I think it's interesting to contrast Neru and Yi Xi. Neru started out as just a design without a voicebank, contrasting with Yi Xi who started as just voicebank. Neru was then given a voicebank by fans(first a Miku retune, and more recently a UTau voicebank), while Yi Xi was then given a design by fans (the `butcher's vanity` design from flavour folly). A similarity between them is that amost all of their popularity comes from a small subset of their songs. Having written this out, I now want to see a Yi Xi+Neru song, just to see how they would interact.
>>11153 By not holding yourself to an impossible standard. You don't aim to be the "next Siinamota". You aim to be the best you. You can take aspects from their work that you adore and cherish to use that to express what you want to through your music. Chasing the idea of being "as good" as anyone is a one say ticket to burning yourself out. Use your experiences and emotions to guide your work.
>>11236 I knew this video was gonna be shit the moment I saw what the bottom track was but it was when i saw Bacterial Contamination at spot #147 when I realized that everyone involved in this should be kiled
>>11236 this video was cleverly designed in a lab to torture old school fans. putting Machine Love at #2 with a couple HACHI and Yuyoyuppe songs at the bottom is the most clever way to troll vocaloid fans.
>>11236 Gosh, seeing Machine Love being described as the quintessential Teto song sucked the air outta my lungs for a second, feel so old now (Though, it is a great song)
>>11243 >>11246 For modern I actually would pick Machine Love, but I was just shocked at how something so recent can be considered quintessential, really shows that Teto in particular recently attracted a really young audience For old time i would personally pick S.A.S
How has nobody brought up Song of the Eared Robot as one of the Teto songs of all time? We're losing our traditions. Typewriter and Yoshiwara Lament have a special place in my heart. >>11243 Ghost Light is great but Nekosogi Matter Bop is probably my favorite of the album
>>11266 Yoshiwara's great. If there's one thing I like about SV Teto's newfound popularity is that it has made newer producers like Haraguchi pick up the UTAU version, which, imo will always sound better than SV.
>>11266 You're right I shouldve thought of Song of the Eared Robot. But to be fair everyone would pick a different song they consider quintessential, im pretty sure almost all of the songs would be old though.
>>11266 >How has nobody brought up Song of the Eared Robot as one of the Teto songs of all time? I like how at certain milestones someone just makes a really good cover of it
>>11236 I posted my thoughts on this in Jaypee already but it's got some real shit placements and a lot of the songs chosen are far from their producer's best. I know Young Girl A is on there because of TikTok but Siinamota's best song in my opinion is Yume no Manimani. I don't blame kids for being unaware of its existence though. Also Jamie just sucks as a producer. I like everyone else she usually works with, though, which is how I like Butcher Vanity but cannot stand Bird Brain, Queen of Venus, Weathergirl, Water the Roses, Rot for Clout, or Machine Love. >>11285 I don't even hate Teto SV by any means, I own her bank! I just feel like a lot of people lazily throw her in for views. >>11288 But more generic! The video had charm but HOLY FUCK I hate her style of producing.
>>11307 Anri sounds like a mix between Kafu and low-range Miki to me, but without much of the personality of either. I still like her but she's not really unique beyond her art.
>>11317 the thing that really gets me about it is that everyone suddenly loves teto the moment her voice changes to be realistic like everyone else. the antithesis to the message her character stood for in many peoples eyes. that being that despite her robotic tone, she is still a diva.
Who are all the vocaloids that can appear in the vartification challenge? I only know the Crypton ones(including Teto, Neru, and Haku, who are licenced by Crypton).
>>11435 I was a huge fan of their content since 2014. Their biggest problems have nothing to do with their music, they're quite talented at it, though if I'd have said that around 2018, many people would disagree.
>>11436 I used to be one of those people who disliked anything GHOST because of their fanbase and the whole copycat thing in the western side of the scene but i've grown to like their stuff
>>11437 I may have spurred GHOST copycat drama when I was 15, admittedly. I wasn't the producer but I was... very obviously mentally at the time. I feel so bad about it.
>>11442 A bunch of teenagers made songs styled similarly to GHOST. It was basically the 2016-2019 equivalent of the MikuTeto duet trend. In my case, around 2018, I got extremely parasocial with one of the producers, to put it mildly, and around 2022~23ish I started putting serious effort into bettering myself. Some people who were involved in copycat drama have not gone about bettering themselves, unfortunately. Everyone involved in mine has except for one, who has mostly disappeared instead.
>>11492 If they're already into J-pop or anison then it's smooth sailing from there. Maybe learn about what specific genres they're into. 2010s Deco*27, toa, and mikitoP really got me into Vocaloid. Shoot them one of those Vocaloid playlist videos that people made during the early-mid 2010s, they usually have some classics.
>>11318 It's partially what the other replies mentioned but I think it's also seen as a fulfilment of her wish. Part of her lore was she started off as a joke but always wanted to become and be seen as more serious (a vocaloid for example), and the SV voicebank gives her this legitimacy.
>>11511 Iirc Teto’s vp has expressed interest in voicing for vocaloid still after Teto SV came out and Teto SV has done amazingly well so I wouldn’t be surprised if they do expend developments to Vocaloid again. So odds are good I would say.
>>11512 Teto becoming an official Vocaloid would be really funny but I feel like realistically no one would use her V6 with the SV existing. People already use SV Gumi and Koto over their V6's.
I really wish they would make a Sukone Tei Vocaloid but absolutely nothing is known about the voice provider and Usamimi doesn't seem like it has been updated in years, I wonder if the members listed there are still active / involved.
>>11568 Technically a lot of the newgens are introduced to Vocaloid *music* by PJSK. They tend not to give a shit about the voicebanks or culture though.
do you guys think if rei gets the V6 voicebank she'll sound too real? i'm excited, but it's a bit scary >>11568 >>11578 i have a friend that got into vocaloid because of sekai and at the start would favor the unit covers over the originals, but i was able to indocrinate him, he now loves project diva and is obsessed with furry utaus instead
>>11607 >>11609 i was more worried about AI making her sound weird (a lot of people call SV teto soulless for that reason) but i had forgotten about the diffsinger voicebank i'll admit. i'm pretty sure her first goal is for an AI-less voicebank anyway
>>11618 Teto sounds realistic because she is voiced by a human. Rei is a bunch of sinewaves with EQ. If she does get an AI voicebank it's likely going to sound like this.
>>11619 yeah, rei being inorganic is exactly why i'm drawn to her. it's also why i prefer her original voicebank for being choppier, but i enjoyed machina mori a lot and that used an improved vb so eh. do you think this will boost her popularity like it did with teto? (not to the same degree obviously)
>>11623 yeah i know she is popular. teto was also the most popular utau before she got the voicebank. what i mean is if it'll be more likely people who don't care as much for this niche to know about her
>>11622 I liked that one cool song I can’t remember the name of but it was in English and it was her like asking questions Idk I don’t remember much just that it was on the album
