Convenience Store

Summary: A wonderful short story of a young man who fell in love at first sight with a convenience store girl. But instead of impressing the girl, he ends up humiliating himself in front of her. Will he ever manage to get her attention?

The Kokoro Series

Another entry from Lin and Rin Kagamine. Don't I just love these two Vocaloids? heh.
I highly suggest that you view the vids separately before watching the last (combo) vid.

Summary: A lonely scientist creates a robotic companion named Kiseki (Miracle). Everything is perfect, except for one thing: the robot doesn't have a Kokoro (soul). Will he give up his dream of perfecting Kiseki?

*Same disclaimer to previous Vocaloid vids apply.



The Scientist's Point of View~ a lonely scientist succeeds in creating the perfect robot, but finds himself at a loss at why a certain program won't work on her.



The Robot's Point of View ~ occured many years after the scientist dies. Now alone, Kiseki finds the Kokoro Program and downloads it into her system, resulting in an unbelievable surprise.




Kokoro counter point ~ a combination of the two vids above. See how both the messages of the Scientist and his Robot interact with each other through Counterpointing. *credits to Tala-chan for explaining the term Counterpointing.

Welcoming October with Vocaloid

Since October is my birth month, I've decided to celebrate it by posting my favorite Vocaloid vids. And to welcome my favorite month of the year, here is a cheerful dance from the Vocaloid family.

*Same disclaimer applies here.

Vocaloid Collection Part 1 - The Evil Series

Disclaimer: Videos posted here are not my own, but those I found over YouTube. There are more than one video made for the same song, and these are the ones that I truly found noteworthy. I would definitely credit the original owners of the said videos, just give me a PM so I can place them here.

Summary: A princess from a certain country rules by evil. See how everything turns out when her servant changes her point of view.



The Daughter of Evil ~ a princess's jealousy creates her own downfall. Sung by Hatsune Miku.



The Servant of Evil ~ The princess's servant who looked insignificant turns out to be the most important person for her after all. Sung by Rin Kagamine.



Translated Version of the Servant of Evil



The Message of Regret* ~ The princess is eaten up with the regret for losing her most cherished servant. Sung by Len Kagamine. *Sadly, I found only one version of the Message of Regret. This song needs a lot more lovin!!

Enjoy!

Breaking the Music Charts with Vocaloid

Photo credits to Moetron.com. Visit their site for more Vocaloid info.

I had introduced Vocaloid in a previous post of mine. For those who doesn't know, Vocaloid is a voice synthesizer program from Japan. Seriously, who would have thought that a voice from a machine would be that big of a hit? I mean, really, you'd definitely see at least one version of the same Vocaloid song. And their songs had also made it big in the music charts of Japan.

First popularized in Nico Nico Douga, Japan's version of the YouTube, it has also been home to the freshest Vocaloid entries. (But you'd have to get past registration first before you can even watch one. Lame for me and others who doesn't understand Japanese and their other available languages.) So how does it work? Beats me, I haven't got a Vocaloid program for myself. But Wikipedia managed to explain most of it.

Originally, there was the voice of Hatsune Miku. Characterized as a green haired girl in pigtails, the data for the voice was created by actually sampling the voice of Saki Fujita, a Japanese voice actress. Personally, I think that Miku's voice is best for the Asian/Oriental songs. One of her internet debuts was the Ievan Polkka, gaining 2 million plus votes as of today. Miku's personality is that of a young girl, kind and a bit gullible. And yes, she likes to twirl that onion leek around too.

My favorite twins came after Miku, Rin and Len Kagamine. This tandem is my favorite among them ever since I watched the Evil and the Kokoro Series of Vocaloid where these two star.


For me, Rin (the female twin) has a really good little girl's voice. As for Len (the male twin), I immediately noticed the "machine-quality" of his voice. Just like a little boy, he stumbles with his letters, specifically with his "S" and sometimes, his voice tends to sound really hollow. But together, these two can make up a perfect duet. I just love these two together. (And from their songs, they seem to be utterly dedicated with each other.) I recommend their voice for just about anything that needs that child-like quality, no matter how evil it must be.

The voice I definitely fell for was Kaito's. He was the more mature older guy with blue hair (from the Evil series, he was the love interest of Miku. On the parody, he was a playboy that was serenading Meiko, the other older Vocaloid.)


His voice is cool and well developed. Definitely best for those serenades. And I wouldn't mind being serenaded by him either. X3

Finally, we have Meiko, the mature young woman of the 5. Appearing as a strong woman in both form and character, her voice complements her personality well. Of the five, I think she ranks as the 4th of the most popular/used Vocaloid since she was fairly new. (5th will be my poor poor Kaito. T_T)


As I said, I haven't heard much from Meiko. Hell, I even had a hard time trying to find that picture above. But as the first voice in the Alice in Wonderland Horror version, she really did quite well. I'd say we give Meiko and Kaito a bit more lovin from now on.

Well, there are others more, but I will leave it to these five for the moment. My next posts will discuss the best Vocaloid songs and vids I found over YouTube. :)

Rockin Out Loud on Anime Tunes!

The Princess from the Land of Green:
Hatsune Miku from Vocaloid! Kawaii!

Yes, yes.... I've been a very lazy girl and hadn't updated in weeks. I was busy (yes, of course, that old reason of being busy again.) with work and life as well... But I was also busy listening to showtunes. Anime showtunes.

You know you're a true anime fan or otaku when all the music that runs in your head is either something from your favorite series, J-rock/J-pop band or another one of Vocaloid's newest songs. But if you live outside Japan, you probably have had a hard time trying to find that song, didn't you?

Well, look no further. Gendou.com is here.


Gendou.com offers a lot of anime MP3's for FREE. Yes... You read it right... FREE. You can download up to 100 songs, organized by anime, title, or artist. I only came about this recently through a friend. And yes, I, who have been an anime fan for around 10 years and counting, am ashamed to admit that I did not know about Gendou before that.

Anyway...

To finally get downloading, all you have to do is simply register. You would also need a good and fast Internet connection so those downloads can just keep coming in.

On the plus side, Gendou not only offers music, but also radio streaming and anime series download as well. I haven't tried both services though, so I can't actually review that part of Gendou. They also have forums as well, where you can chat about anything to any otaku lurking nearby. And you can drop a donation if you are feeling wealthy.

There are several negatives too. Though Gendou offers free music, not all of them is entirely free. New arrivals can cost you, but give it a little time (at least a week) and your music will be free again. Another thing is that Gendou sometimes conduct serious maintenance that disables the sites features for that day, including downloads. So it's nice to get an RSS feed to see what features are disabled for the day.

Also, there is a limit of 100 songs per account. Though it says there in their FAQ that you can download up to 100 songs per day, I never saw my download count reset anytime in the past.

Lastly, Gendou doesn't carry all the songs. So don't be surprised if you can't find the Namimori Anthem in there. But frankly, I'm quite satisfied with my Sakura Addiction.