Just about every meme I've covered so far has something to do with this green-haired deva, so she's getting her own thread. Well Miku Hatsune has been officially covered as a meme topic by Know Your Meme. So I suppose the picking this specific character out of the Vocaloid 2 series is acceptable. Well to start, Miku Hatsune is a character from Vocaloid 2. Vocaloid 2 is a voice synthesizer program that allows people to create electronic singing in music videos. Vocaloid 2 is especially good, because unlike programs like Microsoft Sam, Vocaloid allows the user to control tempo, pitch and other things that create the "singing" effect, albeit a flawless electronic sounding one. The original Vocaloid was simply a voice synthesizer program, however Vocaloid 2, featured an array of voices that could be used, each with a corresponding character, creating a sort of ensemble of virtual back up singers (or lead singers depending on the video).
Below is a list of current Vocaloid 2 characters:
Vocaloid2 Character Vocal Series
Miku Hatsune: Japanese female
Rin and Len Kagamine: Japanese female (Rin) and male (Len)
Luka Megurine: Japanese and English female
Yet-unnamed Japanese male[8]
Prima: English female
Gakupo Kamui: Japanese male
Sweet Ann: English female
Big-Al: English male[9]
Gumi: Japanese female
Sonika: English female[10]
SF-A2 miki: Japanese female [11]
Yuki Kaai: Japanese female [12]
Kiyoteru Hiyama: Japanese male [13]
Miku's voice itself comes from "The voice data...from sampling Japanese voice actress Saki Fujita" (Knowyourmeme). Miku's popularity is partly attributed to Nico Nico Douga due to the ease of sharing new voclaoid videos, in a fashion similar to youtube. Miku's popularity is immense, even outside of internet meme circles and homemade music videos, Several professional music artists made miku centered albums that topped the charts in japan. Some of the bands include Livetune and RYO. Also, the band Absorb made a song: Sakura No Ame, which was about graduation, and "80 high schools in Japan used Sakura no Ame as their graduation song for the 2009 semester" (Knowyourmeme). There was also a program to go along with Vocaloid 2 called Miku Miku Dance which allows users to create videos of Miku dancing to whatever music video they decide to create. To the best of my knowledge Miku is the only character who has such a program. well aside from her mainstream adoption, Miku has been in an unfathomable amount of memes. I will list examples below.
There is probably alot more media I could post here, but I'll leave that up to the club members, if they feel like it. I'll most likely be adding more about Miku as I come across it.
The relative date of Miku's popularity seems to have started in the later of half of 2007, just around the time Crypton Future Media released Vocaloid 2. This probably means Miku's success and popularity were relatively instantaneous:
That about covers it. However there is one more thing I have to mention, like lots of other characters on MAL, Miku hatsune has her own fanclub (a massive one at that). the club has a detailed Miku Bio as well as alot of Miku Hatsune Music Videos: here is the link Hatsune Miku - the Goddess ~FanClub~
New Update: I found a video of Miku's live concert in Japan:
not as good quality as my first one but Sega had to go and claim copyright on the video ugh
you know i really don't see how this Miku Hatsune got so...famous. her and Mio from K-ON!. Mio should be a meme topic,cuz i see her everywhere and i like her but personally i don't find her that extravagant.
Hiyorin17 said: you know i really don't see how this Miku Hatsune got so...famous. her and Mio from K-ON!. Mio should be a meme topic,cuz i see her everywhere and i like her but personally i don't find her that extravagant.
you can't be serious...do you even fully know who she is? read it up on wiki if you have no clue, she's revolutionary, well, the software is...but she's the singer.
the first of many ^^ it was partly the combination of leek spin + nico nico douga that helped turn miku into the mascot for vocaloid 2 over all the other characters.