Do you know Hatsune Miku? A quite different pop star who made a mark on the music industry in Japan and worldwide. How was this virtual girl able to create more than 150,000 songs and have millions of fans spread around the world? In this article, we will be uncovering her origin and success.
For those who are unaware, Hatsune Miku (初音ミク) is a Vocaloid. A voice package developed for a voice synthesizer program, used to create music through a computer program. She was created in 2007 by the Japanese company Crypton Future Media.
The Vocaloid program was launched in 2004, where you write the syllables and choose the tone of the voice, to create your songs. It was supposed to be a simple voice show, but thanks to marketing, the show has created a very popular phenomenon among young people and adults all over the world.
Japan is famous for creating stylized anime/manga character illustrations. The same thing was done, they created illustrations to represent the voices used in the program. Hatsune Miku has become the most popular voice/character, becoming a standout character, worthy of gigging gigs.
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How did Hatsune Miku's success come about?
It was on August 17, 2007, that version 2 of the Vocaloid program was released in Japan. Hatsune Miku was launched as the first voice of the future on the 31st! This is the meaning of her name, where Hatsu (初) means first, Ne (音) means sound, and Miku (未来) means future, although it is often written in katakana (ミク).
It was thanks to Japanese youtuber Nico Nico Douga that Miku became a sensation. Back in September 2007, a named Otomania posted a remix of Hatsune Miku swinging a leek while singing the song Ievan Polkka. It was because of this first song that Hatsune Miku became a web sensation:
The original video has gained over 3 million views as of August 2011. Not to mention Not to mention the over 200 million views (or more) of the re-up and different versions of the music video.
Soon other very popular songs were created using the singer. Songs like Melt, Po-pi-po and thousands of remixes and versions of already known songs. Soon other vocaloid voice packs appeared, illustrated by different characters, where it was possible to create songs with various voices and vocaloid characters.
In addition to the songs with synthesized and robotic voices, another thing that was responsible for Hatsune Miku's success was the dance videos with the character in both 2D and 3D. Soon, several 3D animation editing programs were created to create dance to accompany the songs.
The Japanese even created a version using Miku and other vocaloids of the song Paranaue:
Hatsune Miku's Impact on Japanese Culture
Hatsune Miku has become popular in all fields involving music, videos, 3D animations and especially memes. Youtubers started to crossover, a flurry of videos were ed to the platform. The popularity of Vocaloid videos reached the Japanese mainstream, receiving press coverage and endorsements by numerous J-pop celebrities.
Its popularity was so great that in August 2009, a promotional concert sponsored by SEGA took place. A real concert, with Miku being projected on glass screens, blew the fans away. Also, a famous rhythm game was released called Project Diva. That was just the beginning of a series of shows and games.
Hatsune Miku made her first holographic debut in the USA through the David Letterman show. Even games like No More Heroes 2 featured songs by Hatsune Miku in their soundtrack. Fans started to create Mods and Skins for other games and made countless modifications to Hatsune Miku, bringing the singer to life.
Various action figures and products related to the singer have been created and spread around the world. At anime events, there is always someone cosplaying as Hatsune Miku or another famous vocaloid. Clothes, toys, towels, and even jeans have been created using the highlight of Hatsune Miku.
Fun facts about Hatsune Miku
Who owns Hatsune Miku's voice? The name of the voice actress who makes the voices used in Hatsune Miku's vocaloid is called Sakiko Fujita (咲子藤田) nicknamed Saki.
Hatsune Miku went to space! In 2009 Miku fans petitioned to convince JAXA to send aluminum plates of the character on a probe to Venus. The petition sured 10,000 signatures and gained the of a JAEA professor. On May 21, 2010 the first Venus probe was launched containing 3 Hatsune Miku plates.
The opening of the Black Rock Shooter OVA was sung by Hatsune Miku along with Supercell. The original artist of the character also created an unofficial manga with several short stories about the character. The name of the manga is Hatsune Mix!
The first version of the viral nyancat was made using vocaloid with Hatsune's voice.
In 2012 a wave of people were denouncing Hatsune Miku's videos because of copyright on Youtube. A campaign was made to combat this problem. Hatsune really became popular for creating covers, remixes and parodies of well-known songs, but that wasn't the reason for the complaints, they were just jealous of her success.
The universe created involving MIku and the other Vocaloid is really gigantic. There are lots of new music every day, 2d,3d videos and animations and even fan-games, doushinjis and others. I hope you enjoyed this little article, if you want to go deeper, we'll leave some articles related to Hatsune Miku below. We appreciate the comments and shares:
