By Carlo Santos, Jul 15th 2011.
Hiroyuki Itoh would like to explain himself.
As the CEO of Crypton Future Media, the parent company of "virtual idol" Hatsune Miku, Itoh sits in the driver's seat of a very crowded pop-culture bandwagon. And before everyone gets too excited, he wants people to understand what this bandwagon is about.
"Hatsune Miku is a [piece of] software," he says, "built on the Vocaloid technology developed by YAMAHA. [Vocaloid] is an engine that produces a singing sound, and we obtained a license from YAMAHA to develop products based on that."
In other words, declaring oneself a fan of Miku is like being a fan of the Korg Triton keyboard, or the Fender Stratocaster guitar. You're rooting for a musical instrument—one that must be installed on a PC, and comes in a box with an anime-styled illustration on it, but still, an instrument. And the Vocaloid brand name itself doesn't refer specifically to Miku and her colorful friends, but rather, to the sound synthesis engine they run on. Taken literally, being "a fan of Vocaloid" is like being a fan of a particular brand of guitar strings.
But who cares about playing semantic games? As with any emergent subculture, words have a way of taking on their own meaning. These days, "Vocaloid" refers to the entire meta-verse that has blossomed from that one innovation. Vocaloid is the infinite repertoire of songs created by home-studio producers using that software; Vocaloid is the gallery of images and videos that go with each song; Vocaloid is every meme and storyline spawned by those images; Vocaloid is the family of characters representing each particular voice bank; and as anyone who attended Anime Expo will tell you, Vocaloid is the fanbase dressing up as those characters in all their variations.
It is a viral effect that has surprised even Wataru Sasaki, Crypton's marketing director. He says that he is struck by "the way it's being utilized through video-sharing sites like YouTube and NicoNico. It's spreading among peers through these sites—really, word of mouth. It's become popular in various countries [in such ways that] there really haven't been any prior examples." In a world where most mainstream entertainment is still run by a heavy corporate hand, the self-propelling nature of Vocaloid has turned everything upside-down.
"In a way, it's been a struggle to find out how to best work with such phenomena," says Sasaki. "We believe that it's best to get feedback from fans about ... how best to handle things, how to do what's best for the fanbase. We're not in a hurry to make money on this."
Left: Hiroyuki Itoh. Right: Wataru Sasaki.
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