Now now, Miku.. I say another one, but really, I missed one I wasn’t able to watch to begin with anyway. Your people didn’t want others to record the show. And there was no livestream. Stop looking like a copyrighted series that I’m currently watching.

Aside from acting like a faggot just now, there’s another Hatsune Miku concert going on. HATSUNE MIKU LIVE PARTY from Singapore happens this Friday at 19:00, for us west coasters in the US that ends up as 3am. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure if it’s going to be any different. Perhaps the setlist will have a few new songs. It’s interesting to note that I have another Vocaloid related post right behind this one, highlighting the composer NantokaP (kiichi). Maybe I’ll have my wish granted. This I’m sure won’t happen because I’ve checked the view counts on nicovideo and they’re paltry compared to the songs that make the live concert setlists.

So is there a reason to watch this one? It’s already cheaper than the previous livestream. I remember paying around $18 USD last time, and now it’s $11. The cost of a lunch from where ever. I think I can skip food to watch a lithe Miku dance in front of me with the support of a damn good live band. If it’s the same guys as seen from the AX2011 and the original 39s-Giving Day showing, then you can bet your ass (or other equally valuable asset) I’m watching it.

Besides, I already laid down the 11 quid to watch the livestream. Can’t go back now.

***

I’ll also take this time to reference the image above. It’s a Hatsune Miku drawn in the style that has been used in Denpa Onna to Seishuun Otoko and more recently Boku ha Tomodachi ga Sukunai. If you’ve crawled danbooru for a while and other anime related imageboards, you’ll probably know the artist Buriki. I first took note of the artist when I found his Touhou fanart — most notably the one where Nitori and Cirno do a hit-and-run skirt flip on Sakuya. (Since when is a skirt flip not hit-and-run? If you’re not running away, it’s just revealing girls’ panties. Oh, technicalities.) It’s been thanks to the adaptations of his art that there’s a noticeable difference in character art.

Lips. They’re drawing lips on the characters. Normally they’re drawn only when there’s a need to draw attention to the lips, or it’s a close-up. Even then, a lot of anime simply don’t draw the lips. Sometimes a character is lucky enough for it to be a focal point of their design (e.g. Mamimi from FLCL). It seems a little silly to give some praise for such a minor detail. However small it is, people took note to realize these character designs looked significantly different from the modern crop of anime. So to that, I salute the original artist and character designers for both series.

Sometimes I can’t tell if my standards are falling, or it’s just me getting hooked on an art gimmick. Maybe it’s both.

UPDATE: I misreported the time as 3pm PST, when it’s actually 3am for those in PST. The concert starts at 19:00 this Friday (11/11) in Singapore. It has been corrected in the post.

-maserbeam

niconico link: sm14639636

Before you’ve reached even this far down this post, I assume you’ve listened, or are reading this while listening to the above music. I hope you’ve reached the same conclusion as me: “Sure sounds a lot like Radiohead.” Even if you don’t make the same connection, it’s not the usual upbeat Vocaloid music.

So is it really that different from any similar Vocaloid music? It’s a sound I hear all the time in the rock space of music: shoegazing and what not. But I hardly ever get to hear it in the Vocaloid community. It’s detached from the usual cheery stuff. All of the Vocaloid music I had been listening to are generally of the lighter-hearted and cheery sounding music. It’s meant to energize — even if the lyrics are to be interpreted as scary or anything other than optimistic. More importantly to me, the song I’m linking to is a Vocaloid being used for a focused sound: sinister and moody. The effectiveness of a voice among it’s own kind of instruments — synthesized — is incredibly powerful. The sounds of synthesizers amplify Miku’s ability to reach eerie tones, something I normally thought was reserved for the analog and living.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Vocaloid stuff. I’ve been around the stuff for a while, but it wasn’t until the last month or two that I decided to invest time into looking for Vocaloid music.  I gravitate towards the stuff that’s not very catchy nor flashy. I’ve found that I really like the music that uses the Vocaloid music banks — which we all recognize as characters (e.g. Miku, Luka, Rin, Len, Kaito) — as another instrument.

Yes, the previous statement sounds obvious, but there’s a fairly distinct and detectable difference between Vocaloid composers. On one hand, there are those who prefer writing lyric centric songs and have the kind of melody and backing that’s intended for the voice to stand out. In most cases, this is what people do. It is an easier way to write music for Vocaloid, and in no way do I dislike it. There’s plenty of songs that I’ve heard that are very good that take this route. Songs like Ura-Omote Lovers by wowoka and World Is Mine by Ryo are driven by the voice and lyrics, which should already be emphasized by the mix.

Then there’s the ones that feel like they’re written with instruments before Vocaloid is taken into account. To some, the order of things is writing the instrumentation first, then implement the voice, and later, back and forth tweaking to compliment the ranges and mood within the song. Often these songs have to be imaginative about structure and implement flourishes within the song to keep it interesting. Sometimes you can hear the vocals being mixed into the music at low volume, as if to the hide the lyrics. The melody might not be as catchy, but it fits right in with the rest of the instruments — never feeling like it’s stepping over heads just to be heard, nor is it way in the back to fly under the radar. Kiichi, a.k.a. NantokaP, is the kind that does this. Should be no surprise since he’s done BGM for games such as Corpse Party. Admittedly, while I’ve been addicted to his music, I’m not sure it would fit in a Hatsune Miku live concert. Wouldn’t complain if it showed up.

Keep an eye out for kiichi’s music. The caliber of his compositions are nothing to sneeze at, unless you’re near allergens and can’t help it. Speaking of which, kiichi wrote Fluticasone, a great song featuring Luka. Straight from wikipedia, fluticasone is a synthetic glutocorticoid that acts as an anti-inflammatory. The more common variant is fluticasone propionate, which is used to treat asthma and hay fever.

.. What a derail.

I suggest using this link to get an mp3. Just in case you folks want to download it.

-maserbeam

I was hungry and decided to celebrate this with a song. Both music and art done by one of my favorite artists, Nagian. A cute song that will either make you hungry, d’awww at Miku, or be angry for some absurd and irrational reason.

I’ll have to go hunting for roasted sweet potato someday.

Because we all know they roam the grassy plains of where ever they are, waiting to be impaled with throwing spears.

-maserbeam

It’s a fresh anime! So it’s now time to look at new anime like everyone else has been doing. Do I have a unique outlook? Probably not. Give me page views, please.

Very clean and solid animation, thanks to Brains Base doing the production, so in terms of visual appeal it’s alright. I do remember there being a show of questionably and wildly variable quality done by Brains Base. (Looking at you Akikan.) It seems they’ve also smartly avoided unnecessary expenditures by drawing other humans as mere sign icons. Quite reinforces that clean look — I like it. It remains looking like a regular anime, but with a strong enough style that sets itself apart. As long as the show doesn’t try to ride solely on it’s initial inertia, I think it’ll do fine.

Wait. Nothing about the blushing girl?

-maserbeam

I’m quite impressed with the MikuNoPolis concert. At the moment I’m trying to remember what the set list was like compared to the two other ones (39sGiving Day & Live in Tokyo). The opener was the same as the 39 show, but it quickly escalated into showing off new costumes, songs and dance moves. I have to say that it truly felt like SEGA was trying to 1up the 5pb production, as Miku and company got to show off new threads. And goddamn that mini-skirt yukata plus thigh-high combo from Miku and Luka. My heart nearly exploded from such a beautiful sight. I have to commend whoever worked on the new animation and models. They were superb eye candy. I want to say they made the animation more lively as well thanks to 5pb upping the ante there. Miku and Rin’s eyes in the 39 concert were rather glass-like and unmoving, which may be a bit of a stretch to say. I do prefer the 39 concert at this point due to having access to the BluRay of it, which means the audio was cleaner and mixed properly afterwards. But in terms of presentation, Live In Tokyo had the Vocaloid girls (and Len) moving about with more emotive expressions and attitude. If SEGA can just add in the attitude that Miku had in the previous concert, MikuNoPolis would have been an absolute winner.

More text to read if you click here.

-maserbeam