A friend of mine recently asked me why I was so obsessed with GUMI, after hearing that for the first time ever, I bought an import (not just an import CD, the first ever import) from Japan: kv(livetune) and Yukimasami's album "Crosslight" ( http://www.yesasia.com/us/crosslight-japan-version/1020340894-0-0-0-en/info.html ). It's a reasonable question to ask considering my extremely eccentric actions from last week (although ironically, the CD is not entirely GUMI, and my favorite song on the CD isn't by her either; although in retrospect, I don't think there IS a CD devoted entirely to GUMI out yet).
To trace the origins of this particular interest, one would have to go back to before Miku was even known about, when the first instance of her is passingly mentioned on the ANN website with some rather mediocre samplings. Ironically I think what was written was something about an anime being made based off this virtual singer, although I never heard anything about any anime (BRS exempt, I doubt BRS was even out when Miku was first mentioned in ANN) about Vocaloid. In any case, while the image was cute and the concept intriguing, I never took an immense amount of interest. I downloaded the Vocaloid program and tried to play around with it, but in the end my interest never got that high since her voice was still distinctly different from a real person's voice.
That's not to say I didn't take any interest in Miku's later songs. There were of course good songs, one of the ones most notable for me being "World is Mine". "World is Mine" is probably the first spark that told me, "this can get good". Miku's voice, as stated earlier, does not match a human voice but it can still work well, like an instrument with a particular tune. Good Miku songs such as "World is Mine" do exactly that, using Miku's voice not as a limitation but as a unique tone and style that no other human being can match. Hence, when composed correctly, Miku's voice sounds really nice.
So, good character design and a voice that can fit depending on how the song is constructed. Good job, Miku! What about Ren, Len, Luka, and other Vocaloids? They are, in my opinion, not much different from Miku. Ren has a higher pitch than Miku; Luka has a deeper pitch than Miku. But overall the distinction between their voice and a real person's voice is still the same. There's still that barrier that says Virtual Idols remain in the virtual (internets?) realm, and real people are in the real world. Their voices just cannot match a real person's voice.
So. GUMI.
Lets start from the very beginning. When GUMI was first announced, before her picture was presented, I was curious. Megumi was going to voice her. The person who did Ranka Lee from Macross F. First, Ranka Lee. As a character, I didn't like her too much; I mean, she was cool, but Sheryl was cooler. And that's pretty bad because Sheryl is an onee-san character, those are not usually the ones I think are more moe than the younger types. However, Megumi's voice while singing is still really nice. I mean, the only real reason I watched Macross F is because of the songs and nothing else. Great, there was a plot. Great, there was mech fightings. But the most awesome was no doubt the final scene, for that 15 minute medley; that was just epic.
Ok, I talked enough about Macross F (I forgot if I made a writeup on my blog about it before). I only spend two days watching that anime anyway. More onto GUMI. Her character was announced, and was probably drawn by the cheapest artist they could get their hands on (I'm assuming the company, unlike Crypton, doesn't have loads of money to blow especially with their failure on Gacktpoid). It was unattractive and seemed like a complete failure before the product even came out. I mean, what was the main motivation behind people to use Miku? It was her character. Otherwise Miku would fade to the backgrounds, just like previous voice synthesizers (Kaito and Meiko were not even HEARD of before Miku came along). Naturally failure in character style would coincide with failure in product.
...Or so I thought. The great thing about the fanart community is they can compensate for a bad character design, so that issue was much more minor than I thought. What they absolutely excelled at, was GUMI's voice.
The first thing I ever noticed when I listened to GUMI was "she sounds so much more real!!!" Anyone will tell you that the first time they listen to GUMI after listening to so many other vocaloids. And that's really the first key spark for my sudden interest in GUMI. But her realistic voice wasn't the only thing that was appealing; she was also still appealing in the synthetic sense. She can do songs similar to Miku's style and still do awesome in it; yet she can also do songs sounding more towards reality, and while not quite like Megumi herself singing, yet, she comes pretty darn close.
This is the difference. While Miku, Luka, Rin and the other vocaloids are sitting in your computer monitor, singing as best as they can, they can't reach out to you and say "I'm human, listen to me". No matter how cute they are, how much fanart is drawn, they're still... instruments.
But GUMI.
Admittedly, GUMI isn't there yet. GUMI is not Megumi, like I said. But you can see her hand stretching out to you from the monitor screen. She wants to reach you with her voice. The rest of the Vocaloids are standing there, in their virtual realm perfectly happy (and rightfully so, they're quite good there as it is). GUMI is trying though. GUMI is trying to become real.
Miku was the first step in virtual idol. She provided everyone with a personality, a display of the potential for virtual idols emerging into reality. But Crypton was happy with Miku's success, and the Vocaloids after them are modelled remarkably similar to Miku. GUMI is the NEXT step. Built by a company that knows they're not as famous as Crypton, knows they're competing against a nationwide sensation and knows people are labelling them as just copycats. But because of that they tried hard to make a much better model. And that's what GUMI is.
What will happen with the next step? It's pretty hard to say. But GUMI in my opinion was as big of a significance as Miku was, purely for her improvement. Professional Musicians will diss GUMI because she's still not there (still too Miku-ish?) while Miku fans won't look at GUMI because they're busy with... Miku. But GUMI, you are changing the world even if people don't see you.
Besides, GUMI has green hair!
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