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Poor Haiyi.

You can try Boomco, I guess

I do love Boomco! But Utau, much as I love, just... I dunno. It doesn't feel like home to me. Ah well, guess now could be a good time to change that!

If you want to use a chinese synth, Aiko will always be there.

Honestly, I think it'd be okay to use the Quadimension girls if you ever feel like getting around back to it. Their official artist is pretty.... bad, and unofficial art or not it does still reflect poorly on the company who hired him by not saying "hey you're really visible and work with us, don't do weird things with our characters" or something to that effect.

But it's definitely okay to like things while acknowledging the problematic aspects - the Quadimension girls aren't inherently gross, after all. You've spent your money on these products and there's no making that up, so I think you have every right to keep using them if that's what you want to do.

Either way though, I get how difficult it is, especially since the wound is still fresh. But you definitely aren't a bad person for using or not using them, so whatever you end up doing, I hope it works out!

I'd say something, but Rylitah already summed up my thoughts quite nicely, so I'm just here to say I second what she said!

It's just... it's difficult, y'know? Part of me says "I acknowledge the bad but love these girls for their vocals and how they've impacted me, so I wanna take something with gross connotations and make it wholesome and lovely!", the other part says that if I ever use them again, I'm going to have to abandon their art and designs and preface every usage of them with "I know their official artist and Quadimension as a whole is a p*dophile, please trust me when I say I don't support that, I just like their voices, I promise I don't condone p*dophilia, I just like their voices, that's it, that's all, I've gotten rid of all of their art and refuse to acknowledge it, I use them for their voices alone, I don't even acknowledge them as characters, they're just software and nothing else, I promise, I don't condone anything wrong, I swear". And if I have to say all of that just to justify not being a bad person, maybe I am a bad person, and maybe I do need to abandon them completely. Do I want to? No. Do I feel like I'm better off dead if I don't because I'm no better than Fee's creators and people like that don't deserve to waste oxygen? Yes.

I get where you're coming from. You shouldn't feel like you have to justify yourself to everyone just for using them, though - I'd hope most people would understand that using a vocal doesn't mean agreeing with the people behind them, but if they don't... nothing you say will convince them regardless, and I don't think it's worth arguing with those kinds of people.

There's a few vocals out there who are undoubtedly voiced by problematic people; I won't go into UTAU stuff since that's on a much more local level, but in commercial synths, there's YOHIOloid, whose voice provider is.... not a very great person. I can't remember if what he did was mentioned here, but it was pretty bad (there's a lot, but I think the worst one that can be mentioned here without going into too much detail is he apparently hangs around neo-Nazis) - the reason I bring him up is because he's a bad person who is directly connected to a vocal synth, which really hurt the fans of his character. There's an argument to be made that Hio is supposed to represent Yohio himself and the two can't be separated (which I don't think applies to the Quadimension girls as they are not representations of other people), but I'm not in a position to say if that's right or wrong. Some people have denounced Hio as a whole, some hold Hio dear to their hearts still as his own character that they've come to love over the years as separate from his voice provider.

So... whichever side of the argument you may fall on, I think if those people can still like a character dear to them despite that grief, I think you should still be allowed to like and use the Quadimension vocals too, as they're less connected to their problematic aspects than Hio is to his. Again, I don't want to tell you for sure that you should or shouldn't do something because you should do what ultimately makes you happiest, but that's my two cents on the matter (and I hope it didn't just seem like a bunch of word vomit orz). Either way, I don't think anyone would blame you no matter what you did.

Hmm... you're right. It'd be one thing if their VPs themselves were problematic people, but it's their artist. As he's THE artist for Quadimension, it's hard to separate him and his wrongdoings from the whole company, but if I DO just approach them as characters and vocals and not as Quadimension's girls, per say... hmm.

I think that's helped me frame this in a more clear perspective. I'll give it a little while and then see what I decide, I suppose, but I think I can start approaching this from a more logical, less suicidally panicked perspective. And if I say "I don't need to destroy and discard them yet; I'm gonna keep them out of sight and out of mind until I'm ready to let go of them, or until I make a decision in general," maybe I won't miss them as horribly either. Thank you!!

(Just thinking aloud) I think for me it depends on the strengths of the character. I don't really care whatever Gackt does. Because Gackpo is the purple-haired dancing samurai who plays the fool on stage at NicoNicoCho party, and swaggers about as a seductive nobleman in a mansion on the weekends. Going on shopping trips with Gumi and Lily. Or trying to pick up girls at the beach with Kaito and Len. He's his own entity, separate from where he originated.

Even beyond that, outside of the hardcore vocal synth community, most people don't even know he's based on a well known musician. And those who have read the fan wiki might know Gackt's name but probably don't know anything about him.


Y'know, this all sorta reminds me of when you dig into Disney's past and all the unsavory things that happened here and there. Or just its sinister corporate underbelly in general. Somehow no one seems to care about that stuff when they're watching Disney media or buying Disney merchandise.

It's that whole philosophical debate of whether a piece of art is its creator or does it exist apart from the creator? Or the "death of the author" concept, where the author's interpretation of their work is no more valid than any other persons' interpretation. One can argue with an author about what the work means because it doesn't necessarily mean what they meant it to.