VocaVerse Network

Could be that he never had an English VB, unlike GUMI, nor any banks since V4. That's a trait all the characters who went into obscurity have in common. MEIKO & KAITO have got English VBs, plus they are actually carried as "Hatsune Miku and friends", IA got an English VB plus ONE and HIPPI to support her, flower got a new VB, GUMI got new VBs, Una got new VBs. Just not Gackpo. He got left out, like Lily, CUL, etc.

Another reason might be his VP - GACKT. Maybe he is just too expensive for INTERNET to work with long-term, as he seems to be very popular in Japan, unlike most other VPs. How many VPs are there who were and still are more popular than their VOCALOID counterparts? Fukase Satoshi maybe, who's VOCALOID didn't get updated since V4 either. Porter Robinson, who's VOCALOID just got made.

I think having a famous VP is not good for a VOCALOID character in the long run.

I have to mention that male vocaloids or vocalsynths in general are not as popular as female counterparts and because of this, male vocaloids is unable to generate enough income for the companies to considered. Unfortunate.

@IO+ It's true that being male might also be considered a disadvantage in a market, where the consumer base consists of predominantly adult male music producers, but simply being male would not hurt Gackpo. After all, he was the 3rd most popular male VOCALOID character after Kagamine Len and KAITO for most of the time. He dominated the niche while he was new. He didn't have the bonus of being marketed in the same team as Hatsune Miku, or Kagamine Rin. He was all by himself and still rocked.

Other male vocal synths got updates, such as Yuezheng Longya AI (closed beta) and ZOLA Project V6, while Len and KAITO will stay relevant for a long time thanks to Hatsune Miku media alone. Len and KAITO, as characters, don't require fresh voicebanks as often, as long as they keep being fed by the Hatsune Miku franchise machine. INTERNET failed to build such a media franchise around their characters, as is evident by their big number of obscure FEMALE characters, like CUL and kokone.
Gackpo got replaced by Otomachi Una in terms of company and fan attention, while GUMI remained a strong solo.

What keeps Gackpo going is just... old stuff from back when he was popular. Old stuff and the occasional merch drop for the remaining fans creating Gackpo content. He plays no role in any corporate media franchise, not even as a GUMI sidekick, and his company doesn't update his voice banks for some reason. The reason is probably a mix of all above mentioned.

I do think the lack of English VBs (or even AI crosslang support through a V6 or SynthV port) hurt Gakupo in the long term. Among Gakupo's fandom (and knowing that Gackt himself can speak English), it was a common request to Internet Co., but to this day it still hasn't happened. I know Gackt is a busy guy (even taking that period he was ill and needed to put his career on hold into account) and was probably expensive to hire as a VP the first time Gakupo was recorded, but you'd still think Internet would try to meet that demand.

Gakupo is still sometimes mentioned by the Gumi Twitter account (to the point where she's nicknamed him 'Gaku-niichan'), so I don't think Internet has forgotten about him just yet. He just seems to be on the bottom of the list in priorities (much like Lily, who I'm personally more salty about the lack of updates for lol.)

Also his vocal style probably doesn't fit everyone's tuning style (I have a feeling he'd sound weird in my music for example); he's probably best for J-rock and traditional Japanese stuff. And Eurobeat, probably.

@AmazingStrange39 Yeah, Gakupo's voice probably falls into that awkward pitfall of being too unique for most genres. He works great for rock and metal because those are Gackt's usual genres too, but pop? Erm...

I don't have much more to comment here because even most of the points I wanted to make were already done, but I will try to add something. For me, I think the thing about him being a not shota like vocaloid very problematic for his popularity. It's true that a lot of the Kagamines were sold because of Miku, but the Kagamines were (At least someday in the past) pretty big by themselves and it was almost a consensus back then that Len had the best voice between the twins.

Len sells a lot just because he is cute and Japan loves cute things (I'm looking to you... Miku ¬¬). Another problem with this genderfactor is about how non cute male are generally portrayed by Vocaloid Fandom. I feel very weird wth how so many fans portrays the grown up men as pathetic and creepy. I'm tired of seeing songs and stuff where Gakupo (And Kaito too) is treated as only a piece of meat or a crazy weirdo who can't hold his sexual impulses.

While the female ones are portrayed in all ways, as strong leads, yandere girls, psychotic girls, cute girls and etc. When you buy Miku you are also buying the fantasy that she is a cute good vibes symbol. It's pretty hard to dislike Miku by the simple motive of how much good traits are attached to her and how Crypton always put effort to portray her as a hardworking, but extremely lovely person (Although the fandom portrays Miku in lot of ways it's undeniable that Miku is more cute than anything). I can see any vocaloid starting a war, except Miku XD And now try to imagine what fantasy you're buying when talking about Gackupo you will see that it's mostly sexual or weirdo vibes.

I'm saying this because I didn't bought CUL only for her design, but also for what she represented. She is a revolutionary in it's essence and I would love to dethrone Miku alongside my favorite red girl! It's more than just the vb, ya know?

I also heard that Gakupo is hard to work with (Tho I preffer to call this a "Mikutard take". Mikutards are people who loves only Miku and/or Cryptonloids and are constantly spreading fake news or hate against non Crypton vocaloids. Thankfully they're kinda rare). But, at least for me, the biggest problem is simply because Miku hijacked Vocaloid, what decentivize non Miku users to use other vbs. You'll be surprised how many people loves Miku and not vocalod in the fandom of vocaloid. I always says that Vocaloids fandom Reddits are not vocaloid fandoms, but Miku fandoms. Don't get me wrong, I love Miku, but a lot of vocaloids lost their spaces or chances to create fandoms only because Miku exists.

I don't even blame Miku fans (Except Mikutards), I simply blame how much stuff the companies does with their own vbs. Crypton really engages with it's fandom, but Internet Co. doesn't seem to be in the same pace.

Obviously, there are a lot of other factors like marketing and how big as a corp Crypton is compared to Internet Co., but I'm talking about realistic things that "we can control" as individuals. I just wants to end this comment saying that I don't really think new vbs are what impulsionates the popularity of a VB. Sure, it will help to have new VBs, but IA never became popular because of her english vb release, she became popular because of Kagerou Project. This also reveals another problem of vocal synths users in general: vocal synth users are too much trend guided.

And for this I'm totally a hater, I hate trendfollowers. No, SynthV is not better than V6 bc it releases new stuff, AI vbs aren't better than normal vbs because they are AI, etc.... Vocal synth is about style because it's art. Some people has and some other don't (Not because they can't have style, but because they simply didn't developed it yet). Believe me when I say that you can totally use non AI vbs and still rocks and get lots of attention in 2024 (Bro, who cares about LagTrain? Exactly, everyone! And it's not even a Miku or a recent vb released song!), because most people care about what you're selling, not the vb you're working with.

It's not that deep, to be honest. Every vocal character needs new original songs that blow up once in a while to stay relevant. They really can't rely on the old classics forever and when was the last time that Gackupo had a new song in recent years that cracked the 1.000000 views? Gackupo can see an increase in usage again but he needs something like a Charles or Lagtrain song to get the attention of various vocaloid-p again. I mean it happened to Kaito thanks to Shanti and arguably Project Sekai.

well these replies have all been very interesting and even downright enlightening

the only thing i take umbrage with is @AddictiveCUL (Add) calling gaku and kaito non-cute males. I'll have you know that they can be downright adorable thank you very much

@Chuchu After i do some searching on niconico, it is correct. I rarely see a new gakupo song and most recent upload are more like 2-3 years ago and it's not even a gakupo song, more like a vocaloid drama series that feature gakupo. Even a cover song's featuring with gakupo is rare.

Not only that it need something to get the attention back but also it need to be consistent too at least an 5-6 original song's every 2-3 months (this part is very difficult to pull off, all thing considered).