Unpopular Opinions

[Rylitah]

Spoilering because it's not really about the current design topic, but I wanted to talk about Yuki's popularity a bit.

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I don't have much to add that hasn't already been said, but on Kaai Yuki, you have to remember she released 15 years ago. She was not at all popular for that entire 15 years - in fact, her surge in popularity is actually pretty recent aside from having one single hit song (Ikanaide) that people knew her from for a decade before Inabakumori came along and now a ton of producers use her.

So saying things like Yuki has a cute design or a unique voice may be true, but they're not really the reason she's popular. Because if it were, then she would've been this popular for the entire 15 years she's existed with tons of producers using her when it's really only been the case for the past few years. That being said, I do think Yuki has always been one of the easier Vocaloids to stumble across, and I think more casual listeners Might have been able to recognize her easier than others (before her surge in popularity, I mean), but really I think her current popularity just stems from Inabakumori's music going viral (which in itself is crazy impressive because again, Yuki songs were not regularly gaining millions of views before him and could even be considered obscure) and more producers picking her up from that alone.

 

[AmazingStrange39]

Spoilering because it's not really about the current design topic, but I wanted to talk about Yuki's popularity a bit.

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I don't have much to add that hasn't already been said, but on Kaai Yuki, you have to remember she released 15 years ago. She was not at all popular for that entire 15 years - in fact, her surge in popularity is actually pretty recent aside from having one single hit song (Ikanaide) that people knew her from for a decade before Inabakumori came along and now a ton of producers use her.

So saying things like Yuki has a cute design or a unique voice may be true, but they're not really the reason she's popular. Because if it were, then she would've been this popular for the entire 15 years she's existed with tons of producers using her when it's really only been the case for the past few years. That being said, I do think Yuki has always been one of the easier Vocaloids to stumble across, and I think more casual listeners Might have been able to recognize her easier than others (before her surge in popularity, I mean), but really I think her current popularity just stems from Inabakumori's music going viral (which in itself is crazy impressive because again, Yuki songs were not regularly gaining millions of views before him and could even be considered obscure) and more producers picking her up from that alone.

in my mind as a younger fan around 2015-16 i mostly remembered her for her decent English imitation, e.g. "calalini" and the "castle on a cloud" cover

 

[AddictiveCUL (Add)]

Spoilering because it's not really about the current design topic, but I wanted to talk about Yuki's popularity a bit.

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I don't have much to add that hasn't already been said, but on Kaai Yuki, you have to remember she released 15 years ago. She was not at all popular for that entire 15 years - in fact, her surge in popularity is actually pretty recent aside from having one single hit song (Ikanaide) that people knew her from for a decade before Inabakumori came along and now a ton of producers use her.

So saying things like Yuki has a cute design or a unique voice may be true, but they're not really the reason she's popular. Because if it were, then she would've been this popular for the entire 15 years she's existed with tons of producers using her when it's really only been the case for the past few years. That being said, I do think Yuki has always been one of the easier Vocaloids to stumble across, and I think more casual listeners Might have been able to recognize her easier than others (before her surge in popularity, I mean), but really I think her current popularity just stems from Inabakumori's music going viral (which in itself is crazy impressive because again, Yuki songs were not regularly gaining millions of views before him and could even be considered obscure) and more producers picking her up from that alone.

Bro, literally no one said Kaai Yuki is popular bc of her design XD Plus, it's definetly right to say that what catapulted Kaai Yuki's popularity was Calalini since it was hell of a controversy + the fact her english imitation was really good and come in march of 2012 (According to the wikia), Ikanaide was released in 2013's october

 

[mary34]

So, I don't have idea why u had access to quote my comment even tho I deleted it way as soon as I posted it, but I guess it has some good remarks that deserves some answers. In general, I don't disagree with a lot of your points (Although u remembered very well about Galaco's situation and she was surprisingly one voicebank that only sold due to her design. It's really buggy and there's not one remarkable original song I remember that uses her, so I think her popularity can be genuinely attached to her design. I mean, it's pretty creative). Kaai Yuki was really only popular due to how much usage she had due to her very unique voice (I mean, a sick child is very unique of a voice design). Miku indeed in fact gained popularity due to Melt and original songs that were created by producers since then, also it helps that Crypton has lots of money and does a really good marketing, specially appealing to the masculine side of the fandom with the whole "Waifu" image they create off Miku. But there are two fundamental points that I think are coming from a place of "fanboyism" from you:

1º - I've never said that designs are FUNDAMENTAL, DETRIMENTAL, EXACTLY WHAT MAKES A VB POPULAR like you imply here " It might secure like a small cult following of people who like the character more than anything, but the simple fact is vocaloid voices get popular the same whay human singers do: Lot's of hits over a sustained period of time". What I said was that it helps and in fact it helps. As I already said, Miku's design may not be the fundamental motive to why she became such an icon, but it's undeniably that if you ever see a hair like hers in a cosplay convention u will end up probably going to think it's Miku, even if it's not a Miku cosplay. Same for banana boy.

You can cry as much as you want that this is not the case, but if I see the letter K I will not think of Kevin bc it's just a letter.

2º - I've never said that characters sells poorly bc they have no design. This one you can be talking generaly to everyone and just happened to have my message marked (Still I don't know how bc I deleted it the moment after I posted it, but okay XD), but yes, you're right, a voicebank don't sells poorly due the lack of design, but design helps to sell more. Pay atention, the designs helping to sell more products doesn't mean automatically that the designless voicebanks sells poorly. One thing don't imply automatically the other. This is basics of logical thinking and argument structure.

Again, what I said is that this whole discussion is kinda unnecessary because design helps to sell vbs. I didn't said it's detrimental, fundamental or designless vbs don't sell bc they don't have vbs. I said it helps to sell, not that it's detrimental.

Sorry I promise I'm gonna move on from this topic I just wanted to make some clarifications about my initial post, please bear with me:

When I started typing my message your post was still there. I was a bit surprised when I saw it gone.
At any rate I am not sure where do you get any fanboyism from my post? I made quite clear I do not have much affection to the alphabet soup. I can and sometimes do defend things I do not like if I don't agree with the critique others are saying.

I don't think I ever said you claimed character design is fundamental for a voice to sell but with the way your critique of the alphabet soup fixated on their lack of design It's hard not to get that vibe from your post.

I geniunely don't mean anything I say here as an attack btw. I wanna clarify this now, because I always struggled with getting my tone across in text and rereading my original post I realize I might have sounded more passive agressive even thought that was not my intention at all. Just wanted to address that.

Anyways, moving on. Someone else brought it up so I wanted to throw in my two cents: Kaai Yuki's recent popularity is interesting because it really throws a wench into the "you need a popular voicebank for your music to succeed" idea that's weirdly prevalent with both eastern and western fans. She was always kinda orbiting in view of the fandom thanks to the relative novelty of her voice type but she was always one of the relatively more obscure voices that only people deep in the fandom would recognize. And then lagtrain happened and it went stupid viral.

Moral of the story, don't worry about what's popular, just pick a voice you like and do your thing. :D

 

[Rylitah]

Bro, literally no one said Kaai Yuki is popular bc of her design XD Plus, it's definetly right to say that what catapulted Kaai Yuki's popularity was Calalini since it was hell of a controversy + the fact her english imitation was really good and come in march of 2012 (According to the wikia), Ikanaide was released in 2013's october

It was a talking point that came up and the initial discussion was around designs, which is why I mentioned it. I didn't say it was anyone's main argument, but it made me think. I really wasn't trying to enter the argument myself, which is why my post was under a spoiler as an off-topic aside.

Calalini was known among western fans, but I don't believe it was known by Japanese producers/fans at all (I could be wrong?), which doesn't really make it relevant to me. Ikanaide was a much more popular song all around, and to this day is still considered a classic, but my point was even that song didn't really do much for Yuki's overall popularity. People might recognize her just for that song (or Calalini), but it wasn't until much later that other producers started to pick her up and she started getting much more popular songs.

My comment was more just me thinking aloud about Yuki's popularity, because it is interesting to me as such an old vocal who was relatively obscure (compared to the Cryptons, Gumi, etc.) is now one of the most popular and used ones, and it wasn't even due to a voicebank update (Inabakumori got popular well past Yuki V4's release but V4 is a port of V2 anyhow). It's not something that happened with any other Vocaloid.

 

[Leon]

Only vaguely semi related but since this IS the unpopular opinions thread, can I just say that I cannot understand how that one song got Kaai Yuki so popular? I saw the art and memes and hype for weeks before I finally saw the actual song somewhere and clicked play, and was so let down. She sounds like she's struggling in it, it was so odd and a huge turn-off (not THAT way, but I'm not sure how else to phrase this) after seeing how much praise it got for so long

 

[AddictiveCUL (Add)]

Only vaguely semi related but since this IS the unpopular opinions thread, can I just say that I cannot understand how that one song got Kaai Yuki so popular? I saw the art and memes and hype for weeks before I finally saw the actual song somewhere and clicked play, and was so let down. She sounds like she's struggling in it, it was so odd and a huge turn-off (not THAT way, but I'm not sure how else to phrase this) after seeing how much praise it got for so long

Tbf, it's a good japanenglish. She in fact struggles sometimes, but it's good, better than most japanenglish. Plus, Yuki's voice is really clear and cute in this cover. The instrumental for this song also slaps really hard, it's really good! I don't remember of any song I've heard that reminds me of Calalini's instrumental vibes.

 

[Leon]

Tbf, it's a good japanenglish. She in fact struggles sometimes, but it's good, better than most japanenglish. Plus, Yuki's voice is really clear and cute in this cover. The instrumental for this song also slaps really hard, it's really good! I don't remember of any song I've heard that reminds me of Calalini's instrumental vibes.

Oh sorry, not Calalini. That one's totally fine for its era and honestly-decent English approximation. Although I do know there is some back and forth on the morality of making a song or creepypastas or anything out of that little girl's experiences...

Anyway. I was talking about that one popular song that absolutely blew up and has like 90+M views, whose name I always forget. This one

 

[mary34]

Only vaguely semi related but since this IS the unpopular opinions thread, can I just say that I cannot understand how that one song got Kaai Yuki so popular? I saw the art and memes and hype for weeks before I finally saw the actual song somewhere and clicked play, and was so let down. She sounds like she's struggling in it, it was so odd and a huge turn-off (not THAT way, but I'm not sure how else to phrase this) after seeing how much praise it got for so long

If Mesmerizer taught me anything, a nice/fun animated pv can go a long way to make a song viral. (It's not super neccessary, just look at popular still image pv songs like King and Goodbye Sengen.) I personally like Lagtrain but even I am willing to admit the memorability/high memeability of the animation loops bopping along to the music most likely played a significant role in it getting famous.

 

[AmazingStrange39]

Oh sorry, not Calalini. That one's totally fine for its era and honestly-decent English approximation. Although I do know there is some back and forth on the morality of making a song or creepypastas or anything out of that little girl's experiences...

Anyway. I was talking about that one popular song that absolutely blew up and has like 90+M views, whose name I always forget. This one

i personally like yukopi's works, they're more lighthearted than most of the popular trending vocaloid songs which is nice

i might also bring this up which blew me away as a tween...she sounds like a little british child... (the thought of oliver teaching her english gives me cuteness overload)

 

[junky]

I was gonna write a short reply to this, but to my own shock I have a lot of thoughts on this subject, so under the spoiler it goes because I don't want to flashbang everyone here with walls of text:

Long kind off rant(?) incoming

Kaai Yuki took off because producers like inabakumori and nakiso made them popular with their hit songs. That is how most voicebanks gain relevancy, large number of hits over a sustained period of time. You see this with Kafu, you see this with Gumi, IA, the list goes on. Miku is the biggest example, having a large amout of notable works with her over a sustained period of time on a newly founded and developing media platform to boot. A character design does not in any way shape or form guarante success. It might secure like a small cult following of people who like the character more than anything, but the simple fact is vocaloid voices get popular the same whay human singers do: Lot's of hits over a sustained period of time.

I cannot believe I might actually have to defend the alphabet voices today, but I find this talking point about character designs straight up bullshit in particular. V3 era was full off interesting character designs for vocals but most of them did not take off because producers did not pick them up.
Kevin become popular because we had zero masculine English voices at the time and because his name was Kevin, which most people found hilarious. His popularity is further solidified when producers like GHOST and Pals picked him up. Like I'm sure the highly memeable stick figure fan design might have helped things along but Kevin's popularity has a lot of factors to it, most of them boiling down to dumb luck.

This is coming from someone who once again does not give much of a crap about the letter gang but this talking point specifically annoys me a lot, cause a.) it has little basis in reality and b.) it reflects a tendency amongst vocalsynth fans to confuse fandom demand for characters to make fanwork of* with market demand for voicebanks as products. You have so many people clamoring for ports and updates of certain voicebanks they like but half of them would not buy it if it existed. I mean, look at Galaco: everyone wanted a publicly purchaseable version of her, they had a whole social media movement to bring her back and when they got what they wanted, crickets. We got a banger 40meterP song out of it and that's it.

I can count the number of letter voices I like on one hand, but the thing is if they really were such poor sellers Dreamtonics would have stopped producing them a long time ago. The fact that they keep pumping them out tells me they must do decently enough to worth it. ** I do not understand how or why either frankly, I do not see the appeal of "nine millionth soft feminine vocal for pop ballads" or "same masculine voice but in cursive this time" but one should not assume that just because the fandom side at large do not care to make many fanworks of a pair of letters, the voicebanks themselves don't sell. The fact that notable producers picked up some of those letter voices is worth noting too: NyanyannyaP made I think at least two originals with Yuma, Ghost made several songs with the letter voices, 3/4th of FLAVOR FOLEY's original discography involves alphabet gang including their biggest hit Butcher Vanity. I saw quite a few originals with Mai, Ryo and Kevin by Japanese producers on niconico too.

I think at the end of the day what I think the alphabet gang really needs are cover art that aren't ugly as sin and look like bootleg Adobe software icons.

*Not even fanwork with, as in making covers/songs/remixes, but of as in fanart and fanfiction where you put them in situations and/or ship them with your other singing blorbos
**Now in the interest of fairness it does worth noting that these voices might be relatively low cost to dev for the company: They already own the engine so no extra dev fees up front, their icon is literally just bad photoshop letters so producing the assets neccesary does not require hiring an illustrator, they don't market them much beyond a demo or two and most of the VPs are unnamed session singers (not counting cases like Ninezero and Weina) so no extra cost that comes with hiring a more notable talent. I still think it would take people to actually, y'know, buy the banks to return their investment cause even a low amount of financial cost is cost all the same, so my point stands.

Spoilering because I think everyone else moved on from this topic, Also I don't mean to attack or bemean to anyone in this thread m(____)m

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I think it kind of says something that every popular vocaloid does have an image though? All of them also happen to be anime-styled ones and not loids with stock photos (or 'loids in the style of Western animation, because we unfortunately lack them.)
I can't name a single Yi Xi song that isn't Butcher Vanity..I doubt Caststation would've had shown interest in Foley's new song if there wasn't a kawaii interpretation of Feng Yi attached..VY1 is probably the most popular faceless/character-less 'loid and has a few hits but she's still nowhere near Miku & Kafu and them. I never really saw Japanese fans discuss SynthV prior to the Kotonohas/AHSloids moving there (and Teto ofc), even Google Trends shows SynthV's popularity peaked during the Teto release (Rikka and the Kotonohas also seem to have also gave them a tiny boost)

Do you *really* think Miku would have as much hit songs as she does without the moe anime girl attached? If that was the case, VOCALOID1 wouldn'tve flopped in comparison to it, lol. Vimalion has seemed to spawn an entire fandom in China and Korea and I doubt that'd be the case if they lacked the fandesigns.

They don't need to be anime but a concept or photo (even if stock) is definetely more memorable like someone else said in this thread prior. I have barely heard of Kevin since Asterian and the Starry Court dropped. The Stick Kevin fans (or people who made fandesigns based on that particular interpretation of him) seem to be the only ones who still do. Saw a good thread about this recently (the design gives you a good idea of what the voice sounds like, unless the design sucks or is unfitting, but even then that's much more memorable than having nothing at all, etc etc)

 

[mary34]

Spoilering because I think everyone else moved on from this topic, Also I don't mean to attack or bemean to anyone in this thread m(____)m

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I think it kind of says something that every popular vocaloid does have an image though? All of them also happen to be anime-styled ones and not loids with stock photos (or 'loids in the style of Western animation, because we unfortunately lack them.)
I can't name a single Yi Xi song that isn't Butcher Vanity..I doubt Caststation would've had shown interest in Foley's new song if there wasn't a kawaii interpretation of Feng Yi attached..VY1 is probably the most popular faceless/character-less 'loid and has a few hits but she's still nowhere near Miku & Kafu and them. I never really saw Japanese fans discuss SynthV prior to the Kotonohas/AHSloids moving there (and Teto ofc), even Google Trends shows SynthV's popularity peaked during the Teto release (Rikka and the Kotonohas also seem to have also gave them a tiny boost)

Do you *really* think Miku would have as much hit songs as she does without the moe anime girl attached? If that was the case, VOCALOID1 wouldn'tve flopped in comparison to it, lol. Vimalion has seemed to spawn an entire fandom in China and Korea and I doubt that'd be the case if they lacked the fandesigns.

They don't need to be anime but a concept or photo (even if stock) is definetely more memorable like someone else said in this thread prior. I have barely heard of Kevin since Asterian and the Starry Court dropped. The Stick Kevin fans (or people who made fandesigns based on that particular interpretation of him) seem to be the only ones who still do. Saw a good thread about this recently (the design gives you a good idea of what the voice sounds like, unless the design sucks or is unfitting, but even then that's much more memorable than having nothing at all, etc etc)

That is a good point and it made me wanna make one last addition to this topic and then I swear I move on:

I do agree the letter logos are mid, my main contention in the original post came from the fact that I often saw people on a more general level (like on a Twitter for example) treat the absence of character design as the biggest if not only issue when the truth is more nuanced. (And also because I personally find most of the alphabet soup mid in terms of voice and as a result the idea that putting a face on them would somehow fix that baffles me)

Y'know after hearing more perspectives on this topic I guess part of this is clearly a me problem because I tend to separate voice and design a lot more: I can think of quite a few instances when I liked a voice but not the design and vice versa. For example: I like Stardust Infinity the voicebank, but I do not care for her design at all, it just feels like budget Honkai Impact to me. On the oposite end of the spectrum, I cannot count the amount of times I found an UTAU vb with a cute design or nice art but then I ended up disliking how they sound for various reasons. Don't get me wrong, It's nice when a voicebank hits that sweetspot of good sound+good design, but I care about the former more.

I guess what I'm trying to say is others might value the design aspect more and I get that. Part of this is a matter of preference, I just wish the fandom at large treated this topic with more nuance (And maybe for vocatwt to stop insisting that An Xiao having a face would totally fix him sounding like Mo Chen in cursive but I might just be petty here.)

 

[AmazingStrange39]

Spoilering because I think everyone else moved on from this topic, Also I don't mean to attack or bemean to anyone in this thread m(____)m

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I can't name a single Yi Xi song that isn't Butcher Vanity..I doubt Caststation would've had shown interest in Foley's new song if there wasn't a kawaii interpretation of Feng Yi attached..

I WISH Yi Xi had popular songs aside from Butcher Vanity, especially as someone who has an aversion to grotesque/horror content (and it seems like almost ALL the songs people actually talk about are either that, hyper-weird, sexual or depressing!). I genuinely love Yi Xi's voice (she's probably one of my favorite DT vocals...and I really like the DT vocals in general) and I hate that she's become cemented in the fandom as a psycho killer (though the other aspects of her fan design are spot on imo!). It's definitely worse than stereotypical gamer Kevin (though I myself have different headcanons; I see him as the energetic brother of the more reserved Hayden).

 

[Leon]

I can understand the spirit of that... Nerd gamer Kevin is the bane of my existence TBH, and he's still one of my favorite English SV voices so it sucks to see him devolved into a meme. Thankfully there's still plenty of more "normal" stuff with him, and I'm sure Yi Xi will get her share as times goes on as well! Although I do really like her popular design, and I don't personally mind a more grotesque song, any character will get old after a while if "oooh crazy psycho bloody killer!!!" is their whole schtick lol

 

[AmazingStrange39]

I can understand the spirit of that... Nerd gamer Kevin is the bane of my existence TBH, and he's still one of my favorite English SV voices so it sucks to see him devolved into a meme. Thankfully there's still plenty of more "normal" stuff with him, and I'm sure Yi Xi will get her share as times goes on as well! Although I do really like her popular design, and I don't personally mind a more grotesque song, any character will get old after a while if "oooh crazy psycho bloody killer!!!" is their whole schtick lol

Theater kid Kevin is pretty spot on though

And then Felicia came out and she was the TRUE theater kid

No no, they're theater kids TOGETHER (hayden just wants to sing normal pop songs and for kevin and felicia to leave the poor guy alone)

 

[junky]

As long as it sounds good, or doesn't use unethical AI/tuning methods (ex. non-consensual RVC models or stolen UTAU), I don't really care about how a song is tuned. Mixing goes also long way as well and seems neglected

I guess this doesn't apply to demos since that's false advertising, but that's rare and prior to Shiki Rowen it hadn't happened since 2011 (SeeU, and I think that demo was leaked anyway) iirc + People beg for tuned demos all the time..even though I also consider that false advertising (another unpopular opinion of mine I guess), imagine if Yamaha posted Mitchie M-tier demos while V6 sounds the way it does? Lol..ideally we'd have both tuned and "raw" demos, but I prefer honest demos that sound bad to God-tier ones that sound nothing like the engine at all. Probably why SynthV's demos are ridiculously underwhelming compared to actual songs people make even though SynthV is pretty easy to get sounding good in comparison.

 

[Midori]

I'm not an expert but I don't really understand what people consider to be "good tuning" or "bad tuning" I'd love an explanation but I feel like it might be subjective.

 

[crtstatic]

I'm not an expert but I don't really understand what people consider to be "good tuning" or "bad tuning" I'd love an explanation but I feel like it might be subjective.

It's purely subjective. There are some tuning styles I can't stand, but other people like them, and might consider them good tuning styles. I'd say the only "bad" tuning style is if it's just downright hard to listen to.

 

[Midori]

It's purely subjective. There are some tuning styles I can't stand, but other people like them, and might consider them good tuning styles. I'd say the only "bad" tuning style is if it's just downright hard to listen to.

I had a feeling that was the case. I guess I don't understand tuning styles exactly I'm assuming each one is different for every producer. Like there's not a name or type for each. If that even makes sense.

 

[Alphonse]

I had a feeling that was the case. I guess I don't understand tuning styles exactly I'm assuming each one is different for every producer. Like there's not a name or type for each. If that even makes sense.

Yes, that's correct. It's like art styles (not in the context of art history but contemporary art). Everyone's is different, some art styles click more with some people than others.