kemu – Intron (from Pandora Voxx)

Let’s keep the kemu-mania going for another day, shall we? Today, I’m sharing one of my favorite tracks from the Pandora Voxx album. Intron is an instrumental overture of a number of kemu’s most famous songs. I haven’t personally tried to count how many are in there yet, but it might be an overture of the entire album, despite the fact that it’s only track number four. It feels like something that would’ve sat well at the end of the album, but it still feels good where it’s at, right before Ikasama Life Game. It’s a very beautiful arrangement that really showcases what an incredibly talented musician and creator kemu is.

GUMI – 敗北の少年 (Kemu)

【ニコニコ動画】【GUMI】敗北の少年【オリジナル曲】

I’ve been on a bit of a Kemu kick lately. I’ve always enjoyed his songs, but especially the very emotional ones. The Defeated Boy (敗北の少年) was my favorite vocal track off of the Pandora Voxx album and I was very excited to see it receive a PV recently. When a few days passed by without it being subtitled, I went ahead and did it myself. Couldn’t resist sharing it here as well.

My favorite line from this has to be 「僕は遠慮するよ」(“I’m hesitating.”) because it feels so self-aware and real. It gets to me every time.

Hatsune Miku – 紅蓮の弓矢 EDM-Mix (teaeye)

【ニコニコ動画】【初音ミク】進撃の巨人OP Remix「紅蓮の弓矢 EDM-Mix」

If you pay attention to what’s new each season, then you’d know that Attack on Titan is pretty big right now. I’ve been personally staying away from it for the most part because the titans freak the shit out of me, but I haven’t been able to keep myself away from the theme song. Sweet merciful Christ, Guren no Yumiya is a ridiculously catchy song. It’s a huge, epic song… That seems to go suspiciously well with animation from other anime openings.

Naturally, since the song is such a hit, I’ve been expecting to see a lot of Vocaloid covers of it. The show is only on it’s sixth episode right now, yet there are a number of covers of it already, just as I expected. (Actually, that goes a little above my expectations.) I’ve been underwhelmed with the overall mixing and vocal tuning on most of them, although I have found a couple keepers. First up is this excellent electronic dance remix featuring Miku. I was a little unsure of it at first because it’s pretty different from the original song, but now I’m completely addicted to it and can’t stop listening to it.

Hopefully Cillia, Ciel, or non are fans of Titan… I’d really love to hear one of them do a cover of it. Can you imagine this song sung by Ritsu with Cillia’s tuning? Just throwing that out there… You know. Into the cosmos.

Kagamine Rin & Len – LAB=01 (偉いほうの犬)

【ニコニコ動画】鏡音リン・レンにP-MODELの【LAB=01】＋αを歌っていただきました

I find some pretty interesting things whenever I start searching back through old Vocaloid uploads. One video led me to another and before I knew it, I ended up at this fantastic song from all the way back in 2008. I was shocked that it only has around 32,000 views because it’s quite good, especially for something that came from 2008 when there weren’t as many skilled producers around.

It’s a cover of LAB=01 by P-MODEL, an electronic group that began in 1979, headed by Susumu Hirasawa. He’s the guy that most westerners would recognize as “that guy who did the music for Paprika”. The group disbanded in 2000 but they created a lot of fantastic music in the time that they were together. Believe it or not, this one was never a single. I guess it is a little too… artistic for the mainstream. There’s a Kaito version of the song that I found quite good as well.

Utaite Feature: ぱにょ (Panyo)

【ニコニコ動画】変態紳士が「こちら、幸福安心委員会です。」歌ってみた(・ω・)

Guys, what the heck is happening? It’s too late for April Fools, isn’t it? I feel like I’ve been jinxing myself by making all these posts about Vocaloid plagiarism, but this one is actually news from about three days ago. (Yeah, I was a little late on the uptake with this one.)

So… God, this one still has me flabbergasted. Are you familiar with who Panyo is? No, not the fish girl. That one’s Ponyo. Panyo (ぱにょ) is an utaite who has sung some very popular covers on NND. There’s no gentle way to segue into this news. Apparently he was arrested on the 19th for indecent sexual acts with a minor. I’m going to leave the details vague because I’m not sure what all that entails. I found a brief news article about it on NND that’s vague on the details as well. All I know is that it involved a young girl under eighteen. I can assume a number of things from it, but they’re probably keeping it vague to protect the girl involved.

I really like his voice, so… This one’s unfortunate to hear about. Yesterday, I was wondering why there were so many of his videos on the top 100 and I thought it might’ve meant that he had a CD coming out or something. Oh, how wrong I was. For instance, if you look at his Senbonzakura cover on YouTube right now, it’s being flooded with negative comments and the like bar is about to hit the bottom. The comments are all along the lines of “They’ve got you now!” and “Disgusting lolicon fatass!”

I just… It’s unfortunate.

Kagamine Len – かなしみのなみにおぼれる (Neru)

【ニコニコ動画】【鏡音レン】　かなしみのなみにおぼれる　【オリジナルPV付】

Hot on the tail of my previous post regarding plagiarism, I bring to you another allegation of plagiarism. This one is directed at a producer I really like, Neru. Supposedly, Neru’s latest song, かなしみのなみにおぼれる (Drowning in Waves of Sadness) sounds like a song by amazarashi called 夏を待っていました (Waiting For Summer). Someone put together a video that compares the two with amazarashi’s song in the left channel and Neru’s on the right. While they are pretty similar when put back to back… I don’t think that they’re all that similar when listened to separately. I’m not too convinced. It’s not as obvious as the case I mentioned in my post about aRth.

I don’t want to believe that this was an intentional act of plagiarism because I know how talented Neru is. It’s pretty easy to be influenced by something in passing, subliminally. If he did take anything from the tune of amazarashi’s song, I think he could have listened to their song, forgot about it, then had it accidentally come to mind as he was trying to come up with a new song.  That kind of thing does happen. But I don’t think this was anything intentional. They’re both fabulous songs but they’re pretty different from each other.

(I find that the two songs are blending together in my head right now, however… Interesting.)

There was one case that I’m thinking of from about two or three years ago that involved a Luka song. I know I have it but I’m really not sure which one it is. It was by BuzzG or KEI or another similar producer… Whoever it was, their song was nearly identical to another one. I’ll have to find it again because it was very interesting and I don’t think that anything negative came of it.

Project Diva Arcade: Like the Wind

【ニコニコ動画】【初音ミク】SEGA POWER DRIFT LikeTheWind を歌物にしてみた【Remix】

Sega’s YouTube channel uploaded a new video last night announcing the addition of three songs to Project Diva Arcade. This includes kuso-inakaP’s Nekomimi Archive, otetsu’s Black Gold, and a new Rin song from Kusemono(SWANTONE) called Like the Wind.

At first I wasn’t so interested in the song until I found about more about it. It actually uses the tune from another song of the same title from the 1988 Sega arcade racing game Power Drift. To be fair, I’ve never heard of the game so the tune wasn’t familiar to me before I looked it up. Apparently it was also ported to the Sega Saturn and Dreamcast among other consoles, but I don’t believe the game ever made it state-side. In fact, some of the videos that I found of the game stated that importing it was prohibited. So I suppose that explains some things.

The Rin version has grown on me a lot already since I first listened to it. It’s actually not the first Vocaloid version of this song, though. For this post, I embedded a Miku version from 2011 by Hal because the Rin version wasn’t up on youtube yet and  I didn’t want risk inviting the wrath of Sega on my channel. You can still follow the link above to hear Rin’s new version at NND.

Producer Feature: aRth/ぐにぐにずにゅにゅんP

Lately, I’ve been going back through some of my old Vocaloid songs to tag them with who produced them. I used to not care about who the producers were when I first got into Vocaloid, so I didn’t pay them any thought and categorized everything in my music player by the Vocaloids themselves. Now I find it very useful to also tag them with the producers so I can listen to multiple songs by the same person. There are times when I’m really surprised to see who is responsible for certain songs that I’ve listened to many times and it’s helped to shed light on their individual styles for me. There is something else interesting that I run into occasionally while searching for old songs.

Deleted videos.

There are some Vocaloid producers who remove some of their older songs when they feel like they no longer reflect the quality of their work. I’ve noticed that U-Ske does that with his work and he’s still an active producer. It’s sort of like ‘cleaning house’ for some people. Others simply move along and either forget about their dreams of being notable producers or decide to leave NND for one reason or another.

Either way, it makes me feel a little special when I still have the remnants of their existence saved on my computer. Even after other people forget about these songs, I can still listen to them. And I just ran across something especially interesting. Yes, this is what this whole post was leading up to.

There was a producer from 2010 named aRth, a.k.a. gunigunizunyunyunP (ぐにぐにずにゅにゅんP) who uploaded many English Luka songs. I have at least seven of them. I can’t say I remember downloading them, but I have them. In my search for who produced these songs, I came across many deleted videos. They’re all gone. All of them. And in the place of their titles is a simple sentence of apology. So, I did a little searching to find out what happened to this producer and came across a video and multiple posts about him, exposing him for plagiarism.

He did produce these songs so I can confidently tag them with his name. However, he was definitely ripping off other Vocaloid producers. It’s tough to find his songs now, even on youtube, but I still have one that makes for an excellent example so you can compare for yourself. If you’re a fan of Luka, then you’d probably already be familiar with the song “secret” by Ryuuuu. His song “Up & Down” totally lifts its tune from that song. If you want to see his apology and a full list of his other uploads, go here and scroll down to the bottom half of the post.

Does it make me enjoy his music less? No, not really. I don’t even think that he deserves the kind of hate that he got in response to this. I ran across a lot of comments calling him “the worst kind of scum” among other nasty things, but I don’t think he was hurting anyone but himself with what he did. I just feel that it’s unfortunate that he had to steal the creativity of others to make his own music. He could’ve just as easily used them as inspiration instead. (You know that’s why we have so many keemu and Jin sound-alikes.) I found this to be an interesting story to share with anyone who might also still have his music around, though. Knowing more about who produces your Vocaloid music can add new layers to the songs themselves.

Hatsune Miku – 無感覚的干渉性完全制御装置 (箸休/hashiyasume)

【ニコニコ動画】初音ミク -無感覚的干渉性完全制御装置- オリジナル

The ‘official’ translation of the title may be “Insensible Coherence Complete Control Device”, since I believe that’s the way it’s listed on iTunes. That translation doesn’t differ too greatly from the way I translated it for the video, so I’d say I’m safe. It’s a very unusual title anyway. Hashiyasume used an impressive thirteen kanji to come up with this title. That’s not something you see too often unless you’re reading Chinese. Uh, not to mention – what the heck is the title supposed to mean?

Well, I have my guesses. On its own, it sounds like nonsense. I think it actually works along with the rest of the lyrics, however. Basically, the song is about Miku singing about how she refuses to give up, even when things bring her down. It’s that general. She never says what’s bringing her down, but it’s something that has the potential to make her feel worthless. In those times – now this is where the title comes in – she calls upon a device which will numb her senses and set her free. I know it’s a little bit of a stretch, but it’s the only thing that would make sense of the title. You know how in some magical girl shows, the girls will pull out a wand and then say a magical incantation to transform? I’m pretty sure that’s what the title was supposed to be like. Don’t quote me. Just my thoughts.

The original video for the song only had one still image, so I decided to go with a cute MMD of Bartz from Final Fantasy V for my subtitle video. I was surprised that there weren’t many videos out there dedicated to this song, despite how popular it was.

Also, I did notice that the video in my previous post was deleted. I wasn’t the uploader of that one so I can’t say for sure what happened to it. I still hope to translate it, so it should make a reappearance sooner or later.

Hatsune Miku – アンダー・プリテンダー (箸休/hashiyasume)

【ニコニコ動画】初音ミク『アンダー・プリテンダー』オリジナル

I love Hashiyasume. Ever since he first broke through with 無感覚的干渉性完全制御装置 (Control Device to Completely Numb Coherence), I’ve been in love with his music and eagerly waited for new videos from him. Unfortunately, he releases things very sporadically. That song originally came out in early 2011 and he’s only uploaded eight songs to NND in total. I’m not sure if it’s because he feels like he can’t live up to the expectations set by Control Device or if it’s because he just doesn’t have the time for it. Either way, I get excited to see him every time he shows up.

That was the case here. I almost couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw his name attached to this video. The title is “Under Pretender”, by the way. His titles are often really unusual, if you couldn’t tell by Control Device to Completely Numb Coherence. His songs are light and energetic, but the lyrics always have an underlying message that brings out something new in the song when you pay attention to what’s being said. I already made subtitled videos for Control Device and pre_mRNA and I’ll be making posts dedicated to those two songs as well. (And I may even subtitle this song because I haven’t seen anyone else doing it.)

I feel like Hashiyasume deserves far more attention than he gets. I feel like the least I can do to help him out is by sharing his music with an English-speaking audience.

If you like the style of his music, then I would also suggest giving a listen to some similar artists like Colate, Anemone, and SmileR. You won’t regret it!