Kaito’s V3 image was revealed on January 1st 2013.

The official Kaito V3 product page is now available with the first official demo of his supposedly finished product. The song, tiled “黄金木の葉が舞う頃に”, makes use of the “Straight” voice bank, which is the voice that represents his “normal” vocal style. Also shown are 3 more voice banks titled Soft, Whisper, and English. Crypton will be uploading a new demo daily until Christmas, so check back regularly for a new demo.

The image of Kaito’s V3 artwork had remained a silhouette from early 2011 until January 1st, 2013. The image has now been revealed, and was drawn by iXima.

The release date is scheduled for February 2013, but there is still no exact date of the release.

 
On December 5th, in affiliation with YAMAHA, Exit Tunes has released their first Vocaloid product: Mayu. She’s a rather interesting character story-wise, as she’s the only Vocaloid described to have a “yandere” personality. She is also the second Vocaloid to be produced by a record label company. Another mentionable aspect is the sheer amount of advertising effort that was put into the character.

The current promotion for her release offers Mayu’s Vocaloid3 library, as well as two CDs packed with over 30 tracks created by many notable producers. The package is priced at an amazingly low 11,500 Yen ($140 USD) on Amazon Japan, or 10,952 Yen ($133 USD) on CDJapan. This is cheaper than her software through the official Vocaloid website.

Official MAYU Promotional Video. Official MAYU site: [Link]

 
Speaking of the Vocaloid online store, YAMAHA has recently announced that their website is now available in English. Along with this change comes new purchase options for overseas buyers. The store previously only offered digital purchases of the software for overseas users, but they now offer the shipment of physical software media.

The product selection isn’t as complete as the Japanese store, unfortunately. The Japanese store offers Vocaloid2 series products as well as over 70 different Vocaloid3 products. The English store currently offers 11 Vocaloid3 series products, but no Vocaloid2 products. Plugins are also only available on the Japanese site. Perhaps the product selection will be expanded in the future. The store is also now available in Chinese and Korean (ironically, SeeU is not offered on the Korean store).

As a last mention, the game “Hatsune Miku Live Stage Producer” was just recently released for the iOS platform. The promised English version isn’t available yet, so users who want to try out the game early will have to do a bit of work to obtain the Japanese version. But if you want to give it a go, head over to Virtual Emotions for the details of the release. Have fun!

November 5th marks the 8th anniversary of the release of Crypton’s first Vocaloid, Meiko. We’ve come a long way since that time, and Yamaha no longer even supports first generation Vocaloid voice banks with their latest Vocaloid3 engine. But fret not, she will soon be updated to V3 along with the rest of the Crypton cast

Karent is celebrating Meiko’s anniversary with the release of several new albums.

As a late mention and apology on my part, November 1st marked the 5th anniversary of the creation of one of the most popular fan-made Miku derivatives: Akita Neru.

Looks like IA is moving her way up pretty quick.

What are the signs that you have a successful Vocaloid product? Topping the top 30 charts on Nicovideo nearly every week since her release, being used at least once by many high ranking and well known producers, and a large adoring fanbase are just some examples of the feats that IA has accomplished. And she’s not even a year old yet. Now it seems like she’s already got her first “live performance” set for November 3rd at the Kamarock Festival, located at the Kamata Campus in Tokyo.

I say “live performance” in quotes, since it seems to be more of a public test of the students work. However, it is still a public entertainment display. The event was arranged with permission, and has been worked on by the campus students. They’ve created their own CG model and choreography, as well as prepared a special band to help “liven up the stage”, although I’m unsure if they will be playing with IA. The Vocaloid producer Jin has been announced as a special guest for this event.

That pretty much covers everything. But if you wish to see more about this event yourself, you can visit the event page here. A tumblr post with more info is also available here. Both pages are Japanese only, sorry!

Sure, we’ve likely all seen our fair share of Weekender Girl covers, but this recent one by GrandMasterFlames159 and pKotetsu stands a bit above the rest for its quality.

This cover features IA for the main vocals, and Yuzuki Yukari for the chorus. pKotetsu was the operator of Yukari, and GrandMasterFlames159 handled the VSQ and mixing. The VSQ is available for free download in the description as long as proper credit is given. Enjoy!