Miku's official Car

It seems that Toyota has now given Miku her own set of wheels - they have made the new 2011 Toyota Corolla the official car of Hatsune Miku. Here is the promotional video:



The commercial is not that bad, considering that this is actually targeted towards the American market, the CGI model looks rather decent and you have to love how they put in the concert appearance.

If Toyota would start selling the FT-86 concept, the revival of the legendary AE86, I would just go to the dealership and quote Futurama: "shut up and take my money". Having Miku that as her official car would have meant that every anime and miku fan would go and buy it.

Here you can follow the official Toyota page: http://www.toyota.com/corollamiku/
The banner has a bit of a different design as I would like, but that is a matter of taste.

Don't Mylist me

The truth about "mylist"-ing in NicoVideo. Direct analogue to "favourite"-ing in Youtube and "like"-ing in Facebook dialect.


NicoVideo link

Here are the notes from translator to help you better understand the hidden clues. These are the same as under the video in Youtube by lygerzero0zero.

0:01 - MyList is Nico Nico Douga's video favoriting system

0:45 - "imifu" stands for "imi fumei" literally "meaning unclear," I thought "WTF" was the closest English equivalent

1:12 - "Temporary just one click" refers to the button on the side of Nico Videos that allows you to add a video to your temporary MyList with one click. "Ippatsu" (which I rendered as "one click") probably also has certain -other- ways of interpreting it. "One go," "one fling" perhaps.

1:23 - "wktk" I couldn't come up with an English equivalent so I left it as it was. "wktk" is a common Nico comment and stands for "wakuteka" which in turn stands for "waku-waku teka-teka" which is roughly "sparkling with excitement." Imagine an anime character with sparkles around them and you get the gist.

1:44 - Just in case anyone didn't catch it, this refers to the video statistics, in this case probably the MyList count. People on Nico will often post congratulatory comments when a video hits a landmark such as 1000 MyLists.

2:00 - When a video becomes popular enough (I don't know the exact criteria but MyList count is definitely a factor) it will be marked as "Silver" or "Gold" and the video thumbnail will be surrounded in a silver or gold frame (incidentally the original video is currently silver. Everyone with a Nico account go MyList it!)

2:32 - This isn't really a note, I'd just like to apologize for the text being screwed up in encoding.

2:37 - Your guess is as good as mine for when she mentions "points." I wouldn't be surprised if Nico has some kind of points system but I don't know of it and couldn't find anything on NicoNicoPedia.

UPDATE: Neibaku says: "I'm pretty sure the points are from when people pay to promote a video on Nico. They get points for it."

Miku Drift in Moscow

Hello, dear reader. Until now I have avoided simply taking content from Sankaku, but this is just so bewildering that it deserves to be shared.

Itasha - anime character or symbol decals on cars seems to be a rather japanese trend, most of us wouldn't be caught dead in one. But one crazy russian drift fanatic has taken his (rather beaten) Nissan 180SX and plastered it with Miku. It is one thing to see a shiny track BMW on a japanese circuit, seeing a 180SX with plastic-welded bumpers and missing rear hatch going sideways through the downtown of Moscow is impressive to say the least.



You can read the whole article and see the rest of the pictures on Sankaku Complex



If you know where to find such itasha, do leave a comment. I swear that if I can find a proper itasha, it will end up on my 1997 Saab which is the last car where it should belong.


Sometimes spirit is more important than the impression it gives to the ignorant. I am sure, many would like to mock him for having anime style shimapan on his hood, but with his driving, who would actually dare to?

UTAU ranking gets political

I guess you all remember this song standing out amongst others.
"meltdown" by iroha(sasaki). Voice Kagamine Rin.


Due to the ongoing nuclear crisis at Fukushima, this song, I'd say, was abused to achieve something or more likely, was remade just for fun. A green faced politician "talking" about the situation (NicoVideo link). I checked that the lyrics are exactly the same as in the original song with some parts left out. It is bizarre to see how its high popularity has pushed it onto the first place in UTAU rankings. Scroll to 22:29 or click here to see by yourself.

Vocaloid covers by ichiko

After being away for a while, pressure for me to post has been building up. I keep finding songs that I really like. These lead to other great ones. I do a small background research and there I have it, a story to share. This time it is about certain Vocaloid/UTAU covers.

It all started with this song. "Ten faced" (十面相). Music: YM, Vocal: GUMI, NicoNico link.



The same song sang by ichiko. Very lovely I'd say (NicoNico link)


Next. "Mosaic Roll". Music: DECO*27. Vocal: GUMI. NicoNico link.


Ichiko's version of it (NicoNico link)


Let the last one be a mashup cover of wowaka's (Genjitsutouhi-P) works sung by toco×iciko.


I hope this was enough to either scare you away (which I believe is very unlikely) or make you interested in ichiko's covers. I didn't find any playlist of her songs in Youtube, so you have to search by a tag ichiko (If you know or are willing to make a playlist, then let us know too :). A better source for digging deeper is of cource NicoNico video ( her user profile). You can also follow her in Twitter.

As a last word, I hope that people in Japan can recover from the ongoing humanitarian crisis and that they could regain trust in government which seems to be lacking of decisiveness and openness in handling the situation. If you can and feel that you want to help, you can do it from any part of the world by making a donation to Red Cross.

Jumpstart with "Escape"

Hello, dear reader. If you are still here, it means that you have surpassed our expectations and we are truly happy to have you here after a hiatus of over half a year. I had personal matters to attend to and I don't even know where Toomas has been or doing in the meantime, but the matter was, that after a while of posting nothing, it is always difficult to come back - what would be important enough to break the silence? During the past months, Miku has been busy taking over the world, appearing in various parts of the world, being seen in paper articles, news broadcasts and even appearing as a tiny neondroid in an estonian IT paper magazine. If you are a fan, you have already read all about it in news channels like Sankaku and I personally did not feel a retelling would be worth posting.

So here is my idea - I shall use this blog to just share Miku's music, dozens of new songs might pop up on a daily basis, so discovering something good from 2009 is in no way rare.

Here is something different, a home-made CGI video to Miku's song "Escape". The small (or big) visual and physical glitches actually make it feel even more hand-made. The feeling is that some guy with limitless love for our electronic Diva spent ages doing this on his own, on a simple home computer. A feel, that can't be achieved by making something with dedicated graphics computers being controlled by a horde of guys on hire and no passion. The only real negative thing in the video would be Miku's eyes, which just look creepy.



If you feel that you would like to share your ideas, music and passion, please do contact us.

Going 3D

First Miku video on Youtube that uses native youtube 3D player. Put on your colored glasses or cross your eyes and enjoy the video. I don't have the glasses so I chose "Cross-eyed" from 3D menu. For those who are not familiar with this viewing technique, here are a few tips. Try to look somewhere in the air between screen and yourself. You'll see 4 instances of the video this way, probably blurred. You have to match the middle ones and it should instantly become clear. If it doesn't happen, try to choose another distance. I have found that the farther away and the smaller the video is, the better is to get the effect. Still fullscreen can be viewed too when you know the trick.

The embedded player doesn't show the 3D button so I suspect you might not see the "Cross-eyed" version by default. If that's the case, click on video and go to Youtube to see it.

Near Future


One more for your pleasure. No youtube-3D player this time.

White Letter


The brave will also look this random dot noise video with hidden Miku. I saw her there :)

And I'm finishing off with something I would like to have at home, on my TV.