KAITO

KAITO is a Japanese male Vocaloid created by Crypton Future Media. He utilizes the older Vocaloid engine developed by YAMAHA. He claims the spot of the last vocal to be released for the Vocaloid engine. The voice was supplied by a Japanese male singer Fūga Naoto (風雅 なおと). The illustration was done by Takashi Kawasaki. The product's name was invited from the public, and "KAITO" was selected from among applicants, which was the idea of Shu-tP.

History
Kaito was created as a counterpart of Meiko and developed together. One of the reasons why his name "KAITO" was selected was that it would be easy for non-Japanese speakers to pronounce, and that it looked fitting to the name "MEIKO" when they were put next to one another. On 24th July, 2003, an CCCD album "HISTORY OF LOGIC SYSTEM", which included a song using Japanese vocaloids commercially for the first time, was released. It was a duet song of "Ano Subarashii Ai wo Mou Ichido (That Wonderful Love Once More)" and it was covered by prototype version of Meiko and Kaito before their release. Meiko was released 1 year after this and Kaito followed her 2 years later.


 * Nico broadcast 【VOCALOID遺産】あの素晴らしい愛をもう一度
 * Nicozon broadcast【VOCALOID遺産】あの素晴らしい愛をもう一度

Also in 2003, Yamaha gave out his first demo song, "Kimi no Uwasa (Rumor of Yours)" 3 years before his release.
 * Nico broadcast 【プロトタイプ KAITO】 ヤマハが作ったデモソング『 君の噂 』(フル)
 * Youtube broadcast Yamaha vocaloid KAITO DEMO song "Kimi-no-uwasa" 君の噂

The Vocaloid era Legacy
At the time of his original sale, Vocaloid was not yet a well known product, and synthesizing software was only considered successful if it sold more than 1,000 units. However, Kaito managed to sell only 500 units—deeming him a commercial failure. In contrast, his counterpart, Meiko, had sold 3,000 units in her first year.

Kaito's initial failure was one the main reasons why other male vocaloids have not been developed for a long time after his release. The male voicebanks had so little demand at that time. However, later interest in Kaito arose and Kaito sold well enough to later claim the second best seller of the year in Nico Nico Market in 2008. From 2009 up until late 2011, he was in the top 10 best selling software of Crypton Future Media often competing not only with Vocaloid 2 era voicebanks, but on occasion outselling them.

Kaito Append - the Future of Kaito
A confirmation came that Yamaha were due to no longer support the Vocaloid engine Vocaloids as the software progressed onto Vocaloid 3. Rather then leave this at that, Crypton announced on twitter that they are developing a new production of Kaito named "Kaito Append" which was being developed for Vocaloid 2. Recording of Naoto Fuuga's voice started on December 9, 2010. Several voicebanks of different expressions like the Appends have been produced for the product. There are four appends empirically under development; temporarily "Mellow", "Sweet", "Solid" and "Power".

Crypton announced that Kaito's muffler in his silhouette version was going to be transparent. However, they have since reconsidered this due to the fan outcry. On February 17th, 2011, Crypton released a temporary silhouette of Kaito's Append. They said that it has not been decided whether he will have a transparent muffler or not.

There is a Piapro demo song contest for Len's Power Append. The prize is a package present of information on KAITO Append dates and when it is commercialized. According to the Piapro blog entry following the contest's results, the winners do not -- or do not just -- receive information on KAITO Append, they get to participate in the production of KAITO Append. It's been guessed they will be given a beta version to work with.

On the 13th April, 2011, it was confirmed 6 vocal expressions had been recorded, two of which were dropped and the remaining were being brought forward with one having reached a completed alpha stage already. The Character Vocal (Hatsune Miku, Kagamine Rin/Len and Megurine Luka) series Appends had been created from vocal performance of their voice providers. The new Kaito Appends were created by adding echo, force and tension to the samples. Kaito's new Vivid, Solid~power voicebanks were recorded with new high tech microphones through a series of trial and error instead of the standard U87ai. On the 11th of May 2011, Crypton went back to Yamaha to announce the current Kaito development, whose demos were at the time suspended, Crypton apologized for the slow development to their fanbase and enhancements to Kaito's Whisper Append were being made.

On the 28 of May 2011, demos of Kaito Append Whisper and Power along with Miku English were posted on Nico Nico Douga. It was also confirmed that the order of progress was Meiko, Megurine Luka and then Kaito. On the 3rd of June 2011 the demo からくり時計と恋の話 was released using an alpha version Kaito's soft Append. Kaito's "soft" Append was considered by Crypton as Kaito's most natural vocal and was noted to require little tuning to make it sound good. According to Crypton, lowering the gender factor on Kaito's Soft Append renders sounding like a female vocalist, which although was cute was considered a blunder on their part. Kaito's Whisper voicebank went through many processes even before it was completed and adjustments were constantly being made to improve it.

The first commerical usage of the Kaito Append was from the album "VOCALOID民族調曲集", which features Kaito Append singing the song "千年の独奏歌 (kaoling mix) / yanagi". The VOCALO APPEND album later used beta voicebanks of Kaito's Normal, Soft, Whisper voicebanks, singing "Lost Destination" with Kagamine Len Append.

Vocaloid 2 to Vocaloid 3 Move
According to a report, version of the software was using Vocaloid 2 software although the software will be released with Vocaloid 3. Both Meiko and Kaito should have been released a while ago, the release has been delayed due to the voicebanks being optimised for Vocaloid 3. One of the differences between the unreleased Vocaloid 2 version and vocaloid 3 was the addition of Vocaloid 3 triphones which had to be added. Crypton also finished recording Kaito's vocals after work was previously suspended for an interval. Crypton were in discussion with Fuuga, Kaito's provider on the image and vocal outputs. A classic Kaito Vocaloid style recording had also completed recording, one which will sound close to the vocal tone of the original voicebank that users were familiar with.

The name of the package is confimed "V3 Kaito".

It is confirmed that Kaito's clothes will not change, they will just get a facelift. The boxart will also use a 2.5D style drawing.

English Voicebank
Crypton has reacted to the possibility of an English voicebank, however they have reported it as "complicated". Nevertheless, they are reported to be testing and will be releasing a Kaito Append song into America to see the reaction. They have noted that they feel females will sell better than male voicebanks.

On the 14th October 2011, Crypton updated us on their twitter about making Kaito capable to sing in English. Not long after, it was announced via Piapro and Miku's FB that a surprise concerning Kaito will be revealed at the 2011 New York Anime Festival. There was a relationship between the two, because when the 16th of October came, the panel revealed a demo of Kaito Append's English VB. Footage of the demo was captured and uploaded onto YouTube:


 * Kaito singing "Top of the World" by the Carpenters

It was later tweeted that English Kaito was in alpha stage and that it still needed brushing up on. Crypton Future Media are currently looking for Japanese producers who can use English capable Vocaloids to work with. Kaito himself is currently being compared to oversea male English Vocaloids. The company is exchanging VSQ files with producers to see how the current English Vocaloids compare with Kaito.

On 23rd of Feb it was announced that they were able to talk about the progress of both Japanese and Kaito voicebanks in production. Several overseas producers were now taking part with Kaito's production. Kaito's double vowel and vowel to vowel sounds had been adjusted after a report came back on him. In early March 2012, Kenmochi Hideki was given the voicebank to make further adjustments to.

Marketing
Crypton did not set his character and profile except his package design, as well as Meiko, for not having a concept of giving a certain character to an synthesizer application software. It was carried over to the following vocaloids to encourage creative activities by free individuals and expanding the characters based on each user's individual needs.

Figurines
Kaito has had a few figurines based on him. Despite being older than the CV series Vocaloids, Kaito's merchandise tends to sell particularly well. The Nendoroid Kaito figurine had a high demand, causing a second re-issue of the figurine. A second version of the Nendoroid Kaito has been released, apart of the Cheerful Japan line.


 * For more Figurines see Template:Nav Figurines

Guest Appearances
In Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei Kaito look-a-likes are seen in the waiting queue during the auditions of the role of Meru Meru, however they do not have Kaito's known colours.

Birthday '12
In 2012 CFM held the Kaito "birthday '12" event. this lasted the full week of the 14th-17th period 2012.

Vocaloid

 * Comparison between the Vocaloid and voice provider

Strengths
Both Kaito and Meiko form the Vocaloid "series", following a different design intention to the series of Vocaloids that followed them by Crypton Future media. Kaito is the male designed to be the counterpart to Meiko within their series. Both Vocaloids are designed to be professional vocals for professional musicians. Since Fuuga Naoto's professional music style lay more in the Jazz area, Kaito's vocals lean towards this particular style of music because of it. However, before this was mentioned Kaito was already being used for many other genres such as R&B and pop, the style that he is best used for was considered pop ballads. Also, because Fuuga Naoto was a professional musician and vocal actor, Kaito's results were of a high quality. His overall vocals are of a slightly higher quality then Meiko's.

Kaito's vocal engine was been updated several times. He can utilize two kind of Vocaloid editors, VOCALOID 1.0 and VOCALOID 1.1, and they have different functions and features. There are many differences between ver 1.0 and 1.1, and they sound different even if they are edited in the same way. (Comparison of ver 1.0 and ver 1.1 without further editing Nico broadcast, Nicozon broadcast). The main differences are Singing Style and Portamento Timing.

Weaknesses
To use his 1.0 version, users who are NOT using 1.1.2 version need to patch Vocaloid Ver1.1.2 update file for Kaito distributed on Crypton’s official page first before they use VOCALOID 1.0 editor. Without patching, a critical error will occur. Like Meiko, Kaito did not have a Japanese interface and instead had the standard English Vocaloid menu so this made it difficult for Japanese users to work with the menus.

V3 Kaito
Unreleased Is his upcoming software package, this will replace the original product and it will be retired from sale. He will have several voicebanks, users will not need the original vocaloid package. This originally was intended to be Vocaloid 2 release. He is confirmed to pocess triphons within his voicebank. The only named voicebank so far is "Kaito Normal", a classic voicebank similar in tone to the Vocaloid voicebank.

Kaito; English
Unreleased

Strengths
Kaito English will allow users to use the software in English. Previously, the only way to make Kaito sing in English was to edit the Japanese Phonetics with low quality results.

Weakness
Currently unknown due to lack of release.

Popularity
Kaito's raise to fame was only by fluke, Kaito was a commercial failure and few had any interest in him. Kaito is now amongst the most popular of the Vocaloids in both Japanese and Western fandoms, this despite that fact he is very dated in terms of engine and newer, better Vocaloids have been released.

The story of the sudden change in opinion on him occurred on September 16th, 2007, when Tatsunami uploaded a parody of the song in Higurashi no naku koro ni, "A Request From Hatsune" onto NicoNicoDouga. During this time, Miku was extremely popular on NicoNicoDouga, yet almost nobody knew of Kaito let alone produced songs using him. The video begins with the words "please sometimes recall [KAITO]," as well as Miku saying "where are you and what are you doing now?" which is from the song Dear You. About four hours later, "An Answer To Hatsune Miku" was posted by Ice-P. In this video, Kaito responds with, "yes? I was eating an ice cream," and then proceeds to sing a cover of The Ice Cream Song (originally sung by Saeko Shuu in 1960). Kaito's last dialogue in this video is "Miku, let's eat it together next time." It just so happened that Ice-P was producing the cover when he saw the video Tatsunami uploaded.
 * Nico broadcast / Nicozon broadcast 初音ミクからのお願い.
 * Nico broadcast / Nicozon broadcast 初音ミクへの回答

At the height of his sale he was the only one of the two Vocaloid engine vocals to have a consistent ranking as one of the Crypton's Top Ten Products. In some instances, he was even more popular than the Vocaloid 2 engine Appends for Miku and the Kagamines. His design has also spawned many producer based derivatives.

A independant Vocaloid search on Nico Nico Douga revealed that most Vocaloids had less then 1,000 videos uploaded on Nico Nico Douga in between July 1 and December 15 2011. Kaito managed to make it into the top six of a few lists. Kaito was the 6th most popular Vocaloid in terms of uploads, recieving 1404 uploads. KAITO had the 6th highest number of views with 1561894 views and 118479 mylists. Kaito did not make the top 6 average list, however, he was the 3rd most popular Vocaloid based on the mean number of views, which is a more truer reflection of his popularity with 414 views and 19 mylists.

Trivia

 * His age was never given officially. In Maker Hikōshiki Hatsune Mix he is usually portrayed as a middle aged man by KEI, however, what he depict in the comic is not official settings as he mentioned in a magazine interview.
 * Since Yamaha and Crypton printed different dates for Kaito's release (Yamaha; 14th, Crypton; 17th), some fans within the Japanese Vocaloid community celebrate Kaito's release date anniversary during all days between the different dates.
 * When it came to the Kaito update, the voicebanks went under much experimenting throughout the developing process. This was because although Crypton were veterans at producing Vocaloid voicebanks, they did not have so much experience with masculine toned vocals such as Fuuga Naoto's. This was due to the fact all of their other Vocaloids intended for the consumer market had come from female vocalists.
 * Because of the story of his rediscovery in 2008, Kaito was often depicted with ice cream. This gave birth to the "Item War" Internet Meme tradition.

Notable for...

 * Was used in the oldest known Vocaloid related song ever released
 * First Japanese male vocal ever released
 * Only Vocaloid voicebank announced as a failure
 * Subject to a sudden opinion change around
 * Most popular Vocaloid voicebank
 * Last Vocaloid voicebank produced
 * First Vocaloid voicebank to be updated