User blog:Angel Emfrbl/So lets talk about Maika...

So lets discuss my issues more deeply about Maika.

So its not uncommon for me to be annoyed with fans of vocaloid... When it boils down to the crunch, I'm annoyed with fans when they over praise something, because often its for petty reasons. "Len is cute? Thats it he MUST be the vest Vocaloid eva!!!!!!11111!!!!", is pretty much an tongue in check example of what I mean. There is a LOT of this in the fandom and honestly, it bothers me more when someone puts a vocaloid down for bias reasons then it does for overpraising them for swallow reasons...

Firstly, a lot of the characters that get this (such as Oliver, SeeU, etc) all have "cute" avatars, Maika included has a "pretty cute" character on the box art. And we know this is a factor in judging a Vocaloid because of Ann and Zola are examples off the top of my head I can recall having this same issue... There is a reason Roro is used to represent VY2, because people know cute guys work and Roro is sadly the only one anyone friggin' knows that will let everyone know its a VY2 video (this is why I say "its laziness" to just use him). In contrast, Bruno and Clara had a rough start for this reason also beause their art wasn't super moe-desu. Heck, we witnessed recently with ruby, as I said at the time it didn't matter what the illustration looked like, since it wasn't the design the dev's wanted to use, the other design was rejected. Unless it had been super unappealing, it wasn't going to be rejected in favour of the flame headed woman.

In fact Bruno and Clara are often a lot of the reasons why Maika feels uncomfortable to talk about. Lets look at the most extreme example also within the fandom. Why do I find Hatsune Miku boring? Because EVERYWHERE I go she is in my face. I literally cannot log into anything Vocaloid fandom without a risk of seeing her. Its almost impossible to avoid her without taking extreme measures. I've discuss previously, that make matters wors tI never found her design all that attractive to begin with. Skip back to Maika... Most artwork I see on Spanish Vocaloids focuses on Maika more then the other two Spanish Vocaloids. They get some art, but most of the spanish vocaloid art focuses on Maika. So if you're like me, a active Bruno fan... You're in for a lackluster time looking for something to wow you.

This can go the same for the songs... We only have 3 Spanish Vocaloids so its really sad to see this happen, especially as Brunoa and Clara are amongst the least popular Vocaloids. It often feels like after Maika was released, it became "Bruno/Clara who?". It sort of reminds me of V3 when people suddenly started realizing other English vocals besides Luka V2 existed. Some are still discovering English vocaloid even now.

then we get to the voice.... Okay the Spanish Vocaloids had a echoe of V1 Engloids, we had a deeper tone female and a lighter tone female. And like Lola and Miriam, Lola often ends up sounding the better vocal overall despite Miriam being the better vocaloid, its the same with Clara and Maika. Maika's a nifty voice... But often songs I heard Maika sing sounded better when Clara sung them overall because their voices have that "give" edge that a lot of deeper toned voices have in Vocaloid of offering more voice ranges comfortably.

Speaking of Maika's voice. I think the only big issue that really pushed things over the edge was that when Maika came along, as I said before, everything we've come to learn about vocaloid in the past was ignored. Sonika's "can do any language" mistaken claim by fans because "Miss multi-lingual". Then came the English factor, SeeU's English being not up to snuff compared to a real English vocaloid... Never mind because Maika apparently sings "better English then the engloids!".... Which was also a comment made about V2 Luka English and Japanese. Then we have bias for Spanishloids as either "among the best" or Maik being "the best vocaloid ever made!". We had people putting down other vocaloids, and being a engloid fan I couldn't help notice the "6 layers of pitching" being paraded around as a example of how good she was... And already into V4 we have 3 English vocaloids with equal or more then that going on. Which was my issue with this, the problem with saying how good a vocaloid is is its only as good as the current voices presented are... Sure past English Vocalodis had 3 layers, but that is Yamaha's fault in the end still for selling a package with problematic lists in them.

All and all, my problem Maika amoutns to I can write a list of issues. Most of these issues are fan based, and while its not annoying like the Kagamines relationship arguments are... Its annoying because its one of those "I expect better!" issues. You kinda expect a lot of the fans guilty of this to know better by now to act this way, but they don't. they do it regardless. And like I said with the issue with Pocaloid, they don't seem to want to admit a few things about it. Rather then accepting Maika has flaws, its easier to over praise her as the better Vocaloid because nobody likes to hear their favourites be put down... Despite the fact that knowing the limits of a Vocaloid will help you understand so much about it and make you a better fan, as well as giving you the ability to appreciate when a music piece is really well done, instead of praising every random crap because it uses your fav. vocal. It gives you incite, helps ease the issues of bias and opens your mind to knowing more about the voice itself.

Even if Maika's fans had been the problem, Maika would still be on the "meiko Meh" list to me, because V3 bombarded us with so many vocals at once it was heard to take them all in, particularly as we had so many females that generation it was really hard to find 1 distinct trait in a voice by the end that no other vocaloid had. I'm also afraid Maika came 15 years too late for me... Its the same for Miku actually, except I have a medical reason for not enjoying Miku (and Sonika, Rin, etc). Their the sort of voices I enjoyed when I was younger. But even then... I was into boybands more then female singers. Spice Girls where literally the only female singers I was into actually... Which I am embarrassed to admit nowadays. :-/

At least when it boils down to SeeU, a lot of the problems come from just having to sit through all that controversy that came from start to end with her release... Which actually makes me look forward to Uni as a fresh start and escape/hope away from this for Korean Vocaloid.

Saying that... People have moved on... You don't see artwork for many of these Vocaloids anymore and Maika's slowly loosing her popularity stance in the english speaking fandom. she has had about 5 artworks on DA this last week, for example. When there was a time she got one practically every day. And this has been this way for the last past year. Its no longer in your face and Maika's slowly edging off the "dislike" list for this reason.

This is actually sad when this happens to any Vocaloid, so I don't wish this upon any of them and its kinda sad because again... Miku bores me.