Nekomura Iroha

Nekomura Iroha (猫村いろは) is a character created by SANRIOWAVE CO.,LTD. in 2009. Also with a collaboration between AH-Software, she was released as a Vocaloid2 on October 22, 2010.

"Iroha" is the old Japanese variant of "ABC" (as seen in the Japanese iroha poem) and "I, Ro, Ha" means "A(La), B(Si), C(Do)" of seven-note scale. She is illustrated by okama, a Japanese manga artist and illustrator.

History
Iroha is one of characters of the "kittylers", who love the Sanrio character Hello Kitty. She also joined the "Hello Kitty to Issho!" project in early August, 2010.

In October, 2010, Vocaloid2 for her was released, offering two demo songs as well along with revealing her appearance and name. The voice provider for her is unknown, however, it is said that she is a professional singer who passed the audition test of AH-Software.

A CD is set to be released with two songs ("Tsubasa" and "ABBEY FLY") with her, along with VSQ files. She owes much of her early use to being supplied as a trial version. The offer for the free trial ended on September 30th 2010.

Usage for Music
Iroha has a deep, strong and powerful voice which does not give her a "child-like" feel like that of Yuki Kaai, as her voice provider is a professional singer and thus she is intended to have singing prowess. She is capable of singing fast-paced songs and has clear strong consonants and good smooth Japanese pronunciations. With a wide ranged voice she can sing both in a high and low tone, and gains the ability to sing in falsetto. Some users say editing her parameters and waveforms are much easier than former vocaloids.

As her default vocal setting is a low tone voice and many users tested her in this range, thus many of her early songs had some listeners judging that she sounded less feminine and "tomboyish". However, now some songs feature her with a high-voice and feminine voice.

Demo
Her trial version did not have as many reported problems as Lily's had and was a more closer representation of her final product than Lily's was. At this point in time, there are no known major bugs with her demo version.

Reception
Iroha was well recieved overall in both Japanese and Western fandoms, in the Western fandoms especially were praising to her vocal capablities and was amongst the fan favourite voices of 2010's releases. However, some of the Western Vocaloid fans had a difficult time matching the Vocaloids avatar to the voice and due to lack of information did not understand why this particular kittyler was choosen over the others, possibly due to the language divide. However, a number of users tend to lighten her vocals to make her younger sounding as her voice in its default pitch is not to everyone's liking.

Trivia

 * She was originally designed by Sanrio for Comiket (Comic Market) in 2009.
 * The speakers encasing her hands are called Dynamic-Phonon Buster. The other set of speakers are called Chorus-speaker, each of these move around, supporting her. The floating microphone collects her voice and Annouce Booth, which is on her head, works as an amplifier and divides the sound into three classes for the speakers, according to its range; the sound for tweeters, mid-range speakers and woofers.
 * According to her official profile on the Hello Kitty to Issho! page, she is interested in Hello Kitty and wants to become a "Platinum Kitty".
 * Two MMD Models of Iroha were released from Windows 100% magazine, one in August and another in November. The first model was based upon her Kittyler attire the other is her Vocaloid attire. The creator of the models is ISAO . Her second model (Vocaloid style) was used for an official 3D movie has shown on her official page and Youtube. Youtube broadcast
 * Since the trial version had enough vocal capabilities to function as a normal Vocaloid, hackers were reported to have found out how to turned off the limit of 30 days for both Lily and Iroha's 30 day trial versions.
 * Due to miscommunication regarding advertisement of the new collaboration happening at the same Comiket booth as another event, fans initially believed that the new Vocaloid, announced to be a collaboration between AH-software and Sanrio, would be the kittyler Rio which was illustrated by KEI, the illustrator for the Crypton Future Media CV series and the Vocaloid Lily. (It is to be noted that at the time, a "kittyler" was misunderstood to be a moe personification of Hello Kitty herself rather than someone who is simply interested in the character) This sparked a controversy, and an interview with one of the members of AH-software had to clear up the misunderstanding. Rio was used for an upcoming project by Sanrio, "Hello Kitty to Issho!" and she is one of several kittylers illustrated by multiple artists. KEI was just one of them.