Megurine Luka

Megurine Luka (巡音ルカ), codenamed CV03, is a Japanese VOCALOID developed and distributed by Crypton Future Media, Inc., and was initially released in January 2009 for the VOCALOID2 engine. She is part of the Character Vocal Series and is a Character Voice VOCALOID. There is currently ongoing development for additional voice banks as well as an upgrade to the VOCALOID4 engine. She was the third release for Crypton's VOCALOID Character Vocal Series, and her vocals are described as "cool, somewhat mysterious".

Her voice is provided by the Japanese voice actress, Yū Asakawa (浅川 悠 / Asakawa Yū), who was recorded in Japanese and English for the voice bank.

Concept
Luka's original concept was that of a bilingual VOCALOID and according to Crypton Future Media, Luka was originally going to be called "Hatsune Miku", prior to the change of concept plans for the Character Vocal series.

Etymology
Her surname combines Meguri (巡, circulate or around) and Ne (音, sound), while the name Luka invokes the Japanese homonyms "nagare" (流, flow) and "ka" (歌, song) or "ka" (香, scent), thus making: "songs to all around the world as scent spreads."

Her codename of "CV03" means "Character Voice 03".

Appearance
According to KEI, who was asked to illustrate her by Crypton, due to her bilingual software her design was made to be asymmetrical, so from different angles she would look different. Unlike previous mascots in the series, her costume is not based on a school uniform. She is based on the "Yamaha VL1 VL-1". Her dress was designed to look old fashioned, to make her represent the past, as a form of contrast, the "∞" on her neck area represents "sound around". Her design incorporates woodwind and brass instruments. The gold curl design on her chest mimics brass instruments and a circulatory organ. The blue jewel near her throat represents moisture in the air and water drops.

VOCALOID fans tried to assign an item to Luka as they had done with past VOCALOIDs, sparking heated debate over the choice. Tako Luka marked the end of the "Item War" system where as items were assigned to VOCALOIDs based on Internet Memes. Despite the Internet Meme's popularity, she is often seen with a tuna fish. This is a result of comparing the Japanese word for "tuna" (maguro) with her last name.

Examples of Usage

 * -|Megurine Luka =
 * -|English =

Marketing
Despite the inclusion of English, Megurine Luka was not aimed at a world wide audience, instead focused primarily at Japanese producers.

Popularity

 * Google Trends, "Megurine Luka"

Trivia

 * While the software was in the alpha stage of development, Crypton were hoping for a voice that sounded sexy, however, due to the level of softness in the results the vocals were unable to achieve this.


 * Some call her "Ruka" or "Luca", however this is incorrect. Though the romanized version of the word could be either, the English version has been confirmed as "Luka" and since there is no dubbed version to content with, this remains the only official name in existence for the VOCALOID.


 * Luka can be heard in the original musical score "Arisen Anew" from a Homestuck album called AlterniaBound.


 * An old trick within the Western VOCALOID fandom is to have Luka's VOCALOID2 English voicebank and SONiKA sing together. If correctly done both voices will blend together. The advantage of this is that both VOCALOIDs effectively hide each others' flaws since both VOCALOIDs have similar vocal ranges.
 * There has been some noticeable concerns with the information on her from the Mikunopolis website;
 * On the Mikunopolis website Luka's profile contains the statement; "In the past, creating songs with English lyrics had always been somewhat awkward, but Luka is able to sing both in Japanese, English or a mix of the two - a worldwide virtual singer". While it is true it had always been awkward to use a Japanese VOCALOID for English, there had always existed native English capable VOCALOIDs so the English language had always been easy to access.
 * As mentioned on her product page, she has a number of issues with her English voicebank that leave some English speakers questioning her English capabilities overall. So ironically while she had the best English level of any Japanese based VOCALOID at the time of her release, just how much lack of awkwardness there is to her vocal results is questionable.
 * Lastly, she was aimed at the Japanese speaking market and was originally not intended to be a world wide release (hence the lack of an English interface).

Notable for...

 * First bilingual VOCALOID
 * First Japanese/English bilingual VOCALOID
 * First female bilingual VOCALOID
 * First English voicebank produced by a Japanese company
 * First English voicebank provided by a Japanese provider
 * First newly released VOCALOID to impact Miku's rankings in the VOCALOID ranking charts