Megurine Luka

Released on January 30th, 2009, Megurine Luka (Japanese : 巡音ルカ Megurine Luka) is the third Vocaloid2 in Crypton's Vocaloid2 Character Vocal Series. Her surname combines Meguri (巡, circulate or around) and Ne (音, sound), while the name Luka invokes the homonymous Japanese words of "nagare" (流, flow) and "ka" (歌, song) or "ka" (香, scent); thus making "songs to all around the world as scent spreads." Yū Asakawa (浅川 悠) provided the voice for the "cool, somewhat mysterious" character.

History
Unlike its previous two characters, Crypton advertised Luka's 3GB vocal database as "Japanese/English bilingual" and chose her name to express its hope that she will transcend borders and cultural barriers. Luka was designed by the Japanese illustrator Kei, who had previously created the designs for Hatsune Miku and Kagamine Rin and Len. However, unlike previous mascots in the series, her costume is not based on a school uniform.

Only a few days after her release, many songs were produced. On the 70th Weekly Vocaloid Ranking (February 2, 2009), many of Luka's songs appeared in the Top 30, knocking the very popular "Miku Miku ni Shite Ageru" and songs produced by ryo (with the exception of "Melt") right out of the Top 30. "RIP=RELEASE" had taken the #1 spot, and had earned a total of 843,233 points, making it the song with the highest one-week score.

Append - the Future of Luka?
Luka is the next member of the character Vocal series to be Append, however Crypton has not confirmed if she will have Append just yet.

Usage for Music
Due to her bilingual coding, her "moody yet husky female voice" carries over into both languages and was designed to handle moodier genres like Jazz. Since her voice provider is Japanese, she often sounds like she has a notable Japanese accent when singing in English, although previous Japanese vocaloids who were used to sing English often had a stronger accent than Luka. Also, as a Japanese vocaloid, she has all of the phonemes that are often missing from English vocaloids such as the 5 breathing phonemes ([br1]-[br5]). Also she has all the English phonemes that English vocaloids have in her voice databank.

Main article and detailed information:Phoneme List

Luka's Japanese dictionary is extensive and on par with previous Japanese Vocaloids and there are no known problems with that part of her program. However, her English is more limited than English only Vocaloids and has the main/common words in its dictionary, so she may need more attention when singing in English overall than a English only Vocaloid. As a bilingual Vocaloid, she has superior capability of the English language than the Japanese only vocaloids. Despite this, the Japanese accent is seen occasionally as a result of her less developed dictionary. However, an extra data library of English words for her English dictionary is available. Her overall English quality is dependant on the skills of the user, and some users may be able to use the phoneme system to avoid the occasional English words pronounced with Japanese accents she produces much better than others, as well as fill in the gaps in her more limited dictionary as they appear. Her voicebanks are able to handle English as well as a normal English Vocaloid, so a user who can work around the problems will otherwise have no trouble with using her in either language.

If need be, less than confident users can use an English vocaloid to aid in fixing her dictionary flaws. Since she speaks both languages, Luka is able to partner with both Japanese and English vocaloids respectfully. Duets with English vocaloids were commonly seen for her when first released, while users (who often were not confident in their English abilities) attempted to work around the flaws in her dictionary. It is still commonplace for Luka to be used with vocaloids from either or both languages.

It has also been reported that she does not seem to have as many distinct vowel related diphongs in her sample library in her English voicebank, making her sound slightly choppy when some phonetics are used together. In other cases, she may not have enough distinction between the phonetic sounds to distinguish one pronunciation from another.

Overall, Luka serves to bridge the gap between both languages and has proven to be her appeal as a vocaloid. She serves as an ideal vocaloid for English speaking users planning to use Japanese vocaloids and vice versa for users who are not so used to speaking English and planning on using English Vocaloids. However, as previously mentioned she may be harder to work with in English than Japanese, or an English-only Vocaloid and users must take this in mind if they plan on using her for English rather than Japanese.

When installing Luka, it is important to pay attention to the release dates of Vocaloids you plan to install after her. Older and newer versions of the Vocaloid 2 software engine can occasionally cause conflicts. Luka has both language engines, so she can cause conflicts between Vocaloids of either language. A user can fix this problem if it occurs simply by installing the Vocaloids in release date order, Luka is noted to be the most likely Vocaloid to produce this conflict.

Trivia

 * She is often given a sexier approach than previous vocaloids. This is owed to both her age and having the body of an adult.
 * 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.
 * Her design incorporates woodwind and brass instruments. The gold curl design on her chest mimics brass instruments and a circulatory organ. The jewel on her throat represents moisture in the air and water drops.
 * 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 sound sexy.
 * 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 her 30 day trial versions.
 * Some call her "Ruka" 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 name remains the only offical names in existance for the Vocaloid.