Nekomura Iroha

Iroha Nekomura (猫村いろは Nekomura Iroha) is a collaboration between AH-Software and company Sanrio (a "kittyler" or someone who likes the Sanrio character Hello Kitty for the "Hello Kitty to Issho!" project) was announced in early August. She was released on October 22, 2010.

"Iroha" is the Japanese variant of "ABC" (as seen in the Japanese iroha poem). She is illustrated by okama.

History
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 and Sanrio, would be the kittyler Rio and designed by KEI, the artist 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 large amount of controversy, and an interview with one of the members of AH had to clear up the misunderstanding. Rio was to be used for an upcoming game by Sanrio, "Hello Kitty to Issho! Block Crash 123!!" and would be illustrated by multiple artists, KEI being one of them. Rio would have no connection to the AH collaboration, however.

Kittyler Iroha is the product of AH randomly picking Sanrio due to Sanrio having its 50th anniversary. In September a homepage for her was released, offering two demos as well along with revealing her appearance and name.

A CD is set to be released with two songs ("Tsubasa" and "ABBEY FLY") with her, along with VSQ files.

The offer for the free trial ended on September 30th 2010

Use for Music
Iroha has a deep but solid voice, and while it does not give her a "little girl" feel like that of Yuki Kaai, she sounds more youthful than many of the other Vocaloids and shares the smoothness seen in many of the later Vocaloid 2 voicebanks. However, her voice has some of the same problems as Lola, in that her mature voice makes her voicebank sound less feminine then most other Vocaloids, giving her a voice that sounds "tomboyish".

Like Lily she owes much of her early use to being supplied as a trial version. Her trial version did not have as many reported problems as Lily's had and was a more closer representation of her final product then Lily's was.

Trivia

 * She is the first franchise based Vocaloid to be made, but will be the second to be released.
 * Because she was already featured as a kittyler, she already has a model in existence for her design in the Hello Kitty game.
 * 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".