Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-33060919-20180228003730/@comment-53539-20180327124612

I don't think you can be popular and not be overrated at this stage.

I've seen people rate IA is "overrated", however... Ia has a large vocal and tempo range, with MQ-HQ results from a professional voicer, etc, etc. Basically of all the vocaloids to pick on, IA is one of the worst to call "overrated". She is overall better then the majority of vocaloids that have been released.

I stress particularly in the overseas fandom we don't tend to know how good or bad a vocaloid is, so often can't speak faithfully about vocaloid, particular ones like the Japanese ones. Heck, most seem not to even know how good or bad their own English ones are. I had a tick over last week about how Vocaloid2 myths are still sticking around and how since 2010, almost no studio is using the Yamaha English script, etc, etc. You can say some things until your blue in the face, doesn't mean that people will believe you, even if you showed evidence. If people can believe the world is flat, even with people who had done things like sail around the world, as well as dozens of photos from NASA and other companies... Then the same rule can be applied to just about anything.

Once an idea has been perceived, if it gets enough momentum it can be hard to stop it. You can show all the evidence you want, but people will find excuses and ways to dismiss it.

Going back to pokemon, I remember a youtuber talking about the issue with using a Pikachu in the games now and how everyone believes you are only using him because of his popularity, which is often true. The guy spoke about how before the anime aired in the west, he was using a Pikachu with the intend to evolve it into a Raichu later. The reason he choose it was because there were not many electric Pokémon in the games and given the options within the game itself, it was Pikachu, magnemite, Zappdos, the Eevee one or Eletrobuzz. Pikachu was given to you early enough to make it worth the time to train him to be strong for the stone later an there was debatably more use in the Vapoureon and Flareon, or simply not at all ad use other options like Vulpix or Growlithe.

When you think about Miku, there is something similar. If you use Miku now there can be criticism for not supporting lesser or better Vocaloids. Even within Vocaloid the idea of buying vocaloids for strategic purposes can occur. Basically you can plan to buy a bass, baritone, tenor, Alto, messo, etc range and stick to that. Miku in V2 was a soprano and there weren't many options back there for it... You had either Miku or Prima basically with no one else's vocal range reaching that high as good before collapsing. Soprano are overpraised in the music industry as it is, so it is naturally people would seek her out for the role. Even now... There is more options like IA or Kokone, but people still buy Miku because the experimentation with unknown vocals can be dangerous. But the fact people will criticise you for not using her, can alone be annoying. Yes, Miku isn't the best vocaloid out there, yes there is no way she is not overrated because of it... But... We shouldn't go out of the way to criticise anyone for using her vocal because while she isn't the best... She also isn't by far the worst either.