Megurine Luka

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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.

VOCALOID Releases

VOCALOID2

VOCALOID4

Examples of Usage

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• Megurine Luka
• English

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Marketing

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

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Additional information

Popularity

• Google Trends, "Megurine Luka"

Status

Sales

Crypton's product list, 12/10/2011, Megurine Luka is in 3rd place; her usual spot on the rankings In 2010, Luka was ranked as the 3rd most popular VOCALOID product they sold. In October 2013, Luka's Vocaloid2 software disappeared off the top 10 products charts as the Hatsune Miku V3 and its bundle package disrupted the chart rankings. Luka had already fallen to 6th place during the 2013 period as a result of Kaito's Kaito V3 release, but this was the first time Luka had disappeared from the charts. After the charts began to settle down again, Luka began to occupy the same spot on the charts that Kaito's original vocal previously occupied (6th-8th place), putting the popularity of the product on par with the older product. After Meiko's V3 release, Luka became the only member of the VOCALOID2 Character Vocal Series vocals to have a product on the charts, leaving her in 5th place. However, VOCALOID2 vocals were mostly absent from the rankings in April 2014. By mid-2014, both she and the VOCALOID2 Kagamine Rin\Len package no longer held constant places in the rankings and were constantly on and off Crypton Future Media sales charts.

Reaction

Luka was the first VOCALOID to impact Hatsune Miku's popularity. Only a few days after her release, many songs were produced. On the 70th Weekly VOCALOID Ranking (February 2nd, 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.

Misc

An independent search on Nico Nico Douga revealed that most VOCALOIDs had less then 1,000 videos uploaded on Nico Nico Douga in 2011 between July 1st and December 15th. Luka, however, had managed to gain enough views not to fall into this category. Luka had the 4th highest number of uploads with 2103 videos to Nico Nico Douga. Luka, who had 3855998 views and 301640 mylists in total was the 5th most popular viewed VOCALOID on the site. Luka’s 1837.94/143.78 average views placed her as the bottom of the top 6 VOCALOIDs based on average view counts. However, when the lists of top 6 VOCALOIDs were sorted based on the mean number (a more accurate reflection of the VOCALOIDs popularity) Luka did not make the top six.

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 [7] 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

Gallery

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External links

Official :

• Crypton Future Media (Japanese)
• Product page CV03
  • LV3
  • piapro LV3

Other :

• Megurine Luka 3D for Shade - 3D model for creating fan art

Fandom :

• Megurine Luka fanart DeviantArt / Pixiv / Piapro
• Megurine Luka models on MikuMikuDance wiki
• Megurine Luka derivatives on Fanloid wiki

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