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| The only time I accept Vocaloid. When it's being parodied by something I like: Lucky Star. |
From the very beginning, I had already "dissed" Vocaloid. "Why?" you may ask. One of the reasons includes how it wasn't even animated (at all) until like what, last year? Let alone a game. It's some voice synchronizing program (which is basically an auto-tune program that auto-tunes real voices to sing lyrics you input. All songs I've heard that are "Vocaloid Version(s)" are just heavy-auto-tuned songs), from what I heard/read a couple months back. This post in general will probably gather hate towards me from any Vocaloid fans.
Well, the point of me posting this is because I've noticed how there's a lot of Vocaloid fans, and one of the only other forms of Japanese Media (only way I could think of putting it) that have the next biggest fan base would be Touhou. I don't get it. Why are the Vocaloid characters popular? Because it has some original characters? Because the program is so amazing? Don't give me that shit. If you can't sing, making some voice program sing for you doesn't benefit you anyhow.
Based on what I know of Vocaloid, it's comprised of shitty "Vocaloid songs," terribly fan-made 3-D game(s) and terribly animated shorts. I've seen videos. It's terrible. I've heard songs. I prefer Rebecca Black's "Friday" or Justin Bieber's "Baby." Maybe just the animators are terrible. Either way, it made me hate it more. Why does it fall under the category of Anime when it has only just gotten an official Animation? Actually, it's not even Vocaloid who has an animation, it's one of their popular characters "Black Rock Shooter."
Black Rock Shooter (BRS) is a character some guy named “huke” created. It soon inspired a crappy song Miku Hatsune (“main character” of Vocaloid) then sung. Apparently BRS became a hit and got an OVA [series] (which is the only one so far to get an animation). I watched it. It seemed nicely done. I generally love anything that has outstanding appearance, so no matter how much I may hate anything Vocaloid, I have to admit there’s good artwork of it out there, along with BRS being outstanding in its appearance. However, I personally believe it had no potential to be animated in the first place.
BRS wasn’t even a character related to Miku. It was some character everyone took a liking to. Cool story, bro. Wait, what story?
You want to know something interesting? I found out about Vocaloid before Touhou, but hated Vocaloid and loved Touhou. Touhou has over 30 characters in over seven official games (produced by one person: Zun), each with an individual story behind them. All of them. Now I will say, the appearance was not as appealing, and the script wasn’t so much better than that of BRS, but I prefer it. More people took time and effort to produce Touhou animations / videos, which all look better than any Vocaloid video I’ve seen.
Back to the point, now. Here’s a spoiling summary of BRS:
(Skip to the next bold-face line if you’d like me not to ruin this “story”)
(Skip to the next bold-face line if you’d like me not to ruin this “story”)
- Real-World Time –
- Mato meets Yomi during their first year of middle school. Mato gives Yomi a phone charm sometime later. It is now their second year of middle school. Mato joins the basketball club, Yomi gets jealous, disappears. Mato gets questioned by detectives on Yomi, soon gets a blank text, and somehow knows to run to the place she had given Yomi the phone charm. Finds it, it glows, Mato is no in some light blue blank dimension, BRS appears, asks her if she wants to save Yomi, says “I am Black Rock Shooter,” THE END.
- Other Dimension –
- 20 second fight between BRS (who looks like Mato) and Dead Master (who is the evil being who possessed Yomi). Real World. 20 second fight. Real World. Repeat until last 10-20 minutes of episode. BRS gets chained down by DM, pretty much defeated. Then OHMAIGOD she somehow breaks the chains and DM is defeated by BRS hugging her. Woohoo, awesome ending…
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| Left-Right/Up-Down: BRS, Dead Master, Strength, [Black] Gold Saw, [Unknown] By the way, in my opinion: Stupid names. |
Review on BRS:
- Presentation/Appearance - 4.5/5
- Yes, a four point five. The presentation of this series along with the overall appearance (animation, character style, etc) was great. I loved it. It kept me watching.
- Here's the thing, this character was fan made, so I suppose they bullshitted the OVA. That's how I feel. If I say what I want to say, I'll ruin it. So I'll leave it at this: I never understood why these little girls in junior high school somehow possess the ability (or even attract those who possess it) to go into another dimension and fight each other in other little girls' bodies.
- Character design was nice, however, character development and relationships were not. It was skipped, or rushed. Guys: If some energetic guy ran up to you asking to be friends during your first year, would you just become friends? Girls: Same thing, but not a guy, girl.
- Music/Sound - 4/5
- The [background] music was awesome. However, when I went to find the actual tracks, they disappointed me. Why? Action scenes were like 30 seconds long each. Guess what? So were some of the tracks. Otherwise, it was pretty well done.
- Here's what you get after wasting about 45 Minutes watching; Accumulated to about 5 minutes of action. It constantly is cut off, changing scenes, so you watch like 30 seconds of it each time, until the last scene. The reason I give it a 4 is because they went all out on the little action they had.
- Summarized: Skipped proper character development, skipped explanation of story (ie why little girls are fighting each other), the actual music clips are extremely short (they didn't bother extending the actual track, since the scenes were like 30 seconds long), BUT, the animation and character design is awesome, and the little action they provide is pretty damn awesome, too. Not worth the 45 minutes, but awesome. One last thing on this: No logical reason for a little girl with middle school jealousy to get possessed by an evil being over one of the other six billion people on this planet with more serious jealousy/envy than her.
If you happened to disagree with what I was ranting about, save your argument with someone who will argue. I didn’t bother to proofread or research to support several of my opinions for this. I will do so for future reviews/posts. I simply, personally dislike Vocaloid and anything that has to do with it, such as Black Rock Shooter (excluding Anime references to Vocaloid/BRS), which is one reason why I didn’t bother to proofread/research to justify myself.
Lastly; I don't hate people who like Vocaloid, I just dislike Vocaloid. But if everything Vocaloid somehow defines who you are, then yes, I hate you.
Lastly; I don't hate people who like Vocaloid, I just dislike Vocaloid. But if everything Vocaloid somehow defines who you are, then yes, I hate you.
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| Did you know? They had a game. Completely unrelated to the OVA series. I would appreciate BRS gladly if they went along with this story. |
VERY Last thing: Game's story, OVA's story, neither of them support the fact that some little girl has the strength to carry a huge fucking cannon. While in the Game, how is this little girl what mankind is relying on? Yes, I am quite aware there are other games and Anime that have unreasonable things, but I hate on those, too. I hate on BRS/Vocaloid more because there are more fans to this non-sense.
So, I understand that Vocaloid isn't your thing. I used to be completely taken with these singing computer programs, and thought they they were pretty damn cool. I almost bought one! Even one of my best friends was downloading song after song. After some time, though, I began to drift away from it while my friend remains entranced. I admit, some of the songs created using the Vocaloid software is amazing. Such as the songs Yuyoyuppe composes (in my opinion). But really, the vast majority of these fan-made songs are only mediocre in quality, if that (not that bad songs don't still have fans). I guess you could say I agree with you, to a point.
ReplyDeleteBlack Rock Shooter was, as you wrote, amazing for the graphics and action. It probably wasn't all that memorable to me, though, as I can't recall much else about it. The BRS game is new to me, but I will definitely have to give it a look. The fact that BRS is carrying a weapon that is unrealistically huge for her size actually adds points for me. I mean, I draw that kind of stuff all the time. Not to mention I love her outfit.
In conclusion to my (drawn out) comment, you write well, and I shall take a more detailed look into Touhou. This research will probably be followed by a phase of uncontrollable Touhou fan art.
Vocaloid isn't my thing at all. I personally believe the voices I hear from it are just horrid. As I said, most users are people who can't sing. But having some highly autotuned voice with the name "Miku Hatsune" or whatever else is worse than having a friend sing it for you. At least it's real talent when someone sings it for you, with less or no autotune.
ReplyDeleteI have no problem with little girls carrying huge things if there's some kind of reason for it. BRS, there is no story behind it. She just has the ability to carry a huge damn cannon, and fight like she's been doing so for years. "Outfit" is an overstatement. She's wearing a bikini with booty-shorts and an unzipped jacket. She's also flat as a pancake. I would have no problem with that if she wasn't in a bikini being flat and all.
Thank you. I will be requesting art from time to time, then. Especially if it satisfies my tastes.
I respect some creators of Vocaloid songs, like Yuyoyuppe and Hanatan, as they sing the songs themselves as well as using the program.
ReplyDeleteSometimes just looking cool is good enough. Especially if you already ditched the idea of a storyline. What's wrong with being flat? :) I think the bikini-on-an-ironing-board look is kinda cute and interesting. But I would have preferred her wear a tube top maybe...
And, yes, feel free to request. Anyone, for that matter. Just remember: requesting does not always lead to receiving. :D
I feel Black★Rock Shooter would've been much better given more time, a one-shot 45 minute OVA wasn't enough for it to be played out to it's potential. We'll see if this is actually true or not sometime in January when the TV animation airs. Whether you decide to watch it or not, you should at least read about it when it finishes airing to decide whether or not you should raise your opinion of it.
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong, I saw the potential from that OVA. I agree that the one-shot wasn't enough time. One of the reason I didn't like it was because the development skipped──which is simply because it was a one-shot.
ReplyDeleteOf course, there is no "perfect" Anime. I'm looking forward to the TV animation like many others, anyways.
I'd like to point out that vocaloid isn't mere auto-tuning, they take a voice sample and turn it into an entire song, they don't have someone sing a song from start to finish then just edit it, they took a sample for each vocaloid and out of it create songs with said sample to this day.
ReplyDeleteOver the course of one or more recording sessions, the singer provides vocal samples by reading off a script in various different keys. The script covers all possible phonetic and diaphonetic data needed for the process to begin. Depending on language and the vocalists skills at singing, this may take anywhere up to a month or more to complete the recording session. Singers may also record a second sample session if need be to increase the quality of the Vocaloids results.
from a scientific point of view it is actually very advanced and therefore very impressive regardless of musical taste/