Has it really been over 15 years since Macross Plus? The science fiction of the ’90s depicted in places like William Gibson’s Idoru is fast becoming today’s fact…
There are plenty of other videos covering the concert - Megurine Luka (whom I prefer immensely; Miku’s “voice” is a tad sugary for my taste), and the Kagamine twins also make an appearance. Particularly fascinating too is the Miku medley, incorporating a number of on-the-spot costume changes.
What’s even more interesting is the sold out crowd of 2,500 attendees. The energy of the crowd is almost surreal in a way – the throaty roar of a hungry audience as a collection of photons coalesce into the familiar face of their goddess… “man-made idols” indeed. Science fiction hasn’t disappeared, we’re just living it. Small wonder that we have a goodly number of series now that definitely break from the old mold of science fiction – look at Haruhi, or Index – science fiction that simply exists in the everyday. There has been a shift away from the traditional space-borne interplanetary narratives for something a little more immediate.
For reference, the Macross Plus clip from 1994, featuring the artificial idol Sharon Apple. It is eerie how very prescient the whole thing is, but then again, we’re long overdue for Zentraedi contact – I suppose you can’t have it all:
October 26, 2010 at 12:03 am
It has been 15 years, and it’s funny how we’re ahead of the curve in terms of the Sharon Apple project.
However, the appeal of Sharon was never truly plausible in my eyes, as even the Macross franchise confirmed: with its back to basics breakout Fire Bomber, and all the way to Sheryl Nome whose selling point is her being all-natrual.
Vocaloid is going to remain a niche for sometime, even with the popularity/notoriety of autotune use.
October 26, 2010 at 9:15 am
I watched the blu-ray rip of the Vocaloid ‘live concert’ (if that’s what we’re supposed to call it) with friends a couple of weeks ago and, funnily enough, my reaction was the same as yours. Namely, 1. Luka is my fave and 2. “HOLY CRAP MACROSS PLUS!”
I recall saying when watching that OAV for the first time that, if something like the Sharon Apple gig ever happened IRL, I’d want to be there. I didn’t know how reality would catch up!
It’s an interesting concept that works better in practice than I expect it to, but it all hinges on what songwriters do with the software itself. As long as they keep using the voices of Miku and the others for cover songs and novelty numbers, it could well stay within the realms of the otaku. As a wannabe songwriter though, I don’t think we’ve even scratched the surface of what could be done with it. So far it’s riding on the popularity of the Miku character design, but the software side is really quite clever.
October 28, 2010 at 4:28 pm
@ghostlightning: Yes, I don’t see Vocaloid displacing real musicians any time soon – after all, a great deal of human input is still required in order to get it to perform; and in that sense Macross Plus is still very prescient. It’s actually a nice touch to notice during the concert that several of the doujin artists themselves came up onstage to play the instrumental parts in their respective pieces; gestures like this certainly make the Vocaloid phenomenon a lot friendlier than the grim deception portrayed in Plus.
What’s really amazing nevertheless is the incredible speed at which the phenomenon has grown – success stories are still a scant handful, but the fact that there are individuals who have published Vocaloid albums that have made it into best-seller lists around Japan is just mind-boggling. I imagine a great driver of that is the novelty factor of machine singing, but partly too I think the amateur nature allows for risks and expression that normally would be a hard-sell to a major record label, allowing for a lot of innovative sounds that are novel simply in the purely musical sense.
@martin: Yes, I really think Luka has a lot more going for her. Luka’s “voice” just comes across as a lot richer than Miku, and many of her songs have a “haunting” feel to them and often tend to be a little heavier than many of Miku’s pieces, which tend towards the exuberant. It’s actually rather fascinating how an entire folklore comes to exist around the characters themselves, to the point where there is a proscribed canon of songs and sounds that influence subsequent creators.
That’s not even mentioning the crowd itself at the concert, which i thought was just absolutely nuts. Take Luka’s rendition of “Just Be Friends” – as soon as she appears on stage waving her arms, the crowd starts waving too; and continues to respond to her body language throughout the song, like when she waves at them during the instrumental. I can`t rule out of course the possibility of live cues from off-camera, but the whole thing is absolutely surreal. As my former co-author Jeka put it “This is probably why Japan has no babies`.
As for the software itself, the potential is absolutely incredible in some respects. In fact, I was initially quite dismissive of the longevity the whole idea until viewing a product demonstration of the “Prima” voicebank:
Hearing that really made me start realizing how far into science fiction we’ve gone.
April 24, 2011 at 1:49 am
Hey Vendredi, is there anyway I can contact you, I have a few questions about anime, in particular after reading your posts on Tatami Galaxy. (Which were great by the way, not in a manner of flattery).
April 24, 2011 at 8:19 pm
@Tsundere: If you’ve got any questions in particular, feel free to leave them here on the latest post and I’ll just reply here – that’s what comments are for, after all.
April 27, 2011 at 7:33 am
@Vendredi: In all honesty, you are right. So I’ll put it bluntly. I read through the “about this blog page” and I drooled at your Tatami Galaxy posts. Your last post was half a year ago, but you still seem to receive wordpress notifications when someone comments on your blog. I have no idea if you still watch anime, or is at the very least interested in it, but I was very much hoping if you would join our crew for a soon-to-launch aniblog (Half a month roughly?) as a writer. (That didn’t turn out as blunt as I had hoped, but I hope I got my message across. We currently have 4 other authors including me just as an extra bit of information)
April 28, 2011 at 12:12 am
@Tsundere – Sounds interesting! I’ve switched over to mostly commenting as I prefer to blog on shows or series that don’t get a lot of attention, but I’d be willing to give it a shot(although I may have difficulty with post frequency).
April 28, 2011 at 4:22 am
@Vendredi: You have no idea how happy that makes us! ^^; Post frequency shouldn’t be too much of a problem as long as you enjoy the process. The idea behind that being the little bit of psychology where, “You enjoy what your good at.” and our authors agree that having you will be a great contribution to our team! For now (if you have twitter) you can follow me/us (It’s hard to decide whether I should refer to the whole blogging team or just me) at tsundereblog on twitter, or e-mail me some way of contacting you (tsundereblog@gmail.com) because of course, there are many other details we will need to cover and you need to meet the rest of the team! xD
Again, thanks for joining us! (´∀｀)
May 2, 2011 at 4:12 am
@Vendredi: Hey Vendredi~ It would be nice if you could pass me your skype or at least any IM communication method! We’re having a meeting in possibly a bit more than 2 weeks.