Lately, I just tend to get a little bit excited when I come across one of the MMD PVs created by Wakamura-P – he really does do an epic job. I’ve posted a couple of PVs done by him previously (keep in mind, he only does the videos, not the music), and they seem to be fairly popular, so I figure I’m going to keep going :)

The song, Melody Line, was composed by SmileR (Piapro profile) and was posted to NicoNicoDouga last year, and this particular video was posted a little later at the beginning of this year.

Watch and enjoy!!

I generally don’t post enough. I realise this. Part of the problem is related to the fact that I tend to wait for something relatively substantial to come along before I post something. And then, when something substantial does pop up, I tend not to have time to actually sit down and write about it.

Epic fail there, huh?

Anyways – I’m going to try and pop in a few shorter posts from time to time – to keep things a little more on the active side over here. 7 November marked Animated Meanderings’s 4th Birthday (it’s been a while) and in honour of the event I figured it’s time to come up with some plans to make it better than ever ^_^

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The latest iteration of Yamaha’s Vocaloid software – VocaloidTM 3 – is being made available for sales today. In addition to this, some new voice libraries – Mew, VY1V3, and Megpoid Gumi – have also been made available, so expect some tunes using the new libraries to start surfacing very soon. I’m particularly keen to hear what Gumi sounds like with the new software.

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Today, 31 August, marks the 4th anniversary of Miku’s release into the world, and for four years she’s been keeping budding video and music creators busy, and entertaining thousands, if not tens of thousands, of fans around the world. Or maybe I should be saying hundreds of thousands … at the time of writing this, the fan-count on the Hatsune Miku Facebook page is well over 250,000.

Miku's 4th Anniversary (credit: KarenT.jp)

It seems that 5pb aren’t a company that doesn’t listen – some of you will probably remember the rather disastrous Mikupa concert that took place on the 9th of March earlier this year. The backlash was so bad, in fact, that the CEO of 5pb issued a public apology. But they learned from their mistakes, and yesterday held another Mikupa concert in Sapporo, and based on some of the reports I came across, it was many levels better. They even had the clear screen back.

There was still some griping about the tickets though – which set concert-goers back something to the tune of ¥5,390 (about $60). That must have stung a bit in what is widely considered to be Miku’s hometown (Crypton Future Media, Miku’s creators, are based there).

I’m not going to go into any detail about the concert itself, since there was no streaming (apparently piracy was a worry), so it may or may not have followed the same playlist as the original concert. There’s a very short report regarding the concert over on Sankaku Complex (warning: NSFW), and I believe the posted pics will speak for themselves.

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As many of you probably know by now, Vocaloid3 will be released later this year. As far as I know most of our favourite Vocaloids will have their voicebanks adapted to the new version, so we won’t be losing Miku, Luka, Gumi and any of the other old favourites.

Of course, with the new package being released, it also presents an oppurtunity for a new Vocaloid to join the ranks – the new character was designed by well-known eroge artist CARNELIAN – and you can see the pictures of her below.

The newest (currently nameless) Vocaloid © Studio DEEN & surfersparadise

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SEGA uploaded a video of the Mikunopolis concert on Youtube yesterday – it’s an 8-minute (give or take a few seconds) video summary, if you will, of the concert – and it’s also available in HD if you feel like watching it full-screen.

I still don’t know if a DVD/BD of the concert is going to be released – but this particular video gives me some hope. In time for Christmas would be good :3

Here’s the video – enjoy:

There are very few things that will drag me out of bed at the crack of dawn. Work being one of them, sadly, but then again you never really have a choice there. As for the others – almost nothing, except that this weekend, at about 4AM on Sunday morning, I yanked myself out of bed, and with great anticipation parked off in front of the PC to catch Miku and the other Vocaloids live in concert at the 2011 Anime Expo in Los Angeles.

As much as I would like to regale you with the various horrors of getting up at that time of the morning, instead of the usual … say … 12 in the afternoon, I’m kinda guessing that’s not why you’re here – so we’ll get on with talking about the actual concert.

Two things before I move on. First – there’s a lot of images after the jump. And second – while I would love to post videos of the actual concert – SEGA has been actively hunting down videos on Youtube – for reasons I’ll make apparent later in this post – and there is no guarantee that what I post now will still be available later.
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According to Moetron, one of my wishes for 2011 has come true after all – due to my inability to instantly jet across to the US (along with thousands of other people, I guess), I was getting depressed about the fact that I was going to be missing yet another Miku concert.

Happily though, NicoNicoDouga once again steps in, and it was announced recently that the concert would be streamed live via the Japanese video-sharing service. Tickets to the actual live show has long since been sold out, so I’m willing to bet that this will be a happy bit of news for the several people who weren’t able to get their grubby paws on a ticket.

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For once, I’m moving away from Crypton’s Vocaloids, and on to another Vocaloid by a different company who has a pretty large fanbase of her own – the reason I’m doing this should be apparent by now – yesterday, 26 June, was Megpoid Gumi’s second birthday.

Or anniversary. Depends on how you feel like looking at things. Whatever floats your boat.

Image below from Piapro.jp

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