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vocaloids (Page 2)

Have a moving Hatsune Miku come to life inside your computer desktop background

Oh, hello there. What are you doing outside of the computer?

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Virtual idol Hatsune Miku now has her own line of real intimate apparel 【Photos】

Now you can wear Hatsune Miku lingerie, even if she, lacking a physical body, can’t.

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After pleasing your ears, Hatsune Miku is ready to ease your pain as a PC cushion plushie

The multi-talented Vocaloid adds yet another skill set to her repertoire.

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Soon, Japanese kids will be learning about virtual idol Hatsune Miku in their school textbooks

Vocaloid pioneer to be featured in high school music text going into use next year.

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Kimono-clad Hatsune Miku figure proves she’d have looked just fine in the pre-computer era

Exquisitely painted figure reimagines the digital idol in traditional garb.

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Mikuture, the Hatsune Miku app that brings our favorite CG idol into all the pictures【Photos】

The Vocaloid star has been secretly hiding in your smart phone, just waiting for the right application to let her loose.

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Looking for some new Japanese music? Virtual boy band Eight of Triangle is about to blow up

One of the oddest and yet most popular idols in Japan is the Vocaloid, Hatsune Miku. She sings, she dances, and fans think of her more as a living, breathing person than the virtual reality project that she is. She makes a ton of money from her live concerts and merchandise and her only real competition is her other female Vocaloid friends.

But perhaps that is about to change, as a new duo of virtual reality idols hit the Internet today, launching their careers with a preview of their upcoming single along with their sultry computer-generated good looks. Introducing Kazuto and Ray from the group Eight of Triangle!

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Evangelion designer’s Hatsune Miku illustration steps into the physical world as cool new figure

Virtual idol or not, there’s no denying that Hatsune Miku is a bona fide star in the Japanese music scene. But while human vocalists might have professional photographers eager to take their pictures for a glossy photo spread, the equivalent for Vocaloids like Miku is being drawn or redesigned by famous artists of the anime and video game world.

Last year we saw Miku as reimagined in CG by Final Fantasy’s Tetsuya Nomura, and now the world’s most popular computer-generated songstress is being given a new physical form as a figure based on a redesign by the character designer of seminal anime hit Evangelion.

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16 years after his death, new song by X Japan guitarist hide released with vocals by…hide?!

The Japanese music scene doesn’t have quite the lengthy list of young deaths that its Western counterpart does, but that doesn’t mean J-pop hasn’t lost some of its biggest stars while still in their prime. In 1998, 33-year-old hide, who rose to fame as guitarist for the band X Japan and had also established a successful solo career, was found dead in his apartment, hung by a towel attached to a doorknob.

Ruled a suicide, his death came as a shock to his legions of fans, and while he left behind a large body of work, it seemed they would never get to hear the song “Ko Gyaru,” which hide had been putting the finishing touches on before his passing. So it’s come as a surprise that a video for the song was recently released on YouTube, with vocals that sound as if they’re being provided by the deceased musician himself.

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Long ago, being an otaku, one of Japan’s hyper-obsessive subculture fans, made you sort of an outcast. People, especially respectable adults, didn’t really want to look at you, either out of embarrassment for your childish hobbies, or perhaps fear that having spent the last three days indoors had given you a case of shut-in cooties that would jump onto them.

That’s starting to change, though. More and more people are becoming comfortable identifying themselves as otaku, and while some still worry their fixations on fantasy are a drain on society, they’re definitely a boost to the economy, as shown by a survey that indicates spending is up in several sectors of the otaku world.

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