Looking for Hatsune Miku in all the wrong places

Graphic by Julia Norkus

By Gabriella Collin

Are you a friend of Miku? 

No, seriously, are you? 

For some of us, the legendary name stirs a sleeping, middle school-aged giant that lives in our subconscious. For the rest, maybe you were “cool” at age 11, or maybe you were just a different type of weird. Hatsune Miku is everyone’s best friend, and everyone is her best friend, too. She’s 16, has long turquoise hair, her favorite food is (unofficially) leek soup, and she’s a teen pop idol from the future. Also, she’s not real. 

Hatsune Miku is a singing voice synthesizer, a software developed by Crypton Future Media in 2007. Her program is available in English, Chinese, and Japanese, and when applied, she gives her lyrics an electronic tone. Similar to the sounds you might hear from Animal Crossing characters like K.K. Slider, the cyber aspect of Miku’s aesthetic is heightened through the unique application of her voice. From dubstep, to JPop, to various remixes, Hatsune Miku’s voice has been used on over 100,000 songs. Simply put, she’s everywhere. Not convinced? The original Nyan Cat video, which amassed 205 million views (though removed by the original creator) features the voice of Hatsune Miku. In 2021 Ashnikko collaborated with the program on a less-than-impressive remix of her song “Daisy”, aptly titled “Daisy 2.0”. The voice actress Saki Fujita, who has voiced characters such as Ymir from Attack on Titan, and Rika Sasaki in Cardcaptor Sakura served as the original sample for Hatsune Miku’s “voice.” 

The various iterations of CV01, Hatsune Miku’s code-name, are endless, as is her merchandise. The most common form of merchandise are figurines, which range in price from $50 to $200, with a resale markup of $1500. There are Hatsune Miku motorcycles, Mercedes-Benz race cars, and a slew of lifestyle products as well. Being a VOCALOID fan isn’t cheap. There is also heavy overlap between the fandoms contemporary VOCALOID listeners interact with. A majority of listeners are often LGBT+ and neurodivergent, and with special interests and hobbies that coincide with their listening habits. While it’s not the case for everyone, Hatsune Miku listeners are often fans of slice-of-life animes as well as other VOCALOID characters, and enjoy colorful clothing and accessory aesthetics like decoden. 

At the beginning of the month I posted on the app Lex, a community building app for queer people. Users can post about housing, mutual aid, as well as missed connections and relationship help. My post was titled, “Are you a friend of Miku?”, and I asked if anyone had any “significant thoughts, opinions or facts on Hatsune Miku.” I specified that I was also looking for memories from their middle school or younger years, since that's when a majority of the listeners today were first exposed to her. The post got a decent amount of traction, with responses ranging from, “One of my exes had a giant miku poster over her bed [...] she detached the miku hair piece from figurines and used it for eating.” to cosplayers telling me their plans for a Hatsune MikuxPokémon collab with their friends. Like with many artists, the cross-cultural fanbase allows for a diverse range of listeners. What’s unique about Hatsune Miku, as well as other VOCALOID programs, is the ability to take matters into your own hands, to own the software from which her voice is produced. 

The official Hatsune Miku spotify page perpetuates the mainstream image of Miku. Bubbly, cheerful music, heavily inspired by the Hatsune Miku video game, Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA. Her top song, “Miku” is exclusively in English, produced by Anamanguchi. Here, Miku thanks her fans for her success, saying, “I'm on top of the world because of you / All I wanted to do is follow you / I'll keep singing along to all of you”. Hatsune Miku, synonymous with Japan, a pop star from the future who represents its fast growing technology, is best known by larger audiences for a song in English. Japanese producers who stick to their native language use Miku’s “cutesy” persona to juxtapose their morbid lyrics and themes. Enter Kikuo, a producer using Hatsune Miku’s voice to create music that fans call a meeting of chaos and harmony. Kikuo has been producing VOCALOIDs since 2010, and in 2022 his song “愛して愛して愛して (Love me, Love me, Love me) was the top streamed VOCALOID song on Spotify. In an interview with NHK (public broadcaster in Japan), Kikuo states, “With Hatsune Miku, you can make a song without singing it yourself.” A great deal of production goes into VOCALOID. The sounds are layered and with a singing voice software, the singer in Kikuo’s projects can reach inhuman notes. VOCALOID is a genre intended for the computer, but the music is still created by hand. Kikuo’s lyrics feature explicitly gruesome themes, such as rape, incest, and murder. His most iconic song, “ごめんね ごめんね (Gomenne, Gomenne)” tells the story of a young girl who is desperate to be saved from her sexually abusive father. 

The melody in this song is more intense, a reflection of the dark themes, but the chorus breaks have a playful, childlike aspect. “ごめんね ごめんね” is a force to be reckoned with, as are most of Kikuo’s songs. But in each album, Hatsune Miku is still his muse. When speaking about the lyric process, Kikuo said, “I'm working on lyrics, but I'm really struggling. (The lyrics are like,) There's something bad happening. Something real bad is going on here." Whether or not listeners understand the connotations of his music, live performances of Kikuo’s music are upbeat and set up more like a DJ set. 

There’s no shame in rekindling old flames. In the past few years I’ve come to the conclusion that I am no better than my middle school self, and to write off three years of personal development,attempts at expanding my tastes, as “cringe” would be a disservice to all the growth I’ve achieved since then. My friends and I were losers in middle school. I was a loser in high school, and by some standards I’m probably still a loser now; but the lamest thing you can do is generalize an entire music community based on an uninformed opinion. Do yourself a favor and listen to Kikuo’s album きくおミク2 (2012) on your next walk home. Even if you think it’s the worst music any human has ever produced, you’ll be part of a small community of people who dared to try something new. No one has to know you tried to listen to VOCALOID and didn’t like it. No one has to know you liked it, either.