If you’ve been on Twitter (also known as X, but I refuse to call it that) at some point in your life, you’ve seen art or memes of a blue-haired girl wearing a schoolgirl uniform. But, if you’ve been on Twitter in the last couple of weeks, you have definitely seen her drawn as hyper-specific depictions of people from certain cities, states, and countries. Even people who have never heard of Hatsune Miku saw her on their timelines, leaving them to ask one question:
Who is Hatsune Miku?
Hatsune Miku is a virtual idol and Vocaloid software created by Crypton Future Media in 2007. Technically, she is a song bank for musical artists to use. According to their website, her name means “first sound of the future,” an accurate description of a Vocaloid if you ask me. Back in 2014, Wired ran a profile on Hatsune Miku that explained the origin of her,
In 2007 Crypton’s CEO, Hiroyuki Itoh, was looking for a way to market a virtual voice program he’d developed using Yamaha’s Vocaloid 2 technology. Vocaloid’s first version had not sold well because, it was suggested to Itoh, it didn’t sound very lifelike. He disagreed. (Japan’s appetite for all things humanoid is insatiable, he knew, if properly plied.)
What Vocaloid needed, Itoh believed, was an aidoru, an idol. So he engaged an illustrator of graphic novels in Tokyo who goes by the single name Kei. Itoh told Kei he wanted something cute but also slightly edgy, something that would attract creative young people to Vocaloid. Kei came back with a rendering of a 16-year-old girl who was 5’2″ and weighed 92 pounds. She had long, thin legs, coquettish bug-eyes, pigtailed blue locks that reached almost to the ground, and a computer module on her forearm. Her first name, Miku, meant “future”; her surname, Hatsune, “first sound.”
The software, and Miku, changed the music scene for anyone who wanted to try their hand at making music without having to find an artist for vocals.
What does the music of Hatsune Miku sound like?
The next question is what genre of music can we classify Hatsune Miku in? The most obvious choice is, of course, pop or J-Pop if we want to be specific. But Miku’s range allows her to also be considered electronic as well as rock. For example, the collaboration with Project VOLTAGE allowed Miku songs to span different genres for each specific type of Pokemon trainer she was representing. The song Psychic Psychic is much more of a rock song than After Epochs, which can be classified as city pop. So while it is easy to put Miku in a certain genre box, she can easily perform different genres that appeal to everyone.
Now you might be thinking that all Hatsune Miku is is a Vocaloid, but you would be wrong. For one, Miku is the mascot of Good Smile Racing. She’s featured on both their race cars and motorcycles, her theme changing each season. Stemming from this, Racing Miku has taken on a life of her own. What began as a mascot now has stickers, figures, and even clothes featuring the new Racing Miku each year. In fact, 2023 marked the 15th anniversary of Racing Miku!
So, let us ask the question: is Hatsune Miku considered artificial intelligence? Well, yes and no. On one hand, she’s a technology that people use to create songs—think of any of the AI song generators that popped up since the beginning of the year. Since she isn’t a real person, Miku can, in theory, create any sort of genre whatsoever without worrying about whether the change in sound doesn’t have the same high quality as her other stuff. She can also be featured on other songs without ever having to actually be in the room and doesn’t need to write lyrics.
Miku and technology
On the other hand, Hatsune Miku can be viewed more as technology than artificial intelligence. The technology behind her doesn’t run on machine learning or CPUs. She’s a software that people can use to create original songs with only her voice. While she has the ability to swap genres, she doesn’t have the ability to change her voice to the point that AI does. If you want to compare her to Gorillaz—for those who might not know, Gorillaz is a virtual band created by Damon Albarn of Blur—Miku is also a hologram. Unlike AI, her hologram can perform at concerts with the use of her image being projected onto a glass screen while a human backing band performs alongside her.
With the rise of AI, it’s easy to brush off Hatsune Miku as just another flavor that will soon be forgotten. She is, after all is said and done, a virtual girl. Similar to Gorillaz, there is no actual person to be seen in real life with Miku despite having concerts that consistently sell out. The difference between Miku and AI, at least in my opinion, is that Vocaloids have become real idols that people feel a connection to.
Miku memes
Parasocial relationships between celebrities and fans are nothing new. The concept has been around for at least two decades. But when it comes to Hatsune Miku, that relationship is even more exclusive than one would think. One possible cause for this is the accessibility of merchandise for her. There is no limit when it comes to supporting Miku through capitalism. She has figures, limited edition collaboration merchandise, clothing, accessories, and even a series of world tours called Miku Expo where fans can see her hologram perform. The variety of these things allows all and any fans to connect with Miku on a much more personal level. Fans can form a bond with their idol without worrying about her disappointing them.
Additionally, the variety of official Hatsune Miku designs allows artists to have fun with fan art. Take the regional Miku trend that took over Twitter for the latter half of August for example. Because Miku is thrown into different official collaborations, it’s easy to throw her in any location and make her fit into the scene. Twitter user ErinArtista posted the first Brazilian Miku fan art back in June, kicking off the obsession with Brazilian Miku.
Regional Mikus
In late August, another Twitter user thecat_mitsu posted a similar art of Brazilian Miku, which encouraged other artists to create art of her representing their region. This ability that Miku has to camouflage into anything people can think of allows her to be loved by so many people. Want to see her wearing a Chinese hanfu? Covered. Maybe you want to see Miku represent a hyperspecific Bronx identity? Covered. Miku can represent so many different things all because she camouflages so well.
At this point, Hatsune Miku is more a cultural phenomenon than a Vocaloid. All of us have come across her whether or not we realize it. Even if you only know her from Twitter art trends, you still know her in some context. She’s on billboards, Twitter trends, and even on Spotify. For the last 17 years, this blue-haired song bank has taken the world by storm, crossing both language barriers and currency values.
This is Miku’s world and we’re simply living in it.
Header image is from Wikipedia and Mujitra on Flickr and is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.
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