Meet Hatsune Miku, the 'crowd-sourced celeb'

Carly Mallenbaum | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Vocaloids: They're pop stars, but they're not real | USA Entertainment Now There's a group of Japanese cyber celebrities that plays sold-out 3D concerts and has thousands of international fans. USA Entertainment Now host Carly Mallenbaum asks fans: What's the deal with Vocaloids?

The vocaloid is a virtual idol that sings fan-produced songs

Miku also stars in video games and %22performs%22 in concerts around the world

Hatsune Miku software and games got a recent U.S. release%2C six years after her creation

Her teen idol status is undeniable.

Fans wear T-shirts emblazoned with her face, and play computer and video games that carry her name. Her concerts are sold out, and she has admirers around the world copying her look.

Hatsune Miku is a pop star, no doubt. She's just not a real person.

"She's a virtual idol," says Ian Condry, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who lectures on Hatsune Miku and is the author of The Soul of Anime. "I might even call her a wiki-celebrity."

The futuristic-looking cartoon character — a 16-year-old with pale skin, super-long teal pigtails and skimpy school-girl attire — was "born" in 2007 as nothing more than a mascot for Crypton Future Media's Hatsune Miku synthetic voice software. The application, which utilizes Yamaha's vocaloid technology, allows users to make music with a synthetic singer (sampled from the voice of Japanese actress Saki Fujita) who sounds like a mix of Auto-Tuned Britney Spears and high-pitched synth. From there, Miku went on to star in a series of computer programs and video games, two of which (Hatsune Miku V3 English and Project Diva F) got English-language U.S. releases this August.

Miku has become "a hub of creative culture for collaborations" among artists and fans, says Crypton marketing director Muraki Kanae, who e-mailed USA TODAY via an interpreter.

Her more obsessive followers began creating art in her likeness (more than 1 million "derivative artworks" have been produced, says a Crypton press release), uploading music videos (100,000-plus fan-produced songs), writing fan fiction and "marrying" the cyber celebrity in virtual weddings.

"(She's) one of the first big, truly global phenomenons based on widespread prevalence of video-capable Internet sites like YouTube and Japan's Nico Nico Douga," says Tom Looser, a professor of Japanese studies who covers Hatsune Miku in his New York University classes. (Though other vocaloids, or synthetic singing characters, have come along since Miku, none have matched her popularity.)

And she only got so popular because Crypton never gave the character a back story. "People started making up their own stories," says Condry. She became a "crowd-sourced celeb."

This all sounds about right for Hello Kitty- and anime-adoring Japanese fans, but Americans have welcomed Miku, too. They're even dressing and acting like her via cosplay, short for costume play.

At the Anime USA convention earlier this month in Washington, plenty of Hatsune Mikus were spotted dancing around the convention center.

"The songs are just amazing," gushes Miku cosplayer Alaisa Cowherd, 16, of Virginia Beach, explaining her passion for the character. "(She's) brought to life and singing your songs."

Condry gets the appeal. "It's as if you write a song for Lady Gaga, and she actually sings it," he says.

Crypton has brought Miku to life in concert, in the manner of the virtual band Gorillaz or the Tupac Shakur hologram that played last year at the Coachella music festival. The performing Miku — who jumps, swings her pigtails and waves her arms — looks like a 3-D figure, but is actually a two-dimensional projection on a curved glass screen, says Condry. (Crypton won't disclose technical details.)

An estimated 85,000 people have seen the energetic avatar sing fan-produced songs in cities such as Hong Kong, Los Angeles and Yokohama, Japan, where Miku performed last month as part of her sixth birthday celebration.

When a recording of that concert showed at L.A.'s Downtown Independent theater, the diverse, sold-out crowd was "super-excited and had great energy," says theater employee Laura Stover. "Everyone was given glow sticks to move in time with the (glow-stick-waving) audience on the screen."

And Miku isn't stopping at concerts. She's also gotten into opera.

After several shows throughout Japan, vocaloid operaThe End is making a November stop at the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris. It's a "truly global event," says Looser.

Louis Vuitton and Marc Jacobs collaborated on Miku's outfits for the show that's "themed in 'death music,' " says Kanae. But it certainly won't be Miku's funeral.

She should last another "30 to 40 years," estimates Condry.

And she doesn't need to evolve her look to keep fans interested. In fact, she can't.

"(Miku's) image has to stay stable so everyone can keep adding their own elements to it," says Looser.



