Hachune Miku

About

Hachune Miku (Japanese: はちゅねミク)^[1] is a nickname givne to a fan-made Vocaloid character inspired by Hatsune Miku. This cute incarnation of Miku is the first milestone of official recognition and commodification of fan creations in the Vocaloid fandom.

Origin

What put the character later called Hachune Miku out into the world was Miku’s parody video for Loituma Girl which was posted to the Japanese video sharing service Nico Nico Douga (NND) on September 4th, 2007^[2], just 5 days after the release of Hatsune Miku the software. This song was composed by Otomania^[3], Japanese music creator and flash animator who was well known for his many musical contributions in the 2channel Flash Movie movment in the first half of 2000s. And the comical illustration of Miku was drawn by Tamago (たまご)^[4], also Japanese flash animator.

On September 11th, 2007, Otomania announced in his blog post that they decided to call her “Hachune Miku”.^[5]“Hachune” is a mispronunciation of “Hatsune”, which shows her childishness.

Spread

Because of its cutenss, Hachune Miku succeeded to indicate various ways of Vocaloid creations not limited to songs, and she is one of the most iconic characters in the Vocaloid fandom. In the fandom, her personality is usually drawn like wild and big eater by the influence of these 2 early instances: MAD video featuring the raging voices of Angery German Kid (shown below, left)^[6] and music video of she singing the names of foods along with the melody of The Tower of DRUAGA (shown below, right)^[7]

As of May 2013, over a thousand amount of videos and illustration featuring Hachune Miku are uploaded to NND^[8], YouTube^[9], pixiv^[10], Piapro^[11] and deviantART.^[12]

Swedish newspaper Yle Uutiset also covered Hachune Miku in their report for the Ievan Polkka meme in 2010.^[13]

Official Recognition

Hachune Miku is the first fan-made character which was officially recognized by Crypton Future Media and became to be utilized in commercial media. Its debut as an official recognized character was the 373th episode in Toro Station published on November 16th, 2007, which was a push news delivery service in an online game for PlayStation3 console Mainichi Issho.^[14] Her official recognision was also announced in this episode.

Toro Station Ep. 373

Then, a slapstick comedy manga featuring Hachune and other Vocaloid characters, Hatsune Miku no Nichijō Roipara, started on a monthly comic magazine by Otomania & Tamago in December 2007. It had continued to October, 2011, and released 4 volumes of books.

Hatsune Miku no Nichijō Roipara Cover Arts

Many kinds of Hachune Miku goods have been released in the official Vocaloid franchise lines. Not only figurines and plushies, her steamed meat bun called “Mikuman” was also released in the collaboration campaign with a convenience store group Famil Mart in 2012.

Figurine, Plushie and Mikuman

Aftermath

“Miku Miku ni Shite Ageru♪” and Leek Dance

Hachune Miku gave a huge influence to the beginning of original song creations in the Vocaloid music scene because many amatuer composers who started composing with Vocaloid got an inspiration for lyrics from Miku’s personality which was being gradually consisted by the chain reaction of preceding fan creations. The leek swing by Hachune Miku had the biggest impact among those precursors.

One of the most notable examples is the lryics of “Miku Miku ni Shite Ageru♪”^[15], the first and biggest hit tune in the all-time Vocaloid music scene. Its line “Without any leek attachment, but I want one if I could” was not only featured in the 3D CGI music video (shown below, left)^[16], but also derived to a comical dance called “Leek Dance” (ネギ踊り, Negi Odori), which was created by Nippori Honsha (日暮里本社), a flash movie creator famous for smooth animation in his flash movies (shown below, right).^[17]

When this song included to sega’s Vocaloid music game Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA^[18] released in 2010, this Leek dance was partly ported to the game together.

Character Item Memes

By the example of “Miku and Leek” coupling excerted by Hachune Miku, people had continued to give the iconic item to each of subsequent Vocaloid characters and featured it in the fandom over the next several years. Famous examples are “Kagamine Rin/Len & Road Roller”, “Megurine Luka & Tuna Fish” and “Kaito & Ice Cream”.

For more information about that particular phenomenon, please check the KYM entry for Vocaloid Character Items.

Notable Examples

Illustrations

Videos

Left: “Ode to Joy”^[19] | Right: Heart Sutra Parody^[20]

SOMESAT Project

The Social Media Satellite Development, SOMESAT, is a satellite-launching project which has been totally run by NICO-TECH, a user group of non-industrial engineers who love niconico since 2009.^[21] And this project aims to launch a CubeSat^[22] with a Hachune Miku figure and realize her leek swing in the outer space. As of June 2013, it’s still ongoing.

Miku Miku Dance Promoting Movie for SOMESAT Project^[23]

On the other hand, its spin-off campaign “Miku to Venus”^[24] succeeded to gather 14,000 signitures and include three aluminium plates of Hatsune/Hachune Miku illustrations to JAXA’s spacecraft Akatsuki^[25] in 2010.^[26]

Aluminium Plates

Hachune Miku Downsizing War

In 2008, NICO-TECH engineers also began the competition to reproduce Hachune Miku’s leek swing in more smaller scale, which were called “Hachune Miku Downsizing War” (はちゅねミク小型化戦争, Hachune Miku Kogataka Sensou).^[27] The war started with the swing by a 4-cm paper doll which was actuated by electric magnets (shown below, left).^[28] Then, engineers passion broke millimeter and micrometer scale barrier partly by the help of highly abstraction. In April 2013, it had finally achieved reproducing the leek swing in 2 micro meters consisting of 200 nanometers plastic beads manipulated by optical tweezers (shown below, right).^[29] It also reached to the smallest scale that could be caught by the limit performance of existing optical microscopes.