For Miku on her 16th anniversary.
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If you show any internet-goer a picture of Hatsune Miku, chances are that they would immediately know who she is. Her iconic teal twin-tails that seem to shrink and bloom depending on the box art, her school uniform-esque outfit and her CV-01 tattoo have become a staple of internet and vocal synth culture, and she is arguably one of the most recognisable mascots of the internet. She has millions of fans of all different ages and nationalities around the world, and she is certainly no longer a Japan-centric popstar. 13 years ago however, finding Hatsune Miku enthusiasts outside of the internet was an extremely difficult feat, at least for me, who lives in the north of England.
I first discovered Hatsune Miku when I was around 12, having just started secondary school in 2010. She would have existed as a character for around 3 years at this point. I discovered Miku through MMD animations, and the weirdness around her being a character to represent a musical instrument (when vocal synths were only just becoming a less-than-niche thing) pulled me in immediately. In 2010, Hatsune Miku only had her original voicebank (no append until late December 2010), had only performed two of her own dedicated concerts (Miku FES’09 in 2009 and 39’s Giving Day in 2010),[2] was only featured in the Project DIVA games, and Tda had not yet released his Append Hatsune Miku model. In other words, pass me my beard comb and thick-rimmed hipster glasses, because I was a Miku fan before it was cool. And as we all know, being into anime and Japanese culture in 2010 was regarded as very cool.
Since 2010, I’ve seen Miku grow into the worldwide virtual pop star that she is now known as. Sure, she was known about by many on the internet in 2010, but that’s exactly my point- she was known on the internet. In real life, no one in my real life knew who Miku was, and if they were a fan, they tended to keep her under wraps. This was because, when I was in school, liking anime or anything Japanese-related was a locality of bullying. Enjoying video games had only just become cool in my day, and that was a thing that boys enjoyed, certainly not girls like myself. Anything anime-related was too weird for the mostly white, mostly lower middle-class northern English 11-16 year olds that I grew up around. Trying to explain my new interest right as I started out as an MMDer to my parents was also a no-go, not because they were cynical like my classmates, but because it was a very foreign concept to them; they just did not understand it.
However, these factors did not stop Hatsune Miku becoming a private source of entertainment for me. I’d listen to music made with her voice, but never show anyone in real life for fear of ridicule. On the rare occasions that I did try and share my interest, I would be asked, “why would you listen to something with such a fake voice?” or “why do you listen to music in a language you don’t understand?”. I would make art using MMD featuring Miku, but I would rarely show anyone in real life. I would watch Miku’s concerts and learn the choreography, but never dance in front of anyone in real life. Miku became a character, a concept, and a source of community that I would keep close to me at all times, but only ever spoke freely of it online in the safety of DeviantART or YouTube, where no one in real life would find out. She was my guilty pleasure.
And now, 13 years on from when I first discovered Hatsune Miku, I’m seeing her everywhere. Not just on the internet where she is trending on Twitter every week, nor in my YouTube recommendations. But in real life, and in my local cities.
If you have visited Yorkshire in the North of England, you’ll know that the big cities like Sheffield, York and Leeds tend to be very old and industrial. The architecture is red-brick, brutalist. The north is shaped by harsh weather and harsh treatment by the South, our society is very much built on hard labor and getting the job done. The countryside is rural, the moors sitting almost untouched by humans for millions of years. Yorkshire towns and cities are not so open to weird and wacky things like anime or weeb stuff like London tends to be, which is well known for its multiculturalism and acceptance of diversity. You’ll find many a British establishment such as a pub, a Primark, about 10 different Greggs cafes, and an HMV and Forbidden Planet in the northern cities, most of these establishments being very functional and part of northern culture (especially Greggs. Seriously, if you ever visit the north of England, go to a Greggs and get a sausage roll or a steak bake. That is Northern culture right there). But if you enter that HMV or Forbidden Planet in 2023, unlike in previous years, you will find none other than internet sensation Hatsune Miku plastered on shirts, posters, manga and confectionery.
Back in around 2016, I remember when my first wild Hatsune Miku appeared, in none other than a Waterstones. For non-UK folk, Waterstones is a higher end book store chain which caters to all kinds of readers, providing encyclopaedias, non-fiction, fiction and kids’ books. A few years prior, this very British book store started to stock manga, and I spotted this manga sitting on the shelf.
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Unofficial Hatsune Mix by Kei Garō, the same Kei Garō that drew Miku’s original box art. I knew as soon as I saw it I had to get it. In those days, it was incredibly rare that I bought anything that was not a necessity, but a manga featuring Hatsune Miku, in a Northern Waterstones? I had never seen anything like it, and I could not let it get away. I bought it, rushed it home and read it all in the space of an hour.
This was the first time Miku was realised in real life for me. It was so unusual and so weird to see her not on a screen or as a print-out poster in my private bedroom, and to see her in the North of England too! If I had spotted her for the first time IRL in somewhere like in London, it may not have impacted me so much. But to be found in a county where everything is so English and northern, seeing something outside of the screen that I have loved for years really hit me hard.
Since that day, every now and then, I encounter more wild Mikus. In Forbidden Planet you can find Miku themed cushions, figures and posters, usually in the dedicated weeb bit of the store with other manga and anime merchandise (and the £6 a bottle ramune, >.>). In HMV however, is where you will find the good kush.
In 2021, I discovered something that would not only rock me, but Hatsune Miku enthusiasts around the world: Miku themed chocolate, Miku themed soda, Miku themed gummies and Miku themed ramune.
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It turned out that this MikuMikuConfectionary was UK exclusive, and only being sold in HMV. This made a lot of people online very disappointed that they could not get their hands on it, but what struck me the most when I shared these images online was how shocked others were to see this kind of Miku merchandise just on sale in a regular English shop that was entirely exclusive to the UK. It proved that I was not the only one who still feels a mixture of shock, excitement and awe whenever I see Miku in real life, even now that she’s not as niche as she once was. Despite her being part of the real life sphere for quite a while now, it seems that we, especially the Vocaloid fans that were around since the beginning, still cannot fathom seeing Miku in any environment except for the internet.
Now, in 2023, seeing Miku in real life is a little more normalised for me. With the rise in popularity of video games and anime among teens and young adults, a lot more normal British shops are catering to them. If you go into any general nerdy shop, chances are that there is going to be anime merch, and there is also a very good chance that Miku is going to be in there too. Whenever my partner and I enter a nerdy shop in town, we play ‘spot the Miku’. The first person to spot a piece of Miku merchandise wins. There are also those anime shops in Camden Market that house a lot of Miku, and the last time I was there, I spotted two MMD YYB Hatsune Miku figmas up for sale. That shook me even more because of their direct relation to MMD, however unfortunately these are the only examples I have of seeing MMD-related Mikus in the wild.
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As we see more of Miku visually in real life, we also slowly make the transition to hearing her voice too, which is arguably a more recent phenomenon as naturally, it is easier to allude to Miku visually than perhaps it is through her songs. A good example of the in-between space between visual and audio representation of Miku is when I found a Project Diva Arcade in an Arcade club in Leeds. I had never actually played a Project Diva game before finding this physical one, but I was naturally very familiar with the concept, the music and the PVs. Normally it would not be the type of game that I would play, however, having seen the arcade in real life, there was no way I was going to pass it by.
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The strangest thing with this particular experience was hearing Miku’s songs played out loud in public. Having been incredibly embarrassed to share my Vocaloid music with friends and family earlier in life, it was a shock to hear the music being unapologetically loud, and I saw multiple people giving the rhythm game a go as I went around the other machines. Here more than ever, the presence of Miku felt normal.
With this most recent experience included, there have only been four times in my life where I have heard a Vocaloid song playing outside of the internet. The first was in 2014 while watching a British cooking show called ‘The Hairy Bikers’ (highly recommend if you’re a foodie) where they played Hong Kong Girl ft. Megurine Luka by Yu Shimoda in the background while visiting Hong Kong. This being 2014 however, I would be too embarrassed to point out the song to my parents who I was watching the show with, and get overly excited at the first time of hearing Vocaloid in real life. These days though, now that they recognise Miku and understand my MMD work better, I would have pointed it out.
The second time I heard Miku was overhearing someone playing Senbonzakura on the public piano in the Oracle shopping centre in Reading. That one was a nice one because I did not register the song at first, but it sounded faintly familiar. After realising what they were playing I stuck around and listened for a while. I was not brave enough to go and say hi, though. There is still a little fear of being ridiculed, even when others are able and willing to flaunt their knowledge in public.
The third and most impactful for me, was hearing Miku sing on the radio during Guardians of the Galaxy 3.
When I first heard the song, I thought that it was Miku singing, and it was not until the next day when I researched the song that I found out that it was actually Koi no Carnival and featured 50 vocal synths, not just Miku. And, to top it off, the song was created and used in an anime, meaning that not only is Miku and Vocaloid being represented in a big budget Marvel movie, so is a genuine connection to anime. However, that Vocaloid accent and classic tuning style made it very obvious that Vocaloids were being used- and used in a big budget Marvel movie. When I first heard the song play in the cinema, I excitedly poked my partner and whispered “Holy shit its Miku oh my god!!!!”, to which he responded “Ah”. Clearly it was not exciting for him, however for me and for other Vocaloid fans, it meant so much.
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I find the overall plot of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 very interesting, especially the themes around God, creationism and perfection, and as other people have pointed out, it is very interesting that the inhabitants of Counter-Earth, who are supposed to be perfect, listen to Vocaloid music. Just an observation :3.
As someone who has been a Vocaloid and Hatsune Miku fan since close to the beginning of her career, I cannot tell whether someone who became a Vocaloid fan much more recently would be shocked or elated as much as I when seeing Miku in real life. From the comments seen on Koinu no Carnival’s comment section and the replies I got after sharing the Miku confectionery, I could guess that the shock and excitement is prevalent through many fans today.
When I was at school, people who were into anime were bullied for being ‘weird’. These days however, anime and Vocaloid are now so popular and so well-known thanks to the internet generation that it seems normal for kids to discuss it openly. It may be my outsider-perspective, and maybe bullying does still occur when it comes to liking anime or Vocaloid, but it genuinely seems like Miku is such a big name in the West now that she is becoming normalised. She is no longer a weird robot-anime character that you might find on the internet: she is an internationally loved virtual pop star that is popular enough for English companies to stock her merchandise. I am so happy that younger fans these days can go out and enjoy Vocaloid and anime (hopefully) without the fear of being bullied.
Seeing Miku in public feels like a form of validation; she is not a niche character anymore, she is MikuMikuMainstream. And as she continues to get more and more popular, I think we in the West are going to start seeing her in everyday life more and more. I will probably never stop feeling excited when I see her in real life, and I genuinely hope that excitement never fades. Miku is reaching so many more people now, people who would not ordinarily learn about her if they are not part of the internet generation. She is reaching places so far away from where she originated, even in the north of England. Maybe one day she will perform in Manchester or Leeds, somewhere where northern Miku fans can reach her more easily than traveling all the way to London. It is a hope that grows every time I see her in my hometown and beyond.
The thing I love seeing the most in public when it comes to Miku, is people wearing her on their shirts. I think that is the most common way that people can express their love for Miku in public, because it is simple and easy. I myself wear my Miku merch occasionally when out in town or at the library. I am unfortunately not the kind of person who can go up to a stranger and say ‘I love your Miku shirt!’, but I wish I was, as I would love to meet more people in real life who share a love for Miku. If you wear your Miku merch down the street, keep in mind that us more closeted weebs do notice, and we think you are super cool.
References
[3] Chestnutscoop's unpublished image
[12] [13] [14] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZn65UP83A8
Additional Sources
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