#Miku across the world

[nocurnalday]

Brooklyn Italian Miku

[modeus-the-misanthrope]

In all sincerity, I love seeing people draw Hatsune Miku and Goku with their personal culture draped across them. Brazilian Miku, Halal Goku. Both of these characters being welcomed across the globe is nice. It makes me smile.

(Partially from nostalgia, I will admit. Growing up in the 90's DBZ was everywhere and the early 2000's internet belongs to the world's number one princess, Miku. So it's nice to see them still around and popular.)

[rosenbergi]

I can’t take the “The World Is Mine” plot point seriously because this is all I can think about-

[im-yotsu]

Old trend but idc

[staff]

Tumblr Tuesday: Many Mikus

"Draw Hatsune Miku from your culture," they said. "Ok," you said, proceeding to create Hatsune Miku from every culture under the sun. From Catalonian to Korean, from Nigerian to Navajo: Please enjoy this staggering abundance of Hatsune Miku fanart inspired by cultures across the world. 39!

@molenaide:

@meriahlatyar:

@marsipain:

@beastwhimsy:

@catmask:

@annbragin:

@fox-from-malta:

@sparkly-s0da:

@multiiocular-mushroom:

@spiiiiiral:

@ella-the-eevee:

@leafsei:

@auntphibian:

@biibontic:

@dr11ft:

@cowinf:

@kapustainu:

@missmisnomer:

@prixcel:

@geothermalescapist:

@noxious-fennec:

@pereczke:

@lemonpoet:

@windwenn:

@berryesque:

[herbertwest]

The origin of the shrine revealed!!!!

There's a Miku shrine in the woods near my house

[communist-hatsunemiku]

https://www.tjf.or.jp/clicknippon/en/mywayyourway/11/post-29.php#:~:text=Known%20as%20the%20creator%20of,behind%20the%20software%20he%20created.

The fact that they kept her available to the public and let her bloom across the world unhindered was such a correct decision it's crazy. She could have been locked in a corporate cage not allowed to add her voice to anybody's music, I literally get sad just thinking about it. Thank god for her creator having some foresight

[jibunbosh]

Mesmerizer is a satire of TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and the rest of the modern short-form vertical video format

A brief thematic analysis.

I'm sure there are countless people already interpreting the imagery and details in this wonderful song & MV, like here and here, so I won't spend too much time retreading that ground. Miku and Teto are dancing. Miku gets hypnotized. Teto signals for help, but gets hypnotized at the end as well.

That part is obvious enough, but that's still pretty surface-level. What is this seemingly hyperspatial horror scenario supposed to mean to us?

While checking to see if anyone before me's already come to the same conclusions as I did and if I should bother not writing this text post at all (lol), I came across udin's great analysis video. She comes to the conclusion that the song tackles themes of disillusionment with reality and the ways we indulge in escapism to relieve ourselves of the pains of the world.

I agree with that reading! From practically the very beginning, we have Miku call to us - the viewer - to push away our true feelings. Teto comes in to peddle a solution, inviting us to surrender and empty our minds - in her words, "pretending to know nothing."

You, the viewer, are a critical character in this masquerade. For nearly the entire video, Miku and Teto's eyes are unfailingly trained on you. Or, well... perhaps they can't actually see you, but they can see a camera, or whatever other aperture the point of view is supposed to be from. And they know they're being watched. (Who else would Teto be sending distress signals to?)

Let's put a pin on that for later.

udin notes very early on that Miku and Teto are, conspicuously, kept in vertical frames - very similar to the video formats of TikTok (and Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, and whatever other clones of the format exist.) You know, just like the animator Caststation's Rabbit Hole fan MV that went viral some months ago.

Hey wouldn't it be crazy if the song's producer, 32ki, released Mesmerizer shorts too haha. Wouldn't that be crazy.

Wow, wild.

These short-term vertical videos are captivating & alluring. If you're reading this, it's more likely than not that you've also found yourself caught up in them at least once, scrolling through the infinite algorithmic slurry and forgetting about the real-life issues you have at hand. Would you say, then, that you felt hypnotized? Mesmerized, even?

And so these two invite us to join their world and focus on the... uh... rectangle.

Their dances are repetitive, following the same loop. Their outfits are distinct, but their choreography isn't. They're copying the same formula, repeating it ad nauseam to the best of their ability.

They're doing a fucking TikTok dance.

Back to the pin I told you about earlier, with Miku and Teto looking at a camera.

Miku sways with the camera, eyes looking directly at it like a swinging pocket watch. She's been looking at it the entire time, after all. We've been seeing her via our screen this entire time, but, again, she doesn't necessarily see us. She's beholden to the camera, which she dances for day after day, caught up in its spell. She's hypnotized by it. Eventually, she breaks.

Teto, on the other hand, resists. For a while, anyway.

Despite her being the one jumping to us with the "solution" at the beginning of the MV, there's very quickly good reason to question how much agency she has in this. She dances for the camera as well, but she doesn't want to. She's signalling for help. She wants out.

Many content creators (as much as I personally loathe the non-specificity and soullessness of the term) have struggled with the adaptation to the short-form video format, and the preference the algorithm has had for these captivating, bite-sized videos. They're catchy, and easily drive up metrics. Practically anyone who's publishing their work via video format online needs to learn to adapt or fall behind, even if that means whittling their content down to fit the frame, the time, and people's shortening attention spans. Sometimes, that means compromising on specificity and completeness... or, in other words, the true representation of a full work.

The song's writer, 32ki, has been releasing songs on YouTube for several years. Their first YouTube Short, however, was posted only a year ago: a short, whittled-down segment of their previous song, CIRCUS PANIC!!!, hoping for it to win the ProsekaNEXT song contest. It was their first song to achieve widespread popularity and hit a million views.

The shorts, however, aren't the "true" versions of the song. The full song just won't fit.

We're being mesmerized as consumers of this endless stream of content, rather than appreciators of music and art. However, that relationship isn't completely symmetrical across the plane that is the 4th wall. Miku and Teto are trapped not by their attention spans, but by a compulsion to project their "truthful acting" and peddle that window into a colorful, problem-free world.

We, as the collective audience, need not dwell on any one thing for too long - we need only swipe, and move on to the next video. However, Miku and Teto are trapped behind the screen for eternity, day after day.

They're the only characters we get to see, of course. There's no evil 3rd voice synth character that's plotting to keep them trapped in there. We can't put a face to whatever force is hypnotizing them and trapping them behind the screen. It's faceless - like the inscrutable algorithms of YouTube recommendations or the TikTok For You page, or the impersonal corporations that develop & maintain those aforementioned apps. Miku and Teto's likenesses, on the other hand, are being exploited and extracted from for their entertainment value, being strung along by that metaphorical hypnotizing force like puppets on a string.

Many people, represented by Miku, enjoy their success on such platforms. It's freeing and liberating to throw oneself wholeheartedly into such an endeavor, of course! Others, represented by Teto, harbor their doubts of the emotional veracity of such a medium, but know they have little choice lest they face destruction... perhaps not literally as a person, but as an idea.

Wouldn't it be easier just to let oneself be swept away by it and give in?

[lagomoz]

List of true Project Sekai facts for non-fans

(technically spoilers but out of context and funny. please add on)

-a character can see ghosts. this is never elaborated on

-all main characters can teleport to a separate dimension based on their psyches and also hatsune miku is in there

-a girl imagines her female friend kissing her and gets so flustered those around her are concerned

-a song very explicitly about having sex with men, originally sung by all women, is covered by all men

-actually correct me if I'm wrong I can't think of a single love song that is covered by an m/f pairing

-a character causes explosions at school near daily

-a character is sad her friends don't go to the same school as her so her solution is to sprint across the entire city and break into their school to hang out. she does this frequently

-a group gets stranded on a deserted island

-hatsune miku stops a suicide attempt

-a highschooler makes a borderline if not outright sapient robotic replica of his childhood friend. nobody considers this a particularly world shattering achievement of ai

-the robot was created to help with social anxiety/stage fright

-the robot has rocket launchers

-the robot has a job as a theme park performer and gets a salary

-a characters family member is dead and it takes her three years to find out

-a character has a body guard dressed in a full mascot costume at all times follow her around

-a character got into fights with professional wrestlers on tv as a middle schooler/high schooler (not sure the exact age)

-there's official sonic collaboration costumes

-fuck is said three times and it's all by members of the theme park troupe that performs for children

-catgirl hatsune miku almost impales a man without realizing it

-sometimes miku is a catgirl

[nostalgic-nobody]

YESSSSSS

spidey miku!

[mikufigureoftheday]

Hi, Mod!

Just ran across this picture in an eBay listing full of Miku bootlegs- she's a figure I've never seen before, and I'd love to find a real, non-bootleg listing for her! Do you recognize this release?

I tried a reverse image search, but the only result was the same bootleg listing on AliExpress.

Thanks for blessing us with many jpegs of our queen, Miku!

I'm here and always glad to share images of anime girl with the masses :>

This specific Jpeg is of Taitos Latidos 2022 ver

on Ebay she seems to be going for ~$30-40USD atm from more legit looking sellers

[ageless-soul-au]

Introducing: Hatsune Miku, ASAU version!!

Odyssey is her biggest fan and he's being so normal talking to her!! Aren't you proud??? He's never been more excited to be the hero, because he gets to show up to a gala and Miku is just THERE. Free concert! (He should probably stop showing off though...)

Characters are from ASAU, please don't tag any other AUs!

Miku has been making music since she was a kid and wants to share it with the world! She's pretty famous, but being asked to play at an official event for another country is still an honor! (Not that she doesn't travel and perform across the continent anyway)

But what is she actually doing here? Well....

She's a sword spirit! She was the one and only replica prototype with a soul. The Sheikah researchers that made her never attempted it again. Did their funding get cut? Did they just call it quits because they realized playing god might not be worth it? Who knows! Regardless, the program ended and Miku escaped with someone's help.

This reference sheet is only current Miku, not how she looked when she was first created. We might draw that eventually, though!

After escaping and hiding her blade inside herself (I wonder where she learned that?), Miku changed her form to a child's to reflect her mentality and wandered into a Sheikah settlement, hoping someone would take her in. It worked! She grew up like a human and blended into society, no one the wiser.

How will the chain meet her and find out her secret? Wait and see!

[project-sekai-facts]

What do you think the World Link of the Virtual Singers will be like? Will it be like those 2 events, i forgot their name (Cherry blossom Sekai thing and Resonate your song in this Sekai?) or will it be a completely different thing?

something i find interesting is how they've been spoonfeeding us the whole concept of WLEs since 2nd anniversary and it went under all our noses. Like. Sakura Across SEKAI is the virtual singers trying to find a tree that will bloom in the sekais, and eventually they get sent to the tree sekai. Like no shit the anniversary was called Journey to Bloom. And then the new buds growing in the sekai like they were not lying about pre-3rd anniversary being the jorney to bloom.

Resonate Throughout SEKAI introduced the concept of an expansion to the tree sekai, no shit the anniversary was called brand new world and now there's new parts of all the sekai too. Oh and also Resonate introduced some lore concepts that are used in the bloomfes card stories. Right back to journey to bloom. Bloom is a very important arc word don't forget it.

Yeah anyway I think this is gonna be the tree sekai's yearly appearance. Technically it already has its sekai expansion last year but i mean it's kinda left vague as to if it's the same place so there's room to work. and it's still a fragment sekai too, maybe this event it'll become a proper sekai? Oh and yeah the saplings + blocked off areas in each sekai 100% are linked to tree sekai. All the sekai are gonna connect at some point (probably not this event?) but we knew this it was foreshadowed in miku's first fes story (also they're literally called World Link events, or World Bloom if you go by their name in the game data. They're telling it to our faces again)

Idk if it'll be the default vsingers or the starters, but considering the order the event is running in i think it'll be starters. I think at the very least the starters might get to meet properly, since they didn't get to do that in sakura across sekai. The individual chapters I reckon could follow a similar concept to Resonate, with the sekailoids meeting the default cryptonloids, except the interactions will get to be longer and more fleshed out here due to the event pacing.

[pokemorion]

Probably VERY late to the whole Miku across the world thing, but POKEMORI MIKU!!!! Or, Scala region Miku if we're going by the trend hehe :)

[lovotomii]

the Brazilian Miku spin-off arts are funny in a way. for all the other nations across the world you have these elegant folk costumes they're putting Miku in, then as soon as you get to the UK and USA, it's all sports wear

[verygoodestboy]

this isn’t a fully formed thought at the moment but if you say you “hate all americans and american things, EXCEPT minorities” you’re tokenizing us (minorities). we’re still americans, we still do all the things you hate like having regional cultures that differ across states, and eating burgers, and not knowing everything that’s going on in the rest of the world.

the international miku trend is fun and silly and a way for people to show off things they like about the place that they’re from! its a cute celebration of the full diversity of the world! it’s political only in the ways that all things are political because we live in a global society, but by and large, these drawings aren’t political action.

you refusing to enjoy or engage with white american mikus from florida or san diego, and actively calling their existence a drain on the art trend exclusively BECAUSE they’re american, while saying you “love Black miku only��” isn’t making you a Good Person. and you certainly aren’t winning any Black people brownie points.

i guess what i’m saying is stop using non white and minority americans to justify the hatred for the american government you keep deflecting onto white americans. not because white americans have “never done anything wrong uwu” but because they’re people like you are and people are not wholly good or wholly bad and discounting an entire group of people out of hand as BadTM is, at the very least, extremely unproductive