New Voice Synth Character, ROSA, Announced by HirotoP
ヒロトP / HirotoP – the creator of CUL – has been making headlines lately with all his recent activities related to CUL’s upcoming 10th anniversary on December 22, 2021!
But today, he has announced another major new project that was previously hinted at: the creation of a brand new voice synth character named ROSA!
Here are the official announcement tweets from HirotoP’s Twitter account:
[Translator’s note: “The person inside” (literal translation of “中の人”) refers to ‘voice provider’ in this case]
[UPDATE ON MARCH 25, 2021]
[In response to some confusion from the overseas community members who interpreted the above tweet as indicating that ZAN-SHIN would be developing a new voice synth engine for ROSA, HirotoP made these new tweets clarifying things, and also fixing the translation issue mentioned above:]
While this news is certainly a huge surprise, its announcement wasn’t completely unexpected. Both on Twitter and on Clubhouse, HirotoP has expressed the desire to create some new voice synth software. What’s more, on the day prior to the announcement, he made several tweets about the existence of other girls in CUL’s family.
Combining HirotoP’s goal of creating a new voice synth at ZAN-SHIN, and the new family member teaser above, one could expect that the major announcement on VocaRevo 129 would be the announcement of said new voice synth and family member!
VocaRevo 129
The 129th installment of VocaloRevolution streamed on HirotoP’s official YouTube channel at 6:00 PM (JST) on March 20, 2021, and is archived below!
Note that soon after the livestream started, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck Miyagi Prefecture and was felt in Tokyo as well, causing the stream to broken up into two parts due to the original stream recording being cut short.
For those who would like to listen to full versions of the songs introduced as they build up to ROSA’s big announcement, here’s a list!
First came two songs from HirotoP himself demonstrating how current AI singers can sound:
Summer Love～夏の恋は～ / Summer Love~Natsu no Koi wa~ (Koharu Rikka cover) by HirotoP (Koharu Rikka self cover)
Summer Love～夏の恋は～ / Summer Love~Natsu no Koi wa~ (Saki AI cover) by HirotoP
And then comes the medly of recent CUL songs by artists who continue to use her!
ヘルP / HelP‘s Error Elimination album crossfade
Wonderful Revolution by 失いP / UshinaiP
Searching for Life by song
KING (CUL cover) by kentoazumi
And about ROSA’s announcement, here are some other small tidbits:
- ROSA does not have a design or official illustrator yet
- They would like to release ROSA within this year
- Her name can be styled as either ROSA or ロサ
- Which engine she will be developed for has not been determined yet either. She will have a talk voice, so it will have to have support for talk banks
- HirotoP promises CUL and ROSA will be brought overseas, and will do his best to make that happen
- HirotoP has received a lot of support these past ten years with CUL, and would like to continue working together with creators to develop his new projects, and someday bring them overseas
- HirotoP thanks everyone who has supported them all this time, and would especially like overseas fans to pay attention to their activities from here on out
And a post livestream Tweet also requested the hashtags #ロサ and #ROSA when posting about her on social media!
So what do you think about the new announcements, and about ROSA herself? Fans are all encouraged to Tweet about her, retweet the above announcement tweets, and spread the word on her announcement, especially overseas! You can bet that VocaSphere will be doing our part as well!
The next VocaRevo livestream has been announced for April 3 from 6:00 PM to 7:45 PM (JST) and will be another major livestream full of major announcements for ROSA, so stay tuned!
Links
ヒロトP / HirotoP
Cul is actually one of the few vocaloids I never really liked (just never liked her voice or her post-VY1 look), but seeing how passionate and full of love Hiroto is for Cul and for this project makes me kind of excited for it anyway.