Akita Neru | By the Phone

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Akita Neru (亞北ネル) is an officially recognized derivative. The term "Derivative" is used here to describe a fanmade VOCALOID character that is based on an already existing character.

History

On October 14 of 2007, when the Miku-movement was on the rise beyond expectations, a Japanese TV station suddenly broadcasted a program that stereotyped Miku users as "anime freaks without stable work experience". Three days later Miku's pictures became unsearchable on main search engines such as Google and Yahoo! Japan, and in the following two days, Miku's article was deleted from the Japanese Wikipedia.

This news became widespread or "flamed up" (炎上した) on 2ch bulletin boards with the rumor that an advertising agency which had a strong influence in the Japanese music industry was behind the series of "anti-Miku negative campaign" in an attempt to purge Miku and indie musicians from the music trend. Then numerous comments were posted which denied the rumor or "put off the fire" (消火する) followed by the phrases "飽きた、寝る。" (Got bored. Going to bed.) or "寝る、お前らも寝ろよ。" (Gonna go to bed; you should too.). Yet those comments drew nothing but negative responses from 2ch netizens. The contributors were branded as "puppets of the agency". The netizens joked about the "puppets" and made a spoof character for these posts as "Akita Neru".

Google and Yahoo! Japan announced that the search failure was a technical problem and had nothing to do with the advertising agency or the TV program. The Wikipedia page removal was the result of copyright violation, which also had no relation to the agency. Still the rumor about the "Miku-hating agency" persists within the Japanese fandom presently.

On April 1, 2008, Crypton adopted Neru as an official derivative character of Miku.

Concept

Smith Hioka, an illustrator, finalized the concept art of Neru and she came to represent the tsundere culture of VOCALOID.

Neru officially has no defined voice, however this has not prevented users from attempting to give her one. In some cases Neru has the voice of a boyish-sounding girl, while some people have assigned her to Miku's default voice, but in a higher octave. Although people use the higher pitched voices as a representation of Neru, her voice has been portrayed in -Project DIVA- 2nd as being a lowered version of Miku. Another suggestion also uses Rin. This was first used in Nanameue-P's HONEY PV, Neru has a singing voice that better matches her aesthetics.

Etymology

Her name is a play on words: Akita (亞北) is taken from "飽きた" or "get bored" while Neru (ネル) is from "寝る" or "go to bed".

She is regarded as a "BOUKALOID" (in Japanese, 防火ロイド or 防火LOID) - a play on words. It literally means Fireproof-loid and has the same pronunciation as VOCALOID in Japanese.