It’s about time!
Back on October 1st, Nicovideo announced that they would be updating the site to support English visitors. This change comes at the same time as Nicovideo’s full transition to their new “Niconico Zero” interface.
Go ahead and check it out for yourself. This will certainly make site usage and navigation much easier for Vocaloid fans.
EDIT: Please make sure that you are registered on either niconico.com or nicovideo.jp. Then change the language setting at the bottom of the page.
It is now October 17th Japan time, which means today marks the 5th year anniversary of Hatsune Miku’s “disappearance” from the internet.
On October 17th 2007, less than 2 months after her software release, Miku’s online popularity had begun to explode on an extremely large scale. The large number of people searching “Hatsune Miku” or “初音ミク” caused Google and Yahoo’s servers to automatically block her name due to suspected spam or search abuse. Even a popular wiki page about her suddenly vanished due to suspected copyright violation. Without anyone able to search her name online, things suddenly went very dark and quiet…
The fans, being outraged, slammed the two major search companies for suspicion of trying to wipe out Miku from existence. Google and Yahoo conducted an investigation of the incident on October 18th, and they soon discovered what had happened and removed the block from their engines. Even the wiki page was restored.
The event lead to the creation of one of the most popular Hatsune Miku derivatives, Akita Neru. After it was confirmed that Hatsune Miku was alright, several posts on 2Channel contained the phrase “akita neru (飽きた、寝る。)” to show they were bored that nothing exciting was happening anymore. This phrase lead to the creation of Neru’s character. Thanks to MikuStar for the tip.
This was the first, but certainly not the last time that the Vocaloid community had banded together to stand up for our Virtual Diva. Needless to say, Miku will not be going anywhere anytime soon. On a semi-related note, here’s the official video for “The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku”.
The official “Disappearance of Hatsune Miku” PV.