Akita Neru (亞北ネル) is the first Boukaloid Character created by Smith Hioka. She is often confused and related directly as a Vocaloid despite lacking a proper Voice Bank. 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.
Neru's design is similar to that of Hatsune Miku. She has yellow hair consisting of an odd length of short and long, the long hair is styled into a left side-ponytail held by a blue futuristic ribbon. This does not need to physically touch Neru's hair to keep it in place. She has a stray hair at the top of her head and nose length bangs, her eyebrows are thick and her eyes are tsurime (upward-pointing) eyelids/eyelashes. Confirmed by it's author, Neru despite "hating" Miku, she actually attempts to cosplay her and secretly admires her, however due to her low salary and lack of money she could only afford one ponytail instead of the intended two, hence the reason her design is very similar, this intentionally. On her left upper arm is the red mark "DEN2", its significance is currently unexplained and said to stand for the "anti-Miku advertising agency", rumored to be a supposedly-powerful entity in the music industry of Japan. Due to this, details were intentionally withheld for the safety of Neru's creator.
Akita Neru (Akita Neru 亞北 ネル)
Character Overview
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.[1] 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.
Impact on pixiv
As of February 01, 2023, there are about 6,200 Akita Neru-related illustrations.
Cultural Impact
As Neru's adoption by Crypton, she appeared in some different media:
- As an extra character, on the Project Diva series of games.
- Doing some cameo appearances inside "Chibi Miku-san", a very popular 4-koma manga that can be found in pixiv as well as his own webpage.
Aside from her appearances in the form of Manga and Games, she also had some concert appearances. All of them are inside some of the "Nico Nico Cho Party" events every now and then, the most notorious ones are the 2013 and 2016 editions.
Other information
Age : 17
Height : 150CM
Weight : 38KG
Illustrator : Smith Hioka
These information below was information given by Akita Neru designer and creator.
Birthday : November 1st, 2007 (The release of Akita Neru, released before a lot of more popular VoiceBanks and characters, including the Kagamine Twins)
"Neru's Day": September 3rd (Day where a lot of fans create special illustrations based on Neru herself)
Notable PVs and Videos of Akita Neru and her appearances
Triple Baka
Stop Naggin' Me!
Heart of the Night
Laughing Counterattack
Kemono no Uta
Related illustrations
Related tags
Variations of Neru
See also: Neru Akita
Songs related to Akita Neru
Groups/artists that are highly connected to Hatsune Miku
Pairings related to Hatsune Miku
