Megurine Luka

Character Overview

Megurine Luka, different from it's previous Vocaloids, is designed to be a 3GB vocal database with a "Japanese/English bilingual" feature. Her name is chosen to express it's hope that she will transcend borders and cultural barriers. She was designed by the illustrator, KEI - who also designed Hatsune Miku,Kagamine Lin and Kagamine Ren. However, unlike the previous designs, Megurine Luka is not designed with a costume based on school uniform.

Megurine Luka's "Signature Item" Arguements (Item War)

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Before TakoLuka came to creation

On January 8 2009, weeks before her debut, there was a big debate going on about what signature item should Megurine Luka hold, which became a heat topic on Japanese VOCALOID threads, NicoNicoDouga, Piapro, and even pixiv itself. Eventually, one of pixiv's artist Sanpachi, as well as a user member at Piapro, proposed that "if she has multiple arms, she will be able to hold on anything you ask for!" and submitted a TakoLuka, a derivated character of Luka. Since then the arguement stopped indefinitely.

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Thus TakoLuka was born

Impact on pixiv

As of May 2011, There are about 28000 illustrations of Megurine Luka available on search in pixiv. She is depicted to have a sexier approach than the previous Vocaloids, as her age is older and has the body of an adult. Because of that, she is very well recieved amongst the Japanese art community.

Many illustrations that have been posted in pixiv are sold in self-published doujins in Comiket. Similarly with Hatsune Miku and Kagamine Rin/Len, pixiv also sold their own published VOCALOID illustration books under the name "Time Go Round, pixiv Megurine Luka Illustrations".

Cultural Impact

As soon as she made her debut, many songs were produced using Luka's voicebank. On the 70th Weekly Vocaloid Ranking (which is published on February 2, 2009), many of Luka's songs appeared in the Top 30 list, knocking the very popular "Miku Miku ni Shite Ageru" and songs produced by ryo (with the exception of "Melt") right out of the list. "RIP=RELEASE" had taken the #1 spot, and had earned a total of 843,233 points, making it the song with the highest one-week score.

In the Western fandom, her popularity is arguably the most popular amongst western vocaloid fans, beating possibly even Hatsune Miku. Since she is Japanese/English billigual, although her English voicebank is flawed to a certain degree many found her to be easy to work with, and until today she is still considered to be better than most of the English based Vocaloids released before; although in the end it depends on how the program itself is used.

US Debut

She has been set alongside Miku to be debuted in the successful Los Angeles concert,"MIKUNOPOLIS". Although it is still unknown whether she will recieve the same treatment as Hatsune Miku in the English software release. However it is possible to fully use her English voicebank in the Japanese release itself.