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Friday, February 22, 2013

Site question: What should we do with the Miku series?


Yeah, that song series we dedicated to Hatsune Miku? It's about to get way too huge for its own good if we don't do something; this is attributed to Namco allocating an entire genre for Vocaloid, allowing for a lot of room for the Miku song library in Taiko to grow larger.

The question now is: what should we do with it? I've been thinking about this since Sorairo was announced, and decided to open the issue for everyone to think about.

Song series were created because of specific sets of songs that have something in common with one another, like most of the Namco Originals (2000 songs etc.). The original reason why we created a Hatsune Miku series was because at the time of the founding of the site, it was a relatively small corner in Taiko consisting of only three songs (Melt, World is Mine, Black Rock Shooter). The three songs had one thing in common; they were all sung by Hatsune Miku, and at the time seemed to be occupying only a small niche of Taiko no Tatsujin, which is why they were grouped together.

As you can probably see, the amount of Vocaloid content has grown exponentially since the release of the HD Taiko no Tatsujin arcade, including other cyber idols like Megpoid GUMI, Kagamine Rin/Len and IA. Hatsune Miku herself already has 7 songs in Taiko, and they just keep on coming; not at the rate of one song a generation like most song series, but two or three at a time, and with the creation of the Vocaloid genre, maybe even more.

I remember getting requests that the trio of GUMI songs on Taiko 0.5 (Matryoshka, Juumensou, Mosaic Roll) be made into a series like Hatsune Miku, but we didn't do it because it would create an even more confusing classification; Matryoshka is sung by both Miku and Gumi, and I can guarantee that will not be the last group Vocaloid song in Taiko.

At this point, there are a few options to consider:

1. Dismantle the Hatsune Miku series and have its contents be turned into Songs of the Week
2. Keep the Hatsune Miku series and let other Vocaloids be featured in Song of the Week
3. Take the series out of Variety, place it in a new Vocaloid category, and place all other Vocaloids as their respective song series in this category, meaning Vocaloid songs would no longer have any place in Song of the Week

That's what I can think of at the moment. I've been weighing the pros and cons of each, but do any of you guys have a better idea of how we should handle the potential influx of Vocaloid content? What do you think?