On the other hand, it's both scary and kind of cool that the real world is getting that close to the Parodyverse. Naturally, it's Japan that's rushing there headlong.

I'm sure those on the board who are more familiar with Japanese culture are farther ahead of the curve than me on this, as this is apparently nothing new. It seems that the artificial nature of our Western pop stars with their inability to play instruments, compose music or do anything other than dance and sing in auto-tuned voices was a laughable half-measure to the Land of the Rising Sun. Why settle for some kind of cyborg puppet teenager when you can go full on synthetic?

Enter Vocaloids... Synthetic singing voices. Apparently, it's like advanced text-to-speech software that replicates a singing voice. You put the music in, type the words you want said on each note, play with the inflection a bit and you have yourself a singer for your song. I suppose it's really no different than using a synthesizer for keyboards or orchestrations... it's just treating the human voice as another instrument.

Only, of course, human voices tend to be distinctive from one another. So, too, are Vocaloids. Hence, they each have names. One of the most popular is Hatsune Miku. If you license her software, you can program her to sing your song. And she is something of a pop star herself, despite not existing. She has a 3-D modeled computer animated avatar that is readily recognizable. According to Wikipedia, she even has a height (5'2"), a weight (93lbs), an age (16), a birthday (August 31st...although how does that effect her age?). She has some serious licensing deals, has been plastered on race cars and even had engravings of her launched into space on real-life Japanese spacecrafts. Seriously. Engraved *pictures* of a synthetic singing voice have been launched into space, I assume in an effort to make a first strike against any aggressive aliens who happen upon them by making their brains explode while trying to decipher what the hell humans are up to this planet.

My favorite bit on her Wikipedia page:

When asked what the benefits would be of having a singer that is not real, 12-year-old Zak replied, "Maybe you can make money and not give any of the money to the fake singer."

Smart boy, that Zak. Plus, she probably won't ever have a coke-fueled public breakdown after shoplifting or anything like that, so there's another benefit.

Anyway, this whole observation was brought on by running across this video of a real crowd rocking out to a "live", vaguely-holographic concert by another synthetic performer, Megurine Luka, which instantly made me ask "Why the hell isn't this kind of thing featured in a Hallie story yet?"

If I can ever find the time, it will have to be.