Our fandom journey this season takes us all the way to Japan to talk about fans of the world's most famous _virtual_ pop idol: Hatsune Miku! How did such a relatively niche thing become a global phenomenon? And who is pulling the strings??
Next week, we're off to Mexico to talk about fans of that exciting sport: Lucha Libre!
## Episode outline
### Fandom Facts
**Origins:**
Hatsune Miku is a VOCALOID. What is a VOCALOID? A VOCALOID is a singing synthesizer application developed by YAMAHA. It was an international effort to create a synthesizer to act as a replacement singer. The original VOCALOID engine was release in 2004. Hatsune Miku was the second VOCALOID released as part of the VOCALOID2 engine and the first member of the Character Vocal Series created by Crypton Future Media Inc. Her name literally means "the first sound from the future."
She is also a humanoid persona: a 16-year-old girl with long turquoise twintails and her voice is modelled after Saki Fujita. In September of 2007, Amazon.co.jp reported over 57 million yen (Over a half-million USD) in sales for the Hatsune Miku software, and she has recorded over 100 000 songs. She has since been portrayed in many different media, and is also a Japanese pop idol, among other things.
[// A SPREAD IN JAPANESE PLAYBOY??? ]: #
**Size of Fandom:**
The vocaloid subreddit has over 15000 subscribers, and the Hatsune Miku subreddit has over 2600. The actual number of fans is probably somewhere in the low hundreds of thousands though:
> She’s beautiful, she’s talented, she’s immensely popular…and she’s not real. Hatsune Miku the virtual popstar creation of Crypton Future Media in Japan, has sold out another concert. Her much anticipated second annual March 9th (39) performance was seen live by over 2000 attendees, watched by thousands more in theaters screening the concert around the country, and streamed in real time to over 160,000 fans via Nico Nico Douga. That is a level of attendance reserved for world class entertainment, and Hatsune Miku didn’t fail to deliver. Her nearly three hour show featured multiple encores, special guest appearances, and was met by fervent enthusiasm by her fans attending live in Tokyo.
>
> — [SingularityHub - 160,000+ Watch Virtual Popstar Hatsune Miku Return to the Stage (video)](https://singularityhub.com/2011/04/12/160000-watch-virtual-popstar-hatsune-miku-return-to-the-stage-video-2/)
**Changes in Fandom:**
Interest in Hatsune Miku has been steady, with a slight decline in the last few years (according to [Google Trends data](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0cp0qm1,%2Fm%2F05p812,vocaloid)). There was a huge spike in interest around the time of her release (Oct 2007), and interest in her (and other VOCALOIDs) has been pretty stable ever since.
**Around the world:**
While Hatsune Miku enjoy fans from around the world, the most interest in her stems from Japan, and, to a lesser degree, from countries such as Taiwan, Vietnam, Chile, Hong Kong, and South Korea.
### [Last Episode's](http://fanthropological.com/e/44-starcraft-fans/) Famous Last Words
**Z**
Hatsune Miku is popular in part due to dating sims.
**G**
A portion of her fanbase does not know that she is not a real person
**T**
Are there male counterparts? Is Hatsune Miku peak moe?
[// Definitely not peak moe. I think that there's only going to be more and more moe as time goes on, and as men continue to isolate themselves more (and as society continues the way that it does]: #
[// That being said... I literally searched for Hatsune Miku peak moe, nothing. ]: #
[// As for male vocaloids... I did find some: Yuezheng Longya, Arsloid, and Yohioloid. ]: #
[// In terms of classification, it is generally considered that "VOCALOIDs" earn their classification when: They have a VOCALOID™-powered vocal released. This includes characters from games with vocals powered by the VOCALOID™ software, as well as privately obtained licensed voca...
