YMMV / Hatsune Miku

This page applies only for Hatsune Miku. For YMMV related to Crypton Future Media's other characters and Vocaloid as a whole, go here.

For YMMV related to Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA, go here.

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• Alternate Character Interpretation: Due to having no set personality, she runs on this even outside of songs. She's been portrayed as a Nice Girl, a Genki Girl, an Alpha Bitch, a Lazy Bum, a Tsundere, a Yandere, an Ice Queen, an Ophelia, a Stock Shoujo Heroine, you name it, there's probably a version of Miku that exists with that personality type. Heck, sometimes more than one of these tropes in a single song.
• Alternate Self Shipping: She's often shipped with other music video versions of herself, with a popular example being the two versions of her shown in Hachi's "Sand planet"/"Dune". She's also sometimes shipped with the unofficial genderbent version of herself, Hatsune Mikuo.
  • The various versions of her inspired by Pokémon types for the Project VOLTAGE collaboration were quickly paired together by the community.
• Broken Base:
  • Is Hatsune Miku's hair blue or green? This has been debated since Miku started to gain popularity, with different people and even producers always adding on with their own interpretation of it. It hasn't helped that Miku's hair color changes shades depending on who's drawing her. Word of God has seemingly addressed this years-long war via their game Project SEKAI by having resident Miku fan Ichika Hoshino clarify that Miku's hair color can be interpreted either way because that's what makes her Miku.
  • Since its initial release and subsequent updates, Miku NT has divided the fandom on its quality compared to Miku V4X. While some enjoy the sound of the software and understand Crypton's reasons for splitting from VOCALOID, others complain that the voicebanks prominent nasally tone is distracting and that she pales in comparison to previous releases, with some saying she sounds outright terrible compared to previous Miku releases and are disappointed that Miku won't be updated to VOCALOID 5 due to the split.
• Common Knowledge:
  • Miku is strongly associated with the date of March 9, due to the Goroawase Number 3-9 (mi-ku), with that date sometimes being considered "Miku Day" and special Miku-related events being held in celebration. However, it is not her birthday: a Vocaloid's birthday is the date when their voicebank was released, and in Miku's case that day falls on the 31st of August.
  • Despite the impression the "01" marking on her arm may give, Miku is not the first Vocaloid, nor was she the first Vocaloid released on the V2 VOCALOID engine. The title of the first Vocaloid goes to Lola and Leon, while the first Japanese Vocaloid was MEIKO. The first V2 Vocaloid was Sweet Ann. When KAITO is factored in and Lola and Leon are counted as separate, Miku is the third Japanese Vocaloid and the seventh Vocaloid ever released. The "01" marking is used to indicate her as being the first entry in Crypton's "Character Vocal" series.
• Crossover Ship:
  • An "official" one exists between Miku and Crunchyroll's mascot, Crunchyroll-hime, with several webcomics on Crunchyroll's Twitter depicting the two in a relationship.
  • Combined with Crack Pairing. In light of Miku's current partnership with Sega and a couple of cross promotional materials with Sonic the Hedgehog, Miku/Sonic has taken off in some circles.
  • In the Spanish-speaking community it has become quite popular to ship her with Don Ramon from El Chavo del ocho, usually in an ironic tone more than anything else.
• Die for Our Ship:
  • Due to her status as the most shipped Vocaloid, Miku gets a lot of hate from hardcore shippers of different pairings. When she is paired with Len, Rin/Len shippers perceive her as a Clingy Jealous Girl. On YouTube, she is often bashed by Meiko/Kaito and Luka/Gakupo fans who dislike the Miku/Kaito, Miku/Luka or Miku/Gakupo pairings.
  • Fans of her ships tend to get in on this as well, as fans of Miku/Luka or Miku/Rin tend to attack alternate pairings such as Miku/KAITO or Miku/Len. There's also some heat that comes from the Miku/KAITO shippers to those that ship Miku/Luka.
• Discredited Meme: The "Hatsune Miku created X" meme, used in relation to unpersoning problematic creators of popular media, eventually became the subject of backlash among the VOCALOID community, the creator of the meme (as seen here), and much of the broader internet as a result of its overuse, leading many to accuse it of discouraging people from viewing works through a more critical lens in regards to authorial intent and influence.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Miku herself is one, as she unexpectedly exploded in popularity following the mild success of the Vocaloid voice banks that were released before her. It was because of her success that Vocaloid would become as well known as it is today.
  • Outside of Miku herself being one, several alternate versions of her are popular in their own right, such as the cool Miku shown in Hachi's "Sand Planet"/"Dune" and "Vampire Miku" from Deco*27's "The Vampire".
  • Even after complaints of it sounding "too different" from Miku's original voice (with this complaint carrying over to her other appends as well), Miku Dark Append went on to the most popular and most widely used of all of her append voicebanks.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception: Good luck by saying "That's not, Miku, that's (random name)!" or the fans will roar at you. This happened when DECO*27's Rabbit Hole got popular on TikTok.
• Fan Nickname: Miku's 10th-anniversary design (or the "Celebration" module as it's called in Project Diva) has been referred to as "Gay Miku" by some fans (particularly by the LGBT Fanbase), due to her outfit's rainbow appearance and rainbows traditionally acting as a symbol of LGBT pride.
• Fandom Rivalry: More like "Fandom-infighting" since it's all Vocaloid in the end, but fans of lesser-known Vocaloids tend to take the biggest issue with Miku due to viewing her as "overhyped".
• Friendly Fandoms: With the My Life as a Teenage Robot fandom of all things, thanks to an official collaboration with Nickelodeon and Youtooz consisting of a figurine of Jenny Wakeman cosplaying as Miku.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: While Vocaloid itself remains niche outside of Japan, Hatsune Miku has managed to become very popular in the West, so much so that she would star in American ads for Toyota, appear on The Late Show with David Letterman in 2014, have her games get localized in English, and for the West to receive special merchandise that not even Japan has. Miku also does concert tours in North America and Europe as well, which often sell out quickly. Miku would even get an English version specifically aimed at English-speaking audiences thanks to her popularity (including a Hotter and Sexier redesign).
• Hype Backlash: Fans of non-Miku Vocaloids tend to be a bit leery of Miku for being the face of the Vocaloid brand and being promoted to hell and back at the expense of attention towards other Vocaloids, especially ones not by Crypton. The fact that a good chunk of Vocaloid contests and events partner mainly with Piapro (which, incidentally, uses the Cryptons) doesn't help.
• It's Popular, So It Sucks!: In the olden days of VOCALOID, Miku had a bit of a hatedom solely because she was popular and widely used by producers. This mindset persists in some parts of the VOCALOID community even to this day.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: She's been shipped with every Crypton (but especially Rin, Luka, and KAITO), and even some of the more well-known non-Cryptons like Gumi, Gakupo, and more recently flower.
• Les Yay:
  • Miku gets this with Rin, officially and unofficially. Due to the popularity of the ship, quite a few shippy hits featuring the two have been spawned such as "Summer Idols" and "Gimme x Gimme". There's also her interactions with Rin in the Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA series in which the pair have a Pseudo-Romantic Friendship in several of the game opening scenes and secret movies. They even almost kiss in one of them before they're interrupted by Luka, complete with shoujo bubbles and blushing.
  • Miku tends to have a ton of this with Luka whenever the two are paired together, with several duets between them often featuring a great deal of moments that can be interpreted as romantic subtext, such as "World's End Dancehall" and "Akatsuki Arrival", if they're not straight up love songs like "Magnet" or "Ladies First". Even official material has gotten in on the yay between them, such as this official art from KAI of them interlocking fingers◊.
• LGBT Fanbase: In the Western community, Miku is very popular among trans people, lesbians, and trans lesbians.
• Memetic Mutation: Miku has spawned so many memes that she has her own section on the Vocaloid memes page here.
• Older Than They Think: Not many Miku fans are aware that her Breakthrough Hit, "Ievan Polka", is just one of many covers of a traditional Finnish folk song that has existed since 1928, with its melody possibly going back to the late 19th century. As a result, Miku's cover of the song is subjected to Adaptation Displacement.
• Pop Culture Holiday: Miku Day, a day celebrating Miku and her music, falls on March 9th due to 39 being her associated number. Fans also observe her birthday on August 31st, the anniversary of her original Vocaloid release.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Previews of NT from both video demos and Project SEKAI got quite a bit of flak from longtime Vocaloid fans for being of subpar quality compared to V4X, citing changes like the presence of "engine noise" where the Vocaloid software had mostly gotten rid of it and alternate singing modes like "sweet" and "dark" having relatively marginal difference from the base voice. It is still possible to create a high-quality and realistic synthesis in NT, but like previous software, this requires a lot of work and has a high barrier of entry for less-experienced users. For what it's worth, fans generally ascribe these problems to NT being an active-development product that (unlike Vocaloid) is meant to receive constant updates over time, so they are still holding out hope that Crypton will improve NT in the long run. While not the same for those who observe the software itself as it develops, Miku NT did see better reception upon her usage in the aforementioned Project SEKAI due to the evident improvements in her sound as more cover songs were released.
  • A lot of Miku fans dislike her NT design's Girliness Upgrade, specifically that it trades her iconic tie for a ribbon.
• Unexpected Character: Expect VOCALOID fans to have this reaction whenever she randomly makes an appearance in an unlikely franchise, especially past 2019 when Miku's collaborative appearances across media became more prominent. Some notable examples come from 2022 when Miku appeared as a character in both Love Live! and Ensemble Stars!, of all games.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley:
  • "Mikudayo", a mascot costume based off of Miku's chibi Nendoroid design is meant to be cute, however, whether it's due to her chibi proportions not translating all that well to a real world costume, her overly giant head in contrast to the rest of the costume, her floppy arms, her stuck happy expression, or her giant eyes, seemingly staring at your soul, it's difficult to not feel at least a little bit unnerved by her. Unsurprisingly, Mikudayo would go on to become a meme amongst the fandom because of her creepiness, often making her into a Memetic Psychopath.
  • There's the lesser known, but equally unintentionally uncanny "Mikunano". A separate mascot Animegao Kigurumi costume used by Sega to promote Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA. While not quite as unintentionally creepy as Mikudayo, the costume still looks very off-putting◊, since it attempts to replicate Miku's stylized anime features onto a real world costume worn by a real person. The unintentionally dead looking expression on her face doesn't help matters either. Like the aforementioned Mikudayo, fans would go on to make her into a meme and for similar reasons.
• Unnecessary Makeover: While Miku's redesigns in later versions of her software are by no means hated, most fans tend to largely prefer her original V1/V2 design, with a number of fans disliking the numerous changes Crypton has made to her design over the years, finding her original design to be good as is. The fact that it’s the most well known version of Miku in the mainstream consensus and is the one that is seen the most in marketing has only helped enforce this mentality.