Hey! My name is Ubnubmaster, I make Vocaloid video essays.
Mostly focusing on the aspects that aren't talked about much, like the artists behind your favorite songs and their influence on Niconico and Japanese music as a whole.
If you have any suggestions for new videos feel free to contact me thanks!
What I'm listening to right now: Last.fm: www.last.fm/user/ubnubmaster Spotify: open.spotify.com/user/aftg31xr9je96h3na1c8gn3ry?si=XK4wixbgTEW6gzTvzyxRqw
As a pretty new vocal lid fan who got my start with Sekai. I absolutely love that game I love the gacha and additional groups and characters. But I also like the project diva series. I am awful at it but it is still fun to play. I bought x on my ps4 a while back and absolutely loved unlocking new modules. And I just bought mega mix finally like a week ago when everything was 50% off and I have been playing it and wondering when the next project diva game was coming out since the fitness boxing game just came out a few days ago. And everything I see keeps saying the series might be dead and even as a very new fan I am so sad to hear that.
Very beautiful analysis for a very beautiful song. As someone from a conservative household who's in love with someone whose family is of different cultures, this song's lyrics resounded to me very strongly. "Evil", in its true meaning, is sacrificing others for your own gain. I think that's related to my personal interpretation of this song; a love song about a pair who had some form of 'forbidden love' that they'd hang on the thread of their little happiness while claiming what they did is 'evil'. It's beautiful.
amazing video! admittedly i'm relatively new myself, i got into vocaloid around 2022 i believe, but still seeing a nashimoto mention made me go YOOOO since he's probably my favorite producer. he's interesting in regards to this topic too because from my experience he's kind of in this gray area in regards to popularity. it's a shame too because there's not really any active artists who do it quite like him. also, something i like to do sometimes is listen to more "obscure" (usually i tend to set the marker as under 10,000 views) songs, and man there's a LOT of hidden gems. one of my favorites is lost world by an artist simply called P (@p_inspi8257). there's also raika (@Raika_music.), who has much more of a raw sound (which is exactly the sort of thing i like to see). i think simply finding these lesser known songs and digging from there is a pretty good way to find new stuff, and i do hope more get the chance to blow up. sickness in the name of pessimism is an example of this, with its view count being notably higher than anything else on the channel, though this does also show the downsides (namely the risk of only one song getting that sort of attention). for the record, i recommend dokuro, though it is one of the artist's older songs. circling back to nashimoto, it's like... it would be sad to see him retire, but the saddest part would be losing that one-of-a-kind sound. i've noticed a lot of more electronic songs, and i get the vibe this might be more of a recent trend, though that might also simply be the algorithm at work + my newness to vocaloid. i guess what i'm getting at is that with more experimental artists like sasuke haraguchi, i hope we can see that sort of thing on the more hard rock end of the spectrum, for lack of a better term.
i dont think any producer should ever feel pressured to retire. but they should also feel drive. if youre not hungry to innovate, experiment of collaborate then you are doomed to stagnate as a creative.
Btw if anyone is interested to know how he comes up with these dark topics, it may be from his mild depression (yes he does have mild depression I searched it up :/)
I discovered Vocaloid & became a fan in 2016! I think you perfectly put into words what made that year so special. Of course, it was already special to me as my first year being a Vocaloid fan, but there was so much more that made it special. Old producers released big new hits & new producers were springing up left and right. That was what attracted me to Vocaloid: the exciting feeling of exploring the Vocaloid landscape & discovering gems everywhere I looked. I listened obsessively to DECO*27, n-buna, Orangestar, Kemu, Kairiki Bear, Circus-P, Powapowa-P, Nayutalien, Pinocchio-P, Police Piccadilly, Hachi, Harufuri, Neru, Balloon, Kurage-P, EZFG, Nekobolo, Giga-P, Niki, Pedestrian, MARETU, Mikito-P, Misumi, Yunosuke, *Luna, and of course, Wowaka and Shizen no Teki-P. When I look back on these memories with these producers, I remember having so, so much fun. That was what made 2016 special to me: even though it was a miserable period of my life & I used Vocaloid to cope, I had so much fun exploring it. It felt like home when nothing else did.
Great commentary, especially around the challenges new artists have in being discovered and the point about genres. I haven't been keeping up on new releases for a few years now, but it feels to me like the Vocaloid community ended up in kind of a weird place. It's almost like the ratio of producers to audience members is out of whack. On one hand, there's a lot of positives to having a very low barrier of entry for musicians, but overall Vocaloid is still relatively niche, so it's tough for newcomers to find an audience. Yet the community is large enough that the old hands easily dominate the centralized platforms. I never played around with Kiite much, and I haven't been back to Piapro since before their redesign, but I wonder if people have found those to be helpful. As with any type of content creation these days I think the key point is having the capacity to just keep putting out quality songs on a regular basis until, like you said, the producer is in the right place at the right time, or they end up building their own audience organically. But it takes a lot of perseverance and motivation to do that.
Really reminds me of what happened to Doriko somewhat recently. One of the old legends, got to the Hall of Myths with Romeo and Cinderella. After 2016 he REALLY slowed down, though he partnered with Hanatan, who used to make covers for his songs (they are really great honestly). Nowadays he releases maybe one song per year if we're lucky, but some of those (Raine Chan '89) are absolutely amazing. The part about music becoming predictable and boring really hit home with "Promise" for Proseca. Also, is it just me or the MV for Cat Food in Project Diva is one of the best in the series? It's an absolute shame that song got forgotten.
The best way to find new producer for me is actually to follow cover artist no matter if vocal, piano or guitar, so when I hear a song I like from a cover artist I can just go to the description and go to the original channel and listen to the producer other songs
I love these videos. Makes me remember that I’m kinda removed from the scene, wish I could be deeper in it. Also wasn’t expecting this to be the video that tells me that project diva is just full dead at this point. I’m now incredibly sad
In the past I only knew like 2 or 3 songs by maretu and didn’t pay attention for the translation or meaning (only knew tge meaning of magical doctor). A few months ago my mental state and emotions were getting really complex due to personal issues and reopened wounds from childhood, I became a vocaloid fan as a coping mechanism and became more interested in maretu in the process. After maretu helped me with some awful feelings at the end of june my love for him started to grow without realizing. Weirdly enough this video got recommended and it’s what made my love for maretu grow stronger (I thought this video is recent why is it from 2020😭😭). I came back to this video today just to write this comment and show that maretu means the world to me now, I’m trying to be as brief as possible but trust me no matter how much I express how he made me feel it’s never really enough… Growing up we all were brainwashed by the idea that life is beautiful and precious no matter what, and any form of suffering is just our own….creation? Choice? (Idk how to say that) due to being sensitive I’d feel emotions more intensely than others, but unfortunately I was raised to suck them up, I succumbed to the social ideals, I gaslighted myself into thinking any awful feeling I have is only my fault..I’m the one who’s stupid and sensitive and should shut up and move one…even when I forced myself to be grateful and happy this hatered I had towards this unfair world never disappeared, in fact it kept growing inside me but I kept these feelings unheard. No one was better than Maretu at helping me realize that this hatered, this hurt, this heartbreak…it all makes sense (I’m about to tear up writing this 🥹🥹)…song after song…translation after translation….it made me slowly get OBSESSED❤❤❤❤ That was really long but I’m not done sorry😭😭😭I’ll talk about some “comfort songs” that impacted me: I knew siu in the past but reading the translation for the first time hit me, this song literally wants to give all trauma victims (including me) a hug o yisigsiydugdiyd😭😭😭💜💜💖💜💖 My top favorite comfort song is white happy….man this song….it’s what really helped me understand myself….it took all these messy feelings I have towards society and the world and put them into words for the first time, I think it’s the only maretu song that makes me tear up (a bit). I could write THE LONGEST ESSAY IN THE WORLD about it but no need to (♡μ_μ) While listening to a playlist hearing the intro of rebirth hit me and made me want to go check it, I loved how the song is about the cycle of birth I love these topics, and as someone who had brutal flashbacks and resurfaced repressed memories this year there’s a line that hit me at the end “I couldn’t laugh anymore, since when was that? All these memories that keep pilling up are making me dizzy” Wow…..I remember how sometime I felt Maretu is too loud or edgy for me (as someone who likes cute things I used to prefer kikou (♡μ_μ) ) but now I feel like I’m a huge fan because I finally accepted the heartbroken part of me💘💘🥹🥹🥹 (this emoji 💘 reminds me of white happy now lol). Thank you for cleaning the mess in my heart maretu…and thank you, the creature of this video (didn’t pay attention to the ch name sorry😔) for making me realize is Maretu just isn’t some edgy emo, but someone who refuses to sugarcoat reality (like me) he wants to show us the dark truth, he doesn’t want the victims to cry alone in the corner, he wants to make them feel seen
Yeah, it would be worse for beginner artists to just get a boost of popularity at a infinitesimal period of time then to drop out the public eye than to not prematurely aquire such a status in the first place.
im a pretty new vocaloid fan so i dont know if this counts but i found a youtube channel called LocalVoid and they seem like exactly what you are looking for i think
I feel NND's "rank" is more fair than RU-vid's because RU-vid users get spoon fed trends more than they search. My answer to the question the video asks is "right away, of course" because even when you're buying CDs and merchandise, the overhead to create that stuff is so big that this really doesn't make money. Vocaloid producers have other income sources, by necessity, even the famous ones. Nobody should do this thinking you can quit a day job. There is a line in My Master Has No Tail - "Nobody in their right mind goes into performing." It's a little bit like that.
