Yowane Haku

About

Yowane Haku (Japanese: 弱音ハク)^[1] is a fan-made Vocaloid character which is officially recognized by Crypton Future Media. She was born as a gijinka character of a state of mind of the people who gave up composing Vocaloid songs, and has earned a unique position in the Vocaloid fandom.

Origin

The first appearance of the term “Yowane Haku” was November 14th, 2007, and it was a mere joke by an anonymous user in a thread for Hatsune Miku in /mascot/ board in the Japanese text board community 2channel.^[2] The word is a pun for “Hatsune Miku” and a Japanese “Yowane [Negative Words/Thoughts or Complaining] (wo) Haku [Utter/Say]”, literaly means “Show the White Feather”. It expresses a state of mind of the people who can’t make the full use of Hatsune Miku even after they bought the software inspired by well-made Vocaloid songs on the web.

Translation

Akita Neru is good, but something has to be done for Yowane Haku, a massive wave of people who can’t create decent songs by Hatsune Miku.

On November 21st, 2007, Yowane Haku was reborn as a character by a Japanese amatuer illustrator CAFFEIN. He posted illustrations to his web site^[3] and pixiv^[4]^[5], which were gijinka version of the term based on additional personalities coming from other anonymous user’s posts.

Translation

Yowane Haku
A general term for Otakus who weep to the fact they are lacking in creativity even after buying Hatsune Miku unthinkingly. Or people who give up creation on the ground of lacking in inborn talents.

Spread

By getting an incarnation, Yowane Haku began to be utilized as one of the Vocaloid characters in the fandom. In the early days, as indicated by her nickname “VOYAKILOID” (lit. “Grumble-loid”), she in a drunk by sake was posting the comment “boring” (ツマンネ, Tsumanne) to other’s videos out of jealousy (shown below, left).^[6] However, her personality has been gradually changed into passionate and aggressive one throughout the fan creations. Since amatuer creators gave her various kind of roles as a foil to Hatsune Miku and other official Vocaloid characters in parodies and fan creations, especially Miku Miku Dance (MMD) videos, she has grown up as an adult sexy lady good at playing many musical instruments, fighting and dancing. (shown below, right).^[7]

As of June 2013, more than a 4,800 videos involving Yowane Haku have been uploaded to NND.^[8] An additional 59,000 can be found on YouTube^[9], including reuploads from NND. Thousands of pieces of fan art of the character can be found on pixiv^[10], Piapro^[11], deviantART^[12] and Zerochan.^[13]

Official Recognition

On April 18th 2008, Haku’s creator CAFFEIN announced in his blog post that he struck a licensing deal with Crypton Future Media for the sake of producing official character goods, which defined Yowane Haku was a derivative of Hatsune Miku.^[14] That was the second conclusion of the character license for derivatives after Akita Neru.

Under this license, a figurine and a plushie for Yowane Haku has been released from Good Smile Company since 2009. She has appeared on light novels and Vocaloid spin-off manga series such as hachune MIKU no nichijo ROIPARA! by Ontama (おんたま) and CHIBI Miku-san by MINAMI (みなみ). Sega’s rhythm game Hatsune Miku – Project DIVA - series has included Haku’s costume since its first title.

Figurine, Plushie and Chibi Miku-san

Notable Examples

Illustrations

Videos

Niconico【弱音ハク】ただし性的な意味で【ごめんなさい】
Left: Original Song “However in a sexual meaning” | Right: Original Song “Daughter of White”^[15]

Left: MMD Kung-Fu Fighting^[16] | Right: MMD Lightsaver Fighting^[17]

Relationship with Akita Neru

Yowane Haku had often appeared with Akita Neru in the early days of fan works. In those creations, they sing satirically about the Vocaloid phenomena from a metafictional point of view. Besides, a MMD model of the fusion of Akita Neru and Yowane Haku called Akine Haru (秋音ハル) is even created.^[18] She also has 3 sisters called Natsu (秋音ナツ), Aki (秋音アキ) and Fuyu (秋音フユ).

Left: “Boring”^[19] | Right: “Turkish March Tsumanne”^[20]

Left: “Just Work NEET”^[21] | Right: “Could It Be You Guys Like These Kinds of Songs Anyhow?”^[22]