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Megurine Luka (Vocaloid)

Mégurine Luka is the product and character name of the desktop text-to-speech and music (DTM) software released by Crypton Future Media on January 30.
The third installment in the Character Vocal series (CV series), many works using Megurine Luka have been published on video download sites like YouTube and Nico Nico Douga , sold as music CDs and even in book publications.
Luka was the first bilingual female Vocaloid, the first to have an English voicebank provided by a Japanese company, and the first Vocaloid2 from Crypton Future Media to be upgraded to the Vocaloid4 engine.

Character presentation

Age: 20 years old
Height: 162cm
Weight: 45 kg

Tako Luka

Tako Luka is the name given to a deformed version of Megurine Luka, in which her head is placed on octopus tentacles. It was designed by the illustrator "March 8th" as an illustration that was published on Piapro and pixiv. Since Tako Luka's popularity, she has appeared in the form of figurines and plush dolls.

Software

The "VOCALOID2" voice synthesis engine is software developed by Yamaha. Using a personal computer, by inputting the range and lyrics, vocals and choruses can be synthesized from the provided vocal library. When Megurine Luka was first released, she was the first VOCALOID to have libraries for both Japanese and English, allowing her to have a more global reach. Since the software included the English vocal bank, the total database reached over 3 GB of data, which is the largest among VOCALOID products released to date.
Luka was not aimed at a global audience and focused primarily on the Japanese market.
Despite the amount of work that went into creating and releasing Luka, the retail price was still the same as the other members of the CV series, at 15,750 yen. Luka's sampled voice was provided by actor Yuu Asakawa and was recorded based on the concept of a "moody and raspy" female voice. Due to her fluency in both English and Japanese, Crypton had been considering hiring Ms. Asakawa to provide the voice for one of their products since early 2007, even before Hatsune Miku was released as the first CV series. Due to scheduling conflicts and the nature of the product supporting both Japanese and English, Luka was released after Hatsune Miku and Kagamine Rin/Len None.
On March 19, 2015, "Megurine Luka V4X," which uses Yamaha's VOCALOID4 engine, was released.

Using the character

Crypton has established the "Piapro Character License (PCL)" and the "Character Usage Guidelines" based on it to allow creators to use Luka's image in animations and illustrations. In accordance with the content of the license, the use of the characters is permitted for non-profit purposes. The official character illustrations are also licensed under the Creative Commons CC BY-NC 3.0 (Display, Non-Profit 3.0). In the case where a song does not use character names or images, use is unlimited, whether commercial or non-commercial, although there are exceptions, for example, if the lyrics contain content contrary to public order and morality.