PRIMER: The Collected Cast
As you might imagine, we take induction into this fandom very seriously here at Singing Robots Enterprises. It isn't an uncommon sight to see someone new dragged by their hair into the chat channel, squirming and kicking and held down while linked alternately to Imitation Black and Toeto until their heads explode, whereupon they become a drooling malfeasant. In their newfound zombie moeblob-adoring state we can send them out for more minions, spreading fear and terror by linking unsuspecting passers-by to Cinnamon Roll and Love Ward, those two videos combined being the closest Vocaloid can get to a breach of the Geneva Convention.
More than a few times we've stumbled across the fact that some of you are still trying to figure out who's who in the robot world, and have wished there's a quick guide out there. So, here you go. We'll touch briefly on each robot, going into their common genres and characterisations and what we consider to be their signature songs. We'll also try to hit up UTAU and the Engloids as bonus general categories and touch extremely briefly on the more common vocaloid-related Nicovideo memes and characters who we're liable to reference in the future.
As with the other primer posts we strongly encourage users to chime in (especially so, in this post's case!) with their own favorite songs or characterisation considerations so that we can add them to the pot and build up a great big gestalt picture of the fandom. There's a series of threads for each robot; use these to link videos, rant about characters, or discuss and every so often we'll go through and add them to the main post. Please remember to keep it civil, as unlike the other posts this post is not and cannot be objective; banter and lively debate is a++ fine, telling people their preferred characterisation or favorite song is 'wrong lol' is not. The characterisations written below are drawn from a number of sources; music videos, together with the more influential comics and MMD productions. This is not in any way a complete list, just the more common characters; the fandom's simply too big to try to make the list complete. If there's something you want added, just write it up and we'll slip it on in there.
holy god this was a lot of work
SONGS last updated: September 2010
TEXT last updated: February 2010
Vocaloids
Hatsune Miku
Character Item: Leeks
More popular than the others by a factor of about seven billion, it's fair to say Miku is the most iconic of the lot after having starred in her own video game, her own TV spots and her own live performance using holographic technology; the number of music videos involving her typically outnumber the other robots each week by a factor of 3:1. As such, she's pretty much always considered the 'main character' of the troupe - in return, however, the sheer volume of different styles and takes on her makes it hard to pin down a common character or genre. While she's tuned for and intended for pop songs by default - indeed, a majority of her back catalogue is cheesy pop - she's been crowbarred into every genre under the sun, from soft ballads to acid-hardcore chanting.
This granularity extends to characterisation, and can often mean that anything goes. Nominally and most regularly, she's the baseline friendly cheery-girl main character who's able to do anything and handle the other robots with aplomb and who comes complete with side orders of happy derp, possessive tsundere, stab-happy yandere, badass action hero or anything else you could think of to taste... which can often include executing Len, helping Ronald McDonald bring about the apocalypse, casually beating Kaito up, being Sad In The Snow, or dissolving into uninstalled particles. She's a bit of a wild card.
Songs: Love is War, Melt, World is Mine, Light Song, Last Night Good Night, Miku Miku ni Shite Ageru, Hatsune Miku no Shoushitsu, Love Word, Strobo Nights, Ievan Polka, Hajimete No Oto, Uraomote Lovers, Hold, Release, Rakshaka and Corpse
Kagamine Rin/Len
Character Items: Oranges (Rin), Bananas (Len)
Depending on who you listen to - and more confusingly, when you listen to them, especially in Crypton's case - these two are either the same person mirrored in some freaky alternate universe way or else actual twins or else completely unrelated. Most people go for the twins thing because then it makes their head hurt less, unless the alternate universe thing would make for some good solid 'where is my twin' angst. And what a lot of it they get, too; a surprising amount of their songs divide neatly into either sad angsty music or else angry rock. Even when they aren't focusing on the negative, their tracks tend to be fast or powerful.
Rin is almost uniformly regarded as either straight-out-and-out crazy and psychotic, or kind of the loud brat of the Vocaloid family, or both. Her standard character loadout tends to include a large steamroller, the Roadroller - regularly used to cajole or punish either 'people who annoy her' or 'absolutely everyone' as required. If doing a fantasy video, is fond of being the member of royalty who sentences people to death or horrible pain, and so on. You get the idea. Hanging off her brother's arm in subtextual fashion - or lamenting his death - is optional, though common.
And look, I know we joke about it a lot and harp on it but seriously, Len dies a lot. Roadrollered, blown up, shot by Miku, already dead by the time the song starts, you name it, he's had it happen. Beyond being one of the most unfortunate Vocaloids around, Len tends to be your average young kid; switching variously between 'pleasant young man', 'awkward blusher' and 'kind of tsun' as required, he's a lot more normal and well-adjusted than most of them, it seems. The note about hanging off his sibling's arm still applies, but Len tends to be shown as less possessive and more open and with maybe just a little white knight syndrome.
Songs: Aku no Series (Daughter, Servant, Re_birthday, Regret Message, Shiro), Roshin Yuukai, Synchronicity Series (1, 2), SPICE!, Trick and Treat, Paradichlorobenzene, Juvenile, siGRe, Gemini, Revolution, It's My Roadroller!, Drive Me Flat, No Thank You, KOKORO, Meltdown, Hot Cocoa ~A Restless Night's Song~
Meiko / Kaito
Character Items: Sake (Meiko), Ice Cream (Kaito)
Hangers-on of an older generation of software, these two are often paired together and are typically seen as the 'veterans' of the vocaloid scene. Their rougher voices can be harder to work with and are less specifically tuned; the advantage here is that this means these two can run the gamut when it comes to target genres, hitting pretty much any tone or bpm you could wish for, with the obvious downside that it's entirely possible to make them sound like they're at the bottom of a well. While it's still filled with water. Nonetheless, take a look around and you'll find breathtaking examples of pitching and programming, so they're not out of the game yet.
Generally speaking, Meiko comes in two flavours; she's either the kind, caring and nice big sister or else she's the hellion super-friendly big sister who terrorizes everyone into behaving because otherwise she'll give them a hug hard enough to crush bone. Both types may or may not be pleasantly drunk thanks to her character item being sake; typically speaking people will pair her with Kaito over and above everyone else, either for the brunt of her affections or the brunt of her anger.
Kaito, meanwhile, tends to rapidly swing between extremes; overwhelmingly he's usually represented either as a clothes shedding pervert, a well-meaning and friendly complete moron and big brotherly sort, or a shadowy and manipulative bastard playing with people's hearts. (Corollary: see also Acute, where by taunting a yandere!Miku he clearly establishes himself as 'both'.) Usually the butt of abuse, whether deserved or not, he still tends to be the sort to pick himself up and keeps on trucking. Once in a blue moon, he may be spotted actually being kinda cool... but blink and you'll miss it.
Songs: ACUTE, Cantarella, Shineba Ii no ni, Akujiki Musume Conchita, Old Radio, Sennen no Dokusouka, Yomi Zakura, Tsugai Kogarashi, Flowers Falling in Ruins, Poem Weaved In Ruins, Various Feelings, Cowardly Squadron Urotandar, Chillyditty of February, Byakkoya no Musume
Megurine Luka
Character Item: Tuna
Luka's main claim to fame is being Crypton's first bilingual release; with a large voicebank intended to be able to pronounce both Japanese and Western sounds, and a character image intended to evoke the feeling of a mysterious stranger or foreigner, she was intended to span the airwaves and the continents and bring about glorious Vocaloid rule. She didn't come far off that goal, either; almost matching Miku in popularity, people have been producing songs for her almost right out of the gate and her appeal has remained high. A huskier sound range and a wider array of pronunciation means that Luka gets some extremely unusual songs; while she can handle just about anything she tends to get a lot of trance, club, and ambient music and has managed to sing in a number of European or completely made up languages.
Her characterisation outside of songs tends to roughly match the idea of her image; an aloof or at least quiet woman with an emphasis on elegance and the whole mysterious foreigner vibe. Commonly, this aloofness becomes the standard anime-quiet-girl shyness as a barrier to her being able to pat small adorable things on the head, which appear to be a major driving motive behind her actions and can cause much existential angst; alternatively, this will be turned totally around and she'll be portrayed as outright kidnapping them. Also regularly found doing sight gags involving Takoluka (see below).
Songs: Luka Luka Night Fever, Double Lariat, Toeto, RIP=RELEASE, Just Be Friends, Palette, Empty, No Logic, The Tailor Shop of Enbizaka, Love Disease, Dancer in the Dark
Kamui Gakupo
Character Item: Eggplants
Gakupo might just be the most illustrious robot of them all. Hailing from Internet Company rather than Crypton, his voice bank was recorded by and named by the famous and ~fabulous~ Japanese musician Gackt. As if that weren't enough, his design came fresh from the pen of Miura, artist of Berserk. ... and all of this is a shame because, as fabulous as he is, Gakupo doesn't really get a lot of pick up. He'll typically be found doing duets or backing work rather than solo songs; while his work in them is often exemplary, he's rarely seen in solo performances.
As you might expect from the design, he's usually portrayed as the stereotypical honor-driven samurai by most fans, but this is regularly ramped up to the point of extravagant parody; he's either a relentless but well-meaning taskmaster with a flair for extremely flamboyant actions and behaviour, white-knighting without fail, or else he's an overly-clingy lech and loveless loser who isn't destined to get anywhere at all. Both versions are regularly crammed into a fundoshi and not a lot else to help demonstrate the spirit of manly.
Songs: Dancing Samurai, Paranoid Doll, Imitation Black, Super Turkish March Owata, Breathe, ggrks, Butterfly, Nishiki No Mai
Important Note
From here on out, large-scale sources of characterisation die out simply because the robots in question haven't been around as long. From here until the end of the post, notes on the vocaloids should be taken with a little more pinch of salt even than usual as they are primarily our take on them.
Gumi
Character Item: Carrots
You might be forgiven for thinking you've seen Gumi, a.k.a Megpoid, before. Voiced by and probably named after Megumi Nakajima, Gumi's design is just a little bit similar to a certain Macross Frontier character. Not that the fandom minds, of course; instead it's used the opportunity to give her a carrot for a character item, an endless source of parody, and a default style. With a vocal range that's similar to Miku but just a little wider, early Gumi songs were typically very upbeat pop affairs, and it's only recently that she's been making a revival and branching out into a large variety of styles to suit her capabilities. In particular, producers seem to be very good at making her sing in English, regularly beating out Luka for clarity.
The second robot from Internet Company, Gumi is almost always linked to Gakupo in some manner, typically familial in nature. A lull in her popularity shortly after her release, combined with the highly energetic style of most of her music, gave rise to a take on her character that combined a burning spirit to reach the top with a certain amount of happy-go-lucky blinkeredness and a stubborn refusal to listen to, react at, or even believe in a sometimes bleak reality. This situation in turn has led to a number of characterisations where she can be just a little petty, mean or envious.
Songs: Megu Megu Fire Endless Night, Campanella, iDOLLA, Eraser, Bad Apple!!, Blue Bird, Bokura no 16-Bit Wars, Endless, Watashi no UMA-sama, Goodbye to Alice, Cowardly Montblanc, Mosaic Role
SF-A2 Miki
Character Item: Cherries
At the beginning of December, AH Software entered the Vocaloid market with a trio of new characters. Miki can be considered their spearhead, intended to evoke the pop idol image, her launch included her headlining on a Christmas 2009 album. Since then her popularity has remained steady, producing a string of solid songs that range primarily through pop, rock and dance with none of the early slow-down Gumi had.
Unique amongst Vocaloid characters, Miki's design includes her actually looking like a robot, with visible doll-like joints. Combined with her rather unusual design that features a whole ton of stars, and a large number of space-or-universe themed music, there's a growing feeling that she might be alien or from outer space. That said, there's just as vocal a movement suggesting that she's simply spacy - the Vocaloid version of an excitable, friendly - and kind of dumb, but happy with it - puppy.
Songs: Miki Miki Romantic Night, COSMIC LUCKY, wish, Ryuu Ten ni Noboru, Good Night, The Universe
Kaai Yuki / Hiyama Kiyoteru
Character Item: Apples (Yuki) / Chocolate Pocky (Kiyoteru)
The second of the AH Software group, Yuki is an attempt at producing a younger child's voice from scratch as opposed to producer attempts at a pitch-shifted Miku; voiced by a conglomeration of actual elementary school children, producers seem to have been having a tricky time getting to grips with her and it's only now that we're starting to see her get some decent songs in. Not having established a genre yet, she seems to be leaning towards fast dance-pop tracks.
She and sensei haven't exactly been fixed in terms of characterisation yet, but their effective combination as a pair has more than once evoked images of, well, a pairing, and a pairing in which the nice clean-cut teacher is bullied and manipulated by an adorable little kid with an evil streak. Alternatively, she's just a get-up-and-go schoolkid who just happens to be a singing robot.
Kiyoteru rounds off both the AH Software offerings and the current lineup of Vocaloids. Designed as a schoolteacher who sings in a rock band in his evenings (Ice Mountain Teru, ladies and gentlemen), he's intended to have a smooth treble voice but often comes off or is dismissed as sounding too much like KAITO. Given his character information, as you'd imagine, he tends to be used for rock tracks.
Of course, fans aren't going to let something like Ice Mountain Teru lie quietly. The idea of sensei going off at nights to illicitly sing has opened up a slew of not-so-pleasant interpretations, the most memorable of which is the idea he's a crossdressing lounge singer. At the more favorable end of the scale, being a rocker gives him an occasionally badass edge, when he's not being a far too polite and suffering teacher.
Songs: Shooting*Star, Scherzone, Disco Chocolateque, For My Beloved, When You Reach the Age of Eighteen, Jewelfish, True Education, Koi no Kayoubi
UTAU
Named after the synthesizer tool that gives rise to their voicebanks, UTAU can have any voice bank loaded in they damn well please, and have it automatically converted to a soundbank. Combine this with the best price in the world, and a rapidly improving software base, and you end up with an awful, awful lot of UTAUs to try to summarise in one post and the ability to sing any sort of genre you'd like. While they often do covers of better-known songs, they get plenty of original songs and there's a distinctly growing movement behind them and no genre they haven't hit. Their soundbanks in the past haven't always exactly matched up to Vocaloid soundbanks, and it's required a good producer to make them sound their best - recent updates to UTAU soundbanks, however, have been producing some seriously breathtaking tracks that easily rival Vocaloid2 software.
They're usually depicted as a rival faction to the Vocaloids, competing for audience and songs, often in a very antagonistic role. Led by Kasane Teto, a drill-haired tomboyish chimera who is typically given a World Is Mine-esque level of tsundere self-importance, and joint- or stealth-led by Defoko/Utane Uta, a quiet girl usually considered infinitely more capable. Other common characters include Momone Momo - maid, housekeeper and all-around generally abused and bullied poor girl - and recently thanks to a high-detail MMD model Namine Ritsu, crossdresser bully of the above. There are, however, literally dozens more - your best bet, rather than relying on our sketchy knowledge, is to toddle your way over to the UTAU wiki here.
Songs: Kasane Territory, Song of the Eared Robot, Tachimukae! Kimi wa Kakkoi!, Saikyou Tetto Teto Keikaku, Sekihi, Labyrinth (Cover), Eternal Force Blizzard
Engloids
Engish Vocaloids are exactly that - Yamaha software, tuned and provided with an English database by either Zero-G or PowerFX. Consisting variously of Leon, Lola, Miriam, Prima, Sonika, Tonio, Sweet Ann and Big Al, their sound quality tends to be a little weak thanks mostly to the problems inherent in correctly pronouncing the whole range of english sounds. They tend to be tuned for genres that the Japanese vocaloids aren't - Tonio and Prima are specifically designed for opera, for example, while Lola and Leon are geared towards soul. For a variety of reasons - not least a lack of character information - Japanese producers haven't really picked up on them and songs involving them tend to be rare on nicovideo. When they do appear they tend to be either in duets or ensemble pieces or else doing covers, though Big Al has been popping up with surprising frequency. Over on western shores they can sometimes be heard providing samples or backing for club and trance.
Three of them are notable: Sweet Ann and Big Al are based on Vocaloid2, making their quality rather better than the others, while Sonika remains the most well known with a twitter and several crossovers with Gumi under her belt. Her software is somewhat advanced in that she has a considerably larger vocal bank, allowing her to have a stab at many languages: in that respect she is the Engloid version of Luka, aimed for international purposes. These three are also the only ones to have a visual representation given to them by their respective companies, which are currently being revised via a series of contests.
Songs: 99 Red Balloons, Little Toy Robot, samsara, Green Green Midorimushi, Manly Fly Me To The Moon
Other
Yowane Haku - Officially recognized by Crypton and included in Project Diva, Haku is the embodiment of an alternate universe Miku that can do anything but sing, be happy, or succeed. Regularly portrayed as a bit of a drunken washout, the traditional catcall for her singing is 'tsumanne' ('boring'), though recent hits such as the Aku No series go a long way to reversing this. Oddly, she's usually portrayed as being unnaturally awesome at everything else, and often crops up in videos as an instrumentalist.
Akita Neru - The /b/troll of Vocaloid, Neru is another officially recognized version that symbolises producers too lazy to finish their work. Usually shown as tiny, angry, and trolling people via SMS, she acts as a straight man to the idiocy of the others and a disapproving voice to anyone who'll listen and anyone who won't. Very commonly hangs off and blushes at Len's every word, in an unrequited love only slightly less doomed than Hamlet.
Hachune Miku - The final officially recognized version of Miku and now ubiquitous enough to be the fandom mascot, Hachune is a round, plump, little-featured foot-high version of Miku. Looking and acting like a cartoon character, Hachune is roughly described as the personification of Miku's childishness. Usually seen waving around a leek at high speed, or sleeping standing up.
Chibi/Petite Miku - Younger versions of Miku (and, more increasingly, the other robots). Chibi Miku could roughly be considered the most successful of all the characters, with an extensive and extremely beloved comic strip created after her - now both she and Petite, an even younger version, are regularly seen in MikuMikuDance videos.
Takoluka - Where Miku has Hachune, Luka has... er... this. Similarly official, TakoLuka is quite literally an octopus version of her head, using her tentacle-like hair strands as appendages and ambulation. Almost entirely a straight-up sight gag, Takoluka usually speaks in strange or broken language and remains extremely blissed out. Has occasionally been known to grow to several stories tall, split off via osmosis, or morph back and forth into the real Luka.
Zatsune Miku - Included here as a sort of personal favorite of our community, Zatsune is a fanversion of Miku intended to be darker and with more sex appeal. While not exactly well known she has cropped up in a few songs, and is gaining some recent exposure after a couple of videos where a suspiciously similar 'Zannen Nako' dancing to extremely cute songs with a 'not Zatsune' sign may indicate she's just a great big closet woobie.
Songs: Takoluka Maguro Fever, Tsumanne
More than a few times we've stumbled across the fact that some of you are still trying to figure out who's who in the robot world, and have wished there's a quick guide out there. So, here you go. We'll touch briefly on each robot, going into their common genres and characterisations and what we consider to be their signature songs. We'll also try to hit up UTAU and the Engloids as bonus general categories and touch extremely briefly on the more common vocaloid-related Nicovideo memes and characters who we're liable to reference in the future.
As with the other primer posts we strongly encourage users to chime in (especially so, in this post's case!) with their own favorite songs or characterisation considerations so that we can add them to the pot and build up a great big gestalt picture of the fandom. There's a series of threads for each robot; use these to link videos, rant about characters, or discuss and every so often we'll go through and add them to the main post. Please remember to keep it civil, as unlike the other posts this post is not and cannot be objective; banter and lively debate is a++ fine, telling people their preferred characterisation or favorite song is 'wrong lol' is not. The characterisations written below are drawn from a number of sources; music videos, together with the more influential comics and MMD productions. This is not in any way a complete list, just the more common characters; the fandom's simply too big to try to make the list complete. If there's something you want added, just write it up and we'll slip it on in there.
holy god this was a lot of work
SONGS last updated: September 2010
TEXT last updated: February 2010
Vocaloids
Hatsune Miku
Character Item: Leeks
More popular than the others by a factor of about seven billion, it's fair to say Miku is the most iconic of the lot after having starred in her own video game, her own TV spots and her own live performance using holographic technology; the number of music videos involving her typically outnumber the other robots each week by a factor of 3:1. As such, she's pretty much always considered the 'main character' of the troupe - in return, however, the sheer volume of different styles and takes on her makes it hard to pin down a common character or genre. While she's tuned for and intended for pop songs by default - indeed, a majority of her back catalogue is cheesy pop - she's been crowbarred into every genre under the sun, from soft ballads to acid-hardcore chanting.
This granularity extends to characterisation, and can often mean that anything goes. Nominally and most regularly, she's the baseline friendly cheery-girl main character who's able to do anything and handle the other robots with aplomb and who comes complete with side orders of happy derp, possessive tsundere, stab-happy yandere, badass action hero or anything else you could think of to taste... which can often include executing Len, helping Ronald McDonald bring about the apocalypse, casually beating Kaito up, being Sad In The Snow, or dissolving into uninstalled particles. She's a bit of a wild card.
Songs: Love is War, Melt, World is Mine, Light Song, Last Night Good Night, Miku Miku ni Shite Ageru, Hatsune Miku no Shoushitsu, Love Word, Strobo Nights, Ievan Polka, Hajimete No Oto, Uraomote Lovers, Hold, Release, Rakshaka and Corpse
Kagamine Rin/Len
Character Items: Oranges (Rin), Bananas (Len)
Depending on who you listen to - and more confusingly, when you listen to them, especially in Crypton's case - these two are either the same person mirrored in some freaky alternate universe way or else actual twins or else completely unrelated. Most people go for the twins thing because then it makes their head hurt less, unless the alternate universe thing would make for some good solid 'where is my twin' angst. And what a lot of it they get, too; a surprising amount of their songs divide neatly into either sad angsty music or else angry rock. Even when they aren't focusing on the negative, their tracks tend to be fast or powerful.
Rin is almost uniformly regarded as either straight-out-and-out crazy and psychotic, or kind of the loud brat of the Vocaloid family, or both. Her standard character loadout tends to include a large steamroller, the Roadroller - regularly used to cajole or punish either 'people who annoy her' or 'absolutely everyone' as required. If doing a fantasy video, is fond of being the member of royalty who sentences people to death or horrible pain, and so on. You get the idea. Hanging off her brother's arm in subtextual fashion - or lamenting his death - is optional, though common.
And look, I know we joke about it a lot and harp on it but seriously, Len dies a lot. Roadrollered, blown up, shot by Miku, already dead by the time the song starts, you name it, he's had it happen. Beyond being one of the most unfortunate Vocaloids around, Len tends to be your average young kid; switching variously between 'pleasant young man', 'awkward blusher' and 'kind of tsun' as required, he's a lot more normal and well-adjusted than most of them, it seems. The note about hanging off his sibling's arm still applies, but Len tends to be shown as less possessive and more open and with maybe just a little white knight syndrome.
Songs: Aku no Series (Daughter, Servant, Re_birthday, Regret Message, Shiro), Roshin Yuukai, Synchronicity Series (1, 2), SPICE!, Trick and Treat, Paradichlorobenzene, Juvenile, siGRe, Gemini, Revolution, It's My Roadroller!, Drive Me Flat, No Thank You, KOKORO, Meltdown, Hot Cocoa ~A Restless Night's Song~
Meiko / Kaito
Character Items: Sake (Meiko), Ice Cream (Kaito)
Hangers-on of an older generation of software, these two are often paired together and are typically seen as the 'veterans' of the vocaloid scene. Their rougher voices can be harder to work with and are less specifically tuned; the advantage here is that this means these two can run the gamut when it comes to target genres, hitting pretty much any tone or bpm you could wish for, with the obvious downside that it's entirely possible to make them sound like they're at the bottom of a well. While it's still filled with water. Nonetheless, take a look around and you'll find breathtaking examples of pitching and programming, so they're not out of the game yet.
Generally speaking, Meiko comes in two flavours; she's either the kind, caring and nice big sister or else she's the hellion super-friendly big sister who terrorizes everyone into behaving because otherwise she'll give them a hug hard enough to crush bone. Both types may or may not be pleasantly drunk thanks to her character item being sake; typically speaking people will pair her with Kaito over and above everyone else, either for the brunt of her affections or the brunt of her anger.
Kaito, meanwhile, tends to rapidly swing between extremes; overwhelmingly he's usually represented either as a clothes shedding pervert, a well-meaning and friendly complete moron and big brotherly sort, or a shadowy and manipulative bastard playing with people's hearts. (Corollary: see also Acute, where by taunting a yandere!Miku he clearly establishes himself as 'both'.) Usually the butt of abuse, whether deserved or not, he still tends to be the sort to pick himself up and keeps on trucking. Once in a blue moon, he may be spotted actually being kinda cool... but blink and you'll miss it.
Songs: ACUTE, Cantarella, Shineba Ii no ni, Akujiki Musume Conchita, Old Radio, Sennen no Dokusouka, Yomi Zakura, Tsugai Kogarashi, Flowers Falling in Ruins, Poem Weaved In Ruins, Various Feelings, Cowardly Squadron Urotandar, Chillyditty of February, Byakkoya no Musume
Megurine Luka
Character Item: Tuna
Luka's main claim to fame is being Crypton's first bilingual release; with a large voicebank intended to be able to pronounce both Japanese and Western sounds, and a character image intended to evoke the feeling of a mysterious stranger or foreigner, she was intended to span the airwaves and the continents and bring about glorious Vocaloid rule. She didn't come far off that goal, either; almost matching Miku in popularity, people have been producing songs for her almost right out of the gate and her appeal has remained high. A huskier sound range and a wider array of pronunciation means that Luka gets some extremely unusual songs; while she can handle just about anything she tends to get a lot of trance, club, and ambient music and has managed to sing in a number of European or completely made up languages.
Her characterisation outside of songs tends to roughly match the idea of her image; an aloof or at least quiet woman with an emphasis on elegance and the whole mysterious foreigner vibe. Commonly, this aloofness becomes the standard anime-quiet-girl shyness as a barrier to her being able to pat small adorable things on the head, which appear to be a major driving motive behind her actions and can cause much existential angst; alternatively, this will be turned totally around and she'll be portrayed as outright kidnapping them. Also regularly found doing sight gags involving Takoluka (see below).
Songs: Luka Luka Night Fever, Double Lariat, Toeto, RIP=RELEASE, Just Be Friends, Palette, Empty, No Logic, The Tailor Shop of Enbizaka, Love Disease, Dancer in the Dark
Kamui Gakupo
Character Item: Eggplants
Gakupo might just be the most illustrious robot of them all. Hailing from Internet Company rather than Crypton, his voice bank was recorded by and named by the famous and ~fabulous~ Japanese musician Gackt. As if that weren't enough, his design came fresh from the pen of Miura, artist of Berserk. ... and all of this is a shame because, as fabulous as he is, Gakupo doesn't really get a lot of pick up. He'll typically be found doing duets or backing work rather than solo songs; while his work in them is often exemplary, he's rarely seen in solo performances.
As you might expect from the design, he's usually portrayed as the stereotypical honor-driven samurai by most fans, but this is regularly ramped up to the point of extravagant parody; he's either a relentless but well-meaning taskmaster with a flair for extremely flamboyant actions and behaviour, white-knighting without fail, or else he's an overly-clingy lech and loveless loser who isn't destined to get anywhere at all. Both versions are regularly crammed into a fundoshi and not a lot else to help demonstrate the spirit of manly.
Songs: Dancing Samurai, Paranoid Doll, Imitation Black, Super Turkish March Owata, Breathe, ggrks, Butterfly, Nishiki No Mai
Important Note
From here on out, large-scale sources of characterisation die out simply because the robots in question haven't been around as long. From here until the end of the post, notes on the vocaloids should be taken with a little more pinch of salt even than usual as they are primarily our take on them.
Gumi
Character Item: Carrots
You might be forgiven for thinking you've seen Gumi, a.k.a Megpoid, before. Voiced by and probably named after Megumi Nakajima, Gumi's design is just a little bit similar to a certain Macross Frontier character. Not that the fandom minds, of course; instead it's used the opportunity to give her a carrot for a character item, an endless source of parody, and a default style. With a vocal range that's similar to Miku but just a little wider, early Gumi songs were typically very upbeat pop affairs, and it's only recently that she's been making a revival and branching out into a large variety of styles to suit her capabilities. In particular, producers seem to be very good at making her sing in English, regularly beating out Luka for clarity.
The second robot from Internet Company, Gumi is almost always linked to Gakupo in some manner, typically familial in nature. A lull in her popularity shortly after her release, combined with the highly energetic style of most of her music, gave rise to a take on her character that combined a burning spirit to reach the top with a certain amount of happy-go-lucky blinkeredness and a stubborn refusal to listen to, react at, or even believe in a sometimes bleak reality. This situation in turn has led to a number of characterisations where she can be just a little petty, mean or envious.
Songs: Megu Megu Fire Endless Night, Campanella, iDOLLA, Eraser, Bad Apple!!, Blue Bird, Bokura no 16-Bit Wars, Endless, Watashi no UMA-sama, Goodbye to Alice, Cowardly Montblanc, Mosaic Role
SF-A2 Miki
Character Item: Cherries
At the beginning of December, AH Software entered the Vocaloid market with a trio of new characters. Miki can be considered their spearhead, intended to evoke the pop idol image, her launch included her headlining on a Christmas 2009 album. Since then her popularity has remained steady, producing a string of solid songs that range primarily through pop, rock and dance with none of the early slow-down Gumi had.
Unique amongst Vocaloid characters, Miki's design includes her actually looking like a robot, with visible doll-like joints. Combined with her rather unusual design that features a whole ton of stars, and a large number of space-or-universe themed music, there's a growing feeling that she might be alien or from outer space. That said, there's just as vocal a movement suggesting that she's simply spacy - the Vocaloid version of an excitable, friendly - and kind of dumb, but happy with it - puppy.
Songs: Miki Miki Romantic Night, COSMIC LUCKY, wish, Ryuu Ten ni Noboru, Good Night, The Universe
Kaai Yuki / Hiyama Kiyoteru
Character Item: Apples (Yuki) / Chocolate Pocky (Kiyoteru)
The second of the AH Software group, Yuki is an attempt at producing a younger child's voice from scratch as opposed to producer attempts at a pitch-shifted Miku; voiced by a conglomeration of actual elementary school children, producers seem to have been having a tricky time getting to grips with her and it's only now that we're starting to see her get some decent songs in. Not having established a genre yet, she seems to be leaning towards fast dance-pop tracks.
She and sensei haven't exactly been fixed in terms of characterisation yet, but their effective combination as a pair has more than once evoked images of, well, a pairing, and a pairing in which the nice clean-cut teacher is bullied and manipulated by an adorable little kid with an evil streak. Alternatively, she's just a get-up-and-go schoolkid who just happens to be a singing robot.
Kiyoteru rounds off both the AH Software offerings and the current lineup of Vocaloids. Designed as a schoolteacher who sings in a rock band in his evenings (Ice Mountain Teru, ladies and gentlemen), he's intended to have a smooth treble voice but often comes off or is dismissed as sounding too much like KAITO. Given his character information, as you'd imagine, he tends to be used for rock tracks.
Of course, fans aren't going to let something like Ice Mountain Teru lie quietly. The idea of sensei going off at nights to illicitly sing has opened up a slew of not-so-pleasant interpretations, the most memorable of which is the idea he's a crossdressing lounge singer. At the more favorable end of the scale, being a rocker gives him an occasionally badass edge, when he's not being a far too polite and suffering teacher.
Songs: Shooting*Star, Scherzone, Disco Chocolateque, For My Beloved, When You Reach the Age of Eighteen, Jewelfish, True Education, Koi no Kayoubi
UTAU
Named after the synthesizer tool that gives rise to their voicebanks, UTAU can have any voice bank loaded in they damn well please, and have it automatically converted to a soundbank. Combine this with the best price in the world, and a rapidly improving software base, and you end up with an awful, awful lot of UTAUs to try to summarise in one post and the ability to sing any sort of genre you'd like. While they often do covers of better-known songs, they get plenty of original songs and there's a distinctly growing movement behind them and no genre they haven't hit. Their soundbanks in the past haven't always exactly matched up to Vocaloid soundbanks, and it's required a good producer to make them sound their best - recent updates to UTAU soundbanks, however, have been producing some seriously breathtaking tracks that easily rival Vocaloid2 software.
They're usually depicted as a rival faction to the Vocaloids, competing for audience and songs, often in a very antagonistic role. Led by Kasane Teto, a drill-haired tomboyish chimera who is typically given a World Is Mine-esque level of tsundere self-importance, and joint- or stealth-led by Defoko/Utane Uta, a quiet girl usually considered infinitely more capable. Other common characters include Momone Momo - maid, housekeeper and all-around generally abused and bullied poor girl - and recently thanks to a high-detail MMD model Namine Ritsu, crossdresser bully of the above. There are, however, literally dozens more - your best bet, rather than relying on our sketchy knowledge, is to toddle your way over to the UTAU wiki here.
Songs: Kasane Territory, Song of the Eared Robot, Tachimukae! Kimi wa Kakkoi!, Saikyou Tetto Teto Keikaku, Sekihi, Labyrinth (Cover), Eternal Force Blizzard
Engloids
Engish Vocaloids are exactly that - Yamaha software, tuned and provided with an English database by either Zero-G or PowerFX. Consisting variously of Leon, Lola, Miriam, Prima, Sonika, Tonio, Sweet Ann and Big Al, their sound quality tends to be a little weak thanks mostly to the problems inherent in correctly pronouncing the whole range of english sounds. They tend to be tuned for genres that the Japanese vocaloids aren't - Tonio and Prima are specifically designed for opera, for example, while Lola and Leon are geared towards soul. For a variety of reasons - not least a lack of character information - Japanese producers haven't really picked up on them and songs involving them tend to be rare on nicovideo. When they do appear they tend to be either in duets or ensemble pieces or else doing covers, though Big Al has been popping up with surprising frequency. Over on western shores they can sometimes be heard providing samples or backing for club and trance.
Three of them are notable: Sweet Ann and Big Al are based on Vocaloid2, making their quality rather better than the others, while Sonika remains the most well known with a twitter and several crossovers with Gumi under her belt. Her software is somewhat advanced in that she has a considerably larger vocal bank, allowing her to have a stab at many languages: in that respect she is the Engloid version of Luka, aimed for international purposes. These three are also the only ones to have a visual representation given to them by their respective companies, which are currently being revised via a series of contests.
Songs: 99 Red Balloons, Little Toy Robot, samsara, Green Green Midorimushi, Manly Fly Me To The Moon
Other
Yowane Haku - Officially recognized by Crypton and included in Project Diva, Haku is the embodiment of an alternate universe Miku that can do anything but sing, be happy, or succeed. Regularly portrayed as a bit of a drunken washout, the traditional catcall for her singing is 'tsumanne' ('boring'), though recent hits such as the Aku No series go a long way to reversing this. Oddly, she's usually portrayed as being unnaturally awesome at everything else, and often crops up in videos as an instrumentalist.
Akita Neru - The /b/troll of Vocaloid, Neru is another officially recognized version that symbolises producers too lazy to finish their work. Usually shown as tiny, angry, and trolling people via SMS, she acts as a straight man to the idiocy of the others and a disapproving voice to anyone who'll listen and anyone who won't. Very commonly hangs off and blushes at Len's every word, in an unrequited love only slightly less doomed than Hamlet.
Hachune Miku - The final officially recognized version of Miku and now ubiquitous enough to be the fandom mascot, Hachune is a round, plump, little-featured foot-high version of Miku. Looking and acting like a cartoon character, Hachune is roughly described as the personification of Miku's childishness. Usually seen waving around a leek at high speed, or sleeping standing up.
Chibi/Petite Miku - Younger versions of Miku (and, more increasingly, the other robots). Chibi Miku could roughly be considered the most successful of all the characters, with an extensive and extremely beloved comic strip created after her - now both she and Petite, an even younger version, are regularly seen in MikuMikuDance videos.
Takoluka - Where Miku has Hachune, Luka has... er... this. Similarly official, TakoLuka is quite literally an octopus version of her head, using her tentacle-like hair strands as appendages and ambulation. Almost entirely a straight-up sight gag, Takoluka usually speaks in strange or broken language and remains extremely blissed out. Has occasionally been known to grow to several stories tall, split off via osmosis, or morph back and forth into the real Luka.
Zatsune Miku - Included here as a sort of personal favorite of our community, Zatsune is a fanversion of Miku intended to be darker and with more sex appeal. While not exactly well known she has cropped up in a few songs, and is gaining some recent exposure after a couple of videos where a suspiciously similar 'Zannen Nako' dancing to extremely cute songs with a 'not Zatsune' sign may indicate she's just a great big closet woobie.
Songs: Takoluka Maguro Fever, Tsumanne