I didn’t want to write this post; I don’t like meta-blogging at the best of times. I prefer to write about interesting things rather than writing about writing about interesting things but even so, I can’t not clarify a point that I was faced with this morning, which is somewhat related to the recent discussions on Twitter and Google Reader about ANN’s current standards of reviewing.
Source: xkcd.xom, a site I love
It started with this unfortunate incident that’s an example of (on this blog at least) a mercifully rare side-effect of the user-comment feature: the Annoying Unconstructive Comment. The anime blogging community is a pretty closed one but every now and then, alongside the usual discussion with your blog’s regulars, you get a comment from a stranger who in all probability is ‘just passing through’. I try to reply to these but when it’s a one-line or incomprehensible comment I don’t normally bother – they’ll probably never read my reply anyway. This time I took the bait and was, well, a bit abrupt; in retrospect I was in the wrong but that’s beside the point. Nor am I taking back what I said. Here’s why.
How do you go about appraising the talents of a vocal artist who technically doesn’t exist? I’m not sure if Shoji Kawamori expected the arrival of the Vocaloid software way back when he made Macross Plus but it was a neat bit of foresight in envisaging a future when it is possible to not only synthesise a singing voice, but a scenario in which the said technology becomes a music phenomenon on its own. Time will tell as to whether Hatsune Miku’s great-granddaughter will be gracing music stages in holographic form or otherwise, but as a music nerd the idea of creating a singing voice from scratch with little more than typing in the lyrics and melody is spine-tinglingly exciting. 
