Analytical Otaku

I don’t like pop music. I think that’s pretty well established at this point. However, pop music has one thing going for it: you can dance to it with your friends. In the words of the Nostalgia Chick, “Pop music is the lowest common denominator.” It’s designed to have a very broad appeal, to use whatever passing trends are popular. Maybe Vocaloid songs will one day have that kind of reach. I don’t know, and I’m not going to make unsubstantiated...

You guys remember that dandy article I wrote about stupid pop songs? Well, Vocaloid songs aren’t excused from nonsensical lyrics. However, they key difference is that Vocaloid songs are user-generated. That means most of the songs (with the occasional exception of bands like Supercell) are made by one person. Of course some of them are wildly stupid or esoteric. However, it also means that the artist is in charge of their work, and not...

I love stories. At heart, I’m still a little kid wanting my mom to read just one more book before bedtime. If something attempts to make a narrative, no matter how sloppy it is, I’m automatically more inclined to like it. Stories have more meaning. In fact, there is a possibility that stories are stored in a different part of our brain that other, abstract facts. This is because stories are a uniquely human experience. Our minds are designed...

“Do you understand what they’re saying?” This is question #2 people ask when they learn I listen to Vocaloid. The majority of Vocaloid music is in Japanese (and even the stuff that is in English is kinda…indecipherable). Except for a few useless stock phrases, I don’t speak Japanese. So why listen to music if you can’t understand the lyrics? The irrelevancy of this question makes me giggle. Let’s face it: there is absolutely no correlation...

“Why do you listen to artificial singers? Why not just listen to real singers?” I get asked this question every time I explain to people exactly what my bizarre, hipster, fruit-for-loops music is. I listen to Vocaloids. Vocaloids are computer programs that sing (for more info, check this out). People are usually confused about why I would listen to a song sung by a computer program instead of a human. I’ve been told that artificial music...

Have you ever noticed that there are a ton of squeaky fangirls in love with shounen series like Naruto, Bleach, and Ao no Exorcist? In fact, there are more pubescent girl rooting for team SasuNaru than team Kyo nowadays. According to Google search, SasuNaru generates 2,610,000 hits while everyone’s favorite anime ginger only has 2,300,000 hits. Why is this? Because shounen is soft-core porn for girls. You have a bunch of bishounen getting...