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malyminSo, in the last post, I went over how Kasane Teto's roots play into her fandom identity:
We have a narrative, being synthesized here. Even within a world where vocaloids are people and not just collections of sound, Teto is a "fake," a "lie." Perhaps, by extention, a liar herself. She is an underdog, abandoned by the bulk of her cruel creators, who found her voice and now dreams of becoming a real Vocaloid, a big-time idol, just like the girl she was originally made as a mockery of. She's the little guy, she's a trickster. she's a big fucking shitpost and living meme. She is... the internet's home-born idol.
Even though Teto is now a commercial voice bank, with a corresponding character design that sheds the vestiges of her Faux-caloid nature, these elements continue to, I think, play a role in what kind of songs get written for her, and how she's portrayed in music videos for these songs.
nex3's grid generatorEach of the above images links to a version of its respective song, with official subtitles where possible, or fansubbed reprints if no official subs exist. I think these songs function as decent examples of trends in post-SynthV music composed for Kasane Teto.
Creature of Fandom
There's an interesting nostalgia to her Synth V use in general - she was born because of the culture surrounding Vocaloid, and therefore is kind of intrinsically linked to Vocaloid's fan culture (particularly as it existed in the late 00's - early 10's) despite still not being a Vocaloid by branding. Vocaloid-as-actor and Vocaloid-as-stock-character, Voice bank characters having fanonical relationships with one another (like "oh these two Utau are friends"), Voice bank characters having favorite food... notice how much baguettes show up in some of these songs, especially in absurd circumstances! In comparison... when's the last time you saw a Vocaloid music video really fixating on the idea that Miku loves leeks, or that the Kagamines love bananas and oranges?
Quoting tumblr user frobby:
i think its really interesting that since teto was gone from the public eye so long, now that she has recently reappeared, generally her silhouette and iconography is a lot more important to her and her songs than more vocaloids because that USED to be the norm back when teto utau was prominent
#vocaloid has kind of moved more away from the vocaloids being characters and closer them being instruments #where typically songs featuring miku the mc doesnt look like miku #but for teto almost every song ive seen of her has featured her look prominently #i thought about this too when i was listening to ultra trailer and it heavily featured bread #and i was like 'oh yeah vocaloids used to have character items' #its really lovely to see this old style come back
Remarkably unremarkable genders
Kasane Teto was born on 2chan, which has demographics comparable to its anglosphere counterpart of 4chan. Although most early fanworks completely ignored her "sex" being "chimera" in favor of treating it as her species — probably for the best, as 2008 was not a good time for sex or gender variance to be treated with any kind of respect or tact — she is still, technically, "textually" somewhere outside of the cis or perisex norm. I thus find it interesting that recent popular Kasane Teto songs can depict her with a sort of... guyish quality? Often wearing things that are technically unisex, but tend to be associated more with dudes, especially boring, ordinary, or loser-y dudes - some guy you might see on the street, some sweaty NEET, some exhausted-out-of-his-mind nobody salaryman.
It's not quite a otokoyaku look, or a "butch" look, considering her signature twin-drills are always present... but it's interesting that the official "male counterpart" to represent masculine tunings of her voicebank, Kasane Ted, is never used for these recent songs.
to quote tumblr user sukimas:
love when artists create a girl who is just a guy
#incomprehensible post. whatever you think it's about it's not that #it's about kasane teto being a failgirl in a suit AND being a failgirl in a tshirt and board shorts #and defaulting to known character representations rather than making ocs of a different gender
Mesmerizer doesn't fit quite into this "just some guy" feeling, but it does fit into the interesting masc-Teto trend: the music video has Teto and Miku in a matching set of very distinctive costumes or uniforms, but nonetheless very gendered ones, with Teto's being sufficiently masculine that it can be worn by a male character design (as in the official English cover) without even remotely reading as crossdressing.
Thus, Teto can act as an "everyman" who's not technically a man, but sometimes presents like one when playing that role. In a society where "man" is seen as the default, these depictions somehow makes her seem even more ordinary than a "generic girl" depiction would; it doesn't really read as drag or butch, but as paradoxically banal. Any character can sing about being a loser, or the indignities of ordinary life - but Kasane Teto's memey roots give her more in common with her creators, and the rest of us internet freaks, than a born celebrity like Hatsune Miku ever will.
Of course, there's plenty of feminine-presenting Tetos (not just using her standard SynthV or Utau uniforms, but original girly outfits) in the recent burst of SynthV productions, too... but it feels like there's a higher percentage of masc!Teto than there was prior to 2023, and certainly a higher percentage of masc!Teto than there is for other "feminine" voice banks with feminine official designs.
2chan's daughter, all grown up... but at what cost?
Speaking of which: Teto started out as a prank, then a free UTAU that still visually mimicked a real Vocaloid, depicted in "Teto Territory" as her being a non-professional singer that dreams of being a real Vocaloid. Now, she has a professional, paid-for voicebank with a modern, smoother quality. This can be framed as her "growing up" - I've definitely seen multiple people treat UTAU!Teto and SynthV!Teto as her "child" and "adult" selves, respectively. I think this adds something to the particular line of "indignity/frustration of adult life" thread of Modern Teto songs: like the 2chan trolls who made her, like the amateurs making silly meme videos on NicoNico and Youtube, like the kids drawing fanart on Pixiv and Deviantart... Teto is older, now. More world-weary. And it turns out? Being an adult means being part of the capitalist machine. Being an adult is less freeing and glamorous than you thought it was.
Cohost user pengy notes this resonance in the post "the coarse acerbic beauty of "i guess we doin circles now (ft. Kasane Teto)" by ex-p", regarding an English-language Teto song:
the video itself tells a whole story, portraying kasane teto—herself a meme that has since risen to prominence and now stands alongside the vocaloids she was meant to mimic, which I think adds another wonderful touch to the narrative—as a disillusioned factory worker who hates her job and hates the fact that she needs the job even more.
The already-linked "Hymn to a Decadent Life," "Headache", "Liar Dancer", and "Feel Empty!" all touch on this sort of theme within the Japanese producer space, if you read their subtitles. Even "Mesmerizer," despite its more fantastical quality, has lyrics that can be read as part of this "modern adult life sucks ass" theme — although, these lyrics alternate between being sung by Teto and Miku.
"Mosu" by Shü, though not included in the opening set of links, also contains a feeling of disillusionment with adulthood. "Cadmium Colors" by Jamie Page, another song about factory work from the English-language Vocaloid scene, is a distinctly different exploration of being a cog in a capitalist machine, contrasting the romanticism attributed to art with the socioeconomic situation of the factory worker who produces the paints.
Looking back on the past
As I noted earlier:
Officially, her sex is "chimera", and her age is 31; knowing how later 2chan "VIPPERloids" were assigned sexes like "futanari" and "okama", these traits were not given to her out kindness. They were meant to make her absurd, make her seem freakish; a transphobic, intersexist, misogynist joke by 4chan's older brothers. Unofficially? Her species is chimera, and her age is 15.5 in "chimera years"; over time this has become part of even her official iconography, in the form of leathery wings and (somewhat less commonly) a devilish tail.
Early formative Teto texts like "Teto Territory" glossed over her strange "character settings" in this way, not thinking too hard about how cruelly they were intended. "Uso no Utahime" depicted Teto as more upset by origins as a prank, but I have always gotten the impression that this characterization stuck less within popular fanon. So it's interesting to see newer songs have Teto express mixed or negative feelings about the nature of her creation.
"Cheap Properties" is a Teto's-roots-as-characterization where Teto expresses frustration: with her origins as a prank and parody of Miku, with her "cheap joke" official statistics crafted by 2channers spitballing horseshit. It is critical of her 2chan roots, not celebratory; where there is positivity in the song, it is towards how these elements, the "cheap properties" and "body like a birdcage" are re-interpreted through use and interpretation by musicians and fans, turned from a sick joke into "bizarre originality", from suggestions picked at random into a more coherent but playful whole.
"Diverging Present (Trust Me)" mentions Teto's "twisted words and crooked body," then says they're "just like you" while pointing at the viewer - she is strange and ungainly, she tells us, but so are real humans. "Propagating Love (Remember Me)", its companion piece, has no subtitled version currently - so, let me copy these lyrics from the comments. Note how they refer to her as having a "patchwork" body; a reference to the randomly-assigned traits the 2channers gave her. Even in the abstract nature of her creation by 2chan, a chimera's nature can be seen.
A body covered in patches
A vessel overflown with being copied and pasted
It’s sucked into the cracks
Into this distorted world
There was a lie I wanted to tell you
But I had no choice but to say it in song
As the world began to spin
The days of regret that won’t disappear, won’t disappear
I’ve left it all behind - I know nothing, I know nothing
Let your cheer echo more, it’s not enough, not enough!
As the thoughts went out over the airwaves that I can’t see, can’t see
The expectations are at an all-time high
And the seams are a little bit off again
It's not to save anyone
It's not to encourage anyone
It's not to put anyone down
It's not even about love
A body covered in patches
A vessel overflown with being copied and pasted
Even so, I'd like to see
Your surprised face again
The days of regret hadn’t disappeared, hadn’t disappeared
They’ve all become the distorted shape of me
When the context and love are all patched together
Those thoughts went out over the airwaves that I can’t see, can’t see
They’re running wild over the ages
Everything's as it should be, right?
Willing to roll the dice,
I was born out of luck
These distorted words and body
Are just like you
And even the lies
Really changed to go on again
And yet, they won't ever disappear, it won't disappear
Everything won't disappear, it won't disappear
Note: there are speech bubbles that appear after the data deletion message at 1:00 that say:
I want to save you with a song
I want to encourage you with a song
I want to make fun of you with a song
I want to love you with a song
They contradict the lyrics being sung by her
"嘘 (uso), n. - a lie; a falsehood; a fallacy"
No other voice-bank/character in vocal synth fandom is as inseparable from the idea of lies or fakeness as Kasane Teto. Listen to recent songs composed for Teto to sing, and the word "uso" will show up a lot. Other characters can sing about lies or being liars, of course, and often do. But the choice to use Teto as your instrument and visual for such songs will always carry an additional valence.
Even now that she is "a truth that looks like a lie," not "a lie that looks like the truth," the uso-nature in inseparable from her. The lie, the prank, the parody. Having been born on the internet, a strange chimera who gained popularity from the strange nature of her own origins. It follows her, though she (though really it's us, through our choices, as the real people who make her sing, and draw pictures, and tell stories) may reinterpret it, reclaim it, redefine it. Like the little android who remembers having been the blocky toy in "Song of the Eared Robot", the Teto who is a professional voicebank wearing her own unique uniform... will always remember the silly little faux-caloid she was.
There is a strange balance between internet joke and human poignancy, to the concept of Kasane Teto.
At least, to me.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-20 09:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-21 03:26 am (UTC)Glad you liked it! ^_^
Here, have this. Got it from here.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-21 03:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-21 04:20 am (UTC)Isn't it? I'm so charmed that this is something the site has up for download. There's also a downloadable cursor on the same page!
no subject
Date: 2024-10-21 02:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-22 11:29 pm (UTC)It's free Teto!!!