Interest
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Likes Speech Synthesized Music, Too
posted on by Bamboo Dong
To celebrate their 60,000th Twitter follower, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department released this surreal video of "Pipo-kun's Song," which blends incredible still shots of the police department's many accomplishments with a chipper speech-synthesized song featuring the supposed voice of their mascot, Pipo-kun.
It's probably one of the few times you'll have the chance to hear this kind of cutesy music played over pictures of police rescues, giant command centers, bad guy take-downs (with guns drawn!), police dogs, helicopters, and riot suppression.
"Pipo-kun's Song" was created in 2002 as a theme song for Pipo-kun, the MPD mascot. He was created in 1987 as a means of bringing together the public and the police department, and has since appeared at various events and in TV programs. According to the official website, Pipo-kun's ears "hear the people's voices from near and fair," his antenna "swiftly detects the movements of society," and his eyes "survey every corner of society."
Check out the video here.
Naturally, people on the 'net have been speculating whether or not the MPD used Vocaloid software to make this song, but so far, no conclusions have been reached.
What do you think? Might Pipo-kun really be Miku in disguise?
