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Scrapped Princess/Polyphonica's Sakaki Pens 'Vocaloid' Work
posted on by Sarah Nelkin
An editor for PHP's Smash light novel imprint revealed on Twitter on Friday that author Ichiro Sakaki is currently preparing a new work. The editor also wrote that the theme of the new work is "Vocaloid," Yamaha's voice-synthesis software made popular by Crypton Future Media's Hatsune Miku and other virtual singer characters.
Sakaki himself expressed surprise that the work was revealed already, and noted that the Vocaloid theme was a request from Smash's editorial staff. He added that he has not finished the draft yet. He also emphasized that this new work is unrelated to his previous Polyphonica franchise, although he said with a laugh that it also has a red-haired girl as the heroine.
Sakaki cautioned, "I'm not going to (or rather, I cannot) write something like 'the touching story of boy meets 'Hatsune --ku,' realizes the greatness of music, and matures as a Vocaloid producer by meeting many people!' (Laughs) Many Vocaloid-themed works call for 'adapting a Vocaloid song into a novel.' Instead of doing that, I am using the theme of Vocaloid itself as a key gadget."
As Sakaki indicated, he is not the first person to write a novel inspired by the Vocaloid movement. PHP also published novels inspired by Haruyoshi Mori's "Sakura no Ame" song featuring Hatsune Miku and Travolta-P's "Kokoro" song featuring Kagamine Rin. Ichijinsha published a novel inspired by "The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku" song by cosMo@Bōsō-P.
Sakaki made his novel debut in 1998, and then followed that a year later with the first volume of Scrapped Princess, which ran until 2005 with a manga adaptation and a television anime adaptation. Tokyopop published both the novel series and the manga in North America, while Bandai Entertainment released the anime.
Sakaki is also the original creator for the Polyphonica visual novel and anime, which aired in Japan in 2007. The Polyphonica anime and its Polyphonica Crimson S prequel were released by Sentai Filmworks in North America.
[Via 0takomu]
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