Why Are There No Kaai Yuki Nendoroids?
Hello everyone! I’m Arashi Bori! This morning, I got up and as usual, checked my phone for updates. I was surprised to find out that a new song from Inubakumori will premiere tomorrow. And of course, this one will feature Kaai Yuki. But I was hit with a sudden curiosity! So, wondering if Kaai Yuki was also featured in some nendoroid models, I tried to find out if she was. Surprisingly, she does not have any nendos. Then I tried to figure out why certain vocaloids aren’t available as nendos. And I couldn’t find any post on the subject! So I decided to write a post about this myself. And after doing some research, I finally found the answer. If you are wondering why certain vocaloids besides Kaai Yuki haven’t been converted into nendos, I also have an answer for them.
In 2009, AH Software Co releases Kaai Yuki. AH Software Co is a company that creates vocaloids software. They’re in charge of collecting voice samples from various people, and creating new vocaloids. These voice softwares can mimic your singing and produce the same sounds as the original voice actor. They have been popular tools for song creators. Kaai Yuki was the first vocaloid to use a child’s voice! In fact, a fourth grader gave her her voice. Yuki’s voice actor is yet to be revealed. As her name has been kept a secret for years. Kaai yuki was designed to be a childish girl. Even her dimensions are measured in “apples”. Which I find to be somewhat silly and childish in it’s own way. As you can tell by the picture, Yuki’s going theme is red. She has shoulder-length hair which she keeps in pigtails. Her eyes are golden, and her hair is black. Yuki is usually featured in a red schoolgirl dress. The kanji in her name can be read as 歌愛ユキ. This means song love snow. The first kanji in her name is read as か ka. The same reading used in the Japanese word for singer, 歌手 kashu. Then 愛 ai meaning love. And finally ユキ Yuki written in katakana. This is a common name for boys and girls, and it means snow.
Kaai Yuki’s voice actor is a grown up now. And this has made it hard to do retakes in order for her to be updated onto newer engines. However, I think it would be really cool to get a matured version of Kaai Yuki as well. I’ve heard that her voice wasn’t meant to sound professional. She seems to have a softer voice, letting you hear the background music better.
Hiyama Kiyoteru is also produced by AH Software Co. He is Kaai Yuki’s teacher.
Anyway, to get back to the point. It took me a while to find out the reason as to why some vocaloids don’t have nendoroids. I had mentioned before that she was created by AH Software Co. AH Software Co was the third company to start producing vocaloid softwares. The first being Crypton Future Media, the creators of Hatsune Miku*. Miku is the first and most popular vocaloid. You might think that all of the vocaloids work together. But they are actually made by various studios. And of course, these studios are competing.
So even though Kaai Yuki and Hatsune Miku are sometimes featured together in the same song. In reality they would be more like rivals.
So now the Good Smile Company comes onto the scene. They are a figure manufacturing company and in addition to anime and video games, vocaloids are one of their staples when it comes to merchandise. That being said, the Good Smile Company has been around for a good twenty years. And Miku has been one of their mascots from early on. Last time I checked, there were 75 nendoroids of her! Of course Miku is owned by Crypton Future Media. And we also get nendoroids of Kagami Rin and Len. Which are also produced by Crypton Future Media. And what about Luka*? You guessed it, also produced by Crypton Future Media. If you are starting to see a pattern here, you probably can already guess the reason.
Good smile has a distribution contract with Crypton Future Media, the main vocaloid producing company. So sadly, we can only get nendos of characters created by them. Say if we get a new vocaloid from Crypton. then there is a good chance that they will receive a nendo someday. But since they go so far back with the Good smile company, and Miku is already good enough, I hate to say his but there will never be nendoroids for Kaai Yuki and the others. Unless they get sold to another company, or some kind of deal happens. The same with Hiyama mentioned earlier, and many other popular softwares from other companies.
*Hatsune Miku the first vocaloid to have been created. She is also the post popular.
*Kagami Rin and Len. These twins are also featured in many nendoroids.
*Luka. Again, she was created by Crypton Future Media and has her own nendo. She looks a bit cooler than the others with nendos to me.
My Favorite vocaloid, Rime. Owned by ceVIO AI. Sadly, she will probably never get a nendoroid.
Sekai is also owned by ceVIO AI. She will also probably never receive a nendo.
Vocaloid Flower. She is featured in a lot of cool songs. But I don’t think we can expect to see a nendoroid for her.
With a thanks to the Vocaloid Wiki for much of the information used in this article. It was really fun researching this. Thank you so much for reading it!
And here was the song I talked about at the starting of my article.
https://youtu.be/NRQRC_0ZQ00
Thank you all so very much for reading!! Remember, this is Arashi Bori! I have lots of nendoroid related stuff on my blog. I hope you enjoyed my second episode of Our Nendoroid Family Discussion. This is a series of post where I answer questions you may have about nendoroids. If you see any typos let me know in the comments and I’ll fix them. Thank you, and see you next post!