1925

Hatsune Miku, sometimes referred to as Miku Hatsune, is a humanoid persona voiced by a singing synthesizer application developed by Crypton Future Media. Hatsune Miku is a 16-year-old girl with long, turquoise twintails.

The name of the character comes from merging the Japanese words for first (初 hatsu), sound (音 ne) and future (ミク miku), thus meaning "the first sound from the future", referring to her position as the first of Crypton's "Character Vocal Series."

Hatsune Miku was the first Vocaloid developed by Crypton Future Media after they handled the release of the Yamaha vocal Meiko and Kaito. The name of "Hatsune Miku" was conceived soon after the Vocaloid 2 announcements, when an English and Japanese vocal were developed for the character. The intended design was delayed, and was later used for Megurine Luka instead. Miku was intended to be the first of a series of Vocaloids called the "Character Vocal Series", which included Kagamine Rin/Len and Megurine Luka. Each had a particular concept and vocal direction.

She was built using Yamaha's Vocaloid 2 technology, and later updated to newer engine versions. The pitch of the samples was to be altered by the synthesizer engine, and was constructed into a keyboard style instrument within the Vocaloid software.

Nico Nico Douga, a Japanese website similar to YouTube, played a fundamental role in the recognition and popularity of the software. Soon after Miku's release, Nico Nico Douga users started posting videos of songs created using her sound bank. According to Crypton, a popular video featuring Miku's super-deformed alter ego Hachune Miku singing and dancing to "Ievan Polkka" while spinning a Welsh onion in homage to Loituma Girl's original video (which led to Miku also being commonly associated with spring onions) demonstrated the potential of the software in multimedia content creation. As Miku's recognition and popularity grew, Nico Nico Douga became a place for collaborative content creation. Popular original songs written by a user would inspire illustrations, animations in 2D and 3D, and remixes by other users. Some creators would show their unfinished work and ask for ideas.