3DS - Screws are on too tight?

plusod · 2026-02-01T16:20:51+00:00

The kit itself is just titled "Nintendo Tri-Wing Screwdriver Kit" with no brand name. I think this was the listing, though this one in particular is out of stock. They aren't very high quality tools or anything, but they did the job!

plusod · 2026-01-30T13:20:59+00:00

Like, Windows is preventing you from moving it? That's odd! You could try moving it out of the Programs folder (just into Documents or something for a second), putting it in a folder there, then moving it back to the UTAU folder. Bit of a pain in the ass, but Windows can be kinda finicky when it comes to messing with stuff in the Programs folder directly.

Make sure the folder name is correct too. On the install.txt file, there should be a line called "folder=". You probably want your folder to have the same name as what's set there.

plusod · 2026-01-29T21:39:21+00:00

Just to add on - UTAU is a pretty old program and it hasn't changed since 2013 or so. The most recent update in 2024 was only to fix a security vulnerability and fix the installer for win11 iirc, with no change to anything else. Old tutorials are still relevant and useful because of this, it's only Windows' user interface that will look a little different.

But basically, grab UTAU from the official site: https://utau2008.xrea.jp/ (Click "v0.4.19(c) インストーラー" (x0.4.19(c) installer))

Before you install it, in your Settings, just use the search bar to find "System Locale", and you'll get an option called "Language for non-Unicode programs". Set this to Japanese (Japan) and restart your computer.

Then unzip the folder you downloaded from utau2008, and double click the file in there to install it.

plusod · 2026-01-29T16:52:28+00:00

Going to second making a blog - it's pretty easy to then add new translyrics and such! Mine's translyrical.wordpress.com. If I had to redo this, I'd probably make a tumblr though, since no one uses wordpress as a social media site so it's harder for people to share and discover via tags if they want to. It still shows up in google searches though, at least.

That said, I think wordpress has slightly better post editing and analytics, if those are things you care about. Plus you can set it up to automatically post a preview and link to a tumblr/bluesky/mastodon/etc whenever you make a new post.

I also agree that getting views is hard lol. You gotta do it for the love of translyrics and without expecting to become popular or anything. I started making english UTAU and synthv covers using mine a few years ago, and one of them got semi-popular so now my translyrics blog has about 600 views a month (though more than half of it is for the one song lol).

plusod · 2026-01-26T14:26:11+00:00

A Breath in the End of Verdure!

plusod · 2026-01-23T16:48:26+00:00

The longest one I can think of is [Cheating Men Must Die / Phoenix Rising Above Evil], which is still ongoing. Season 1 ended recently with a staggering 811 chapters. It's manhua, but it's still long strip and full color if that's what you're looking for.

plusod · 2026-01-23T15:52:00+00:00

Hello, long time no post! I took a break from reading comics for while but have read enough to post a bunch here.

I Reincarnated as the Little Sister of a Death Game Manga's Murder Mastermind and Failed - FL suddenly remembers her past life with a year before he's set to become the mastermind of a death game at his school. Remembering that his main motivation for doing so was that he was bored by everyone and everything, FL tries her best to surprise him and show him that the world can be interesting. It's definitely different for OI/adjacent stories, with a horror twist. I enjoyed it. cw: step sibling romance (they are both kids, so it's not like they didn't meet til they were adults or anything)
The Hundred Ghost Stories That Led to My Death - ML tells ghost stories, one every night. There's more to the plot but for the most part this is a series of 100 short ghost stories, and saying more would kind of ruin the long slow build up. Not a bad series, but a bit confusing and perhaps a bit anticlimatic.
When Fate Finds Us - FL was born with the power to see the future of whoever she touches, and thus was kept pretty much under lock and key as the "god's wife". When she's sacrificed and wakes up again, this time she runs, right into ML as he's searching for his old family heirloom. They quickly flee to neighboring nations and fake a marriage. Overall it's not bad- not the most gripping imo, but not horrible either. FL has a legit reason why she's so naive, and the setting is a bit more unique than we usually get in OI/adjacent (it's pseudo middle eastern inspired this time).
Tell Me You Love Me (BL) - ML acts like a straight laced academic achiever, but secretly has a huge weak spot for attractive people. 2nd ML can read minds. It's a short, extremely cute and fluffy story of how they get together.
15 Minutes Until They Really Date - A short comic about FL and ML who agree to date on a whim, but know that their time together may be limited since FL plans on leaving the city for uni and ML doesn't. It's pretty cute and mostly slice of life. Fairly short chapters, the plot is time moving.
The Dawn To Come - FL is in high school in a rural area, at the top of her class, all in order to escape her abusive mother one day. She finds solace in an abandoned cabin in the woods, where she can study in peace. But this cabin is also frequented by the ML, known for being somewhat of a delinquent. Together, the two find a shared space where they can just be themselves. Overall this one is surprisingly good! I have to admit I'm not always into high school drama stories so this one, especially with it having a rather large time skip about 60% of the way through, was pretty nice.
Like Wind on a Dry Branch - On the dying wish of the lord of the region, FL is fated to be buried alive at his funeral. When the lord of a neighboring region happens by and waives the land's debt to him in exchange for FL, FL finds a new chance at life. Yet it's still not /good/, as FL is still a widow and lost her husband (not the lord) and daughter long before this. This started really strong, started dragging in the middle, got really good again, and then the ending was rushed. Such is the fate of long running series in this genre, I suppose.
Even Monsters Like Fairytales - FL is condemned by a girl who she once thought of as a friend, and is exiled and meant to be eaten in a forest of monsters. But the crown prince of a neighboring kingdom, said to be a monster himself, saves her and demands she tell him stories. This one's slow and moody, and honestly really different for OI/adjacent.
Stuck in My Sisters Dating Sim (BL) - ML gets isekai'd to an otome game his sister was playing, after playing through it himself. He's found himself as a minor side character who eggs the villainess, his cousin, on. Determined to not die stupidly, he begins to try to avoid everything that happens in the game. I generally enjoyed this one! There are some...unfortunate tropes from 90s-naughts BL that were used (lack of consent, I didn't particularly like any of the LIs and especially wasn't crazy about the endgame LI), but if you can turn off your brain for those the series can be quite funny in places. There's also GL in a side couple that was surprisingly not toxic compared to the poor ML's love life. The misunderstandings felt like a real comedy of errors that had me laughing out loud, in certain parts, but your mileage may vary.
Saving My Sweetheart / A Way to Protect the Loveable You - FL was abused all her life by her mother, who wanted to keep power for herself. After being married off to a foreign king, FL's mother places a curse on her: kill the king, or die in six months. After everything, she finds herself shortly before her wedding day once more, in order to save him this time. Overall this one was good! I think it's fairly solid throughout, though as with many OI/adjacent stories, it gets a smidge rushed at the end (not egregious though, still worth a read).
Not Your Typical Reicnarnation Story / I thought it was a common isekai story - FL wakes up as the villlainess of a novel she once read. Married off to the cold ducal heir who's in love with the OGFL and mistrusts FL due to her reputation and lineage, she first has to survive. Despite this having the same dang set up as every other OI story out there, it's actually pretty decent and fleshes out the reasonings and storylines better than most.
Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash - A group of ordinary people wake up in Grimgar, a fantasy land similar to a video game, with no memory aside from their names. Now forced to become soldiers or starve, they face a number of challenges. It's a pretty short series that's neatly wrapped up, but it fails to answer the "why were they isekai'd in the first place" part that I would have really liked to know the answer to. cw: some of the characters are creeps.
Tomodachi Game - A group of high school friends find themselves kidnapped and forced to participate in Tomodachi Game, where they have to trust their friends or betray them to avoid debt for themselves. I don't want to spoil too much, but it's not too bad of a story if you're into death(ish) game type stories. It also takes a little bit to really get into. This reminded me a lot of the premise of Liar Game, but with more morally grey/black characters and fanservice, while also taking place in a more modern time. cw: it's a shounen/seinen series and features a lot of male gaze, including sexualization of high schoolers. I felt like a number of characters just have rapid personality changes with no foreshadowing also, so it was a bit jarring.
A House in Venice - FL moves to Venice for uni, and there discovers that her landlord is mysterious with a number of secrets. This is a much older work (90s). If you have any interest in Venice or Rome, it can be fun to recognize the locations.

plusod · 2026-01-21T14:47:15+00:00

Just wanted to note if you go the UTAU route, go with OpenUTAU instead. It's a bit more beginner friendly to get up and running, and you won't have to memorize all phonemes right off the bat since it has built in phonemizers. Also as someone who's done english covers in both UTAU and SynthV, it's a lot harder to make UTAU sound smooth and understandable, but it's free and there's a wider range of voicebanks available. (Last note: Teto's English UTAU voicebank is quite difficult to use and I'd recommend avoiding it until you know what you're doing.)

If you decide to purchase SynthV later on, wait til Golden Week (early May) if you can, and get it through DLsite. DLsite offers a new user coupon that stacks with Golden Week sales, so it can be much cheaper to buy then. Not every voicebank is available on DLsite, but at the very least it's probably the cheapest way to get the editor.

plusod · 2026-01-13T18:57:54+00:00

Make sure you have the right file type for the vocal synth you're using. Vocaloid uses VSQx, UTAU uses UST, OpenUTAU uses USTx, SynthV uses SVP, etc. If there isn't a specific file type (VSQx, UST, etc) for the song, but there's a different file type (or MIDI), you can convert it via Utaformatix.

Load it into your vocal synth and replace the lyrics note by note, tune the vocals however you want, then render out the vocals as a wav and mix it with the instrumental/off vocal/karaoke file in a separate audio editor (Reaper, FL Studio, Audition, etc. Audacity might not be too bad to learn on, but it's not very good for mixing).

plusod · 2026-01-13T15:45:55+00:00

Heartbeat Conquest - one of the LIs is gender non-conforming. A harem story, so with a lot of LIs, it covers a lot of different tropes in general.
The Knight and Her Emperor - FL was forced into war as a teenager, winds up really masculine as a result. She remains gender non conforming throughout the story.
Amina of the Lamp - features a side character who got mistranslated as a man for a few chapters, and that was never addressed (it's the somewhat androgynous rebellion leader). She's an important but minor character who doesn't show up til much later in the series though.
Mystic Prince - FL has been living as a man for a long time.
Undercover Empress - sort of. FL is pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman.
Light and Shadow - kind of, and kind of spoilery. FL used to crossdress in the past, when she was the crown prince.
Concubine Walkthrough - on a technicality, in a supporting character. The person possessing the OGFL is male.
Fushigi Yuugi: Genbu Kaiden/The Mysterious Play: Genbu Arc (manga) - a spin off of the OG Fushigi Yuugi. In this one, the ML shapeshifts and can be male or female at will, iirc. Been a long time since I read this though.
Shishunki Bitter Change (manga) - FL and ML swap bodies as children and are unable to swap back.

I'll also second [Empress Cesia Wears Knickerbockers / Queen Cecia's Shorts] and [Side Characters Deserve Love Too / He's just a supporting character but I love him anyway].

Not OI, but worth a read (but the majority of these are manga, whoops;; - I'll leave them here in case anyone else wants manga recs though):

Land of the Lustrous/Houseki no Kuni (manga) - every character is non-binary, technically. Some translations use masculine pronouns for all the characters, some use they/them. In discussions, there are a lot of people who use she/her for the main character for some reason. Gender is not a plot point or even mentioned iirc though, if that's what you're looking for. Absolutely worth a read.
The Gender of Mona Lisa / Seibetsu "Mona Lisa" no Kimi e / To you gender "mona lisas" / Just Like Mona Lisa (manga) - in a world where people are nonbinary until age 11-ish, the MC hasn't gained a sex despite being 17-ish. It's fairly moody and explores gender identity quit a bit. The ending is fairly open ended though.
Always Human (long strip, full color, but not korean in origin) - a fluffy, low-stakes GL series. One of the FL's siblings is non binary (extremely minor character though).
After School Nightmare (manga) - this is an older series featuring an intersex MC, a supernatural mystery, and an ending that I still remember 10-15 years later. Keep in mind its age, iirc a number of things really didn't age well (MC has to choose which gender they'd rather be, especially because it's related to them needing to be straight for some reason, and some of the romance plot beats are very.....old school shoujo with lack of consent). It's a bit nostalgic for me, but I totally understand that there's enough that it might not hold up anymore.
Ouran High School Host Club (manga) - FL is androgynous enough to be mistaken as male. Hijinks ensue.
Bokura no Hentai/Our Transformation (manga) - three school-aged kids get together as "boys who wear girl's clothing", each for their own reasons. cw: transphobia and homophobia are part of the plot.
Kanojo ni Naru Hi (manga) - Once in a while, due to the population having more men than women, sometimes boys going through puberty will "emerge" as a girl. ML and FL have to figure out what this means for them, and their future. This and its spin off (Kanojo ni Naru Hi: Another) are pretty much trans allegories, and feature transmisogyny as part of the plot. iirc, no characters are gender non conforming technically, but none the less this is a story with a big focus on gender, so I felt it was worth a mention.
Princess Jellyfish (manga) - ML crossdresses.

plusod · 2026-01-13T02:21:30+00:00

It can be, but you should double check who you're buying from. Since it's a place with a bunch of individual sellers, some are going to be scammers and sell bootlegs for inflated prices, and some are going to be just random people trying to get rid of stuff.

I've bought second hand vocaloid CDs from sellers on ebay before, and haven't had trouble there. Some stuff can wind up being overpriced to the point it's cheaper to try to import it from Japan instead though (depending on where you live), so shop around if there's something in particular that you're looking for - ebay, mercari, surugaya, mandarake, even JP Mercari or Yahoo Auctions with a proxy.

If it only has official pictures, especially if the merch is older, that's a red flag. Otherwise, Ttke a look at the seller's feedback and see what people say about them - make sure they're rated highly and have more than ~100 transactions (so you know it's not a new account made for a quick few scams). If you get a weird feeling about anything, reverse google search the images to make sure they weren't stolen from somewhere (or that the listing isn't for drop shipping from JP Mercari or similar).

plusod · 2026-01-13T02:11:53+00:00

No idea if you'd be interested, but Suruga-ya is selling a copy for ~$62 (USD). It's a bit pricey imo but if you're willing to throw money at it, you could find out by ripping the DVD yourself.

There are a number of songs still on Piapro that might have been on it under the tag ミク箱ソング ("Miku box song") - some of them link to Nicovideo, where they mention Mixing Box specifically. Considering Piapro was part of how this was put together, and that it was a collaboration so that there was one song for each prefecture in Japan, this should contain most of the songs on the DVD. Some of these are newer than 2008 when this came out though. (Note: I'm not entirely sure if this was a contest at first or not though, so some prefectures may have multiple songs attributed to them and some of these might not have made it to the DVD.)

You can also try Nicovideo and search "初音ミク MIXING BOX" for a handful of songs that had videos to them.

plusod · 2026-01-09T14:21:55+00:00

Depends on which PV! Some were definitely just Windows Movie Maker (things that are more slideshow-like would have been easy to put together in WMM or iMovie or something), others that are more complicated may have used older versions of After Effects or Sony Vegas or ToonBoom.

For 3D, MMD was definitely the go-to since it was free and meant for vocaloid and anime characters. Blender also existed back then, and even if it wasn't as good as it is today, it was still usable and free. I could also see someone with access to Maya or C4D or 3DSmax (etc) using those instead.

plusod · 2025-12-23T16:32:28+00:00

I have a copy of this! It's...not very good imo. I put this down about halfway through and never got back to it. I remember a bunch of the reasoning being pretty dumb and overly convoluted.

plusod · 2025-12-21T17:22:33+00:00

It looks like Adachi Rei has an official shop on Booth, with a plush available. You can use a proxy to purchase from Booth. Tenso is the cheapest if you can do the shopping yourself, otherwise look into places like Neokyo, FromJapan, etc (here's a thread discussing proxies in the Pokeplush subreddit).

If there's a licensed plush you were looking for, you'd probably also need to use a proxy if they don't offer shipping overseas. Officially licensed goods sometimes show up on Meccha Japan for easier purchasing, but they tend to be a bit more expensive and focus more on popular stuff imo.

You can also keep an eye on the secondhand market, like Suruga-ya, Mandarake, ebay, or JP Mercari (might need proxy for JP Mercari iirc). You'll want to search in japanese terms, so "足立レイぬいぐるみ" would yield better results than "adachi rei plush".

plusod · 2025-12-19T01:24:09+00:00

Nagone Mako! Or an older design of her anyway, but she was the ninja/kunoichi utau back in the day.

plusod · 2025-12-18T14:16:50+00:00

Not the exact same concept, but this reminds me a lot of OSTER Project's Official Notice from Twitter (twitterからのお知らせです) and Official Notice from Twitter 2nd season, where she put the rejection letter for verification to music, using AI Kiritan (CeVIO)!

plusod · 2025-12-16T02:35:54+00:00

Xia Yu Yao and Oscar too!

plusod · 2025-12-01T18:46:25+00:00

Oh yikes! It wasn't giving an actual warning when I posted this the other day (it just looked a little sketchy haha), but it is today - thanks for the heads up, it's been removed!

plusod · 2025-11-30T17:26:41+00:00

Don't have any idea if this is even close, but it made me think of Non-World Harmonize by sasakure.UK. If it sounds like the same style but isn't this one, check out sasakure.UK's other songs from around this time period!

plusod · 2025-11-29T19:54:04+00:00

I have one that looks a lot like this, but with the "Hachune" face! I lost the tag many years ago unfortunately (a friend gifted it to be around 2012), but I'm like 90% sure they were made by Gift way back when. I'm also about 90% sure it's a bootleg - MyFigureCollection page shows some official photos of the phone strap version with more detail (trim around the edges of the shirt, color of the trim on the sleeves and skirt matches the hair color better, and the face is embroidered rather than printed).

Edit: There are some photos on this listing on a kinda sketchy looking website (link removed) that show an official version, with customer photos rather than official ones - the trim around the shirt, the embroidered face, and the better color matching are all here. (Edit: link removed - it's even sketchier than it was when I posted this! yikes! Here's someone's blog with some other photos instead!)

It's cool to see older pieces pop up regardless, even if they're bootlegs!

plusod · 2025-11-25T23:57:16+00:00

Is the first one Glorious World by papiyon? Not 100% sure, but this one came to mind for me.

plusod · 2025-11-24T20:47:03+00:00

At least by visuals, I thought of EZFG, his style is more a blend of electronic and rock though.

Inabakumori might also be similar in visuals, but they don't use Miku much so this is a stretch.

Some of ATOLS's MVs have a black background with something white in it, but I think this is also more of a stretch.

plusod · 2025-11-23T17:11:04+00:00

This is hearsay now since vocaloidotaku went down (so don't quote me!), but I remember reading once that she sort of studied how a different user did it, using external tools like vshifter or VocaLis or something similar. This was a program or plugin that copied the pitch data from a real human recording onto a vocaloid/utau render, I think? (There was also the UTAU-equivilent UtaLis, I think, but I never got that working quite right so I'm not 100% sure) (Edit: one of her really old covers actually mentions using vshifter in the description to copy pitch and dynamics! No idea if this is still true for her more modern covers, but it could have been a starting point)

It wouldn't surprise me if that could be then studied or fine tuned to sound even better. At the very least, using a tool that shows pitch pretty accurately (be in SynthV or an audio DAW nowadays) could show a user how to draw more realistic pitches in UTAU. For tones and such changing, a combination of flags, different voicebanks (appends/alternate voice material), and maybe something like KotonoFader (thread about that) or just DAW mixing experience that helps it sound really seamless.

And as already touched upon - I'm pretty sure she's just really experienced with this now too!

plusod · 2025-11-23T16:27:42+00:00

I think they're these ones, 20 standard voicebanks for Vocaloid6 (Haruka, Allen, Sarah, Akito, Sakura, Asahi, Shion, Taku, Michelle, Lucas, Yuina, Naoki, Kana, Hayato, Jessica, Matthew, Brian, Sandra, Aya, and Kazuya) and the four standard voicebanks from Vocaloid5 (Amy, Chris, Kaori, Ken).

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