By	mollipen	3
	Filed Under	Japan, USA, Video, Vocaloid
	Tags	commercial, corolla, hatsune miku, rape, toyota, vocaloid

When I—a diehard fan of both Hatsune Miku and the whole Vocaloid thing in general—actually feel embarrassed watching this video, you know something is wrong.

Spending a bit of time goofing off on Twitter, I came across a link to this: a strange page on the official English Toyota website advertising the 2011 Corolla. Strange, because, right there on the page is one Hatsune Miku.

What’s Miku doing on there? Outside of a small group of people who actually know what this Vocaloid stuff is, it isn’t like she’s any kind of well-known face in the States or anything. To most people, she’s probably just some “random anime chick” drawn specifically for the promotion of a car.

In talking about the subject on Twitter, @Zerochan mentioned that Hiroyuki Itoh (CEO of Crypton Future Media – aka the “creator of Miku”) recently mentioned during an event in San Francisco that the company wanted to push Miku here in North America.

That’s… odd… but okay. I’m not really sure how you get a wider American audience to give a damn about a cute cartoon girl who sings with a bizarre computer voice, but hey, I can’t know them for trying. Then, however, I actually had a friend insist that I watch the videos on that Corolla page.

“right at the end? did you cringe? i cringed,” my friend messages my via IM. My response was that, indeed, I did.

…oh, and I also love the “It’s the official car of Hatsune Miku” line. My response to that would be this:

• Related URL: <a href="http://www.toyota.com/corollamiku/">www.toyota.com/corollamiku/</a>

This entry was posted on Friday, May 6th, 2011 at 2:47 am and is filed under Japan, USA, Video, Vocaloid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.