maimaimai

It wasn't a particularly beautiful memory or anything. It wasn't something glamorous and shiny.

It was just Draken being Draken, and Hanagaki, staring at him.

"What a hot fucking day," Draken said, dropping on the seat next to him as he passed Hanagaki a drink from the vending machine. "You'd think the rain would make it cooler but now it's just gross and humid," he called out. The rain pelted down, as though threatening to flood the world. There was no way they were going to ride out in this, so they were going to wait it out. It was a couple of extra minutes that Hanagaki could see Draken, and he couldn't think of a more wonderful thing.

Draken scowled at the sky and pulled his phone out, probably to let Mitsuya or someone know that they were going to be late.

Meanwhile, Hanagaki couldn't help but notice the shine on Draken's face, the glimmer in his eyes, the way he rolled his eyes, and how the whole world seemed to fit in the arc of that curve. The rain could drown out the world, but Draken would remain here.

"...Takemitchy?" his voice was louder than the rain, the thunder, and Hanagaki's throbbing heart, "The heat getting to you or something?"

And it wasn't the summer heat, but it was heat. And it wasn't something like a once-in-a-millennium comet, or the storm of a century, but something else entirely. It was the thing that slowed the world down, like Hanagaki could feel the earth changing trajectory to keep this smile a little longer, and Hanagaki had never been more content to be so helplessly powerful.

It was Draken, arching an eyebrow at him before kicking him in the leg.

Hanagaki groaned at the pain, but he finally snapped out of his thoughts.

"...Takemitchy?"

"Huh?"

"You with me now?" he gave him a lopsided grin.

At that time, Hanagaki should have said, "always."

He didn't remember what he actually said, but it was probably something stupid and dumb. It probably was, when all he remembered was the way the rain stopped and the sun returned. And he was awestruck, the way people were rendered speechless in front of the glorious. Sunlight framed Draken like it was made for the sole purpose of making Draken look stunning. Clouds parted as though to share the fleeting time they had with him with even the sky.

Takemichi, to put it in simple words, is hot.

All of Toman knows this and have trained to act normal around him in order to maintain world peace. They have scoured mountains high and low, crossed countless oceans and faced off against gigantic beasts most humans have never even heard of, just to be brought to their knees because of a skirt, a fucking skirt.

It all started one fine regular day, the captains of Toman were gathering today for a meeting. It was a simple affair, discussing the different areas under Toman and how they were doing. These types of meetings often had the people attending dressed in casuals, the usual black uniform hanging out to dry in the sun after god knows how long it had been worn for.

There was still ten minutes left until the meeting began, but there still wasn’t a sign of the blonde teenager coming. Normally he would be here the earliest, talking about how kids these days seriously don’t know the value of time.

Chifuyu sighs heavily, not being the only one to notice his captain's absence. A lot of people, scratch that, everyone has noticed. The usual chatter that fills the air is gone, replaced by a tense silence, only one thought on everyone’s minds, Where the hell is Takemichi?

Time passes by agonizingly slowly, less than a minute before its time for the meeting and finally they can hear the sound of shoes hitting the floor a mile a minute. Mikey is holding in barely restrained annoyance, eyes dark and a tight smile on his face.

Takemichi comes bursting in through the door, a shout of “Safe!” leaving his lips. He rests his hands against his knees, breathing heavily and looks around at the dropped jaws of his friends and immediately his cheeks explode into pink.

Just as Mikey is about to threaten Takemichi to never do that again or else, his breath catches in his throat, because what in the hell got into Takemichi for him to dress like that.

He brings his hands to his chest, feeling unnaturally exposed in the pink dress. Because it was made for someone with a chest, the dress was loose there for Takemichi and sagged, showing off delicious skin. It should’ve looked funny, but any sane (or insane) person who looked at him could only describe him as erotic, lewd, a literal succubus incarnate if you will. His hair was back to being black, showing off his pretty blue eyes. They were tearing up slightly and only made him look even more tempting.

And oh my god he was wearing garter belts.

HE WAS WEARING GARTER BELTS!!

They were the same shade as his dress, and only served to make him look even more submissive and breedable.

In a shy manner, his hands went towards the bottom of his dress and tried to tug them, although it did more damage than good considering you could literally hear the control of several teenage boys snap at once.

If Mikey had been a lesser man he would have immediately jumped Takemichi, too bad he was. Thankfully Draken still had enough thinking power left in order to hold back the commander. As much as he wanted to do the same, he had to hold himself back for Takemichi’s sake.

Baji was biting so hard at his rubber band that it snapped and hit him in the face. That seemed to clear his mind a bit as he stared at the horndogs around him, a hand on his cheek that was steadily becoming red.

Kazutora was lying on the floor, barely alive after receiving a punch capable of sending a man to heaven because Hakkai caught him in his ‘I am going to jump takemichi’ stance. Don’t even ask how he knows about it, Hakkai would rather not answer.

Takemichi, to put it in simple words, is hot.

All of Toman knows this and have trained to act normal around him in order to maintain world peace. They have scoured mountains high and low, crossed countless oceans and faced off against gigantic beasts most humans have never even heard of, just to be brought to their knees because of a skirt, a fucking skirt.

It all started one fine regular day, the captains of Toman were gathering today for a meeting. It was a simple affair, discussing the different areas under Toman and how they were doing. These types of meetings often had the people attending dressed in casuals, the usual black uniform hanging out to dry in the sun after god knows how long it had been worn for.

There was still ten minutes left until the meeting began, but there still wasn’t a sign of the blonde teenager coming. Normally he would be here the earliest, talking about how kids these days seriously don’t know the value of time.

Chifuyu sighs heavily, not being the only one to notice his captain's absence. A lot of people, scratch that, everyone has noticed. The usual chatter that fills the air is gone, replaced by a tense silence, only one thought on everyone’s minds, Where the hell is Takemichi?

Time passes by agonizingly slowly, less than a minute before its time for the meeting and finally they can hear the sound of shoes hitting the floor a mile a minute. Mikey is holding in barely restrained annoyance, eyes dark and a tight smile on his face.

Takemichi comes bursting in through the door, a shout of “Safe!” leaving his lips. He rests his hands against his knees, breathing heavily and looks around at the dropped jaws of his friends and immediately his cheeks explode into pink.

Just as Mikey is about to threaten Takemichi to never do that again or else, his breath catches in his throat, because what in the hell got into Takemichi for him to dress like that.

He brings his hands to his chest, feeling unnaturally exposed in the pink dress. Because it was made for someone with a chest, the dress was loose there for Takemichi and sagged, showing off delicious skin. It should’ve looked funny, but any sane (or insane) person who looked at him could only describe him as erotic, lewd, a literal succubus incarnate if you will. His hair was back to being black, showing off his pretty blue eyes. They were tearing up slightly and only made him look even more tempting.

And oh my god he was wearing garter belts.

HE WAS WEARING GARTER BELTS!!

They were the same shade as his dress, and only served to make him look even more submissive and breedable.

In a shy manner, his hands went towards the bottom of his dress and tried to tug them, although it did more damage than good considering you could literally hear the control of several teenage boys snap at once.

If Mikey had been a lesser man he would have immediately jumped Takemichi, too bad he was. Thankfully Draken still had enough thinking power left in order to hold back the commander. As much as he wanted to do the same, he had to hold himself back for Takemichi’s sake.

Baji was biting so hard at his rubber band that it snapped and hit him in the face. That seemed to clear his mind a bit as he stared at the horndogs around him, a hand on his cheek that was steadily becoming red.

Kazutora was lying on the floor, barely alive after receiving a punch capable of sending a man to heaven because Hakkai caught him in his ‘I am going to jump takemichi’ stance. Don’t even ask how he knows about it, Hakkai would rather not answer.

i have always loooooved vocaloid update designs, v4 update era was my Absolute Favorite, so when sv2 was announced, against my better judgement, i was absolutely determined to make "update" designs for all (checking) 28 ?? vimalion sv designs. ough

there were a few things i wanted to achieve:

i wanted the SV2 designs to feel more like a unified ensemble

i wanted it to be obvious from an immediate glance whether you were looking at a SV1 or SV2 design

i wanted to leave flexibility for new future SV2 (only) designs in the future

vimalion sv1 designs were largely "neutral colors (black, white) + key colors", so for sv2, i reduced this down to "dark neutrals (black, grey) + key colors, with a gradient". it does make everyone look a little bit emo, and some sv1 designs (like weishu) didn't have any light neutrals which kind of makes them fail point 2, but i think overall it worked out pretty well :')

i also gave everyone newwww hairstyles ^_^ because it's fun. but i made sure they were all hairstyles that didn't change the length or cut of the hair cuz i like the idea of them being able to switch between these designs at will lol

(also, i added an extra line to the logo. for Synth V Two)

but the main challenge of this premise is that there are many vimalion designs i simply feel like i nailed on the first shot. i simply think that some of the vimalion designs are Perfect. also some of them i made like, literally only months ago. so i can't really go a miku v4 or longya v4 route of trying to "improve" or "modernize" them with only slight adjustments.

to this end, my approach was more along the lines of v4 flower: take the same original Vision, but turn it into a different direction*

i feel like this approach lets each iteration have its own identity, and since i don't want the SV2 designs to be replacement for the SV1s but rather just New Additional Designs If You Want Them, i felt like it was the right approach :-)

*i know v4 flower was just based off a genderbend fanart but bear with me for the sake of my design theory lol

anyways, i haven't really talked publicly about the direction/themes/motifs/Visions for the vimalion dt designs, so i thought it'd be fun to identify them and talk about how i did them in a different flavor for their sv2 designs! some are a bit more interesting than others haha

Saki: the og, very first AI voicebank... so i wanted her to feel very Lowkey, very Tutorial Character. nonplayable secretary in the idol game vibe. so my vision for her is "chic sexy office lady", which i did with a sexy little tube top- fully out for her SV1 and buttoned up under her blazer (but still w some skin showing under) for SV2- combined w sexy officewear (it's just normal officewear?)

Qing Su: she and saki were the only faceless vocals for a while, so when people made fan designs they often made them reaaaally complex. so i wanted qing su to be elegant but simple: "marine fashion + hanfu". hence the sailor collar :-) SV2 has her showing more skin but i feel like it's like a "walk in the ocean" vibe. she's also got a bit of a lace subtheme in SV1 so i brought that back in SV2 with the gloves to kind of echo the "elegance" vibe of the long skirt.

also! back when letter vocals were only 1 letter i also tried to incorporate the letter into their designs... this didn't last long, but it did stick for qingsu- in her SV1 design, the combination of her bun and the hair stick make a Q shape. i reprised this in spirit for SV2 with the hair loop + ponytail also making a Q shape :-)

Ryo: his vision is "street fashion + modernized traditional japanese". for his SV1 i gave him a little half kimono thing, kinda samurai reminiscent... SV2 i gave him a haori instead (though i brought the kimono sleeves back for vibes) + hakama pants. also, his hair is based off kenshi yonezu, so i just picked another kenshi hairstyle for SV2 lol

Kevin: i felt bad for english voicebanks not having traditional fashion motifs to pull from like the japanese and chinese ones. i figured steampunk is the closest thing to immediately recognizable English Fashion Culture, so that's why the english voicebanks have steampunk elements. and thusly as the first English voicebank his vision was just "steampunk guy". i brought back the K-shaped neck thing from one of Kevin's earlier design iterations because it's sooooo good. and then i put the goggles on his head because they annoy me around his neck. that's basically all i have to say for him.

mo chen: his vision is "cute menswear + chinese fashion", or more succinctly "match qingsu" LOL. i couldnt really get him to matchsies super close w qingsu anymore though so i swapped out his wendy collar so he could have an elegant sweater vest over chinese collar moment. his hair is in a loop to match his sister but maybe it can look like the O from his logo if you want.

an xiao: his vision is "elevated high fashion suit". it was a very dramatic weird bodysuit moment for SV1 but SV2 looks a bit more like a normal high fashion suit LOL. also his tits gotta be out. also idk he gives me "suit + sneaker" vibes right? dont you agree? (holding a microphone up to you) hey

feng yi: she was the first one i earnestly designed with "VIMALION" in mind rather than just one-off designs, so i went a little bit too crazy with giving her motifs. i guess her vision theme is "han lolita-ish?" but she also had subthemes of clouds, ribbons, that weird criss-cross thing on her wrists... plus her main theme of ginkgo... anyways. i took the fluff under her skirt that served as a "cloud" vision and gave it to her as a fashionable little shawl for SV2. i swapped the zettai ryoukai of her arms and legs (thigh socks -> opera gloves, bare arms -> bare legs) just cuz?? i also made her colors closer to what they actually are LOL

weina: her vision is "phoenix goddess". i regretted giving her a bird theme when ling wan came out and was actually bird themed HAHA. but for SV2 i just did another angle on this vision, though maybe a little more elegantly this time... hers probably feels the most like a "level up". you can't tell in her key art but her cape is still wing shaped i promise.

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