Shiki Rowen

Shiki Rowen
Character information
Species	Werewolf
Gender	Male
Pronouns	He/Him
Age	14 (UTAU debut) 15 (A.I.VOICE) 16 (VOCALOID6)
Birthday	March 23
Height	5'02" (159cm)
Weight	100lbs (45kg)
Item	Potato
Technical information
Product code	A.I.VOICE: AIVT2015J (physical) AIVT2016J (digital) VOCALOID6: V6VB_SHIKIROWEN
Type	Beast Vocal Series, UTAU, DeepVocal, DeepVocal2, CoeFont, TALQu, A.I.VOICE, A.I.VOICE Junior, MYCOEIROINK, VOCALOID6
Language	Japanese
Voice Provider	Yuuma
Concept	Yuuma
Illustrator	Yukanuntiusel (UTAU .Revo, VOCALOID6) Kitakado (.Revo-Re:Chain-Deeper) Shinono Tunekichi (A.I.VOICE)
3D modeling	Shinono Tunekichi
Release date	March 23, 2010 (UTAU) April 24, 2024 (VOCALOID6)
Creator	Yuuma
Group	Kemonone Rou (Shiki Rowen) Project
Company	MUGEN Co., Ltd.
Affiliation	AI, Inc. (A.I.VOICE) YAMAHA Corporation (VOCALOID)

Shiki Rowen (式(しき)狼(ろう)縁(えん), Shiki Rouen), also known by his stage name Kemonone Row (獣(けもの)音(ね)ロウ, Kemonone Rou), is a Japanese vocal synthesizer character created by yuuma, a voice actor and Virtual YouTuber who is also his voice provider, and was first released for UTAU in March 2010 and later for DeepVocal in March 2020. He has received numerous additional singing and speaking voicebanks and models for various speech engines such as: SHABERU, TALQu, COEIROINK (announced to be compatible with VOICEVOX), RVC, and a speech library that was in development for CoeFont CLOUD. In early February 2024, it was announced that his UTAU voicebanks and RVC model would be discontinued at the end of the month. Those who wished to utilize his voicebanks were urged to download them while still available. The voicebanks were discontinued February 29th as scheduled. He was planned to receive a vocal for Synthesizer V Studio, however this was scrapped due to monetary reasons.

He received an A.I.VOICE text-to-speech library, his first commercial vocal synthesizer, developed through the A.I.VOICE Junior program, in March 2022, in collaboration with MUGEN Co., Ltd., and later was released as an AI voicebank for the VOCALOID6 engine in April 2024. On November 1, Shiki Rowen was announced to be receiving an update to the A.I.VOICE2 software, scheduled to be released in December.

With the release of Rowen's VOCALOID6 voicebank, yuuma transferred the rights to Rowen and Taigen to MUGEN, having fulfilled the lifelong dream he had of Rowen becoming a VOCALOID vocal ever since he created him when he was a middle school student. MUGEN will continue to manage projects related to the pair.

Concept

Shiki Rowen is a young teenager who absolutely loves potatoes. If you make him upset, it is highly advised to give him potatoes as a form of apology. Ironically, he dislikes every single vegetable other than potatoes.

Etymology

As for his stage name Kemonone Rou, it's surname is a combination of the words "kemono" (獣) and "ne" (音) meaning "beast" and "sound" respectively. In English, his name "Rou" (ロウ) is sometimes stylized as "Row".

Appearance

Rowen is a kemono, which means "beast" in Japanese, and is the Japanese equivalent to what is known as a furry in the western world. He is a young wolf with light blue and white fur, blue eyes, long, spiky black hair tied in a low ponytail, and a black nose on his muzzle. He wears a gold amulet around his neck, and has a gold piercing on his left ear.

• UTAU
• A.I.VOICE
• VOCALOID

For his UTAU .Revo design, he wears a purple and white crop tank top underneath a long hooded jacket of the same colors. This jacket splits in the back to allow his tail through. He wears grey jeans held up by a white belt with a gold buckle, sneakers sharing the same colors as his outfit, as well as fingerless gloves. He is depicted with a microphone based on the iconic Shure Brothers microphone, the model 55s, Multi-Impedance "Small Unidyne" Dynamic, which was first released in 1951. His mic is based on the modern "55SH Series II" variant, which is much curvier than the original version.

A.I.VOICE DESIGN APPEARANCE WORK IN PROGRESS

For his VOCALOID6 design, he wears a top that is blue on the upper half, and aqua on the lower half, and sports a long collar and white accent trim. His midriff is no longer exposed. He wears a black band around his neck, akin to a choker or collar. His jacket is primarily white with a long black collar and black shoulder flaps. The flaps feature 4 small yellow diamonds combined to form one large diamond on each flap. A small yellow rope holds his jacket closed and hooks underneath both flaps. The ends of his jacket, midsection, jacket sleeves, and inner sleeves are a glowing cyan. What appears to be black straps extend from the back of his jacket on both sides and snaps into place just below the shoulder flaps, and feature a silver button, and an aqua strip running down the center. His inner sleeves are black and feature an editor interface with red note bars. His fingerless gloves are now aqua with black trim. He wears black pants that have aqua bands around each leg above the knees, and small cyan lights over the knees and at the bottom of the legs. He wears silver and black shoes that have light bars running up the tongues. These bars are colored cyan, green, yellow, and red, and transition into each other in gradient fashion. The heels of his shoes feature two cyan light bars, and the soles of his shoes feature orangish-yellow lights. His low ponytail is held in place by a silver hair band with an aqua strip running around the ccenter. He also appears to wear an aqua ribbon in his hair as well. He also now has a blue streak in his hair. His hair is notably less spiky in appearance compared to his UTAU design. He now is featured with a new wired microphone that is more modern in appearance, and the stand is slightly altered for the detachable mic.

Likes

• Potatoes
• Potato butter

Dislikes

• Vegetables other than potatoes

Relations

• Shiki Taigen - Great-grandfather

History

Kemonone Row was originally created and released for UTAU in March 2010. Since then, he would have multiple releases over the span of several years including CV, VCV and CV-VC voicebanks.

In March 2020, he received two DeepVocal voicebanks, both of which were ports of two of his UTAU VCV voicebanks. On January 20, 2021, he was updated to the DeepVocal2 engine.

2021

On May 17, yuuma tweeted that Row and Shiki Taigen were expected to have commercial voicebanks developed on a software that would support English input. It was noted that the English voicebanks would be based on Japanese pronunciation. The platform was not confirmed at the time. In regards to Row's name, yuuma noted that he wasn't sure which would be better for a person's name as he didn't know enough English to make a decision, leaving this to fans to give suggestions. This later led to yuuma tweeting that the name would be changed to "Shiki Rowen", Row's real name, after the development of a commercial voicebank was decided. It would serve to unify with the family name "Shiki", which was the same as Shiki Taigen, Row's great-grandfather.

Later on July 5, yuuma expressed interest in creating a Synthesizer V AI voice database for Rowen, though a crowdfund would be necessary to produce it. He later asked overseas fans on July 7 if Rowen's voicebank should be on Synthesizer V Studio, and if so, a Standard voice database was considered due to budget. Synthesizer V was not a final decision, but it was confirmed to still be a consideration. A decision on crowdfunding would be dependent on support and encouragement from fans. The estimated budget would be based on previous successful Synthesizer V crowdfunds.

On September 10, it was announced that Rowen, alongside Taigen, would be receiving A.I.VOICE Junior voicebanks. This would be the first talk voicebank and first commercial voicebank for him, as his previous voicebanks were designed for singing and released for free.

2022

On March 12, 2022, Shiki Rowen and Shiki Taigen's A.I.VOICE libraries were released for pre-reservation as physical and digital download options through the A.I.VOICE Official Site, DLsite, and Vector PC Shop respectively. The release date was announced to be March 25, 2022, which was Rowen's 12th anniversary.

On July 26, yuuma announced that Rowen was now being recorded for an AI singing voicebank which would be first released for free on the NNSVS engine. In response to inquiries by fans, he said that Synthesizer V was no longer in consideration but that other commercial platforms were being considered; budgetary reasons (allocating everything for A.I.VOICE and blanking out AI singing synthesis) were cited for its dismissal as a platform. The status of his NNSVS AI voicebank is unknown as of this writing.

2023

On December 21, 2023, yuuma tweeted that Rowen would get a new singing voice on a commercial software (as well as a new commercial text-to-speech voicebank), but did not name any specific synth engines. He dismissed CeVIO AI as a possibility on December 22; after a fan later that same day speculated whether the singing vocal would be on either VOCALOID6 or Synthesizer V AI (and whether the talking vocal would be on either A.I.VOICE2 or VOICEPEAK), yuuma assured on December 25 that the engines were not related to AH-Software Co. Ltd. at all, thus ruling out Synthesizer V and VOICEPEAK as possibilities. Instead, in spite of hinting at VOCALOID6 as a hypothetical, he declared that the synthesis platform would be "still a secret" before also dismissing ACE Studio as a possibility.

2024

On January 8, 2024, yuuma started to tweet strongly-veiled words regarding Rowen's upcoming commercial singing voicebank: it would be the first beast-headed voicebank ever under the still-unrevealed engine's brand, although he was also teasing that "it would be better if it was a V6" (hinting at VOCALOID6); and AH-Software was again reiterated to not be involved at all. He also revealed that a new text-to-speech voicebank was being developed along with the singing voicebank, but did not reveal the engine. He was also aware of various other companies planning development of furry-character voicebanks, but then teased whether everyone would want to see a furry voicebank "coming from a famous Japanese manufacturer" "with a great track record in Japan" (hinting possibly at YAMAHA Corporation). He also opined that Rowen would have sounded flat under the Piapro Studio NT engine had he been developed for it.

On February 6, it was announced that Rowen's UTAU voicebanks and RVC model would be discontinued on February 29, as part of the dismantling of the UTAU Voice Bank Kemonone Row project; the decision was taken by yuuma himself rather than by any other company or entity.

On February 15, yuuma tweeted that a new Shiki Rowen project had begun and that on February 26, a voicebank "under the brand of a commercial singing synthesis software" would be announced, with no mention of any specific voice engine. This commercial software was eventually revealed to be VOCALOID6 on the announcement date, however it was not stated when his voicebank would be released for sale; it was also announced that on Rowen's 14th birthday, March 23, his first full-length VOCALOID6 demo song would be published. yuuma also announced that he would be completely transferring the rights to both Rowen and Shiki Taigen to MUGEN Co., Ltd., having fulfilled the lifelong dream he had of Rowen becoming a VOCALOID vocal ever since he created him when he was a middle-school student; from then on, MUGEN would continue to manage projects related to the pair, while yuuma would spend the rest of his life working on his Virtual YouTuber career as well as drawing artworks and creating games. It was also revealed that the trademarks for Shiki Rowen and Shiki Taigen had been transferred to MUGEN the year before, albeit the exact date was not given.

On February 27, when asked by one of the VOCALOID Wiki editors, it was confirmed that Rowen, primarily a Japanese vocalist, was practicing his English pronunciation to make it better correspond to it under VOCALOID6's Multilingual feature, "so that English speakers can also touch Rowen!" He followed up shortly later that the decision to choose VOCALOID over other commercial singing-synthesis engines was because (1) English- and Chinese-speaking users always worked hard to make Rowen and Taigen's Japanese UTAU voices sing English and Chinese words and thus MUGEN wanted to return the favor by choosing a VOCALOID capable of singing in multiple languages, and (2) they wanted the VOCALOID to sound close enough to his UTAU's voice quality.

On March 23, Rowen's VOCALOID6 demo, alongside his new design, were revealed, with Yukanuntiusel returning as Rowen's illustrator. Furthermore, it was also revealed that his voicebank is slated to release on April 24.

Marketing

In 2014, his 3D model was officially registered to be used in the Charamin Studio software.

Voicebanks

• Kemonone Rou (UTAU), March 23, 2010, discontinued
• Kemonone Rou Act2 (UTAU),August 25, 2010, discontinued
• Kemonone Rou Append (UTAU), March 23, 2011, discontinued
• Kemonone Rou .Revo (UTAU), December 18, 2012 +, discontinued
  • Power
  • Light
  • Deep
  • Soft
  • Whisper
  • Adult

• Kemonone Rou .Revo-Re:Chain- (UTAU), June 06, 2013 +, discontinued
  • TranSinger
  • Silencer
  • Noiser
  • Deeper
  • Silencer2S
  • TranSinger2S
  • BlasterUNLIMITEDEDITION
  • BlasterLIMITEDEDITION

• Kemonone Rou .Revo-CVVC：SOVIDROCKS (UTAU), March 22, 2015, discontinued February 29, 2024
• Kemonone Rou (DeepVocal), March 23, 2020, discontinued February 29, 2024
  • TRANSINGER3:D
  • SILENCER3:D
• Shiki Rowen (A.I.VOICE Junior), March 25, 2022
• Shiki Rowen (Synthesizer V Studio), scrapped
• Shiki Rowen (NNSVS), assumed cancelled
• Shiki Rowen (VOCALOID6), April 24, 2024

External links

Official

• Kemonone Row Website
• Shiki Rowen Website
• Twitter

Articles

• DeepVocal Wikia
• UTAU wiki
• Furry Synth Wiki
• VOCALOID Wiki
• NicoNicoPedia
• VocaDB (UTAU)
• VocaDB (A.I.VOICE Junior)
• UTAU Gakkyouku Data Base
• UTAU Visual Archive