Editorial: R.I.P. 炉心融解

Artist: Lento
Artist: Lento

NOTE: The following contains comments that are based on the opinions of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of  Vocaloidism or its staff.

“Roshin Yuukai,” literally “nuclear fusion”, but more commonly referred to by it’s English subtitle of “Meltdown,” has been taken off of Nico Nico Douga.  To non-Japanese speakers like myself, this was a puzzling development, but as the details came in, it became more and more troubling. It’s been explained elsewhere on this blog, (actually, keep it in a separate tab/window; I’ll be referencing it often) so I’ll just jump right into the commentary.

No matter whether you think that taking the video down was a good idea or not, Iroha and friends are in the right.  It’s their work; it’s only natural that they deserve a say in how it’s viewed or distributed.  Essentially, it’s not that much different than internet piracy.  You have a bunch of people trying to distribute content in an inappropriate manner, and the “Meltdown” staff, as creators and de facto owners of the song, have a right to try and control distribution as they see fit.  You may not like it, but making everyone happy isn’t the goal here.  If anything, I think Iroha and his or her cohorts should be lauded in trying to do things the “right way”.  The MyList spamming did nothing but boost the song’s visibility, and others wouldn’t say “no” to free pub. Sure, it may be petty, but again, they have the control.

It’ll be interesting to see where things go from here.  VocaRan 101 has the same scoring system as the past 80-some before it, so it looks like that won’t change.  The two real unanswered questions are these:
1) Will other producers of artificially publicized videos take action?
2) Will the staff of “Meltdown” stop producing videos for Nico Nico Douga.

My initial inclination is that the answer to both is no. Only time will tell for the answer to #2, but for the first question, the initial numbers tend to agree with me. My fellow bloggers looked at the sea of downward arrows and conclude that there is an immediate impact (for the better, I’m sure). I think they are humbly mistaken, because they are looking at the wrong statistic. For my conclusion, I look at the points. Score is generally a better indication of traffic than a ordered ranking. If Song A has 300,000 points in a week, and Song B has 200,000 points, there’s a good chance that more people were watching/MyListing Song A than Song B. The same can be said for comparing one song’s score week-to-week. As stated the VocaRan article, when comparing this week’s scores to last week’s, there were songs that went up and songs that went down. Of the nine “regulars” still in the Top 30, 5 of them had changes of at least 6,000 points, but four of them were increases in score. That one was “Black★Rock Shooter”, who likely had a generous bump from MikuFES and the upcoming anime adaptation. Do you see a “Meltdown” effect from this? I don’t.

Maybe the fallout (pun somewhat intended) will take time to fully develop, or maybe this will just end up being an isolated incident that quickly vanishes from the collective conscious of NND. Whatever happens, this certainly is an unfortunate event that I do not want to be repeated.

About: Joe Mello


9 thoughts on “Editorial: R.I.P. 炉心融解”

  1. I strongly hope that this does make some impact, As much as I adore BRS, Meltdown should not die in vain. I'd be overjoyed if it causes the destruction of Miku Miku no Shite Ageru- sorry, I do not want your Miku Miku, so give it to someone else.
    Either way, I'll certainly be getting the DVD and CD versions of Meltdown, along with any memorabilia, although I fear that this event has destroyed all chances of memorabilia a la the BRS keychains and Saihate nendos.

  2. The song title’s literal translation is “Meltdown”. Nuclear fusion is something else all together.

    I’m confused. Nagimiso took down his reupload too?

  3. Personally, I don't see what the big deal is. I actually praise what iroha did. This way it makes room in the countdown for potential new blood. I wish everyone including supercell would drop their videos after say 30 weeks on the countdown, and put it on a list of retired awesomeness. Countdowns are good to show popularity, yes, but it's supposed to also bring new music to the fans who would normally have no knowledge of it. Things like Miku Miku ni Shiteageru, Melt, BRS, and yes, even Double Lariat, have all been on the countdown for so long their popularity is basically assured. They should create a Vocaloid MV Hall of Fame playlist, having Rankaloid throw a retirement party once a week.

  4. If you want to gage the impact of the Meltdown removal, it's probably best not to compare 101 to 102, which are both weeks after the song's removal. A better comparison would be 99, the last ranking where Meltdown was present, to 102, the most recent one. Comparing those two weeks, all nine long-runners have seen reduced total points, coming generally as a combination of lost views and my-list adds. Still, there is a lot of fluctuation in the week-to-week results, so for an even better view of the impact, it would be best to take an average over weeks, for example weeks 97-99 versus 101-103 or 102-104.

    It's also important to compare the long-runners to the week-by-week mid-range songs that they intermingle with. There is a big difference in how each group earns their points each week. The songs that tend to stick around for only one or two weeks tend to have a higher proportion of their points come from my-list adds and fewer view counts, while long-runners tend to have higher view counts and lower my-list adds. Is the high number of weekly views due to how good or popular the songs are, or is it analogous to the dummy my-list strategy?

    1. That actually seems to be an intuitive process. Songs that have run for a couple weeks will have lower MyList counts simply because (in theory) the songs will have already been MyListed in previous weeks. Also, I don’t know what constitutes as a view, but I would think spamming F5 could easily rack up the hits.

      As for the first point, I initially compared 101 to 100, since that was the first time it was apparent to us (and anyone unaware) that Meltdown was gone. I do plan on a more long-term analysis, but right now, the week-to-week will suffice. The theory was that if there was a short-term impact, scores should have dropped immediately and stayed, but several went up in 101. 102 had the first indicator, but it’s still too early to tell.

      1. A "view" if I'm not mistaken constitutes when a single IP address visits the video and either streams or downloads it in its entirety. There are a lot of places that have IP detection scripts up, one of which I know is radio.keiichi.net, which keeps people from spamming multiple requests from a single IP. The same concept is true here. Only one person can constitute a hit per IP, and rapidly hitting F5 wouldn't change it. If anything, you would have to clear the cache and cookies before you can log another hit. Even if F5 did work, there are spam-detection scripts that limit the number of hits an IP can make per day and/or put them on a Spam list, making the entire group null and void.

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