Happy 5th Birthday, Miku!

Online artist community pixiv had over 2000 images uploaded for Miku’s birthday, filed under the appropriate tag. PIAPRO also had a lot of images uploaded, but unfortunately not all of them are tagged appropriately, so trawling through all the recent Miku images would probably be best. The following is a sample of the images uploaded to PIAPRO:

Nico Nico Douga also saw a large batch of uploads for Miku’s birthday, with over 250 videos currently on the 初音ミク誕生祭2012 tag. Some highlights include LamazeP’s latest song as well as a whole album (MIZUIRO-infinity) comprising of 10 new original songs uploaded by danierukunP (the guy who won the cosmetics set prize for SeeU in the VOCALOID3 Song Competition).

In addition to the typical user uploads, the 39’s Giving Day concert, the MIKUNOPOLIS concert and the Final 39’s Giving Day concert were streamed as a marathon on Nico Nico Live, with the first concert being free to watch and the later ones requiring paid tickets. Fujita Saki and Shimoda Asami, amongst others, were at a special Miku birthday party as well. At one point in time, according to the SEGA head there, Saki was eating some negi while Asapon was wringing a lemon. Later on, Asapon logged on to the concert stream and posted some comments as well.

Speaking of concerts, there were also many music-related events for Miku’s birthday. On August 29, a festival called “End of Summer’s 39 Fest” was held to celebrate the next-day release of Project DIVA f. During the day, it was held like a typical summer festival in Japan, but at night, the organizers wowed crowds with a short Miku concert that used projection onto water sprays to create the illusion of a giant Miku floating and dancing in mid-air. The Famitsu article has some nice photos and the concert was streamed on Nico Nico Live as well. Miku was also featured at Animelo Summer Live 2012 where she performed World is Mine and Tell Your World.

Nico Nico Douga also held a two-night club event at nicofarre the weekend before called Voca Nico Night, featuring many famous VOCALOID producers. The two shows were streamed on Nico as well. Furthermore, for the night leading up to Miku’s birthday, there was another event called Hatsune Miku 5th Anniversary DAIBA de DIVA ALL NIGHT special, which took place at Joypolis in Odaiba and started shortly before midnight. For the past month or so, Joypolis has also been holding daily Miku concerts, with two 3-song showings per day.

KarenT had also set up a special site for Miku’s birthday, which features several new albums including one that has a strings arrangement of malo’s Hajimete no Oto specially made for Miku’s birthday. Family Mart had many things set up for the lead up to the celebration, including a raffle for prizes and special Miku-themed foods that included vegetable juice and Hachune Miku buns (which ended up in a lot of guro pics on the web…) Anime-related goods shop Animate had a campaign going where buying suitable Miku merchandise such as Miku 5th compilation CDs resulted in some cardboard standups, postcards and raffle entries.

There were sites that let people write messages to Miku. On the Birthday Song for Miku site, messages eventually ended up in an interactive PV for the song. MIKUBOOK is also holding a message campaign with prizes, and a bingo event with even bigger prizes.