TOKYO6 ENTERTAINMENT (合同会社TOKYO6 ENTERTAINMENT) is an entertainment company focused on the planning and development of speech synthesis software with characters, production and sale of goods and events, live music, and music production.
History[]
Established as a start-up venture in December 2019, TOKYO6 ENTERTAINMENT was launched and ran by the president, Ryuichi Akasako, who started out as an engineer at a software development company. He was also a former member of VOCALOMAKETS, a company known for managing voice synthesizer characters Yuzuki Yukari and Kizuna Akari. He could not suddenly make a living solely through this company, so he began work as a programmer at the same time and made use of his savings. He had some idea of what he wanted to do when he started the company, thus deciding to launch a crowdfund for TOKYO6 ENTERTAINMENT's first vocalist, Koharu Rikka, while consulting with AH-Software Co. Ltd..[1]
A successful crowdfunding campaign with the goal of developing a VOICEROID for Koharu Rikka ran around the same time. Additional stretch goals were added after reaching several milestones including the development of a singing synthesizer. The stretch goal for singing synthesizer production was reached on June 7 at 25 million yen.[2][3]
On June 26, 2020, TOKYO6 announced the development of Koharu Rikka for Synthesizer V Studio in partnership with AH-Software.[4][5]
On May 22, 2021, TOKYO6 ENTERTAINMENT unveiled two new characters alongside Koharu Rikka in collaboration with Otaru City, in Hokkaido, Japan for a campaign titled "Koharu Rikka x Otaru Collaboration (小春六花×小樽コラボ)" The characters revealed are named Hanakuma Chifuyu (花隈千冬) and Natsuki Karin (夏色花梨) respectively and are students enrolled at the fictional high school Otaru Shiokaze High School (小樽潮風高校). They are part of a small music club with Koharu Rikka. Along with this information, an illustration contest and radio contest utilizing Koharu Rikka's CeVIO AI Talk library were announced as well as a contest for naming the bear-like characters accompanying the girls. [6] It is unknown if these characters will be given voice synthesis libraries at this time. On August 8, due to some concerns regarding business activities related to Synthesizer V, Dreamtonics Co., Ltd. noted that Chifuyu and Karin were on the list of "yet-to-be-published" voices and initiatives.[7]
On February 17, 2022, during AH-Software's monthly live broadcast, TOKYO6 acknowledged their cooperation in the development of VOICEPEAK, AHS's new text-to-speech software based on Dreamtonics' Syllaflow AI speech-synthesis engine. There, they also announced Natsuki Karin's release month to be April while Hanakuma Chifuyu's was confirmed to be around October.[8]
On April 19, 2022, TOKYO6 introduced a fourth character known as Momoka Akino (百花秋乃), who was Karin's senior. She made her debut in Karin's audio drama and was voiced by Nene Hieda, who won the Rookie of the Year award at the Voice Actor Awards in 2022.[9] She was themed around the autumn season.[10] There was an offer with an idea of making a voice synthesized character in the future, however, TOKYO6 ENTERTAINMENT wanted to think further about the development of the three existing cast members, thus putting the idea aside.[1]
On June 20, on Hanakuma Chifuyu's crowdfund page, it was later mentioned that TOKYO6 ENTERTAINMENT noticed that more and more people were talking about the characters at the time, which they believed was due to the fans' creativity and support. The company noted that they wanted to create several characters wearing the same uniform and to be based on the same concept, thus easily creating dialogues between them, illustrations, novels, and various secondary works. With this in mind, they proceeded with the project in a rushed but uncompromising manner. Koharu Rikka was designed to have a rich middle range and a flexible voice to be used with any genre, Natsuki Karin had a lovely voice with strong high notes, and Hanakuma Chifuyu had a rich bass tone and exquisite breathiness. All three of them could be used to sing in a variety of genres, with the company believing that they would also be useful in choirs.[11]
Following successful crowdfund campaigns, Natsuki Karin was released for Synthesizer V AI in April 2022, and Hanakuma Chifuyu in October 2022.
In May 2023, an interview with Ryuichi Akako was released by DTM Station. When asked about why the crowdfunding campaigns began as concepts, he explained that after the switch from VOICEROID to CeVIO AI for Rikka's speech synthesis software and returning the full refund for all applicants in every tier, TOKYO6 ENTERTAINMENT wanted to show that this problem would not occur again in the future. He thought it would be easier for people to support the projects if they knew what the voices would be like, thus, the more information provided during the crowdfunding, the better. He also noted that it would be easier to convey the company's enthusiasm to the public this way and he wanted to gain the trust of supporters, which prompted the decision to release a preview of Chifuyu's voice when her crowdfunding campaign was launched. Regarding future development projects, TOKYO6 ENTERTAINMENT was interested in continuing to actively propose functional improvements for Synthesizer V and continuing focusing on speech synthesis. Plans for a second major update to Rikka's CeVIO AI Talk voice library was planned for the month. There were considerations for parallel development of software with new technology (such as VOICEPEAK), organizations of new live music events per character, projects for users, and developments with the Otaru City collaboration. Major goals for the future included animations and video game collaborations, though there were currently no plans.[1]
Key people[]
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Ryuichi Akasako (赤迫竜一; Akasako Ryūichi), best known as just Akasako (アカサコ), is the founder and president of TOKYO6 ENTERTAINMENT.
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Voice Databases[]
Synthesizer V Studio[]
Voice databases developed by TOKYO6 ENTERTAINMENT.
Synthesizer V AI[]
Voice databases developed by TOKYO6 ENTERTAINMENT.
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 https://www.dtmstation.com/archives/60921.html
- ↑ https://greenfunding.jp/pub/projects/3660/
- ↑ https://twitter.com/tokyo6info/status/1270377998852558848
- ↑ https://twitter.com/tokyo6info/status/1276564665061924864
- ↑ https://note.com/tokyo6/n/n3c60d7d49057
- ↑ https://note.com/tokyo6/n/nc5e32c933fa1
- ↑ https://twitter.com/dreamtonics_en/status/1424533859752812545
- ↑ https://twitter.com/tokyo6info/status/1494296032750219267
- ↑ https://twitter.com/tokyo6info/status/1516604792701091841
- ↑ https://twitter.com/s_akasakov/status/1527328339945746433
- ↑ https://ubgoe.com/projects/200
External links[]
- TOKYO6 ENTERTAINMENT
- TOKYO6 ENTERTAINMENT (@tokyo6info) Twitter
- TOKYO6 ENTERTAINMENT Facebook
- TOKYO6 ENTERTAINMENT Instagram