Just announced in the recent nicovideo livestream event was the winning 2014 Snow Miku design, as well as the winning pet design that will accompany her. The designs were chosen by fans by using a voting system on the live stream itself. Selection boxes appeared over each choice, and the votes (clicks) were tallied.

The winners of the event are the #8 finalist of the Snow Miku design contest, and the #7 finalist for the associated pet that will also be included with her design. The theme of next year’s design was “magic”, and required that all design entries of Miku included a wand.

Congratulations to both winners! Now comes the long wait before the designs are refined and finally processed for creating a Nendoroid. You can view larger and more detailed images of the winning designs from here (Miku) and here (pet).

After the previous Winter and even Spring Family Mart promotional campaigns featuring Snow Miku and Sakura Miku, it seems that the fans just can’t get enough. With the demand for promotional goods still high, Family Mart will be launching another promotional campaign this summer, starting at a currently unspecified date.

The recent livestream event on nicovideo detailed many of the prizes that can be expected in the lottery of the upcoming promotion. Like the last time, each store will carry 100 tickets and 100 prizes. Tickets will cost 800 yen each. The majority of prizes will be the smaller rewards, such as the Graphigs and clear files. The much rarer prizes include the 2013 Family Mart version Nendoroids of Rin, Len and Miku.

The rarest prize of all is a Family Mart Swimsuit Miku Nendoroid, which will be rewarded to whoever buys the last (100th) ticket from each Family Mart store. So not only will this figure be rarer, but fans will have to camp near stores to be able to snatch it.

Better images and more detailed info will follow soon.

Images borrowed from 初音ミクみく.

For accessories, Kaito will come with three different expressions, two different scarf sizes, and an ice cream bar. As a small hidden bonus, he seems capable of holding many various Nendoroid accessories (many of which are ironically perfectly sized for Figmas). So if you have any laying around, go nuts.

Preorders can be made in the usual places (CDJapan, Amiami, Amazon JP, Hobby Search). But those who preorder directly from GSC’s online shop will receive a bonus Nendoroid/Figma clip that allows you to pose your figures from additional surfaces.

Preorders from GSC’s online shop will close on June 12th at 9:00 PM JST, while preorders from other sites will remain open until their limits are reached. Orders are scheduled to ship in September 2013. You can view the official GSC product page here, and view additional images from Mikatan’s blog.

As a followup for my previous post regarding this album, Reboot is finally scheduled for release tomorrow on May 15th, 2013 JST. If you haven’t preordered your own copy yet, it’s not too late to score some cool bonus items with the album. Below are a couple options to choose from.

Along with the album, CDJapan’s preorder bonuses include 5 collectable character straps, and a full reproduction key-ring, all of which was seen in the promotional video for Reboot.

The special bonus for ordering from CDJapan is a Reboot poster. The price is set at 1905 Yen, or about $19 USD. Click here to order from CDJapan.

The second preorder option is Amazon Japan, which offers similar bonuses as CDJapan, but with a single change: Instead of a poster, you will receive two decorative clear files.

Like CDJapan, Amazon Japan also ships albums internationally. The price is set at 2000 Yen, or about $20 USD. Click here to order from Amazon Japan.

Below is the crossfade previewing all 16 tracks from the album.

It’s that time of the year again! For the third year in a row, Good Smile Company and Piapro are collaborating on a contest where the Vocaloid community can submit illustrations to be used for the 5th official Snow Miku design. The contest began on April 24th, and will end on May 13th at 4:00 PM JST.

The theme for next year’s Snow Miku has a few rules. The theme this time around is “magic”, so all entries must show Snow Miku with a wand of some kind. Another addition that’s new this time around is the inclusion of a pet. This is a seperate category, meaning there will be two winners this year!

Entries for Snow Miku designs must be submitted to Piapro with the tag “２０１４年雪ミク衣装”, and the tags must be locked. If you need it, you can use the template design provided here. Entries for pet designs are also submitted to piapro, but must use the tag “２０１４年雪ミクペット”. Once again, the tags must be locked.

EDIT: Mamitan from Good Smile Company has posted a translated guide here.

Winners of the contest will receive a free Nendoroid of the winning design, along with many Snow Miku goods. You can see all current Snow Miku entries from here, and pet entries from here. The winners will be selected sometime around mid-May.

I can’t wait to see the next winning design!

Thanks to the preorder listing from Amiami, we now have a bit more info. The 1/6 scale figure stands at a taller than expected 29.5cm, and includes a detailed scale replica of the Yamaha DX7 synthesizer. Also included are different sets of hand pieces for poses, but there doesn’t seem to be any alternate expressions.

The figure is priced at 20,700 Yen ($211 USD) on Amiami. This may seem high, but remember that this is essentially a much larger and highly detailed Figma with accessories. The expected availability is set for January 2014. As a note, I’m pretty sure this is one of the very few official 1/6 scale Miku figures in existence.

Check out some of the images below! Find the full set of images and product listing from Amiami here. I will add additional sources as they become available.

EDIT: An Amazon.co.jp listing has appeared here. A CDJapan listing has also appeared here.

Needless to say, I think we were all expecting a DVD and Blu-ray release of the Mikupa in Kansai concert event at some point. It looks like those expectations have been answered, as there are now three different sets to choose from this time around. If you’re wondering about the Hong Kong, Taiwan and 2013 Sapporo concerts, those have been acknowledged in this announcement as well!

Up first is the DVD set. The entire 3 hour event spans two DVDs and includes all 39 songs. If you preorder from Amazon.co.jp, you can receive the following bonuses:

A special decorative box, a full brochure of the event containing additional images and infomation, and a white carrying pouch decorated with the images of all 6 Cryptonloids.

The DVD set is priced at 5,284 Yen and ships internationally. Please note that DVDs are region locked, and may require special steps to be playable in other regions.

Up next is the Blu-ray set, which is similar to the DVD set, but with a few important differences.

The Blu-ray set includes a bonus disk containing special footage from the 2012 Hong Kong and Taiwan concerts, as well as the recent 2013 Mikupa in Sapporo event. The carrying bag for this set is black instead of white.
 

The Blu-ray set is priced at 6,838 Yen, and ships internationally.

The final set is much pricier, but contains a few attractive bonuses that are exclusive to Amazon.co.jp orders. It includes all bonuses found in the Blu-ray set shown above, as well as the following items:

A 50 page album containing special live and behind the scenes images of the event, and a steel-case book containing special illustrations by KEI. The price for this Amazon exclusive set is 11,340 Yen.

All three sets are scheduled to ship out on August 30th, a day before Hatsune Miku’s 6th anniversary. Alternatively, the first two sets can also be ordered from CDJapan (DVD and Blu-ray) and Amiami (DVD and Blu-ray).

If you missed it before, here is a video from the official Hatsune Miku YouTube channel containing footage and interviews from the Mikupa in Kansai event:

View the full song list from the concert event here.

SEGA appears to have another game project in the works, as a new teaser site has been opened up. Other than for the site url (http://miku.sega.jp/mmr/), the only other info we have for now is the opening date for the website: April 18th.

The teaser page can be found here. And according to SEGA’s twitter post, there will also be an update in the weekly Famitsu magazine. Anyone care to take a guess at what it could be, and what “mmr” could possibly stand for?

Via VO.net and Hatsune Miku Miku blog.

[Updated 4/16/2013] I previously guessed it was a second Project Mirai game for the 3DS, and it looks like the Weekly Famitsu has confirmed this (via TaleTaleSource).

初音ミクProject mirai2（仮題） (Working Title)
発売日／2013年秋発売予定 (Fall 2013 Release)
機種／3DS (System)

リズムゲームは全曲タッチモードとボタンモードがある。収録曲は全てフルサイズで収録される。(The game will be playable in both touch screen and button press modes. All songs used will be full-length)

収録曲 (Music Tracks)
子猫のパヤパヤ（ワンカップP） (“Koneko no Paya Paya” by OneCup-P)
ドレミファロンド（40mP） (“Do Re Mi Fa Rondo” by 40mP)
ゆめゆめ（DECO＊27） (“Yume Yume” by Deco*27)

Images by Japan Otaku Channel.

Check out the images below! And if you’re curious about how you can obtain one of these, be sure to read my other article here.

Via Mikatan: [Link]

The full video has been recently discovered on a VEVO channel that allows viewers from outside Japan.

The promotional video was released to advertise the new album release by the producers Keiichiro Shibuya and Hiroki Azuma, which is still available for purchase in in limited edition Blu-ray and DVD versions.

From the animation and music style, the video was clearly made by the same studio responsible for the production of THE END, the four-time sold-out opera performance at the Yamaguchi Center in Japan from December 1st through the 3rd in 2012. The event was so successful, they have announced an additional showing in Shibuya, Tokyo for May 24th, and even a showing in Paris for November 14th.

It’s quite possible that the promotional video is a part of THE END itself, as you can hear a small section of ‘Initiation’ at the end of the official promotional video for THE END. The music video can be best described as intense and mind-bending, and can even seem somewhat confusing at certain points. Enjoy the official video below.