What are mythology and folktales if not shared characters that people weave various tales about? Mass education, mass religion, and mass literacy may have sent the habit into dormancy for a while, but in the same way, I think the popularity of “participatory” characters like Miku is precisely because that itch has been unscratched for so long, like you said.

The authenticity issue is pretty interesting, but my handle on it would be retreading what I’ve already written repeatedly about participatory culture.

There are so many trains of thought leaving this particular station, but the first that I can think of off the top of my head before I turn in for the night is that, against Lana Del Rey, Miku’s easier to accept in that her persona is knowingly fabricated so, in a weird kind of way, she’s more ‘honest’. More importantly though, I think that in terms of Miku vs Lana, it’s a case of pop star pretending to be non-manufactured (something we’ve seen countless times before) versus virtual pop idol (which hasn’t really happened before).

That is to say, virtual idols have cropped up in books and movies but this is the first time that such a character has found ‘fame’ in the real world. Interestingly, a science & tech monthly that I’ve subscribed to for years did a feature about virtual reality and part of that article focused on the evolution of virtual idols in Japan. Sadly that particular issue was back in the mid 90s so I threw it into the recycling bin years ago, but suffice to say that the general concept that created Miku has been stewing away for a number of years…I suspect it wasn’t until 1. the voice synth technology was good enough and 2. the internet provided enough exposure that it took off like it has.

The techology in that article talked about the marketing angle but also the CG artwork and animation…and this was over a decade ago! I think we’re going to see a lot of surprising (and possibly weird) developments riding off the back of the whole vocaloid phenomenon that has nothing to do with voice synthesisers and music composers. If Gibson were writing Idoru today, I wonder how different it would be…I’d love to find out what he thinks of it.