Megurine Luka

Megurine Luka (巡音ルカ / Megurine Ruka) was the third Japanese Vocaloid2 from Crypton (her Vocaloid 4 version will be released on March 19th) and released on January 30, 2009.[1] Yū Asakawa (浅川 悠 / Asakawa Yū) provided the "cool, somewhat mysterious" character vocals.[2][3]

According to KEI, who was asked to illustrate her by Crypton, due to her bilingual software, her design was made to be asymmetrical, so from different angles she would look different.

Her design incorporates woodwind and brass instruments. The gold curl design on her chest mimics brass instruments and a circulatory organ. The blue jewel near her throat represents moisture in the air and water drops. [4]

Vocaloid fans tried to assign an item to Luka like they had done with past Vocaloids and there was a heated debate on what Luka's item would be. Tako Luka is marked as the end of the "Item War" system where as items were assigned to Vocaloids based on Internet Memes. Despite the Internet Meme's popularity, she is often seen with a tuna fish. This is a result of comparing the Japanese word for "tuna" with her last name.

Unlike previous mascots in the series, her costume is not based on a school uniform. Despite the inclusion of English, Megurine Luka was not aimed at a world wide audience and was aimed at the Japanese producers.

Luka was the first Vocaloid to impact Hatsune Miku's popularity. Only a few days after her release, many songs were produced. On the 70th Weekly Vocaloid Ranking (February 2, 2009), many of Luka's songs appeared in the Top 30, knocking the very popular "Miku Miku ni Shite Ageru" and songs produced by ryo (with the exception of "Melt") right out of the Top 30. "RIP=RELEASE" had taken the #1 spot, and had earned a total of 843,233 points, making it the song with the highest one-week score.

In 2010, Luka was ranked as the 3rd most popularVocaloid product they sold.[15]

A independent Vocaloid search on Nico Nico Douga revealed that most Vocaloids had less then 1,000 videos uploaded on Nico Nico Douga in between July 1 and December 15 2011. Luka, however had managed to gain enough views not to fall into this problem. Luka had the 4th highest number of uploads at 2103 videos onto the website. Luka, who had 3855998 views and 301640 mylists in total was the 5th most popular viewed Vocaloid on the site as well. Luka’s 1837.94/143.78 average views placed her as the bottom of the top 6 Vocaloids based on average view counts. However, when the lists of top 6 Vocaloids were sorted based on the mean number, a more accurate reflection of the Vocaloids popularity, Luka did not make the top six.[16]