Mazeteyo★Nama Voice - Crypton's ringtone app
Jun 6, 2024 21:24:51 GMT
marius and angiefoodcake like this
Post by sloshy on Jun 6, 2024 21:24:51 GMT
This was referenced from machine-translated (through DeepL) blurbs from the official website, JP Wikipedia & press releases, so if anything is incorrect I apologize! I also apologize if this is paragraphed sort of weirdly. I don't think it would make for a good article without being edited or re-written, but it'll do for a forum post.
[Take it with a grain of salt] Additionally, I want to preface that although some English sites claim these were "voicebanks," or "Cryptonloids," (Implying they were full voicebanks made for the VOCALOID program, or a dumbed-down mobile version of it) I'm actually fairly certain this app was more likely to have contained pre-recorded lines for you to splice together to create custom ringtones. Mazenama characters were NOT marketed as VOCALOIDs.
Mazeteyo★Nama Voice [まぜてよ★生ボイス, shortened as Mazenama/まぜ生] was a ringtone distribution & creation app by Crypton Future Media, launched on July 6th 2009 & shut down on March 29th 2013. It featured a free version, and a 315 yen per month "renewed" version. The renewal site is extremely poorly archived, but a blog post from Piapro states that the renewed version featured dress-up, Flash games, and character lock screens. This renewal site was online as late as 2016. I'm completely unable to find any clips of the app being used, on both Niconico and YouTube.
In May 2011, a light novel spinoff mobage named Re:Mazeteyo Nama Voice was released, and introduced four new voice actors & characters. The page itself is also extremely poorly archived, with parts of it being entirely nonfunctional. But there are more screenshots available online of the actual gameplay than there is of the original app.
The website boasts that they had over 1,000 names and to choose from while creating your ringtone phrase!
Alongside the ringtone customization, it also featured a weekly-updated "'consultation room,' where there the characters offer advice to everyone." The website is decently well archived, but things like character images (and image downloads) result in broken images now. You can't even get samples of their voices anymore since it required a phone to do so.
Mazenama featured a total of 42 different characters, voiced by 9 different voice actors. (You can view the full voice actor list here.)
The full character list is here. I see no point in listing their names, as each URL has an official romanization of their name anyways. Plus it'd be really long.
Re:Mazenama added Saya, Chii, Megumi, and Shizuka. (Voiced by Ryoka Yuzuki, Emiri Kato, Rie Tanaka & Miyuki Sawashiro respectively.)Aside from the app & its contents, there's also a CD and guidebook.
Mazeteyo ★ Name Voice x Forest Novel Mazenama★School Opening Commemorative CD & 28-page Guidebook, sold as a goods set at Comiket 74 in 2008. I don't think the CD itself is available online, but we do know the contents thanks to this blog post, talking about Piapro x Mazenama collaboration contest winners & their song's inclusion on the CD! However I wasn't able to find what the guidebook contained.
There were also two official fan books, a first-anniversary booklet released at Comiket 74 and an 'official setting documents collection' that featured new illustrations by KEI. (Who notably already did a lot of the Mazeteyo character art, as well as the original official illustration for Hatsune Miku. I'm not sure when or where this released.)
There's also Mazeteyo★Nama Voice ft. Hatsune Miku 1st Anniversary♪, a short collaboration CD between a handful of vocaloP. AFAIK it doesn't have anything directly relating to the app, simply being sold alongside Mazenama goods at Comiket 74.
I've included a lot of images pulled from various sources, mainly the Piapro blogs, here!
I may go back to that album and update it to include proper links to each blog page the image was retrieved from, but for now they're all from the Piapro blogs unless I linked a different source. 
