Who is Kagamine Len ?

Posted by : Muhammad Richard Rabu, 04 Februari 2015

Kagamine Len

Kagamine Len (鏡音・レン), codenamed CV02, are Japanese VOCALOIDs developed and distributed by Crypton Future Media, Inc., and were initially released in December 2007 for the VOCALOID2 engine. They are part of the Character Vocal Series and are both Character Voice VOCALOIDs. There has since been numerous installments such as additional voice banks dubbed 'Append' as well as an upcoming upgrade to the VOCALOID3 engine (information pending) which is said to include an English vocal release. They are the second set of vocals for Crypton's VOCALOID Character Vocal Series.
Their voices are provided by the Japanese voice actress, Asami Shimoda (下田麻美 Shimoda Asami).

Concept

The development of the Kagamines began when Crypton formulated the concept of making a pair of female and male voicebanks. The first idea was for two voices of a girl and her mirror image of the opposite gender, just like twins.^[1]
Crypton had the intention to distribute them as twins, but this was not adopted. After seeing many works that depict their relationships differently, Crypton announced in a magazine interview that those would meet their ideal. However, Crypton's final announcement was that they were neither siblings nor lovers.^[2]^[3] During Append production, Wataru Sasaki (aka. Wat) described them as having one soul between the two of them.^[4] Wat also described that the Append boxart makes the pair seem like twins,^[5] due to the fetal position they were in.^[6]

Etymology

When the Kagamines were being recorded in 2007, their names had not yet been decided. Their given names of Len were said to be based on "right" and "left", according to Asami Shimoda. She later confirmed in an interview after the Append release that the names were based on Ken and Rin from Hokuto no Ken, derived from a discussion about names that were familiar from her childhood.
Their surname was derived from the developing code combining Kagami (鏡, mirror) and Ne (音, sound).
Their codename of "CV02" means "Character Voice 02".

Kagamine Len's introduction artwork:

Kagamine Len has "Act 2" on his headphones.
The cyber-on-normal clothing design on the detached sleeves were changed from a green bar to a blue one.
His fringe was reshaped, other strands were adjusted as well.
Len's face, particularly around the cheekbones, was reshaped.