YAMAHA has now added Tone Rion, a VOCALOID3 voice bank produced by entertainment bar Dear Stage, to its lineup on its website along with a preliminary package design. A demo song titled “Thousand Regrets” is now available for listening as well, embedded on the webpage as a YouTube video. According to the website, Rion is a 16-year-old girl who traveled back in time 100 years to arrive in modern day (2011) Akihabara, wanting to become an idol at any costs and asking to work at Dear Stage. A “special nasal and youthful voice never done before with VOCALOID” is touted as one of her charms. The website lists her vocal range to be from A2 to F4 and her tempo range as 60 BPM to 140 BPM. Tone Rion’s character design was done by Watanabe Akio, who has lent his hand in character designs for such works as Nurse Witch Komugi-chan and the animated adaptation of Bakemonogatari. While the YAMAHA website is in Japanese, Tone Rion’s own website has Chinese and English translations for parts of it.
UPDATE (2011/12/13): More sample songs have been posted, and Tone Rion now has her own official Twitter account in addition to the normal info account.