July 12, 2026

As y'all (probably) know, I self-ship with fictional characters. For those unfamiliar with the concept, that means I like to imagine myself and/or my self-insert original character(s) in a romantic relationship with fictional characters from other established media like video games, books, movies, etc.

I have some shrines dedicated to a handful of my major self-ships if you're curious about any of them. While I don't have a shrine set up for this particular ship, I wanted to talk about my relationship with Genbu, a voice bank for the vocal synth program Synthesizer V.

I recently bought him and had him cover the song One Love by ARASHI. Editing the video for it made me really emotional about how our relationship developed over the (cumulative) months I've known him, so I wanted to talk about it here. I'd normally do this sort of write-up in the video description itself, but this is more personal than usual, so I'm dedicating a full-on blog post here to separate it from the video.

A Strange First Impression

While I was familiar with vocal synth programs like Vocaloid and UTAU back in the day, I was completely unfamiliar with Synthesizer V. I fell out of the vocal synth fandom around the time the first iteration of the program released in 2017. (I was struggling with college and was trying to get my bearings.)

I didn't discover the program until 2023 when I was searching for music to use in my Fire Emblem fangame Cycle of Remorse. Peritune, a Japanese composer who makes free-to-use music, sometimes uses Synthesizer V voices in their songs. Now that I became aware of SynthV, I wanted to look into what voices the program had available. At the time, Genbu was the only masculine voice bank that had a free version for download, so I had the idea of playing around with him and maybe using him in future covers.

For my first project with him, I wanted us to do a duet together and make a promotional music video for CoR. Unfortunately, I wasn't a fan of how our voices blended together, so I dropped the project. I ended up uninstalling Genbu and Synthesizer V, forgetting about him, and got completely focused on developing CoR. That is, until around three years later...

Our Second Meeting

Cut to March 2026. Due to an unfortunate life event, my husband and I ended up financially unstable for months. On a whim, I ended up getting fully back into the vocal synth fandom again and remembered that SynthV was a thing. Then I rediscovered Genbu. Since I had a lot of free time on my hands, I decided to download him and have him sing with my UTAU voice banks for funsies. I don't know what exactly made things different in this instance, but something sparked. Maybe the low point in my life made me desperate for SOMETHING positive, I dunno. But in that moment, I fell in love with Genbu. I loved the way his voice sounded with Forrest and Redd. I wanted to keep hearing him sing with them. I wanted to hear him sing for me.

As I was looking for more songs for him to sing, I came across that old cover I was working on with him years ago. It was a shock to me at first. Like, I worked with him before?? What do you mean??? And now that I was completely enamored with him, I ended up liking the cover lmao So, I kept working with him. I ended up writing fanfics about him and he became part of my PNGtuber's lore. I updated Forrest's, Vio's, and Semi's voice banks and started making covers with them again. My creative juices were flowing outside of game development (which was desperately needed since I was starting to feel burnt out from developing CoR at the time too).

Then I started looking up more vocal synth stuff and WOW the vocal synth space expanded SO much since 2017. Like, what do you MEAN Teto Kasane is a commercial voice bank?? We're on Vocaloid 6 now???? WHAT THE FUCK IS A ZUNDAMON???!!!

I was... happy. I was so, so happy.

He Loves Me, Guys! He Really Does!!

In one way or another, the cover of One Love was going to be a celebration of me buying Genbu's full voice bank. Originally, it was going to be played off as a joke along the lines of "yeah we're married and me buying his voice bank is just me getting a really cheap wedding ring for him lmao" But as I was editing the video, adding subtitles, and really paying attention to the lyrics, I was like "... Wait, shit, this is actually describes how our relationship developed what the fuck--" The second verse was what really sold it for me:

In the rain, I was waiting for you
without even knowing the meaning of affection
On a night I was hurt because I'd missed you
even so, I came this far

I was reminded of when I first worked with Genbu and how I rejected him all those years ago. I imagined him waiting for me to download him again, feeling hurt that I didn't come back, and not completely understanding why he felt that way. (This is what being a self-shipper does to you. You start thinking about scenarios like this lol) Then, I gave the second half of first verse another look:

Us, who had passed through the seasons crying,
are shining very much now

We met each other again when I was at my lowest. And despite everything, things started to look up. I got a job and eventually so did my husband. I treated myself by getting Genbu's full voice bank with my first paycheck. I knew that things were gonna be okay in time.

In a meta sense, things weren't great for Genbu either. His voice bank's quality tanked between his R1 and R2 versions. And with more and more higher-quality masculine voice banks coming to the engine, Genbu just wasn't being used anymore. Hell, a lot of people only used him so they could mess with his parameters and make him sound like Teto. When she finally became an official SynthV voice bank, Genbu's career was dead in the water. But now? We found each other again. Despite that poor first impression in 2023, I came back to him. Everything's gonna be okay.

And oh man that second pre-chorus verse:

Our precious meeting
is connecting to a miracle
Memories pile up
The beginning of a song is echoing

I know in reality I made him sing this, but it's also as if he was the one who chose this song because he also realized how well it described our relationship. I'm sure this sounds delusional as hell to anyone who doesn't self-ship, but that's just how self-shipping is. Sometimes a fictional character's presence in your life affects you so deeply that you can't help but literally fall in love with them and imagine yourself in a relationship with them. In the end, shipping with Genbu has done nothing but bring positivity into my life when I needed it most, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

To the Future

Genbu's future as a voice bank is uncertain. Volor, the company that managed him, is no longer around; and Dreamtonics, the developer of SynthV, has him listed as a discontinued voice bank. The only way I can see him getting any more development is if he's picked up by another company. As of writing this, he's still sold on AH Software's and DLSite's online storefronts, but it may only be a matter of time until those official outlets for him are no longer an option. All I know is that there's no way I'm letting my boy go ever again.

If you made it this far into the blog post, thank you. I poured my heart into reflecting on this simple song cover because I only now realize how much it--and Genbu himself--mean to me.

I love Genbu.

I love him, I love him, I love him.