Hatsune Miku
One of the Vocaloid compilations, "Exit Tunes Presents Vocalogenesis feat. Hatsune Miku", debuted at number-one on the Japanese weekly Oricon album charts dated May 31, 2010, becoming the first Vocaloid album ever to top the charts. Another album, "Supercell", by the group Supercell also features a number of songs using Vocaloids. Other albums, such as 19's Sound Factory's "First Sound Story" and Livetune's" Re:package", and "Re:Mikus" also feature Miku's voice. Other uses of Miku include the albums by Absorb and by OSTER-project. She had sung the original Nyan Cat called "Nyanyanyanyan!" by daniwell-P. Kagamine Len and Rin's songs were covered by Asami Shimoda in the album "Prism" credited to "Kagamine Rin/Len feat. Asami Shimoda". Another song original sung by Miku, "Color", was covered by Maria, and featured as the opening theme of the 2011 anime series "Freezing".
Vocaloid
The software became very popular in Japan upon the release of Crypton Future Media's Hatsune Miku Vocaloid 2 software and her success has led to the popularity of the Vocaloid software in general. Japanese video sharing website Niconico played a fundamental role in the recognition and popularity of the software. A user of Hatsune Miku and an illustrator released a much-viewed video, in which "Hachune Miku", a super deformed Miku, held a Welsh onion ("Negi" in Japanese), which resembles a leek, and sang the Finnish song "Ievan Polkka" like the flash animation "Loituma Girl", on Nico Nico Douga. According to Crypton, they knew that users of Nico Nico Douga had started posting videos with songs created by the software before Hatsune Miku, but the video presented multifarious possibilities of applying the software in multimedia content creation—notably the "dōjin" culture. As the recognition and popularity of the software grew, Nico Nico Douga became a place for collaborative content creation. Popular original songs written by a user would generate illustrations, animation in 2D and 3D, and remixes by other users. Other creators would show their unfinished work and ask for ideas. The software has also been used to tell stories using song and verse and the "Story of Evil" series has become so popular that a manga, six books, and two theatre works were produced by the series creator. Another theater production based on "Cantarella", a song sung by Kaito and produced by Kurousa-P, was also set to hit the stage and will run Shibuya's Space Zero theater in Tokyo from August 3 to August 7, 2011. The website has become so influential that studios often post demos on Nico Nico Douga, as well as other websites such as YouTube, as part of the promotional effort of their Vocaloid products. The important role Nico Nico Douga has played in promoting the Vocaloids also sparked interest in the software and Kentaro Miura, the artist of Gakupo's mascot design, had offered his services for free because of his love for the website.