ACME IKU aka MAIDLOID

Warning for a lot of non graphic sexual content.

This my web shrine of Acme Iku. She is a somewhat well known vocal synthesizer and UTAU, but more well known for her original NSFW program, MAIDLOID. This is the official website of Iku, by her creator StudioS. Her name is wordplay. The word Iku meaning "to go," and the word Acme or also characterized as Akume, meaning to orgasm. Iku used just by itself is often in relation to an orgasm as well. So, in japanese, her name loosely translates to "upcoming orgasm."

On December 27th of 2007, Acme Iku attempted to hop into the vocaloid scene. Unfortunatly, that didn't land well, considering she was not a vocaloid at all. She was her own unique program, MAIDLOID! On this same day, one of other most popular Vocal Synths ever came out. Rin and Len Kagamine. The release of Rin and Len overshadowed Iku's release. But to be honest she wasn't gonna get popular anyway. Anyways, back to MAIDLOID. This program hosted numerous NSFW audios consisting of moaning, sound effects, a few voicelines, and even more moaning!! All of those, voiced by the amazing Kazuna Sayaka! Another NSFW voicebank was made by StudioS as well named Princess Knight RIYONA. This doesn't matter much but it's worth bringing up for later. They're sisters in my heart. Anyway, back to Iku. Since she couldn't really sing and she really just had everything premade, nobody really thought to make songs with her. It was practically impossible anyway. Unless...?

This was until paraoka made "Bikkubiku ni Shite Kudasai," a suggestive parady of Miku Miku Ni Shite Ageru. This was the first major Acme Iku song. According to VocaDB, there are a few more songs older than this one, but none of them really did any numbers until this one. This would mark the rise of paraoka and Acme Iku. Following this parody, paraoka would continue to make a fuck ton more songs using Iku, each of them being better and more popular than the one before it. First, it was Nightmaid. Then it was Slashmaid. Paraoka was able to make Acme usable using pitch modulation and heavy editing. His genre has been described as many things. Breakcore, DnB, Electropop, Metalcore, and even Technopop. In 2008, paraoka released an entire album using Acme Iku. It was called Iku Acme Training Diary. Each and every song on here is a banger. And then in this album he released his biggest song yet, Chaosmaid.

CHAOSMAID

Chaosmaid is the most popular Acme Iku song to ever exist. This song is about a maid being sexually abused by her master. This song blew up, leaving Acme to get somewhat popular. Still, she wasn't as popular as the stars at the time (Miku, Haku, Neru, Meiko, Kaito and the Kagamine twins.) So this left her pretty much with only one major producer, and that of which wasn't even that major. So as a you'd expect, she ended up fading into obscurity after her run.

But thats until 2022. Her green hair and charms (sexual harrasment) seemed to capture the hearts of enough people around the world to get her a new voicebank! Because nothing ever truly stays obscure for long. 2022, an official UTAU of her was released. It was distributed through the UTAU wiki. It was released in 7 different VCV and CVVC pitches. Her range went from B3 to G5. She was somewhat popular, at her peak reaching 17 songs per month. There are many non official UTAU voicebanks of her, which no matter how much I look for, I cannot find anywhere. But there is enough proof and documentation of them to lead me to believe it is indeed real. With her official UTAU, released a new design for her. It kept most of her original elements, but made her slightly less scandalous. The amazing Kanna made the art of her UTAU port. Many people took the new design as a glow up, and honestly I do too. I personally prefer her original design because of the aesthetic and tackiness of the mid-2000s anime artstyle, but I can agree that the UTAU design is better. One thing to take note of with the UTAU port is that, although its official, it's also kind of not. Essentially, it was just a glorified fan port. It was trained off of spliced audios from the original MAIDLOID program and potentially also other works of the Kazuna Sayaka, rather than actually contracting her to make new samples. So, it's only official because StudioS said so and provided it, not because its actually official. This voicebank was... something. It has a very robotic sound and I've heard multiple people say its really hard to tune. I even tried my hand with it on OpenUTAU, and I struggled. But all good things come to an end eventually, don't they? In 2023, barely even a year since the UTAU voicebank was released, it was deleted and stopped being distributed due to a social media incident with one of the creators, Kanna. And oh boy is the situation messy. I personally would rather not talk about it, BUT, it caused Iku to be discontinued. So, it is important to her story. Long story short, a tweet was made by Kanna in response to someone else. In this tweet Kanna claimed that pedophilia was an illness and that pedophiles didn't deserve to die for hurting others. After this, they attempted to smear the name of the other person in the argumet. This ended in flames and Kanna deleted their twitter and everythin else, ending the distribution of Iku. A UTAU voicebank of Princess Knight RIYONA was also going to be made, but due to this incident it never was. Another UTAU voicebank was going to be made of a woman named "Yuki" but this was also cancelled due to this. Unfortunatly there is barely any information on Yuki which is extremely unfortunate because she seems very interesting. There is a lot on the Princess Knight Riyona though considering she was also a NSFW voicebank by StudioS.

a little bit about PRINCESS KNIGHT RIYONA

I originally found Iku through a Riyona song. I saw a cover of SIU by Maretu using Riyona. This cover was made by someone named Rev who made a UTAU voicebank of her, this is also probably Riyona's most prominent song. This song interested me so I did research on Riyona. And that research led me to Iku. Honestly, it probably would work vice versa. Say you found Iku through Chaosmaid and then you researched her and the learned about Riyona. Riyona was made for a similar program to Iku's, named KNIGHTROID. It makes me very mad that it is named this way. Why isn't it KNIGHTLOID? Why is it ROID instead of LOID? I don't get. This is offtopic I know, but if anyone knows why, please text me on discord or spacehey why. Back to the topic at hand. Riyona was the most recent H-loid (and honestly probably last one) made by StudioS. She is voiced by Miki Honda and her illustration is by Shin. Her voicebank is based on the Ryona fetish, (like her name) that focuses mainly on ... attacking women in fighting games apparently? I'm reading this off the VocaDB article of her because i really don't wanna look this up myself because I'm currently writing this at school. She mainly is depicted as more of a stronger woman, much more proud and assertive than Iku. All UTAU voicebanks of her are fanmade.

Personal Thoughts

n With all of this information you'd probably think that Acme Iku is my favorite Vocal Synth. This would be wrong. My favorite is Rin Kagamine, but I will admit, I have done a bazillion times more research on Iku than I have on Rin. I only discovered Iku a few months ago anyway. I have been a fan of vocaloid for the majority of my life, and it has always held a special place in my heart. Scuffed and old voicebanks especially though, which is probably why I connected with Iku so much. So if Iku isn't my favorite, why am I making this? Well. She's my second favorite, and she is criminally underated. She is so unique and has such an interesting backstory and even more creative songs, I can't help but be absolutly amazed by everything shes used in. She is another great example of something that was originally gooner material being turned into something actually great. Thank you for reading this, I appreciate it very much. I hope you learn to love Iku as much as I do.

I will be working on some more vocaloid shrines. I plan on making one on Otomachi Una, Rin Kagamine, Len Kagamine, Luka Megurine, Fanloids in general, Adachi Rei, and Gumi.

I own lots of music software and have done music most of my life. I own Vocaloid, the Kagamines v4x, MAIDLOID, SynthV Teto, Adachi Rei UTAU, and all of Iku's StudioS UTAU voicebanks. I have made a few covers using Rin, but also plan on making some covers using Iku. I am currently in the process of making a "Pokkan Kara" (or "Pokkan Color") by Kikuo cover using Iku. At the same time, I'm also working on making a cover of Fukouna Girl by Stomach book using Iku. I have been working very hard to tune her to sound good, and it has been working for the most part. I also hope to someday make original songs using Iku and Rin together. When these projects are done, I will most definetly be updating this page. Additionally, I will frequently update this page with new covers by others on Youtube and Nico Nico.