Problem Statement

Official Metadata says Character (Vo. Singer). But it is ranked as Character (CV: Singer) which is misleading because the singer is not singing with character voice and is different person from the voice actor for the character.

Currently, I have found 2 ranked maps where VO was replaced by CV because the RC doesn't say anything about VO.

https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/1470500
https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmapsets/1264917

Solution

This proposal is to change the existing standardisation rule:

When a fictional character is credited as the singer of a song, their credit is to be formatted in a Character (CV: Voice Actor) format. For live action, credit the voice actor only.

to

When a fictional character is credited as the singer of a song, their credit is to be formatted in a Character (CV: Voice Actor) format. When primary metadata uses `Character (Vo. Singer)`, where singer is not the CV, it should be `Character (VO: Singer)` format. For live action, credit the voice actor only.

This format makes it consistent with current CV rules and doesn't cause any problem with ambiguous tag usage.

Solution 2 (proposed by Muse Dash/ML-ysg)

When a fictional character is credited as the singer of a song, their credit is to be formatted in a Character (CV: Voice Actor) format. When primary metadata uses `Character (Vo. Singer)`, it should be `Singer` format and put the character in tags. For live action, credit the voice actor only.

issue with this format is the character in tags doesn't indicate any relationship with the song, it could be related to the BG.

Character Voice (CV)

CV means the song is sing by the character using the character voice.

For example, with Waki Azumi in 300 years killing slimes ED, she voiced the character in the anime, but does not sing using character voice, she sings with her actual voice. The song is sing by her as artist, not by her as CV, therefore official meta doesn't use CV. In that case you would not follow that standardization rule.
https://slime300-anime.com/bluray-cd/

when CV is used officially, it means the singer is the voice actor. I have not seen a case where it is not.

Voice Over (VO)

VO is used when song is sing by character but not using character voice. This is the case when the singer and voice actor are 2 different people as seen in `Vivy` and `Carole and Tuesday`. VO is there to make a distinction so people don't confuse the singer as the voice actor.

So saying VO and CV is same doesn't make sense to me.

If you think not following original meta is right then you need provide reason why VO is wrong.

Conclusion

I don't think CV and VO has same meaning, and I don't think the current RC is implying that CV=VO, so something needs to be added to the current RC to prevent people from using CV by mistake.

I don't think using CV when official meta uses VO is correct.

This is my first time making a proposal.
I am not very good with grammar, please help with the wording.

Consensus

community/forums/posts/8147605

TL;DR

If official meta use CV, then use CV
If official meta use VO, then use VO, not CV
If official meta doesn't use either, don't use either

—— 'When a fictional character is credited as the singer of a song, their credit is to be formatted in a Character (CV: Voice Actor) format. For live action, credit the voice actor only.'

My opinion (in short):

To be honest, I don't think a 'Voice Over' (According to Drum-Hitnormal's argument) should be considered to a 'fictional singer'. Because it's not the same voice with the 'fictional character'.

For me, I don't think VO is that important and necessary to be added into 'Artist'. To avoid misleading as well as make the metadata rules too complex. I suggest just add the 'fictional character' to 'optional tags' instead.

Muse Dash wrote:

—— 'When a fictional character is credited as the singer of a song, their credit is to be formatted in a Character (CV: Voice Actor) format. For live action, credit the voice actor only.'

My opinion (in short):

To be honest, I don't think a 'Voice Over' (According to Drum-Hitnormal's argument) should be considered to a 'fictional singer'. Because it's not the same voice with the 'fictional character'.

For me, I don't think VO is that important and necessary to be added into 'Artist'. To avoid misleading as well as make the metadata rules too complex. I suggest just add the 'fictional character' to 'optional tags' instead.

the official meta is listing it as Fictional Character (VO Singer). So I don't think you can ignore that it is a fictional character and just use `Singer` without character name in artist field.

But I do think just `Singer` is still more correct than `Fictional Character (CV: Singer)`

metadata is already complicated, and that's the nature of it. it should not be a concern to make changes to existing rules.

my main point is the usage of CV is wrong.

IMO, no matter using CV or VO, we should always follow official.

CV. to CV: is okay
because its same meaning
thats what standardisation is for, its not for changing official meaning

;>

the official meta is listing it as Fictional Character (VO Singer). So I don't think you can ignore that it is a fictional character and just use `Singer` without character name in artist field.

Maybe I am not clear enough.
Let me go more specifically, my opinion is:

If primary metadata source is 'CV' I think we should just keep what it as. No need to argue if it's the same voice as the character. (just as what deta5869 said)

If it's said 'VO' or similar things (I don't know if there's any) or didn't mentioned the CV in primary metadata source. then I think it shouldn't be marked as 'CV' in 'osu!' as well.

Muse Dash wrote:

the official meta is listing it as Fictional Character (VO Singer). So I don't think you can ignore that it is a fictional character and just use `Singer` without character name in artist field.

Maybe I am not clear enough.
Let me go more specifically, my opinion is:

If primary metadata source is 'CV' I think we should just keep what it as. No need to argue if it's the same voice as the character. (just as what deta5869 said)

If it's said 'VO' or similar things (I don't know if there's any) or didn't mentioned the CV in primary metadata source. then I think it shouldn't be marked as 'CV' in 'osu!' as well.

agree, I just want RC to explicitly say when official uses VO we should keep it as VO and not use CV

Muse Dash wrote:

To be honest, I don't think a 'Voice Over' (According to Drum-Hitnormal's argument) should be considered to a 'fictional singer'. Because it's not the same voice with the 'fictional character'.

For me, I don't think VO is that important and necessary to be added into 'Artist'. To avoid misleading as well as make the metadata rules too complex. I suggest just add the 'fictional character' to 'optional tags' instead.

我赞同这一观点。我认为当声优并没有用角色音或者是为了某一角色(是自己配音的)而演唱的话，那么这首歌只属于他自己的歌曲，没有必要强调VO。但不排除有一些声优无法使用角色的声音唱歌而导致唱的角色歌接近自己的声音的情况。

I agree with this view. I think that when a seiyuu does not use the role voice or sing for a certain role (which is dubbed by himself/herself), then this song belongs only to his own song as a singer, and there is no need to emphasize VO. However, it cannot be ruled out that some voice actors cannot use the voice of the character to sing and the character song sung is close to their own voice.

That being the case, if the conditions are not met, I also think that CV cannot be used

ML-ysg wrote:

Muse Dash wrote:

To be honest, I don't think a 'Voice Over' (According to Drum-Hitnormal's argument) should be considered to a 'fictional singer'. Because it's not the same voice with the 'fictional character'.

For me, I don't think VO is that important and necessary to be added into 'Artist'. To avoid misleading as well as make the metadata rules too complex. I suggest just add the 'fictional character' to 'optional tags' instead.

我赞同这一观点。我认为当声优并没有用角色音或者是为了某一角色(是自己配音的)而演唱的话，那么这首歌只属于他自己的歌曲，没有必要强调VO。但不排除有一些声优无法使用角色的声音唱歌而导致唱的角色歌接近自己的声音的情况。

I agree with this view. I think that when a seiyuu does not use the role voice or sing for a certain role (which is dubbed by himself/herself), then this song belongs only to his own song as a singer, and there is no need to emphasize VO. However, it cannot be ruled out that some voice actors cannot use the voice of the character to sing and the character song sung is close to their own voice.

That being the case, if the conditions are not met, I also think that CV cannot be used

so what is your expected way to write artist when official says Character (Vo. Singer)?

Drum-Hitnormal wrote:

ML-ysg wrote:

Muse Dash wrote:

To be honest, I don't think a 'Voice Over' (According to Drum-Hitnormal's argument) should be considered to a 'fictional singer'. Because it's not the same voice with the 'fictional character'.

For me, I don't think VO is that important and necessary to be added into 'Artist'. To avoid misleading as well as make the metadata rules too complex. I suggest just add the 'fictional character' to 'optional tags' instead.

我赞同这一观点。我认为当声优并没有用角色音或者是为了某一角色(是自己配音的)而演唱的话，那么这首歌只属于他自己的歌曲，没有必要强调VO。但不排除有一些声优无法使用角色的声音唱歌而导致唱的角色歌接近自己的声音的情况。

I agree with this view. I think that when a seiyuu does not use the role voice or sing for a certain role (which is dubbed by himself/herself), then this song belongs only to his own song as a singer, and there is no need to emphasize VO. However, it cannot be ruled out that some voice actors cannot use the voice of the character to sing and the character song sung is close to their own voice.

That being the case, if the conditions are not met, I also think that CV cannot be used

so what is your expected way to write artist when official says Character (Vo. Singer)?

I think this is not need to write VO, just need to fill in the name of the singer.
We want to emphasize the song itself. If this song is independent of the character, then don't emphasize whether the singing singer of this song is involved in a role.

ML-ysg wrote:

Drum-Hitnormal wrote:

ML-ysg wrote:

Muse Dash wrote:

To be honest, I don't think a 'Voice Over' (According to Drum-Hitnormal's argument) should be considered to a 'fictional singer'. Because it's not the same voice with the 'fictional character'.

For me, I don't think VO is that important and necessary to be added into 'Artist'. To avoid misleading as well as make the metadata rules too complex. I suggest just add the 'fictional character' to 'optional tags' instead.

我赞同这一观点。我认为当声优并没有用角色音或者是为了某一角色(是自己配音的)而演唱的话，那么这首歌只属于他自己的歌曲，没有必要强调VO。但不排除有一些声优无法使用角色的声音唱歌而导致唱的角色歌接近自己的声音的情况。

I agree with this view. I think that when a seiyuu does not use the role voice or sing for a certain role (which is dubbed by himself/herself), then this song belongs only to his own song as a singer, and there is no need to emphasize VO. However, it cannot be ruled out that some voice actors cannot use the voice of the character to sing and the character song sung is close to their own voice.

That being the case, if the conditions are not met, I also think that CV cannot be used

so what is your expected way to write artist when official says Character (Vo. Singer)?

I think this is not need to write VO, just need to fill in the name of the singer.
We want to emphasize the song itself. If this song is independent of the character, then don't emphasize whether the singing singer of this song is involved in a role.

Using Vivy example, you would write `Vivy (Yagi Mari)` or `Yagi Mari` ? im confused.

Drum-Hitnormal wrote:

ML-ysg wrote:

Drum-Hitnormal wrote:

ML-ysg wrote:

Muse Dash wrote:

To be honest, I don't think a 'Voice Over' (According to Drum-Hitnormal's argument) should be considered to a 'fictional singer'. Because it's not the same voice with the 'fictional character'.

For me, I don't think VO is that important and necessary to be added into 'Artist'. To avoid misleading as well as make the metadata rules too complex. I suggest just add the 'fictional character' to 'optional tags' instead.

我赞同这一观点。我认为当声优并没有用角色音或者是为了某一角色(是自己配音的)而演唱的话，那么这首歌只属于他自己的歌曲，没有必要强调VO。但不排除有一些声优无法使用角色的声音唱歌而导致唱的角色歌接近自己的声音的情况。

I agree with this view. I think that when a seiyuu does not use the role voice or sing for a certain role (which is dubbed by himself/herself), then this song belongs only to his own song as a singer, and there is no need to emphasize VO. However, it cannot be ruled out that some voice actors cannot use the voice of the character to sing and the character song sung is close to their own voice.

That being the case, if the conditions are not met, I also think that CV cannot be used

so what is your expected way to write artist when official says Character (Vo. Singer)?

I think this is not need to write VO, just need to fill in the name of the singer.
We want to emphasize the song itself. If this song is independent of the character, then don't emphasize whether the singing singer of this song is involved in a role.

Using Vivy example, you would write `Vivy (Yagi Mari)` or `Yagi Mari` ? im confused.

Yagi Mari is OK imo

@ML-ysg


Ok thanks, I understand your point now. will add this as solution #2.

appreciate your help

Thank you for your work. I agree with the opinion that a format that can clearly distinguish VO and CV should be added to the current RC. And I think Muse Dash and ML-ysg's solution is good. It seems better to add a character tag to the 'Singer' format rather than the 'Character (VO: Singer)' format. Because VO indicates that the character's voice actor and the actual singer are different people, so there is no need to put the character's name in front of Singer format in my opinion.

Paran wrote:

Thank you for your work. I agree with the opinion that a format that can clearly distinguish VO and CV should be added to the current RC. And I think Muse Dash and ML-ysg's solution is good. It seems better to add a character tag to the 'Singer' format rather than the 'Character (VO: Singer)' format. Because VO indicates that the character's voice actor and the actual singer are different people, so there is no need to put the character's name in front of Singer format in my opinion.

i just want to point out that using VO it indicate singer is related to character. without VO it may be confused with artist unrelated to the anime.

you have people who use BG of X character and put that character name in tags while the song is not related to the character. and your suggestion will end up looking same as this case

Then how about adding the following sentence to RC?
"If you're using a character's BG that's not related to the song, you shouldn't add that BG character's name to the tag."
Could this is also be a problem?

Paran wrote:

Then how about adding the following sentence to RC?
"If you're using a character's BG that's not related to the song, you shouldn't add that BG character's name to the tag."
Could this sentence also be a problem?

Tags must be related to the beatmap and not misleading for search results. Tags describing the beatmap's style, song, storyboard, video, or background content are considered to be related to the beatmap. - RC

tags related to the Background is considered valid. You can't add that sentence

For example, your kimetsu no yaiba song uses shinobu as BG, you can add shinobu in the tags, and I think it's not wrong to add it since it tells player who the character is.

Yeah you are right. Then even if the name of the character has nothing to do with the singer, it must be added. And in that respect, the 'Character (VO: Singer)' you suggested seems more reasonable.

Paran wrote:

Yeah you are right. Then even if the name of the character has nothing to do with the singer, it must be added. And in that respect, the 'Character (VO: Singer)' you suggested seems more reasonable.

I don't think the singer is unrelated to the character. It's same as in action movie, you have someone else to do the action scene, but it is to be perceived as the character its just not the original actor.

In carole and tuesday example, the Japanese voice actor can't sing in fluent English.
In vivy, my guess is that because she is AI, and her mission is to sing with "heart", and she is in the process of gaining that, so her singing is like hatsune miku, its programmed. So they use a different singer than CV to make the point clear that she is not singing wit her heart.

I think VO indicates the song is by the character, but it is not by the CV.

I just thought that the singer who actually sang and the character in the background had nothing to do with it. An extreme example is the use of a background containing band characters in an artist(Linkin Park, Maroon 5, etc.)'s songs unrelated to animation or jpop genres. If BG band characters and band artists' voices can be confused, it can be applied VO format?

Paran wrote:

I just thought that the singer who actually sang and the character in the background had nothing to do with it. An extreme example is the use of a background containing band characters in an artist(Linkin Park, Maroon 5, etc.)'s songs unrelated to animation or jpop genres. If BG band characters and band artists' voices can be confused, it can be applied VO format?

I think VO format should only apply if the official meta use VO, same as how CV is being used right now.

Drum-Hitnormal wrote:

Paran wrote:

I just thought that the singer who actually sang and the character in the background had nothing to do with it. An extreme example is the use of a background containing band characters in an artist(Linkin Park, Maroon 5, etc.)'s songs unrelated to animation or jpop genres. If BG band characters and band artists' voices can be confused, it can be applied VO format?

I think VO format should only apply if the official meta use VO, same as how CV is being used right now.

Okay, I understand now. Thank you.

i just want to point out that using VO it indicate singer is related to character. without VO it may be confused with artist unrelated to the anime.

WHAT?

If the singer is the same with a character, then put it into the tag is enough, isn't it?
Why we should marked it in the artist?

Few people knows what VO accurately means I think? (Tell me if it's basic knowledge. At least I don't know without your explain.)
Adding this to the artist would help few but cause more confusion.

Muse Dash wrote:

i just want to point out that using VO it indicate singer is related to character. without VO it may be confused with artist unrelated to the anime.

WHAT?

If the singer is the same with a character, then put it into the tag is enough, isn't it?
Why we should marked it in the artist?

Few people knows what VO accurately means I think? (Tell me if it's basic knowledge. At least I don't know without your explain.)
Adding this to the artist would help few but cause more confusion.

it's not enough to put it in tags. as explained earlier. Waki Azumi sing ED song for 300 years killing slime, if mapper use her character as BG and put character name in tags this is valid. and this would be same with your suggestion: Singer in artist and character in tags. But Players don't know whether the character present in tag is associated with the song or the BG. This case its BG, but VO case its song.

I don't think its harmful to use VO in artist field even if most people don't understand what it means. some people might not even know what CV means. Keeping VO in artist field makes it consistent with how CV is used. and it avoids confusion in tags.

Yea many people don't know the difference between CV and VO, CV and VO should be distinguished clearly so both the CV and VO can have credits (I am not very good with grammar

I think at this point, we can agree that everyone thinks VO should not be replaced by CV.

RC didn't intent to do so but it is happening due to lack of rules for VO.

For the solution of Singer in artist and Character in tags there's issue with not clearly indicating relationship with the character as tag can be related for background.

So the only solution is to do Character (VO: Singer) which is consistent with the CV format. This also doesn't cause any problem, as it follows the official metadata and simply standardize the : usage.

I think we can move forward by making the change happen, no further discussion needed.

CV: was standardised with : because it was the most prominently used if i recall correctly. in that case, i think Vo. should be standardised as Vo. simply because both songs you've linked in the initial post use it.

it also has relatively rare usage compared to CV so making a rule for this seems a bit overkill

caps wrote:

CV: was standardised with : because it was the most prominently used if i recall correctly. in that case, i think Vo. should be standardised as Vo. simply because both songs you've linked in the initial post use it.

it also has relatively rare usage compared to CV so making a rule for this seems a bit overkill

Vo. or VO: depends on higher up want keep consistency with CV format or not. doesn't really matter in terms of meaning. This is not something for us to discuss/decide

Rule exist to guide people to do the right thing. Current rule is wrong and should be fixed. Even if it is rare usage, doesn't mean you should do things the wrong way because you are too lazy to update rules.

Drum-Hitnormal wrote:

Vo. or VO: depends on higher up want keep consistency with CV format or not. doesn't really matter in terms of meaning. This is not something for us to discuss/decide

The higher-ups use this exact same forum to discuss RC changes. It's absolutely something to be discussed here since the topic was already brought up.

Personally, I'm not sure which way to go. "VO:" matches with our standard CV format, but it'd make a lot more sense to use the format that's actually the most common. However, I can't easily find any other songs with a variant of Vo. in the title, so we'd be picking a majority from a sample size of only 2, which is kind of ridiculous. If you know any other songs that use the marker (inside or outside osu!), it'd help a lot.

As for the proposal itself, I have nothing against it; preserving small quirks like this feels way nicer than standardising everything. CV doesn't seem like a marker people would really search for by itself, so I doubt an allowance for VO would have any noticeable negative impact on searchability. Then again, CV did get a standardised format, but since I couldn't find the thread it was added in, I'll just assume it was for visual uniformity.

I don't get the point of the second suggestion, though. Treating two extremely similar markers so differently feels pretty weird, and who are we to decide whether a song was sung "in character"? When the official metadata credits a character, so should we, as long as it fits within the length limits we have to work with.

Vo. vs VO:
tbh with you, I also don't know any other case of VO: or Vo. on top of my head. It is very rare occurrence.

Vo. format, its used in 2/2 cases but you sorta need find more cases and that indicate this the most frequent format and not just coincidence, which is not very practical. Even if it is most frequent usage, there's still possibility of confusion with Vo meaning 1 word (example: Vocal) instead of 2 (Voice Over).

VO: format, it is consistent with CV: format so this makes more sense imo.

Reason why I think consistency is important, is because RC is full of standardization rules.

2nd suggestion
I also don't like the 2nd suggestion but it was proposed by many so included it as potential solution. It has its flaws and don't really see the benefit of it over VO.

I found a case where VO format should still apply but VO wasn't used in official meta:

Game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1183260/TrymenT_Ima_o_Kaetai_to_Negau_Anata_e_AlphA/

Title: Re:Tryment -TraumenD-



Artist: 天草月乃 (maimie)

but the CV is 石原舞
https://re-tryment.com/character

we could..

1. follow official
2. become monke and unify both to (feat. Voice Actor)

Chromate wrote:

we could..

1. follow official
2. become monke and unify both to (feat. Voice Actor)

please explain when and why you want use (feat. Voice Actor) , also this proposal is not for CV... I don't see how it's related

oh yes I was saying do EITHER of those, not BOTH, sorry for that

and by official I mean follow official artist

Chromate wrote:

oh yes I was saying do EITHER of those, not BOTH, sorry for that

and by official I mean follow official artist

I got that, but for 2. please explain it more.

How would you write it given the official artist are:
case 1: Vivy (Vo. Yagi Kairi) -------- CV: Tanezaki Atsumi
case 2: Amakusa Tsukino (maimie) ------- CV: Ishihara Mai

and explain your reason

I was about to say its just (feat. Yagi Kairi) but actually lets just resort to official meta if it's there, shall we

yeah feat makes absolutely no sense in this context

ya I don't see any feat. in official and I don't think it adds any value to be added for the case of VO.

Official meta is always available, if it wasn't you would be using Unknown Artist instead.

Only following official would result in inconsistency of format, despite having same meaning, that's why standardization rules exist in metadata RC, and it takes up most part.

this is a good proposal, although i wonder if it'll be pushed forward to vocaloids with a well known voice bank (ie kaai yuki) but i think it depends on the artist themselves

Li Syaoran wrote:

this is a good proposal, although i wonder if it'll be pushed forward to vocaloids with a well known voice bank (ie kaai yuki) but i think it depends on the artist themselves

I think vocaloid is a completely separate case and unrelated to this proposal

Under current RC, vocaloid is not used as artist field by itself. it might show up in title, or artist field is producer. because the main contributor is producer and not the program itself.

you can raise a new proposal if you want push a `producer feat. vocaloid` format for artist field.

Drum-Hitnormal wrote:

I think vocaloid is a completely separate case and unrelated to this proposal

oh i was mentioning songs like lagtrain which in the official video have (Vo: Kaai Yuuki)

technically speaking it isn't rankable since lagtrain got ranked without that included but im wondering if it'll apply to other similar songs

Li Syaoran wrote:

Drum-Hitnormal wrote:

I think vocaloid is a completely separate case and unrelated to this proposal

oh i was mentioning songs like lagtrain which in the official video have (Vo: Kaai Yuuki)

technically speaking it isn't rankable since lagtrain got ranked without that included but im wondering if it'll apply to other similar songs

Im assuming you are refering to beatmapsets/1326266#taiko/2917591 and official MV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnIhRpIT7nc

If you look at official meta source, the Vo: Kaai Yuuki isn't on the artist field.

I still think that's a separate case from this proposal. My proposal isn't trying to force people to add `VO: Singer`, when its not there.

because my purpose is to avoid wrong usage of CV. in case of anime.

For vocaloid there is already an established standard of using producer as artist, sometimes they add feat. Vocaloid, sometimes not. Also I think it makes no sense to have `Producer (Vo: Vocaloid)` as artist

If you want standardize vocaloid artist format, it would be something like `Producer feat. Vocaloid` makes more sense. But thats really a different discussion, and out of scope for this thread.

well just found a case of song by not CV but credited as CV.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylxvggdxGjM

the weird part is 1 of them is actually the seiyuu, but the rest are cosplayers

given the rc is forcing incorrect standardization here, i'm not sure how this wasn't applied to the rc earlier

https://github.com/ppy/osu-wiki/pull/7433

pishifat wrote:

given the rc is forcing incorrect standardization here, i'm not sure how this wasn't applied to the rc earlier

https://github.com/ppy/osu-wiki/pull/7433

ty

now i can map song for this game cuz its all different singer, not CV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtWi-YekQAc

merged