Tohoku Zunko
fictional character

Tohoku Zunko (東北ずん子, Tōhoku Zunko) is a character created for Voiceroid and was later also developed for the Vocaloid 3 engine.
Development
She was originally created to help promote the recovery of the Tōhoku region in the wake of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. Zunko's release marked an improvement compared to previous Voiceroid models, notably in the user interface. The ability to adjust strength of intonation has been added, as well as the ability to insert pauses directly into the tuning screen. Users can also directly use ruby pronunciation markers in the text. It also reads text at up to 4x speed and can output 22.1 kHz sample-rate audio files.
Additional software
A fundraising campaign was in effect with the goal of creating a Vocaloid vocal for Zunko if the required funds (¥5,000,000) were met by July 20. Since then, the campaign was successful and her vocal was released in June 2014 for Vocaloid 3.
Her Voiceroid software was updated in 2015 to Voiceroid+ ex along with 5 other Voiceroid products.
Characteristics
Her character design is based on a zunda-mochi, a Tōhoku specialty, which is a traditional sweet made of green soybean paste.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q11526103. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2011, 2014 and 2015.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tohoku Zunko” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.