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Who Was Zhanyin Lorra?
Written 05/17/25, regarding events in 2014-2017.
In the early days of Shanghai Henian, back when not all the VOCALOID CHINA PROJECT characters had their voicebanks, the company helped on development for two VOCALOID unrelated to their own. These were Stardust, who was distributed and owned by the group Quadimension, and Zhanyin Lorra, who was owned by NetEase.
The difference between Stardust and Lorra, however… Is that while Stardust was successfully released and would later see a large boom in popularity thanks to her fantastic SynthV voicebank, Lorra was never released, despite large amounts of work done for her.
Lorra’s Entire History, From Beginning To End
Zhanyin Lorra was first revealed in 2014 alongside Yuezheng Ling. As mentioned before, she was owned by NetEase, with Shanghai Henian doing development— that is, creating the VOCALOID voicebank. Due to their simultaneous reveals, Ling and Lorra would be promoted together heavily, with Lorra’s character bio directly mentioning Ling.
Much like Ling, Lorra also had a contest to find her voice provider— fans could enter the contest with a submission of their talking voice and singing voice, and other fans would vote for which voice they liked best. Three finalists made it to the end of Lorra’s campaign, and alongside Ling’s three finalists, they would be made into sample VOCALOID3 voicebanks so fans could see how they sounded in the engine. After this, fans could vote on which voice they wanted to win on Ling and Lorra’s promotional website.
Promotional Website screenshot
Cardboard cut outs in front of the six finalists
The results for both girls were announced on October 15th, 2014. The winner for Lorra would be 龟娘 / Gui Niang, who at the time was an internet singer and aspiring voice actress— today, she’s had countless voice acting roles. You can listen to her winning voice clip here. You can use the wayback machine to hear the other two finalist entries for Lorra and all three of Ling's finalist entries here.
Gui Niang would report later on Weibo that she had finished recording for Lorra not too long after the contest ended, and QI Inory, Ling’s chosen voice provider, would record after her.
Toward mid-2015, VSINGER (then at the time going by the name VOCANESE) would report that Ling was still in production and would release soon, but the same could not be said for Lorra. Though Gui Niang finished her recordings, NetEase owned Lorra’s character rights and made the calls for everything marketing and release related. Meaning, Shanghai Henian could complete the voicebank (it’s unclear if this was ever done), but only NetEase could decide to release it.
Gui Niang would give feedback later in May saying she had heard Lorra’s voicebank and was happy with the result. However, Suyi, the music director and a voicebank developer at Shanghai Henian, would confirm soon after this that Lorra would be delayed, citing poor quality/not meeting the devs’ expectations.
On May 28th, Stardust would be announced to be in development at Shanghai Henian, as well as the start of the “Voicebank Customize Project”— this would separate commissioned characters (such as Stardust and Lorra) from the core group making up VOCANESE (now changed to VSINGER with this announcement).
In early 2016, it was confirmed that those at NetEase responsible for Lorra's project had resigned and were not interested in continuing her production. It would be possible for another company to pick up development, but for now, Lorra would remain in limbo. Though her activities were listed and left as “suspended”, there have been no updates since in regards to her VOCALOID voicebank and is considered abandoned. Her official Weibo is scrubbed clean, and the video game she was created to promote is no longer online. After the release of Stardust VOCALOID4, the “Voicebank Customize Project” would never be acknowledged again.
A setup icon for Lorra labeling her as a VOCALOID3 would be found in files for VOCALOID5 and VOCALOID6, but there is no voicebank to match.
More About Lorra
Lorra has two biographies, one that emerged during her time as a VOCALOID in development and one that emerged when Lorra was added to the game 元气战姬学院 / Combat Girl Academy (fan translation) after her VOCALOID development was suspended.
Lorra’s VOCALOID biography taken from her and Ling’s promotional website:
A quiet 16-year-old girl who came to the human world from the magic dimension with a mysterious mission. Due to dimensional turbulence, she got her exit wrong and crashed into Ling’s house (Is Ling's house built at the intersection of dimensions? *A reference to Ling and Tianyi meeting in the VCP animations). Lorra had never been to the human world before and was very unfamiliar with everything around her, but she had passion and a clear singing voice. So with the help of Ling, Lorra became a VOCALOID. Lorra has an "Awakening Right Eye" that can see the musical potential in people, and activates this potential through singing, giving it magical power.
Her age was listed at 16, but “actually 163” was in parentheses next to it. It’s assumed her last name, “Zhanyin”, was in reference to the game ZhanyinOL, a NetEase game that would also never release.
After her development was suspended, Lorra’s character rights were purchased by another game studio, Joyme, and she was added into Combat Girl Academy in 2017. Her biography was changed to mention that “[though] Lorra has lost her singing ability, she can still continue to sing and enjoy wonderful music”. Gui Niang would return to voice Lorra in the game.
How Does Lorra Live On?
Lorra has lived on in the voice synth space following her suspension solely through fancontent. Shanghai Henian do not have her character rights and most likely can’t post anything about her following the end of development, and it's unclear if the company behind Combat Girl Academy is still active.
Much like how when only Tianyi was out and people would make her sing songs they would want Ling to perform, some people pitch shift Yanhe and label them Lorra covers, or use UTAU that sound similar enough to Lorra's winning clip.
Assorted Lorra images
