Chapter 146: Akihabara-style Culture Arrives
Xiang Chuan now somewhat regretted the suggestion she gave after a moment of thinking with her fatigued brain from not taking a nap the previous two days. Although from a two-dimensional perspective, setting up some themed style small shops was naturally a piece of cake, the problem was that this was 30,000 years later.
So she could only wrinkle her face full of social death embarrassment in her own club’s… next door Performance Club. There was no choice; the restaurant side had too many people and loose lips, and leaking their class’s plan would be troublesome. Xiang Chuan was now showing some popular science twenty-first century two-dimensional maid culture to the classmates gathered around her, like “Maid Sama!” and “Lucky Star”, etc. Never mind “Lucky Star” which was full of ancient otaku flavor; “Maid Sama!” truly captured this group of hyperactive kids in the class.
Handing the image light screen to the classmates, Xiang Chuan nestled on the Performance Club’s sofa and only thought while writing the application for these two old anime: maybe, it seems, perhaps, she hadn’t shown modern people any proper romance films yet?
Although “Empresses in the Palace” had romance parts, even modern people’s avant-garde aesthetics couldn’t really appreciate the looks gap between the emperor and Huan; “My Own Swordsman” White Exhibitor and the landlady… according to feedback from her little sister and her own club members, they seemed to treat their romance parts as cross-talk.
So, the girl manga original “Maid Sama!” seemed to really become her first proper romance film to bring out?
“I was careless…” Xiang Chuan’s originally furrowed brows wrinkled even tighter now, “I should have brought out Teacher Sonamura Yuna or Clip Mommy’s masterpieces earlier…”
If the old two-dimensional fans from the twenty-first century heard this, they would be scared to death: never mind Teacher Sonamura Yuna’s girl manga; showing CLAMP’s manga to future people ignorant of the world?! Isn’t that a bit too much?! Do you want to abuse them to death with “Tokyo Babylon” and “X Chronicles”, or tangle their brains with the plots of “Wish” and “xxxHOLiC”?!
But setting these aside, this was still modern people’s first contact with the “animation” medium. Class Eight everyone was very surprised seeing the screen with not real people but flatter pictures. 2D pictures for modern people were only things that appeared in the design sketch stage; things usually shown were mostly in 3D imaging form. So upon seeing twenty-first century produced 2D animation, Class Eight everyone was very shocked: ancient people actually used this form to create film and TV dramas? How do the people on the screen move? Motion capture technology? But the characters are sometimes big and sometimes small (referring to chibi figures); how to ensure smoothness?
Some classmates from information technology and animation production clubs were getting restless, but were immediately pressed down first by Class President Lu Daiqing: I know you’re very eager, I’m quite eager too (Class President: Hearing that this thing called “animation” is adapted from books called “manga”, how can I as a Literature Club person not be curious?), but we are now researching that maid cafe thing, other matters wait until after the school anniversary to fiddle with slowly.
With Class President Lu Daiqing and Vice Class President Nancy and other class cadres helping control the scene, it finally prevented Class Eight people’s increasingly jumping thinking inspired by the class motto from straying off topic.
Xiang Chuan didn’t forget to collect more maid model photos as information when going home in the evening, and also conveniently collected some butler photos, but compared to the varied maid outfits, butler outfits had relatively single styles. Chou Manman used her own club’s 3D clothing printer to print a sample for Ainuo to try on; although it looked quite handsome and human-like, because its essence was similar to suits, and modern serving attire wasn’t without suits, the impact wasn’t very strong.
The girls’ side wasn’t without complaints either; Akihabara otaku-style maid outfits were too revealing, and were chopped by the girls’ group led by Ouyang Yating and Nancy, making the boys greatly heartbroken. On the contrary, some more retro Victorian style long skirt maid outfits combined elegance and beauty, very welcomed by the girls’ group. Chou Manman volunteered to try on a sample outfit, imitating the anime maids’ speech and behavior with some “Master, welcome home” demonstrations; the pure yet elegant and cute attire instantly earned full marks from the boys’ group who had been greatly regretting the ultra-short skirt maid outfits being cut.
But the boys’ group clothing problem was still stuck in a stagnant state.
Xiang Chuan also temporarily had no time to care about clothing matters.
Because Class President Lu Daiqing first went to Teacher Zhu Bingwen to apply for the maid restaurant (Xiang Chuan’s original words: doesn’t even know which fleet’s which corner the coffee beans are in, better not call it a cafe), Zhu Bingwen and the principal saw it was a project originating from ancient culture, and gave the green light all the way without a word.
Although clothing and venue decoration needed to wait until the cooperating school’s class arrived before arrangements could be made, the catering aspect could only be handed to A Bite of China Club.
Who let the entire club’s people be in Class Eight; proximity advantage.
Because it was just a high school school activity scale project, no need to prepare any proper grand feast; usually supplied cakes, buns, juice, milk, etc., were sufficient. The only problem was ingredients fees. Fortunately, the tuition already included the students’ class fees; under Class President Lu Daiqing’s authorization, a good sum of fees was allocated to A Bite of China Club. If not for some ingredients currently not having mass production and no oven available, Xiang Chuan was somewhat aroused in fighting spirit wanting to show off some new desserts following Class Eight everyone’s style.
But after all, it was a cooperative project; Xiang Chuan and A Bite of China Club everyone also didn’t hope their own new products to steal the cooperating school’s spotlight, so they honestly selected some simpler to make things from Xiang Family’s breakfast recipes.
Ainuo took the sorted ingredients proportion table and the class fees Xiang Chuan forwarded to him, and on the next day bought one-third more ingredients than originally planned and transported them to A Bite of China Club’s warehouse. Only upon asking did they learn it was because a certain production escort ship had just harvested recently; the processed food had just entered port, and Ainuo first-handedly got ingredients through his own channels at a price only a tiny bit higher than cost price.
A tiny bit higher than cost price yielded one-third more quantity? The few classmates in the class whose families weren’t engaged in agriculture production industry and those whose families were in food processing industry all fell silent.
Alright then, one reason Yue Xiang Restaurant’s dishes sold so expensively was because of this? If not for not having contacted twenty-first century political culture, everyone would start cursing capitalists right now.
But after A Bite of China Club here smoothly completed the ingredients preparation task, Class Eight everyone still hadn’t decided. Victorian style long skirt maid outfits would surely make the girls a major highlight at this school anniversary, but the boys also had their own desire to perform, and the girls didn’t want to be too busy with feet not touching ground by then.
Everyone wanted to take advantage of fewer people rest times to stroll other classes’ school anniversary exhibition stands.
But the butler outfits lacking highlights, they were also somewhat powerless; Xiang Chuan couldn’t suggest anything on this matter either, after all she wasn’t clothing major, had no twenty-first century flashes of inspiration to help.
There were also some heartless ones like Nancy who chose not to consider this problem, starting to try on clothes here in the Performance Club to play around after getting familiar.
At the Performance Club’s creation, Xiang Chuan gave Chou Manman quite a lot of “Romeo and Juliet” era clothing information; Chou Manman waved her hand and directly prepared a whole room of clothes, sometimes having members change into them during rehearsal programs, very motivating members to super-level performance.
After Nancy tried on several long skirts in one go and got a bit bored, she directly changed into Romeo’s clothes, and upon walking out of the changing room harvested Xiang Chuan, Ouyang Yating, and Chou Manman’s simultaneous “So handsome”, attracting Class Eight everyone’s attention, directly making the girls’ group eyes sparkling as they surrounded her.
Takarazuka style being welcomed by females was indeed not without reason. Xiang Chuan thought looking at Nancy surrounded by same-class girls.
Class President Lu Daiqing touched her chin looking at Nancy in the sword servant outfit, a flash of inspiration in her mind.
The next morning, Zhu Bingwen looked at the project plan submitted by his own class’s class president; the title clearly wrote: Maid Butlers and Male-Female Servants’ Small Eatery.
Didn’t notice writing the wrong chapter number in the previous chapter…
