The Rise of Otaku

Chapter 201 Maze Making

Edited by: Xelot

The fame of little Muli in the real world was actually far smaller than the ACG world, the reason was that she couldn’t appear in the real world, and she couldn’t even appear in front of her fans. In the ACG world, at least, there were some television stations that occasionally came to interview her, and when little Muli accepted the tasks of Starlight city, she would also appear on the screen, and the amazing performance in the idol contest also gathered some good amount of popularity for her.

But, in the real world, there weren’t any opportunities like this. On the internet, the number of loyal fans, who wanted to find out her true identity, was still a lot, the more mysterious she was, the more it could trigger people’s desire to dig out all her information. This was the reason why after little Muli appeared in the fantasy city, it attracted a lot of her fans to stake out the fantasy city.

However, if people could not see her in the amusement park, naturally, the excitement would fade out. Idols are creatures that live in the worship of others. Without any news, fans would gradually lose interest, and then the idols would lose all their popularity. Although little Muli was still at home, she was still an idol. It was her nature that she liked to be in the limelight, so if she became an unpopular idol, she would suffer a heavy blow, perhaps she would become depressed forever.

In order to make little Muli happy, Zhou Yu should give her more opportunities to show herself to the world. Although he currently did not have an item that could make her appear in the real world just like the function of the midnight troupe theater, making a variety show was not a bad idea. It’s just that he didn’t know how to describe the videos that he was going to produce.

Call it an animation? Or a movie or a variety show? What platform should it be released on? Or just released it on the internet? Perhaps, he should let the children of Luhua village see it first. There were so many things to consider, that it made Zhou Yu feel very irritated. So in the end, he simply stopped thinking about it but put all his focus on making the maze.

Making a maze was a big project, it was much more complicated than many previous movie sets because it required a lot of mechanical design. With many more meticulously designed small mechanical parts, naturally, it required more effort to assemble them. It was not something a person was able to handle.

And at this time, having a disciple has finally proven useful.

Wu Yun has already started learning mechanical engineering. So if Zhou Yu gave her the blueprint, she should know how to assemble it. With women’s unique attention to detail, she was very competent for this job. So two people could work together very tacitly even if there wasn’t any communication. A huge and complex maze model that had numerous traps, was slowly formed in the hands of those two people.

Whenever Zhou Yu started making models, Zhou Fu would definitely come over to have a look, because after the model was made, it would be the time to shoot a movie. Originally, Zhou Fu was quite worried, because it had been some time since the last movie was made, but there were no new movements from Zhou Yu. After all, the park’s biggest revenue came from Zhou Yu’s animated movies.

However, this time, he was very confused about what Zhou Yu wanted to make.

In the past, there used to be one sand table for each scene, such as a town sand table or a forest sand table, etc, but now it was just a whole huge film set, about 10 meters wide and 20 meters long, which was a breathtaking project.

Fortunately, the studio was very large that it was able to accommodate such a big project, but later on, because the project was simply too big, even Wu Yin’s disciples also joined in to help. Although their ability was not enough, the simple parts assembly was not a problem. After all, the production of the sand table was also one of their compulsory courses.

Waiting until Zhou Yu had a break, Zhou Fu asked curiously, “Boy Yu, what movie are you going to make? Do you really need such a big set?”

“A maze adventure, the first season is planned to shoot 12 episodes, each episode is about an hour long.”

This was the number of episodes marked on Oba’s script, which made it a relatively large survival variety show. At the moment, the host and the hostess would be Zhao Zan and little Muli. In addition to a complete maze, there was a need for a live stage, which made this film set preparation the most laborious preparation ever.

Zhou Fu was stunned when he heard this. 12 episodes and it was only for the first season and it was not even an animated movie?

“Wait a second, if it’s not an animated movie, what are you going to shoot?”

“I don’t know how to categorize it. It’s like a variety show. It will become an amusement park project in the future, whether this program works well or not. What do you think, Uncle Fu?”

The amusement project was solely decided by Zhou Yu, and Zhou Fu only had the right to make suggestions. Although Zhou Fu already knew that boy Yu was a person who had many strange ideas and likes to do strange things arbitrarily, he was still shocked by this sudden decision. He hurriedly ran to the edge of the sand table and carefully looked at the designs.

The maze adventure is divided into two parts, the ground part, and the underground part. The ground part is a normal maze adventure, which requires passing some tests to check the intelligence level and the physical ability of the participants, and there are even signs that have the words “be aware of monsters” written on it. And the underground part has haunted houses, tombs, and some other similar structures, which also looked pretty good.

However, such a huge project needed a lot of money, the daily consumption of capital was not a small number. With the current number of tourists they had in Luhua village, can they support such a large game project?

“Boy Yu, are you sure about this? Do you want to think about it again? The project is too expensive and we don’t even know if we will be able to get the investment back.”

Those who were running the amusement park would only hope that there would be more entertainment facilities available for the customers. The more facilities mean the longer the customer would stay. However, if everyone was behaving like boy Yu, not many amusement parks would be able to stay open for a long time. Zhou Fu did not know what Zhou Yu wanted to do at all. This was not how you should run an amusement park.

“It’s okay, I just wanted to see what it will look like when it becomes a real project. It doesn’t matter if no one comes to visit it.”

Indeed, Zhou Yu didn’t mind even if no one came to visit the maze. The main purpose of this project was to explore the underground world of the ACG world. As long as he could find the citizens of the underground world, no matter how much money it would cost him, it would still be worth it.

Spending so much money on this project, just because he wanted to see what it would look like. Even in the entire world, perhaps only Zhou Yu would do such a thing. Zhou Fu knew what kind of person Zhou Yu was, and if he decided to do so, he would certainly do it to the end, even if it meant that he would get nothing in return. As a conscientious amusement park manager, he just wanted to keep the losses to the minimum.

So he carefully began to read the program’s flow chart, and then he came across a section that interested him a lot.

“Boy Yu, the hostess of this program is Muli? The muli who sings very well?”

No wonder Zhou Fu was excited. If it was indeed that girl, it might be able to cause some discussion. And once people began to discuss it online, it would definitely attract some attention, and in the future, if Muli were to appear in the maze project of the amusement park in person, the success of this project would not be impossible.

“Yes, but she will just be doing the voice acting since this variety show is still animated.”

The new term, “the animated variety show”, also stunned Zhou Fu, because he knew quite a lot about animation, but still has not seen any similar programs before. Innovation is a good thing, but the possibility of failure is also very high. It made Zhou Fu wonder if Beidou ever considered the possibility of the failure of this project.

“I will leave the promotion of the program to you. But don’t stress yourself out. The success or failure of this project doesn’t matter much. I would gladly do it, even if it is to show it to Little Rat and other kids.”

However, Zhou Yu’s understatement made Zhou Fu feel even more stressed.