The Rise of Otaku

Edited by Esperanza

It didn’t get popular in the east, but it got popular in the west? It really made the people from the Otaku Gaming portal speechless. When the weekly sales of the English version of “Fun Recipes” were submitted to the boss of the Otaku Gaming portal, his face was extremely confused. ‘God Dammnit, I wanted to forget about it, but why did it reappear in front of me in strange ways.’

Looking at domestic sales, it still gave people a feeling of despair. It seemed like the popularity in the west hasn’t affected the domestic market. But even so, the profit of the English version had offset the early advertising fee, it could be said that it was a reversal of fortune.

When the boss of the Otaku Gaming portal finally came back from the shock, he suddenly remembered one thing, so he quickly called in Gao Shu, who was in charge of Zhou Yu. With an eager tone, he asked, “last time, I asked you to tell Zhou Yu to suspend the production of educational games, did you tell him already?”

Seeing a very strange expression on the boss’ face and hearing his strange tone, Gao Shu carefully replied, “boss, Zhou Yu did not sign an exclusive contract, we can not control what games he can develop, so I did not tell him to suspend the development of educational games, but I have been asking him about the direction of new games.”

The boss sighed with relief and said, “well done, you need to immediately and personally go to Luhua village, make sure to ask Zhou Yu to continue the educational games. We also want the sequel to ‘fun recipes’, and it would be even better if there are other games, and the deal would be the same as before. If he wants anything, we will get him anything.”

Gao Shu was extremely confused, in just a few days, what exactly happened that made the boss change his mind so drastically? And the meaning of his words seemed to imply that he wanted to continue the plan of promoting the educational games, but it was against the shareholders’ decision! Was he mad at the shareholders or was there a new investment?

Looking at Gao Shu’s confused face, the boss pushed over the fax that he had received from the division overseas, the data on the fax shocked Gao Shu. He almost thought that the people from the overseas division provided the wrong data.

“We’ve got it wrong. But it shows that there is indeed a huge potential market for this kind of game. This kind of trend may still continue for a while, the overseas branch has already increased advertising fee, the influence from the overseas trend on the domestic users will most likely appear very soon, so we must seize this opportunity!”

The boss suddenly had high hopes for the game again, and it gave Gao Shu a lot of pressure.

What kind of person Zhou Yu was, after two years of contact, Gao Shu was very clear about it. If it was about business, you should thank god if he was taking a few seconds out of his time to talk to you. But if you went to Luhua village, he would definitely ignore you.

Fortunately, there was Zhou Fu next to Zhou Yu, and he could still talk to him about any kind of business.

The influence of the overseas trend of “Fun Recipes” on the domestic market had such a strong irony there. When foreigners think something was good, the consumers from the domestic market would gradually begin to review the game. Of course, some people were just following the trend, while others really felt that the game was unique.

People, who were following the trend, would not necessarily be able to become loyal users, and this type of trend would not last long after all, but the real point of this trend was to change perceptions, to successfully link the word ‘game’ and ‘skill ‘together, to weaken the traditional notion that ‘game = bad’ and pave the way for educational games later.

However, Zhou Yu did not have the awareness of a pioneer. Even though Zhou Fu was also confident in the educational games after he talked with Gao Shu, Zhou Yu still didn’t find that this kind of game was fun enough. If it weren’t for the fact that he wanted to learn how to cook, he wouldn’t have made this game.

So when he heard that the game suddenly became popular overseas, Zhou Yu’s attitude was still indifferent.

Popular or not, he still didn’t care about it. Anyway, he would never be able to understand the societal people.

In fact, the popularity of “fun Recipes” has gone awry. It didn’t mean that you would master the cooking skills by playing the game. Only when people started to practice in the real kitchen would they know that, there were still many things they needed to learn. This was something Zhou Yu deeply experienced. With knife skills alone, it took him more than a month to master it, and it was also with the help of the brain energy value. Without it, it could possibly take up to a year or two for an average person to master knife skills.

This was also the reason why many people failed to cook any dish successfully on Facebook. Some people had not even mastered the basic cooking skills, so no matter how good they were in the game, it was still no use. Similarly, if he made other skill games, such as driving games or other simulation games, people could only use them as an auxiliary practice, not a way to master a skill from zero knowledge.

A week later, the trend indeed spread to China.

As a result, “Fun Recipes” once again became a hot topic online. There used to be many people making sarcastic comments when the Otaku Gaming portal tried their best to promote the game to housewives, who wanted to learn how to cook. But when the English version of Fun Recipes went viral, all that noise slowly disappeared, leaving all sorts of surprised reactions.

The success of “Fun Recipes,” made even more reporters want to interview the brothel Taoist, after all, it was the mysterious team that created a new genre of games. However, the team still refused it straight away, just like before, and none of its members wanted to appear before the press.

This kind of determination was extremely similar to Zhou Yu’s two animation teams.

Regarding whether the brothel Taoist was also Zhou Yu’s team, it had already become a mystery. With the increasing popularity of “Fun Recipes”, and when the brothel Taoist became a market leader, this topic was brought up again.

However, the newly released movie “the dragon’s treasure” mobile game was not made by the Brothel Taoist, which seemed to indicate that the two were not connected, otherwise, why would they give the game to other companies. Moreover, the Brothel Taoist was good at CG production, while Zhou Yu’s two animation teams have been adhering to the 2-D animation movies, it seemed that there was a big difference in production style.

But what exactly was the truth?

Zhou Yu did not give any interviews, and both the Otaku Gaming portal and the penguin company were silent, only some unidentified sources said that Zhou Yu had already and completely dominated the animation, the comic, and the gaming industries and built a mysterious ACG empire that no one was able to imagine.

Everyone knew that it was exaggerated, but there was no way to prove it. Zhou Yu’s amusement park did not allow reporters to enter at all. No one knew exactly how many people had disguised themselves as tourists and conducted secret visits, but all the moments they captured were showing him living a life like an old man, there was no sign of an ACG empire at all.

The strange “emperor” went fishing every day, doing strange exercises, and even working as a chef in the canteen of the amusement park. He didn’t have an emperor’s grandeur at all! He was clearly a retired “old man”. But it was said that the dish that was cooked by him was very nice.

This, however, had some connections to the game Fun Recipes.

At present, the only media that could officially enter the amusement park was that parent-child variety show. While so many people were paying attention to the show, they also hoped the show could provide more information about Zhou Yu, after all, the secret behind the young man was really fascinating.

So far, people were sure that he had two animation teams, as well as the manga artist, who was known as the fast-handed Wang, and the earlier artist, who was drawing the Doujinshi of hunterxhunter, it should be a team as well. If the Taoist really belonged to him, then he really dominated the three industries.

An ordinary otaku without any prominent family background, where did he find these talents? Moreover, how on Earth did he make them so obedient and so willing to stay behind the scenes.

That was truly strange.