[1161] Master And Student
└ posted on Thursday, 12 March 2020, by Novil
- Richard: That chocolate cake was delicious! It was the best one I’ve ever eaten!
- Hitomi: Arigatou gozaimasu! I baked it!
- Richard: Is that a character from an anime?
- Hitomi: Yes! That’s Faris from Steins;Gate. She works as a maid in May Queen cafe.
- Hitomi: Cafe Mai:lish is prototype for May Queen! We are very proud! Steins;Gate is one of best anime series in the world!
- Richard: Well, then I have to watch it! If Faris is only half as kawaii as the real maids, then she must be a great character!
- Hitomi: No, no, no! Not embarrass Hitomi! Faris much more kawaii! Faris master of kawaii! Hitomi only student!
![[1161] Master And Student](/comics/2020-03-12-1161-master-and-student.png "[1161] Master And Student")
Shouldn’t maids in a maid cafe have their uniforms… well…uniform?
@ cathulion:
Things like maid cafes work under the concept of customization. Workers make a persona so to speak, with their own little personal flair, to help set themselves apart and build their reputation. This helps them also build a bond between them and repeat customers.
@ cathulion:
From a quick Google search, it’s apparently not always the case. It’s fine as long as it’s
a maid outfitsome kind of demented version on acid of a maid outfit.I like hers manifold and fast changing facial expressions! 🙂
Hmm, I think Sandra could end up having a Japanese stepmother… XD.
Glad Richard finally got an arc. It’s only been…12 years? O.o
@ Andrea:
I wouldn’t mind it… provided that Powree could make her face/head more visually distinct from Ye Thuza.
Faris is kind of low key one of my favorite S;G characters and I’m not entirely sure why.
I may be falling in love with Hitomi a little.
@Lizuka, maybe because she can out-chuunibyou the mad scientist?
On the one hand, Hitomi is so much a caricature that I feel somewhat uncomfortable… but then again, Richard is being portrayed here as a stereotypical lost gaijin, so I suppose it’s fair. (Yes, I know maid cafés do exist, and I’m quite familiar with Steins;Gate.) I think it’s the broken English that grates on me. Hitomi knows odd words for someone who doesn’t speak English well, and her grammatical mistakes are also inconsistent. But… the dialogue is written in German first, I suppose….
I guess I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out that Hitomi is quite fluent in English (maybe not even a native speaker of Japanese], and is just playing to the tourist’s expectations.
Richard used the K word!
Fiction logic at this point dictates that Sandra be able to sense from across the ocean that her father is feeling attracted to a woman she doesn’t know and feel entitled to pass judgement on her potential stepmother.
Hitomi, I think, has nothing to fear from her potential stepdaughter. But I’m anticipating a call on Richard’s cellphone within the next four pages, with horrendous disregard for the roaming charges he’s going to incur as a result.
Finally! Someone else who acknowledges that Faris was best girl in Stein;Gate!
ooooh boy, you’re in for a world of wtf XD
@ Ratfox:
That’s a bit of rude description… Most Japanese maid cafes base their uniforms on a mix of French uniform style and the popular harajuku/lolita style in Japan…
If Faris NyanNyan is the inspiration here, is Hitomi in the same age range?
nekokami wrote:
I have been thinking in similar lines, there is probably some kind of surprise in store for Richard. There is something endearingly nerdy about Hitomi. I wonder if she works in the maid café to pay for her grad school studies, or something similar? I hope so, because I think Richard needs a brainy woman by his side.
MarqFJA87 wrote:
I think both the cheeks and the chin are different enough, there would be no problem distinguishing them, even if Ye Thuza is unarmed. 🙂
The flirting is strong in those two.
Furthermore, isn’t Cloud into Steins Gate as well? That would be an interesting dynamic if Sandras boyfriend and stepmother would be into the same anime (or VN). It would kinda force her to watch that stuff if she doesn’t want to be excluded by their discussions.
@ Regis Earsquake:
As a girl with a boyfriend and best friend who have interests I’m not interested in, I see no reason why Sandra would feel obligated to partake in something just for the sake of conversation.
Actually, my boyfriend has a beautiful habit of, when I tell him he’s made a reference I don’t get and rrquest context, provide me with JUST enough detail to help me understand it and not enough to sound like he’s pressuring me or fangirling, and Cloud strikes me as the type to show that sort of consideration for Sandra’s disinterest.
@ Marteri:
More likely, that’s just a consequence of the visual medium. The webcomic Ménage à 3 suffered a similar problem. Stereotypical “foreigner gammar” came about because writing realistic linguistic errors for a non-native speaker of a language is less easily discerned to a reader than it is to a listener. Better to play the stereotype and have your readers understand than play it realistically and spend the arc translating in the author’s notes.
@ Alpha-Sigma:
I’m I think you’re just afraid of weebs.
It’s too good to be true, if we are are going with Steins;Gate there is only one option: Hitomi is a guy.
@ DTIBA:
There’s a fine line between representing linguistic errors in a readable way and having a character sound like a bad stereotype from a b-level movie from the 50s (cringe). To me, Hitomi’s dialogue is on the line or across it (especially since she started doing it after Richard complimented her on her English). But if it turns out she’s doing it on purpose, it will be hilarious.
If not, well, this is (sometimes at least) a comic about a talking raccoon in which the human deity is apparently selected more or less at random and a pre-adolescent has a pet black hole, so I’m not going to judge it based just on a language/cultural stereotype. 😉
Steins; Gate rocks!! Awesome reference!
D’awwwwww!
Kawaiiiiii… ^_^
@ nekokami:
I see no significant difference between Hitomi’s dialogue in 1159 and 1160, so I’m not sure what you’re talking about. In terms of the dialogue itself, everyone has their own sensitivities in regards to stereotypes, and I’d be very surprised if any creator managed to utilize such (knowingly or not) without aggravating ANYONE.
@ SaboteurSupreme:
I don’t see how having an understanding boyfriend makes me “afraid of weebs”, you’re gonna have to walk me through the logic on that one.
Hitomi is very sweet and I love her ♥️
And i am still waiting for us all to figure out that she is half Richards age..
On the other hand. Can you imagine Woo trying to visit japan..?
Not to be a wet blanket, but… we may have departed from reality a bit here. We could be down a rabbit hole, so to speak.
I wonder if this is going to turn out to be a dream-sequence. You know what they say: if it seems too good to be true, it’s probably going to turn out to have been a dream-sequence, or a drug and/or alcohol induced haze, a fever-dream, or a fugue state.
I’m rooting for Richard here, but… I’ve had my heart broken before.
@ Eledore:
Would it kill you to show a little optimism? Even assuming she is younger than he is by any significant measure, she’s employed at a fanservicey job and is familiar with a political embassy. She’s definitely of the age of majority, and the idea of Richard entering into a relationship with a younger adult isn’t a bad thing.
@ J. Craig:
Richard’s daughter has a talking raccoon for a pet, her boyfriend’s little sister is a spacial physicist, and he flew to Scandinavia to deliver packages by car because it was cheaper than mailing them, and you find the idea of a relationship with a Japanese woman to be unrealistic? Good night.
and now i want these two to start dating or something
Eledore wrote:
Shall we assume that Richard is somewhere between 40 and 45? There is the old rule of thumb that a man can date a woman who is half his age + 7 (and vice versa I guess, but that’s another matter). If Hitomi is a bit over 30, she is in fact old enough to be the mother of a girls of Sandra’s age. I guess she might be as young as 28 (twice Sandra’s age) it it would still be ok with a relationship. Any younger? Well, if Novil wishes to surprise us, why not. 🙂
@ Marteri:
I once dated a woman who was half my age minus seven. It must have worked, we’ve been married 13 years now.
Too cute, got diabetes
Oh my goodness, Sandra’s getting a stepmother isn’t she
@ Brett P Bellmore:
Good for you! Both of you. 🙂
Did i said she may be Sandra new mom? uuuuhhhh…
He has a talent for making “students of kawaii” blush, I see.
@ Marteri:
i get the feeling that at least part of this is her maid persona for the job. as i understand it, with the more professional ones, the employees are basically cosplaying characters of their own making, and maintain a “working persona” that they stick to whenever they are wearing their cafe outfit.
so if/when he meets her when she isn’t working in the cafe or in the maid uniform she’ll be a little less over the top.
glitterboy2098 wrote:
Yes, that is my understanding as well and I keep my fingers crossed that the real Hitomi has qualities that can make her a serious partner for Richard. And she would still be able to make the chocolate cake outside her cosplay role. 🙂
glitterboy2098 wrote:
I kind of hope she’s a graduate student in something arcane enough to spark his interest at an intellectual level and that she actually is only working there until the next semester starts at the U.S. University where she has a fellowship.
cathulion wrote:
From what I’ve seen, maid cafe outfits nowadays are pretty much like magical girl outfits. If you see a ninja maid and a shrine maiden maid, it doesn’t mean you entered the wrong cafe.
AnotherBear and glitterboy2098, it looks like we have become a bunch of shippers! 🙂
Marteri wrote:
I, for one, am widowed. I feel Richard’s loneliness and sorrow, believe it.