When I was very young, I watched a tokusatsu show. I can't remember the specific story anymore, but I recall one absurd setting that really attracted me—the monsters appearing in the show were imagined by children on the street. Each child molded their favorite monster, and these imagined monsters actually appeared in reality. Later, one child even assembled parts from different monsters together, creating a super-strong monster.
I never remembered what that show was specifically, nor did I ever try to look it up, but that scene has always occupied the most important space in my mind when it comes to the topic of monsters.
I only looked it up to write this article; it's the Ultraman Gaia movie "The Decisive Battle in Hyperspace."
I really like this plot, probably because it fully illustrates that "imagination" is the core source of fun for many forms of entertainment. When I was a child, I thought only kids liked to imagine, finding joy for half a day picking up a stick on the road, chasing classmates and shouting, "Hey! Monster, where are you running!"
Only after growing up did I realize that adults are the professional players in the field of imagination, a group capable of systematically processing and collecting delusions on a large scale.
They can use their imagination to complete adventure stories millions of words long, establish memes and pop culture trends, and turn mundane, lackluster daily life into something colorful and vibrant.
Just like this billboard below, which has over twenty million views on X.
This billboard is hung on a utility pole. It has the word "Felicie" written on it, and the maid in the picture is pierced through the chest by a bolt from the pole.
If you don't use your imagination, this billboard is just a realistic case of "good enough." The person choosing the billboard location couldn't have predicted that there would be a sensitive bolt on that utility pole. The person installing the billboard followed relevant regulations for installation, probably not caring much about the structural design of the content on the sign, and might have even had a bit of "impaling" bad taste.
This situation isn't unique. The world is so big, with so many utility poles; you can always find similar billboards with bolts placed in awkward positions.
In fact, she wasn't the only beautiful girl getting impaled.
But because someone's delusions slightly expanded while passing by, this billboard began to have countless stories. This person had probably watched too many strange maid-themed works. Upon seeing the cute little maid on the billboard, peacefully impaled by a bolt, they instantly imagined a tragic scene of a maid saving her master.
The line he imagined has strong infectious power on social media. Because most netizens, like him, have watched many strange maid-themed works. In their hearts, maids have long become an image that automatically resonates with people's memories due to years of cultivation in entertainment products. Just mention a few keywords, and people will recall countless famous characters and iconic scenes.
For example, if I say, "If true love had a color, it would definitely be blue," many people's DNA would probably start reacting, even if they haven't watched "Re:Zero − Starting Life in Another World."
So, after this netizen casually made up a scenario, this maid billboard, with its tragic color and elements fitting an iconic scene, quickly became a hot topic in the community. On Togetter, a Japanese website that compiles trending topics on X, it once climbed to the second spot on the popularity list. Even the poster didn't expect so much attention and seriously apologized in the comments, saying, "Sorry for the disturbance."
Along with this热度 (heat/popularity) came all sorts of meme images. As mentioned earlier, adults are the true experts at filling in the blanks. Just give them a starting point, and they'll automatically expand and continue the story. They're better than anyone at making up stories from pictures, turning a clumsy "laundry maid" into the "Future Dragon Emperor."
First came all sorts of strange associations. It proves that the number of weird works people have seen can only be described as tragic. Thanks to the发达 (developed/advanced) flow of information, magical little edited images in the comments section sprang up like mushrooms after rain.
This impaled pose is just overflowing with "iconic scene" energy.
With such strong visual impact, it always tugs at everyone's shared emotions. Positive portrayals remind people of countless tragic and heroic scenes, stirring up passion or tears, with soundtracks like "Uta no Kuruma" ringing in their ears.
But if portrayed from a different angle, the music playing in your head would probably be something like "Kanashimi no Mukou e" or "The Flower of Hope." Then, the trollish mood takes over your brain, leaving only thoughts of "persecution." Unfortunately, there seem to be way too many such iconic scenes.
There are both fated duels from Gundam and gentle maids instantly transforming into Stroheim from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, turning the bolt in their chest into a "Great German Cannon" aiming directly at you.
Combined with the original Stroheim, it must be said that the position of the cannon barrel and this pose are reproduced very cleverly.
Some netizens wanted to directly rewrite the maid's ending on the spot, so they brought out Dante, the well-known rogue from the gaming world, suggesting that getting impaled is no big deal, just entertainment for after meals. Instead of being sad, it's better to go bother that man sitting on a plastic stool.
Among these baseless associations, the most interesting and fitting is everyone's recreation of Aizen's fake death scene from "Bleach." In the original work, Aizen was nailed to the exterior wall of a building, dying dramatically. As a result, after Aizen faked his death, he executed a series of plans behind the scenes, triggering many key plot events, making this heroic death scene even more meme-worthy.
The reason why this image of Aizen is the most fitting is that, with the spread on the internet, the story settings for the maid in the picture obviously started to become richer. Netizens were no longer satisfied with just crafting a tragic story; her image visibly became increasingly outrageous.
At first, everyone just continued from the original post's line, "Young Lady, I'm so glad you're okay." Since the billboard had the name Felicie written on it, people named the maid Felicie. Then, they created detailed character settings for the Young Lady based on this and added flashback plots between the maid and the Young Lady. Thus, a three-dimensional image of the Young Lady, who shares a deep bond with Felicie, vividly emerged.
Many people like to write final monologues for Felicie, adding details to complete the story bit by bit, sprinkling in some fragmented daily maid life as seasoning, and ending with a sense of no regrets in life, perfectly establishing Felicie's character and the tragic ending of the story.
Others were frantically adding details to this assassination, using the dialogue of the assassination team to forcefully assign the "invincible combat maid" setting to Felicie.
Even the name "Iwamoto" on the utility pole, used to mark the location, was ruthlessly incorporated into the script as a tool for the assassin.
The innocent young lady who relied on Felicie, and Felicie, who was raised as a killing tool since childhood, built a deep bond through their companionship. Felicie gained her humanity through her interactions with the young lady, while the young lady, under Felicie's protection, survived numerous assassination attempts amidst noble feuds.
In the end, outnumbered and outmatched, Felicie could not resist the giant wheel of power and fatefully sacrificed herself in rounds of assassinations. And so, a tear-jerking image of a "tragic hero" was forcibly written into existence in the comments section through everyone's contributions, leaving everyone satisfied.
Ah, I seem to have experienced a similar story back in 1999.
But the birth of tragedy doesn't align with most people's preferences. With so many entertainment works out there, there are countless ways to keep someone who appears dead alive and kicking. Continuing from the famous "sword pulled from chest" iconic scene, Felicie unlocked the奇妙 (wonderful/strange) operation of pulling an anti-tank gun from her chest in another timeline.
Perhaps due to the positive influence of Stroheim, the setting of having an overpowered weapon grow out of one's chest unexpectedly became popular. It's quite common in many netizens' fan creations, and thoughtful netizens even provided the caption for the next part: "Young Lady, please prepare for impact. I'm going to fire."
If you don't like sci-fi, the magic side also provided quite outstanding fan creations—although the name of the move "Lady's Iron Resistance" is truly quite meaningless.
However, among this series of fan-made plot speculations, I think the one that's hardest to keep a straight face at is the following—
Even the genre has changed; this is no longer about a maid and a young lady, but a plot from "Detective Conan."
With the support of numerous works, the image of the maid indeed has too much room for association. Plus, this billboard, constantly recreated by everyone, is located in Akihabara—a place with over a hundred maid cafes, known as the holy land for 2D maids. Passersby who leave their imaginative stories here, when seeing this billboard full of吐槽 (complaints/jokes), can probably draw rich creative inspiration from the "maid stories" in their memories.
Overall, this is a large-scale secondary fan creation within an online community that evolved from a passerby's fantasy. It must be said that as netizens supplemented the background story, this story indeed has quite a few highlights.
But as everyone got more and more carried away, they seemed to forget: the initial carrier of these stories was a billboard.
Since it's a billboard, there must be a shop advertising.
And this shop is a maid massage parlor in Akihabara specializing in "healing," named Felicie. The maid who has been constantly featured in fan creations is their poster girl.
In a sense, this shop is a well-known old establishment with a good reputation. It has been in Akihabara, a fiercely competitive area, for over ten years. In fact, if you search for this shop online, you can still find quite a few reports about it.
When we turn our perspective to this shop, we find that the whole story changes its appearance. As a maid cafe offering "healing" massage services, its overall atmosphere is more aligned with the traditional maid image: considerate, thorough, and making guests feel at home.
The magnificent stories of Felicie in netizen fan creations do not happen here. Or rather, this is like another timeline, or an epilogue after all the turmoil has settled. In this story, Felicie was not impaled; she remained a gentle, calm, smiling, healing maid.
Seeing the shop's billboard being discussed so enthusiastically, they were also surprised. Seeing Felicie impaled, they would join in the jokes—"Every day at work, I feel like this kid is too pitiful."
Just like the back of this billboard that sparked countless stories, and another billboard on the other side of the utility pole, the bolt didn't pierce the maid; it just served its normal, ordinary purpose of fixing the sign in place.
And the only trace left by those fantasy stories concocted by netizens in this timeline is the daily worries of the maids working at the shop—
It's going to be troublesome to cosplay for Halloween.
