What are Nijiura Maids? First, an introduction to 2chan.
2chan is an anonymous image board posting website created in 1999 by Hiroyuki Nishimura after the image board website 2channel shut down and was used as a refuge site for 2channel users. 2chan (sometimes abbreviated to 2ch or otherwise known as futuba channel) was the insporation for 4chan and the birthplace of many other memes/net characters such as Me-Tan and other OS net characters.
As of currently, 2chan shut down on Febuary 11th, 2014 after the domain was seized but many of the memes and characters born on 2chan are still alive today as you can see with Nijiura Maids!
Now for the main question. What are Nijiura Maids?
Nijiura Maids is a collection of maids that was born on 2chans board Nijura which is 2chans random board. The thread started with an anonymous user (or Toshiaki) posted about their fantasys of having a personal maid to serve them on April 21st 2004. As a result, another anonymous user posted a drawing of the very first nijiura maid - Medoi-San. Afterwards, many other people posted maids all of which having a pun that corilates to their name and ending with a I. Nijiura maids were so loved that their popularity grew offsite and even in western areas (though not much). Some maids have their own music maid for them such as Ozoi, Yukai, Chioki, this genre of music is called maidcore and is mainly popular amongst Russians.
Why are anons called Toshiaki?
Users on the site were referred to as either Anonymous or Toshiaki after a user by the name of Toshiaki spammed 2chan saying that they were horny and requesting porn until they were banned. After this, many people started putting their name as Toshiaki to refrence this incident as a meme but after a while, the nametag entirely was banned off of 2chan and would instead be replaced with「」.
Can I make my own nijiura maid?
Yes! Anyone can make their own nijiura maid because (mostly) nothing nijiura maid related is canon or fanon. Most nijiura personalitys or looks are just popular interpitations of the characters. Nijiura maids were all created by unknown users, some created on the original thread post and some created earlier on such as on Pixiv.
How many nijiura maids are there?
As mention in the "can I make my own nijiura maid" category, anyone can make a maid! Because of this, there plenty of maids and no specific number of maids for some have never even been posted or for all we known, even drawn. Though magority of the nijiura maid fanabase mainly focuses on the original characters created in the thread, that shouldnt limit you to any extent. Have fun making your maid!
Do I have to know all the maids?
You dont need to know all the maids to like the nijiura maids. As stated before, theres too many maids to even focus on all of them. Because nijiura maids arent canon or fanon, you dont have to like all of the maids, you can just pay attention to the maids you like!
