The Last Bakery is an animated short by Dillongoo based on the game, Genshin Impact, that was presented during Hoyofair 2024.
The premise involves a baking competition happening in Fontaine with which Navia and her assistant Xiangling take part in order to acquire the prize money to save her father's bakery. However, the Mekas are not playing fair and are doing everything they can to influence the competition.
This short animation baked up the following examples:
- Adaptational Friendship: Navia and Xiangling have yet to actually meet in the game. Here, they are established to be very close and have been working at Spina Di Rosula together for a while.
- Adaptational Job Change: In Genshin Impact proper, Navia has the career of being president of Spina Di Rosula which is an organization dedicated to helping people. Here, she is a head of a bakery called Spina Di Rosula which is established as the only human-run bakery.
- Adaptational Species Change: In Genshin Impact, Guoba is a deity that has taken the form of a bearlike creature. Here, he is a robot.
- Alternate Universe: The setting for the short appears to be a mix of Genshin's high fantasy setting and a more futuristic sci-fi direction. There are sentient robots, digital holograms and displays, and hovering machines. But also Neuvillette casts a spell that floods Spina Di Rosula's kitchen, and the game's elemental reactions exist still, including a wood-fire oven exploding when an electric spark hits it, referencing how Electro and Pyro create an overload.
- Baguette Beatdown: The chef Meka that invades the bakery attacks Navia using stale bread, which it is somehow able to swing hard enough to pierce through metal. Xiangling responds by fighting with a loaf of bread of her own. Unfortunately, her bread is too fresh and delicious to be effective of a weapon.
- Cheaters Never Prosper: A group of baker Mekas sabotage the competition in order to better win through various means including refusal to sell ingredients and destroying ingredients and dishes of opponents. Needless to say, Neuvillette discovers this and cancels the competition completely in response. He even finds a way to reward Navia and Xiangling for their efforts by providing them the money through flood insurance.
- Chef of Iron: Both Navia and Xiangling are skilled bakers and fighters, and are forced to juggle both preparing food for a judge and fighting angry Meka who Xiangling stole ingredients from.
- Cute Machines: Guoba remains a Ridiculously Cute Critter even as a robot.
- Exact Words: Xiangling assures Navia early on that they can win by telling her "We can make our own luck" when she sees Navia setting up Romaritime flowers for luck. Come the end, Xiangling reveals she had filed for flood insurance and repeats the line to Navia, showing how prepared she was.
- Gotta Have It, Gonna Steal It: In this scenario, it's less of a want and more of a need, but Xiangling steals a batch of Jueyun Chilis for a recipe due to the mekas refusing to sell to her.
- Indy Ploy: Navia is able to use the destruction of her kitchen to her advantage to finish a cake on time. When the kitchen's oven explodes, she resorts to baking macarons atop a burning bread paddle, and later fends off the Meka chef with the same kitchen knife she's using to slice up a cake. Then when the key ingredient for her recipe is destroyed, she realizes she can substitute it with Romaritime Flowers from a vase. And the results prove to be just as delicious.
- Job-Stealing Robot: Apparently, Spina Di Rosula is the only bakery that is human run with all of the other bakeries owned by meka. The meka's actions make it clear they are not okay with this.
- Knew It All Along: Neuvillette reveals he and Clorinde had long since suspected the Meka of cheating for a while. Witnessing one attempt to ruin Navia's dish was the proof needed to shut down the contest for foul play.
- Making a Splash: When he sees the Meka chef attacking Navia and Xiangling in their kitchen - proof of foul play in the baking competition - Neuvillette unleashes a flood on Spina Di Rosula to break up the conflict.
- Muscles Are Meaningless: Both the leading ladies are incredibly tough and strong despite lacking any noticeable muscle. Special mention goes to Navia being able to halt a steel door being ripped from its hinges and chucked straight at her, and with just one arm!
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Much like in the game, Neuvillette comes off as a very rational figure who desires fairness above all else. When he discovers the meka have been cheating to influence the competition to ensure that no humans win, he cancels the competition. However, he leaves letting Navia know her dish likely would have won if the competition was properly handled. Since this discovery required him to flood Spina Di Rosula, he makes it up to Navia by providing her the prize money through flood insurance that Xiangling filed for prior.
- Robot Buddy: Guoba is Xiangling's floating robot companion in this AU.
- Shout-Out: Guoba does a breakdance based on the "Breakdancing Cat👁 Image
" meme. - Take a Third Option: When Neuvillette discovers that the meka have been cheating he could easily just disqualify them and give the prize money to Spina Di Rosula, but he knows due to how likely it is that all meka were cheating, it wouldn't be right to and opts to cancel the contest. He does manage to find a way to deliver the prize money to Navia through flood insurance though.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: Navia and Xiangling go through a lot of trouble to make a dish to win the contest that the baker mekas deliberately sabotage. When one of the mekas breaks into their kitchen to destroy their dish, Neuvillette walks in to notice this, prompting him to flood the bakery to stop the meka's attack before announcing that the competition would be cancelled. Before he leaves though, he tells Navia that their dish would have likely won if the competition had been handled fairly. Not just that, but thanks to Xiangling planning ahead and filing for flood insurance beforehand, Navia gets the money needed to save the bakery anyway.
