everything I learned about the döner shop in nuremberg blessed by hidamari sketch
Sorry for shit quality, I only have my cell phone cam.
Best thing is: Neither anime nor manga are licensed around here, they don't even have a Wikipedia article, it's totally obscure.
somewhere in the depths of the nürnberg u-bahn, the underground subway, for a period spanning probably a decade, yuno and miyako daydreamed about döner. maybe they’re supposed to be jutta and mitzi, evil twin OC doppelgängers that are equally infatuated with wurst and sauerkraut. the only thing about this image that I have ever known with any certainty is that wideface is unmistakable, even when dyed blonde and wearing blue contacts. the other is that I knew peeking behind the curtain was going to make me exercise my umlaut.
this image seems to have been circulating for the better part of fifteen years. my first time encountering it was around hoshimittsu’s broadcast, back in 2010, and that does appear to be when it first gained attention based on the surviving examples that can be found in reverse searches. it’s all over english forums. it’s on those japanese matome sites that used to reverse import macros and translate live watch threads back to japanese audiences. germans, strangely, do not seem to like hidamari sketch as much as I was led to believe, or they are less enthused to speak publicly about a heritage site that existed in their backyards. the otaku hegemony, in this moment, has fallen apart before my eyes.
very little detail has ever been recorded about this poster or shop, and definitely not aggregated anywhere convenient enough for me to find. this is not entirely surprising, if not for the fact that there appear to be multiple people that can recall seeing it on journeys into nuremberg center. for reasons less clear to me, it appears to have had a resurgence in recent years, probably from fans desperate for a crumb of hidamari to keep them from madness. one man lost to that madness staring at the nanoha poster on his wall and put himself on the case two years ago, coming up largely empty. all he has to show for his efforts now are a MAD sneering at his spiral, and a bundle of questions. “why are they there? how did this happen?”
the case, like my christmas kebab, had gone cold, and I wasn’t going to let myself succumb to vlogging in my bedroom. it was my turn to crack it wide open.
alas, my cool guy line lacks the muscle to back up that gusto. my hope is to still one day bring you a grand narrative of lost lore in a controlled scroll gallery, like I unearthed one of chopin’s lost waltzes, but for now I’ve exhausted my online searches and I am unwilling to go knock on doors in nuremberg. instead, I am outlining what my research has trudged up so that it may outlive me into a future where people speak more german than I do and are better equipped to solve this mystery. the best time to eat a kebab was fifteen years ago. the second best time is every day after today, starting right now.
specifically, I am now offering a bounty on any information (leads, photographs, or otherwise) that may bring us closer to understanding the mind of a german graphic designer from fifteen years ago. if you ping me with any novel detail on bluesky, I will compensate you for exactly one meal valued up to 10 EUR at your preferred döner restaurant, provided you also send along a picture or scan of your receipt. let this serve as a warning post for any brave enough to try, lest you also come down with the madness.
What and where was this shop?
this advertisement is for döner point, which was a restaurant that existed in the schlemmerpassage (gourmet passage) at the ground level of nuremberg hauptbanhof (central station) just outside of the platforms. schlemmerpassage was, functionally, a food court. from reports of people that visited, no hidamari sketch-related signage or decor was present at the actual shop location. it was, fortunately, damn affordable, even before factoring inflation. glory to the turks, and long live deutschland.
Been at that shop a multiple times already and checked, since it's in the main station and all. Didn't see any Hidamari posters in the actual store.
schlemmerpassage was slated for rennovation in 2014 and closed in june 2015. while it was initially supposed to reopen that year, it was ultimately delayed twice before reopening in august 2016 with bougier decor. after this renovation, the entire area became managed as rubenbauer genusswelten (worlds of pleasure), with shops subletting space. döner point appears to have vanished after this renovation, with der beck, a national bakery chain, beginning to occupy the same space. one photo from december 2018 suggests that a nondescript food cart was operating adjacent to it.
rubenbauer transfered their ownership to lagardere travel retail starting january 2023, who rebranded the area as nürnberger markthalle. lagardere modernized the space again, which in market speak means they opened a coffee fellows branch. der beck appears to have survived these modernizations and is still in the original döner point space today.
Where was this poster?
this is a little trickier. for what will no doubt crack a few bones for some of us, Taiga very gratiously provided a detailed account of where to find it:
plärrer is a u-bahn station two stops away from hauptbanhof. uniquely, it’s the only other station besides hauptbanhof in the u-bahn that services all three lines. that also makes it the second most trafficked station in the system. one would think that means there would be more surviving record of this advert there, but alas, time waits for no one. camera phones were not as prevelent, hidamari sketch wasn’t being simulcast, and people did not yet record adverts in station walkthroughs or scan junk mail for the fun of it.
while the leading image is probably the most famous capture, there are two additional photos from what appear to be a different location:
those are clearly platform tracks, which doesn’t come up as a detail in any archive discussions from when this advert was first being discussed. the origin of these images also lacks the same context, as I only found one on a russian-curated image board for similar examples of anime escaping containment and the other from a reddit post by an account that will surely respond to me any day.
with plärrer and hauptbanhof as our only bounds, that leaves a lot of surface area to look through. with no assumptions, I cross-referenced these photos with interior photos that were the most period appropriate I could find for every u-bahn station. unquestionably, these were taken in frankenstraße, located on the U1 line three stops from hauptbanhof.
deep into these comparisons, as I scoured yelp and other listings only someone that would call themselves a “city guide” or somesuch would ever feel any urge to post to, I had the brilliant idea to search the wikimedia commons in german to see what came up:
do I need to put a youtube thumbnail arrow on this? if you squint hard enough, just at the far end of the platform to the left headed inbound, that’s plainly it. that’s the same muck yellow background and the same blue text with white stroke. with how barren the walls are here, it’s probably some indication as to how a döner shop was able to afford placement for so long, and why it has escaped really any specific mention at all. the track lining appears to have been retrofitted, but the rest is there, and it’s probably the strongest proof yet that I’m not having my leg pulled by a ghost in some elaborate photoshop troll. are there, possibly, others? was there a vast, underground network of hidamari sketch in the fourteenth largest city in germany?
to throw something of a wrench in things, this photo is dated to november 2016, which would place it beyond the schlemmerpassage renovation that supposedly kicked out döner point. it’s not there in a photo from january 2008. by february 2018 at the latest, it was very clearly gone for good. from january 2020, the digital signage that began accompanying it at some point also evaporated.
Who designed it?
at the bottom right of the poster, there’s a watermark for flyer club. flyer club was, seemingly, a design agency that operated locally in nuremberg. they were at least infamous enough to be called out for infringement as their trademark at the very start of this story. nothing suggests they ever had much presence beyond these posters, though they are listed unclaimed on yelp and on a yellowpages equivalent. one business directory suggests their registration was updated as late as november 2014, which indicated they worked in advertising. the phone number listed for it doesn’t appear to connect anymore, or ma bell is not letting me reach out to violently shake someone. google street view recently returned to germany after a pause in 2011, but without any historical captures due to the country’s strict data privacy, so there’s not much to gain looking at it now. the most recent capture of the address, from november 2022, doesn’t provide much hope they still exist.
there is an accompanying website for döner point, last captured in may 2017, though unchanged from its first in 2010. again, this is beyond the rennovation timeframe we would have expected it to go extinct with. the very last capture, in september 2017, shows the domain expired by that point, and historical whois data confirms it was first registered in august 2008. the current record suggests the domain was not actually released until 2021, after the last update was performed to it in late december 2020.
there is a little more of the recolor here than is shown in the advert, like the bleed I wasn’t ever supposed to see. the metadata on the SWF says it was Designed by www.flashmo.com, which closer to flash’s relevance provided free flash templates. either this is another strike against our designer, or it points instead to our döner shop owner as the common link, who put yuno and miyako to work as his mascots not only for döner point, but for sisters pizza point, china point, and döneria. let me save you the suspense and a click or two: all of these locations have now disappeared as well.
Sauce?
spicy garlic, preferably. the daydreaming yuno and miyako for the advert, however, is almost certainly a vector image made in an era where people cared a lot about making transparent cutouts of anime girls for reaction images and vectors for wallpapers. it’s unclear where it orignated, but a vector of this frame was posted to danbooru in november 2007 without any source attributed; gut instinct tells me that likely means 4chan. the automated archives for /a/ don’t stretch back this far, so it’s not possible to know for sure, but a search for the hash turns up this image being posted there on february 4th. february 3rd would be when the currently surviving /a/ archive scrape first began in earnest. it’s fair to say, then, that this image was being posted there with some regularity around that time.
this shot can be sourced from the second episode of hidamari sketch at around 10:12, depending on the release you have. we can presume the vector is the source for the advert, rather than this frame having been manually traced by the designer (which would have taken actual effort), based on the mouth flaps and electrical tape. it’s also mirrored in the advert, which means the designer exercised artistic license beyond the paint bucket tool.
this is an artifact long lost to broadcasting schedules and share raws that I likely won’t ever have another reason to talk about, until I phone up kamitsubo, but hidamari sketch initially aired at 4:3 when it was broadcast on TBS. hidamari sketch was not actually seen widely, either in aspect ratio or coverage area, until it was broadcast to greater japan on BS-i at a two week delay. those share raws did actually survive and are, miraculously, being seeded as of this writing. very few people have seen this version of the broadcast outside of japan, and we can count this designer out.
perhaps most indicting is that the frame isolated this way lost no context in this remix. yuno and miyako in this scene may not be dreaming specifically of döner, but they are dreaming of country grown vegetables that could have paired with it. this is, either, an amazing coincidence, or indelible proof that a designer thought they could get away with a cheeky hidasketch reference without me noticing. you better believe I’m looking.
What’s left?
location scouting. the ultimate pilgrimage. if you’re local, a daytrip to stare wistfully at buildings and signs that are no longer there.
my next move here would probably be to hunt down more business registrations to see if any valid contact info could be traced to these businesses, which I’m guessing must survive either in dusty government cabinets as physical filings or just as impervious online indexes. given not only the advert’s longevity, but also that it was loyally long-term to one station where clearly nothing else was, there must be an advertising firm or two that sold billboard space for frankenstraße that will likely have some clue what you’re talking about. beyond that, there are a lot of cold calls to start making. someone must still remember.
The ad used to be at Plärrer. I still remember it.
>Döner Box
>3 €
Must have been over a decade.
