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In the 4th season of Hidamari Sketch, Honeycomb, there's scenes where there's a bunch of numbers (and an HK with a "honeycomb" symbol) in the background. Do these numbers have any significance? Are they related to production cuts (sometimes shown in "flash card" style during Bakemonogatari, another Studio Shaft production)?

Examples:

Episode 1: enter image description here Bottom right corner: HK 01105

Episode 5: enter image description here Bottom right corner: HK 05274

Episode 6: enter image description here Bottom right corner: HK 06333

Episode 10: enter image description here Bottom right corner: HK 10133

Episode 12: enter image description here Bottom right corner: HK 12074

Not sure if I missed any, but it looks like a 2 digit episode number and 3 digits of something else. Also, not sure if previous seasons of Hidamari Sketch has these, been a while since I've seen them. What do the other strings of numbers, that don't seem to change, mean?

Jon Lin
  • 28,141
  • 21
  • 111
  • 169
  • This has been bothering me for as long as I can remember watching the show... (along with the other numbers on the board) – atlantiza Jan 21 '13 at 17:30
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    [x365](http://i.imgur.com/NCwK2Ad.jpg) had 36500xxy, where 'xx' is the episode number and 'y' being 'a' or 'b' indicating which half it was. – кяαzєя Jan 27 '13 at 14:04

1 Answers1

10

It's the "cut number." Just like in film, any time the perspective shifts is considered a new "cut" which equates to a numbered frame on the storyboard.

Using the first episode example, the first time the number is shown it reads 091B (cuts that have some obvious close connection might be grouped together as A and B of the same number, though I'm not sure why this particular cut is a B):

091B 091B

These are my guesses for the numbers of the following cuts. Only someone with access to the storyboard could say for sure, but this is probably close enough:

092 092

093 093

094 094

094B Since it's just a close up of the last cut they probably wouldn't bother drawing it again (storyboard drawings would be rough anyway) so they'd just leave a note next to cut 094 to zoom in and add detail, hence cut 094B. 094B

095 095

096 096

097 097

098 098

099 099

100 100

101 101

102 102

103 103

104 104

105 105

As you can see, 14 cuts later we see the board again, and it has incremented exactly as expected.

Edit: I think I may have misinterpreted the question. Not sure about the unchanging numbers, but there seems to be at least one theory that the numbers before the X are an encrypted "hidamarisketch" with two digits per letter. If you can break the encryption you might be able to figure out the rest.

The full thing for reference:

963958208
975195648
926748230
8X☆☆☆9428
947295039

mcs
  • 444
  • 4
  • 7
  • No, you answered it. I figured it was something like the production cut numbers but didn't have any evidence for it. Did you get any of those numbers from scans of the story boards or was it just from the cuts between the two with the numbers in the background? As for the static numbers, it's not a 1-to-1 letter/2digit mapping, the repeated letters (like "i" and "a") aren't consistent. – Jon Lin Feb 08 '13 at 05:34
  • No scans of the storyboard exist that I know of. I just watched the episode and took a screen shot every time the perspective shifted. – mcs Feb 08 '13 at 14:16