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A few weeks back, THR ran an interesting story about a very strange international connection Hollywood had unwittingly stumbled into.
The story detailed how a local LA toymaker that had licensing deals with Disney, Warners and Netflix among others was acquired by a mysterious Japanese conglomerate called Good Smile. This conglomerate, the article details, was the umbrella organization for more than 100 different companies, including companies that aggressively marketed sexually provocative images of pre-tween girls, putting Disney, et al in the uncomfortable position of having stumbled into a business partnership with a purveyor of borderline child pornography.
(The article also details how the entertainment giants are working to extract themselves from that relationship.)
Perhaps most intriguing, however, with an eye towards current events, the piece revealed that Good Smile may in fact be the owner of the site that is the launching pad for all contemporary chaos and conspiracy-mongering, 4chan, the site where QANON shot to its current renown.
The THR piece cites a suit filed against Good Smile by the original owners of the LA toymaker, Guy Brand and James Kim, in which they allege:
“In October 2017, Brand and Kim visited Good Smile Japan’s headquarters in Japan for the first time,” states the court filing. “During the visit, [Good Smile executive Enna] Hozumi informed them that Good Smile Japan had ‘acquired’ the website 4chan and it was being managed on the third floor of its Tokyo, Japan, headquarters.”
4Chan, it is described in the suit, is owned by a company called Tokyo Sangyo Shimbun, Inc, itself a subsidiary of another company called Mirai Keusaku Brazil Ltd, a Tokyo-based corporation which works out of the same building as Good Smile, and, it is alleged in the suit is actually an arm of Good Smile.
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MGM TAKES THE VILLAGE
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