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The story
Outdoor-comedian Hiroshi, embroiled in a dispute with camping gear maker Show’s, has said he won’t pursue legal action, explaining: “I do have a retainer lawyer, but what’s the point of spending hundreds of thousands of yen just to win a court case?” While the company has signaled it’s fine with both releasing their LINE chat logs publicly and being sued, Hiroshi has stayed silent — and word has also spread that a past collaboration deal fell through after Hiroshi demanded “all rights go to me.” On 5ch, users have been debating whether his response is the right call.
Trouble Erupts Over Hiroshi’s Fire Pit: The Disputed Product Photos, His Agency’s “Current Situation” Statement, and the Unsettling Deletion of a 10-Year-Old Video
While plenty of voices on social media say this should be settled through legal channels, Hiroshi had this to say:
“Sure, I could go get the design patented, but there’s already bad blood over this. I just don’t want anything more to do with it.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
Show's (the company): "Go ahead and post the LINE logs, we're fine with that."
Hiroshi: "…" — dead silence, ghosts the thread
I like Hiroshi, but man, this is seriously uncool.
The other side was just one step ahead of him. No way you're launching those funnels now.
Turns out the funnels were smarter than the pilot.
Funnels: "…"
This is genuinely sad…
Sounds like the ID marker on-screen is turning from green to red (Gundam-speak for the funnels switching from friendly to hostile).
The other side says it's fine to be sued, but he won't sue.
With the company saying all this, what exactly can Hiroshi even do at this point?
Because all a comedian can do is make people smile.
Honestly, all Hiroshi can do now is team up with some other big camping brand, slap his face all over it, and push out a similar product as his "official endorsement." Since the company's already said his idea "wasn't anything special," they can hardly call a Hiroshi-branded product a knockoff.
What manufacturer is going to draft the blueprints, order the parts, and get it produced through a supplier — only for all the rights to end up belonging to Hiroshi?
As long as it turns a profit, a company will do it — that's just business. And right now it's actually generating buzz, so it wouldn't be strange at all for someone who can pull it off to jump in.
But under Hiroshi's terms, the manufacturer isn't even allowed to sell it themselves — how are they supposed to turn a profit?
If they hand over all the rights and can't even sell collabs or other variants, how exactly does anyone make money off this? 😅
He just should've thought of it as making money together with the manufacturer.
He just shouldn't have stirred up buzz on his own and blown himself up with it.
Not happening. Show's is a brand every camping enthusiast knows — just owning their gear is aspirational. They're at every camping fair without fail, and in the industry they carry way more clout than Hiroshi ever could. If he burns this bridge, other manufacturers will just see him as "difficult to work with" and stop offering him deals. There are tons of camping comedians out there — they'll just offer the deal to Ogiyahagi (a well-known comedy duo) instead.
Guess the camping industry really is a small world.
So he's done as a "camping comedian," huh. He seriously underestimated the manufacturer.
Hiroshi
Show's
Figuring that out is exactly what a "business owner" is for.
So how does that turn a profit, then? I'll admit, I'm intrigued by Re: #69's argument too.
Why force yourself to make it work? Normally you'd just judge it's not profitable and pass on it.
Forgotten already? My whole point was "you shouldn't share your idea in public."
If you don't have your own production line, pitching the idea is your only option. What actually matters is going through the proper contract process.
I wonder if there was no contract for the Laid-Back Camp collab either. He did say he's never written a contract before.
Maybe the Laid-Back Camp side handled the contract? They're a big company after all.
No way they've never drawn up a contract.
"It's a mutually beneficial relationship, so it's fine" — guess that logic doesn't fly here.
They say they proposed a collab, so presumably they were planning to pay incentives. But according to the company, Hiroshi turned the collab down, demanding all the rights for himself and that the blueprints be handed over to him too.
Fitting, given it's literally about a fire pit.
He probably figured launching the funnels would sort it out somehow. That's shockingly shallow thinking.
Background and Key Points
Show’s is a well-established Japanese outdoor-gear manufacturer with a track record of licensed collaborations, including a fire-pit tie-in with the hit anime Laid-Back Camp (Yuru Camp) — a signal of how seriously camping brands are taken within Japan’s post-pandemic “outdoor boom.” Hiroshi’s career category, “outdoor comedian” (アウトドア芸人), is itself a recognized niche in Japanese entertainment: comedians cultivate a hobbyist persona (fishing, camping, etc.) that manufacturers pay to attach to products for credibility with enthusiasts. That context matters here because it explains why a broken collaboration is treated as industry news rather than a private tiff — reputational standing with gear makers is Hiroshi’s actual business asset.
The thread’s real fault line isn’t whether Hiroshi is right or wrong on the merits of the fire-pit design; it’s whether his refusal to sue or release the LINE logs, after the company said it would welcome either, is prudent restraint or a tacit confession. Posters arguing “of course you’d drop hundreds of thousands of yen only to prove a point” read it as ordinary cost-benefit thinking; others read Show’s public willingness to be sued as a confidence move that only makes Hiroshi’s silence look worse.
What the thread never engages with is the actual economics of the “hand over all rights” demand: a manufacturer that transfers full IP to a talent it collaborated with typically loses the ability to sell the product itself, meaning there’d be no revenue stream to fund production in the first place. Readers unfamiliar with Japanese talent-collab norms might also assume a signed contract is standard for such deals — several posters note Hiroshi apparently never had one, which is not unusual for informal tarento tie-ins but leaves no paper trail to arbitrate the dispute.
*This article is compiled as excerpts and a summary from the 5ch (Live News G) thread “Hiroshi Won’t Sue the Camping Gear Maker: “I Do Have a Retainer Lawyer, But What’s the Point of Spending Hundreds of Thousands to Win in Court…”“.
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