A new possible viral website for the JJ Abrams produced top secret monster flick Cloverfield/1-18-08 has appeared online. I must first note, that no one is sure if this is actually a legitimate website created for the Cloverfield online game, or if it is what the people in online reality gaming call a “gamejack”. As you might remember, when the Cloverfield trailer was first released with Transformers, there were a bunch of websites which appeared to be part of the online viral campaign, but were later found to be “gamejacks” (Evan Haas anyone?).
The new website is for the Tagruato Corpotation, located at tagruato.jp. The company is a “collective of top scientists, 
engineers, and businessmen committed to leading our investors and the whole of mankind into the future.” When you enter the website, you must choose English as a language as all the other options are non functional.
“We regard ourselves as explorers, and believe there is much more our planet has to offer than has already been discovered. We view every challenge as an opportunity for innovation. With our groundbreaking deep-sea drilling technology, Tagruato has positioned itself to become a world leader in energy resources, medical research, advanced technology production, and consumable product.”
“Created by Tagruato C.E.O. Ganu Yoshida, Slusho! brand happy drink is a icy cool beverage that is rapidly becoming one of the company’s most profitable expenditures. Slusho! contains a “special ingredient” that customers can’t get enough of. Bearing the slogan, “You can’t drink just six!”, Slusho! has grown to the second most popular frozen drink in all Asian markets. Hip adult drinkers have begun concocting deliciously intoxicating alcoholic mix drinks starring Slusho! The beverage’s popularity has spawned overwhelming sales of brand apparel, a hit theme song, and coming soon: an animated television show starring the Slusho! Flavor Droids! The next step is to introduce Slusho! to the rest of the world. A search is on for top marketing professionals who will be tasked with duplicating the drink’s Asian popularity in the Western market. Our aspiration is to one day place Slusho! dispensers in every convenience store and mini mart. Slusho zoom!”
The newest drilling location at the Chuai Station, which opened in September 2007, is on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which is near New York City.
All 14 of the drilling stations are named after Japanese Emperors. Emporer Chuai (192 to 200BC) was the 14th emperor (tennÅ) of Japan and is considered by most historians to be a legendary figure. According to wikipedia, his wife was suddenly possessed by some unknown gods. The gods promised Emperor ChÅ«ai rich lands overseas. ChÅ«ai then looked to the sea, but he could see nothing and denounced his belief in the promises of the gods. The gods were enraged by this and declared that he would die and never receive the promised land. Instead they would go to his conceived but unborn son. The legend then states that ChÅ«ai died soon after and his widow, JingÅ«, conquered the promised land, which is conjectured to be part of modern day Korea.
There is a lot of talk on the page about using deep sea ingredients for research into curing cancer and other terminal illness. (Treatment applications for Alzheimer’s disease, cystic fibrosis, and herpes are also under consideration.) And on one page, they talk about how they hand out Slusho brand happy drink to sick elderly friends, because it “makes them feel young again”. I wonder if they are doing unethical research via something in the Slusho ingredients. On one page they also say that the company is “currently working on the Slusho! Sea Freeze, a frozen pop that will be available for purchase in your local market and will contain the company’s healthy special ingredient.”
Someone on the Unfiction Boards called the phone number listed in the domain whois contact info (+81-3-5403-6318), and here is what they got in Japanese (and then in English):
“Thank you for calling Tagruato, due to high call volumes we have transfered your call to the automated answering service. There are NO UPDATES at this time. Please leave us a message and we will return your call.”
The domain name was created on July 25th 2007, well after the release of the teaser trailer and slusho.jp viral site, so this very well could be a “gamejack”, however the concusses at this time is that it is real.
Thanks to the great people at the Unfiction Forums for a big chunk of the legwork and details that went into this update.
September 30th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
This HAS To Be The Cause. C’mon Their Releasing Their Own Flavour Called Sea Freeze… Thanks Tagruato, Robs Gna Die Now
September 30th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
On 1-18-08.com
Does anyone know how to access the actual photos? I have the first available one on my myspace because when the site started it was just that single photo, no flash.
Many thanks.
October 1st, 2007 at 3:14 am
I keep reading these Cloverfield updates, and I am as enthusiastic as the next person who frequents /Film every day, but am I the only one who is SO TOTALLY OVER this Cloverfield campaign? I mean, seriously, am I?
October 1st, 2007 at 3:05 pm
I agree with Krystal, this was all really exciting at first, but now it’s just sort of stale.
October 2nd, 2007 at 5:05 am
The campaign is becoming more and more like Lost every day…
October 2nd, 2007 at 8:32 am
— Ig Foley Says:
—
— September 30th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
—
— On 1-18-08.com
— Does anyone know how to access the actual photos? I have the — first
— available one on my myspace because when the site started it — was
— just that single photo, no flash.
—
— Many thanks.
Go to fortop-digital.com and download “Fortop SWF Resources Extractor”. Then open the cloverfield site in IE and then go to IEs
“Internet Options” then click the Browsing History “Settings” button, then “View Files”. Next, find the SWF files from the site and copy them to the desktop (or another folder you’d like to work from). Then you can start the Extractor and open the SWF and you should hopefully be able to figure it out from there. hope it helps.
October 2nd, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Can anyone translate the name of the original company which is mentioned in the company history page at the Tagruato site? I think this is a major clue. The site does look authentic. I like how involved its getting lol.
October 2nd, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Krystal, I agree…
Does anyone really care about this movie anymore? and if so, Why?
This thing was beaten to death by the viral campaign and all the hype surrounding it.
I think it came to a head when people started bashing and complaining about the title of the movie (which I believe no one still knows)
October 3rd, 2007 at 4:59 am
Well I was looking at the “chef” photo from the 01-18-2008.com website and I didn’t have any luck trying to find an online resource to translate the Japanese on the back of the photo. But, I typed in a search of the number 3912 into google an I found a website for Entrez Gene: LAMB1 laminin- this is a gene founf in homosapiens. If this was a coincidence, well than that proves life is stranger than fiction. If it was intentional I am disappointed due to the fact that it seems to just point to a site that alot of people may spend alot of time finding out alot about nothing (to do with the movie anyway).
Not quite sure how much time I will waste hunting for clues. I have more important things to do, like the dishes or something.
Take care.
October 3rd, 2007 at 10:54 am
Shawn, don’t know if you found a translation yet, but cloverfieldclues .blogspot .com has one. It’s also a pretty good blog.
October 4th, 2007 at 5:51 am
Evan Haas has nothing at all to do with jj’s movie. Stated by JJ himself, look around for the letter of it.
October 4th, 2007 at 5:52 am
Evan Haas has nothing at all to do with jj’s movie. Stated by JJ himself, look around for the letter of it. They have other websites out there relating the movie, kind of like a an egg hunt, because people have only found one of those websites so far, which is 1-18-08.com
October 4th, 2007 at 9:20 am
The Tagruato site has an interactive map that states their newest station. which happens to be the closest to New York, and is called the Chuai Station.
This is the following definition for chuai: chuái - disaster; calamity, evil; wicked; mean.
Perhaps the slightest of coincidences?
October 15th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
Sea Ingredients? the guy from the trailer its going to work in japan now for his company (tagruato?). the company digs in new york, they wake up a fuckin big squid. guy cant go to japan, he discover that its fault of his company. he tries to save the world.
October 17th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
They need to just make another teaser trailer and quite with all the viral websites, marketing and what not. I mean the first taste of this came out in front of Transformers which is now out on DVD and all we have is viral marketing to make people spend hours upon days trying to break the clues. It’s just not fun anymore for me - can I just get another trailer
…tired of all the theories, gimmie something more then Godzilla remake, no Lost finale, no Voltron, no monster attacks people that drink Slusho, no Godzilla remake - oh wait, we’re back here again.
October 18th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
slusho sounds exactley like that old sci-fi horror classic The Stuff still an incredible concept it was released back in the early 80’s look it up and read on it tell me it’s not the same concept now weather or not it goes the same route all im saying is when you have drilling secert ingrident’s people cannot get enough of your asking for trouble…..it remindes me of the year 1975 watching my mom drink Tab (one of the most foul tasting sachrine filled drinks ever to grace mankind) the stuff killed lab rats yet since it was “diet” it was ok, not to mention the fact that the diet was causing cancer in lab animals I remember her telling my 4 year old self to “leave her Tab alone” hey no worries here lady…i cant believe they still make that stuff infact i bet some one drank a Tab one day spit it out and thought up the screenplay for “the Stuff” oh and by the way Tab is sooo horriable that all thru my kiddome life in the 70’s even if it was bakin hot outside and you were dying of thirst you wouldnt touch that crap “i would rather drink water” we use to say and thats saying alot, and i will tell you what ..the water tasted great (espeacially if you made the mistake of try a Tab again and needed to rinse the foul taste from your mouth………you could use that crap in War to extract information.) anyway ….Slusho.
October 27th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Hey. Apparently, the Slusho site’s got an ad up for anyone interested in distributing Slusho stateside.
According to the page, Slusho lists its parent company as “Tagruato”, and the phone number posted matches Tagruato.jp’s number shown under the “whois” information, shown above in Peter’s article.
October 30th, 2007 at 1:20 am
Ugh. It was fun in the beginning, but now it’s getting annoying.
We’re Americans here! We are impatient. I was supposed to know what this movie was called … 6 months ago! LOL!
(Ok, with barely a couple months left … end the suspense already :D )
October 31st, 2007 at 9:57 pm
Giant squid…like Cthulu? :)
November 20th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
This website is more than authentic. Go to Slusho.jp and click on Distribution Opportunities. Read down till you get to TAGRUATO! Its mentioned as the distributor with the same phone number as on the TAGRUATO home page. Not only that but there is some clues in the TAGRUATO! as to the origins of the monster.Check out the YOSHIDA MEDICAL RESEARCH section for example. It says, “YMR is a genetic research firm specializing in deep sea bioprospecting. YMR implements Tagruato’s advanced exploration technology to study extremophiles found only in the deepest parts of our oceans.” Could the new monster be a extremophile?
Not to mention the fact that in the company histroy section it mentions “Tagruato, who had emigrated to Japan from Polynesia with his family as young boy, started the company with dreams of “holding Earth’s energy in my fist.— Look at the distributions opportunity page on http://www.slusho.jp . What do you see in the background? Some guy holding up something that looks like an energy sphere with the same leaves that are around the symbol for the UN. Coincidence? Maybe maybe not.
November 21st, 2007 at 2:39 am
An anagram of Tagruato is ” Gut aorta”
What with possible exploding stomachs identified in the second trailer,
I thought this was quite amusing :-)
November 21st, 2007 at 12:36 pm
I’m back to further my theory.
In the last post I asked the question could the creature be a extremophile? Most monsters today have a long list of immunities and/or tough outer shells that will not allow them to be penetrated, slowed, or killed by conventional forces. Well an extremophile is a one cell organism found at great ocean depths that can withstand enormous amounts of pressure, extreme heat or cold, and other “extreme” conditions.
In the Slusho story and on the Tagruato website a “special ingredient” is said to be in the Slusho drink. This ingredient is “found in the deep sea”. If this ingredient were to be a extremophile or a group of extremophiles several possibilities arise.
Since the extremophile is a one celled organism it could potentially bond with human cells or react with other cells in our stomachs and divide rapidly (keep in mind anything is possible in Hollywood).
This “parasite” would then get too large to be contained in the stomach bursting out like in the 2nd trailer. Its kinda like the Alien movies.
The catch phrase “You can’t drink just six.” Seems to implicate that something happens once you drink 7. Maybe after you drink 7 the extremophiles begin to bond with one another or something.
IDK. Just a theory. Theres plenty of them out there. –SlayerX–
November 21st, 2007 at 3:25 pm
SlayerX 2012 : You mean olive leaves. :)
So another monster movie. KEWL! I LOVE MONSTER MOVIES!
( er, Japanese -REAL- Godzilla, not knock-off Godzilla. )
So far we got a deep sea frozen monster who likes to eat New York. More! MORE!
November 23rd, 2007 at 10:14 am
I tried to analyse the ingredients of Slusho with some chemical knowledges (of my friends, hehe). OK, perhaps the key ingredient is just top secret, but there were some interesting details:
http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=22206
November 24th, 2007 at 7:22 am
In case no one noticed, the site has been “hacked.” There is now an image and the page has been re-titled to “TAGRUATO IS DESTROYING OUR OCEANS”
November 25th, 2007 at 10:32 am
you should check out the tagruato page again it has changed its all related to slusho! there is a guy standing just like in cloverfield the website changed a lot.
November 28th, 2007 at 12:13 am
I know you guys have been hacking away at this for some time now, And i’ve only just begun but if you go to the subsidarys portion of the site… Listen to the sounds each on makes. if you compare it to the new HD fil trailer it some of the sounds are pretty damn close to the monster. i went back to the site later on..and that noise didn’t play again it was just the regualr little ding. IDK… it’s just wierd cause a few buddies on mine got the same noise and then they never got it again. so i know it’s not me. well any help would be helpful to us….thanx for listening.
-Turtle
November 28th, 2007 at 2:49 am
Tagruato …. If any of you have followed JJ’s hit-show “LOST” you’ll know that he LOVES to use anagrams as hints! Well, when you try to unscramble “TAGRUATO” you get the words “A TORTUGA.” Tortuga in Spanish means turtle! So, I think the hint is that it is a Giant Sea Turtle!
sincerely,
ECKS_NIHILO … aka Tortuga