VHS Vault: Anime Works presents Shinesman - or, I Steal A Mysterious Tape From My Brother And Live To Tell The Tale
By: Erin
Posted: July 03, 2021
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For over a decade I have been keeping close to my heart a certain VHS tape. I didn't intend to initially, but as we moved from place-to-place, this tape somehow followed. I first discovered it when unpacking in our new home in Ohio in 2009 and was amazed because I had never seen it before. Like, I used to take all kinds of tapes from my brother; this one would have surely caught my eye at some point, right? I mean, look at this front cover!
Exactly the kind of anime art style I would have went crazy for.
Well, either he was hiding it in a drawer that I never really checked, or he got it during a time where we weren't living together, or it just fell through the cracks somehow. Inspecting the tape reveals that he or a friend got it from Network Video in Florida, which checks out, and after talking about this with him he confirmed that he bought it from a friend. I can assume that the friend either got it on clearance or stole the tape. Either way, it made its way to me, and every time I shrank our VHS collection I knew to keep that one safe until one day I started what I now call the VHS Vault, my own little personal collection of tapes from my childhood, aftermarket art pieces, and things I pick up for fun. It's funny, for some reason I never thought to ever actually take the tape out of the box and play it. I never even looked at anything except the front cover. It's not like I wasn't watching tapes back in 09 - the most reliable way to find movies back then was by getting a tape from the library or from Goodwill for a couple of dollars. And yet, even as I ingested Pulp Fiction or Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Shinesman sat inside its drawer, unwatched.
Until now!
Or rather until like a few months ago but I'm rewatching it now!
So, yes, a few months ago, I finally watched this mysterious tape. I remember picking it up and realizing that I could watch it, and I read the back of the box with intrigue.
From corporate cubicles to alien invasions - our Shinesman team fights evil everywhere!
Hiroya Matsumoto, hoping to become a great employee as his late father, has just been hired at Right Corporation, a top trading company. Little does he know that he's been recruited for a very mysterious department within the company - the Special Duty Combat Unit: SHINESMAN . . . which must gace a terrible alien menace unbeknownst to Earth.
Like most corporate employees, Hiroya still has meetings to attend and deadlines to meet, but when the SHINESMAN team rage war against the alien race from Planet Voice, Hiroya and his co-workers don their office-colored combat unit suits: Red, Sepia, Gray, Moss Green, and Salmon Pink.
That's right - it's a sentai parody. Honestly, it's a blessing in disguise it took so long for me to watch it, because now that I'm much more intimately familiar with sentai I could pick up on the jokes immediately and truly appreciate everything this tape had to offer. I mean, look at this last paragraph:
If you thought you'd seen it all in Power Rangers, Masked Rider, or even Dynaman, wait until you take a look at the zany, but corporate world of SHINESMAN!
I'm sold! I'm more than sold! I grabbed that tape and slammed it into my VCR, waiting for enlightenment, and enlightenment I got. It started, as all good tapes do, with an FBI warning.
It may be tape degradation, but it seemed to wobble around the screen.
After the FBI warning, we get my favorite part of anime tapes from this era - company logos and trailers for other things they distribute! First off, a ride in a dark tunnel that ends with a CGI brick wall exploding.
Well, they definitely started blasting.
I've never heard of Media Blasters, but they know how to make a good first impression. They follow this up with a curtain rising on the Anime Works logo.
It is, of course, a catgirl.
Now for the good stuff - trailers set to music that may or may not be royalty-free production tracks. They're a staple of old ADV releases and I'm delighted that they're here in this Media Blasters release as well. First is an ad for something called Earthian: Angelic Destroyer Final Battle, which I can only describe as "What if two angels caused The Birds while a song that sounds almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a Japanese version of the Cheers theme plays".
I LOVE that this dude is trying his best to shoot this flock of birds with a machine gun.
The OVA goes on to show some sick imagery including a keypad with "MESSIAH" written on it. If I had to guess without knowing anything about it, I'd say this is either the last part of an OVA, or a single OVA film. Back in the day, anime was the genre, so companies licensed a lot of OVAs to distribute on video or show on the Sci-Fi Channel and similar. It was a wild time.
Following Earthian is a preview for Ninku: The Movie.
I have never heard of Ninku, nor have I heard of Ninku: The Movie, but the lo-fi MIDI guitar beat is funky enough to make me want to check it out. Apparently what I can expect from it is:
The Old West!
A fight with a big snake!
At least one (1) girl!
This ugly-ass kid!
Cool poses!
This is everything an anime fan would've wanted in 1998. I can see why Anime Works picked this one up.
Next in the pre-roll is a pretty interesting one - Yu Yu Hakusho!
I'd recognize those clouds anywhere!
Or rather, as my keen eye would point out to me, "Yu Yu Hakusho: The Movie". I gotta say, it's really interesting that widescreen film versions of these works were preserved on the VHS with letterboxing. Releases from this time period were often cropped and formatted with pan & scan to fit on the 4:3 sets of the time. I guess Media Blasters really respected the original work! Well, to an extent. You'll see.
This logo is delicious.
The whole thing is accompanied by some thumping bass and some wondrously dreadful MIDI trumpets, It's like someone started playing the Waterworld SNES soundtrack but decided to spice it up with a copy of Pokemon Ruby. I am obsessed with how unfitting this is for Yu Yu Hakusho and how unexcited this makes me for Anime Works' release of this movie. I didn't even know there was a Yu Yu Hakusho movie.
I will say, I do find it suspicious that the last clip in this trailer didn't have any letterboxing. Are you trying to pull a fast one, Anime Works? Is that specific clip from the show and not the movie? Be honest.
Anyway, we've been watching this tape for five lovely, lovely minutes, and it's finally time for the OVA to start! When I watched this tape for the first time I went through every emotion under the sun condensed into a brilliant supernova thanks to the fine folks at Anime Works. Maybe I should write to them and let them know how much I enjoyed their pre-roll footage.
They even left a contact address. But is it "Anime Works" or "AnimeWorks"?
If you'd like to experience this entire pre-roll for yourself, I've digitized and uploaded it to archive.org here. I do recommend it; if you couldn't tell it brings a tremendous smile to my face. That said, we can't stick around the first five minutes forever.
