VHS Vault: Anime Works presents Shinesman - Part 2: The OVA!

By: Erin

Posted: July 03, 2021

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So, from what I can tell, Shinesman is an OVA adaptation of a manga - Tokumu Sentai Shinesman by Kaimu Tachibana. According to my extensive research (five minutes of searching), "tokumu" or "特務" roughly translates to Special Duty. So, Special Duty Squadron Shinesman. The localization of "Tokumu Sentai" therefore is "The Special Duty Combat Unit". I guess that's pretty accurate, especially for 1998 when Super Sentai and tokusatsu in general was almost unknown unless you were Stan Lee.

The first thing I noticed about this tape once the OVA hit was how fun the dub was. This was a time where dubs weren't really monopolized or homogenized like they are now. Not to go on a tangent, but I feel that while you're going to get a lot of rough dubs from this era and most dubs nowadays are generally good, the general approach to them back in the day lead to significantly more memorable ones, especially in comedy anime like Cromartie High School, Azumanga Daioh, and it turns out in this as well. In fact, I literally just learned that Media Blasters is the team that licensed A Time To Screw, an infamous over-the-top gag dub of a hentai. According to some cursory research, the team behind the Shinesman dub is Coastal Carolina Sound Studios. I don't know what else they've done, but I will say that one of the actors sounds suspiciously similar to the iconic hentai dubber Pete Meat.

The Shinesman Squad forms!

This is the Shinesman team! They start by showing up and announcing their colors, as any good hero team does - Red (a classic), Grey (kind of weird, but okay), Sepia (really exciting colors, guys), Moss Green (getting a little specific here...), and Salmon Pink. Huh. They defeat a monster with ease, gloat about it a little, and then our hero, Shinesman Red, reflects internally that this is not what he was expecting when he applied for work.

He wasn't even supposed to be here today.

The second thing I noticed when watching this show was that the opening is amazing. It is such a perfect spoof of sentai openings combined with evocations of other hero shows like Chargeman Ken or Tekkaman The Space Knight. I've uploaded it to archive.org for your listening pleasure. Give it a go.

The other thing I absolutely adore about this opening sequence is how they decided to obscure the Japanese credits in the opening with big white boxes. They couldn't actually do this for the show logo itself, so they took what seems to be the same graphic they used for the VHS box and just superimposed it in a few frames. It's great. This is exclusive to the VHS version, by the way. The DVD release and rip of this OVA seems to just put the credits in English over the Japanese text, and the logo is a little cleaner. Either way, I guess they couldn't get a creditless version of the OP.

Graphic design is my passion.

Anyway, we go on to learn that the plot is exactly as it says on the box - our hero has joined a new company and his boss decides that he's a perfect addition to the Shinesman project. His fellow coworkers enlisted to the hero team have already selected their favorite colors, which is an important question in the job interview. Hiroya chooses red, which as said before is a strong leader-y kind of color. The rest have already picked their favorite colors which I just gotta say are really funny. Like, they're all bland suit colors. This juxtaposition of a fighting sentai team with the stuffy corporate office atmosphere cracks me up. I won't go into extreme detail about all the best parts of this OVA, but some highlights sure can't hurt.

So, without further ado: A small selection of fun things from early in the Shinesman OVA series.

1. Super Sentai exists in this universe.

Did I mention Sony sponsored this?

After the credits we learn a shocking truth, that Super Sentai must exist as a show in this universe, meaning the Shinesman team is a vigilante unit actively trying to be a real-life sentai. This team is known as Greatman. I guess the plural would be Greatmen? Anyway, Hiroya's little brother loves them. As Hiroya eloquently puts it, "My little brother's a fanboy. Some day we'll go to a con!".

2. The alien menace are just as bland as the heroes.

They will take over the Earth through corporate espionage.

The two main alien antagonists of the show have very good banter. They sit around in their evil lair fretting about how their monsters aren't siphoning company secrets enough. Eventually, the alien that is apparently prince of the planet Voice gets the frustrating news that his sister is coming to Earth. "What? Why wasn't I told that stupid bimbo was coming to Earth?" he exclaims. "Well, that's not a very nice thing to say about one's own relative," his companion replies. Together they enter an elevator that assumedly takes them to the office building the Shinesman secretly call home and turn into Completely Normal Humans.

Do not be alarmed, fellow humans. We also "work".

I love the Humanization Elevator. Imagine being able to still wear a cool suit of armor but appear to be a put-together salaryperson. I feel like most people would want to do the opposite.

The Humanization Elevator is located in a bathroom supply closet, by the way.

The constant bickering of the villains who have to pretend to be anything but the prince and consort they are is genuinely amusing.

3. Heeeeeeere's Shiina!

The best character.

Shiina, the aforementioned "bimbo", is here, and she is quite honestly utterly hilarious. Her voice actress has a ridiculous amount of energy and you can tell how fun the role was to both localize and voice. Can you believe she's an anime-only character? Seriously, I looked up how to spell her name and that's the honest truth. They put her in a drama CD, which is nice, but man, knowing that the funniest part of these two episodes isn't in the manga at all makes me less likely to read the manga.

Side note, speaking of the manga, did you notice that the art they put on the side of the VHS box is one of the characters in the manga's art style? The more you know.

Anyway, Princess Shiina blasts onto the scene by materializing in the middle of a crowded square looking like the coolest member of the Crescendolls, shouts her name loudly while proclaiming that she traversed the Milky Way, and summons a big tentacle creature. The crowd members, to their credit, are extremely impressed as they think she's the new mascot for an anime store.

She spends the whole rest of the series getting into mischief. She nearly gets a bunch of Braveman suit actors killed by a big alien. There's a part where she gets locked in a closet with Hiroya. In conclusion, she rules.

4. How Hiroya got his job.

They were really dedicated to covering up all the Japanese.

I think my favorite thing about this whole setup is how Hiroya just seemed to walk in, tell the team that his dead father also worked at a trading company, and then apropos of nothing the boss just asks "What color do you think best suits a superhero?"

A completely normal interview question.

Remembering how his little brother loves the Braveman team, Hiroya says "Red" and is hired on the spot. The Head of Human Resources even draws a nice flower on his application, takes him to the dead-end hallway that takes him to the secret sentai HQ, and has his suit ready! The whole team does a roll-call and it doesn't make their colors any less lame.

After every team member gets introduced, the head of HR (whose name is Kyoko, by the way) lets our hero know that his sales job is just a cover, as well as in which departments the other Shinesmen work in. Imagine getting a job as a superhero because you have decent physical fitness and like the color red. If only it were that easy.

There are plenty of other things to talk about with this OVA, though the overall plots involve goofy office shenanigans, fighting the aliens trying to take over, and this real life sentai team saving the Braveman actors from a stage show gone wrong. It's overall extremely fun, and packed with amusing dub lines and goofy action.

If you want to watch Shinesman yourself, a kind soul has uploaded DVD rips of the OVA episodes to archive.org, so click here for that. One day I'll rip and upload my VHS copy in its entirety, as it'll be fun to have it up with the clumsy text removal intact, but as it stands this is the best way to watch the actual episodes in full quality. They're even dual-audio MKVs, so if you'd rather check out the sub and miss out on Shiina, you can!

All in all, I'm really glad that I saved this VHS this whole time. I think this is a really interesting piece of work because the whole thing smacks of clever dry humor when it comes to the office scenes and is a genuinely fun sentai show when it wants to be. The dub is a little rough as is to be expected, but it's charming with some really quotable lines. I have to wonder if this was just a little too ahead of its time. I feel like a best-of quotes cut could be fun with how tokusatsu is much more known these days. Who knows, maybe a con can be convinced to show this at one of their underappreciated classics panels and start a new wave of Shinesman Moss Green fans. It really makes you think.

Well, on second thought, maybe not. Still, it's a fun addition to the VHS Vault, and one I'm glad I have.