022 – Girls Really Like a Guy in Spandex (The Special Combat Unit Shinesman) | Feat. The Omni Viewer

Travis needed some time off, so Nathan is joined by YouTube personality and sci-fi author Ryan “The Omni Viewer” Collins to discuss something a little left-of-center for Henshin Men: an anime. The Super Sentai parody The Special Combat Unit Shinesman (aka Tokuma Sentai Shinesman), to be exact. This hilarious OVA is a tale of corporate warfare with the Good Trading Company’s Shinesmen battling alien invaders disguised as a rival corporation secretly plotting world conquest. (Can you say, “Disney”?) It’s one of those comedies that’s surprisingly deep. Omni and Nathan connect this all-too-short but highly-quotable anime to C.S. Lewis’s famous quotation on fairytales and growing up, Looney Tunes, Mel Brooks, and even Dune, to name a few. What’d else would you expect from them?

Shinesman was released on VHS and DVD by Media Blasters under their Anime Works imprint. Both are long out-of-print, but the dubbed version (which was discussed in this episode) can be viewed here on YouTube.

Follow Henshin Men on Twitter: @HenshinMenPod.

Listen to Travis’s main podcast, Kaiju Weekly, and Nathan’s podcasts, The Monster Island Film Vault and The Power Trip. Check out Omni Viewer on YouTube.

MUSIC:

-“Shine/Shinesman – You are the Hero” by Hironobu Kageyama

-“Not Your Above-Average Joe [Standing Ovation]” by Ivan Hakštok