hinesman opens dramatically, even seriously: there's a horrible monster, a team of brightly-colored mecha-suited heroes, a lot of leaping bodies against colorful neutral backgrounds and a big explosion. The Shinesman team has clearly once again made the world safe for peace, freedom and the Japanese way. They've also eliminated a nasty corporate espionage agent, making it possible for their Sales Division to continue growing the business. Dilbert would be so proud.
The Shinesmen are actually a secret project of the Right Trading Co., as hapless salaryman Hiroya Matsumoto discovers when his first day on the job involves being fitted for a mecha suit. Invaders from the planet Voice have entered the corporate world in order to launch a hostile takeover of Earth, and Right Trading is obliviously co-sponsoring the aliens' new theme park exhibit. Hiroya finds himself serving double duty as both a gung-ho salesman networking with the aliens and a costumed superhero fighting them off. But are his corporate-themed weapons, such as the Business Card Cutter and the Tie Clip Bomb, up to the task at hand? And do the chosen colors of his team members "Shinesman Sepia" and "Shinesman Moss-Green" really have cross-demographic appeal? This looks like a job for the Marketing Department!
As if juggling a full-time sales job and an unpredictable hero gig wasn't bad enough, Hiroya also has to deal with his kid brother Yoda's obsessive adoration of another five-member superhero team whose colors are simpler and cooler. And then there's the evil alien princess who's decided Hiroya has to be her boyfriend...
Laugh with them or at them?
AnimeWorks is billing Shinesman as a Power Rangers parody, but its scope is far broader than that. This video's eye-rolling ironic mockery is aimed at everything from Japanese corporate culture and cartoon fanboys to mecha-team anime. Virtually every character is a ridiculously stiff stereotype who speaks entirely in exposition and clichés, as if to continuously display the worst possible extremes of science fiction, adventure, romance and business dramas alike. Pop-culture references abound, including a quick homage to South Park thrown into the translation.
Unfortunately, there's no coherence or aim to all the snideness. Many individual moments are hysterically funny--mostly in small details, such as when the Shinesmen are pinned down by a monster and each member comes up with a ridiculously over-dramatic reason to survive. ("I can't let her win ... she's got bad hair!") But the story itself doesn't make much sense, and it's weighted down by a great deal of overwrought sentimental schmaltz. Despite the assumed derisive intent, watching Hiroya and Yoda share A Sweet and Meaningful Moment for the twelfth time isn't any more tolerable here than it would be in the putative bad drama this is sarcastically mimicking.
Shinesman's main problem is that it often simply and slavishly presents exaggerated anime clichés and expects viewers to remember to laugh with, not at, the writers. It's hard to see the awkward script and floundering story as subtly caustic instead of just weakly written. The intermittent authentic silliness helps a lot--but it would help if there was more of it, and less of everything else.
