By: Erin
Posted: July 03, 2021
Views of the Shinesman VHS (Large images):
Front Cover | Back Cover | Side & Top View | Videocassette
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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!
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