Thanks for the suggestion Moth3r. :)

Unfortunately, the problem in this case really boils down to finding the blasted things. I believe that the last time that it showed up for sale on Yahoo! Auction Japan was seven or eight years ago and it's taken me nearly a year of searching to even find pictures of the videocassette covers.

With the help of two librarians on opposite coasts and separate countries, I've searched every single database in Japan, the U.S., and Canada, and no one has it in English. Two American libraries, one in New York state and another in Minnesota, supposedly did, but have since disposed of them. A chain of rental stores in Japan known as Tsutaya allegedly has the Japanese ones for rent, but their lack of a central database means that they can't tell me which one, if any of their nearly 1400 stores it's available in. Add to this the fact that people who actually live in Japan have told me they've never seen VHS videocassettes for rent in any of those stores for years anyway...

So yes, it's been immensely frustrating to say the least. :(