Those who receive the Revelation of Babel must overcome many battles and trials. By grasping the hand of their special partner, these "Hand Shakers" transport themselves to the realm of Ziggurat, an alternate dimension where time no longer exists. Each pair of Hand Shakers must battle it out for the right to meet with God, who will reward them by granting them a single wish.
Tazuna Takatsuki, a high school student with a penchant for fixing things, is one of these Hand Shakers. After receiving a request for repairs from Professor Makihara of a nearby university, Tazuna stumbles upon Koyori Akutagawa, a bedridden girl that reminds him of his deceased sister Musubu. Remembering her dying wish to never let go of her hand, Tazuna grasps Koyori's hand and awakens his power as a Hand Shaker. However, Koyori's life is directly tied to her status as a Hand Shaker, meaning if Tazuna was to ever let go of her hand she would die. With meeting God being their only hope for saving her, the duo must find a way to make their unique powers mesh together, overcome the opposing Hand Shakers, and make their wish come true.
[Written by MAL Rewrite]
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ZephSilver
What's the ultimate sign of a "bad anime?" For some, it's a poorly written script, for others, it's a lack of effort on the audiovisual front. It could even be something trivial, like a personal gripe against certain cliches or tropes. Whatever the reasoning may be, we all have ways of coming to our own conclusion. As for me, the ultimate sign of a lousy anime is not what that particular work does by itself, but how it forces me to retroactively reexamine other terrible works in the process. When the show in question is so bad that I have to commend the efforts ofbottom-tier shows that, at the very least, "tried," to me, that's the ultimate sign of a piss poor project.
Hand Shakers is that kind of anime. A show so baffling in its inception that calamities of years past—such as the infamous Absolute Duo or Terra Formars—manages to appear "decent" by virtue of comparison. The degree to which this show fails is actually pretty impressive. In a way, it's a masterpiece at fucking up. From fundamental production issues that could have easily been fixed to writing butchered beyond the point of repair; what we have here is a perfect swan dive into brain-dead content.
Whatever the lowest score you've ever given a title may be, proceed to raise it a point higher so that you have a level solely dedicated for this gem. It has earned the right to reign unchallenged on its shit-tier podium.
The first thing that would jump out at you is the overall presentation. It's been a while since I saw a show where the issue wasn't it being under-produced but actually the exact opposite. Hand Shakers is overwrought with so many art-style, animation, and filmmaking techniques that it's nauseating trying to process it all. I'm sure you've seen people mockingly say that something is "headache-inducing" before but with Hand Shakers, it isn't just a snide remark to make in passing, it's the actual truth. There are certain parts of the show where you feel like you're on the verge of getting a migraine. And this goes beyond the obvious issues you'd expect from a poorly put-together anime. The issues here have almost taken on a life of its own due to its aggressive application of everything occurring all at once.
Firstly, let's run over the obvious one that immediately sticks out to most people, the presentation:
Everything is constantly bathed in an oily opacity filter. Random 360 camera panning with fisheye lens distortion at a moment's notice. 3D rendered landscapes with 2D constructed characters with no spatial awareness given for any of it to breathe. A complete disregard for blocking, leading to a whirlwind of poorly thought-out motion and distracting object placement. Unmoving plaid animation technique (best featured in cartoons like Chowder and anime like Gankutsuou) that are randomly used with no true purpose. Enough lens flare to make even J.J. Abrams blush. Digitally rendered clothing layered with a feathering sheen effect. Random micro sparkles fluttering around everywhere. Shots riddled with dead space while simultaneously being cluttered throughout other parts of the scene. Jarring post-production CGI blended with cel-shaded animation that moves at a completely different frame rate from everything else. Lighting and shadow casting that doesn't account for its light source. Layered in live-action dust and flame effects placed on top 2D drawn objects. Random Dutch angles, top-down view shots, dollying shots, dolly zooms that transitions into handheld camera point-of-view scenes; all this plus more that could occur back-to-back at a moments notice—none of which used with any purposeful intent. Spliced-in insert shots that highlight pointless information. Multiple occasions where the 180-degree rule is broken. A complete disregard for motion vectors, resulting in discombobulated action scenes. And the list goes on and on.
And this was just a conservative list of what I've spotted. If someone were to actually sit down and dissect it all, I'm sure there are more structural and presentation problems just waiting to be unearthed.
It's a dizzying vaudevillian display of one terrible idea after another, with each aspect desperately vying for your attention.
It's one thing to apply bold presentation choices to make your project stand out, and it's a complete other to compound it to the point where it becomes the equivalency of throwing shit at the wall. Not only does this show run the gamut of every possible shortcoming on a presentation standpoint but it fails at utilizing any of it in an effective manner. And perhaps even worse is the flippant disregard for basic editing and filmmaking techniques, despite the creators' desire to overuse it.
Here are just a few simple examples. Establishing shots are used to give the viewer a sense of location, time, and space as it relates to the destination of the story or the scene being brought to one's attention. In Hand Shakers, establishing shots are reduced to cobbled-together reused scenes or random point of views done merely for a "cool" shot, defeating the purpose of giving the viewer any sense of placement. If you use the same cutscenes or go bat-shit crazy with camera angles to establish a multitude of things, it's no longer serving its purpose. All that does is leave your audience disoriented, giving them no chance to find their footing in your world. On top of that, spatial awareness is lost here as well. Rooms and locations can get bigger or smaller from scene to scene. Characters appear and relocate in their positions within any given shot, something that occurs every time the show attempts to show a relation between the environment and people's positions in them—and no, this wasn't a purposeful artistic choice like it is in the Monogatari franchise. The director and creators of this show are either inexperienced or overcompensating for material that doesn't deserve the excessive theatrics being allotted to it.
There are many movies and TV shows where the intent is to create a feeling of disorientation, as is the case with Satoshi Kon's Paprika, where it created a visually augmented existence between dream and reality or with live-action movies like Natural Born Killers and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, where they wanted to simulate a drunken fever-dream-like experience to heighten the adrenaline-fueled intoxication that the characters found themselves reveling in. If done with proper care, this kind of visual inebriation can be a fun experience, but the dizzying effect that Hand Shakers has throughout its run isn't of that pedigree. It's creators seeing "cool" things and then converting it into parlor tricks in a piss poor attempt to emulate it. It's the unholy matrimony between improperly used filmmaking techniques and lousy art-style decisions.
You see, the truly mindblowing thing about this entire production is that it's an ANIME, NOT a live-action film. No really, think about it for a moment. You don't have to puppeteer between makeup artists, lighting crews, prop departments, stunt performers, movie extras, cinematographers, actors, construction crews, auditors, modeling supervisors, food catering services etc. The advantage that anime has over live-action is that the daunting tasks associated with live-action have been diminished to a degree where the creative technicians involved are usually significantly less, making it far more manageable as a result. In layman's terms, there's less joggling required. Just compare the staffing of any live-action blockbuster film against that of any anime project. 2015's One Punch Man vs. Age of Ultron for example. The amount of people involved speaks for itself. Ultron's staffing is practically 50x larger than that of One Punch Man's. So how Hand Shakers manages to have the frantic feel of an overworked production cycle, while not having to worry about most of the issues associated with an overworked production cycle, is beyond hilarious. And honestly, pretty fascinating, if only for how bad the finished product ended up being.
But enough about the production, if I were to discuss all the issues found, we'd be here all day. Instead, let's try to comb over the show's screenplay without dying of embarrassment.
You really can't expect much content-wise from a show whose premise and name sounds like an awful pun gone too far, but let's try to find something worth discussing anyway. Produced by studio GoHands—HAND Shakers, Go HANDS, GET IT!?—the story follows a limp-dick, pussy protagonist named Tazuna Takatsuki, who, through a series of events, find himself coming into contact with Koyori Akutagawa, a fair porcelain-skinned complexioned girl who's been in a coma for a long time. In her dainty state, Koyori reminds Tazuna of the little sister he once had, and through the miracle of "da chosen one," she awakens to his presence, grabbing his hand as they start their journey together as newly formed Hand Shakers.
When he isn't busy being an ideal self-insert beta-male, Tazuna uses his Shirou Emiya ability to fix mechanical devices of any kind, being something that's both a passionate hobby of his and means to test his acquired skills. But after becoming a Hand Shaker, all that changes, as he's pitted against multiple opponents who have accepted the call, each coming with their own unique fetish to meet the expected checklist of your routine fantasy empowerment show. From sadomasochism and pop-idol worship to vanilla incestual love and lolita complex; this anime is your one-stop shop for all your harmless fanservice needs. Using powers they could summon called "nimrods," the duo fights off their attackers one by one, with each conquest becoming friends in the end because "reasons." And really, that's the extent of what you need to know about this show, trying to give you a more detailed description of it would only lead to numerous contradictions later on, as the show doesn't follow any of its pre-established rules whatsoever.
Whether the issues spotted as the story goes along was just a case of excessive retconning mid-production or just a shitty draft treatment that was turned into a screenplay without any sort of revision, honestly, it's hard to tell the difference with this show. Just be prepared for several inconsistencies and accept it for what it is.
Accepting things as is also extended to specific scenarios and plot details as well. This is a show that cannot exist without treating most the characters involved like dimensionless NPC stand-ins, because the moment it does bother to make its inhabitants fully functioning human beings, is the moment that the show's logic begins to collapse in on itself. Take the following scenario, for example:
Because of Koyori's health condition, she cannot let go of Tazuna's hand, in fear of her life being lost in the process "because reasons." But since Tazuna is still a high school student, he needs to find a way to attend classes with this dilemma, as well as a means to go about his daily life. So how does the show accomplish that? By just turning his classmates and parents into unquestioning oafs! Tazuna bringing a Rei Ayanami knock-off into his parents' household is treated with no confrontation at all, in fact, it's greeted with a celebratory welcome home. Even if we ignore the fact that he's not letting go of her hand the entire time he brings this stranger into their household, he then proceeds to take this strange girl into the shower and bedroom with him. All of which happens with his parents' complete acknowledgment of these events. With a flimsy off-screen explanation given to explain this, we're just supposed to accept that these are the world's most accepting parents, in a culture like Japan that's built on strict decorum, where shit like this will never fly. This is the level of nonsense we're dealing with here.
And how do they solve the issue of him attending school with a girl continually holding his hand? Well, same shit. No one bothers to question it. The show quite literally turns an entire population into brain-dead idiots just to sell its cutesy fantasy empowerment concept. You could just feel the power of the scriptwriter's pen dictating every aspect of this show's logic, making the entire thing unbelievably stupid. At no point can you buy into any scenario presented, as it's all incredibly forced. I could only imagine the conversation for this show's plotting going along the lines of:
Studio head: "We need to get point A to point B, I don't care how you do it, just make it happen."
Scriptwriter: "Don't worry my nigga, I'll just write some bullshit and make everyone accept it."
Studio head: "That works for me."
-throws up gang signs, crip walks out of studio office-
And really, that's all this show is, an excuse to have a self-insert pussy protagonist hold the hand of a cute, dainty girl, from what came into existence from a dumb word pun. At least that's what I'm hoping the joke floating around in the studio office was, because if this was seriously pitched like a legitimate idea, then may God have mercy on us all. Thankfully, the gimmicky scenario was mirrored throughout the conversations had by the characters, leading to my first conclusion being acceptable enough to stomach. The dialogue scenes, for the most part, were composed of 40% information dumps, 50% "OMG, they're such an adorable couple!" and 10% "I like to fix things, hurr durr!"
It's one of the most blatant fantasy empowerment/escapism shows, not only in the 2010s but also in the past decade. Hell, maybe even an all-time contender.
To help sell this experience, we're given what could best be described as cheap elevator music for a soundtrack, xerox copy character designs, and a demo-quality opening theme that's chopped together with scenes of all of the occurring events seen throughout the series. And before we go on any further, can we just quickly acknowledge how funny the naming choice of "nimrod" is in this series?
Given that the other dimension that the Hand Shakers battle against each other was referred to as the Ziggurat, it's safe to say that the show was using the old biblical text definition of nimrod; a person who was known as a skilled hunter in the old testament. Which, by itself, isn't a bad idea to use as the basis for a classification of weaponry... except for one problem. In modern-day semantics, most people define the word "nimrod" as a dumb person. So keeping that in mind, every time the characters' weapons are brought up in the show, what was intended to be a badass moment where two opposing Hand Shakers clashes just ended up becoming a comedic one. If you view it with the understanding of how this word is primarily identified by most people, head-to-head battles can almost be seen as a fight between who the bigger idiot is. The last anime I recall watching with such unfortunate naming choices was Tomino's Brain Powerd. And if you haven't seen Brain Powerd as yet, consider this an endorsement to check it out. It's basically the autistic version of Neon Genesis Evangelion.
But anyway, back to Hand Shakers.
Hand Shakers is a title I found value in, although, that value had nothing to do with any successes it may have had. As for what message this anime may be trying to sell the audience, the only thing I could come up with was some tacky moral statement of "separated we are weak, but together we are strong." Other than that, I'm drawing blanks here.
But despite all my negative comments towards this project, it may surprise you to know that I love this anime, or rather, I love titles that are this bad. Shows that everyone, regardless of viewing habits or taste, can collectively acknowledge how terrible it is. These are the kind of shows that bring people together. Where we can all join hands spewing out diatribes like a kumbayah cleansing ritual, declaring in one voice that this anime "is shit."
If you're aspiring to do anything with editing or the process of filmmaking, Hand Shakers could be seen as the best visual example of what not to do, serving as a sort of warning sign on how doing too much could be just as bad as doing very little. Other than that, if you just wish to have a good ass time laughing or being baffled for a few hours as you watch something fail at everything it attempts, Hand Shakers is a great drinking game entry to view with a few friends.
As for me, this anime is a marvel. A new defining point of a particular kind of pathetic. A spectacular failure that has redefined my idea of what cancerous presentation looks like. Weirdly enough, I'm thankful for Hand Shakers's existence. Through it, I have a newfound appreciation for other shows I once quickly disregarded, softening my stringent criteria of what I consider "acceptable" in the process. There's always something worse out there, and Hand Shakers became a martyr to prove that point.
CodeBlazeFate
**DISCLAIMER: This version is outdated, however I will keep it up here as a mark of how I felt a year prior when constructing this review (I spent 50 days). Since then, I have created a superior version of this review that I sadly can't link (it's in my blogs section). Regardless, enjoy!** “HOLY FUCK; this show has got to be the worst anime I’ve seen in my whole life! I mean, I've seen some dog shit like Big Order, Pupa, Mahouka, Mars of Destruction, and Skelter+Heaven, but this takes the fucking cake, and GoHands will pay with their now abysmal reputation!” -me, now and hopefullyforever...
My friends...thank you for waiting for this day; for this review..for sticking with me, and suffering through this abomination like I did; you are all brave souls. Now, for the usual preamble about why this show is absolute garbage and why you shouldn't watch it...EVER!
Thanks to all the time I spent splurging the forums of this crazed and fascinating enigma of a forum site and the equally crazy and passionate community that spawned it, as well as the time I spent rummaging through the narrative and production of studios like Ufotable, Production I.G, Sunrise, and Tatsunoko Production, I've come to the conclusion that every season of anime has to have “that one show”. You know the one; the one show that happens to be so spectacularly bad that 90% of the vocal parts of the Internet slam it as one of the worst anime of the year, even if there are ones with lower scores, since those are just ignored by the masses. Some are lost in the aether once the new season of anime kicks off, but others stay as legends. Last year had some examples of the former, namely “Enride” and “Seisen Cerberus”, but it had even more examples of the latter, namely “Big Order” and “Mayoiga” and while I'm not 100% sure where this show will end up, my money is on the latter. Now, I'm not gonna whore out views by making a sarcastic review that was meant to give fake and ironic praises to this show that will emphasize how lame it is. I'm gonna tell it to you straight: Hand Shakers sucks! It sucks really bad. I mean, you shouldn't be watching this, it sucks that fucking bad, and expect that word a lot because this show is just that goddamn awful; it's abominable; 1 out of 10 bad. That's right, we're going there...
*While there are spoilers for Hand Shakers, don't bother watching this abomination; it's not worth your time. TL;DR at the bottom, and apologies for the length and apologies if I come off as a psychologically broken rambler just hating on a low hanging revolting pile of shit that calls itself a "fruit", but if you hate this show anywhere near as much as I do, or even if you don't hate it that much, please stick around? I'm sure it'll be more worth your time than the actual show could ever be. If you hate my tone here, I promise you it won't get any better since this show is apocalyptically bad! I just...really fucking hate this show...*
Once upon a time, there was a man who watched an anime, and once he finished it, he described it as the anime equivalent to a 5 car pile-up; something so disastrous yet fascinating; you can't look away. It was the beginning of Summer 2016 when this occurred. Half a year later, and this show was allowed to air in Japanese television and on Crunchyroll, with Funimation (for some weird reason) jumping into this shit pile of a show only a few weeks later. In my demented head-cannon, I am willing to believe that the people behind this show saw this and decided to one-up the anime that received the aforementioned statement (though, I must be fair and cast that twisted imagination aside), for Hand Shakers is the anime equivalent of Hiroshima. It is an event so disastrous, that it caused intense pain and suffering to everyone who watched and experienced it. It was something so fucked up and disastrous, that would be forever marked as a tremendous tragedy in the history of mankind. It is sickening to have looked at, and many people talk of it in disdain for all the suffering attached to it,and even joke about it for that same reason. However, in the case of the Hiroshima bombing, at least it ended something much worse. This, on the other hand, didn't serve to impact anything other than our sanities and Studio GoHands’ reputation.
Now, premise aside (since we'll get to it), what exactly...is Hand Shakers? It is something that can only be described in one of two ways, one of which I already mentioned. The other way for it to be described is: a masterpiece of fail that deserves to be talked about in the same vain as Mars of Destruction, Pupa, or Skelter+Heaven. It is something that either causes you to watch in awe or in despair. To some, it is an enigma of bullshit that will make some stare in awe, wondering just how something like this came to be, and how spectacularly this pile of dung was made without resort to alcohol and drugs for its script, while laughing their (possibly drunk) assess off while watching this piece of shit. To others, it is a travesty that forced them to watch in agony, either at how everything about this anime manages to be so bad, or at how the horrendous visuals manage to cause physical pain to their eyes. This anime is not for the visually-challenged, nor is it for the easily nauseous, or the easily angered, such as myself (for the latter adjective exclusively). This kind of shit leaves you bitter, especially if you actually care about storytelling and visual presentation.
When I jumped into this anime, I already expected it to be bad thanks to the reception it has received, but it ended up being so...SO much worse than I anticipated; it was shocking as to how awful it all was, from writing, to direction, to audio, to characterization, to visual presentation. This "anime", if you can even call it that, violates the 8th amendment, and makes no qualms about it, for this was an attempt to make Studio GoHands a household name...and you can all guess how that worked out. To be honest, I'm 100% surprised that THIS was supposed to be their breakout anime. Just… why? Do you people honestly expect me to believe that THIS was supposed to be Studio GoHands' claim to fame; the anime that makes the studio a household name; something that opens our eyes and makes us see that Studio GoHands should be heralded as a legendary studio on par with the likes of Production I.G., Bones, Kyoto Animation, or Ufotable?!
I truly mean it. This is something that warrants explanation. Why was this...FILTH, the studio’s attempt at glory?! After all, it's nothing but a generic, shitty Fate/Stay Night clone with a ridiculous premise attached to give as excuse as to why all of the powers are so lame. If it wasn't for the obnoxiously bad visuals that were supposed to be seen as "visionary" or "innovative", almost nobody would be talking about it. It would just be a trite cow pie that didn't even try. We would have a little laugh at its expense and move on, putting this as a lazily created and forgettable schlock-fest. Instead, we are left to watch in suspense as the shit-shields (aka, the critics, such as myself; you're welcome) dissect this shimmering ball of fuckshit for creatively (and more often than not, uncreatively) murdering our brains, sanities, and eyesights with this blend of lazy, broken, and generic writing, accompanied by the most baffling of visual diarrhea.
Still, how did it all go so wrong? How and why was this anime such an endless cycle of bullshit that only spiraled more and more into innovatively awful territory with each passing episode? Now that I took my anti-breakdown pills, it's time to press on. As we enter the fray, sacrifice our much-needed brain cells on this abomination from hell, and finally finish this painfully long and meticulously crafted preamble of visceral hate porn, let's sing kumbaya and find out, shall we?
STORY: 1/10
Let’s start with the concept of the show; the premise, if you will. The premise is stupid as hell. If for one second, the MC duo lets go of one another, the girl dies, except apparently not because she can go a few seconds without contact and still survive. In fact, by episode 3, she become capable of surviving this for 15 minutes despite the fact that they give NO reasoning or decent time-lapse to tie into why we should buy this bullshit. Then, she can suddenly go two hours in episode 5 (the events surrounding that throwaway line bring up its own plethora of plot holes), and none of it has any sense of progression since we don't now what influences that progression. Back to the previous point. With the way the antagonists of episode 1 hold hands, you would assume that each group of Hand Shakers must hold hands, but then episode 3 comes around with a duo named Blade and Dagger (Talk about on the nose for their powers. Also, more on them later) and has it so that they never once hold hands. So, what the hell was the point of that stupid ass premise?! If it was advertised as a stupid gimmick for only the main duo, that would be fine; you would just have to explain it. However, when you battle, you're automatically in the Ziggurat (which I'll get back to) where you're not allowed to lose your grip otherwise you get kicked out, until the whole episode 3 example I mentioned above, except now it's when both parties don't wanna fight at all (then what about how the fight in episode 4 ended, when one side clearly wanted to keep at it a little longer and easily could've?) So, what the hell, anime?!
As a matter of fact, not only is that established rule broken in episodes 4 and 6, but by episode 8, we can confirm that this rule is nonexistent bullshit and a lie since NO ONE DOES IT ASIDE FROM THE PROTAGONISTS!!! Wasn't it supposed to be that if you lose your grip, you lose? Apparently not because in episode 8, the more active Hand Shaker (Kodawa) never even holds hand with her partner and is separated from him all the fuckin’ time, and in episode 4, neither do Blade and Dagger, so fuck me for being a logical human being that expects a show to follow its own rules. For fuck’s sake, don't violate your own rules so constantly; it ruins everything.
In fact, no wonder the powers blow! If you were to use exciting or creative powers, you would have to ditch the retarded fucking premise, which the show somewhat does, so what the fuck, you lazy piece of shit of an anime?! If you wanna make a Fate/Stay Night clone, at least have some decent powers. Then again, if the powers are called FUCKING NIMRODES (forgive the spelling, that's how they decided to spell it; I know the original meaning, but that doesn't really help given the modern definition of the term ”nimrod”), then how the flying fuck do you expect them to be good in the first place? Well, here’s how the death game works, random duos are chosen (for seemingly no reason) to participate in a game in which they need to hold hands and “kill” all other Hand Shaker duos, in order to meet God...who here wants to watch Mirai Nikki and Fate/Zero instead right about now?
Jokes about better anime aside, there are fundamental things about these kinds of death games that aren't explained here (unlike the aforementioned better anime). For starters, nobody knows how long this whole game has been going on. Nobody knows if there have been winners before or if this was just an ongoing game (no matter what, either route will bring its own set of issues).
Nobody knows how many pairs there can be at a time. In fact, the game seems to be extremely vague and off about its rules and mechanics. Hell, holding hands in front of a duo of Hand Shakers is a trigger for battle, meaning that there is a very strong possibility that innocent couples have been mistakenly threatened due to them holding hands in front of Hand Shakers by accident, which really sells how stupid these rules are. This is the absolute worst constructed “death game” I've ever seen. In fact, I shouldn't even call it that because no one dies. Even if you have fatal injuries, as soon as you leave the Ziggurat, they're no longer fatal, and you can simply lose from getting beaten and rendered “immobilized” (not really, but the anime doesn't bother with letting that particular duo that lost that way continue for unknown reasons). Aka, this isn't even a death game or proper battle royal. It can't even bother going through with its hook (not including the hand holding but, which it doesn't go through with either). Have I mentioned that you should have been watching the Fate/Stay Night anime titles instead?
The Ziggurat...well, I don't know what it is. Given context, it seems like a space that appears not only when two Hand Shaker pairs meet, but specifically, they meet while no one else is around, which is already convenient in and of itself. The whole Ziggurat thing is so poorly defined, and this is effectively where the “battles” of this “death game” take place. Also, the Hand Shakers’ hands don't even shake, they hold. This title lies. The title is stupid sounding, regardless, but still. Then again, if they wanted to be truthful, it would be “Hand Holders” and that sounds like a cheesy ass shoujo romcom, and I’ve heard that we’ve had enough of those this season already. I guess they had their hands tied (get it?).
Also, this anime constantly pushes the incest angle between our MC duo for some weird reason. I dunno. Maybe for a generic, hollow attempt at grabbing attention? Probably, knowing this show. I mean, they aren't actually blood-related siblings but they not only don't care about that, but the first 4 episodes (when they thought they were siblings) really give the incest vibe (like the shower scene in episode 2). Also, remember the whole “actual sister” plot line that is occasionally addressed, well, prepare to her no closure. I mean, we already know that the randomly slapped in “backstory” scene in episode 1 is a pathetically bad attempt at making us care for Tazuna before he actually gets to do anything, which is emotionally manipulative as hell, but it's not like that plot point went anywhere aside from creating bad plot twists. At least it has the decency not to try to slip in another bullshit plot twist that could've brought her back while proceeding to ramp up the incestuous undertones; that would've been the absolute worst. I mean, even evil has standards.
Let's go back to the battle royal/potential death game for a second; I’m not done ripping that sorry excuse for a battle royal apart. Remember when I said that fatal injuries stop being fatal as soon as you leave the Ziggurat? Well, that wasn't a joke or a misunderstanding. Take this, for instance; when our MCs stab the first villain (Break, who can honestly rot in hell), with their gear sword, not only does it go right through him, but the area he’s in, fuckin’ EXPLODES, and you mean to tell me that he only suffered injuries?! The fucker should be dead, Ziggurat abilities or not! Then again, this same shit would later happen to Kodama in episode 9, so that’s just par for the course, which already consists of 14 full dishes of fresh, heaping bullshit. In episode 8, Tazuna gets his ass kicked and says that he lost a match against a group of Hand Shakers. According to the anime, if you lose, you lose permanently and can't come back. However, he is still in the game, despite losing in similar ways to how Break lost (incapacitated) and how Hayato lost (lost the will to fight while the other group did so as well but he was in the losing position anyway). If you somehow didn't catch that, that's a gigantic contradiction that is not patched up, since this game fucks it's own rules in the ass every episode.
Everything about this battle royal/potential death game and its physics is stupid, and they don't even try to give reasonable explanations for any of it. In fact, it doesn't even feel like a battle royale; it feels more like a linear video game, where each duo is simply a stepping stone boss for the MC to overcome before moving on to the next until they reach the end. Battle royal my ass! I'd talk more about the story of this series, but this is basically all it amounts to: a high school student and his sister being haphazardly thrown into this horribly conceived death game, taking down one enemy group at a time before meeting God, except almost nothing makes any sense as they somehow meet him despite the fact that the only way to meet him is for your Nimrod to infect the Ziggurat and beat another opponent, which Kazuna and Koyori haven't done at all. Well, back to the final two episodes after this next side tangent.
What is it with the first scenes of every episode and being completely disconnected from everything? Episode 1’s first scene is just a shitty and poorly rendered advertisement of what's to come, episode 5’s and 6’s is just some terrible “ad” for the rest of the episode without the scene being brought up again. What is the point of these? Just play the episodes and insert the scenes when necessary. It makes the episodes feel disjointed. That doesn’t even take into account the really bad scene in episode 6 in which a random new duo shoots an impaling projectile at Lily, only for it to be disconnected from everything else and completely retconned entirely, making me ask what the point of it was. All of this truly highlights how horrendous the directing and scene placement of this show is.
I'm not even going to try to go through this pile of schlock scene-by-scene because that's a death sentence for my sanity due to all that’s wrong here (which really sells just how broken the writing is since I've pulled so much wrong out of it already) and the horrible physics, asspulls, and other things I haven't talked about don't help whatsoever. Even if both myself and a friend of mine, who introduced this show to me in a fit of disgust at the product, end up finding brand new faults with it (some of which appear here), at least narrative-wise, I still wouldn't be able to break them all down, and that's only from a narrative standpoint, not even from a character or technical standpoint (though here is a distressing amount of faults in both of those areas as well). Plus, this review is long enough as it is. Expect some of them to pop up in the characters section, though. Maybe someone can make a blog or thread listing everything that's wrong here in the writing department. Tazuna and Koyori kick other Hand Shaker duos’ asses one by one, before each battle, there is a twist regarding said duo (after the first pair), they lose and are spared, and Tazuna and Koyori finally challenge God after facing a bunch of idiots, asspull by asspull. Get fucked by a cactus, Hand Shakers.
However, obviously, we need to talk about the finale, or rather, the lead up to it. Remember this one guy from episode 5 that told Tazuna that Koyori wasn't his real sister and did so in a way that made him so obviously evil, you know, Daichi? You don't? Neither did I until I remembered that this show had a plot and until episode 10 rolled around. Well, he brought Koyori’s sister (so,Tazuna’s is still dead?) and he is her Hand Shaker partner, and they delve into this big dumb backstory about how Makihara and Daichi were Hand Shakers and this backstory about Koyori’s and her sister’s (Mayumi) past. As you’d expect, it was dumb, especially since this was near the end of the show and there was no remote confirmation that there would be a season 2 (and it still doesn't have one, and I hope it dies here and with the prequel ova since that exists now). The plotholes about the hand holding and the fact that Hand Shakers can be born (so how does that explain how Tazuna became one, and does this mean that each Hand Shaker is born? Does this mean that they technically don't have to have motivations to fight in this? Then why do people partake in this to fulfill a wish that could easily be achieved normally?), as well as the one about the two sisters randomly collapsing (due to an unknown organ failing for unknown reasons that also makes us ask how a simple organ failure can destroy your memories and your communication skills) all culminate with the poor presentation and bad writing (even excluding plot holes) to make a lame ass backstory.
Then, we getting the finale: Tazuna & Koyori vs Daichi & Mayumi. It's about as retarded as you'd expect by now, and the Tazuna and Koyori meet God and Koyori is no longer afflicted with the curse because bla bla bla! I'm not even gonna rip this pathetic finale to shreds like I did ever single episode this far, because fuck it! You don't give a shit and neither do I, so let's move on from this flaming plane crash that calls itself a plot; it has killed enough of my brain cells with its sheer idiocy and convolution already and I can feel my sanity dripping by the second. After all, it can't do battle royales, backstories, or frankly anything right and it's appalling that I managed to pull so much bullshit out of a 12 episode series. After this, I'm gonna go apologize to The Asterisk War and Psycho-Pass 2...
CHARACTERS: 1/10
As any vigilant viewer who is decently well-versed in anime can tell by watching this series, the characters here are all worthless, comprised of mostly caricatures of actual characters; templates, if you will. That would be bad enough on its own, but each of these individuals is beyond terrible, due to sheer stupidity, asspulls, pretentious quoting, general annoyance, or what have you. As such, we have no reason to care about these idiots. With that said, let’s jump right in.
Shirou-wannabe (or Tazuna, as he shall be referred to since that's his real name) is an annoying and generic “average everyday highschool boy that gets into supernatural business” who looks like he’s in his first year of Middle School instead of high school. I mean, do we really need another generic high school guy who simply whines about his circumstances for reasons that vary from reasonable to ridiculous? Every time he wins, it's due to a Deus ex Machina new power that he pulls out of his ass (like randomly summoning his Nimrod in the first place). Plus, he got aroused to the point of nosebleeding when he rubbed his sister in the shower. Gross...except it's ok because,”plot twist”, she’s not really his sister, except no it fucking doesn't! Also, his shtick about things “meshing” got really irritating after episode 1, especially since it sounds lame as it is. Plus, in episode 9, he even has the audacity to do the whole edgy “fuck you, I'm fighting for someone who is obviously not happy about how much I'm hurting myself for her” bullshit to her parents, which really ruined any chance of him not being a pathetic MC template. For a main character, he’s a pretty bad and annoying one, but he is TAME compared to some of these other individuals, believe me! He may be poorly written and not have any real motivations but at least he isn't as asinine as some of the other asshats you'll be seeing later down the line.
Koyori, particularly at the start of the series, is the human equivalent to a pet, except with less personality. She’s a human vegetable that can understand communication and human needs. Hell, the ED gives her more personality than the first 4 episodes of the anime do! What the hell?! What is it with these MCs and having little to no personality?! I mean, as I said, she gets personality traits EVENTUALLY, but she is the second half of the main character duo, and it should not take 4 episodes just to give one of the two most important characters in the series a single personality trait! It's not like she’s a remotely good character anyway. Hell, she doesn't actually do anything (like fighting or trying to help in non-combative ways) in any fights except for the fight in episode 6, where she leads Tazuna to figure out what she figured out in order to win (and even then, he only won by new power ex machina). At least show shows some semblance of a personality by the end of episode 4, and is marginally more realized as a character than the rest of the twats in this show. Still, that's not saying much, as her personality is still vaguely defined and uninteresting. Also, her escalations are horse shit. She can gain more time away from holding hands...for some reason. Her subplot about trying to talk is only referenced for plot convenience and is never developed properly (not that I would expect such talent from anyone involved with this show), and she randomly gets a mahou shoujo costume and nimrod in episode 9 for asspull plot convenience as well, right after finally talking. Just...she either has no personality, a bland personality, or grows via plot convenience, depending on the episode. That's just sad. Sure, she gets a “sad” backstory about how she and Mayumi had a right childhood as Hand Shakers, but again, still doesn't help her much as the backstory is terribly executed. She had the most potential to be a good deuteragonist (secondary protagonist) but, as per usual with this atrocity, they squandered it.
Luckily, their parents are more tolerable, simply being lovey-dovey parents who tease and stuff like that. Harmless, but harmless doesn't help much given the cast. They only appear for like...two episodes anyway, so I guess that's to be expected. Whatever, I’m stalling; back to the shit show that is this show’s important “characters”.
Let’s talk about the scientist guy (Makihara), shall we? He’s basically what's used to justify all of the nonsense present here with “not enough data” or just by explaining some of the broken basics of the “death game” and is incredibly annoying, not to mention forgetful of critical information they somehow adds more problems to the show’s narrative. Sure, his past comes in handy in terms of providing a little bit of info to Tazuna, but that’s about it. His voice in the sub is really irritating when you combine that with his mannerisms. The dub doesn’t win him any points either.
Let’s talk about these other Hand Shaker duos, shall we? Break is a generic mofo antagonist thrust within the first episode just for the sake of a stepping stone into the protagonists’ journey through this battle royale. Bind is his masochistic weapons bitch who gets off on him stomping her goddamn VAGINA and wrapping chains around her that move fast enough that she might get rope burn. Could our premiere antagonists be any more one note and boring than these two? Plus, their power is summoning chains to hit people with (hence the names that are really on the nose). The powers are as bland and boring as the wielders themselves. It's somewhat cute seeing them get a school festival cameo in episode 7 (as convenient as that is for the anime), but that doesn't help them at all. Besides, unlike the other roadblocks/Hand Shaker duos, these two don't even have motivations! I mean, the motivations of the character that have one are rather lame and disproportionate to what they're doing to achieve them, but these guys are or introduction to this whole deal, so...what the fuck?!
Blade (actual name, Hayate) is a bumbling dork who apologizes more than any character I've seen to date, and is relatively ok. He just wants to prove himself to his boss(which doesn't work when you apply that as a motivation to why you participate in a battle royale in which you can potentially kill people).His partner/boss, Dagger (adult who looks like she’s 6, actual name, Chizuru), is more annoying, particularly around him. She’s also a bit contradictory in fact in terms of her instructions about him correcting people. Even with a more social and playful attitude towards the main duo, she isn't a good character. Her backstory is that she was bullied for her height by her cohorts and wants to prove herself to them and make everyone equal by winning and becoming powerful (as her wish, which, again, doesn't work when you apply that as a motivation to why you participate in a battle royale in which you can potentially kill people), and that could've been an interesting thing to touch upon to really make her more complex, but, of course this show wouldn't bother. It isn't capable of pulling it off, nor does it try in any other narrative regard. Still, this duo is better than the first one, especially since they actually have backstory and motivations, as poorly placed and poorly presented as they were.
Lily is aggravating, juggles two annoying personality gags that are all that define her, she's incestuous with her (not really her brother, but that doesn't make it ok) little brother, Masaru (who is also a twerp who instigated the fight in episode 6 due to his own arrogant stupidity, piling it onto Lily, and is also a pathetic excuse for an already generic male-tsundere), and she has nothing going for her, not even the F-cups they are way too big for her body in terms of proportions. Besides, the backstory for her and Masaru is half-hearted and dull, not even making any sense as a backstory for why they are fighting in this game, with their reasoning being their love for each other, which shouldn't factor into this game at all, even less so than the previous duo’s reasoning. Every scene with her after episode 4 is aggravation incarnate, and she is quite possible the most irritating character in this show, which is saying a lot.
Kodama, while beautiful, is also pretty annoying. She constantly quotes famous figures in pretentious manner for even the most simplest of shit that can count as a belief, as if she was some terrible fortune cookie, and it quickly gets on my nerves. Sad thing is, she isn't ever trying to be pretentious but she does this enough to make Shougo Makishima proud. Her only other gimmick in terms of personality is being all about her performances and “fans” and nothing else. What a waste. She has the more upbeat, thoughtful, and dedicated personality to make me really wanna like her, but her stupid gimmicks ruin it all. Her manager, Hibiki, is even more annoying, being this unbearably hyperactive and stereotypical brown-nose manager, and that's his only personality trait. Needless to say, I wanted him gone by the halfway mark of the episode that introduces him. Though, the two do have a semi-interesting backstory. They were friends since they were a bit younger, and Hibiki sacrificed his job to let Kodama succeed, even if they were still underground people. Even still, this isn't even used as a motivation for why they bothered acting as Hand Shakers, they had no motivation whatsoever. Even still, out of all the duos, they're the least bad.
Then, we have this guy, Daichi, who came in at episode 5 to be all like “she’s not the real sister; stop being Makihara’s slave” in the most obviously evil way possible, and lo and behold, he’s a stone cold prick who actually is a Hand Shaker partner with the real sister, whose backstories raise even more problems that I actually went over in the story segment. He’s as dull as the rest of the characters, and his backstory makes him much more emotional and moral in the past than now (so, why has he changed so drastically?). As for the sister, Mayumi, her backstory gave us nothing to go off of aside from her having a rough childhood, fighting in something de doesn't understand, but she doesn't even have a personality. She is what Koyori was at the start of the series, and she's part of the final boss. Shame, really. Then, she speaks and becomes another Koyori because...fuck it; I quit!
This is the only work in which I can, with 100% certainty say: “I don't care what happens to these people.” Even in works like Gundam 00 Season 2, Mahouka, Gundam SEED Destiny, and Fate/Grand Order: First Order, there was at least one character that I can like and remotely root for, even if, at least with the 2nd and 4th examples, almost everyone is horribly generic and unlikeable. Here, there is not a single person that I care about or can get invested in, even if it's just to see their asses get kicked. Worse yet, there are characters that I still WANT to get invested in, but can't due to their bullshit ruining everything. Every single character in this show can fuck off and die for all I care, and I would actually be happy, because almost every character is an idiotic asshole who only makes things worse, with the few exceptions still being pathetically flat and with almost no personality whatsoever. Their personalities are flatter than the show’s resident loli, and that's sad for an original show that was supposed to put this studio on the map. Seriously, fuck these characters. I desperately wanna know how ANYONE can root for these people and get invested in their stories. Even in the few cases where they try to give us a reason to care, the presentation is so bad that we give no shits about those characters, partially due to the fact that they are completely one-dimensional. When a decision made by the show or the characters wasn't offensively or annoyingly bad, I was beyond bored, and it's thanks to these assholes. Congrats, assholes (the characters, not you guys; you guys are cool for making it this far), I hate all of you (minus a few, still one-dimensional exceptions) and you can all go to hell. Moving on.
ART: 1/10
Woooooooo boy! Now onto the section we really wanna talk about; the elephant in this room so big that the room had to be the size of a skyscraper for it to fit: the visuals! Lemme put it like this. You know the phrase “Work smarter, not harder”? Well, the people behind this show, aka Studio GoHands, really need to learn that after what they did here. There’s a lot to talk about in terms of what went wrong here, possibly more so than the writing, which is an achievement given how I contorted the abysmal writing in so many ways that no chiropractor on the planet can fix it. Oh boy, here we go...
The CGI in this anime is some of the most poorly integrated and some of the worst CGI that I've ever seen, and no amount of decent CG backgrounds can remedy that notion. I mean, there are moments where it can look good, only to be followed up by a moment where it looks hideous, excluding the ok CGI background buildings. Plus, it's not above using fugly ass CGI pedestrians for no good reason, as if this show wasn't enough of a nightmare to look at already. There's one moment in which this flame emperor hand is summoned, and it is revolting to look at, like it was a 1996 CGI effect for a Direct to Video DVD. Don't even get me started on the nimrodes and how hideous they look or how had the frame rate is for them. In fact, let's delve into that right now!
The frame rate in this series is all over the place! Within the first two scenes, THE FIRST TWO FUCKING SCENES, the frame rate crashes and it is a sight to behold. Get used to that. Whenever the camera moves in a long shot of a scene filled with people walking in an attempt at world building (which it sucks at), expect that to happen. In fact, the 2D characters have vastly lower frame rates than the CGI Nimrods. Notably, the chains in episode 1 all look like they have different frame rates, and if you see them moving while the characters are moving while the camera is moving, all at the same time, it becomes a nightmare to look at, even more so than before. Why does this show have to tread the frame rate like the Germans treated the Jews? Just...why?
Sometimes, when the characters’ clothes are flapping in the wind or when the camera is slowly showing off it's CGI landscape, the frame rate shits the bed so hard, for seconds on end, and it's the absolute worst. I've never seen a show have so much or blend with frame rate before, and I've seen Phantasy Star Online 2 The Animation! Also, there are 2D first clouds drawn when a character is rolling back after an attack, and it doesn't fit well with ANYTHING in this series, whether it's the CGI backgrounds or the GoHands style character models. Now that I'm done sidetracking, let's get back to the other major gripes I have with these visuals.
The camera, notably in episode 1 and the fight scenes, is the worst thing ever. It is highly capable of inducing vertigo, and I'm willing to bet you that it has. It moves around at the most unnecessary of times, especially in static moments, and when it does that in some of the aforementioned scenes or any scene like that, your eyes try their damndest to curl up and die just so they won't have to process all of this crap at once. Even in scenes that would otherwise look potentially good (like the opening scene in episode 8) are, at best, hindered by the obnoxious camera, and I dare not say what happens to them at worst, but episode 1 is the ultimate indicator of that. The “ambition” behold all of these aforementioned visuals really came at a detriment to this already pointless disasterpiece. Let's not even touch on the revoltingly bad choreography, otherwise I'd be relying myself in terms of the effects, especially since the camera plays a large role in the action scenes and the way they are shot. There’s also the fact that it often feels like the battles skip a gigantic chunk of frames while the frame rate dips, like in episode 4 and 8, making the action scenes unbearable to look at, and everything I mentioned previously (aside from repeated animation) are on full display in each and every one. Let’s just move on to the character designs.
The character designs range from mediocre to horrible (due to the body types and their proportions to their characters’ ages), even with the decent hair detail (especially since Koyori’s hair is awful to look at at times and changes colorway too much with no reason aside from “light filter change”, more so than Donald Trump’s hair). I mean, all of the high school students look like they're almost half their age, especially due to the small heads and bodies. Adults look like older teenagers (except for Chizuru/Dagger, who looks like she’s 6) for somewhat similar reasons. It simply doesn't work well. It's like making a semi-chibi version of K’s visuals, and mixing it in with horrendous hair designs (particularly for Koyori, as I already mentioned), and everything else mentioned above, makes every second painful to look at. Nothing feels or looks right. Nothing blends well with each other, and that's a crying shame because if it did, and if they removed all the camera, CGI, and frame rate bullshit, this show would've actually looked good, really freakin’ good. Yet, they went with this anyway, and they clearly weren't skilled enough for it, because they somehow got every conceivable thing about this process wrong.
All of this is not even mentioning the terrible lighting filters that make everything look off-kilter, the fugly ass fire and explosion effects that look more like an amateur freshman college student’s attempt at pasta sauce (not to mention the times where it's just stock fire footage in a TV ANIME FOR FUCK’S SAKE) that somehow manages to fuck the living shit out of episode 6’s frame rate for about ⅓ of the episode (aka, the entire time fire appeared), the horrible school clothing designs, the occasionally awful walk animations (especially the one with Daichi’s “ominous” CGI walk in episode 10), or the fact that scenes are often reused. I'm not kidding. By the time you reach episode 3, it becomes disgustingly common for them to reuse actual, few-second clips, for no particular reason, and with no regard as to whether or not it fits. It's as if they had some trippy and “ambitious” angle for how they wanted everything to be done, but they still decided to be lazy with it in occasion. I mean, it would've been a visual nightmare regardless, but they still cut corners, like having a menu that wasn't even drawn but was instead photoshopped from real life, or, as increasingly common it becomes as you move along, a variety of objects being stock; ripped from real life. Again, FUCK YOU, HAND SHAKERS!!
I swear. This anime deserves to be in college courses on how NOT to integrate CGI and 2D animation together, as well as how not to use a camera or use a filter. The visuals do virtually nothing right, and that's astounding. It's like if a girl out every single lipstick and piece of makeup in existence and then adding all colors of glitter; it's a visual mess that's really hard to look at. As if the story and characters weren't abysmal enough, the visuals make this show actively unwatchable! It's a shame that people actually have to work overtime in order to make this, partially die to how awful the product looks but also due to how none of that effort paid off in the slightest. Before I lose my sanity in this void of hell known as Hand Shakers’ visuals (or anywhere else in the review for this nauseating travesty), let's move on.
SOUND: 2/10
The OP, “One Hand Message” by OxT, is a very generic OP with obnoxious vocals that sound somewhat like auto tune, and give off a grand feeling of obnoxious genericness; a perfect fit for this show. The ED, “Yume Miru Ame” by Akino Arai, is a melody that unfortunately fails to elicit its emotion of calming and heartwarming. Sure, it gives Koyori some actual personality, but the singer sounds like she’s out of breath, and not in a good way that it makes the song more emotion-filled and somehow just as great. Then again, that's partially a product of the awfulness of the show because if it was involving well-written characters that we have been made to care about, it might've been more effective. At least it has better visuals than the show does, showing the potential the visuals had, but it doesn't matter at this point.
The actual OST is lame and not memorable (within its own strengths, not in terms of how much it was drilled into my head by the show). There are ok pieces there, but they're as bland and forgettable as everything else that doesn't even sound remotely interesting. There's also the fact that the OST doesn't ever fit well with the anime, whether it be due to the backgrounds or situations, it always sounds out of place since it all sounds like scenes that fit better in a generic slice of life series than in a show full of combat and destruction, especially when they pop in during the action scenes. The piece in episode 6 when Lily is hugging Masaru, happens to be especially generic, making that scene even more hamfidted than it already was. If the OST felt memorable and really good to me, I might be able to excuse that (somewhat), but it isn't so no curving the score for this section either. Not to mention that some songs that start off promising turn out really bad (like the one at the end of episode 7). I know, some people actually like this OST, but it just doesn't work for me, nor does it work for the anime. Plus, the repetitive usage of the same few mediocre and ill-fitting tracks over and over was not good. At least when Aldnoah.Zero did it, it was at least replaying GOOD music. Also, the idol songs are merely ok. They don't really help much of this poor OST. Even the idol songs are both brief and mediocre, not to mention completely out of sync to the point where it's either hilarious or maddening, depending on who you talk to. In episode 9, it's constantly interrupted by what sounds like Hibiki, and it even gets cut off for the OP, and all of that is maddening. They didn't even bother treating the idol songs from Kodama with any respect, and they're better than the rest of the OST (not by much, but still). Just...wow.
As for the dub, let me be fair: no one could've made this work, thanks to the character designs, or rather, the proportions of their bodies. Even still, some of these performances feel distressingly flat or over-acted, with miscasts all over the place, but, again, it's not like the best casting choices would've been able to work well with any of this. It doesn't “mesh”, as Tazuna would say. Even Monica Rial can't give her character anything good. Some of the other voices are annoying as well. Then again, the sub was pretty awful too, possibly more so than the dub. Still, this proves that Hand Shakers really is unlistenable as well as unwatchable. I mean, even as a cheesecake dub (by that I mean, a corny and unintentionally or even intentional hilarious dub full of camp), this is rather boring, as I and many there can point to you at least a few that do a much better job at being a cheesecake dub, like Garzey's Wing. Just skip the dub, as well as the show itself. Also, I know that the sound effects can be pretty bad in this anime sometimes, but there’s this one moment in episode 10 in which Makihara moves back, but ever sound effect in that moment begins literally an entire second before he actually moves, you know, because this show can't do sound effects right either.
ENJOYMENT: 1/10
Well, if you somehow couldn't already tell, I hate this show. I really fucking hate it. The visuals are infuriatingly bad in almost every conceivable way, the battle royale “death game” is so poorly constructed and explained that it alone killed the script for this show beyond redemption (only for everything else to add a million gallons of fuel to the fire), the dialogue is Mahouka levels of robotic, the action is revoltingly bad and incoherent, the characters are flatter than a loli, the comedy is awkward and terrible (often reusing the same gag over and over), the voices are awful, and everything about this show just pisses me off! In fact, it finds new ways to make me suffer with every passing episode, which is crazy considering that episode 1 broke my spirit and made me hate it more than any anime within the span of 22 minutes. Ah, Hand Shakers: the gift that just keeps on FUCKING giving!
The worst part is that when it's not doing that, it flat out bores me to death, and that happens surprisingly often. Then again, this show never tried to be remotely interesting, anyway. If anything, episode 1 alone made me grow an obsessive hatred with this show, and it only got worse the more the show progressed, culminating in this bleak review devoid of any positivity. I know that some people look at all of that and laugh, for it does nothing right and would make a great template on how not to write these kinds of shows, but I just couldn't stand it for the life of me, not even for an instant. Hell, as I was taking notes on this series, that task ended up being much more entertaining and fulfilling than ANYTHING this show had to offer, which really speaks volumes of how much I hate this series, especially since each of the notes I wrote down made it to this review.
I understand that someone can enjoy this schlock ironically. I understand that there are people out there who unironically LIKE the show and have probably given up on this review for being nothing but unbridled hate on a show that they somehow managed to enjoy, but I almost never had a moment that made me smile (aside from one moment where I laughed and got incompetently done Masaru's rolling was), and that's not even an exaggeration. The only episode I DIDN’T hate with a passion is episode 7, but despite having some semblance of charm at points, it's still as dull as the rest of the dull moments of this series, albeit it's not offensively bad, unlike the rest of the series. All in all, my hatred of this show became obsessive, and now I can lay it to rest.
OVERALL: 1/10 RAW SCORE: 0/100
All in all, this show was a disaster from the word “go”. The moment it aired, it received a humongous backlash, and for damn good reason. This show had around 10 producers, so the results probably shouldn't has been so surprising, since that just practically screams “lack of communication” and “clusterfuck” right there. Either way, this abomination a masterpiece of failure, with all sorts of mistakes around every corner, and it never once gets better; it's a canvas of vomit that someone decided to call art, as if we are supposed to accept something that is this apocalyptically bad! Worse yet, it was pathetically generic and without an attempt to be interesting, aside from its visuals, and even then, only somewhat. In every sense of the word, this show is BROKEN; nay, FUBAR! This shit went Fucked Up Beyond All Repair from the moment it fucking started! THAT'S PERFECT WAY TO SURMISE THIS PIECE OF FUCKING HORSE SHIT!!!!
Then again, you're probably thinking “We already knew all that; it's obvious. Why’d you waste your time with this 9,400+ word novel of a review on a low hanging fruit like this show?” Well, aside from sharing what this anime did to me, I wanted to solve this anime’s hatedom forever, making sure that there is no way to reasonably defend this show and that any non believers can be sent this review to read in order to accept that this show is an abomination. Interestingly enough, there has been quite a number of people trying to pass this off as simply middling and not awful, which this review and the writer in question disagree with wholeheartedly. With that, we come to the final nail in the coffin I prepared.
If you've played it or heard of it, think back to Sonic ‘06. It was a broken mess, with glitches up the ass, horrible gameplay elements, poor worlds and visual aesthetics (aside from some of the cutscenes), and a bizarre mess of a story to boot. Even still, it had ambition. It has great music, and an attempt at a complex and interesting story. It over-reached in all the necessary places, and rushed itself in others, leading to its downfall, but at least it tried something interesting and potentially unique. Hand Shakers didn't do any of that. It played around with camera and CGI, but was so damn lazy in every other regard, that it's insulting to call this show ambitious. It didn't even try, and it suffered horribly for it. WE, or at least I suffered horribly for it, and, if the Internet is how we think it is, Studio GoHands is suffering for this as well. After all, even if this was how they intended it to be, in the end, this was an abomination from hell that will damn their reputation; that's what they get for making the Ride to Hell Retribution of anime. All we need now are some awful motorcycles and those fucking cowbells…
Anime is an interesting category for certain animated series, and is a sink of ideas, plenty of which are ingenious and creative, and are capable of captivating us, invigorating us, and making us think, while also being capable of teaching us something new and interesting, warning us of what we don't want to become, and even reminding us about amazing things we desperately needed to remember. It allows for kinds of shows you will never see in any other outlet of television. However, shit like this is filled with a dearth of creative and interesting ideas, and is simply a product meant to suck our money and give the studio (not the workers) some profits, like with plenty of Light Novel adaptations (whether the LNs were good or not) like Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei and The Asterisk War. The sooner we realize how these cheap products dupe us, the more we can demand shows that more people in the production will take seriously in terms of actually entertaining us and making us want to watch more of their stuff. Plenty of us in the west have been doing that for the past decade, and more people in the east need to start adopting this mindset. Stuff like this is unacceptable, especially when the generic and poorly written product anime are also poorly produced, like this show. I hope to never come across something like this again, and I hope Studio GoHands learns from this and tries to recover with an interesting anime that many will want to see and will actually get invested in, for this anime has done a lot of harm to their reputation.
Plus, Hand Shakers is such a cheesy name. Couldn't have been something cool like “Hands of Fate”? I mean, give me a cool name to hate a show, something to make it feel like it is “the dreaded”. Then again, that title I proposed would make the fact that this is a shoddy Fate/ ripoff even more apparent. It's the modern day equivalent to what De:Vadasy was to Evangelion. For those not in the know, De:Va was considered by oldtaku (old anime fans) to be the worst Eva ripoff of all time, with awful directing, awful scene structure and composition, poor production values, retarded concept, and so much more, hence the comparison. Whatever, fuck it. This shit gets my “Go to hell; You Didn't Even Try” award (aka the 1/10 award). With all that said, FUCK HAND SHAKERS!! Can't wait for the god-awful prequel OVA coming out this summer with the purposes of turning shis fuckfest into a franchise, that way I can rip on that, too! Well, assuming that my next target doesn't ruin me, see you next time, everybody! I'm the meantime, I’m getting chemo for this bullshit!
“For you, January 11, 2017 was the day that your worst nightmare arrived and began ravaging everything you and your tastes stood for, but for me, IT WAS TUESDAY!!!” -Me, Tuesday, when this travesty of an anime came on every week.
Karhu
So I watched Hand Shakers because I heard it's the worst thing ever. Of course, this same thing is being declared about every series ever by people who have not seen every series ever. For this reason I approached it with the same skepticism I approach the "best series ever" claims. And once again the exaggeration was real, and Hand Shakers was more or less like the "best series ever". Sure this series doesn't have many good things in it. It has lots of bad, but none of the bad in it impressed me in any way. It's not advanced awfulness, terribad clusterfuckery, not evennauseating shit. In fact, it just offers a mediocre view on bad. Series such as Code Geass and Clannad did an impressive job building all the depth and factors that made these series garbage in almost every possible way. Hand Shakers seems more like a parody of those. Instead of offering its own unique take on unwatchable trash, it rather seems to be made for ironic viewing without any seriousness
One important thing to note about this series is how it challenges the viewer's intelligent. The concept of holding hands is a direct middle finger towards all those "deep" and complex anime series where instead of the characters holding each others hands - the anime itself is holding the viewer's hand. This one doesn't do it. It couldn't care less if you fucking like it or not. This series is also a reverse-ripoff of Franxx with more subtle. I can totally dig into that. #not a pun
For a borderline softcore hentai, Hand Shakers does quite an impressive job with the boob wiggles and tentacle-like chain movements. The scenery is colorful, detailed, and the animation is nearly as glorious as in series like Kemono Friends, Houseki no Kuni, and Kingdom season 01, so it passes. The story on the other hand is definitely better written than Code Geass R2, and I highly enjoyed it despite it being a mixture of vomit and piss, so I can't complain.
SunlitSonata
In 2010, Cartoon Network greenlit a show called "The Problem Solverz". It attempted to compensate for its boring/obnoxious characters, choppy movement and horribly inconsistent writing by having bright, flashing, seizure inducing visuals and a high concept that was made to disguise the fact that the story in actuality went nowhere. It was hated by everyone pretty much immediately and taken off the air very quickly. It seems history repeats itself. As an attempt by Japanese Studio GoHands (best known for the painfully average K Project), they created Hand Shakers for the Winter 2017 anime season. It attempted to compensate for its boring/obnoxious characters, choppy movement andhorribly inconsistent writing by having bright, flashing, seizure inducing visuals and a high concept that was made to disguise the fact that the story in actuality went nowhere. This time however, it manages to set the bar so low, that it could possibly be the worst anime series to be released in this entire decade.
The first aspect any keen viewer will be able to notice is the art and animation. It fails in so, so many ways, and it only gets worse the further into the show's trench you go. Every color is made out to be as bright as possible, like the entire show was waxed with a car bumper. Color contrast doesn't exist, shadowing to make darker moments serious doesn't exist, nor any common sense on the production team. Actual color placement can be impossible to see. Like, whose idea was it to give a character with white hair the palest face and body imaginable? Distinguishing body details? A thing of the past and the future is Hand Shakers! Then there's the movement. The first episode has CGI chains moving like CGI that in no way fits with flat character models, and everywhere else has CGI backgrounds that our flat (both figuratively and literally) characters literally SLIDE through instead of being animated. If something is animated, expect it to move at like, 15 frames per second. In some cases stylistic artwork can compensate for lack of movement, but not here, when they try to make the backgrounds look as realistic as possible with flat characters models lazily pasted on. Or with an aquarium CGI effect that comes off as nothing but disorienting. ESPECIALLY in the OP. The show gets your eyes's attention, but not in any pleasant way.
From the first episode, you see how overeager the director is to tilt, and pan and zoom the camera all over the place. He wants to make a style, but combined with the overly bright and shiny color palette, it only results in the audience wanting to head to the nearest sink to puke. Even an emotional scene isn't free of the distracting camera tilts. A scene involving an idol character is shot to never actually show her lips while singing. It makes an already terrible looking show come off as outright nauseating.
All this and I haven't even discussed the frustrating dearth of plot yet! Similar to how K Project attempted to cash in on the Durarara craze two years late, Hand Shakers wants to cash in on the popular survival game craze (Deadman Wonderland, Mirai Nikki, Fate/Zero, Btooom) over five years late. A game called the "Ziggurat" causes pairs of people known as Hand Shakers to challenge each other with the hopes of meeting God and making their wishes come true....:.and that's it. No more plot than that! Character relationships exist but until the 11th episode's massive plot reveal, don't mean jack crap. Most episodes exist for two purposes, make a fight scene or have an overly long, boring string of filler and exposition back to back to reintroduce us to characters we saw two episodes ago. It's like every time they add a new Hand Shakers they have to remind us characters exist! As far as the games themselves go, you'll find more logical rules in No Game No Life, a show which did a lot of this stuff right but had problems when it came to making its rules consistent. There's no real specific setup for any fight and when there is setup, it's handled in the laziest, most last minute way possible. The fight between the protagonists against President Big Boobs and Card Kid is a shining example of how NOT to establish a fight scene. It's somehow made worse later by an exclamation that might've made the two episode long fight obsolete entirely!
See my colleague CodeBlazeFate's review for more on why the Ziggurat game is COMPLETE bullcrap, but there's issues outside of just that.
Just about every single fight scene takes place in the wide open streets of their city, and yet somehow, aside from the people directly fighting, literally NO ONE ELSE notices the massive fight going on. It's not like Yu Gi Oh where fights take place in a separate dimension, all of them are in the REAL WORLD, and no one does anything to interrupt a fight. Or even peek out a window. It makes the scenes look more empty than the Market City in FoodFight. And you NEVER want to be compared to that horrific disaster. Even Mirai Nikki, terrible as it was, crafted its survival game in specific spots so that it would go unnoticed by the public, or even possibly reported as news enough to get cops on the case. Hand Shakers is so one tracked that this isn't even possible.
So, with all of the time devoted to either fight scenes that lack much in purpose or at least 3-4 completely pointless filler episodes in 12 episodes, how does the show resolve? [b]HORRIBLY![/b] Not only are the final revelations about backstory completely rushed and out of nowhere in the penultimate episode, but the final one ends with instant redemption and an FU teaser. Even if you wanted some reward for the heroes for all the crap you've waded through, too bad! Nothing to see here. I thought it was problematic when Angel Beats rushed its final revelations and padded itself with filler but that is NOTHING compared to this unfulfilling slog with no ounce of heart or good animation that show contained. What you're left with is dead air with no payoff whatsoever, the worst kind of writing I haven't seen since Gunslinger Stratos The Animation.
Even the sound mixing is totally bunk. Little to no music exists in the non-action scenes, and when it appears in action, it's often soft piano pieces or the joyful music type you'd see in a Spyro game. It works in that context but the lack of actual ACTION music removes all tension that could be in the fights to make them EVEN MORE boring. The final episode uses a vocal theme sound in dubstep, WHILE whispering, so it's impossible to even hear the song. Oh, and the OP and ED are completely generic. Nothing to say here except, the sound designer was probably as high as everyone else when crafting this show, its world and its characters.
The characters....oh boy. Much like The Problem Solverz, the cast is either entirely bland or annoyingly obnoxious, with incredibly phoned-in performances. Starting with our main character Tazuma, we find out from the first episode that he's a schoolboy who's a really good mechanic for his age. And that's it. Throughout the entire series, the main character remains just an ordinary schoolboy who wouldn't look out of place in a toy commercial show, only with a sister to hold hands with. Hell, he honestly gets WORSE because the mechanic trait is pretty much entirely dropped when he gets involved in the game, save for having a plot device clock weapon. Meaning his character got worse for not doing one of two possible things.
His "sister" Koyori is even worse. For most of the show she remains silent, possibly so the audience can bask in how cute she is. Unfortunately that's all to her. Any chemistry she has with Tazuma feels off-putting, and unlike say, Gangsta, her lack of speaking isn't circumventing in any way when put in a scene. Besides, of course, talking later. Don't worry, nothing comes of it and speaking gives her even LESS personality.
Every enemy pair can be summed up in just a few words a piece for how little character you get. There's hardcore biker & bondage masochist, Tsundere & Baka, Idol & Star Wars kid with choppier animation than usual, scientist twin & sister twin and last but not least President Big Boobs Chan and Card junkie.
These last two are special because this show tries to tackle a serious topic with them. You see, President Big Boobs chan has a massive, massive obsessive crush on her little brother. Related brother. Her wish when appearing towards God is basically to be with him forever. Despite them....fighting together, holding hands to win the incredibly vague crown? The incest soon becomes her only character trait, she constantly obsesses over her little brother and the show barely resolves this. It's pushed so so much and never seen as directly wrong in any way that it gives ANY other incest-related anime look better by comparison. Not freaking kidding.
Finally, there's the scientist guy. Basically GoHands's attempt at one of my personal favorite characters Okabe Rintarou. He's quirky, is keen on giving exposition, acts weird when there's barely anything to hide besides history with another scientist, and appears as a mentor to the main character Tazuma. There's nothing more to him than that though I suppose those few character traits make him the best character by default. Still doesn't do ANYTHING for the plot besides introducing the main idea
So basically, if you're a character in this show, you either are one note, become worse than one note, or barely do anything for the plot. At the end of the day you're left with a horrible cast that brings nothing new to the table, barely contribute, and make this miserable excuse for a show into flat out irredeemable annoyance and boredom.
[b]Conclusion[/b]
The final episode is called Shake the Hands, which is exactly what I felt like doing to the makers of this series. With extra shocking joy buzzers to whoever thought this was a competent finished product. I'm sorry but this show was just flat out asinine in every way. Awful animation, awful directing, awful writing, awfully bad music choices, awful characters and most of all some of the worst art directing you'll ever see. Unless you want your eyes to suffer, STAY the HELL away from Hand Shakers.
themegamancave
WARNING- Unlike most of my work, this review contains explicit content… reader’s discretion is advised. For fuck’s sake. I thought I'd do something a little different in this review, and start off with a few haikus that accurately illustrate Hand Shaker’s impact on my well being and emotions. My eyes are bleeding Maybe possessed by demons? No, just Hand Shakers If a bus hit me I would be a vegetableAt least no more pain
Hand Shakers is like
Cancer was personified
And is your roommate
There you have it. Sometimes an anime comes along and creates so much buzz amongst the community that you can't help but check it out. The phrase, “how bad can it be?” constantly surfaced from my vocabulary prior to watching Hand Shakers, and after 12 episodes I can say with confidence that I survived the impossible. It goes far beyond the “so bad it's good” realm and into the “so bad it’s a precursor to suicide” side. This is truly the worst series I have ever watched, and it isn't even close.
The writers at Studio GoHands (K) have a hard on for sadism. It's as though their anime pitch went something like, “I’ve got this great fucking idea about people that hold hands to randomly use badass weapons, and there’s some unfappable fan service in there too”. And to think that some masochistic prick actually gave it the green light. Hand Shakers is the result of no one having a single fuck left to give when it came time to write a show up for the season. On top of it, they had the nerve to tarnish the legacy of my favorite gaming franchise, Mega Man, with the synopsis…. “In the year 20XX…” Are you fucking kidding me? It's not paying homage, it's like putting dog poo in a paper bag and lighting it on fire on Keiji Inafune’s doorstep.
If someone told me that by holding hands with a complete stranger could cause me to harness the power of something called “nimrodes”, and make everyone in the world want to blow my ass to smithereens… well I would've let that bitch die in a heartbeat. Who comes up with these names? Nimrodes is one letter away from effectively summarizing the personality of everyone on Hand Shakers staffing bill. And what takes the cake is that they're trying to fight against God himself. As if holding hands with a coma-struck lolli is going to get you further with that insurmountable task. The plot is nothing short of atrocious. A monkey obediently pointing at objects on a screen could piece together a more coherent storyline than this.
To make matters worse, the story unfolds into an even bigger, chaotic mess. Tazuna and Koyori, our hand shaker extraordinaires, go from dueling a fucked up bondage couple to some kids that love card games, making light of the fact they're attempting to overthrow the man upstairs the whole time. Hand Shakers fails at almost every turn to impress, and it isn't even the slightest bit believable within its own inconsistent jargon. It's reminiscent of watching a homeless drunkard trail off in one of his timeless tales, only to end up wetting himself in front of you and forgetting who he was. Nothing seems to follow in a digestible plot line, and believe me, I tried to look for something… anything that could salvage this anime. It just isn't there.
The writing, as expected, is nothing short of a disaster. The dialogue reminds me of watching two middle schoolers arguing over a Yugioh card battle. The lines “You'll never defeat me!” and “I'll get you next time!” were just some of the Pulitzer Prize-winning excerpts from the anime’s script. The comedy is as humorous as oral surgery, only without the laughing gas to put you under. It almost comes across as unintentionally deadpan, an inscrutable attempt at making us laugh. Originality was left at the door, as all your basic tropes are present: the cute lolli damsel in distress, the awkward Chibi main protagonist and tons of stereotypical side characters with as much development as Koyori’s chest. And the fanservice… oh the fanservice. It's definitely there, but the manner in which it's presented (i.e., through its choppy visuals) made me want to chop my dick off. Most generic anime often rely on cheap fanservice to grab as many views as possible, but in Hand Shakers’ case, I think it does more harm than good.
For those of us who've experimented with LSD or various types of acid/shrooms, the visuals in Hand Shakers can be summed up as a bad trip. I was intrigued by the “unique” art style for all of two minutes, until I realized I wasn't watching a PS2 cutscene. I assumed anime in 2017 had at least some minimum standard or acceptability criteria for animation, in which Hand Shakers would clearly fail the quality assurance inspection. It's like watching someone play a video game with continuous lag. The main character models are creepy as hell, providing an ominous juxtaposition to the childish demeanor Koyori and Tazuna exhibit throughout the series. The environments are rather plain, which only cause the jutting visuals to stand out even more. I thought when I saw how nauseating the chain scenes were in the first episode, things could only get better… but I was sadly mistaken as I began to trudge through the series, growing more weary with each passing second.
In a sea of the ghastly and unacceptable, I'd have to say the sound in Hand Shakers, though uninspiring by itself, was the only decent aspect of the anime. The sound effects were believable and the voice acting showed some promise, most specifically with Ai Kayano’s role of Riri. The OP was quite lackluster, as the anime world seems to shovel these JPop titles out ad nauseum. Vibrant yet generic colors stifle your senses as the cliched vocals pierce your eardrums. Same old, same old. The ED was possibly my favorite track of all, the only saving grace for a monotonous soundtrack.
Well, I did it. I cannot stress enough the level of effort on my part to actually make it through a series of this “quality” without dropping it. This may be something used for torture viewing in the future (right up there with Baby Geniuses 2), and I applaud my fellow reviewers for sticking it out the whole length of the show with me. If I could compare it to anything, it would be Mars of Destruction… only not funny. I recommend this to absolutely no one, and as you can see by my overall reaction, neither should you. Hand Shakers should be taken down from every streaming site on the internet, and every hard copy buried in the desert (much like ET on the Atari 2600). Lock it up and throw away the proverbial key. Thanks as always for reading and be sure to check out the rest of my Winter ‘17 reviews!
LIQfilms
Hey there you filthy weeb! Do you enjoy watching boring fights with absolutely no narrative stakes or tension? Do you like watching completely dull and downright unbearably bland characters with no personality whatsoever? Do you enjoy a completely nonsensical plot that makes no sense and goes nowhere? Well, then, you'll love this amazing show! For just £19.99, you'll get this amazing package sent straight to your door, along with an apology letter from the studio who made such an awful piece of trash and a couple of cyanide pills, just in case, like many people, you feel like vacating this shitty world since you can'teven bear to go on for another moment knowing this atrocious trash exists! Why delay? Order today!
This anime is terrible. Like holy hell is it bad! In every aspect and category this anime falls flat on its face and there isn't an ounce of talent in this entire production. I would make a comment about it being a terrible light novel adaptation, in the same vein as something like Black Bullet, but this show is completely original! It has no light novel to blame; no manga to trash. The blame for this unholy piece of trash falls solely on the creators at studio GoHands, who, at this point, really need to GoAway (laugh track and applause at my completely funny and original joke). Last year, there were three anime, which I dub as the "unholy trinity" that being Divine Gate, Mayoiga and Big Order, but even these shows are nowhere near as bad as Hand Shakers because, at the very least, those shows were entertainingly bad. Hand Shakers is not that. It's like a boxing match that has lasted for thirteen rounds, dealing abuse after abuse to one person who refuses to give up. It's just pathetic.
This anime has everything that I dislike in lazy writing and storytelling from the characters to the actual narrative itself. Nothing in the show was handled with any care and it seems the team was more concerned with pretty colours than making something worthwhile. It honestly staggers me that the score for this show if a five out of ten; it deserves much less. The story is about a young, boring man named Tazuna, who has one of the worst catchphrases ever. He constantly repeats the phrase "It meshes!" over and over again, and is just so annoying. He says the phrase in response to something that is going his way, or something that doesn't make sense since Tazuna here is someone who is great at fixing stuff...and the anime believes that a quirky personality is enough to make a character, neglecting development and themes. It's laziness at its finest and all of the characters are like this. Anyway, Tazuna becomes something known as a "hand-shaker", an ability in which he has to hold hands with a voiceless girl named Koyori, who awakens from a coma after he touches her hand, and after touching hands, they can activate their powers. After this, they're told that they have to fight against other Hand shakers until one person remains to be granted a wish from God himself...for some reason. They explain that this power is a gift bestowed by God himself but there is no basis for this and instead feels tacked on instead.
The show's main problem is that there is no investment or intrigue in the narrative at all. The audience has no reason to care for anything that is going on since the show never gave us any reason to care. Who cares if Tazuna gets his wish granted and survives? Who cares what the other hand shakers want to do, or the reason why they fight? Aside from very brief, cliche backstories and exposition, the show hardly delves into why these characters want to fight and it feels disjointed and clunky. Not only that, the show has so much melodrama and all of it is so damn forced. From the very first episode, I knew the entire backstory surrounding the main character and his little sister that when they do try and present it as a twist in the series, later on, there is no effect since this has been replicated so many times before. Call me genre savvy, and perhaps I am, but that is still no excuse for lazy, forced drama and backstories; something that Hand Shakers can't even replicate when it's the most cliche route to go in an anime of this nature. Aside from that, the entire show feels like an empowerment fantasy, with the main character suddenly gaining a bunch of random new powers which he pulls out of his ass to conveniently defeat the enemy, and the show even has incest sub tones with a sister character called Riri, whose tits bounce up and down every time she so much as moves her eyeballs. Every terrible anime has some kind of strange incest vibe going on, made even worse by the lolification of one the of characters who is supposed to be in her twenties but she looks like she is twelve. There's also this stupid gimmick in which the two main characters have to be holding hands constantly, otherwise the girl will die or something, thus they have to sleep together and also bathe together, leading into a lot of moments in which Tazuna feels embarrassed, just for the sake of putting a naked loli into this show somehow.
The show also has so many drawn out friendship speeches in which the main character goes off on tangents about how much he loves Koyori and how much you have to "mesh" with your partner, that it comes across as completely cliche, especially for shows of this nature. The final fight in the show was also pretty anti-climatic despite the build-up and despite these characters being hyped up as the strongest in the show, Tazuna defeats them even easier than the previous opponents he fought. The pacing for this show is also pretty bad and moves at such an erratic flip-flop pace that it feels like a chore to watch (aside from all the other things that make this show a chore to watch anyway. One moment they're fighting for an entire episode and the next they spend the entire episode cooking some food in a restaurant. Now, downtime in shows is a good thing, and I wouldn't mind so much if the characters and the pacing weren't so boring!
Not only that, but the show has so much cheap shock factor that it feels laughably pathetic. I addressed this also in my Black Bullet review but shock factor is perhaps the cheapest way to make the audience feel sorry for a character who is as interesting as a wall since it requires no effort. Just throw cute, adorable girls on the screen with some hardships and the Otaku will eat that trash up. In terms of the narrative, there isn't a single element, or idea, that I felt was well executed or interesting. Not a single one. And I tried really hard, REAL hard to think of one thing, just ONE thing that this show did right in terms of story, but, try as I might, I failed since there isn't a single thing in the entire narrative that is good. It's a mess and by far, one of the biggest train wrecks I have ever seen before. This show is a masterclass of how NOT to write a show and if you want to get into script writing then this show is highly recommended to get a taste of how not to mess up your story.
The characters don't fare much better either. Not a single one is interesting in terms of design or personality while receiving minimal development and growth. Hell, half of the characters in the show are completely forgotten about after their introduction and never referred to ever again. Tazuna is your boring typical, self-insert bull for all the ten-year-olds watching this fecale matter and Kayori is mostly loli-bait for all of the filthy weebs. They do attempt to develop her character through a backstory at the end, but this is far too little, far too late and leaves no impact, especially since the story was executed so poorly. The sister and brother character does receive some development but is mostly forgettable but their love feels off-putting and strange. I understand they rely on each other since their parents split up but they seem a little TOO close for my liking. Other characters include the final opponent, who tries to be intimidating but fails, and an idol, who at the very least has a purpose and goal, but she is just as dull as the rest of them. The twenty-year-old loli and her partner are perhaps the only two characters with some kind of development but it's hardly anything, and definitely nothing substantial enough to raise the bar. Each one has got some strange personality or quirk, such as the idol manager who speaks and moves really quickly, but the writers believe that just making a character eccentric is enough to warrant the creation of a three-dimensional character, which is as far away from the truth as possible.
Even just the basics of shot composition and cinematography, this show messes iit up. The camera is constantly pacing around in strange directions with strange and experimental shots, which are more distracting than visually appealing. The Monogatari series also has random and unconventional shots, but in that show, the dialogue between the characters was interesting and always had my interest, and the shot composition matched the strange allure of the show and worked in its favour. Not here, however. The general look of the city makes me want to puke with all of the sparkly silver, which looks mostly computer generated. The character designs have this strange, bright glow to them, which I dislike looking at. When the characters are standing still, there can be some nice looking colour artwork in the background, which I can find somewhat appealing, but when they're in motion, dear God, it's like watching two Barbie dolls fight.
When the characters fight, the camera pans around them in strange ways, constantly moving. This makes most of the fights feel so disorientating and confusing to watch since it's hard to gain an understanding of the relative positions of the characters in reference to each other. Combine that with some horrible CGI, makes for not only a terrible script but an awful aesthetic as well. Trust me, if your eyes could puke, they would. The only half decent thing is the music, which is decently composed but is not very memorable. The opening was alright, but it reeks of laziness in the visual department since they don't even bother to try and create new visuals for the show; just splice in some actual scenes from the episodes and call it a day. Who needs effort when people will like this trash anyway? As previously stated, the show also likes to throw boobs in our faces any chance we get with Riri, and Jesus Christ, these are some of the worst boob physics in anime. Not only do they constantly shoot this character from low angles but every time they bounce, I swear I can feel the Earth shifting on its axis towards the Sun, coming ever closer to that sweet embrace known as death from this shitty show.
In conclusion, stay away from this show, at all costs. It's so lazy, so mundane and so incoherent that it makes me want to throw up just thinking about it, and I swear this show made me lose about five-hundred brain cells. Anime deserves better than this, and GoHands can GoFuck themselves for producing this asinine piece of garbage, to add on to their other asinine pieces of garbage.
ghostney
When one accurately thinks of a masterpiece, one can only think of Hand Shakers. This isn't just the best anime I've ever seen, this is the best anime of all time. With stunning visuals, fluid animation, incredible character designs and depth, and an eargasmic soundtrack, topping this would undoubtedly be completely impossible. There is nothing about this anime I could critique. I could spend hours alone lost in Koyori's eyes, for in them you can see the universe itself. The fluidity of the animation meshes perfectly with the classic anime-style character designs, which, by the way, with their stunning colors and intricate details, simplycould not be better.
This anime has stolen a piece of my heart, and without it, I would be incomplete.
Maka_Ev
Oh my god. Just wow. I don`t understand all these negative reviews i don`t understand what people are expecting, or perhaps they`re just too used to the drawing style and can`t wrap their heads around this. But let me tell you, the amount fo detail in this Anime is CRAZY, and i mean crazy. Every single background character is animated as well as having every single detail on them. I did also enjoy the story quite a bit, the main characters Koyori and Tazuna really meshed together! Loved their little interactions and besides hey, Koyori`s just a waifu can`t deny it. But jokes aside, Theanimation was super super fluid, the characters were super detailed, those camera angles were so unique and i really loved them, it just added to the emersion, made me feel like i was there with them running and fighting. The audio as well, was crispy clear, voice acting was spot on and it has funny moments as well as some sad moments that made you feel for the characters. This was truly a hidden gem, and i`m glad i watched it. I`ll never let anyone`s opinion persuade me intro not wathcing an anime, can you only imagine if i did, and i would`ve missed on this amazing little anime?! Huhu.
Overall i give this anime a 9/10. That`s a minus one point from 10 just because i didn`t get to hear a conffession, BUT that doesn`t mean there isn`t one, i guess you`ll have to watch and find out for yourself!
PS: Aparently W`z is a sequel to this anime 10 years into the future or something, but i`m not sure!
PyraXadon
Anime originals. Creating original anime has the crippling fault of being the source in existence, meaning, if the anime doesn't fulfill everything it needs to do in order to complete a story by its own merits, it can and will fail stupendously. So, with a name as ridiculous as 'Hand Shakers', it's not hard to see how GoHand's (how fitting) original show flopped so hard. Story: Takatsuki Tazuna is a boy in high school who acts as a handyman to anyone who needs help. Any device that's broken, he can fix in a jiffy. One day, while arriving in a placeto help someone named Makihara on a job, he finds a sleeping bedridden girl who's hooked up to life support. Reaching down to grab her hand, the girl suddenly awakens and the two are then thrusted into a battle with a weird S/M couple without any word or warning.
Hand Shakers according to the show, are a pair of individuals who 'charge' their power by holding hands. When two pairs of Hand Shakers are within a 1 km radius within each other, the two pairs are forced into battle in a place known as the 'Ziggurat', where they use powers and weapons known as 'Nimrods' to fight each other. The pair who wins gets to keep being Hand Shakers while the pair who lost loses their power entirely and are out of the game. It's said that the last remaining pair of Hand Shakers will be able to meet God and fulfill whatever wish that the pair so desires.
Despite having a tournament style plot that to some extent, has potential, the idea of having holding hands be a key aspect of the whole series is personally, a laughable way of trying to be unique. Though it may be ridiculous, that is not the thing that makes this show a laughingstock and a crying shame. The biggest problem with Hand Shakers is the overindulgence of style over substance. The show primarily focuses on our two main characters fighting various pairs of Hand Shakers (5 to be exact) and inching their way closer to meeting/challenging god in order to fulfill their wish. The problem is, the two don't really have a wish. In fact, our pair of protagonists only have any form of motivation to continue forward once more than half of the episodes are over. As such, the story is stuck in this loop of characters just dealing with problems as they go along without any character motivation moving them along aside from just getting to the end.
Due to the nature of how the Hand Shakers work, each pair has their own reason for fighting. The problem is, the show reveals the motivations for each pair so late in each respective mini-arc that by the time it's over and done, there's no reason to care for them. In fact, the show doesn't even give you a hint as to what each respective pairs' problems are until after their defeated, then dump all of the info via backstory and monologue onto you expecting to care for them after they've been defeated and their struggle no longer matters in the series. This kind of writing is what kills the series, and it persists through every pair of opponents that our main characters meet.
As far as positives go, Episode 11 stands as the series's high point. The episode gives us much needed backstory to the whole situation of the series, and actually gives the audience a reason to care about what's going on. But yet again, the flaw of "too little, too late" rears its ugly head, as by the time the show makes it to this point, the audience has little reason to give a damn because everything thus far has gone so picture perfect and the end result is extremely predictable. The ending also has a confusing set of circumstances that honestly don't even make any sense. I feel like GoHands just threw whatever they wanted at the end because the ending does not make any sense at all. There's no definitive conclusion, there're things in there that were never shown before, and we don't even get to meet God. You bastards.
Overall, Hand Shakers' story is an example of wasted potential, as the idea of reaching God had a variety of directions that the show could go. But because Hand Shakers was too focused on style over substance, the story became a bland piece of work that only served to move the characters from one fight to another. The show doesn't try to do anything new, and the characters all having skin-deep motivations gave the audience no reason to care for anything in this show.
Overview:
+/- Episode 11 arguably the best episode (though that's not saying much)
- Show gives no reason to care about anything
- Style over substance
- Forced character motivations
Characters: As the show gives almost no reason to care about the characters and their stories, the cast is filled with characters that in sense, feel like either they don't want to be there, or that do only care to do so for about an episode or two.
Takatsuki Tazuna is the main protagonist in Hand Shakers, and his character is about as colorful as the white his hair becomes when he's fighting. It's difficult to describe his character because Tazuna virtually doesn't have a personality to call his own. The show makes it feel like the only thing he's good for is protecting the girl he finds named Koyori. When he does finally get some semblance of reason to fight in the series, the end reason becomes "We're together", which is one of the laziest reasons to ever tack onto a character. If you separate him from his little girlfriend, there's almost nothing to say about him.
Then there's Akutagawa Koyori, Hand Shakers's little doll. As expected of the partner of our bland protagonist, Koyori does...actually nothing. The majority of the series has her be this stiff, emotionless figure that only at the end, does something useful. In cases like these, the caretaker (Tazuna) is supposed to make up for the character that does nothing (Koyori) by fulfilling a both roles and making up for both of them by having character traits and a personality that can encompass both of them so they don't feel like a hindrance to the overall story. But when your protagonists both have nothing to them, the end result ends up becoming nothing as well. (0 + 0 doesn't equal anything other than 0) I don't blame Koyori for having nothing to do with the story, as it makes sense in the show's context, but her being a natural hindrance while her partner is an unintentional failure in the same sense of contributing nothing only furthers why the story's content is bad.
Then we have the rest of the cast, made entirely up of other Hand Shakers that our pair of protagonists encounter (and one tutorial guy who basically does all of the info dumping). As mentioned before, all of these Hand Shakers have forced character motivations that are only told at the end of their arc, which by then, we have no reason to care for them because it's already painfully obvious what's going to happen if the first two episodes are any indication. Not only that, but each pair has their own unique dynamic which seems to be the only character trait they have. This 'character trait' of theirs gets repeated over and over and over and over again throughout each of their arcs, and persists even after their time in the spotlight is over. This gave me less of a reason to give a damn about them because their repeated behaviors irritated me to the point of not caring even more than I already didn't.
Overview:
- Bland main protagonists
- Annoying and equally bland side characters
Art: Despite how poorly GoHands managed to screw up on Hand Shaker's story and characters, thankfully, the concept of 'style over substance' was consistent throughout all parts of the show. Made with a strange combination of CG done in a handdrawn artstyle, Hand Shakers bears a unique style where everything is fluid like handdrawn animation, yet is done in a way that can only be executed by computer graphics. This artstyle has its ups and downs, but largely gives the series a very unique look.
The art is split into two different aspects. Fights, and normal everyday scenes. For both of these styles, the colors that're used are blindingly bright to the point that it becomes a little hard to discern colors, yet still plays to the series's strengths. The everyday scenes are detailed and actually quite nice to look at, though these scenes are the less intensive parts of the show. The actual kicker to all of this are the fight scenes. Due to the nature of devoting almost solely on computer graphics, the show has a lot of effects during the battle, a great deal of fluidity, and manages to use its bright and vibrant artstyle to its advantage to make everything look like a moving palette. The problem is, the fights are a little too fluid sometimes. During fights, the show likes to use a variety of nauseating camera angles while the characters are moving which make it both hard for the audience to see and understand what's going on. I personally felt a little sick watching my screen with some of the fights with just how much was going on. Despite that, the art is still a genuinely good aspect of the show.
Overview:
+ Aesthetically pleasing
+ Managed to make CG look good
+/- Bright colors (sometimes too bright)
+/- Fluid fight scenes (Warning: May cause nausea)
Sound: In terms of sound, Hand Shakers also has a surprisingly good OST. "One Hand Message", its opening, has an energetic rock beat that, while isn't the most memorable song to exist, has positive merits that compliment the wild action that the show exhibits. Its "Yume Miru Ame" on the other hand is a more somber piece that personally I wasn't a fan of. The notes are far too screechy for a supposedly somber piece, and I couldn't stand listening to it.
Beyond that, Hand Shakers also has a notable array of BGM that's worth noting. Battle music like "Dust Trail", more emotional pieces like "Aism", and others utilize a lot of piano and synthesized piano to create music that not only fits with the show, but puts weight on the fight scenes and other moments that they're used in. They give the illusion that the characters are actually doing something meaningful, and while they may not have been too effective as I still didn't care for anyone by the end, these tracks are genuinely good and actually nice to listen to.
Overview:
+ Great tracks
- ED is less than stellar
Personal Enjoyment: I went into Hand Shakers not knowing what to expect. Sure the title was ridiculous, but I've watched more ridiculous things before. But when I started, I realized that this show was going to end up being a mistake. By the end, I just did not care. Hand Shakers was so devoid of meaningful content or anything for me to give a damn. It's not bad enough for me to loathe this show and spit on it for everything that it stands for, but the show gave me so little reason to care about ANYTHING that was happening on-screen that the overall experience just felt like a waste of time.
Did I enjoy this anime?
I actually really like some of the Nimrod designs; especially the intricacy of Tazuna's gear sword. The use of CG was well done and gave the show a layer of detail that I greatly appreciated. The show's aesthetics and soundtrack are by far the best parts of the show and create a good amount of nice-looking still images and nice music to listen to.
What didn't I like about this anime?
The only thing I was truly irritated by was the character 'quirks'. Each of the Hand Shakers have their own quirk (be it fawning over your younger brother, yes that's in here, or reciting off quotes of famous people like you're a goddamn scholar every other line) that made me care about them even less than I already did. Not only that, but the show repeats these various quirks, and it gets quite annoying.
Would I recommend this anime?
This anime is honestly not worth your time. Despite its good art and decent soundtrack, the lack of story and proper characters makes this show an experience not worth having. If anything, I'd suggest just googling images of Hand Shakers so you can appreciate GoHands's work on the show's look, and finding the tracks of the show so you can listen to how good the music is. Beyond that, Hand Shakers isn't worth the investment.
VivavideoUser2x
HandShakers, is it the worst anime ever? Pretty much every review says yes, but when it comes to me, I like to see the good in things, but in this show, it's Really hard. Hand Shakers is pretty much fate stay night but with generic anime character, the main character is this boy who looks like a grade school student and suddenly he is paired with this silent girl who has been comatose for a long time, so they have to fight all these other pairs and win so they can get a wish granted by God.The main hook of the story is so thefact that the two main characters can't let go of their hands or they die but this concept is thrown out the window.They fight using powers called “nimrods” but the only “nimrods” are the people who edited this mess, it's like the scenes got jumbled out of order and it's very weird.Also this has to be the worst thing they could do, but you expect to see people fight each other. You do get that for like one half of the episode and literally the next hour and a half is just nothing but pure BOREDOM.OMG I was begging for something to happen I mean come on.They do the regular fighting but after two or three of those, the show slows down so quickly I think I got skidmarks. The second to last episode is just a regurgitated fest of exposition and the ending begrudgingly was alright, but really see why people drop this show.It's really hard to get through.
Alrighty then, the hardest part to talk about is the animation.It was done by Gohands who are masters of chromatic coloring,see “K” for example.In this show though, you can tell where they were going for but it doesn't completely work. What actually shocked me was that the main director and art director both worked on K, so if they did work on this they were probably drunk as hell.The show tries make everything in the background animated on par to what's in the foreground,but it all looks slow and sloppy, some of the characters disappear before even leaving the fucking shot.And what really doesn't help at all is whoever directed the camera movements .There is this one scene where someone gets a close up but they are walking towards the camera so they just disappear and it's very weird.Also, the camera has the stupidity to try to follow the characters around when they fight and it made me so freaking dizzy.This one girl jumped like two blocks to hit this building and bounced off and just went back. WTF. The 3d can sometimes look good (if the show was released in 1999)but when it gets involved with 2d and the crackhead behind the camera, it can look very bad. Getting to the art, its fine but just so overwhelming, the hair looks so fake, and the background is just Bleeeeh. There are times when it zooms into the background but it's low in resolution.There is one part that looks decent. it's when the pair enter the fighting world and all the walls have cool looking designs that come to life and it looks kinda nice.That’s the nice looking flower you see in all of the trash in the dumpster.
Now the BEST part of this show hands down (seriously if you think anything about this show is better than the sound,there is something wrong with you.)I watched the dub, cuz Funimation is the best, and it's alright.The soundtrack sounds like a bunch of royalty free computer leisure music from the youtube editor.Not only that but i feel like if I bought the CD, it would be like 20 minutes long.There are like 5 songs on the soundtrack.But they don't sound too bad.The foley was alright. I The best song is Dust Trail for sure.It’s like a mash of ballroom dancing music with orchestra and its very good.I recommend to listen to it on your own.The opening was done by Oxt who did openings to Overlord Season 1 and 2.Those opening themes weren't my favorite,but after hearing “One Hand Message”I can see why they are so popular.It's super addicting and kinda unfair that they have to be put with messy eye gouging opening visuals.The ending is freaking beautiful too.
The characters are kinda clique but there are very weird turns taken with them.The main character and the emotionless girl are bland but I can't say the same for the others. Including a girl with Hypopituitarism, another girl who is actually a.pedophile, and also another girl who uses the powers of orgasms to break the ground around her.Despite that, the actual interaction with each pair is decent.One pair uses cards.Another pair can only use her nimrod after using hand sanitizer.The route they went with the two MCs wasn't bad,but the execution made the show BORING AS HELL.There was one episode moment that lasted 5 seconds, but it did a good job of showing interaction between the two characters but that was the only memorable thing in the whole episode.
I can see why everyone trashes this show ,but I don't hate it with a passion.It's just forgettable.The story is alright but done way better.The animation and art had potential but it was just too overwhelming and lazily put together.The soundtrack is not bad but it sounds like stock music.And I can appreciate the personalities of each pair but the MC and the girl interaction was just so freaking boring I was tearing up from yawning all the time.This show is pretty freaking bad, but people are just overreacting.People who say this is the worst anime ever probably haven't seen all the other trash that anime has to offer.
Overall-5
I feel sorry for Gohands right now....
Rick250012
, I like this anime because it's unique on it CGI and animation. It's a fresh new story you don't see in anime like SAO or even Tokyo Ghoul.I like the characters except that one kid only, I love all the characters except that one kid. I like the opening and the ending theme, but prefer the opening because it pumps you with motivation. The fights scenes are brutal but great. I like how the main character have proper development unlike the former handshakers user. I recommend you watch not too serious. That's all I can say.I enjoyed it better than other shows like YojouSenki or maybe long stream anime like Sousei.
OmegaOtaku
Rather than writing a detailed review the likes of this disgrace doesn’t even deserve, I’m going to instead list some fair warnings for anyone who would be remotely interested in checking this disaster piece out and why you should AVOID it. Let us begin: 1. If you discover this and see the score and think “How bad could it be?” you probably should AVOID it. 2. If you’re a same person that said that said it can’t be worse than the likes of Berserk (2016), Big Order or even Pupa, then you’d best AVOID it. 3. If you somehow believed, after reading the synopsis given, that you will be in storefor something monumentally promising, you probably should AVOID it.
4.If you believe the displaying image for the anime makes the anime look more promising and you’re going to be greeted with an aesthetically pleasing anime to watch, you’re going to want to AVOID it.
5.If you’re not a fan of 2D character designs rendered on top of 3D backgrounds, or in general, have an issue with jarring and nauseating art and animation, you’d best AVOID it and giving yourself a headache.
6.If you hate weak willed main characters that have no clear or concise goal to either achieve or aspire to realise and if strong and capable characters are what you like in an anime, then AVOID it at all costs.
7.If you can’t stand an over-saturation of pretty much any and all clichéd character archetype and stereotype with them all being hopelessly uninteresting with very little (to none) character plot, progression or development, then AVOID it.
8.If you hate inconsistent plots that go back and forth from being action packed to taking a back and contributing absolutely nothing to what the show is even remotely about with said action scenes only delaying and stalling the plot because it has nowhere to go, then you must AVOID it.
9.If you were put off within any point during the first episode and have an optimistic approach and think it could get better as it goes on, then sadly you must AVOID it.
10.Finally, if you’re someone who is not fond of pointless fan service, cringe inducing performances and dialogue that will make you facepalm, then I implore you to AVOID it.
If none of the above actually matters to you, then maybe Hand Shakers might be right up your alley. Either that or you’re an extreme masochist that gets off from watching trainwreck anime. I hope you enjoy it and not suffer any prolonging mental illnesses in the process. May your nausea and headaches be more minimal than the ones I had to suffer.
ADrac
Before watching this, I had never felt like I had been genuinely insulted by how fucking terrible a show was. This anime has zero redeeming qualities. The art is atrocious and makes no sense. The studio couldn't even composite the characters into the backgrounds properly, which ended up with many scenes where characters are standing still and are sliding around on the floor. Plus, the perspectives make absolutely no sense. The directing is equally as bad with horrible framing and shots that break continuity constantly. They even break the 180 degree rule and have scenes where the scene will have a cut which completely reversesthe direction of the scene and makes it almost impossible to follow what is happening.
The sound design is almost non-existent and the music, especially the OP, is comically bad.
There is absolutely no establishment, progress, or pay off of any conceivable plot or characters.
The only enjoyment that arose from watching this atrocity from start to finish was from watching this with a group of friends and being absolutely dumbfounded by everything that was going on. Only watch this with a group of friends or if you want to see just how badly actual human beings are able to fuck every single part of a production up. I honestly don't think I could even come halfway close to making something this bad intentionally.
Gahr
So Hand Shakers is a little weird at first (framerate being slightly higher and variable rather than constant) which may make some people steer away from it. Most the time the artwork is fine. Supposed spoilers (theories) near end of post I do have to complain about the chains moving from the first episode as it causes brutal screen tearing. Other than that it's art style for characters is pretty nice to look at. Opening -- Song isn't bad, maybe a little pacy and lots of high motion. Normal Animation -- Usually not bad some parts of the first episode were a little laggy. Ending -- Song is another neutralthing but animation really isn't a big deal there due to lower key music tone.
How is the music in the background, well it complements it quite well the fighting sequences usually have more upbeat music in the background.
Now that I have finished watching the series, the story is definitely different, though the end leaves on a cliffhanger of meeting God?
Maybe an OVA (Supposed Episode 13 "Go ago Go") which is apparently a prequel seems to be focused on pre story stuff. Though this new character in it who is apparently called Kōichi from my research. This new character looks similar to that guy who was seen at the last seconds of Episode 12. I don't think a 20min OVA will cover the stuff after as well.
Welp time to go back waiting for Index III or the next season of Railgun
lazyking88
The battle tournament/ survival game genre is something that always catches my interest due to it's massive potential. It's a quick and sure-fire way to have epic battles, dynamic characters and a thrilling ride of suspense. Even an average writer could make a good survival story. A terrible writer, however, can only produce garbage. Hand shakers could very well be the worst anime to Grace this genre. Let's get straight to the elephant in the room: the art and animation. I don't understand how Gohands( what is it with Japan and weird names?) Could produce something as beautiful as k project then make this dumpster fire.The show tried so hard to be advant garde by combining 2d and 3d animation but the director hadn't the slightest clue what to do. The CG is painfully poorly rendered to the point there are ps2 games with better graphics There's also the poorly handled camera that just spins around without any real meaning. I'm guessing the director was going for a cinematic feel but it felt like the show was made by a child playing with his phone. Viewers are bombarded with oversaturated rainbow vomit colors you can find on a bad Wattpad faction cover. More colors don't mean better art If there's no rhyme or reason put into it. Some people even claimed to have gotten nauseous from these pathetic visuals. I'll admit the actual character designs were good and I liked the outfit worn by the mc. His jacket is chic and looks good enough to be sold in fashion retails.
The soundtrack was completely dull. Not a single song stuck out to me and I forgot every piece of music as soon as it ended. I understand not every anime can get that Iwasaki Taku or Hiroyuki Sawano soundtrack but at least have something noteworthy in the audio-visual department to distract viewers from the clusterf*ck story. I liked the voice acting in the English dub and I would've never watched this boring show with subtitles so that's one positive I guess.
Time to finally get to the real meat of the show. Or maybe it's vegan meat cause it's completely bland boring and a utter waste of time.
( Cue dramatic narration in the voice of Optimus Prime)
Fierce opponents from all across Japan battle to enlist in a legendary tournament to own the right to talk to God. The battles are daunting and survival is not guaranteed. Only one boy and his basic bitch girlfriend may come out supreme.
( End credits)
And that's the entire show in one paragraph. Episodes either have bland mc and basic bitch go on a date or have them battling other fighters. Let's take a quick look at the setup. Why are the weapons here called nimrods? I understand the old definition means mighty Hunter( I researched it so the show indirectly taught me a new meaning) most people would immediately think of an idiot. What's also idiotic is why the area these teens fight in is called a ziggurat. It's another biblical term that refers to a temple. These people are never in a temple so calling an empty space a ziggurat is stupid and pretentious. I just know the writers thought they were being clever with the naming. Anime has this weird fascination with using religious terms simply to look cool without any thought put into it.
There isn't a lot to say about the story since this show is as superficial as it gets. It's utterly cluttered with archetypes and badly animated fights. Let's make a list of the cliches shall we
• Emotionless quiet girl
• quirky scientist
• Laid back parents who don't question the obvious
• sadist and masochist duo
• pop idol
• a loli who's actually an adult
There's more but you get the point. The dynamic between the characters felt drier than the devil's ass. Tazuna wants to protect hiyori cause she looks like his dead sister and hiyori wants......??????? Other contestants include a brocon sister who wants to be by her brother's side forever, a pop idol who wants to remain in fame and a businesswoman who wants to be taken seriously. With motives and personalities so boring, it's hard to care who wins and losses.
What's worse is that the entire tournament was for nothing. Tazuma wins but he never talked to God. Thanks for cementing your complete lack of skill dear writers. we never get to find out anything about this god and the show ends.
I don't recommend watching hand shakers. You might have fun laughing at how bad it is but the atrocious visuals and lackluster cast make it hard to sit through.
IchiRoR
The reason for my hatred is that some time ago he wrote a certain story / novel with an exaggerated resemblance to Hand Shakers, the point is that I wrote it before I even knew that this existed, I decided to give it a try, and I found the animation more beautiful that I've never seen in the anime, it was as if they had taken my lore and adapted it to the anime, that made me feel ... well, sad, they did something I wanted to do, and they did it well! another thing is to take a premise and handle it badly, nowif I take out that novel it will seem plagiarism, but in turn, the anime I love it! That's why my love relationship is hate. Well, I left that aside, so, here goes my criticism.
-Animation and Colors: Simply beautiful, a series that should be seen at no less than 1080p, the work in detail is excellent in terms of the foreground and even more in the fights, the weapons at first are representations of the Hand Shaker, in the case of Tazuna it is a kind of sword formed by gears, and the care to the movement and animation of this is beautiful, yes, it relies on a rough use of the CGI and for obvious reasons it is noticeable, but the own filter of the series with the colors it pays to spare, each character has a certain "control / corruption" of the world where the fights take place and each one uses a treaty of different color, which is in agreement with the character in course , they just hit right away.
-The attitude of Koyori: It seems somewhat ambiguous for a single point, but this made the difference between other series with clichés of the "silent girl" that normally appears in the Kuuderes... just in a certain chapter to defeat Chizuru and Hayate, it is shown that he has feelings and coldness is only part of the inability to speak, by giving that blow to Tazuna it shows that he has decisions with what he feels and thinks, and that he is not indifferent to the world that surrounds him, only to show That gains points to the attitude, it is not a Kuudere as it was seen at the beginning, and the knowledge that it has feelings gives the missing touch to that relationship, since it does not feel like a monodirexional relation (it took me a long time to invent a word).
But! Not everything is good with the series, there is a point that gives me a lot to think about, apparently the one who chose the plans or was drunk or wanted to get sick every time there is a monologue, that choice is strange, sometimes it is given an emphasis of greatness/smallness to the character, but at other times, deforms the shot to the point of saying "why?" They do not make sense, that takes me out of my head. I mean, is it necessary to try to make the viewer dizzy when it comes to watching the series? I say as you can see, curving the whole image while doing a panning is uncomfortable, just that, I do not know if it is a bad or good decision, I leave it in you.
Points against:
- Character design: Lolis, lolis, shotas and more lolis, why? make a design like that, more in a series of this kind, that's why I said that I appreciate moderating the fanservice, I do not see it necessary to be watching ecchi in a series purely of fights and plot, I already said it, it is appreciated, but it is uncomfortable see children fighting, and in itself, they touch issues of incest and obsession, now, the cherry would be child abuse xD. Although at the end of the day, well, they are mostly high school kids, but there is no excuse, the only Hand Shakers that look like adults are the masoca and Hayate, from then on they look like children.
- The brightness of the series: Another thing to which I do not find any sense unless I emphasize... why so much brightness? someone passed his hand that filter, I say, would not be wrong in certain situations... but at all times there is extreme brightness, or flashes of light, it may be for an artistic theme but it becomes more uncomfortable than pleasing to the eye , without a doubt, to omit most of the situations in which the characters have their own phosphorescence would make the scenes of monologues much more attractive... since already being in the subject, they are also enough
- Empty battles: This is complicated to explain, but, the battles feel empty, not lifeless, as I said above, the work in detail is brutal, but I do not know, the problem maybe is that they do not take more than one chapter to finish, I do not know, maybe it is something that can only be seen and not explained, but at the end of each fight you feel that something is missing, as if it really was not over, although the series specifies that it is not likely that someone I die during a fight, it's not the fact that we keep seeing the character, that's fine, I mean, it's strange.
Out of all that there are certain things that I feel I should talk but the truth is not too important to deserve a point, as the way in which Koyori wakes the nimrod, I liked nothing, and other things, but I think I better give a small opinion about the series in general, I already said above, without a doubt, the best animation I've seen in any anime, I am amused that people labeled this series as "Another cliché anime" yes, it is not bad to be inspired by a theme that is already known, I can name several animes like that, but even the best works are plagiarism of something else, the point is how you are going to handle that premise, and without a doubt Hand Shakers did it well, and the points that had to be to play better as the relationships of each couple or Koyori's own attitude, themes that other series displace, Hand Shakers did well, a series worth seeing, worst of all, is... THAT ALL THAT ANNOYING ME! It's a beautiful series, and I had a similar story if not equal, and someone already did well! I'm glad they knew how to carry a story in which I got stuck for years.
Tyrannicswine117
Warning possible Spoilers: After finishing Hand Shakers I'm surprised that this has a pretty low score on MAL because honestly I thought it wasn't too bad sure it's not the best, but it is most certainly not the worst. Reading the description the story gave me a Future Diary vibe and it actually was in some ways similar to it just without the gore, killing and insane Yandere, it's about people who would become hand shakers and defeat all the other hand shakers so they could have a chance to face God and either fight him or be granted a wish sound familiar yet and the morethe story progressed it got more interesting overtime finding out how everything worked, this show could also have put in the Romance and Comedy tags because there is some of that in here.
The characters were actually pretty interesting it was nice seeing the relationship develop between Tazuna and Koyuri as they got more experienced over time, the other hand shakers were mostly interesting because their wishes were actually more good than evil so you kinda feel bad for them when they get defeated plus they didn't act like assholes towards the MC's after they were defeated and actually became friends with them which was an interesting twist for once instead of seeking revenge.
The Artstyle is pretty much what grabbed my attention, it was very colourful and reminded me of No Game No Life, but a lot more shiny it was interesting seeing this style since this was probably a first for me with this type.
The action was quick, but satisfying I've never seen a Gear sword before so that was new for me and the powers the other hand shakers had were also interesting.
Hand Shakers is actually a decent anime, if you've seen future diary or like action animes then this might be a decent watch for you, it depends really on your taste, but I mostly enjoyed it
DesolatePsyche
First things first. My "reviews" system is explained on a blog entry. Which can be found through my profile. ------ ✦Story To keep it short. I did enjoy the concept and a lot of ideas in this Anime. The bonds, past and general lives that were presented here were quite conflicted that made the story fairly emotional. What I did not enjoy. I felt that the story was way too fast pace and another thing I disliked that the story constantly built us a fairly interesting world, powers and concept but it kept growing it's sense of mystery. Building sense of mystery in 12 episodes Anime is a seriouspunch in your face. It's one of those Anime that basically tell you to read the source material. As Anime simply fast quick paced intro to the world.
Another thing I will have to mention about each section of this review is the general mixed feelings I got from this series. As for story, I felt it had lot of good, but at the same time I cannot really praise it as much as I would like to. I simply cannot explain, but the emotion it gave me in general was "kinda good, but not quite" . Or to put it simply, mixed feelings is the cause of my inability to give it more credit/praise score-wise.
✦Art & Sound
Well, studio behind this is same as Anime "K", which means we have very unique, different, colorful and alive art & animation. Even if wasn't as impressive as in Anime just mentioned. It was still highly enjoyable. Action and some camera pans felt very awkward at times, and low framerate didn't make it any better. And another issue regarding Art would be that faced did feel quite "derp" now and then.
Aside that I gotta add I did love the fashion in this Anime. Very fancy clothes and FMC had some extremely fancy and pretty underwear.
Fanservice to be honest felt non-existent aside oppai-chan, which had some extreme jiggles. Felt odd but artsy, didn't feel anything else.
Music was funky, active and generally had presence and was quite "stylish". In this particular case I mean that it did fit well with Anime visual style. Nevertheless I found it superb.
And yes, again with Art I had some mixed feelings as most of it felt really good, whilst some things made it very odd.
✦Character
This Anime was way too short... essentially we got episodic Anime with different pair every episode.
But to put it plainly, hand shakers are essentially people with painful past thus developed into sad, empty and pitiful present selves. And "hand shakers" essentially gives characters hope to gain their dreams that simply were in emotional way quite ghastly? I don't really want to mention characters too much as there were plenty of them and we were given little of time to know them. So anything real would be spoiler.
But I have to add, that once again characters concept was fairly nice. Very dark and sad, but nice. All of the characters had their issues in life and essentially got scarred or damaged. Thus their hunt towards the "god" to achieve their dreams. While on the other hand, everything progressed too fast in this Anime that gave me difficulty to truly grow into characters or fully understand them. Essentially it gave you little tease to feel for the character, but by the time you will actually achieve that "feel", it was all over. As felt I felt characters were fairly ironic as well.
To sum it up, odd bunch of characters that I personally did enjoy as whole, BUT at the same time I would loved to know about them a fairly large portion more of. But eh "go read the novel", I guess.......
✦Enjoyment & Overall
Did mention most things in previous sections, but I can add that it was probably the most mixed feelings Anime I've watched in a very long while. As lot of things I loved about this Anime. Lot were sad, painful and probably even relatable, whereas at the same time I just feel I wasn't give enough time to feel those feelings as intended. Same with growing into characters. And that dark and cruel sense of mystery this Anime oozed off, was simply bullying at this point. There were simply so many things they explained, teased about, but simply didn't give us enough.
Average of this review probably would be higher than 6. But this is one of these odd little unpolished gems that this time around, simply won't get that praise from me just because I love Anime in general.
To wrap it up, it's unique Anime but suffers from excessive fast pacing and various "feeling vibe" issues, that might you think this Anime is bad or very good. But the truth is, it's middle line that has been approached and conveyed a tad bit incorrectly.
Moral of the story.
This Anime is weird....I cannot explain why.. it just is weird. Not even sure whenever in bad or good way...that is as well weird.
Weird. Period.
Shingster
There are Slight spoilers mainly for character analysis. Plot The premise of handshakers is nothing new to the anime world. Anime's featuring characters that have some kind of power are one of the most common type of genres within the anime world. From the outside this anime can be said to be anything but special but what drew me to Hand shakers was the concept behind it and its story. Hand shakers takes place in the city of Osaka sometime in the near future and follows the life of Tazuna Takatsuki a high school student and who whether through fate or something else meets amysterious girl called Koyori. Their meeting which coincided with the touching of their hands transported both to an alternate dimension where they meet the being that resided there where their bonds as hand shakers are forged and their powers are born.
The overall plot of the series story revolves around the use of the powers called Nimrods that Tazuna and the mysterious girl Koyori gained from their little trip to that dimension and use that to grant their shared wish by beating every other pair that too have their own powers that are derived from their bonds with each other. As the nimrods are born from their shared bonds with each other the bond that Tazuna and Koyori forge and improve as the series goes is one of the main themes of this story.
Tazuna
Tazuna played by veteran voice actor Soma Saito is one of the main characters of the series and is the main hero of the series. A kind and caring person that’s also honest to a fault Tazuna is the image of a standard Japanese teenager. A high school student that has a knack for mechanics and repairs Tazuna loves to repair stuff whether it’s a simple thing like a MP3 player to a car he can with enough time be able to determine what’s wrong with it. As a result of this talent of his however Tazuna has more focus than most people but this is offset by the fact that this trait also makes him unaware of whats happening around him. In the beginning of the series Tazuna thanks to an errand encounters the series main heroine Koyori who lies unconscious in a room that Tazuna encountered upon. A mere touch of her hand eventually resulted in Tazuna and Koyori becoming Hand shakers after encountering the being that resided in that space.
In the beginning Tazuna did not believe much in the role of a handshaker and wanted his life to remain the way it is. Additionally, because Tazuna has a personality that can be best be described as non-violent Tazuna in the early battles wanted to avoid combat at all costs. However, as the series progresses and he is made aware of the consequences for not just him but also for Koyori of not winning this contest his attitude starts to change. Tazuna starts to fight hard yet at the same time fight smartly. While being kind and caring towards not just his friends and classmates but also to Koyori, Tazuna is also quick thinking and can easily see the different situations that can arise when in combat. This quick thinking also allows him to sometimes come up with tactics that others haven’t accounted for during battles with other handshakers which had the effect of making some of their fights interesting. In combat Tazuna’s Nimrod takes the form of a large number of gears that can either be forged into either a sword for offence or a shield of gears for defense. Generally, his tactics are a mix of defensive strategies mixed with precise strikes on the enemy’s weaknesses.
Tazuna’s bond with Koyori is one of the main points of the story for this anime and can be said to be one of the central points. At first Tazuna’s relationship with Koyori can be termed as awkward because due to the fact that they have to hold hands as per their bond both to maintain their powers and also to keep Koyori alive. This inevitably causes problems both at home and at school. At first Tazuna’s first impression of Koyori was that she was a beautiful if silent girl that seemed to have a past that she didn’t know about. As the series progresses however and Tazuna’s bond with Koyori grows in power Tazuna begins to understand Koyori more as she learns new things and learn about the things that are in this new world of hers. As their bond increases which also gives them more power their relationship becomes closer as they come to care about each other more. This however had the effect of Tazuna becoming more protective of her which I thought was nice to see.
The character of Tazuna I though was an interesting character. While he may look like an average teenager the evolution from a reluctant combatant to one that not only fights well but also smartly while trying to grant the wish to his beloved was nice to see. Soma Saito I felt did a pretty good job here.
Koyori
Koyori played by veteran seiyuu Sumire Morohoshi of Bungou stray dogs fame is one of the main characters of the series and is the main heroine of this anime. A mysterious girl that Tazuna stumbles upon while exploring a lab that he had been summoned to Koyori is in fact a hand shaker who had lost her partner in the past. By inadvertently touching her hands with his a bond between the two of them is established and both become hand shakers. Personality wise Koyori has two different personalities that is developed as the series goes on. Koyori’s initial personality which lasted from the time she woke up and right up to she gained her own nimrod was very timid and she seemed to be reluctant to fight very much like Tazuna. At this stage, she was also very quiet and had problems interacting with others partly from the fact that she didn’t trust people that easily. However, as the series goes on Koyori’s personality changes as she fights more with Tazuna and her understanding of him improves which also had the effect of improving their bond as well. As a result of this Koyori becomes more trusting of others, more willing to express her own thoughts and more honest with her feelings towards Tazuna. At first Koyori didn’t actually speak and usually communicated with gestures or facial expressions. This made it hard for Tazuna in the beginning to figure out what she wanted at times. However after gaining her voice back during one of the later battles Koyori was able to express her emotions and feelings much better. Throughout the series we can see that the bond that Koyori shares with Tazuna is important to her because in addition to keeping her alive it also allows them to improve the power that they have as the bond is directly affected by the trust they have with each other. While trust is important ultimately, it’s the feelings that Koyori and Tazuna have for each other that actually makes them more powerful as they fight more battles and overcome the increasingly heavy odds that are laid against them. The love story between them I felt was well done and flowed pretty naturally.
All in all, I thought that the character of Koyori was pretty well designed and that her seiyuu Sumire Morohoshi really did a great job portraying her.
Chizuru and Hayate
Chizuru Mitsudera played by veteran seiyuu Sumire Uesaka of Myriad colors phantom world fame and Hayate Azuma played by veteran voice actor Kaito Ishikawa of Occultic nine fame are fellow handshakers that Tazuna and Koyori encounter as they embark on their quest and are the second pair that they face. Chizuru and Hayate are actually adults that run their own company that deals with new technology that are being leased to places like schools. In this regard Chizuru is the boss of the company while Hayate is the subordinate. Personality wise these two though they have a close relationship as both friends and confidants have different personalities that often clash with each other which is used for comical effect in the series. Chizuru is a serious but cheerful young woman that’s very capable and efficient at her job. Her most notable trait is that of her height which is short to the point that she’s often mistaken for a child much to her chagrin. In the comical arguments that often erupt between her and Hayate Chizuru often makes witty comebacks to Hayate’s comments which is usually pretty funny.
Hayate Azuma is Chizuru’s partner and also co-worker and helps manage the day to day affairs of the company while also accompanying his boss for business meetings. Compared to Chizuru’s serious and hardworking nature Hayate’s personality is the complete opposite in that he has a more laid-back personality and generally is pretty easy going. Due to his tall height and the fact that he can stand both tall and straight Hayate is often mistaken by others to be the actual boss of the company with Chizuru if she’s present being often mistaken as the new girl instead. This is used for comical effect during the series and it’s always something that’s amusing to see.
As with all handshakers Chizuru and Hayate have their own wishes that they wish fulfilled once they manage to beat all the other handshakers. This wish was a result of the injustice and the way that they were treated when they first came into the world of the adult working world. I felt that their wish was actually a pretty worthy one and one that I wouldn’t mind seeing. All in all, I felt that the characters of Chizuru and Hayate were well designed characters that contrasted greatly with the first pair in that they had a decent reason and motivation to fight for. I felt that Sumire Uesaka and Kaito Ishikawa did an excellent job portraying their respective characters here. Of all the pairs that fought in the series Chizuru and Hayate are after Tazuna and Koyori probably one of my favourite characters as their interactions with each other are just hilariously funny.
Riri and Masaru
Riri Houjou voiced by veteran seiyuu Ai Kayano of Tales of Zestiria the x and Anohana fame and Masaru Houjou voiced by veteran voice actor Ayumu Murase of elDLIVE fame are fellow handshakers of Tazuna and Koyori that they encounter on their quest and is the third pair of hand shakers that they face. Riri is both the student council president of the school that Tazuna attends and a classmate of his and as a result is someone that Tazuna knows very well. Riri who likes to be called Lily for some reason has a cheerful personality and one that is best described as a big sister type personality commonly seen in anime. When in school and in student council president mode Riri is calm, cheerful and confident and composed however this personality of hers change when she’s with her younger brother who she adores and dots on. Riri has a rather unique hobby which is that of divination in which she makes of use of tarot card reading to determine the fortune of someone. Like Tazuna Riri is someone that dislikes violence yet she and her brother like every other hand shaker has their own wish that they wish fulfilled and as such even if they have to face someone that they know neither will step back as both want to achieve their wishes.
Masaru is the younger brother of Riri and is a 12-year-old boy who has a talent for card games. Personality wise Masaru is a calm, collected and mature person who despite the age difference actually looks out for his sister even though it should be the other way around. Masaru can be quiet and slow to trust people especially strangers but he’s the type of person that will open up to someone once that person has proven he’s not anyone dangerous or untrustworthy. Masaru’s talents for card games is not just a hobby that he takes part in for the fun of it though and instead forms a part of his Nimrod as well. Though not as developed as pairs like Kodama and Hibiki and Chizuru and Hayate the pair of Riri and Masaru are still pretty interesting characters with much of this coming from Riri’s interactions with her brother and the fact that she’s always being embarrassed by him. I felt that Ai Kayano and Ayumu Murase really did a good job portraying their respective characters. Being able to use his hobby as his nimrod though was an interesting design decision on the part of the writers here.
Kodama and Hibiki
Kodama voiced by veteran seiyuu Mikako Komatsu of Re Creators and Tales of Zestiria the x fame and Hibiki Moriyama voiced by veteran voice actor Tomokazu Sugita of Kanon and Buddy complex fame are fellow hand shakers that Tazuna and Koyori encounter as part of their trials. Kodama is a popular idol singer that is recognized by her fans for her use of prominent proverbs from famous people as well as her singing ability. Personality wise Kodama is a cheerful, positive and self-assured person that can be overconfident at times. Though not underestimating any of her enemies Kodama can however be smug at her opponents Kodama has real skill in combat as in the story she was able to hold her own against every one that challenged her. Kodama’s fighting style is very different to what the other handshakers make use of as part of their fighting techniques in that Kodama’s are more akin to being at a concert as her moves while certainly hard-hitting look like the finely tuned dance routines that are seen at concerts. Due to her experience Kodama and Hibiki can be said to be the first real challenges that Tazuna and Koyori have to face in their journey. Kodama’s most prominent trait is probably her use of famous proverbs that she often uses whether in battle or outside of it.
Hibiki is the manager of Kodama and also a handshaker whose main role is to support her. Though in the support role Hibiki isn’t a pushover in a fight as he is very much capable of launching some rather strong attacks that can be surprising given his role. Personality wise Hibiki is calm, polite and positive and even during combat tends to stay focused for his role of support for Kodama. The relationship between the two is very much like that of a manager and idol in that Hibiki helps manage the activities of Kodama while also helping to both support her in battle and to motivate her both in and out of it. From this it can be seen that apart from being a manager and performer Kodama and Hibiki are also really good friends from their actions as handshakers and also from the past memories that were shown in the series. As with all handshakers the power of a handshaker was gained by Kodama and Hibiki thanks to the hardships and challenges that both experienced. In this case the challenges came from being looked down and disregarded by both their fans and the companies that managed them despite the hard work that both have done. As a result of this injustice that also serves as the team’s main motivator Kodama and Hibiki can be said to be fighting the hardest to achieve victory in order to enter the other dimension and have their wish granted.
The character of Kodama I felt was actually pretty done and designed as though she appears to be a girl that’s slightly older than Tazuna and Koyori the hardships and challenges that she has faced in her career has hardened her so while she still retains her trademark positive and upbeat nature that defines her it can be said that she knows what the reality of life is and how unfair that can be to people. As a result, she can be seen as a good contrast between Tazuna who though as determined as she is doesn’t have the same wealth of experience in life that Kodama has seen. In a way, the fight between the pair is very much a clash of ideas as it is a clash of arms. All in all, I felt that the character of Kodama was an interesting character and that her seiyuu Mikako Komatsu really did an excellent job portraying her.
Bind and Break
Bind played by veteran seiyuu singer Yoko Hikasa of the Devil is a part timer and High school DxD fame and Break who is played by veteran voice actor Jun Fukuyama of Code Geass and Rail wars fame are fellow hand shakers of Tazuna and served as the first opponents after Tazuna and Koyori become hand shakers. Though their appearance in the series was relatively brief it can be seen that the relationship that the two had was very different to the other hand shakers that are present in the anime. In their relationship, it can be seen that Break is the master here who makes use of his partner’s ability by tormenting her which I found to be slightly disturbing. His attitude towards her rather than being caring and understanding seems to be the opposite in that he seems to view her as something akin to a tool instead of a human. Despite that it seems that doesn’t seem to bother his partner Bind as she seems to be both close to and devoted to her master. Despite their flaws the pair of bind and break managed to serve their intended purpose in the story by showing Tezuna and Koyori just the types of fights that they will be expected to face now that they have become hand shakers. It also taught them that brawn and might are not the only thing that can lead to a victory as intelligence and tactics are also things that need to be considered which is best shown when Tazuna and Koyori used this to win against them.
Makihara
Makihara played by veteran voice actor Shoutaro Morikubo of Naruto fame is one of the main support characters of the series. A scientist that worked at the university that Tazuna visited and where he encountered and met Koyori Makihara is a researcher whose research is focused on what he calls the hand shakers phenomenon. Though Makihara has a serious side to him when he explains new developments that affect both the world and Tazuna and Koyori his default personality is rather laid back and relaxed which often causes him to be disregarded by Tazuna and Koyori at times which is comical every time this happens. Makihara’s main role in the series apart for providing support to Tazuna and Koyori also consists of watching over Koyori who he was charged with monitoring and document the changes to her as her bond with Tazuna improves and advances. A recurring trait of Makihara’s is his rather over the top expressions that he uses when told positive things or being made aware of good things which I found comical.
Nagaoka and Mayumi
Daichi Nagaoka voiced by veteran voice actor Kenjiro Tsuda of Attack on Titan fame and his partner Mayumi who is voiced by veteran seiyuu Ai Kakuma of Asterisk wars and Clockwork planet fame are fellow hand shakers that Tazuna and Koyori face near the end of their journey. A mysterious character whose appearance in the plot leaves more questions than answers made even more so by the cryptic comments that he leaves before vanishing. This had the effect of making this character even more mysterious. The reveal of his characters true role in the story and his connection with not just Makihara but also with Koyori’s past was however a well-executed move. Personality wise Nagaoka is a calm, aloof and analytical person that has a degree of intelligence in him that reminds you of a scientist. Yet this is offset by the fact that Nagaoka seems to have problems conversing with people in that due to his limited social skills he has trouble coming up with smart answers or converse with people that he hasn’t seen for some time. Nagaoka’s main personality trait that defines him however is that he is someone that is extremely driven and determined to achieve his goals to the point where he will use any and all means to do so even if these means are underhanded or evil.
Mayumi is Nagaoka’s partner and fellow hand shaker and in physical appearance looks very much like Koyori because they are related. Like all hand shaker’s Mayumi is very loyal to her master who in this case is Nagaoka however it can be seen that rather having a bond that is built from mutual trust and genuine feelings their bond seems to be built on something else entirely. Due in part to how Nagaoka helped maintain her life Mayumi has very limited personality besides her loyalty however it can be seen with her attacks that she seems to be rather childlike in that she seems to like playing with toys like balls. However, this doesn’t mean that Mayumi doesn’t have a personality as though she may be quiet she can still speak and from this we can see that while she is obedient to her partner she also has the capability to make her own decisions especially if it clashed with her core duties of protecting her partner. Mayumi’s other personality that she recovers near the end of the series is slightly different to her other personality that was born of how she was treated by her partner. In this personality though she retains her loyal nature Mayumi is a bit more understanding and talkative and not afraid of embarrassing her partner. This personality I felt also made her look more positive which is different to her other personality which was a bit gloomy.
Like all handshakers Mayumi and Nagaoka also have their own wishes that they wish to be fulfilled and in this case, it’s to continue the work of Nagaoka’s teacher and Mayumi’s father. The defining trait about Mayumi is that because she has no emotions and no personality she will usually use the more direct methods to settle her fights and in away actually resembles Koyori when she was still in her old self. Mayumi’s nimrod within the series is rather unique in that it takes of the form of a ball that can be used to create countless other balls that can be used to encompass an area where Nagaoka’s attacks can reach.
Arts and animation
The art style that was used in this series I felt was pretty good and both the environments that were shown as well as the designs of the individual characters was well designed and implemented. In particular the character design for Koyori and Kodama I though was pretty good. Koyori’s design can aptly be described as the sleeping beauty as true to her persona she is someone that was created and born into this world a long time ago in the past which meant that there are few girls in this period that can be compared against her. With the persona of Koyori being someone that has been asleep for a long time I thought this design of hers really matched her. Plus, Koyori’s design really made her look really cute. The character design for Kodama was also another one that matched her persona yet one that also emphasized on the fact that idols should be approachable to the people. The resulting design I felt was nicely done and the different shades of colors that she had on her outfit contrasted nicely with each other. Another thing that was noticed in regard to the animation is how clear everything is especially when they show the city scenes. The details that are present in these scenes was nicely done. With regards to the combat scenes I thought that they were well done and clear enough in that we as the viewer were able to see clearly what was going on in the battle itself. The animation of individual characters and scenes I felt were also well done.
Music
The opening theme for the series I felt was pretty good and helped set the mood for the series while also having a good tempo. The music for individual scenes within the series was well done and felt appropriate for the scenes that it was used in. The ending theme for the series however is different to the opening theme in that it seems to be more focused on Koyori and her struggles in life and as a result has a rather somber tone to it compared to the upbeat nature of the opening theme. However, I do like the contrast between the two though and I can clearly see what the intended effect the animator clearly intended with their choices.
Voice acting
Voice acting for the series I thought was actually pretty good which is helped by the fact that almost every cast member that was in this series is a veteran with many roles to their name. In particular the seiyuu’s for the characters of Koyori, Chizuru and Kodama which are Sumire Morohoshi, Sumire Uesaka and Mikako Komatsu I felt did an excellent job portraying their respective characters. Sumire Morohoshi in particular is a seiyuu that I only seen in support roles until now most recently in Bungou stray dogs. The line that divides a support role and separates that from a main role is a large hurdle and challenge yet it’s nice to see Sumire was able to handle the job of portraying Koyori who is not the easiest character to play. Overall the voice acting for the series was pretty strong which helped make the characters that they portray more lifelike.
Overall conclusion
In conclusion Handshakers was an anime series that I really enjoyed watching when it first came on during the first anime period. To me the strong points of this anime was the overall concept, story, characters and the voice acting.
Although the overall concept of people gaining powers is not a genre that is particularly new in anime the concept and variation of it that was used in this anime I thought was interesting and well designed. The idea to make use of a bond that two people have created and share with each other as the main form of power within the series rather than the usual single person power was an interesting concept and a gamble as was the promise that by managing to defeat every other pair that have similar powers you will be able to enter the other world and have your wish granted by the god there. Ultimately this gamble did pay off and because this bond will get more powerful the closer one is to their partner it also provides a good means to affect some good development of the individual characters. The wishes part of the bond I felt was well thought out as each of the characters that were featured in the series though having different personalities all have one thing that they have in common with each other which is the wish that they would like the god in the other world to grant. Each of the characters no matter how positive they may be have had horrible things happen to them in the past that had the effect of creating the bonds with someone that share their pain and thus giving them the means to become hand shakers. Because each of these wishes are a result of the hardships that each character faces they are directly connected with the personalities of each character and can be said to be unique to each. Naturally as a fighting type anime the bond that the characters share with their partners directly affect how powerful they are as hand shakers with them becoming more powerful as they trust their partner more.
The overall story of the series revolves around Tazuna and Koyori’s journey to both discover the truth of Koyori herself as well as get to the other dimension to see the god there and have their wish granted by defeating every other pair if hand shakers that share their goals. Arguably the most important aspect of the story was Tazuna and Koyori’s meetings with the various hand shaker pairs that though their enemies at first quickly become allies once defeated. It is through each of their personal stories and wishes that one can see and understand the motivations for them becoming hand shakers. An important part of the overall story for the series is of course the bond that is forged between Tazuna and Koyori and its improvements as the series goes on. Though they had the most unusual of first encounters watching them get to know each other and see their bonds develop as they both find the motivation that they need for their quest was heart-warming. As was seeing them put the new powers that they gained from this bond to good use. Koyori’s past forms a part of the main story for the series but isn’t addressed until near the end of the series. This part of the plot I felt was actually pretty good and helped in explaining how she was created and the hardships that she went through that ultimately caused her to be put to sleep by Makihara.
The combination of an interesting concept, interesting story and reinforced by a talented voice cast and great characters made Hand shakers one of the better anime that I saw back in the first period. Though some of the characters I felt could have used some more development I felt that the series as it stands is an interesting one.
