Hand Shakers

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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Adaptation:	Hand Shakers
Prequel:	Hand Shakers: Go ago Go
Sequel:	W'z

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Characters & Voice Actors

Akutagawa, Koyori

Main

Morohoshi, Sumire
Japanese

Takatsuki, Tazuna

Main

Saitou, Souma
Japanese

Houjou, Riri

Supporting

Kayano, Ai
Japanese

Houjou, Masaru

Supporting

Murase, Ayumu
Japanese

Awaza, Kodama

Supporting

Komatsu, Mikako
Japanese

Mitsudera, Chizuru

Supporting

Uesaka, Sumire
Japanese

Makihara, Nagamasa

Supporting

Morikubo, Shoutarou
Japanese

Moriyama, Hibiki

Supporting

Sugita, Tomokazu
Japanese

Azuma, Hayate

Supporting

Ishikawa, Kaito
Japanese

Break

Supporting

Fukuyama, Jun
Japanese

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Staff

Suzuki, Shingo

Director

Tanaka, Ryou

Sound Director

Rial, Monica

Script

Yanagi, Tamazo

Script

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Opening Theme

"One Hand Message" by OxT (Masayoshi Oishi x Tom-H@ck)

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Ending Theme

"Yume Miru Ame (ユメミル雨)" by Akino Arai

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Reviews

Mar 28, 2017

12 of 12 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 1

ZephSilver (All reviews)

256 people found this review helpful

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 of read more

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Mar 28, 2017

12 of 12 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 1

CodeBlazeFate (All reviews)

112 people found this review helpful

**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 hopefully read more

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Mar 28, 2017

12 of 12 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 1

LIQfilms (All reviews)

21 people found this review helpful

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't even 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.

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Mar 28, 2017

12 of 12 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 1

SunlitSonata (All reviews)

19 people found this review helpful

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 and read more

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Hand Shakers

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