Hand Shakers

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 ... bottom-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.

**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 ... forever...

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.

Really funny anime - in the wrong way. I watched the first 30 seconds and already knew I would be watching it just for laughs.

Story 1/10

This was like an attempt at a combo of No Game no Life, K Project, and Mirai Nikki, of course, just horribly. Half of every episode was full of irrelevant things that had no importance whatsoever. All the useless things that pop up just make you wonder, "but why?" :-) The story mostly goes: "Wow, they're holding hands! They must be hand shakers! Let's fight! Now that we've fought, let's stay friends!". I love how the two main characters ... are supposed to hold hands at all times and they do... in the first 4 episodes.

My favorite line is from episode 1 around 19:20 the MC says "How many are there?" - I seriously couldn't stop laughing, did this boy just ask how many, and not why? Dear god.

Art 1/10

Those camera angles were really something else. I loved when they flipped the camera angle in any direction possible so that you couldn't tell what was happening, it didn't look trippy at all - trust me. The OP looked way better than the actual anime to me, they tried to do the art kind of like K project. The FPS was only about 15-16.

Sound 3/10

Want to listen to a moaning girl chained up that sounds like hentai? Well now you can! In just the first episode-- with more in later episodes as well, of course! Honestly only the OP was decent.

Character 1/10

WHO ARE ALL THESE RANDOM CHARACTERS THAT COME OUT OF NOWHERE?

Literally, some scenes a character would just pop up. Then, they'll be talking to the characters as if you know them and won't be introduced until later. Koyori - why is she even a character? Haha who knows, she hasn't done anything. There's no backstory to the characters, you don't know the MC except that he has a name, sister, and fights. They say irrelevant things of no importance. "That's a nice bike" to "Okay. bye" What a conversation.

Also you can't forget about the girl in the first episode listening to music, apparently her chest likes to dance with her.

I can't watch this anymore- It's heading in the incest direction.

Enjoyment 4/10

Funny. Hilarious even. I laughed at random things a character said or the camera angles that look like someone just dropped their camera and it flipped everywhere. The irrelevant scenes were great.

Overall 2/10

Honestly, I would say watch it if you like to laugh at how horribly appalling something is. Other than that - the opening. Um, yeah, that's it. You hardly know anything about the characters to say you like them.

Unforchunetly, I theenk I have wost all my bwain cells fwom thes aneme. (Safe to say my IQ dropped this low)

Hand Shakers is the worst thing I´ve ever seen.

Now this show exceeded my expectations quite a lot. When I first saw it, I thought it was bad, but holy molly. This show is quite the good thing to dig into. I mean there is so much wrong with it, you could write for hours about what trash you can find in this. So, I decided, screw it. This is not some throw away material to write 500 words or less about. This is the real jackpot. So, I decided to do something more in the style of YourMovieSucks, who is like one of my favorite ... YouTubers ever and you should subscribe to him right now.
As of writing this review, it is the 17th of january, after I watched episode 1, so I will write this review along the next months until this show is over, to create the perfect review. I will structure this review in multiple parts, ordered kinda chronologically, each part centering around one object of failure. I don´t even care if this doesn´t get popular. I missed my chance to destroy Big Order. This is my slice of cake, idiot.

Part 1: The first impression

So, after hearing first about this anime, I immediatly go to its MAL page. Take away the bad score, which I don´t care about as I´ve already seen anime, which had a less than stellar score, which were better than expected.

The picture shown includes the two main characters, alongside other pairs of two. Assuming by the picture alone, it is easy to say that the show includes a aspect in which multiple couples are involved with each other. By the setting, the story plays in a big japanese city, if it is fictional or not is not possible to assume, as it is pretty much a generic backdrop of a shopping mall or a similar building complex. Considering the modern design of it, you can say that it plays in a rather big and a rather modern city. The two main characters are shown in the middle of the picture to get the focus of the viewer onto these two, a boy and a girl. The boy is taller than the girl, has brown hair and his clothes make him look like a student. Even if none of the story takes place in school, we can conclude that he is somewhere between 12 to 17 years old. Besides him stands the girl, which is rather short and has white hair. This design is easy to link to her personality being the quiet Kuudere of the story. Considering her clothes in the picture, you could assume that she is pretty young, which means that the two should belong in the younger part of the 12 – 17 spectrum.

The next step to my first impressions should be the description. My conclusion of the picture, regarding the place and time of the story and the pair aspect was right. The story is apparently about multiple couples fighting against each other to fight god. If there isn´t a set number of couples, that compete in this, the entire concept would not make sense in the least. Besides that, through the picture alone you can conclude that one of the couples is indeed the main focus on the story. To make a battle royale situation work, there cannot be a main character, because then you´d know that this character cannot die in the story, which has already been shown in Mirai Nikki, which was pretty terrible as well. A example of a show that did this right was Fate/Zero, which didn´t necessarily focused on the battle royale itself, but rather the characters and their relations, which worked, because there was no legitemate main character. The rest of the description is some quote, that is probably taken from the anime. The only interesting thing about it is that „Ziggurat where the fighting shall ensue“, which implies that the battle royale situation takes place in a specific tournament.

Part 2: The animation and artstyle

Hand Shakers is the worst looking anime I have ever seen.

The first entire minute is a montage of the protagonist and the girl jumping around at high speed with directing, that is completely disorienting. I absolutely hate this technique, in which the shot moves towards the center and then out, over and over, to give a sense of motion, while animating nothing and destroying every sense of direction or orientation. The movement is not fluid, it feels disjointed. I know none of this was from the same sequence of events, but considering the “epicness”, this show tries to convey, it should have at least a sense of fluid movement to carry it. I´m talking about this for so long, because that´s all the directing in this show. It looks horrendeus.

The next thing I noticed were 3D effects. You could make better special effects on Windows Movie Maker. The chains look like they´re glitching and also they look fake as hell. Their placement in each shot doesn´t even make sense. At times, they should hit someone, but they don´t, because it looks “epic”. Yeah, fuck off. These chains are supposed to look like an obstacle, not to be one. This brings me to random 3D shots. They are the worst thing I´ve seen. They just show them, so that the viewer knows, that the show looks “good”, and for no other reason. Hand Shakers does this cancerous thing, where they take realistic looking backgrounds and put anime characters in it. You don´t do that, that looks fake. There are lens flares, that should not exist. They are only there, so that the show might look more high-quality. Here´s the thing, if you have a good artstyle or high-quality animation, do something with it. Look at Evangelion and how well animated its fighting scenes are, look at Gankutsuou and everything creative or magical that is done with it artstyle, LOOK AT KILL LA KILL!

The character designs look absolutely terrible. You can see that no thought has been put into them, AT ALL! The boy has the school-uniform outfit. The girl has the “I´m the cute girl”-outfit. None of the characters have a design, that sticks out. Everything looks generic and bland. The design of backgrounds or surroundings look ungodly bland too. So, you´re trying to make some modern, futuristic look, right? They´re obviously trying to go for that, because it´s a special and interesting look, but why is the only indication, that everything is shiny. Why not do something interesting? It all looks the same to me, at this point. You should at least try to make everything look interesting.

One of the main criticisms I´ve seen for Hand Shakers is its fanservice, to which I say, noes. No, because the fanservice, for once, isn´t the most irritating thing. Yes, because of the way the anime is animating such scenes, with ridicolous boob physics and panty shots, which don´t even work. There is a scene, where the dude steps on the grill and her boobs fly 90 degrees in the other direction. How are breasts supposed to behave this way? It doesn´t make any physical sense. It´s my main course in school, I know what I´m talking about.

Part 3: The first episode

Consider, that I´m writing this part months before you´re reading it, as this is right after I watched episode 1 on the 17th of january 2017. So, I decided to write down my thoughts on the episode completely independent from any other episode, even the second one.

Right of the bat, we get to see this this one minute scene of horrible action which serves no purpose other than to fail at looking cool with monologue, which does not make sense, even a bit. It´s like a monologue in a fanfiction, where the protagonist is supposed to look deep, but that´s actually dumb, because the protagonist is dumb. But wait, I would rather read Sonic fanfiction than watch Hand Shakers. Right after that is a scene with fish eye visuals, which serves no purpose except to look good, which it doesn´t, because there is nothing going on. Then there is a fighting scene between the protagonist with the white haired girl and another couple with the chains. I don´t know their names and I´m supposed to know what is going on. You didn´t even introduce anything of what I´m seeing.
„But Boris, this is smart, because you know what is going on after you´ve seen the entire episode.“
Lain was smart, when it did that, because you understand the message and idea behind it after watching it again completely, but on your first watch through, you still understood what was going on. What Hand Shakers does is dumb.

There are characters literally popping in and out of existence. When I first saw that I laughed for like 5 minutes. Then we get introduced to our main character and oh look, a school, just like I predicted. There is also the red haired girl. You might notice I cannot remember the characters name. That´s because I only make the attempt to remember the name of a character or a person in real life, if I know I might need the information or find the character interesting. I don´t remember the name of half of the teachers I have in school and no one actually knows. The red haired girl is like „do you have the thing I wanted to get repaired“ and the boy is like „sure thing, Red haired McOppai“. Then the rest of the scene goes about useless dialogue and obvious foreshadowing. A tarot card, really? That´s the most subtle foreshadowing that you could bring? Who came up with the idea of adding a freaking tarot card to foreshadow something?

Then the protagonist goes somewhere else and fixes that persons car. His only personality trait is apparently that he is good at fixing stuff. But you have to question why. I mean I can understand if he is good at fixing McOppais aPod or some clocks, but a car engine. Are you kidding me? These are not the same things. This guy could work at NASA, he´s so good. You could give this kid two lollipops and a DVD of Breaking Bad and he could build a nuke out of it. Take that, McGyver.

Then the protagonist is at the university of a professor, who he wants to fix something for. The following scene legitemately ticked me off. I sat in front of my laptop and cursed at it for two whole minutes, because of this. So, he looks into this other room, which is a hospital room, which doesn´t even make sense, why would there be such a room to begin with. He gets a cheap flashback that his little sister died in that same room. WHAT!? So, either the anime did a trash job at showing that the protagonist forgot some things and he remembers his sister, which was a thing in Big Order, or he´s just an idiot. This is so all of the sudden, even Big Order did the dumb „I forgot this thing, but now I remember it“ twist better. The foreshadowing in this anime is so bad, that it is 13 PM. But it gets worse. He gets in, there is the white haired girl, he gets reminded of his little sister. This is cheap, this is just cheap. Essentially, this is only there to make sure the audience has some tragic backstory about the protagonist, so that they know they are supposed to feel something for him. He has two personality traits, he can fix literally anything and his little sister died. Doesn´t sound like an anime character, sounds more like a piece of paper to me.

Then in the next scene the professor comes back and he gives exposition, but the anime screws that up, by not letting him tell the exposition, that we need to know, just giving away some words, like Nimodes or Ziggurat. Can I eat that? Then he disappears. Oh, also, if he lets go of the girl she dies and he doesn´t want that, because it´s like his little sister. Oh no. Then they get attacked by the pair from the beginning. Considering the positioning of the chains, the two should´ve tripped at least once. There is really not much to say. So, apparently the enemy couple is a guy with no personality and a girl with no personality. How interesting. The girl is completely chained up. It´s obvious the creator of this had a bondage fetish, I mean I don´t blame him. Also, it´s the scene from the beginning again. Also, he´s giving away words like Nimrodes again. Also, the voice acting legit sounds like Hentai. It´s essentially the scene from the beginning, except now our protagonist can magically use his Nimrodes, even though he has never used it. Also, in most shots it is shown that they stand like 50 meters away from each other max, but there is a scene of the main character running at him for like a minute. This is the most amazing continuity error I´ve ever seen. I thought Guilty Crown should´ve gotten an Oscar for this, but Hand Shakers should get like 10 Oscars for that. I hope someone gives them the „Best continuity error“ Oscar.

Then the MC tries to attack him. The End.

Now, once I was done with episode 1 I already knew what this was. This was the worst thing I´ve ever seen. Before I move on, congratulations. You´re actually still reading this insanely long review. You apparently don´t have the memory span of a goldfish, so you can deem yourself smarter than a goldfish. It´s funny, because the goldfish thing isn´t actually true. The reason I decided to write about episode 1 as a special part is just to share how bad this show felt once I watched just this one episode. I mean, it was bad. So now that you know how bad episode one just was and how horribly written it is, I can move on to making the rest of the review.

Part 4: The rest

So, after realizing that my review was full with words like “protagonist” and “white haired girl”, I decided to insert names for them, in order to remember them. McOppai is still McOppai. The protagonist is McGyver and the white haired girl is Not-Rei. Now this should be easier to write.

Episode 2:
Episode 2 starts off with 6 or so minutes of dialogue between professor guy and McGyver. The entire scene is stretched to an unneeded length and contributes next to no exposition. There is no way, he could know any of the things, but he does, for some reason. Because this is episode 2 after the first episode with an insanely fast pacing, this is the slower episode in which nothing happens, except the actual introduction to the story. And guess what, it´s nothing more than fanservice and a “comedy” cringefest. It´s funny, because McGyver thinks he´s going to jail.

Episode 3:
Episode 3 is 75% the same stuff as episode 2, in which nothing of importance happens and the anime tries to be funny, while being absolutely cringeworthy. There´s also this character, who is apparently an adult, but she looks like a loli. Not only that, but her only character trait is that she´s a Tsundere. I mean why do people like Haruhi, Kurisu or Asuka again? Was it because of character development or that they were extremly lovable. Naah, I think it was just because they were bitchy. Also, she and her partner are Hand Shakers. Also, their tragic backstory is that they have been discriminated. Also, the fight scene is disorientating and comes out of nowhere. The background is moving in a different way than the effects and characters, which makes it look obviously fake. Then the episode ends.

Episode 4:
Nothing of any substance or worthwhile development happens, it´s just cancerous CGI-porn. Watching real porn feels more enjoyable. Hell, why should I watch this, if I could watch porn? Exposition a shit in this series, yet again, nothing anyone says makes any sense. This episode feels like a filler.

Episode 5:
This entire episode proves that not one writer on this show gives a flying fuck about sticking to the rules they set up. McGyverToo loses Not-Rei and she should probably die, but oh wait, then the show might end. Stupid me, let´s break the rules, we set up, in order to establish a melodramatic setup to the next useless fight. Nothing of substance happens. Also, no one makes any sense. McOppai is like “I see you don´t wanna fight” and her brother is like “He wants to fight” and she´s like “You want to fight.” What? I´ve never seen a character that stupid and I´ve had the displeasure of watching the entirity of Fairy Tail and Guilty Crown and Big Order and Code Geass. It´s the same shit as Ep.3, where it spends the majority of the episode doing fuck all, to set up the next episode, which is going to be SoOoOoOoooOO äääpppiiiIiiIccCC!!!??

Episode 6:
You know, I actually had high hopes, that this show might pull some Hunter X Hunter or One Piece-ish stuff, where the battles are pretty strategic and center around one character trying to break through the other ones defense, oh wait, it´s just useless bullshit. The entire fight is a huge bowl of plot armor spilled out to write “You´re supposed to like this.” I asked myself, why did Tsundere-Baka and her boyfriend have a sword and shit and everyone else has specialiced weapons? Probably because the writers didn´t know how to write characters.

Episode 7:
OH BOY; YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I LOVE THE FILLER IN CODE GEASS!!?? THIS IS EVEN MORE WORTHLESS!!!! :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D
Nothing happens. It´s all just supposed to be one pile of drama and comedy, that doesn´t fit into the story. After this episode, I was convinced that Not-Rei has absolutely no personality and only exists as a loli, for people to find cute. Also, there´s a plot twist, which has no build-up and still manages to be obvious from the start. How is this even possible? Probably because things only exist to look cool to their idiotic target audience.

Episode 8:
So, after episode 7 being nothing more than filler in a sea of no plot progression, we get another episode of characters appearing out of nowhere and fighting out of nowhere. The ability of the couple, that I nicknamed Singy & Guyi, was actually quite interesting, but yet again no one deemed it interesting enough to make it into a interesting battle or even use good directing. There is also this scene, where Not-Rei talks about McGyver, but it just ends up looking like a desperate attempt at character devlopment. Oh man, I love empty females, reminds me of myself.

Part 5: The summary

After letting 8 episodes pass by, I decided that this should be the final part, before summarizing the main flaws in the anime. I will watch Hand Shakers until its end, thanks to my “No-Drop policy”, but I decided that updating my review shouldn´t be a priority for me, especially if my exams started about two weeks ago. Therefore, I decided to summarize every point I have to get out to show how idiotic and dumb this series actually is.

-Repetitive structure

I already ranted on how entire episodes repeat themselves. As you might´ve noticed in my episode summaries, the show is beyond repetitive. Entire episodes are there for the sole purpose of having a fight scene in it and I can appreciate that in other shows. Some of my favorite anime have episodes full of over-the top, fast-paced action. Anime, like Jojos Bizarre Adventure, Hunter X Hunter or Gurren Lagann are this kind of anime. The problem with Hand Shakers is that it packs them with so few episodes in between, that the anime cannot “breathe”. The entire plot comes off as boring, if every second episode is the same trash, with another dumb episode in between, that serves no purpose to the second one. There is no variety in either episode. On one hand, there is Slice-of-Life, while there is a fighting scene, which play out the exact same. How can one be entertained by this?

-No plot progression

Hand Shakers starts as a story of two characters fighting against others. Now, tell me, where is it now? If you said “It´s still a story on how two characters are fighting against others”, you´re goddamn right! You might say “But anime X didn´t progress and you liked it.” Actually, it did. People might argue about One Piece having no progression, but consider the fact, that the structure in it is every so slightly changing. Then there is stuff like Serial Experiments Lain, where events are happening and affect the plot to move forward. Then there is Hand Shakers. Ask yourself this, if you would cut out everything that happened from episode 1, where the story really started, to episode 8, would anything change? If I would do that with One Piece or Lain or many other anime, this would affect the plot. If I would do the same with Hand Shakers, the entire story would be indifferent.

-Ziggurat has no rules and the ones it has are broken

One of the main reason the plot doesn´t progress is because there is no sign of progressing in the Ziggurat. Mirai Nikki told the viewer the amount of competetors beforehand, that´s at least something. That way, you would know whether there are 5 or 5 million people left to kill. There isn´t a time window either or a way to join the Ziggurat. So, what if someone becomes a Hand Shaker, when there is only one left? When does Ziggurat end? Does it end or is it a endless tournament of fighter, trying to eliminate each other? That would be awesome in a way, but you would still have to set rules. There are no rules, it´s just “If you met another Hand Shaker, you will fight.”. That´s stupid. And what about the weapons? McGyver has a clock sword and shield and McOppai has cards, but the Tsundere couple has giant shuriken, if I recall so. How are weapons chosen for people? If I would join the Ziggurat, is my weapon of choice a rare Pepe? How is giving one couple a shield and a sword and another a giant shuriken or a power to change reality itself fair? Who came up with this?

-Kirito & Yuno Syndrom

Something I notice a lot since having sat through SAO is “Kirito Syndrom”. It´s when members of a character cast only exist for the sake of admiring another character. The exact opposite would probably be “Yuno Syndrom”, where characters only exist to oppose a character or be an enemy to that character. Hand Shakers is the ultimate example of both flowing together into one, basically a giant sewer, if you want. Many characters, like McOppai or Not-Rei only talk about McGyver, in order to admire him or tell the viewer how big his dick is, but I don´t care about that. These characters only talk about him all the time. Do they get any development of their own? No, not really. Do they serve another role in the story? No, actually nah. What is even worse is characters existing as pawns to defeat. Couples appear without build-up, just to be defeated at the end of the day. These characters have no personality, no real backstory, no traits, they are just there to be defeated, so that we know how “great” our main character is. That is really dumb.

-Horrendeus directing

I already mentioned this earlier, but Hand Shakers directing is worthless. Actually, it has the worst directing I have ever seen, worse than Transformers, worse than Suicide Squad, worse than any terrible high school student film. I usually notice good directing a lot, but I also notice a lot of horrible directing too, mostly because I already did some editing myself.
The first problem with Hand Shakers' directing is its rapid movement. Whenever something happens in a action sequence, the shot moves around really fast and all over the place, in order to emphasis as much as possible how fast the scene is. You might´ve seen some Hollywood movies, where they do the same, mainly to hide parts of a scene. In Hand Shakers, this is put to a new level, because the rapid movement of a shot makes it feel disjointed and overanimated. The place in one space, where things are, can get confusing, which makes it hard to follow such scenes.
Even worse are scenes, where nothing is happening. If you´ve ever watched a Quentin Tarantino movie, you know that they are full of action, but also have countless still shots, which are there to convey atmossphere or let a scene rest. Hand Shakers doesn´t do that. Every shot has to be animated as much as possible. There are shots, where nothing is happening and nothing of importance is said, which have moving camera shots, just to jerk off more animation into your face. There are barely shots, which are resting for a long enough time to let a place or atmossphere sink in, before it moves to the next shot. That is what makes the anime feel empty. There is literally no time for the anime to breathe, before it moves on.

-Poorly handled exposition

The worst part about writing a story for me, besides making dialogue sound natural, is exposition. If you´ve never tried to write a story on your own, you don´t know how hard it is to make exposition feel natural. You can´t go around and explain the laws of your story by counting down everything your reader needs to know, because at that point it´s just a glorified school book. And, I have to say, the way Hand Shakers does it is beyond me.
Entire points of exposition aren´t conveyed like in usual media. There are characters, that act like they know a certain thing and build-up everything until they give it away, only to withhold that information. If you want to make a story, that makes sense, you have to give at least a minimal amount of exposition, but that doesn´t include giving away random Buzzwords, to sound smart. This is kindof exclusive to the start, but that doesn´t excuse it, because by that time, your viewers should know what a Ziggurat or a Nimrod is. After that, entire plot points are told in info dumps by the professor. Why not do that by the first episode? The anime was even leading up to it, but just didn´t. Who wrote this?

-School as a catalysator

You might notice that many stories have a catalysator through which events can be created or bound together into one plot. This catalysator can be a character, a event, a place, it doesn´t matter. As long as it ties the story together or kicks it off, it works. The school in Hand Shakers works as that, a catalysator. The problem is that it isn´t the only catalysator, that is used in Hand Shakers. Can you name the other one? That´s right, it´s the Ziggurat. The Ziggurat is there to tie the characters into one narrative, which would work, if it wasn´t for the school. Characters appear there, just for the purpose of tying the story together twice, one time a couple appears at school and another time at Ziggurat. This is unnatural. Imagine, if all of the sudden Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Zombie Karl Marx and Hillary Clinton are at your school, for some reason. Sounds dumb and nonsensical? Well, so is this anime!

-The music

Music as a asset can be a very important thing in your story. Whether or not a scene contains music can change it and whether or not it is good can change it too. Too bad the Hand Shakers soundtrack is absolute garbage.
When I think of the FLCL soundtrack, I think about how energetic and creative it sounded. It always fits the mood for FLCL. Whenever I think about the Hand Shakers soundtrack, I feel bored. There is no variety in the OST whatsoever. It´s all a mix of piano songs. Everything on the OST sounds the exact same. As a mood setter in the story, it doesn´t function. Every scene feels the exact same, boring. It is extremly unmemorable. Every piece of music is there to play safe. If the viewer hears something new, they might not like it, so we´ll tuudle the same thing over and over. They´re so dumb, they won´t even notice.

-Disjointed flow and pacing

There is no pacing in Hand Shakers. Through the beforementioned repetitive structure, there is not time to breathe. With every episode of nothing happening, the story gets interrupted, before it picks up way too fast the episode later. The transition between these two states of hot and cold cause the story to feel even more unnatural. Imagine going from lifeless Slice-of-Life to a full-on fighting scene in the timespan of 3 minutes. There is no build-up between these two states. It´s just like “Here´s a fighting scene” and that´s that. There isn´t any time to given to build this up. Do you even know how unnatural this feels like?

-Horrible character cast

Hand Shakers doesn´t have the worst character cast. That is because they can barely be defined as characters, rather they can be seen as random pixels on the screen of your computer.
The main problem I have with the cast is Tazuna, which I dubbed as McGyver. The problem I have with him is his shallow personality. I expected, that he would get at least some development aside of being the 21st Century McGyver Reboot and having a little sister, that died. I was disappointed. There is nothing I can say about him, aside of that, because he´s that much of a empty shell, perhaps a GHOST in the SHELL and after he lost his sister, he should have a STAND ALONE COMPLEX!
Aside of him, I already discussed the Kirito & Yuno Syndrom of this show, so mentioning enemy couples again wouldn´t make sense.
McOppai and Not-Rei are only there to admire McGyver and have fanservice scenes.
The professor is supposed to be smart, but also kindof silly for no reason other than lulz? Wut

-Empty world

A world can be something, that can create entire anime or stories overall by itself. If you do worldbuilding just right, you got yourself an entire story. However, if you do the exact opposite and neglect worldbuilding as a whole, you got yourself a empty story. Hand Shakers has none. There is, in fact, one place that plays a role in the story, that is the school and even that is of no use. There isn ´t any development done. I couldn´t tell you, if a place is there or not, because the anime does such a poor job at conveying the location of something. Many other places are only there to serve a purpose in the story and be forgotten about.
Every place in Hand Shakers looks generic. As predicted, the show takes place in a big, modern city in Japan. Thanks to this wonderful design choice, everything looks the exact same. Places in the Ziggurat battles are just giant, unmemorable fields in the middle of central. Every location looks the same and has nothing to it. After finishing a episode, you just forget about it anyway.

-Fanservice

Now, I don´t have anything against fanservice in itself. I mean, I look boobs, I´m just a simple dude. My problems start, when fanservice is done in a dumb way or is straight-up distracting. The thing with this anime and fanservice is that it puts it in, whenever it can. You know, having a character with tits, bigger than her head, jiggling them around by doing absolutely fucking nothing, that sounds like normal and useful fanservice. Whenever McOppai is on screen, her entire presence can be summarized by two words. That is not how you do fanservice. You don´t just put it in, because fanservice. That is stupid!

Part 6: The conclusion

After summarizing my thoughts about this anime, I feel like I am able to give a conclusion to it.


Fuck Hand Shakers. In my entire lifetime, I have never seen a anime or a show in general, that was so incompetent and couldn´t do a single thing right in its entire runtime. It is the worst anime that has ever been produced, worse than Akame Ga Kill!, worse than Mars of Destruction, worse than Big Order. Hand Shakers is the final point, that shows that MAL needs to implement a 0/10 rating, because giving it a 1/10 is too much of a compliment for something, that has no redeeming qualities. There is nothing good about this anime. It is truly the biggest of all trainwrecks.

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.

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 ... 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. 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.

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 vegetable
... At 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!

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 store ... for 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.

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 place ... to 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.

I really like writing, and when I review things on this site I normally take my time to discuss the show whether I liked it or not because I enjoy the process. This is not one of those occasions. I am only writing this review in an attempt to save someone the misery watching 4 episodes of this show has caused me.

This show. Is terrible.

Do not, under any circumstances, watch it.

All I am going to say is that if you want to watch a prepubescent girl get molested while nothing else happens, this might be the show for you. I would rather not hang ... out with you, but you might have some fun watching this show. I personally found it to be two things in equal measure: fucking boring and disgustingly sexually exploitative.

Avoid this show at all costs. Beside being not in the least bit entertaining, it is also gross. I don't want to watch a 12 year old borderline autistic girl get felt up for any length of time, much less for an entire season of anime.

I would watch all of School Days twice before I watch another episode of this show once.

Please, I ask of you not to watch this if you are new to anime. This show has nauseating graphics and camera effects with badly integrated 3D (coming from a guy who enjoyed the new season of Berserk so it's not the concept I don't like), the characters are empty, the story makes no sense and I would fear that a newcomer watching this show as a first anime because the opening looks fine and the synopsis sounds cool would then be discouraged to watch any more.

If the concept presented by this anime interested you, I would recommend No Game No Life, that has ... a similar concept but that was realized way better, and if it was an example of fluid graphics and cool visual effects that got you wanting to try this, please first consider both seasons of Zestiria the X for the VFX or Berserk (2016) for the 3D.

As for the music/sound, pretty much the only part of this show that is decent, I would still recommend Hunter X Hunter over this, or alternatively Kill la Kill if HxH seems like too long of a time investment for you.

I hope this comment helped at least one person avoid this show, or at least make them realize that this isn't what anime is about and that there is way better out there.

Finally, for anyone watching this of their own will and enjoying this anime, good for you. Seriously, there is nothing wrong with liking any anime, regardless of its objective value, anything you enjoy watching is what you should be watching. However, I would like you to consider the points I made earlier about newcomers before giving this a high note or complaining about bad reviews. It's ok to disagree with the majority, but this kind of site has reviews to help people who can't decide whether to watch the show or not and I think that there are enough shows out there for you to find better than this whatever your tastes are.

Where to even begin with this...

From the first episode on this anime has been a mess. I had no idea about premise and plot. Hand shakers....Battles....God....Wish...Koyori. Plot is almost nonexistent, things just happen and we know next to nothing about the handshaker thing or even about the main chars. There are a lot of fight sequences and by GOD they are awfully edited. 10FPS with strange camera movement and composition. Blink and you are lost. It really looks like that they are trying to be really unique and artsy with their wonky camera angles and movements but it falls flat. Only good thing to say ... about this anime is its Art style and backgrounds. Style looks too good for this anime and this is of course excluding god awfully CGI. Backgrounds are vibrant and they really are well made and detailed, especially pan shots of building. Sound design is stock af and sounds at times like cat walking on piano and very easy to forget.

Final verdict.
Interior decorations of the rooms in this anime really summarize Hand shakers; empty, pretty coloured and lacks substance. I don't know about source material but this is a bad anime. This regained 1 point after seeing 9th episode. It wasn't much but seeing even slightest of development in main chars. is bonus. Motives and plot are still mess so if something completely game changing doesn't happen this is final. 4/10.

Wth this show is just a fcked up. Kinda like a fever dream x10 like if your watching this and your casually smoking weed, this will kill you. Not to mention its 3d like what were they thinking. Fast faced animation and Nauseating feeling like thats the perfect combination of a diarrhea bowl. I kid you not if you have a disorder such as epilepsy, well avoid this. This shit show is some sort of a torture method. Other one is the garbage writing. A story that went nowhere besides the dumpster truck. Sigh dont watch this please like if your a sick fck well ... go ahead but if you suffer from a disability that can be triggered by flashing shits well turn back.

GoHands, the studio that makes this statement clear in their branding - "Animation Entertainment to Advance". GoHands presents a parody to their company goal - Hand Shakers.

Story - The entire premise of Hand Shakers is flawed and should've been changed during pre-production. The premise could've had changes made to allow a less awkward development and scenario between all of the characters. It forces certain characters to do illogical acts to try and keep the series' drama and motives to battle each other. The original creator, rather than making changes to the premise, decided to try and work around it, which resulted in the series digging ... a hole further and further.

The story is capped and limited by the amount of time spent on completely unnecessary scenes, such as the repeated gag of one of the characters being short. There are also plenty of other mundane scenes which does not help to grow any characters or plot developments what-so-ever.

Art - The art in this series has a lack of colour coordination, that any professional colourist should be capable of. Some scenes have very vibrant colours, and has a sleek look with many shiny surfaces and light reflection. In other scenes, colours will suddenly go to a much more bland look that reminds me of 1970s decor.

Almost every background art is rendered in CGI, which a few hand-painting things like leaves and grass over the shot. But most of the time, uses a single tree image and does a copy, paste to several in a row, making scenes look completely unnatural and repetitive. Cameras will be placed at very odd angles and do unnecessary movements that will make you nauseous.

The CGI in general, is very patchy and made up of poorly textured models which makes the backgrounds look more akin to films outside of anime, known as Ratatoing and The Little Panda Fighter.

Though thankfully, most of the character designs actually look great, and are coloured very nicely. The character animations can rarely be jerky, but for the most part keeps consistent quality.

Sound - The music is very nice, and even though it doesn't have the epic sounds of most action series, it really works well with the pacing and mood of the series.

The sound effects can sound a little bit like stock audio files on royalty free sites, but doesn't really impact the experience of the anime after you spend most of your cognitive thinking power trying to follow characters through the wacky pans and flips and rotations.

The voice actors' performance can sometimes sound forced, although it might sound more cringe due to the bad scripting.

Character - You wont know any more about a character that you will have seeing them for their initial 3 minutes on screen. It will keep on re-iterating their personality type and complex for the rest of the entire series (so far).

The two main characters seems to be the least fleshed out, as each arc in this series always focuses on their enemies, leaving very little time to build the relationship between Tazuna and Koyori. Koyori being potentially the most interesting if we could ever get a look into her mind.

Enjoyment - The series has at least kept me interested enough not to drop it, but as I watch each episode, my patience decreases slightly. Being a 3D modeller, I would sometimes pause on scenes have a little giggle to myself over the poor CGI being presented.

What a shame.

This series is actually pretty amazing through the sheer fact of in how many ways it manages to fail. There is some promise within the general idea behind it and the two main characters aren't horrible, but the barfy animation, nausea-inducing perspective and laughably bad CGI immediately tell you that you're in for some bad time. The randomly-inserted fanservice and absurd BDSM themes in the first episode also stand as a clear warning of what's to come.

What's maybe most laughable here is the unironic use of some of the most annoying anime tropes. We have brother/sister incest, a 30-years old woman looking like a ... primary schooler, a Japanese idol whose dance animation felt as if they were ripped straight out of Stephen King's "It"... We have nonsense, cryptic intrigue using random historical and/or mythological terms, absurd motivations for the main villain... It is, essentially, a kind of "everything wrong with shounen anime" compilation or a guide on what to avoid writing a story.

On the other hand, it's outlandish enough to have a lot of "so bad it's good" entertainment value. If you watch it with full knowledge of what you're getting into, you can get a good laugh out of it. But, that's the only circumstance under which you should ever approach it - it is, by pretty much all possible measures, insanely awful.

IMPORTANT: There are enough reasons to watch this. Because you won't know it if you'll like it without even trying. So just try it. Watch 2-3 episodes and reach to an conclusion. If you like it you watch further, if you dont you drop this

Also this is my first review so you shouldnt read this unless you are interested about my opinion.


Before the anime aired there was a lot of hype. Even I got onto the hype train.
But it was all for nothing read further to find out why it was an utter disgrace.

***************************
So lets start with the story:
...
I have watched 5 episodes now and I can say the concept is great. You have 2 MC that fight others to get their wish fulfilled kind of like Fate/Stay night where they needed to get the holy grail.
Here we dont know anything about how you actually get it fulfilled. They tell us that after they defeated all other Handshakers you'll meet god. Which I am not sure of if its actually true.

But the bad thing is how bad they handled the story. They don't tell us much about the story and I feel like I'm being left out of the story.

The story keeps repeating itself. They meet some cool people, they get friendly and suddenly they reveal themselves as Handshakers. And this keeps happening over and over.

***************************
The Art:

Oh god. Its bad. They tried to make the graphic so good that they sacrificed the framerate. Its like putting graphics to extreme in GTA 5 on a Intel HD Graphics.

They used so bright colorfull colors that my eyes start to hurt after watch half the episode.

These angles they are using are also really annoying. I will really be lucky if I dont end this series with naussea or epilepsy.

************************
The Sound:
The sound is something else I really liked it. Well uhm I would have liked it if it was played in another anime. Since they are playing happy music when its sad and when they are fighting.

The K project, which Handshakers is being compared with was good enough. I liked the music while the fighting and the music style/genre turned when it got serious

But Handshakers is really the worst in this. I really wanted them to get serious with non happy music. But they dont show anything sad. Now Im getting a bit to far onto the Character category but I need to include it in this part. They get thrown into something really big, they are kids HOW do they stay so calm. They lost their normal life and get forced to fight. WHAT is this....

**********************
The characters:
Lets just say no character development. Still know nothing about Koyuri and the MC. The MC keeps repeating the word 'Meshing', which is original but really annoying. We got some character development in the first episode but that was it. nothing else.

Koyuri doesnt say a thing. Nothing.

*************************************
Lets now talk about Enjoyment:

Oh god can I just skip this section??? This was the worst anime that I have seen even the Naruto Shippuden fillers are better than this.

This anime keeps bugging me like hell. Its annoying. And I still regret hyping for this anime. I like that the animation studios dont make things so obvious. The cliches gosh too many to count!.

------------
So overall I'd give this anime a 1 out of respect for the other animes that were bad but not this bad. I'd love if some others animation studios to take over this story and remake it. Because this is too much for me. I hyped myself for this anime as the number one anime from this season. But it was all a lie.

1/10

*****************
So now we get to the conclusion. Should you watch this?

- if you like happy go lucky stories you should like this one too.

- if you like a colorfull color palette you should like this.

- Do you like much bloom and flares in the animation you should like this

- If you like cute boys/girls who shake hands almost the whole time?

There are enough reasons to watch this. Because you won't know it if you'll like it without even trying.

The trailer for this was so god awful that I just had to check it out. I will be completely transparent and admit that this anime would not go beyond the 3 episodes watch and that it would get the highest possible score of 2. And even then it disappointed me because I found out it was even worse than imagined. I'm just going to list a few of the bad things I can say about this one because I cannot bother with writing a better-constructed review.

The overall art direction sucks, bundle that with bad animation and awful direction, horrendous CGI, embarrassing everything to do ... with color theory, inconsistent designs (like they had multiple amateur artists drawing on the same panel), stupid premise, cliche pacing, horrible character development, character designs, character personalities and one of worst ways to deliver exposition. Even the sound sucks, everything from music, voice action and sound effects. Also, did I mentioned that is ugly as sin?

It's not good enough even for a laugh or two.

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 reverses ... the 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.

You know, there are times where I myself wonder why God never comes from above.

And now, thanks to this anime in particular, I've now been enlightened.

HE'S AFRAID OF OUR OWN CREATIONS.

-

Have you ever been hyped for something? So excited that you'll be jumping around your room in joy?

... That was me and a few other's simple reactions to the PV trailers for this anime.

Knowing that the same studio that made KK, GoHands, was making this anime, I got really excited. I found much enjoyment in KK, and I was truly, deep inside, looking forward to this anime.

And then, when the subs came out on the exact release date, I immediately clicked on it.

This is all I can say about it.

I'VE NEVER BEEN THIS DISAPPOINTED IN MY ENTIRE LIFE.

In all of the years I've watched anime, I had NEVER seen this much laziness in a show.

EVER.

This isn't Pupa levels of bad.

This isn't Mars of Destruction bad.

Ohohoho, this is FAR worse.

-

Story 2/10

Story. What story?

YOU MEAN THE CLICHE PILE OF TRASH THEY THREW AT US?!

Honestly, did they even attempt to at least write a decent story? Because from what I saw, they clearly didn't.

Every single line felt lifeless, predictable, shallow, etc.

I could go on and on at how bad the story in this, but you wanna know the worst part?

THE IDEA THEY WAS ACTUALLY INTERESTING!

Sure, it wasn't the most original idea, but it definitely was one that peaked the interests of many, and we haven't seen many plotlines like that in an anime.

Nope!

They decided:

"Hey, let's just make the laziest excuse for a story that we possibly can!"

Such a good concept was wasted on laziness.

-

Art 3/10

I'll give GoHands the credit where it's due: Some of the frames in the show were absolutely stunning to look at. It'd be enough to get a person's panties moist.

But, I'm just gonna let out the enormous elephant in the room.

THE CGI.

Oh god, I've seen '90s cartoons with better CGI than this.

Like, there are video games with crappy CGI that are absolutely terrible, and they put much more effort into the CGI than Hand Shakers did.

It's just so unappealing to look at!

And the chains, OH GOD THE CHAINS.

The earlier episode of Veggietales look more appealing than Hand Shakers.

Dorbees looks more appealing than Hand Shakers.

That's saying a whole lot.

Just imagine a Chocolate Truffle, with the interior being sewage, while the exterior is just chocolate.

That's basically the art in a nutshell.

-

Sound 5/10

The best part of the series, without a doubt.

I don't really have much to say about the music, other than it not being the best music ever, but it isn't really the worst either.

-

Character 2/10

Oh. you mean there are CHARACTERS in this anime, and not just cardboard cutouts?

Honestly, what an absolute shame.

These have to be the most dull, cliché, and lifeless characters I've ever seen.

They're just so one-dimensional and forgettable. Heck, the only notable thing about them were their character designs, and that's it.

Do I remember any of their names?

Nope.

Do they have any memorable traits?

Absolutely not.

It's like they took out pieces of computer paper, scribbled on them, and said:

"Yep, these are dynamic, fleshed-out, memorable characters that an audience will absolutely love!"

They're basically flat characters, accompanied with flat writing.

-

Enjoyment 1/10

What did y'all expect me to rate this?

I'm honestly not surprised if they use this anime to torture people or something.

It took me so long to make this review as a whole, because of how much I was dreading to go on with this anime.

But somehow, I finished it without dying.

-

Overall 2/10

I'm only giving this a 2/10 because no show is completely "bad."

This show had so much potential to be great, but it ultimately wasted it all, and resulted in being the pile of garbage that it became.

So overall, if you want to torture yourself or your friends, look no further than watching Hand Shakers!

More like Camera Shakers. I got motion sick from a scene where the main character lies still in his bed.

Complex worlds about alternate dimensions and how to travel between them are fun if there's a decent explanation. Hand Shakers lets the main character travel between alternate dimensions by... holding someone's hand. Not by going through some kind of teleporter specifically built to carry people across dimensions, not by activating some kind of special gizmo they carry, apparently the world's greatest minds in the Hand Shakers world can thrust people into a separate plain of existence if you accidentally get the wrong Tinder date.

The most ... brilliant mind in the Hand Shakers universe can't even keep a girl alive if she isn't holding onto some guy's sweaty hand. Continuously. Isn't it impossible to hold onto something for more than a couple hours? At least hook this poor girl up with a device or something. There is no explanation for how the humans in the Hand Shakers universe managed to invent the wheel if their most brilliant minds are this dumb.

As if the plot wasn't nonsensical enough, all the art choices are nonsensical too. How hard can it be to stuff up anime from a stylistic standpoint? Get a few artists, tell them to draw what they usually do and bam, decent-looking anime, but no, GoHands decides that modern day anime art needs an Instagram filter. A normal shot of a normal classroom got turned into a purple room where everything is shiny. Someone's house might as well be a disco with how everything has 56 light glimmers at each angle.

I'm not sure what software they bought to make the art look all saturated and shiny, but their dodgy software must have a dodgy camera function. Every single camera shot goes like woooooooooahjkl and must zoom in and out and pan across every single little thing. Maybe they created all the scenes in a pseudo-3D setting and clicked a few options in a camera menu to track certain characters and object, I dunno, but the camera pans are way too smooth and way too slow. Even non-action scenes that show the characters eating at a cafe can't stop the camera from going like WOOOOOOOOOOAHI'MFLOATINGWOOOAHLOOKATTHIS. Even scenes where the characters are sleeping feel like they're shot in the ocean.

The plot, the characters, the art, the colour choices, the camera work, the incest, every single choice GoHands made was the wrong choice.