I'm only 8 episodes in, but I'm going to start jotting some thoughts down now. I highly doubt I'll have to add much.
Technically speaking this show is miles better than Hand Shakers in every way (minus the music). The character designs are crisper without as much 3D rigging. The animation is smoother, although still choppy at times. The battles are more fluid and dynamic, albeit much shorter. There's a clear direction in the script, and the dialogue isn't as repetitive. The pacing is tighter.
All that said, I think this is far worse than its predecessor. The new characters are bland, forgettable, and boring. Instead of lewd edgy fun we get generic yuri and yaoi teases. Their motivations are extremely shallow (which is saying something, since most pairs in Hand Shakers had generic wishes). Wanting to hold hands normally is easily accomplished by losing. Wanting to be alone is easily accomplished by moving out of the city. How would you even steal a rocket in the Ziggurat?
Yukari and Haruka are just mashups of Tezuna and Koyori, complete with Tezuna's catchphrase and powers. Yukari is supposed to be blunted emotionally and lacking desires, but he is emotionally expressive all the time. Pile is a weaker version of Makihara and the Nagaoka. They fought and arbitrarily stopped fighting for no reason 3 times just to extend the show. Now we're are circling the drain of the will-they-won't-they confess. Just wasting time.
The best part is seeing the old characters again, and all they really do is talk about old times. Hand Shakers had finally gotten somewhere interesting, and they threw it away to start setting up something new. Then they realized they didn't have anything new to add.
The old show had many problems, but it had heart and soul. It was fun and titillating. W'z is just boring and uninspired in comparison. Instead of over-the-top cuteness or romance-bait or fanservice, we have a character delivering his sobstory to his parents for no reason (who really didn't have a reason to argue with him in the first place). Instead of dazzling eyes and quietly saying, "I love you," we get Haruka's hollowed out soul-sucking dead eyes screaming that she's always loved him for reasons. Reasons that we never actually got to see, but apparently they happened more than once. The plot is still chasing the conclusion to the end of Hand Shakers despite being 10 years later. As a result, it doesn't actually feel like we're making any progress. It's like hitting a checkpoint in a video game, and then starting over from the beginning anyway. It doesn't matter how much is actually happening, you're still just waiting to get back to where you were.
Honestly I'm wondering where the hell Tezuna's sister and Koyori's parents are. I would have guessed they figured into a wish somewhere. Especially since she was Tezuna's first love, and her parents were missing. But only Koyori was rescued for reasons...
Time to finish off the rest, and see if anything changes.
Update:
Back from episode 11. I see we've finally completely broken all of the established Ziggurat rules. Time can freely sync, and no longer passes much more slowly. Old battles would take little time in the real world. Objects and environmental damage are no longer guaranteed to heal. People barred from entering can still do so. It doesn't even make sense how Nielsen didn't end up eliminated after all this time, considering people can be forced to battle and accidentally be thrust into one due to proximity. The butler lost and kept his Hand Shaker powers.
After one of the most boring and dumb confessions ever (Why could Haruka even be a replacement for him?), we have a stupid test battle. We finally get to bring in full pairs, which is what we've wanted to see this whole time. There's absolutely no reason for the fight to take place, and Bind doesn't even wrap her chains around herself. We finally get a THIRD instance of old characters holding hands (his parents didn't momentarily twice during the cultural festival). The characters (especially Tezuna and Koyori) held hands all the time, so it feels wrong for them not to.
We just magically find Nagaoka and Mayumi because Nielsen knew where they were the whole time and didn't tell anyone, making the entire show beyond pointless. And of course they're his biological parents and time just instantaneously passes outside even though that contradicts what was shown before completely (we see him as an infant, kindergartener and elementary schooler in the real world, so why would Reiji not have pictures) and Koyori not aging. It's cool that all the old pairings hooked up, but honestly the only one I didn't like was Nagaoka and Mayumi. It doesn't make sense that they'd end up together. I don't really care about age gaps and such in shows, but it is definitely weird considering he was an adult helping care for Mayumi as an infant, drugged her to think she loved him, and forced her to hurt herself in fights. There's just not really anything there.
All of the conversations you want to hear are ignored to make time for useless bullcrap. The fights just end way too quickly. The only cool new power is Tamataka's, which finally gives us another crumb of fanservice (which is just oppai here, not even romantic gestures). The power scaling is retarded. Yukiya was way too strong by himself at the start, then Tezuna seemed invincible, now he's sparring with Reiji who barely had battle experience in comparison, and Yukiya can hold his own too.
Two more episodes...
Update:
Even for the finale, we can't have more than 30 seconds of action. Absolutely nothing was resolved. If Yukiya just lost at the beginning, the show wouldn't need to happen. We still don't know what happened to the parents or what they wished for, or what Tezuna and Koyori wished for, or what anyone aside from Yukari wished for the second time. We didn't get to see god or the little sister. Even the OVA sucked. They couldn't show the tiniest bit of bondage.
A thoroughly awful show. They should have just done a proper season 2. Instead they listened to all of the criticism of Hand Shakers and forced out a soulless cash grab. Abysmally boring and pointless.
2/10
P.S. I can't stand how some shows constantly darken the screen during action. |