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!
