Hand Shakers

Those who receive the Revelation of Babel must overcome many battles and trials. By grasping the hand of their special partner, these "Hand Shakers" transport themselves to the realm of Ziggurat, an alternate dimension where time no longer exists. Each pair of Hand Shakers must battle it out for the right to meet with God, who will reward them by granting them a single wish.

Tazuna Takatsuki, a high school student with a penchant for fixing things, is one of these Hand Shakers. After receiving a request for repairs from Professor Makihara of a nearby university, Tazuna stumbles upon Koyori Akutagawa, a bedridden girl that reminds him of his deceased sister Musubu. Remembering her dying wish to never let go of her hand, Tazuna grasps Koyori's hand and awakens his power as a Hand Shaker. However, Koyori's life is directly tied to her status as a Hand Shaker, meaning if Tazuna was to ever let go of her hand she would die. With meeting God being their only hope for saving her, the duo must find a way to make their unique powers mesh together, overcome the opposing Hand Shakers, and make their wish come true.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Akutagawa, Koyori Main

Morohoshi, Sumire Japanese

Takatsuki, Tazuna Main

Saitou, Souma Japanese

Houjou, Riri Supporting

Kayano, Ai Japanese

Houjou, Masaru Supporting

Murase, Ayumu Japanese

Awaza, Kodama Supporting

Komatsu, Mikako Japanese

Mitsudera, Chizuru Supporting

Uesaka, Sumire Japanese

Makihara, Nagamasa Supporting

Morikubo, Shoutarou Japanese

Moriyama, Hibiki Supporting

Sugita, Tomokazu Japanese

Azuma, Hayate Supporting

Ishikawa, Kaito Japanese

Break Supporting

Fukuyama, Jun Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Kananiwa, Kozue Producer

Ogata, Mitsuhiro Producer

Kawamoto, Sachi Producer

Reviews

Apr 11, 2018

Karhu

Recommended

So I watched Hand Shakers because I heard it's the worst thing ever. Of course, this same thing is being declared about every series ever by people who have not seen every series ever. For this reason I approached it with the same skepticism I approach the "best series ever" claims. And once again the exaggeration was real, and Hand Shakers was more or less like the "best series ever".

Sure this series doesn't have many good things in it. It has lots of bad, but none of the bad in it impressed me in any way. It's not advanced awfulness, terribad clusterfuckery, not even ... nauseating shit. In fact, it just offers a mediocre view on bad. Series such as Code Geass and Clannad did an impressive job building all the depth and factors that made these series garbage in almost every possible way. Hand Shakers seems more like a parody of those. Instead of offering its own unique take on unwatchable trash, it rather seems to be made for ironic viewing without any seriousness

One important thing to note about this series is how it challenges the viewer's intelligent. The concept of holding hands is a direct middle finger towards all those "deep" and complex anime series where instead of the characters holding each others hands - the anime itself is holding the viewer's hand. This one doesn't do it. It couldn't care less if you fucking like it or not. This series is also a reverse-ripoff of Franxx with more subtle. I can totally dig into that. #not a pun

For a borderline softcore hentai, Hand Shakers does quite an impressive job with the boob wiggles and tentacle-like chain movements. The scenery is colorful, detailed, and the animation is nearly as glorious as in series like Kemono Friends, Houseki no Kuni, and Kingdom season 01, so it passes. The story on the other hand is definitely better written than Code Geass R2, and I highly enjoyed it despite it being a mixture of vomit and piss, so I can't complain.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Aug 1, 2018

VivavideoUser2x

Mixed Feelings

HandShakers, is it the worst anime ever? Pretty much every review says yes, but when it comes to me, I like to see the good in things, but in this show, it's Really hard.

Hand Shakers is pretty much fate stay night but with generic anime character, the main character is this boy who looks like a grade school student and suddenly he is paired with this silent girl who has been comatose for a long time, so they have to fight all these other pairs and win so they can get a wish granted by God.The main hook of the story is so the ... fact that the two main characters can't let go of their hands or they die but this concept is thrown out the window.They fight using powers called “nimrods” but the only “nimrods” are the people who edited this mess, it's like the scenes got jumbled out of order and it's very weird.Also this has to be the worst thing they could do, but you expect to see people fight each other. You do get that for like one half of the episode and literally the next hour and a half is just nothing but pure BOREDOM.OMG I was begging for something to happen I mean come on.They do the regular fighting but after two or three of those, the show slows down so quickly I think I got skidmarks. The second to last episode is just a regurgitated fest of exposition and the ending begrudgingly was alright, but really see why people drop this show.It's really hard to get through.


Alrighty then, the hardest part to talk about is the animation.It was done by Gohands who are masters of chromatic coloring,see “K” for example.In this show though, you can tell where they were going for but it doesn't completely work. What actually shocked me was that the main director and art director both worked on K, so if they did work on this they were probably drunk as hell.The show tries make everything in the background animated on par to what's in the foreground,but it all looks slow and sloppy, some of the characters disappear before even leaving the fucking shot.And what really doesn't help at all is whoever directed the camera movements .There is this one scene where someone gets a close up but they are walking towards the camera so they just disappear and it's very weird.Also, the camera has the stupidity to try to follow the characters around when they fight and it made me so freaking dizzy.This one girl jumped like two blocks to hit this building and bounced off and just went back. WTF. The 3d can sometimes look good (if the show was released in 1999)but when it gets involved with 2d and the crackhead behind the camera, it can look very bad. Getting to the art, its fine but just so overwhelming, the hair looks so fake, and the background is just Bleeeeh. There are times when it zooms into the background but it's low in resolution.There is one part that looks decent. it's when the pair enter the fighting world and all the walls have cool looking designs that come to life and it looks kinda nice.That’s the nice looking flower you see in all of the trash in the dumpster.

Now the BEST part of this show hands down (seriously if you think anything about this show is better than the sound,there is something wrong with you.)I watched the dub, cuz Funimation is the best, and it's alright.The soundtrack sounds like a bunch of royalty free computer leisure music from the youtube editor.Not only that but i feel like if I bought the CD, it would be like 20 minutes long.There are like 5 songs on the soundtrack.But they don't sound too bad.The foley was alright. I The best song is Dust Trail for sure.It’s like a mash of ballroom dancing music with orchestra and its very good.I recommend to listen to it on your own.The opening was done by Oxt who did openings to Overlord Season 1 and 2.Those opening themes weren't my favorite,but after hearing “One Hand Message”I can see why they are so popular.It's super addicting and kinda unfair that they have to be put with messy eye gouging opening visuals.The ending is freaking beautiful too.


The characters are kinda clique but there are very weird turns taken with them.The main character and the emotionless girl are bland but I can't say the same for the others. Including a girl with Hypopituitarism, another girl who is actually a.pedophile, and also another girl who uses the powers of orgasms to break the ground around her.Despite that, the actual interaction with each pair is decent.One pair uses cards.Another pair can only use her nimrod after using hand sanitizer.The route they went with the two MCs wasn't bad,but the execution made the show BORING AS HELL.There was one episode moment that lasted 5 seconds, but it did a good job of showing interaction between the two characters but that was the only memorable thing in the whole episode.


I can see why everyone trashes this show ,but I don't hate it with a passion.It's just forgettable.The story is alright but done way better.The animation and art had potential but it was just too overwhelming and lazily put together.The soundtrack is not bad but it sounds like stock music.And I can appreciate the personalities of each pair but the MC and the girl interaction was just so freaking boring I was tearing up from yawning all the time.This show is pretty freaking bad, but people are just overreacting.People who say this is the worst anime ever probably haven't seen all the other trash that anime has to offer.

Overall-5
I feel sorry for Gohands right now....

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Mar 28, 2017

ZephSilver

Not Recommended

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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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