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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.