Hand Shakers

**DISCLAIMER: This version is outdated, however I will keep it up here as a mark of how I felt a year prior when constructing this review (I spent 50 days).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 hopefullyforever... 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.

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 evennauseating 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.

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 andhorribly 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 vegetableAt 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!