W'z

Don’t you just hate when you read the synopsis for an anime and you think to yourself “wow this actually sounds interesting and unique”. You’re kind of excited to watch it because it presents a concept you feel has not been done before, and then it turns out you have seen it before and you realize you’ve been catfished. That’s how I felt 2 minutes into the first episode of W’z when I found out I was watching a Handshakers sequel. So the story for Handshakers season 2, I mean W’z (pronounced Wise not Wiz, yeah I know it’s weird) starts off with our main characterentering into an alternate reality to shoot some music video even though it didn’t enhance his music in any way. This alternate reality is called the ziggurat with the goal to reach god or something. Along the way we are introduced to more Handshakers each with their own purpose for why they are there or maybe they are just there to bs around. Probably going to go with the latter because for a majority of the time there was no story. You can’t throw a bunch of cryptic religious stuff at us and expect that we’ll be all fine and dandy with it. When you have a 13 episode anime with no direction suddenly start to develop some semblance of a story by episode 9 you know there is a problem and that is honestly the biggest problem with this show. The characters can only be described as a polished turd which happens to perfectly describe the art and animation as well. Shiny on the outside but hollow on the inside. All character motivations are either lost after the first episode or never take shape to begin with. On the positive side of things I will say that they did actually improve in some areas. A big problem with the first season of Handshakers was the direction when it came to fights. Anytime there was a fight they would resort to some shaky cam either to hide the poor cgi animation or because they genuinely thought it looked cool. For W’z it would appear that they learned from this mistake. The fights are now shot much better to the point where you can actually tell what is happening which in turn makes the animation look halfway decent. They may have learned from some of their mistakes but not all seeing as how this exists. To sum this show up would be one big disappointment. They had me going early on thinking this would be something original. Instead I was betrayed. Shame they didn’t air this on April Fools Day or at the very least I could have gotten a laugh out of it.

On one hand, I'm annoyed that GoHands decided that a 'Hand Shakers' sequel was the natural progression of things their company should go for despite just how poor that show was. But on the other hand, their OST is still fire, so I somehow still can't be mad. Story: When two people have a fervent wish, they become 'Hand Shakers', battlers who wield weapons call Nimrods (god I wish i was kidding) and fight other Hand Shakers in the world known as the 'Ziggurat' in an attempt to get their wish granted by God. Set roughly 14 or so years after the original Hand Shakers, our storynow features Yukiya, a boy born in the Ziggurat with the irregular ability to bring anyone into the other world if he so much as touches another person on accident. I just want to ask, "WHY IS THERE A SEQUEL?" Having watched the original, I can safely say that that Hand Shakers was such a narrative mess that I'm genuinely surprised that W'z even exists to try and save the series instead of just leaving the whole thing forgotten like a bad dream. Weirdly enough, at least in the narrative sense, this show does redeem the entire story of this series to a somewhat respectable degree. Instead of slice of life filler clogging up a majority of the plot with a protagonist that didn't know what to do with his life aside from dragging around his voiceless, living doll of a girlfriend because letting go of her hand would mean the end of her existence, W'z follows Yukiya's plight to try and find meaning and worth in the power he sees as a curse while still following a rough (nearly identical) outline similar to its predecessor where Yukiya comes into contact with other Hand Shakers with unique quirks and fighting them to ensure that he doesn't lose his powers. Because of this, it actually feels like there're some personal stakes for Yukiya, and that the guy actually has a bit of a personality to him since aside from DJ'ing, he seems to have inner turmoil regarding these powers that early on, he regards as something unsightly rather than useful. Good, but faulty when compared to the rest of the story. While Yukiya's story is most definitely the forefront of the series this time around, for the most part, W'z feels like it's meant to be a 'throwback' to the original Hand Shakers, as if to constantly remind the viewer of its predecessor, the quirks of its 'deep' cast since Tazuna and literally everyone he beat the crap out of are now all buddy buddy, and just how great of a sequel this is supposed to be because it ties that with this. This is made more obvious by the fact that all of the new characters introduced this time have the exact same kind of 'quirky gimmick' that made up the original cast, making everyone new feel like just more added tropes instead of legitimately interesting characters that I want to give a shit about, as well as giving us a final arc that in the long run, doesn't really make all that much sense due to the fact that the motivations for the antagonist is muddy, contrived, and don't really make all that much sense. Seriously, why is this dude mad at our MC? I've watched the entire show and I still don't know. Because of all of these factors W'z, while somewhat narratively superior to its predecessor because it actually seems like it has and sticks to a story for once, still falls flat on many of the same reasons that made Hand Shakers a terrible show in the first place. It tries a few new things, but not enough to make it feel all that different from Hand Shakers, all the while constantly reminding us that Hand Shakers was a show they made and that they're (apparently) proud of. Characters: Yukiya, being the nephew of the series's previous heroine (believe me, it's better hearing his origin now rather than watching the show 11 episodes in), is known as an 'irregular' Hand Shaker being able to enter the Ziggurat with anyone at any time so long as he touches them with his special hands, as well as bring in and take out whatever he wants at will. Due to the irregularity of his existence, his personal conflict with coming to terms with this strange powers of his is the crux of his personality and what makes W'z at least minutely superior to its predecessor. The show takes time to make Yukiya feel like his character at least somewhat matters, and that in and of itself is already a huge step for the series considering what was going on last time with two characters that existed together for reasons. The rest of the new cast unfortunately isn't blessed with the same treatment. His female counterpart Haruka spends the majority of the series talking about her 'positive' mentality as she's always looking at things with a positive outlook before getting upset over some stupid reason midway through the series. (I don't get it either.) Similarly, the series's four new pairs of Hand Shakers feature all some kind of gimmick, two of which are somewhat plot relevant due to having been in a similar situation to Yukiya in the past, while the other two basically have their gimmick be boiled down to "We're gay" and or something about mountains. Come on, you can do better than that, and that isn't even a fucking gimmick. The whole cards schtick in the original was a gimmick. Their sexuality? Not a gimmick. And because neither this show nor I can stop bludgeoning the audience with the fact that this show's a Hand Shakers sequel, here's pretty much every fucking character that appeared in the original series. Admittedly there is some good to this, as both Break and Bind, two characters who had significance for a grand total of 1 episode in the original have their roles significantly fleshed out as Yukiya's foster parents even if the quality of their role is dubious at best. But beyond that though, there's not really much reason to these old characters showing up besides obvious plot devices, attempted 'nostalgia' since everyone gets a chance to use their old shit again, and afterstories to tell the anticipating audience who's banging who, which given some of the pairings, is extremely, extremely awkward, and borderline creepy depending on who you're referring to. (Believe me, learning about the ramifications of Yukiya's birth was NOT fun.) Aesthetics: Despite Hand Shakers having nauseating visuals due to the fact that the flat characters were moving around in a 3-D space, the vibrancy of the color palette in addition to the animation's fluidity during the show's fight scenes were definitely THE defining moments even if it was most times difficult to watch without straining the eyes. It gave Hand Shakers at least something worth talking about and at least made the series aesthetically interesting with some great choice scenes for computer backgrounds if you were so inclined. W'z however is a major, major downgrade. Comparatively, the show just doesn't feel AS vibrant as its predecessor, having a slightly muted color scheme that isn't as bright. While that's actually a more welcome change, it feels like the quality of the art overall just isn't on-par with what Hand Shakers had. More than that, the fight scenes in W'z are drastically less exciting, dynamic, and fluid, with only one fight near the end being the standout moment in the show, which strangely enough, doesn't come nearly as close to being as visually interesting as what Tazuna was able to pull off during his time in the spotlight since Yukiya for the most part just stands around and swings his sword without doing any gliding, fancy moves, what have you. It helps that the show no longer is murder on the eyes because of how fast and how much everything is moving, but the drawback of that has the blocking of the characters basically just standing there with weapon in hand instead of constantly surfing down buildings, gliding along grass, or standing on buildings commanding chains, cards, giant shurikens, etc. Likewise to the art, the OP and ED for W'z just...isn't all that interesting. Both Ryouhei Takenaka's "Reason" and Fuki's "Kamisama wa Kitto" are more instrumental pieces that don't have any of the flair that I expected from a series that prides itself on the DJ thematic because Yukiya not only has a mix table, but spends the entire series wearing headphones around his neck. All the time. Luckily because GoHands loves putting its priorities in the wrong place, the OST for W'z is almost on par with the OST from its predecessor. Sporting more dulcet tones with a DJ thematic because Yukiya, many of its songs like "Espalemit" and "Deep Inside" stand out and really make the overall sound of the show a lot better than it really ought to be. It's the one aspect of this entire series I give its due credit because this fucking OST is so much better than it has any right to be and is the one thing that I think is worth talking about in this series. Final Thoughts: Honestly, I'm still hung up over the fact that GoHands decided that a Hand Shakers sequel was the right course of action for the company, and not to just make a different show in the same style featuring DJ boy that isn't connected to some god-like world hopping power. Like, Hand Shakers is so negatively rated and so generally panned that I highly doubt the series made any kind of return on the ludicrous amount of CG and action fluidity that they put into the show in order to make it at least stylistically interesting despite how garbage the story was. It's probably the reason why the overall aesthetic of W'z just seems like a less pretty looking downgrade to how Hand Shakers is and why the characters also just don't move around a lot or have the busty girls feature a little jiggle any time they heave their body around. (Because yes, that was a thing that happened.) Narratively, W'z is vaguely superior to its predecessor for having a better protagonist and story that seems to have SOME merit up until the end where they reveal that he's the nephew of the previous heroine (because that was a loose end that needed to be tied up) and begin the whole ending arc against an antagonist that doesn't make any sense both in motive and just in general concept. But because the show consistently tries to shove Hand Shakers down your throat with constant, constant reminders on telling you that "This is a sequel" and "Hand Shakers was a good idea, we promise, just look at how happy everyone is", I find W'z to overall be on par if not slightly inferior to its predecessor because at least in Hand Shakers, you can see some interesting animation and vibrant colors. Here, the fights suck to watch, and if you want the half decent character moments, you're going to have to sits through so much horribly spoken Engrish and 'quirky' dialogue that it's just not worth it in the end because so many of the show's characters are just not that interesting and are typically swept to the side because they're not important to the story anymore. My recommendation for W'z is pretty much the same as Hand Shakers: Just listen to the OST. The OST is without a doubt the only objectively good aspect of this series with my only regret about it being that it doesn't belong to a show that's equally good. While the story is undoubtedly slightly better, I can't in good conscience recommend it as not only does context for Hand Shakers play some part in this story, leading an almost near requirement to watch the original before this one, but because it reminds me so much of it that I got really annoyed just from the fact that this show just had no chance to be anything else. I just hope they don't make a threequel. No one wants that. Please don't do it, GoHands.

"You thought you'd see a new IP from Production GoHands, but no it was me HAND SHAKERS THIS ENTIRE TIME!" No seriously this is a SEQUEL to Hand Shakers and LA was a baffled and as anxious when LA came to realization about W'z. Ok but LA will have to get some things out of the way first. W'z has a new set of characters but the returning cast also gets some limelight as GoHands tries to ACTUALLY develop the anime as it was suppose to in Hand Shakers and to a decent degree in this regard. GoHands seems to try and right their wrongs from Hand Shakersby developing it's returning cast and giving them something like depth and development to them, the most surprising ones of all being of Reijirou & Yukine Araki...you know "Chain & Bind" duo from the first episode of Hand Shakers. The new cast also learned a bit from Hand Shakers as it isn't the same tournament style format Hand Shakers was. Yukiya Araki voiced by Katsumi Fukuhara is a DJ and an abnormal Hand Shakers able to freely bring other people and things into the Ziggurat and because of a video that circulated, every Hand Shaker goes after him. He does have a childhood friend by the name of Haruka Tosabori voiced by Akane Fujita who has an obvious crush on him and has a running gag personality of trying to be positive about everything. The newer Hand Shakers that becomes adversaries towards Yukiya have some development to their friendship and why they want to win and grant a wish and we see a great deal of screentime from both sets of Hand Shakers that is a marked improvement from Hand Shaker's one episode then toss the characters away mentality it had before (not to mention reducing the amount of rivals Yukiya compared to Tazuna had to go through is a factor as well). W'z does have a proper villain in W'z and it's......disappointing to say the least, LA won't name names but the point of this villain is trying to utilize Yukiya's ability and able to infinitely produce resources for the real world using the Ziggurat and Yukiya for his plans and he'll do ANYTHING for this...so he's something of an environmentalist in a ways and well in perspective, he's a MUCH worse villain outright than the final villain of Hand Shakers all down to his motives being small potatoes, like yes an interesting plan but through the bigger picture..like do we even need this major villain?. The animation done once again by GoHands, well in some respects they toned down their bizarrely hyperbloomed and rapidfire special effect show every second aka. the background is chewing itself and actually gave some or the majority of the anime some time to breathe but the markings of GoHands is still there and they still tried to add in some of their "flair" into the mix, especially when they go into the Ziggurat and the fight scenes. W'z's animation is nowhere close to Hand Shaker's level of vomit inducing rollercoaster ride but it seemed that GoHands both learned but couldn't help themselves with the animation at times. Voice cast was "ok", LA did have a few annoyances here and there, from Inori Minase as Senri Toyoshima and at times Akane Fujita did annoy LA with her hyper genki "positive attitude" (Hey at least Akane Fujita had more range than Inori Minase did in W'z), but still the voice cast if anything did try with the material they had especially Katsumi Fukuhara, the aforementioned Akane Fujita, the returning Sumire Morohoshi as Koyori, Yoko Hikasa as Yukine and even Sumire Uesaka as Chizuru was toned down considerably well. If anything the returning voice cast was a welcomed improvement if only because of the material not being sooo stereotypical and bareboned this time round. W'z still had some gripes LA had to contend with, mainly because of the more developed characters and the build up and non-pay off W'z delivered, there is for one, ALOT more talking and less action(though that's for the better) to it's main cast, returning and new, ALOT of lull episodes almost making it filler and the anti-climaxes it gave out near the ending of the anime...well it's Hand Shakers...what did you expect? So we essentially have a sequel to Hand Shakers trying to both learn from it's mistakes yet trying desperately to cling to it's failures. On one hand, LA applauds Hiromitsu Kanazawa and Shingo Suzuki that they can do proper character development and them trying to expand their Hand Shaker universe to make this a thing, while on the other hand, the animation is only marginally better but became a much slower slog to get through with it's much more relaxed tone and it's "major" villain being even worse than before AND to top it off having such a typical anti-climax towards the end. LA thinks the only statement LA really needs to say about W'z overall and perfectly sums up LA's thoughts on it is: "three steps forward, two steps back"

4 out of 10 does not sound like a high rating, and in most circumstances, it wouldn't be... With a Hand Shakers sequel though, it represents an immeasurable improvement over the original. That series was a production and storytelling trainwreck, infinitely dumb, often nauseating to look at and apparently unaware of its unparalleled shittyness. A shocking combination of most obnoxious anime tropes, horrible writing decisions and CGI that no human being should consider passable. I very seriously consider it the worst full-length anime show ever made and the fact it got a sequel sounds like a grotesque joke. Or maybe, simply a treat for connoisseursof extremely bad anime such as myself...? Putting that question aside for a moment, this background makes W'z a deeply intriguing phenomenon. Can you improve something so deeply unsalvageable? Can you make it even worse? I already spoiled that part: W'z is a major improvement. It looks a lot better, with 2D art and CGI blending together in an acceptable manner and perspective being less broken most of the time. The show's distinct style is also preserved and I consider it the only redeeming feature of the original (although it's a matter of taste for sure). The cast is treated slightly more seriously: I'm kind of amazed that they were able to salvage some purely-episodic garbage like the BDSM couple from Hand Shakers ep. 1 and turn them into serviceable characters. The poorly-done fanservice is also mostly gone. So, things are better. That's good, right? Or is it...? The thing is, the improvements do not translate into a genuinely good story: the rules of the world are all over the place, character motivations are bonkers, the main villain hardly passes as a human being with his pointless schemes and incomprehensible goals. Some of the new cast members are obnoxious and animation still can be hard to look at. "Hand Shakers, but more competent" hardly make for a decent show and without the shock factor from the original's all-around awfulness, there're are few reasons to watch W'z outside of twisted nostalgia of disturbed individuals such as myself. It's a poor anime that isn't even very memorable in how poor it is. The "so bad it's good" factor is still definitely there, but not in an abundance that made me consider Hand Shakers something of a must-watch. And this means W'z is ultimately very, very skippable. For Hand Shakers fans, ironic or not, only.