Review of Hand Shakers

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.