A Visual Rollercoaster Ride: A Review of Hand Shakers

A tale of interconnected fortunes plays out in Osaka's vibrant metropolis, where the mysterious future known as "AD20XX" marks the passage of time. Tazuna Takatsuki, a high school student whose mechanical ability leads him down a path of unexpected meetings, is central to this novel.

Join us on this thrilling trip where the boundaries of reality are tested and echoes of hope and longing resound in the hearts of the Hand Shakers. As they negotiate a planet on the verge of divine intervention, you are invited to witness their struggles, victories, and sacrifices. Will you enjoy the journey, fall into its abyss, or throw it all away?

Hand Shakers, also known as “Hando Sheikā,” is a Japanese action anime television series produced by Studio GoHands in collaboration with Frontier Works and published by Kadokawa. Shingo Suzuki directed the series, which was written by Hiromitsu Kanazawa and produced by Kazuhiko Hasegawa, Sabi Kawamoto, Kozue Kaneniwa, Mitsuhiro Ogata, Yūki Kurosaki, and Toshiyasu Hayashi. The soundtrack was composed by GOON TRAX and was broadcast from the 10th of January until the 28th of March in 2017.

This original anime consisted of 12 episodes, each lasting 23 minutes. It was rated PG-13 for teenagers aged 13 and up and belonged to the Action genre. On January 5, 2019, W'z, a sequel set a decade after the events of Hand Shakers, also made its debut.

Onto the story: those fortunate enough to receive the Babel Revelation must overcome various battles and tribulations by grasping the hand of their special companion. These "Hand Shakers" journey to the land of Ziggurat, another place where time no longer exists. Each ''Hand Shaker'' must compete to meet with the Almighty, who will bless them by fulfilling just one wish.

One of them is Tazuna Takatsuki, a high school girl with an aptitude for fixing things. Tazuna visits Koyori Akutagawa, an ill girl who evokes memories of his late sister Musubu, after receiving a repair request from a local institution's Professor Makihara.

Tazuna clutches Koyori's hand when she activates his Hand Shaker powers, recalling her dying plea not to relinquish her hand. Koyori's life, on the other hand, is irrevocably bound to her position as a ''Hand Shaker,'' which implies that if Tazuna ever loses the grip of her hand, she will perish. With meeting God as their only option for saving her, the team must figure out how to combine their skills, defeat the opposing Hand Shakers, and grant their desire.

Let's start with the show's concept—the premise. While I appreciate that anime are only fantasy stories, the premise of this anime is just too ridiculous. If the Main character couple lets go of each other for one second, the girl dies, except she doesn't because she can spend a few seconds without contact and still survive. In fact, by episode 3, she had developed the ability to survive this problem for fifteen minutes, even though they provided NO logic or a reasonable time frame to explain why we should buy into this nonsense.

Episodes 4 and 6 not only violated this "solid rule," but by episode 8, we can demonstrate that it is false and nonexistent trash. Isn't it true that if you let go, you lose? In episode 8, the more active Hand Shaker (Kodawa) never holds hands with her partner and is almost always apart from him, and in episode 4, neither do Blade and Dagger, so please pardon me for being a rational human being who expects a show to follow its own rules. Just refrain from constantly breaching your own rules; it ruins everything and exasperates viewers.

Now for the Art and animation: it was done by Studio Gohands, masters of bright and vivid colors. I can tell where they tried to go with this, but it just didn’t work. What shocked me was that the principal director and art director both worked on K, so they were probably drunk if they did work on this.

The show tries to animate everything in the background on par with the foreground, with everything looking slow and sloppy. Some characters disappear before leaving the shot, and you can see it! On the other hand, whoever directed the camera movements didn’t know what they were doing. The camera stupidly tries to follow the characters around when they fight, so I felt dizzy.

The 3D Animation does look good occasionally, but it doesn’t work well alongside the 2D and erratic camera. The Art is pretty and all, but it's also overwhelming. The hair looks fake, the backgrounds are just bland, and there are random zooms into low-resolution imagery. It makes you wonder if they even bothered at all.

Props to the scenes where the pair enter the fighting world and all the walls have cool-looking designs that come to life, though; it honestly looks pretty impressive. On that note, the Opening sequence actually looks far better than the actual anime, as they attempted to recreate the art style of K Project. Even then, the frame rate was approximately 15–16, so that’s another letdown.

Regardless of how you look at it, the best aspect of this anime is the sound and music department. The OSTs are not the best; they sound generic and uninspiring, but they are fine and do not hurt anything. The best song is "Dust Trail," which sounds like a mashup of ballroom dancing music and orchestra.

The Opening theme is "One Hand Message" by OxT, the ones who did the Openings for Overlord Seasons 1 and 2. As a massive fan of those Openings, I loved this one and can understand why it's popular. Popular. It's a shame that the cluttered, eye-straining visuals detract from how addicting it is to listen to.

"Yume Miru Ame," composed by Akino Arai, is the film's closing theme. Do you think it will be exciting to hear a chained-up girl scream like a character from a Hentai movie? If you are interested in that sort of thing, you will find it in this Anime. Of course, this is only the first episode, with more to come in future episodes! But yeah, props to Kadokawa and GOON TRAX for composing such lovely music for this dastardly Anime.

So, what is the ultimate criterion for a "bad anime"? Some attribute it to poor script writing, while others attribute it to a lack of audio-visual efforts. It could be as insignificant as a personal aversion to certain cliches or tropes. Whatever the reason, we all have our own way of reaching conclusions.

Hand Shakers failed for me because of its inability to work independently. The quality was so low that I began to appreciate even the worst Anime shows as an improvement over this one. Meanwhile, Hand Shakers squandered a large budget on a bad film whose only saving grace is the audio. I at least expected the Visuals to be outstanding, but that was a massive letdown, too.

Hand Shakers is an example of an anime that is so perplexing in its conception that tragedies of the past, such as the infamous Absolute Duo or Terra Formars, appear "decent" in comparison. The extent to which this show fails is astounding. In some ways, it's a masterpiece, showing how much a series can screw up. From fundamental production flaws that could have easily been corrected to writing that has been mutilated beyond repair, this is a magnificent swan dive into dead-in-the-brain content.

Will you enjoy it with your brain off? No, I doubt that, too. Will you at least be able to laugh? Well, I chuckled at random things characters say on occasion and at some shots that appear like someone dropped their camera, and it flipped all over the place, but that’s about it. It can be hilarious if you can derive a good laugh from the sheer mass of irrelevant scenes.

We recommend Hand Shakers to anyone who can derive a good laugh from just how horrible this Anime is. Also, if you’re a massive fan of the Music and can forgo everything else in its name, that should be fine, too. If you watch, do not expect anything from the Story or characters; you have been warned. This is not something I recommend.