W'z

The intriguing Hand Shakers' narrative has left a cloud of doubt over the once-familiar world. Tazuna, Koyori, Mayumi, and Nagaoka mysteriously leave after venturing forth to meet God and have their heartfelt desires fulfilled, leaving behind a gap replete with unresolved questions. The lack of their presence weighs hard on Koyori as her prized abilities fade away like whispers borne away by the wind.

W'z | Hand in Hand with Hand Shakers | Anime Review | Pinnedupink.com

This is the story of a kaleidoscopic trip where fate's threads merge; secrets lie around every corner, and the lines between power and vulnerability blur. Yukiya's song reflects the echoes of his past, present, and uncertain future that await him in the domain of Hand Shakers as he starts on a perilous voyage.

W'z is a 2019 Anime television series directed by GoHands and produced by Frontier Works, Mainichi Broadcasting System, Movic, Sony Music Communications, Glovision, Hakuhodo DY Music & Pictures, Medicos Entertainment, Kadokawa Media House, Sega Interactive, GOON TRAX, and FABTONE.

It aired from the 5th of January until the 30th of March 2019 as a follow-up to Hand Shakers. A live-action theater stage was conducted in Tokyo from the 10th of April until the 14th of April of the same year. Katsumi Fukuhara plays the lead in the series, which contains music by various EDM performers. This original animation is divided into 13 episodes, each lasting 23 minutes. It belongs to the action genre, and its main focus is music. It was rated PG-13 for those aged 13 years and up.

Tazuna, Koyori, Mayumi, and Nagaoka ultimately encountered God sometime after the events of Hand Shakers, and their wish was later granted. They do, however, vanish without a trace. This also causes Koyori to lose her power. But Tazuna resolves never to stop looking for them.

Yukiya Araki, an erratic Hand Shaker, is presented ten years later. Yukiya, who aspires to be a DJ, avoids shaking hands with others for fear of turning them into Hand Shakers like him. He invites his companion Haruka into the Ziggurat one night, the parallel reality that hosts combat for all Hand Shakers, while trying to garner more views for his music videos. Sadly, this draws the attention of other Hand Shakers who wish to dethrone Yukiya and seize his authority.

Don't you just hate it when you read an anime's summary and think, "Wow, this certainly sounds intriguing and unique?". You're looking forward to watching it since it provides a notion you believe hasn't been done before, but it turns out you've seen it before and realize you've been catfished. That's how I felt when I discovered I was watching a Handshakers sequel just two minutes into the very first episode of W'z.

''Hand Shakers'' is flawed to the point that it's sad. One would wonder how and why such a series was created in the first place. Sadly, we live in that kind of world and shows like this get famous as a punching bag, prompting a prequel OVA, a sequel series, and multiple stage plays while failing critically and monetarily. To be fair, by the time this sequel was revealed, nearly no one cared because it's difficult to imagine a sequel to Hand Shakers.

Indeed, nobody asked for this, but it's here. Not only is it here, but it had enough advertising for products to impress Michael Bay. Just why? Any sensible person would have dropped this series decades ago or worked on some other projects before even thinking about attempting something so awful again. However, director Shingo Suzuki is not a sensible person, and I am not either because I somehow convinced myself to watch Studio GoHands drag itself across the mud once again.

I can spend hours trying to understand and explain this Anime's terrible and contradictory world-building, but I’d rather not. W’z has come up with new and refreshing ways to add confusing terminology, conjure up nonsense contrivances, contradict its prequel, and break established rules.

It does all this before re-establishing them itself, leaving you wondering what the point was. For example, “the first condition Hand Shakers introduce for losing is for your team to stop holding hands,” and they break it immediately. Perhaps this was because the prequel made all this an inescapable hobby, so the sequel follows suit.

How else can we have a team consisting of one melee and one ranged fighter without breaking the one rule of this franchise for the 100th time? It makes you wonder why they even bothered telling us the rules when they're only going to get broken infinitely. The more significant issue is that even the characters don’t know them! Are you confused yet?

From a narrative point of view, W'z is marginally superior to its predecessor due to a slightly better protagonist. The story appears to have some sense of achievement by the end, where they disclose that he's the former heroine's nephew and begin the ending arc against an antagonist who fails to make any sense whatsoever.

It does mildly better in terms of purpose and overall concept, but it's still bad. While the story is undeniably better, I can't recommend it in good conscience because the prequel Hand Shakers context plays a role in this story, making it almost mandatory to watch it before the sequel. It is also very frustrating how this show just lacks the potential to be anything other than what it is, which is, again, sad. I can only hope there isn't another sequel because nobody wants that. Please, GoHands, don't do it.

The characters are nothing more than polished rocks, perfectly describing the art and animation. The appearance is gleaming enough, but the core is entirely hollow. All their motivations are either gone after the initial episode or have yet to develop. They are so poorly written that you stop caring about them overall. They do attempt to bring in some personal drama for the old cast, but that’s as far as anything goes in terms of actually trying. The characters’ motivations and arcs are ridiculous and pointless even to discuss. That’s about all I can muster about this department…

With this degree of art and animation, GoHands has outdone itself. Their distinct style is innovative and appealing—art in its purest form. Of course, the character design could have been better, though.

Despite having nauseating visuals due to the flat characters moving around in a 3-D space, the vibrant shades of the color palette, as well as the animation's fluidity during the show's combat sequences, were undoubtedly the show's best and describing moments, even if it was often difficult to enjoy without stressing the eyes. It gave Hand Shakers something to speak about and made the series more visually appealing, with some beautiful options for desktop backgrounds if you were so inclined.

If I'm being frank, the Sounds and Music of this Anime make the series incredibly peaceful to watch. The score is exceptionally calming, the music is nearly constant, and even the DJ nonsense is tolerable. Overall, the audiovisual display is a cleansing experience for the soul.

The Opening theme is "Reason" by Ryouhei Takenaka, and the Ending theme is "Kamisama wa Kitto" by Fuki, both of which are great. My advice for W'z viewers is the same as it was for Hand Shakers: just listen to the OSTs and be done with it. The OSTs are, without a doubt, the sole objectively reasonable component of this series, and my only regret is that it doesn't belong to a similarly excellent program.

One must mention the dastardly dialogue to do a Review of this series. It’s as heinous as ever, with “mesh” being spammed way too much for comfort and characters actively describing their personalities to each other. This is a prime example of too much “tell” and almost no “show.”

Don’t think you’ll be spared from the incessant monologuing; that trope’s on a rampage here. The very concept of this show and the entire franchise is inherently broken. These were all issues it had before, and they have not been fixed. It’s literally just the old Hand Shakers, but with a music video theme, somewhat different vibe, and a cast of over-the-top characters doing god knows what for hours on end while hanging out with an ever-bland returning cast. You will, however, be greeted with a brand new batch of nonsensical lore, terminology, and religious references about God and language and the Tower of Babel…

To summarize, this show is a huge letdown. They had my attention early on, assuming this would be something unique. Instead, I was utterly duped and kept feeling bitter. If only it were all some lousy joke that we could all just laugh off, but nope. Either way, I do not recommend this; please spend your time on something more worthwhile.