By Dustin Cabeal

The title alone was enough to make wonder if I should bother watching this anime. I mean “Hand Shakers” … it’s not that the concept of hand holding is lost on me. For the record, “Hand Holders” is an accurate title for this anime. I was once young and appreciated the intimacy of holding hands. It’s something that is lost on you as you get older and have more, wait for it, hands on time with the activity. Still, I can see how teenagers desperate for affection and unable to just push their tongues against each other would give a crap about holding hands. Not me, but the youth, right? A random stranger could come up and hold my hand right now, and I would give zero fucks… until my germaphobia kicked in and I scrubbed my hand the rest of the day.

The show is about pairs of people fighting each other in a dimension that shares a look and space with our world. It’s just that the damage accrued in the hand holder dimension doesn’t affect our world. I do mean our world by the way. The animation is super fucking lazy and uses photos for settings and spends the rest of its time animating ridiculous lighting effects on characters walking on warped pictures. I am not kidding by the way. 85% of the backgrounds are still photos that are partially warped for some reason. In one scene, the medical equipment looked like a picture with a filter over it. I knew I would never watch another episode after seeing the visuals.

What’s even more annoying than the backgrounds is the fact that we see the same part of the damn episode twice. In the beginning, we watch a shitty battle, and then we watch it again and see the partial conclusion. I say “partial” because the extra minute that’s added doesn’t have a conclusion. I’m going to assume it sucks and continues the story somehow. Again, I’ll never watch this series again.

The “bad guy” that we meet is also presented as a woman beater in the beginning, but then the second time around it’s a bit more S&M. That doesn’t make it any better and actually a bit more disturbing, but it’s worth pointing out because I’m sure someone thought, “Hey, this will change how this character is perceived!” It didn’t. He’s a piece of shit.

I suppose I should mention the main character who likes to fix things. That’s all that’s established about him outside of his sister’s death. She died because he couldn’t hold hands hard enough or something. The dude with the generic anime name spends all day fixing things for free. He forgets to eat; he doesn’t do his school work and even when he has an unpaid job to get to, he stops and fixes a car. I guess in the future no one has the time to get anything repaired so they exploit this idiot boy that can’t stop himself from fixing anything and everything. He was a delightfully annoying character, sorry shitty, not delightful. I get those two confused when writing reviews.

Hopefully, someone likes this show. I would hate to think that all this CG, fake CG (photos with filters) and lighting effects are going to waste on the world. The premise wasn’t interesting; I don’t care about people holding hands and calling it shaking so this show isn’t for me and takes the trophy for the worst anime I’ve seen of the season and honestly the worst thing I’ve seen in the past two years.

Score: 1/5

Hand Shakers E.01