“It at once is the antithesis of creativity and a testament to everything that can go wrong with ambition in art; it is the enemy of creativity itself! Let’s give one final farewell to Hand Shakers, the show that broke my spirit 10 times over; see you in hell!” -An idiot who thought this shit would end.

In an ideal world, something as broken Hand Shakers would have never been made. Unfortunately, we live in a society, where something like this can get popular as a punching bag, garner a prequel OVA, a sequel series, and several stage plays despite flopping both critically and commercially. Understandably, by the time this sequel was announced, almost no one cared anymore. A sequel to Hand Shakers is frankly that unfathomable. It’s like making a sequel to Ride to Hell Retribution or Battlefield Earth. No one asked for this, and yet it’s here. It’s not only here, but it’s rocking enough product placement to impress Michael Bay. Why? Any rational human being would have shitcanned this heap ages ago, or at the very least worked on other projects before even considering attempting this again. However, director Shingo Suzuki is not a rational human being, and neither am I as I watch Studio GoHands drag its name through the mud a second time.

Wasting time by dissecting the nightmarishly awful and consistently contradictory world-building is fruitless. Tackling all the fresh new ways W’z adds nonsensical terminology, conjures up nonsensical contrivances, contradicts its own predecessor, and breaks its own franchise’s established rules even before it re-establishes them itself, is pointless. It’s also a good 5K words no one wants to type or read about when I can just say “the first condition Hand Shakers introduces for losing is for your team to stop holding hands, and they broke it immediately”. W’z’s grotesque predecessor made all this into a fucking hobby, so of course this show follows suit. How else can we have a team consisting of a melee and a ranged fighter without breaking the one rule of this franchise for the umpteenth time? How else can they allow literally every character to not hold hands and suffer no repercussions, even when it makes no difference to their fighting style? Needless to say, they shouldn’t have even bothered telling us what the rules are when not only does the show constantly break them, but the characters themselves don’t even know them.

The dialogue’s as heinous as ever, with “mesh” being spammed to hell and back, and characters actively describing both their own and each other’s personalities to each other. The monologuing is exactly as insufferable as it is rampant as well. The mere concept of this show, this entire franchise, even if it didn’t get contradicted constantly by these sorry excuses for screenplays, is inherently broken. This is all shit we’ve heard before. It’s literally just Hand Shakers, but with a music video theme and vibe, and a cast of over-the-top gimmick caricatures meandering for minutes on end while hanging out with our bland returning cast. The only things new are the new pieces of convoluted, nonsensical lore, terminology, and gaudy religious references about God and language and the Tower of Babel and whatever. They do try to bring in some personal drama for the old cast, but that’s as far as anything goes in terms of actually trying, and the characters are so badly written that I couldn’t begin to care. No amount of poorly and predictably placed backstories will ever change that, especially when said backstories dismantle the already mind-numbing pacing and episode structure. The characters’ motivations and arcs are beyond nonsensical as well. It’s pointless to even discuss the writing any further since even the original Hand Shakers wasn’t burned in effigy over that shit, and that’s despite this anime’s narrative somehow being even worse.

Two years ago, I claimed that if it wasn't for the obnoxiously bad visuals that were supposed to be seen as "visionary" or "innovative", almost nobody would be talking about this franchise. To think W’z would prove me right. Hand Shakers was the apex of a saga of GoHands pushing the envelope in how much garish, blinding, inconceivable shit it can add to its signature style before the audience throws up and retaliates. Now that they’ve jumped back, there’s nothing really to discuss, nothing new to get angry about or sell this series as a disasterpiece with. Sure, we can bitch about the abysmal vehicle, weapon, and pedestrian CGI, which is as prevalent as it is disgusting. We can complain about the awful camera and background movements, the frame rate dips, and terrible choreography all we want. Same goes for all of the unfinished choreography and nonexistent animation, terrible color and character designs, blinding filters, needless and ill-conceived camera tricks. None of it is new. Not even the blatant stock assets and reused footage are worth noting beyond the fact that a sequel should fix all of this kind of shit, and that none of this should have made it past the initial pitch back in the franchise’s inception. Even going into detail with how the show actually looks good during the few times the show lets go of most of this tacked-on glitter and make-up in episode 1 is old news at this point. The best I can do is praise some of the nifty shots and editing tricks the first episode pulls early on, which are reminiscent of cheesy music videos which this show attempts to emulate. Other than that, it’s all dead air and retreaded ground. Even the needlessly abysmal and frequent attempts and 2D and 3D CGI compositing isn’t a startling talking point anymore.

You wanna know the real kicker here? The first 30 seconds of this show took my breath away. We hear someone whistling as he walks before an impressive fish-eyed lens shot of skyscrapers, before switching to Doctor Strange style kaleidoscopic imagery of the city. Barring the shitty CGI and garish lighting filter sandwiched between these impressive sequences, it actually painted the picture of a promising anime with a music video aesthetic. Imagine my disappointment when it went back to doing the same shit that made Hand Shakers so reviled. It’s as if Shingo and his team at GoHands knew what they were doing and chose to trick people expecting something new. If that doesn’t sound wack to you, then you might actually enjoy this dumpster fire.

The OST is almost as uninspired and badly implemented as it was before, except now they added FUNKY FRESH BEATS AND SHIT! It’s also as badly edited as the music in a bad student film. But hey, at least they came up with a track or two that works in a vacuum, and they even worked up the courage to put an orchestral battle theme in the midst of all the elevator jingles. Again, barely even half of these tracks are good and some don’t even fit, but when I have to stretch this thin for compliments, anything goes. The only thing of note left is how surprisingly reserved this show is with its OST, which is for the better. Then again, there’s no use even trying to compliment that cuz even when this show corrects a mistake, it’s a mistake that should have never been thought of in the first place. It’s not a competent sequel just cuz they added some beats to a dry OST to make up for their shitty fucking OP and ED, or because they dialed back on the eye-searing AIDStacular visuals they had no business going this overboard with for like 5 minutes before hopping right back into doing everything as wrong as possible again. It’s just backpedaling, lazy, lifeless, stupid backpedaling that means nothing to no one. In some ways, it’s even worse than Hand Shakers because as repugnant as that piece of shit is, it’s so avant-garde in its awfulness that even when separating it from how it’s the culmination of a studio taking its style too far, it would at least make for a piñata worth bashing, even if that one’s still the more insufferable of the two.

There’s honestly no point in going any further. It’s been two years, and nothing’s been learned or gained. Not even I’ve learned to stay away, and I didn’t even plan to watch this until a friend I moderate for put this on his stream. The worst part is: I won’t even really be able to get closure on a franchise that’s haunted me for years anymore, as just when we think it’s dead, it comes back. This isn’t even funny anymore. It’s honestly depressing. This is the kind of thing that would make even the most rose-tinted anime fan jaded towards this industry. It’s a cruel joke, with schmucks like me serving as the punchline. W’z is the purest example of a director and studio taking the piss. At what point do we draw the line? When do we decide to stop watching, and begin avoiding and boycotting this thing? When will they decide to move onto a brand-new IP and let the dead horse lie? When is enough going to be enough? When will shows like this truly be a rare occurrence to be forgotten instead of a common underside that reincarnates four times a year in an ever-growing incestuous ouroboros of pain and suffering for everyone involved?

Not now, not with a lazy, worthless waste of time so up its own ass it pronounces its name as “Wise”.

Written and Edited by: CodeBlazeFate
Proofread by: Peregrine