Hand Shakers

ハンドシェイカー

1.0(1)

OtakuDen

5.2(43,922)

MAL Score

Ranked #14140

Popularity #2238

Action
Sci-Fi
Super Power

Episodes: 12
Duration: 23 min per ep
Aired: Jan 11, 2017 to Mar 29, 2017
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

Chosen by the Revelation of Babel, Hand Shakers fight through a gauntlet of trials by joining hands with a destined partner. That bond allows them to enter Ziggurat—an alternate realm where time stands still—where paired combatants clash for the chance to meet God and receive a single granted wish.

Tazuna Takatsuki, a high schooler who enjoys repairing broken things, becomes entangled in that hidden conflict after a job request from Professor Makihara at a nearby university. There he encounters Koyori Akutagawa, a bedridden girl who reminds him of his late sister, Musubu, and her final plea to never let go of her hand. When Tazuna takes Koyori’s hand, he awakens as a Hand Shaker—only to learn her life is bound to their connection, and releasing her would mean her death. With a wish from God as their lone hope, the pair must learn to synchronize their powers and survive the battles against other Hand Shakers.

Otaku Consensus

Hand Shakers is best treated as a maximalist GoHands experiment: Shingo Suzuki's glossy, roaming direction, the 12-episode gauntlet pacing, and Masayoshi Ooishi/OxT's punchy opening give it a sensory identity few 2017 TV action shows share. Its reputation is dominated by the same choice, though—CG-heavy compositing, warped perspective, and nonstop camera motion overwhelm character writing and clarity, which explains its weak 5.23 MAL / 42 AniList standing despite a small defender base.

Why You Should Watch

Watch Hand Shakers if you want a battle-royale anime less for tidy tournament logic than for a studio going all-in on visual excess. It scratches the same itch as GoHands' K for gleaming urban surfaces and gravity-defying camerawork, while the paired-combat structure gives it a Future Diary-adjacent tension without that show's diary-game mechanics. The appeal is the collision: romantic hand-holding as a literal combat interface, impossible weapons staged against frozen cityscapes, and a soundtrack package fronted by Masayoshi Ooishi/OxT and Akino Arai. Viewers who need clean layouts and subdued CG should stay away; viewers fascinated by ambitious, messy TV anime experiments will find a genuine case study in how far style can drive a super-power show.

Key Characters

T
Tazuna Takatsuki
His repairman mindset makes him the rare action lead whose heroism is framed through maintenance, calibration, and the fear of letting a connection fail.
K
Koyori Akutagawa
Fans often read her through the kuudere tag: emotionally muted on the surface, but designed to make silence and dependency part of the show's tension rather than just a personality quirk.
P
Professor Makihara
As the university researcher who pulls the story out of domestic space, Makihara embodies the show's preference for pseudo-scientific machinery and secret-rule exposition.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
GoHands' house style is the headline: director Shingo Suzuki pushes glossy urban backgrounds, aggressive camera moves, and layered digital compositing until the show feels closer to a visual-tech demo than a conventional TV action layout.
2
AniList's high CGI and Full CGI tags reflect how central digital modeling and compositing are to the viewing experience; Hand Shakers does not hide its CG as background support, it makes the artificial sheen part of the spectacle.
3
The combat design turns constant physical contact into a staging constraint, so fights are blocked around distance, hand position, and synchronization rather than only special-move escalation.
4
The music credits are unusually recognizable for a poorly scored title: the opening is associated with Masayoshi Ooishi and OxT, while the ending is performed by Akino Arai.
5
Its tag mix is stranger than the basic Action/Sci-Fi label suggests, combining Battle Royale, Urban Fantasy, Surreal Comedy, Cosmic Horror, Idol, and Card Battle elements in one 12-episode package.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: Hand Shakers aired as a winter 2017 TV anime from January 11 to March 29, finishing its story in 12 episodes rather than extending into a split cour.
Fun fact 2: Takayuki Uchida had two major visual responsibilities on the production, serving as both character designer and one of the chief animation directors alongside Makoto Furuta.
Fun fact 3: Masayoshi Ooishi is credited on the opening along with OxT, the unit he is famously part of with composer-guitarist Tom-H@ck.
Fun fact 4: Its database profile shows a sharp cult-versus-consensus divide: despite a MAL score of 5.23 and AniList score of 42/100, it still has 158 AniList favourites.
Fun fact 5: Ken Naitou served as art director, a key role on a series whose background compositing and digitally distorted city spaces became one of its most discussed production signatures.