Anime World Order Podcast · [email protected] (Anime World Order)

Anime World Order Show # 231 – This Isn't Meshing and Watching This Was UnW'z of Us

·2 hr 12 min·5 clips

Why Handshakers is so bad it might be the worst anime ever, according to these experts.

Show 231 arrives like a bill coming due. The opening treats Handshakers as the assignment the listeners, or one listener in particular, managed to drag into existence after a long wait. Daryl gives the episode number and panel, and Gerald and Clarissa quickly turn the setup into substitute teacher banter. It feels loose in the usual AWO way, then the complaints start landing. The sticking point is that Handshakers is not just throwaway bad. The central idea looks close enough to usable that every messy choice becomes more irritating. The visuals take the worst of it. They keep coming back to the effects, angles, foregrounds, backgrounds, and layers because the show piles style onto style without making the pieces work together. The color theory gets laughed off as ridiculous, but the read is not that the design is daring. It feels like nobody is speaking the same visual language. They explain the alternate dimension setup cleanly. A hand grab drops the characters into a mirror version of the real world, empty and only a little changed, so the fighting can happen without real casualties outside that pocket space. That sends AWO down a useful side road through battle magic barriers, tokusatsu, metal hero shows, Clamp, Tokyo Babylon, X, and psychic spaces where destruction stays contained. The tangent helps the point: Handshakers is not broken because the premise is weird. Older shows have used the same sort of device. This one just cannot make its art design behave. Makihara bursting in only adds to the pileup. The show keeps choosing effects, screaming, and intensity where it needs control. By the end, they are comparing bad anime direction to messy action editing, moving through Paul Greengrass, Taken 3, too many cuts, and direct to video Steven Seagal material. The final hit is simple enough: Handshakers may leave an impression, but it is bad in an expensive way.

As heard by us

A sharp, comparison-heavy teardown of a show that almost works but does not quite get there.

Anime World Order Podcast show #231 spends most of its time on Handshaker, and the panel treats it as a near miss. They think a few small fixes could have made it work, but the art design feels muddled and the color work sticks in the mind for the wrong reasons.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a panel that can explain why a nearly good anime keeps collapsing.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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