This Week in Anime
Throw Hands with GoHands
by Christopher Farris & Nicholas Dupree,
Nick and Chris take a deeper look at studio GoHands' anime output and try to figure out why all of their shows look like that.
These series are streaming on Crunchyroll.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.
Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.
@Lossthief
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@BeeDubsProwl
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@NickyEnchilada
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@vestenet
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Chris
Sorry, Nick, I don't know if I can do the column tonight. Either I forgot to wear my glasses again, or there is something terribly wrong with my screen.
Sorry, Nick, I don't know if I can do the column tonight. Either I forgot to wear my glasses again, or there is something terribly wrong with my screen.
Nick
I'm sorry to hear that, but at least this gives me extra time to take care of my invoice. Any suggestions on how I should get Kadokawa to reimburse me for anti-nausea medication?
I'm sorry to hear that, but at least this gives me extra time to take care of my invoice. Any suggestions on how I should get Kadokawa to reimburse me for anti-nausea medication?
Ooh, better be careful; I hear that stuff isn't cheap.
Anyway, hold on, I managed to get my contacts in, so something is coming into focus, and...Ooooohhhhhh, that explains everything.
Anyway, hold on, I managed to get my contacts in, so something is coming into focus, and...Ooooohhhhhh, that explains everything.
Somehow, against all odds, logic, and good taste, GoHands has returned to the world of TV anime. We all thought the plagiarism scandal that got their Tokyo Babylon adaptation canceled could be the end of them. Still, somehow one of the most notorious studios in modern anime has returned with two (2) new shows. God help us all.
What's wild in the wake of that Tokyo Babylon 2021 situation is that both of GoHands's Summer 2023 shows are also adaptations. Granted, neither The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses nor The Masterful Cat Is Depressed Again Today has the gravitas of a CLAMP joint. However, it's still only a little surprising that multiple companies were willing to hand them the keys to their properties.
I have to chalk that up to the sheer overbooking in anime. So many shows are being produced with so few animators to go around that if you're a company just looking to profit off licensing deals and maybe sell more books, you're willing to work with a company that has been Anitwitter's punching bag for going on six years.
It's easy to come in on schedule and under budget when you steal from Korean girl groups and doll outfits. Though barring that, you could rip yourself off.
Two separate shows, five years apart there.
Two separate shows, five years apart there.
In hindsight, reusing old cuts and storyboards might explain why every god damn thing this studio has made in the last six years looks bad in nearly the exact same way.
Even before the plagiarism scandal that caused their whole Tower of Tokyo Babylon to come tumbling down, GoHands had a pretty notorious reputation amongst seasonal anime followers. Mostly because of all their shows for at least the last ten years looking, like, well...
Like That.
Like That.
It's worth going into a quick history lesson for anyone who wasn't around for The Great Hand Shaking of Winter '17.
Before that point, GoHands had a reputation for making weird creative and visual choices, especially using filters and less-than-great digital effects. However, they'd had some success with the K series and their Mardock Scramble movies.
Then they released a show that looked so awful in every way that it became The Ugly Barnacle of Anime.
It really can't be overstated how, as rough as simple screenshots make Hand Shakers look, what rocketed its pain-train reputation into the stratosphere was how this all looked in motion. Which the show helpfully made apparent from the very beginning of its first episode's opening credits.
I'd heard of K before and even watched Coppelion as it aired in 2013. But the premiere of Hand Shakers is when I and many others became instantly aware of the studio on a named basis.
I'd heard of K before and even watched Coppelion as it aired in 2013. But the premiere of Hand Shakers is when I and many others became instantly aware of the studio on a named basis.
It was the culminating moment. Having done some research on their earlier works, you can see a lot of the ideas and creative choices that precipitated what became Hand Shakers, but that show was the moment every bad choice, misguided inclination, and technical limitation coalesced into a mess so bad it gave people motion sickness.
There has been a lot of bad anime out there, and we've watched most of it! But there are very few who can stake their claim to fame because they caused actual physical harm to people.
It's terrible but fascinating - both as trainwreck viewing and as a way to learn about animation. Weirdly enough, looking into the "Why" of GoHands' aesthetic and its myriad failures can get you thinking about how other shows do this stuff better, more effectively, or avoid the pitfalls this studio keeps leaping into every couple of years.
A big part of what makes Hand Shakers so painful to watch is that the 2D characters and CG backgrounds move at different frame rates, delivering an effect that feels like either the video or your vision is lagging. It can be powerful enough to make your inner ear do acrobatics. That's something that other productions figured out, and at this point, tons of seasonal shows use similar techniques with far better results.
When you watch stuff like K, you can see how their earlier playing with filters and CGI-background tracking shots would lead them to where they are now. But (comparatively) more restrained application thereof over the material means that, while still weird, it isn't as jarring, and you can more charitably evaluate it as "ambitious."
With K, there's also much more conventional direction and storyboarding. Maybe that's just because the CGI tech wasn't there yet in 2012, but it means they had to reserve those uh "experimental" shots for specific moments. And to their credit, the fish-eye lens and tracking stuff make sense when a character's skateboarding.
It mirrors the look of real-life skating videos, even the low angle. And it's a prototype for what Sk8 the Infinity would go on to do with way sharper results and sleeker execution.
It mirrors the look of real-life skating videos, even the low angle. And it's a prototype for what Sk8 the Infinity would go on to do with way sharper results and sleeker execution.
You can make out similar sensible reasons for their choices in Coppelion, which came out just a year after K. The weirdly rendered and filtered backgrounds work when it's supposed to be a hollow, post-nuclear wasteland; our anime schoolgirl protags are meant to stand out against it uncannily.
The occasionally extra-thick character borders oversell it sometimes, but there's an intent there that fits the material. You can get why they employed it.
The occasionally extra-thick character borders oversell it sometimes, but there's an intent there that fits the material. You can get why they employed it.
It still doesn't look great, but there's much more room to argue that it's a valid creative choice for the adaptation. Though there are moments in both that beg you to scratch your head, like the random use of canted angles for mundane scenes.
I'm sure using tension-raising staging techniques in material that doesn't deserve it won't come back to bite them in future productions.
Also, even with a justification, the monochrome filters never look good. It always seems they're compensating for bad compositing, like somebody trying to salvage a bad photo through copious Instagram filters.
Even in these earlier years, when you could make more good-faith evaluations of what GoHands and Shingo Suzuki, their go-to director at this stage, were trying to do, there was the air of "trying to use every effect in AfterEffects just because you can" about them.
Hell, even earlier shows like Seitokai Yakuindomo, which predate Suzuki as director, let you catch sight of stray color filters or attempts at tracking shots whose movements would manifest in that memeable moment in Glasses Girl that took Anitwitter by storm decades later.
Hell, even earlier shows like Seitokai Yakuindomo, which predate Suzuki as director, let you catch sight of stray color filters or attempts at tracking shots whose movements would manifest in that memeable moment in Glasses Girl that took Anitwitter by storm decades later.
Still, back then, you could argue that these were stepping stones, small experiments to test ideas that the creators could then go on to refine. As I said, plenty of shows use CG environments, tracking shots, and the like to great effect. Surely once the technology caught up and these directors got a grasp of their vision, they could deliver something ama-
Oh god, what in the hell is that?
Oh god, what in the hell is that?
Hand Shakers was the "So preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should" moment. Arguably, CGI in anime had "caught up" by this point. For Babel's sake, Land of the Lustrous would come out the same year. At a certain point, it's not the fault of a technological wall you're hitting; it's the ceiling of your abilities.
For real, Hand Shakers was where all these choices started actively hurting their output. Implementing CG backgrounds seems to have given the directors free rein to move the camera wherever the hell they want and just let the animators try to catch up and match perspective, and it never looks right. Throw in the cavalcade of digital effects that never mesh with each other, and you have something that probably required a ton of effort to make it look this cheap and slapdash.
It made for some fascinating pain-watch viewing, so long as you weren't, uh, actually being caused physical pain by it.
And in hindsight, we may have given it too much attention since Hand Shakers seemingly wound up being a success for GoHands! At least enough that even with the critical drubbing it took, the studio kept getting work, and they even greenlit a sequel!
And in hindsight, we may have given it too much attention since Hand Shakers seemingly wound up being a success for GoHands! At least enough that even with the critical drubbing it took, the studio kept getting work, and they even greenlit a sequel!
I firmly believe 90% of the public's exposure to Hand Shakers was through gifs on social media, so I don't think they made much off of hate-watching. If anything, the fact that they didn't say upfront that W'z was Hand Shakers 2: Hand Shakier suggests they knew the IP was an albatross.
I only found out about its Trojan Horse status via hearing the distant screams of our fellow writer James Beckett, the man who carved out a whole corner of his career consuming a medically inadvisable amount of GoHands anime.
Also, since W'z is just a slightly less lousy sequel, I want to note that its main character is a YouTube DJ, and his entire setlist is the looping elevator music that GoHands uses for every show they make. So you have these lengthy scenes of him going HAM on the turntables and everyone dancing along, all to the sounds of being put on hold with a particularly fancy debt collection agency.
Oh god, that's one of their stylistic signatures I hadn't even made time to mention yet: The way that music will keep playing over any given scene with no thought given to timing one to the other. It enhances the surreal, fever-dream nature of watching so many of their shows.
I had an epiphany about this that we'll get to later, but it's genuinely one of the most bizarre parts of their house style. K and Hand Shakers are supposed to be action series filled with life-or-death battles and superpowers, but they all have this droning score that sucks any life out of what's on screen.
There's nothing necessarily wrong with a house style, even as it can cause some in the audience to conflate creators with a whole studio (See those who refer to studio Trigger's "style" when they most likely mean Hiroyuki Imaishi). But Suzuki's stylistic stranglehold at GoHands means even its amateurish excesses start standing out less. Case in point, that time they snuck Scar on the Praeter out to relatively little notoriety, good or bad, because that was the same season that EX-ARM debuted, which looked awful in new ways compared to GoHands misusing the same old tricks.
That was when they found the Video Game Soldiers from the Unity asset pack they bought and boy howdy, they were going to use em!
Also, all the guns in this show full of guns look like photoshopped Nerf blasters, I swear.
Also, all the guns in this show full of guns look like photoshopped Nerf blasters, I swear.
So following along this succession of shows with such a distinguished pedigree, more unfamiliar readers might now fully understand why these guys getting tapped for a new adaptation of a CLAMP work wasn't met with the most resounding amount of enthusiasm.
See, all that stuff before was bad, but at least it was contained to the studio's original works. If you wanted to, you could ignore their stuff and continue with your life. But once they returned to adapting existing works, it became the ultimate Monkey's Paw. Now "Produced by GoHands" carried the weight of an actionable threat.
And oh boy, speaking of actionable!
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2021-03-28/tokyo-babylon-2021-anime-canceled-with-restart-planned-after-more-plagiarism-uncovered/.171243
Thus GoHands entered the rarified pantheon of shows that got canceled before they even aired - like the original version of Mysteria Friends that was shelved entirely before being redone by a different studio.
(https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2016-03-08/rage-of-bahamut-manaria-friends-anime-announces-indefinite-delay-removes-staff-listing/.99542).
There's so much about this that's hilariously baffling to me. Why, if they were going to steal costume designs, would they go so far as to copy the poses? Why did they even feel the need to create new clothing designs? You're adapting CLAMP, my dudes; you aren't going to find more distinguished fashion inspiration.
It makes no sense, but it inspired folks to find past acts of plagiarized designs in their work. Everyone figured such a high-profile scandal would put GoHands in the toilet or at least prevent other companies from hiring them for adaptations.
And yet somehow, as we opened this column, we are just two years later with two new shows. Did the time and scandal humble GoHands enough to make them rethink their approach?
What do you think?
What do you think?
To their credit, there have been some improvements to their output. The filters are still bad but not as grotesquely implemented as before. There are fewer moments of mismatched frame rates, so it's easier on your sense of balance. But those minor upgrades highlight how nothing about this style makes sense for either show.
GoHands's house style had married itself so tightly to their previous output that you probably couldn't get me to differentiate between screenshots of K and Scar on the Praeter at gunpoint. This makes their shift into two slow-paced slice-of-life anime this season a bizarre leap for their, uh, seasoned sensibilities. But then maybe they don't have the luxury of picking where their business comes from.
The thing is, they do have a choice in how to adapt them. Slice-of-life comedies are a solved problem for anime. The industry knows how to deliver simple, soft humor in an infinitely charming and memorable way. Some, like Kaguya-sama, get wilder with their styles, but only to enhance the material they adapt. Nothing about GoHands' approach does that here. Multiple parts of The Masterful Cat feel like they should be in a horror movie.
Masterful Cat is the one that, to me, maintains most of its old "every button on the effects board" approach. There's no reason for stuff like that body-dragging tracking shot or the ominous slow zoom-in from the fridge there, but they did it anyway because they could, and the vibes are atrocious.
It's frustrating since this base story could have been a slam dunk for me as a cat person and an appreciator of funny hard-drinking office ladies. I didn't even know about this manga before GoHands adapted it, and now I'm mad that they did. That's like some sort of time-travel monkey's paw!
It's frustrating since this base story could have been a slam dunk for me as a cat person and an appreciator of funny hard-drinking office ladies. I didn't even know about this manga before GoHands adapted it, and now I'm mad that they did. That's like some sort of time-travel monkey's paw!
It's such a solid little concept, and so much of it doesn't work because Yukichi comes off as vaguely unsettling rather than cute. Something between the sickly yellow tint to their apartment, the way they often obscure his full appearance, and just the framing of any scene with him makes it feel like an A24 film that had the wrong soundtrack added on.
Additionally cruel? The significantly cuter, stylized take on things we glimpse over the ending song. What could have been?
Oh, and remember that epiphany I mentioned about their soundtracks?
That right there next to the too-shiny clock is a parody of the album cover for Sonny Clark's "Cool Struttin'" jazz record. And seeing that made me realize: Holy Christ, the plinky piano muzak is their attempt at jazz accompaniment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6K9Bzq0VDk
That right there next to the too-shiny clock is a parody of the album cover for Sonny Clark's "Cool Struttin'" jazz record. And seeing that made me realize: Holy Christ, the plinky piano muzak is their attempt at jazz accompaniment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6K9Bzq0VDk
It's astounding to think that they attempted that sort of intent with a score, only to wind up with the feel of music played from the next room over while you tried to watch a completely unrelated show.
Frankly, whatever company owns Blue Note Records these days should sue for the mere suggestion of being connected to this.
As if GoHands didn't get in enough legal trouble already.
But if that ain't the all-over effect of GoHands shows. Nothing meshes from the animation to the effects, to the backgrounds, to the background music.
Before we did this article, I wondered if looking deeper into the studio's development would give me a stronger appreciation for their work or at least a better insight into why they make their choices. Instead, I'm left more confused. It's beyond me how somebody with enough money and clout can see these visual wrecks again and again for years and keep saying:
It's not like the experimentation that has somehow netted them a few defenders out there seems to be paying off. For all the attention kicked up by the dunkable opening minutes of The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses, the dirty little secret of that show is that it quickly devolves into a poorly-paced realization of a one-joke rom-com. Especially ironic that the 60FPS interpolated extended tracking shot there seemingly already blew through their resources, with even these languid episodes needing to fill time with flashbacks to scenes we just saw and repeated cuts to distressingly dust-mote-filled CGI hallways.
The generous interpretation is that the direction is ambitious, but those shortcuts are bad resource management. These complicated sequences - even when they look this bad - take a lot of time and effort to complete, and part of directing for TV anime is picking your battles on what you can get done on a deadline.
Most other romcoms don't do this stuff because simpler, more straightforward delivery is more effective and efficient than sliding the camera underneath the protagonist's shoes.
Most other romcoms don't do this stuff because simpler, more straightforward delivery is more effective and efficient than sliding the camera underneath the protagonist's shoes.
I necessarily celebrate ambition and the messy, often not wholly successful art that results. But as we've spent all this time covering here, Suzuki and the rest of GoHands started with those messy ambitions and have spent over a decade trying to get their shit together, and what have they wound up to show for it? A couple of grimy-looking slice-of-life adaptations and their previously longtime collaborator King Records declared a "loss of faith in the production studio."
It's frankly a bummer. As fun, as it is to dunk on these weird choices, I also feel for any fans of these manga who have to struggle through. Trust me; I've been there
(https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/lucifer-and-the-biscuit-hammer/.187760)
and it sucks that now "I hope your favorite series gets adapted by GoHands" is a plausible curse you can place upon somebody now.
It's why the best thing to do, I think, is to try to advise people to stop watching GoHands's stuff. Not as a curiosity, not even as a hate-watch. Lest the attention paid to them continues to contribute to them getting more work, and we get motion-sickness-inducing adaptations of our faves. Or Hand Shakers 3.
I have a different solution: Make GoHands exclusively adapt isekai anime from now on. Either they or that trend will die, and we'll finally be free from one.
Now that's an ambition I can support!
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