When Does Hand Shakers Season 2 Come Out? Is It Renewed?

What is Hand Shakers about?

Hand Shakers follows Tazuna, a mechanically-minded high school student, whose mundane life takes a surreal turn when he meets Koyori, a chronically ill girl confined to a hospital bed. Their chance encounter catapults them both into Ziggurat, a hallucinatory alternate dimension where pairs of people called Hand Shakers literally join hands to summon powerful weapons known as Nimrods. Caught in a tournament of escalating battles against other Hand Shaker pairs, Tazuna and Koyori must fight their way through increasingly strange challenges, all with the promise that victory will grant them an audience with a god-like entity willing to fulfill their deepest wishes. The premise taps into wish-fulfillment fantasy while grounding emotional stakes in the relationship between two characters desperate to change their circumstances.

The show embraces a visually experimental and often disorienting aesthetic that prioritizes striking imagery over conventional narrative clarity. Its animation style employs striking color palettes, abstract backgrounds, and inventive action choreography that creates an dreamlike, sometimes overwhelming sensory experience. Hand Shakers wears its commitment to visual spectacle proudly, treating the Ziggurat battles as opportunities for artistic flourish rather than straightforward combat sequences. This distinctive approach marks it as a show unafraid to challenge viewer expectations about what anime action should look like, though that same boldness proves divisive.

The series struggled significantly with critical and audience reception, earning a notably low rating on IMDb and failing to generate sustained enthusiasm during its initial 2017 run. Viewers frequently cited confusion over narrative progression and pacing issues as central complaints, with the show's abstract visual style alienating as many viewers as it attracted. The twelve-episode run concluded without the cultural resonance or dedicated fanbase that might have sustained further development or adaptation.

Hand Shakers occupies a peculiar niche as an ambitious but commercially unsuccessful entry in the action-fantasy anime landscape of the mid-2010s. While it refused to follow conventional formulas and demonstrated genuine creative ambition in its visual language, it ultimately serves as a cautionary tale about the limits of style over substance. The show remains a footnote in anime history rather than a landmark, remembered more for its polarizing aesthetic choices than for any lasting impact on its genre.

Is Hand Shakers renewed or cancelled?

Hand Shakers Season 2 Release Date

Best & worst episodes

Hand Shakers seasons

Where to watch Hand Shakers

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