“You’re so meticulous, Sacchan.” “My eczema gets really bad. Want some?” “Yeah, I’m gonna go ham with it! Please!” “Seriously? No way! For real? Your hands are so pretty! Honestly, though, you have to take care of them.” “Seriously?” “Wanna do your skin care, Hinapi?” “Not really.” “But you don’t want dry hands!” “It’ll make my hands slippery. It’s a debuff.” *It just keeps going!*

Well, GoHands is back with their latest adaptation of what happens when you attempt to treat a stroke with LSD. I didn’t go in expecting it to be good, but somehow, GoHands actually succeeded in falling shy of my already dismal expectations. The weirdest part is that, rather than falling back on their old bad habits, the show is terrible in new ways. It seems that the staff at GoHands realized that making viewers’ eyes bleed was getting old, so they decided to get innovative and unleash their creativity on our eardrums.

If you’re unfamiliar with GoHands, they’re arguably the worst anime studio I’ve encountered. I legitimately don’t understand what their business model is, given that they release abomination after abomination. I’ll discuss them in more detail later, but suffice it to say that I came into this with a morbid sense of curiosity and was still horrified by what I encountered. Momentary Lily isn’t as insufferable as Handshakers or W’z, but it’s closer than it has any right to be.

You might ask, what is Momentary Lily even about? I’m not entirely sure myself. It might be a post-apocalyptic sci-fi battle magical girl cooking show, maybe? Does that sound interesting? If so, I’m presenting it wrong. I’m not going to strain my neurons trying to wrap my head around it.

GoHands are known for a handful of production trademarks. They often feature stilted dialogue, nausea-inducing tracking shots, nausea-inducing filters, nausea-inducing CG effects, nausea-inducing camera angles, and nausea-inducing color palettes. In this regard, Momentary Lily is a step (or at least a slight shuffle) forward. I only occasionally experienced nausea during this episode, and it never hurt my eyes the way W’z did.

However, there is one element missing that it desperately needs. Silence. These characters will not shut up. Around the midway point of the premiere, I made a concerted effort to look out for a gap of more than two seconds between lines of dialogue. After about 6 minutes of constant yammering, I technically found a spot that qualified. The characters were still making noise because one of them accidentally ate too much wasabi, but there were about 4 seconds without dialogue. That might be a record for the episode. I honestly don’t know how to convey how irritating the characters are. Each is defined by a single trait (if that), and they’re constantly talking over one another. I’ve never seen so little conveyed with so many words.

GoHands is a studio that has long been the bane of anime critics. They didn’t always attract this much ire, but they had a breakout hit with K back in 2012, in which they used strong color filters to cover up some of their messy CG effects. Afterwards, they started layering more and more filters and CG, at the expense of visual cohesion and retinas.

This is the first GoHands anime I’ve watched since 2021’s Project Scard. They had two shows, The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses and The Masterful Cat Is Depressed Again Today, back in 2023, but I didn’t sample either of those. I thought GoHands might have entered a phase where they were simply bad and boring, but I was legitimately begging the first episode of Momentary Lily to end. W’z and Project Scard both had issues with characters rambling about faux-pretentious musings, but Momentary Lily takes it a step further by having the characters talk about nothing.

The studio evidently thought, by applying each character’s singular trait in a condensed paste, they’d make those characters memorable. Not only is this agonizing, but it doesn’t even hold true. Outside of the green haired girl who talks as if everything is a video game, and the dark haired one who constantly says “guilty,” I legitimately couldn’t tell the remainder of them apart. The only thing preventing this from being worse than Handshakers and W’z is that the camera movement has been toned down. It’s still present, and ugly as sin, but that’s undoubtedly a step up from those titles.

Before I wrap up, a few Notes and Nitpicks:

• I wonder if the fact that Momentary Lily actually makes sense as a name gave me false hope? Unlike Project Scard: Scar on the Praeter, K, and W’z, this one actually sounds like a real show.
• I took multiple breaks when watching this episode, even going so far as to go to the grocery store. Despite those intermissions, this was a slog.
• Oh, god. I forgot about the OP. Look, I don’t have anything against metalcore, but the last thing a GoHands show needs is MORE stimulation. I can’t even judge the song on its own merits, as it was accompanying an absolute onslaught of visual stimuli.
• And what the hell is with that blond character’s chest? Much of the character animation is actually a cut above Go Hands’s previous works, but it turns out the uncanny valley refers to that character’s cleavage. Physics went out to lunch and never came back.

GoHands almost defies critical analysis. I’d compare their works to the oeuvre of Tommy Wiseau, but despite being a despicable person, Wiseau has at least afforded people unintentional entertainment. Momentary Lily is arduous and painful. I’d rather do a double feature of The Room and Battlefield Earth than watch even half of this series. I hate it. 

Score: 1/5