Link Click

While it was airing, Shiguang Dailiren was considered the hidden gem of Spring 2021 by many fans. Now, with its strong finale and its pass to a second season, its insanely positive response by the audience will make more people watch it and discuss it. But is it really worth the hype? First of all, let's state the obvious and answer this question to a certain audience. People with an interest in non sci-fi time traveling shows could easily enjoy this. Flashy and with style, the protagonists use photographs to enter a past moment of the same world's timeline, and control others' bodies and minds therefor a few hours with their main objective being the solution of criminal cases. Using that power, they must be careful not to change the flow of events because the butterfly effect may lead the world to a completely different future. How do they handle situations like these? Well, Cheng Xiaoshi's character is heavily inspired by the mad scientist from Steins;Gate, Okabe Rintarou. In his "diving operations", he gets emotional when he faces hardships and he feels the urge to help other people. He never puts the blame in others and tries to take full responsibility, and that's what could make him a tragic character or... a hero. His partner, Lu Guang is more grounded and that makes sense because he is an observer when they use their special power. Sadly, in these 11 episodes all the other characters are shallow and forgettable, so in the end, only Cheng matters. The dialogue and character interactions are a big minus in this show. There's sometimes fan service, while at times there are just tragic events happening and people acting immaturely. Of course, not everyone views this as a flaw. The animation and art show almost no similarity to those of common anime, and that's because Shiguang Dailiren is a donghua. Their style is closer to a live webtoon than a japanese anime. As for the soundtrack, it's a good reason to watch the show; the beautiful and romantic opening song, the dynamic and mysterious ending song that makes you want to watch more, but most of the insert songs too; all of them are praiseworthy. In my point of view, to really answer the question I set in my prologue, Link Click is neither innovative nor brilliant. Its selling points are either easy to use or already popular in fiction: simple time travel with no sci-fi approach, a compassionate main character, simple life lessons and morals that say no to greed, attractive looking characters and shallow drama that stems from bad life choices. It's like a failed attempt to make a crossover of Sherlock Holmes and Steins;Gate. Thank you for reading.

tl;dr: good art, decent soundtrack, awful character development and one of the worst time travel implementations of any show. It's okay, not great, not awful. Story: 4/10 --- They jump into photographs and change the past for various clients, why? Well, they don't really explain their motivations much. They simply do it. The story is one of the characters jumping back into the past to help a client, solve their problem and then return to the present. You might then wonder, why doesn't the main character go into the past to either 1) save people 2) accrue a large amount of money Well, he can't do that. Why? The showessentially brings up the butterfly theory, that one small change can have immense impacts. For example, if I traveled to the past and took up a few seconds of your future partner's time with idle conversation, you may never meet them. Then your entire life trajectory (and countless others) would be changed permanently. The show brings this concept up multiple times as a generalized excuse, it never expands on it and it's never applied to the characters when they change the past every episode. Every change the characters do in the past are seen as largely an isolated change, so why can't the main character change the past however he pleases? This is never answered. Art: 7/10 --- There was a few scenes where I could tell there was a lot of effort put into it, then others where there was a lot of slacking. Overall, the background art/animation looked generally good. Sound: 6/10 --- Very hit or miss. It either perfectly suits the atmosphere or it ruins the atmosphere, they also reuse some tracks far too much in the wrong context. I did enjoy some of the OST's in this show but by the time I heard it for the 30th time, I stopped enjoying it as much. Characters: 4/10 --- I feel like I know nothing about the main characters motivations, thoughts or beliefs. Instead of focusing on the main characters, there was a plethora of episodic side characters that ended up being fleshed out more then them. I found that the random side characters they helped out seemed more interesting then the main characters, who didn't seem to have much of a personality. Overall: 6/10 --- It's alright but has a few flaws, mostly related to character development and the time travel aspect of the show. It's like Mushishi and Steins; Gate tried to have a kid but it came out a little retarded. Great concept but very poorly executed.

Shi Guang Dai Li Ren or Link Click is a popular Chinese cartoon about time travel. This has earned it many comparisons to Stein’s Gate, but beyond the time travel element this isn’t really a good comparison. Speaking of time travel, the plot of Link Click was problematic within China since the CCP banned all time travel fiction in 2011. It was considered “disrespectful to history and unhealthy wish fulfilment”. So instead of time machines, Link Clink had to create a truly bizarre and unique magic system to get the series approved by Communist Party censors. The series is about these 2 best friends named Xiaoshiand Guang who run an unusual business together. If they look at a photo, Guang has the power to know everything the person in the photo did or thought within a 12-hour period. Xiaoshi has the power to project his consciousness back into the past and take over the body of the person in the photo for 12 hours. Guang can then use his natural telepathy to tell Xiaoshi what to do in the past. Yes, Guang’s telepathy is so strong he can communicate with people in the past, even if they’re located vast distances away. They don’t actually try to change the past, but rather use their power to learn information. In the first episode, an unknown client gives the duo the task to recover the financial data of a powerful CEO who is suspected of fraud and embezzlement. Xiaoshi goes back in time 48 hours to take control of the CEO’s female secretary and has to find a way to read the data off the guy’s laptop. That’s a typical episode of Link Click until they meet their main antagonist later in the series. So how does Link Click compare to Stein’s Gate? Stein’s Gate is about a goofball mad scientist who accidentally creates a time machine by putting bananas in an old microwave oven. This immediately gets him targeted for assassination by the real-life research agency CERN, who in the world of Stein’s Gate is just HYDRA from Marvel Comics. They’re an evil organization of ex-Nazis who want to take over the world using super tech and succeed in 99.999 percent of all timelines. The plot of Stein’s Gate is fucking stupid. The series works because of its over the top characters and how they interact with each other. Stein’s Gate combines goofy humor with serious drama in a very VN sort of way. It is 100% a visual novel adaptation and it succeeds by embracing that. Link Click is kind of the polar opposite. It’s a series that lives and dies by its plot and high concept. The series succeeds because the plot is cool and the way they do time travel is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. It’s not particularly funny. It’s not there to generate dozens of memes and reaction gifs. The characters aren’t as fleshed out or memorable as the ones in Stein’s Gate. Xiaoshi is the funny man and Guang is the straight man. Xaioshi has a heart of gold and Guang is kind of a cold bastard who is all about profit with little concern for the people in the photographs. By the end of the first episode, you basically know who these guys are. Link Click is less like a visual novel and more like a Hollywood blockbuster. I would say it’s a lot closer to Inception than it is to Stein’s Gate. One thing that actually impressed me about Link Click was its willingness to address China’s massive wealth gap and rural poverty that still persists to this day. This isn’t something that China typically advertises, so I assume this show was mostly made for a Chinese domestic audience. This may seem like a minor thing, but it shows up in Link Click repeatedly and actually makes the story more powerful while also making it feel more real. Link Click was made entirely in Shanghai by a studio called BiliBili. Apparently, it was made using Adobe Flash, so that’s actually really impressive. They made a God Tier rated anime in 2021 using the same software that brought us immortal classics like “Kerrigan & the Frog” 20 years ago. Is Link Click worth watching? Absolutely! However, if you don’t have Funimation, you might have a rough time. On most of the streaming sites as of this review, some of the episodes use the official subs and some use the fan subs. The fan subs are bad. REALLY bad! I’m getting flashbacks to bootleg Naruto DVDs where they translated “dattebayo” as “Fuck!”. I think most MAL users that watched Link Click just watched it in the original Mandarin, but if you’re a gweilo and don’t have a Funimation subscription, be prepared for a rough ride.