In the early days of Spring 2021, a few strong contenders had a monopoly on what they thought
was just a relatively average season. They thought they had it set at the top of the
food chain, until a disturbance in the balance of anime was felt across the globe. Gigguk
felt it, Mother’s Basement felt it, Hiding in Public felt it, and of course the Anime
Culture Corner certified biggest and bestest anime channel on youtube felt it as well.
And I felt it before them actually, let’s not forget. No one could have foreseen (except
for me) that odd taxi would jump up to the number 32 spot on myanimelist uncontested
after its final episode, a thrilling, mystery-resolving, and cliff-hanging conclusion, blew us out
of the park. Was odd taxi our underrated king of 2021? The anime YouTube community certainly
thought it was. But, alas, it was not. Because not only is there a series even more underrated
than odd taxi from this past season, but after its conclusion and season finale it is even
rated better as well. A show that i dug my fingers into weeks ago, initially in it just
for all of its time travel galore, but afterwards realizing the absolute magnificence and masterclass
that was Link Click. A donghua, a chinese anime, that is scored better than jujutsu
kaizen, better than mob psycho season 2. What is this mystery show? Why is it rated so highly,
what in it could possibly beat out so many well-ranked shows? And as per request from
my subscribers, i will assume that anyone who put el psy congroo meant yes, and that
even the people who said no meant yes because i was going to do this video regardless, I
am back with another video on Link Click. I did one approximately 2 weeks ago; before
the series finished, I came at it with my thoughts, a summary of the plot and concept,
my typical spiel really, and at the time I was still talking about how i loved it. But
that feeling has magnified exponentially since the first season ended, just like odd taxi
did actually, because both series ENDED WITH HUGE F*CKING CLIFFHANGERS. Lemme ask you a
question: how often do you see end-of-season-cliffhangers in anime? Code geass, violet evergarden, there’s
a couple, sure; but to have two in not just the same season, but in the two BEST SHOWS
of said season. Are you kidding me? But, the fact that it has the cliffhanger is the only
actual spoiler I will leave you with here in the intro of the video, because there is
absolutely no way that I could afford to worsen your experiences of watching the show yet,
for those of you who have yet to get around to it, because it is just so amazing. But
do be warned that there are some minor details about the story and characters, nothing specific
about key plot points like that, but just enough to supplement the length of this video,
to fully encompass the greatness of this show. And thus, today is my fleshed out review of
all of Link Click, the undisputed best anime of 2021.
Now if you’re this far without knowing the concept of Link Click, let me give you a quick
rundown in Anime Culture Corner’s Concise, Compressed, Condensed, and every other C-letter
word I could find in the thesaurus Summary. We follow two main characters who can travel
to the past through pictures. Chen Xiaoshi goes into the past through the bodies of the
photo takers, and Lu Guang guides him telepathically in the present by telling him what happens
in the timeline and what he must do to make sure nothing in the past changes at all. What
he must say, how he must act. People come to these two for various reasons and odd jobs,
offering their old photos, so they can find hidden information from the past that can
help in the future, because of course they can’t, or rather won’t, change the actual
past. Finding a secret recipe from an old friend, saying goodbye to a past lover, you
get the gist. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.
As i prefaced in my last video, i love time travel. And i wouldn’t say that i’m a
time travel know-it-all, in the sense that i’m nitpicky when it misses a certain theory
or there’s a small plothole, but i will often notice them because i’ve seen a lot
and its just a difficult concept to pull off in the first place. Most anime take the simple
approach of having someone come from the future to change the present; vivy did this, orange
did this, the girl who leapt thru time. And its because its easier to pull off, you don’t
really have to worry about paradoxes or nuances of time travel because the main, present cast
of characters are changing an unknown future. Everyone wants to make a better future, so
they encourage making a new timeline, changing the course of their story. Which is why i
have even more respect for link click, because it tackles the other, more difficult to traverse
side of the coin; going from the present and changing the past. Something that was mastered
by steins;gate, which set such a high standard for how it should be done. Changing the past
inherently makes for a complex story. And not only does it go for this more challenging
approach, but it does it extremely tastefully, and truly expresses what i believe are both
the beauties and horrors of time travel. Chen Xiaoshi and Lu Guang set up an essential premise
from the start of the show: in fact, the rules of time travel that they self-impose are the
very first words of the entire series. You get 12 hours. Chen must follow what lu guang
says, who knows the entire timeline and what happens, and change nothing. And lastly, past
or future, just let them be. Which comes to be the focal point of this series, and the
very human and emotionally-taxing difficulty of having an opportunity extended in front
of you, but having to force yourself not to take it.
And this is what i meant by the horrors of time travel. Everyone has regrets, even if
you don’t believe in regrets there are always moments where you could have done something
better, and link click is all about regrets. In the very first episode, we initially go
into this girls photo simply to get secret information from her boss, only to be unexpectedly
thrown into a grief-stricken story of a broken and expectation-driven family as well. Chen,
in her body, wants to change things, he raises questions like ‘what will one small change
do?’. ‘I don’t even know her… it won’t even affect me…’. Which are all reasonable,
because at this point in the story, the very beginning, we have no idea how changing the
past will affect the future. We agree with him. In steins;gate we have no idea about
the real consequences of messing with time and how drastic they could be until that fateful
moment where it hits us like a truck. Or i guess, hits us like a train. And chen decides
to make a change. Yeah, he disobeyed rule number 2 right off the bat in the show, but
it was just a text to her mom. so small and heart-warming that even us as viewers were
willing to overlook it because, what’s that gonna do? And we immediately see the consequence
at the end of the episode, arguably the worst possible outcome and one that immediately
reels us into this series. It proves to us in just the first 20 minutes- no time for
slow burning, no build up- that messing with time has real consequences, and truly sets
us up for the rest of Link Click. When faced with immense, unavoidable loss that you might
have the power to change, can you stop yourself from doing it? Even if it’s someone else’s
life, someone you don’t know, what likely won’t ever affect you personally, are you
willing to hold yourself back for the sake of… just being safe? You’ll probably change
the timeline, but… what if your actions don’t? There’s also that aspect of skepticism,
convincing yourself that maybe doing one small thing won’t change anything significantly,
that’ll it’ll all go right and as you hope. Being in chen xiaoshi’s shoes, having
to live through these people, is horrifying because there is not a person in the world
who wouldn’t want to act out in some of these moments, but you have to try to hold
yourself back. Purposefully living through and literally recreating your regrets… is
there anything more horrifying than that? excluding junji ito, of course. Because nothing’s
scarier than that.
But not every story in link click is stricken with sadness, many of which are actually very
beautiful and heartstring-pulling tales. The beauty of time travel is in what we typically
fantasize it to be, what it is put on a pedestal as: what could’ve been. And despite the
darker side, more realistic aspect of time travel in the butterfly effect and such consequences
that the show dives into, this brighter side does exist and link click emphasizes that
good just as much as the bad. Shows like orange almost entirely focuses on the good of time
travel, of replacing the terrible future with a better one, and on the other hand anime
like steins;gate revolve entirely around the consequences of it and realizing that you
never should’ve messed with it. Returning to the two different kinds of time travel
stories, often when someone comes from the future to the present it focuses on the good
of time travel, while present to the past focuses on the bad. Generally. And even though
breaking the rules of time travel is link click’s central theme, it balances the benefits
and the losses of changing the past. Chen Xiaoshi and Lu Guang have the chance to reunite
separated family in the present, and finally bring together star-crossed lovers who have
never been able to be together, all by simply gathering information from the past and bringing
it to the current age. Their job does have its merits even when they can’t change anything,
they still have an impact on people’s lives that is irreplaceable. But if you could change
the past… then that separated family never would’ve been separated, those star-crossed
lovers would’ve always been together. The temptation of changing the past has really
never felt more real than it does in Link Click.
And setting aside the content of it for a moment, disconnecting myself and looking at
just the production, pacing, logistics, it’s all amazing. I said in my last video how the
black bars add to a cinematic feel visually, and the opening/ending songs are just awesome
and really bring the show up a whole notch but what i want to focus on here is the pacing.
The show is paced in a way that just about every single episode ends in a cliff hanger.
Its not just the ending of the show that i mentioned earlier, honestly i shouldn’t
even have been surprised it ended with a cliff hanger because its such a common trope in
this anime that frankly few to no other anime pull off or even try to do. And the reason
cliff hangers work so well with link click specifically is because it is a very episodic
anime. The problem with episodic anime, in my eyes, more often than not, is that the
appeal of each episode doesn’t last. It is contained to just the 20 minute duration
of each chapter of the series, which while it isn’t necessarily a bad thing on its
own, becomes very difficult to binge through. It almost feels like watching multiple mini
movies, and can be tiring. The power of cliffhangers completely erases that. Every time you finish
an episode the show is almost just slapping you in the face and saying, ‘wait… there’s
more.’. As someone who has watched anime for a long time, my prime binging days are
past me. The days, or just one day actually that im quite proud of, when i watched 46
episodes of one piece in 24 hours, are long gone frankly and i can really only binge series
nowadays that i really enjoy or that are put together cohesively like link click. Cliff
hangers expand on the wow effect of any show, the kind that leaves you jaw-dropped at the
end and wanting even more and link click capitalizes on that and completely turns it into one of
the most integral parts of the show’s enjoyment.
The barebones of Link Click, the concept has been done before, the example that immediately
came to mind when i began the series being Getbackers, a rather old anime around 2002
that also has these 2 main characters, one being kind of the brains and the other being
the more charismatic and headstrong one, taking odd jobs for people. Time travel isn’t new,
nor are murder mysteries. So it’s not like link click at base level really brings anything
inherently new to the table, it’s simply the way its delivered and just how much it
delivers. Action, suspense, thriller, romance, slice of life, hell even sports. It is a show
that’s not afraid to dive into the more complex side of time travel, and the suspense
of a good murder mystery, that isn’t scared to add in a bit of everything and do it all
extremely well. And I just absolutely love it, especially considering it already faces
an obstacle naturally as a donghua, a chinese anime. The type of show that will always experience
less interest from audiences or exposure just because its not japanese. It’s incredibly
rewarding to see such an ambitious series take off in the way it has, even if the actual
audience that has seen it yet is small, the rating truly reflects how good
the show is.